The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-07-20

Lee" which. as you may know. con-
tains 500 pages and promises to be one
of the most lasting and best works re-
lating to the civil war and the great
southern hero thereof.
Mr.. Page might almost be called a
worshiper of Robert e. Lee. He thinks
him among the greatest of military
geniuses saying he was as great as Napo-
leon was great and as Washington
was great and also that he was as great
as man he was as soldier. His
first work upon Lee was entitled Robert
f. Lee southerner," 1t was a 12mo Of
200 pages. This book formed part of the
revised manuscript for the greater work.
looked over it. The printed pages are
covered with penciled lines along the
margins and between the type and in
addition is perhaps half bushel OF man
uscrpt. written word by word in Mr..
Pages own hand. The galley proofs are
likewise covered with penmanship. and
the whole contains enough writing for
three or four books of equal size. This
manuscript is to be sent to the Washing
ton and Lee university. which wishes to
preserve 1t as relic of its greatest lit
erary student.
As we looked over the copy Mr.. Page
told me how the greatness of Lees char
acter grew upon him, and how. after
writing the short biography, he felt that
he could not help making the larger
work This remark led to the evolution
of his longer stories, and he told me that
many had started as sketches, which, as
he developed the characters and came
to know and feel them, had grown into
should not be entirely devoted to one
star performer. He thinks it should be
a picture of real life, and says that in
real life you seldom find one character
who stands alone AS we talked | asked
him If his characters were real to him.
and IL he could feel and see them as
though they were alive. He replied
Yes. The people in my stories are
very real to me. I know them not only
physically, but Intellectually and psy-
chically. and | have to make them act
and talk as they naturally would do if
they were alive. This does not mean
that the real villain will always act in
a vilainous way, but he must act in
accordance with his nature as I know
him."
During the conversation the names of
some of the worlds great novelsts came
up. and l asked whether, If Thackeray
books would be among the best SELL
ers.'
Most assuredly they would" was the
emphatic reply. Those men would set
the pace in fiction now just they did
when they wrote their greatest novels
| do not mean that their writings would
be the same, but their natural ability
would be as prominent In their pictures
of the present as they are In those OF
the past. The setting would be different,
but the stories would be as fully ap-
preciated."
The conversation here turned to purity
of thought In literature. and I asked DIR.
Page his opinion of the novels of today.
which verge closely upon forbidden
ground In dealing with the character
popularity known as "the white slave"
He replied
II suppose you refer to stories dealing
with the sex problem and marriage.
That problem has always been a feature
of fiction and IL is one OF the live ele-
ments of human life. | do not see how
you can present life without dealing
more or less with II. We find 1t In the
literature of the past. Dickens touched
upon it in the person of Steerforth in
David Copperfield:' Thacl<eray gives us
tbs temptations of Pendennis In his
novel of that name, and Oliver Gold
smith presents such situations In the
Vicar of Wakefield: I have dealt some-
what with the social outcast question in
John Marvel. Assistant and also in
one of my stories, The Land of the
Spirit, just published. Such things de-
pend entirely upon how they are treated.
They may be handled with perfect pur-
ity. / hardly know how to describe 1t.
1t is the difference between nakedness
and nothing vicious or revolving about
it, It is a part of nature and should
be treated as such. On the other hand
] do not approve at all of catering to
the vicious instincts along such lines"
FRANK G. CARPENTER.