Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1921-12-15
WISCONSIN HAS
WRITER'S OF FAME

CONTINUED from page ope)
was written when the family was run
ming the store and moving at the same
time. Then followed the stories which
eliminated in the Emma McChesney
series written when she was 22. These
stories caught the attention OF the
i magazine reading public at once. In
Emma McChesney, Edna Ferber has
brought a new type upon the stage,
the successful business woman. 1t is
said that she received $1,000 for eacn
of the McChesney stories. ! might
add that Edna Ferber's income from
short stories, book royalties and play
royalties, Emma McChesney having
been dramatized, amounts TO $4,000
year, quite step from the $500 per
week she received from the Appleton
Crescent
From the intimate way in which
she handles business themes 1t is inn
possible to tell the sex of the writer
from the books, nor her nationali-
! ty says one critic No doubt her
familiarity with business was due to
the fact that her mother was bust
ness woman and the table talk or
the household was usually business.
Few of us realize what fascinating
world America must have been to
this Hungarian Jew and his Berliner
bride, world in which no door was
closed to them and in which they were
able to ride to affluence.
EDNA Ferber was wise to write
about the things she had experienced.
Her first book has many characters
that are easily identified by Appleton
people. Her business stories have
their basis in fact instead of being
filmy vaporings of vivid imagination.
She claims today that the business
woman is the most domestic because
her life outside of the home brings
to her the blessing a true home can
be- She also holds that the club
woman is now an anachromism since
the franchise has been given to wom
en-, not realizing that with the ballot
and the organized club and fedora
ton, woman can get anything that
she seriously and earnestly desires.
Ella W. Wilcox
'In Neal Browns Critical Confess
sions', there is an essay which all
should read who are interested in Ella
Wheeler Wilcox. This writer was
born at Johnstown Center, in 1850,
and graduated from our state uniyer-
sity. While she was there she met
the critic who long after was to treat
her work savagely in "A Deferred
Criticism Evidently the verses OF
this female bounder had grown more
and more distasteful to him until fin
ally in 1899 he could no longer keep
this dead man on his chest and the
result was an essay long deferred. lI
am not an admirer of this Doetess, but
think "a farier criticism would have
been written had the satirrcal pen de-
ferred for another fifteen years its
criticism of the Poetess of Passion.
''At three years of age our poetess
washed playmate's face before she
would play with her. This attitude
followed her through life She felt
II was her mission to set the world
right and send it on it's way rejoic-
ing. Nobody ever helped so many
lame dogs over the stile as she did.
says Theodosia Garrison, a poet who
knew her intimately, She adds: to
spend day with Ella Wilcox was
.equay to that spent at a lsuperior and
highly delightful vaudeville. Her
post was loaded with letters from pun
pit, prison, glad souls, mad souls,
people helped and wanting help, peo-
pie who looked upon her as a spiritu-
al and temporal authority Her heart
was big enough TO embrace all human
ity'. Thus her friend writes on but
nowhere does she accuse her of writ
ing poetry.
"Her first verse was an introduction
to her first story, entitled Minnie
Highland and Mrs. Dudley
Head covered with pretty curls,
Face white as snow,
Her teeth look like handsome pearls.
She's tall and merry. too
"In her girlhood she wrote verses
on total abstinence which were coll
leeted into volume Little Drops or
Water. This brought her $50. 'Maur-
inc which she hoped would become
as popular as Lucille brought $500
Her first great success was Poems or
Passion and this was due TO the
marked curiosity of the American
public, A Chicago critic made Ella
Wheeler Wilcox famous by review
of this book He headed the article: