page_title: Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis
section_title: Novels
hierarchical_section_title: Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis / Career / Novels
caption_attribution_description: English: The Story of Texas under Six Flags, By M.E.M. DAVIS
context_page_description: Mollie Evelyn Moore Davis was an American poet, writer, and editor. From the age of 14, she wrote regularly for the press and other periodicals. A critic said of her that she was "more thoroughly Texan in subject, in imagery and spirit than any of the Texas poets," and that scarcely any other than a native Texan could "appreciate all the merits of her poems, so strongly marked are they by the peculiarities of Texas scenery and patriotism." In 1889, Davis became editor of the New Orleans Picayune.
context_section_description: The series of works in which Davis has portrayed the life of Texas and Louisiana was the following: In War Times at La Rose Blanche Plantation (Lothrop and Company, Boston); Under the Man-Fig (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston); An Elephant's Track, and Other Stories (Harper and Brothers, New York, 1897); The Story of Texas Under Six Flags (Ginn and Company, Boston, 1898); The Wire Cutters (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899); The Queen's Garden (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1900); Jaconetta (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1901); The Little Chevalier (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1905); The Price of Silence (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1907); The Bunch of Roses (Small and Maynard, Boston). Of these In War Times at La Rose Blanche Plantation and 'Jaconetta were largely autobiographical, both dealing with the early years of the author's life, but in a modest and unobtrusive fashion that enlisted the liveliest interest of the reader in the many other characters that crowd her pages rather than in her own. Jaconetta" was Davis's childhood nickname  at La Rose Blanche during the American Civil War. 
  Under Six Flags is a charmingly written child's history of the "Lone Star State", in which the romantic features are brought out distinctly, and the mere annalistic details, without sacrifice of historical accuracy, are subordinated to humanistic interests and dramatic effect. It is in fact a Tendenzschrift well calculated to arouse the State pride of the Texan youth and stimulate him to achievement worthy of the descendant of such ancestry as he finds therein described.
  The life in Texas furnishes the background for two other books in this list: Under the Man-Fig and The Wire Cutters, both to be numbered with her more important works, both ably written, and both developing ingenious and rather complicated plots through which love stories of grace and charm are guided safely to the end. Davis' novel Under the Man-Fig, was described by a reviewer as "a tale at once strongly dramatic, clean and artistic," while her work generally is described by the same writer as being "characterized by a keen sense of humor, a fine restrained pathos and a delicate play of fancy."
  'In the 'Queen's Garden' (a sweet flower exhaling its fragrance amid the tombs), is an idyl whose scene is laid in New Orleans, agonizing in the paroxysms of one of those fearful visitations of yellow fever, now, thanks to the explorations of science, numbered with the past forever. It is in 'The Little Chevalier,' by many regarded as her masterpiece, and 'The Price of Silence' that Davis has made the most minute and painstaking study of Creole life, manners, and character. The former deals with those early days, in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, when the boundless colonial ambition of France stretched a long thin line of possessions, following the water courses of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. It is a motley web of intrigue, ambition, adventure, war, treachery, devotion, death, with a great variety of incidents and characters, French, Indian, and African, and through all runs the golden thread of a romantic love. 'The Price of Silence' deals with the New Orleans of to-day, though the roots of the story reach back two generations into the past. The theme is not altogether pleasant; the tragedy of color is evoked and only deftly evaded at the close. Not every one will find the treatment satisfactory. Alone among Davis's works this seems to bear some traces of haste in composition. Nor should this circumstance give occasion to wonder; for the book was written on a couch of pain, while the writer was suffering daily and almost continually from an excruciating malady. Produced under such conditions, it seems the most noteworthy of her creations, as in fact it surpasses the rest in boldness of conception, in dramatic situations, and in sustained intensity of interest. But it may be questioned whether any of these longer works show the author at her very best.
caption: The Story of Texas under Six Flags
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