Los Angeles herald., 1891-09-03

Story. 'The Quick or the Dead"-nIr.
Chanler's Courtship--A Few Words Con-
cerning Ex-senator Conness.
Especial Correspondence
WASHINGTON, Aug. II. = Fair Amelie
Rives is again conspicuously before the pub
lie eye. Her new novel. According to St.
john" has appeared in part in The Cos
mopolitan Magazine, and has been various
ly received. Never are the critics so savage
as when criticising the writings of Amelie
Rives. Never is the public so remorseless
as when passing Judgment upon the work
of this young Virginia girl. If one is to
believe the critics, those dreadful people
who never do anything noteworthy them
selves, but who are quite sure that no one
else can do any better, she never wrote any
thing worthy place in a respectable libra
ry. Yet Amelie Rives is not without honor,
save in her own country. One of the great
est literary lights of England pronounced
her tale 4 the Middle Ages, "Nurse Crum-
pet Tells the Story" the best short story
that has appeared in the English language
in half century. Virginia of Virginia"
he deemed almost as perfect, and this story
was, for wonder, appreciated in the
United States. Other of her earle stories
were generally regarded as the york of a
great genius, and many of her poems were
everywhere read and everywhere praised.
Then "The Quick OF the Dead" ap-
peared. 1t was q strange, a pCe'l story.
1t was unlike anything theworl had ever
read, and at first the world did not know
what to make of it. But it happened that
just at that moment there was a virtuous
reaction from wave of erotic French lit
erature and clumsy American limitations
thereof, and the reading world, eager to re-
establish a reputation for good taste and
good morals, seized upon this new story
and made an example of it, AS soon as
some one had whispered that it was bad
book the cry was taken up and passed
along, and people who had already read the
story and discovered in it no word or line
to shock their sensibilities or nerves sud-
denly became aware that "The Quick or
the Dead" was something dreadful They
didn't exactly know why and they don't
know yet, but it was the fashion to de-
nounce the book.
The manner in which the American press
treated this book ard it's young author was
something inhuman in its savagery and
heartlessness. / say this as d newspaper
man. as ready as any other, on the slight
est provocation, to defend the institution
out of which / get my bread and butter.
But Amelie Rives was shamefully treated.
In the first place, there was a universal as
sumption that in writing "The Quick or
the Dead" she had done something un-
wholesome and offensive without any one
being able to point out why and how.
There was very little serious and honest
criticism of the story, but decided tend
49, oh sAlro - or,A t,ak
worse and anything but creditable to the
manhood Of the press, to write the author
down with the book. Amelie Rives be-
came the object of innumerabIe newspaper
sneers. She was the subject of countless
witticisms, each with sting in its tail.
She was thus made not only famous but
in sense notorious. Idle stories of her
personal characteristics were taken up and
exaggerated, sensationalists and scandal
mongers were permitted to make her the
target for their blunderbusses, and in
about six months the American people
were pretty we'll convinced that Amelie
Rives not only wrote bad books, but that
she was q queer woman whose acqua1nt-
ance careful persons would not cultivate.
All this had come from a misinterpreta-
ton of her most famous book, 1.-THE Quick
or the Dead" from failure to compre-
hend its spirit and from an utter inability
to discern its motif. When understood,
and when the circumstances under which
it was written are taken into account, this
singular and powerful story becomes new
thing-it takes on new life, new soul, new
meaning 1t was some time ago my pleas
ure to hear the remarkable story of ''The
Quick or the Dead" from the lips of one
who knows all the facts.
"The Quick or the Dead" contains in a
shadowy, suggestive way the story of the
courtship of Amelie Rives by the man
who is now her husband. The motif of the
book is the struggle an imaginative,
dreaming girl had to give up her ideal for
reality which was not like it. Every
story that was ever written probably had
it's first suggestion, its germ, in the actual
experience of its author or some of his
friends or acquaintances. 1t is rarely that
the imagination creates something out of
nothing. The something in this case, the
germ of the idea, the suggestion which a
strong artistic sense knew how to make
the most of, was found when Mr.. John
Armstrong Chanler wooed for the hand of
Amelie Rives, of Castle Hill. Miss Rives
was Barbara Pomfret and Mr.. Chanler
was Jock Dering. Who was Val, the dead
loverp Simply Miss Rives girlish ideal of
the man she had thought she would like
to marry. / suppose every young girl has
such an ideal.
An imaginative girl like this sometimes
finds it anything but easy to give up her
ideal for reality which is different, as
realities are nearly always unlike ideals in
this matter of fact world. Amelie Rives
surely had struggle, for Mr.. Chanler did
not win his suit till he had pressed it again
and again, and had been put off from time
to time. The struggle was long one, and,
with nature like that of Amelie Rives,
it must have had some bitterness in it. 1t
was while this struggle was going on-while
Chanler was waiting for his answer and
Miss Rives was dissecting herseh-that
"The Quick or the Dead" was written. OF
course the originals appeared in the story
only In form or type. The development of
the tale carried the characters into expert
ences which the originals of them had
never had
wish had the space in which to tell
the whole story of Mr.. Chanler's courtship
of Amelie Rives, and to point out the in
cidents which were made use of in the now
famous novel. 1t was at a ball at Newport,
| in August, 1887, that Mr.. Chanler first saw
Miss Rives. He was young man of two
| and twenty, rich, educated and with quite
as much good hard sense as romanticism
|