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The Hoosier Schoolmaster by Edward Eggleston

E >> Edward Eggleston >> The Hoosier Schoolmaster



THE HOOSIER
SCHOOLMASTER

A Story of Backwoods Life
in Indiana

REVISED

with an introduction and Notes on the District
by the Author,

EDWARD EGGLESTON

With Character Sketches by

F. OPPER

and other Illustrations by

W.E.B. STARKWEATHER


GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

1871




AS A PEBBLE CAST UPON A GREAT
CAIRN, THIS EDITION IS INSCRIBED TO THE
MEMORY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL,
WHOSE CORDIAL ENCOURAGEMENT TO MY
EARLY STUDIES OF AMERICAN DIALECT IS
GRATEFULLY REMEMBERED.

THE AUTHOR.




PREFACE TO THE LIBRARY EDITION.

BEING THE HISTORY OF A STORY.


"THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-MASTER" was written and printed in the autumn of
1871. It is therefore now about twenty-one years old, and the publishers
propose to mark its coming of age by issuing a library edition. I avail
myself of the occasion to make some needed revisions, and to preface the
new edition with an account of the origin and adventures of the book. If
I should seem to betray unbecoming pride in speaking of a story that has
passed into several languages and maintained an undiminished popularity
for more than a score of years, I count on receiving the indulgence
commonly granted to paternal vanity when celebrating the majority of a
first-born. With all its faults on its head, this little tale has become
a classic, in the bookseller's sense at least; and a public that has
shown so constant a partiality for it has a right to feel some curiosity
regarding its history.

I persuade myself that additional extenuation for this biography of a
book is to be found in the relation which "The Hoosier School-Master"
happens to bear to the most significant movement in American literature
in our generation. It is the file-leader of the procession of American
dialect novels. Before the appearance of this story, the New England
folk-speech had long been employed for various literary purposes, it is
true; and after its use by Lowell, it had acquired a standing that made
it the classic _lingua rustica_ of the United States. Even Hoosiers and
Southerners when put into print, as they sometimes were in rude
burlesque stories, usually talked about "huskin' bees" and "apple-parin'
bees" and used many other expressions foreign to their vernacular.
American literature hardly touched the speech and life of the people
outside of New England; in other words, it was provincial in the narrow
sense.

I can hardly suppose that "The Hoosier School-Master" bore any causative
relation to that broader provincial movement in our literature which now
includes such remarkable productions as the writings of Mr. Cable, Mr.
Harris, Mr. Page, Miss Murfree, Mr. Richard Malcom Johnson, Mr. Howe,
Mr. Garland, some of Mrs. Burnett's stories and others quite worthy of
inclusion in this list. The taking up of life in this regional way has
made our literature really national by the only process possible. The
Federal nation has at length manifested a consciousness of the
continental diversity of its forms of life. The "great American novel,"
for which prophetic critics yearned so fondly twenty years ago, is
appearing in sections. I may claim for this book the distinction, such
as it is, of being the first of the dialect stories that depict a life
quite beyond New England influence. Some of Mr. Bret Harte's brief and
powerful tales had already foreshadowed this movement toward a larger
rendering of our life. But the romantic character of Mr. Harte's
delightful stories and the absence of anything that can justly be called
dialect in them mark them as rather forerunners than beginners of the
prevailing school. For some years after the appearance of the present
novel, my own stories had to themselves the field of provincial realism
(if, indeed, there be any such thing as realism) before there came the
succession of fine productions which have made the last fourteen years
notable.

Though it had often occurred to me to write something in the dialect now
known as Hoosier--the folk-speech of the southern part of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois of forty years ago--I had postponed the attempt
indefinitely, probably because the only literary use that had been made
of the allied speech of the Southwest had been in the books of the
primitive humorists of that region. I found it hard to dissociate in my
own mind the dialect from the somewhat coarse boisterousness which
seemed inseparable from it in the works of these rollicking writers. It
chanced that in 1871 Taine's lectures on "Art in the Netherlands," or
rather Mr. John Durand's translation of them, fell into my hands as a
book for editorial review. These discourses are little else than an
elucidation of the thesis that the artist of originality will work
courageously with the materials he finds in his own environment. In
Taine's view, all life has matter for the artist, if only he have eyes
to see.

Many years previous to the time of which I am now speaking, while I was
yet a young man, I had projected a lecture on the Hoosier folk-speech,
and had even printed during the war a little political skit in that
dialect in a St. Paul paper. So far as I know, nothing else had ever
been printed in the Hoosier. Under the spur of Taine's argument, I now
proceeded to write a short story wholly in the dialect spoken in my
childhood by rustics on the north side of the Ohio River. This tale I
called "The Hoosier School-Master." It consisted almost entirely of an
autobiographical narration in dialect by Mirandy Means of the incidents
that form the groundwork of the present story. I was the newly
installed editor of a weekly journal, _Hearth and Home_, and I sent this
little story in a new dialect to my printer. It chanced that one of the
proprietors of the paper saw a part of it in proof. He urged me to take
it back and make a longer story out of the materials, and he expressed
great confidence in the success of such a story. Yielding to his
suggestion, I began to write this novel from week to week as it appeared
in the paper, and thus found myself involved in the career of a
novelist, which had up to that time formed no part of my plan of life.
In my inexperience I worked at a white-heat, completing the book in ten
weeks. Long before these weeks of eager toil were over, it was a
question among my friends whether the novel might not write _finis_ to
me before I should see the end of it.

The sole purpose I had in view at first was the resuscitation of the
dead-and-alive newspaper of which I had ventured to take charge. One of
the firm of publishers thought much less favorably of my story than his
partner did. I was called into the private office and informed with some
severity that my characters were too rough to be presentable in a paper
so refined as ours. I confess they did seem somewhat too robust for a
sheet so anaemic as _Hearth and Home_ had been in the months just
preceding. But when, the very next week after this protest was made, the
circulation of the paper increased some thousands at a bound, my
employer's critical estimate of the work underwent a rapid change--a
change based on what seemed to him better than merely literary
considerations. By the time the story closed, at the end of fourteen
instalments, the subscription list had multiplied itself four or five
fold. It is only fair to admit, however, that the original multiplicand
had been rather small.

Papers in Canada and in some of the other English colonies transferred
the novel bodily to their columns, and many of the American country
papers helped themselves to it quite freely. It had run some weeks of
its course before it occurred to any one that it might profitably be
reprinted in book form. The publishers were loath to risk much in the
venture. The newspaper type was rejustified to make a book page, and
barely two thousand copies were printed for a first edition. I remember
expressing the opinion that the number was too large.

"The Hoosier School-Master" was pirated with the utmost promptitude by
the Messrs. Routledge, in England, for that was in the barbarous days
before international copyright, when English publishers complained of
the unscrupulousness of American reprinters, while they themselves
pounced upon every line of American production that promised some
shillings of profit. "The Hoosier School-Master" was brought out in
England in a cheap, sensational form. The edition of ten thousand has
long been out of print. For this large edition and for the editions
issued in the British colonies and in continental Europe I have never
received a penny. A great many men have made money out of the book, but
my own returns have been comparatively small. For its use in serial form
I received nothing beyond my salary as editor. On the copyright edition
I have received the moderate royalty allowed to young authors at the
outset of their work. The sale of the American edition in the first
twenty years amounted to seventy thousand copies. The peculiarity of
this sale is its steadiness. After twenty years, "The Hoosier
School-Master" is selling at the average rate of more than three
thousand copies per annum. During the last half-dozen years the
popularity of the book has apparently increased, and its twentieth year
closed with a sale of twenty-one hundred in six months. Only those who
are familiar with the book trade and who know how brief is the life of
the average novel will understand how exceptional is this
long-continued popularity.

Some of the newspaper reviewers of twenty years ago were a little
puzzled to know what to make of a book in so questionable a shape, for
the American dialect novel was then a new-comer. But nothing could have
given a beginner more genuine pleasure than the cordial commendation of
the leading professional critic of the time, the late Mr. George Ripley,
who wrote an extended review of this book for the _Tribune_. The monthly
magazines all spoke of "The Hoosier School-Master" in terms as favorable
as it deserved. I cannot pretend that I was content with these notices
at the time, for I had the sensitiveness of a beginner. But on looking
at the reviews in the magazines of that day, I am amused to find that
the faults pointed out in the work of my prentice hand are just those
that I should be disposed to complain of now, if it were any part of my
business to tell the reader wherein I might have done better.

_The Nation_, then in its youth, honored "The Hoosier School-Master" by
giving it two pages, mostly in discussion of its dialect, but dispensing
paradoxical praise and censure in that condescending way with which we
are all familiar enough. According to its critic, the author had
understood and described the old Western life, but he had done it
"quite sketchily, to be sure." Yet it was done "with essential truth and
some effectiveness." The critic, however instantly stands on the other
foot again and adds that the book "is not a captivating one." But he
makes amends in the very next sentence by an allusion to "the
faithfulness of its transcript of the life it depicts," and then
instantly balances the account on the adverse side of the ledger by
assuring the reader that "it has no interest of passion or mental
power." But even this fatal conclusion is diluted by a dependent clause.
"Possibly," says the reviewer, "the good feeling of the intertwined love
story may conciliate the good-will of some of the malcontent." One could
hardly carry further the fine art of oscillating between moderate
commendation and parenthetical damnation--an art that lends a factitious
air of judicial impartiality and mental equipoise. Beyond question, _The
Nation_ is one of the ablest weekly papers in the world; the admirable
scholarship of its articles and reviews in departments of special
knowledge might well be a subject of pride to any American. But its
inadequate reviews of current fiction add nothing to its value, and its
habitual tone of condescending depreciation in treating imaginative
literature of indigenous origin is one of the strongest discouragements
to literary production.

The main value of good criticism lies in its readiness and penetration
in discovering and applauding merit not before recognized, or
imperfectly recognized. This is a conspicuous trait of Sainte-Beuve, the
greatest of all newspaper critics. He knew how to be severe upon
occasion, but he saw talent in advance of the public and dispensed
encouragement heartily, so that he made himself almost a foster-father
to the literature of his generation in France. But there is a class of
anonymous reviewers in England and America who seem to hold a
traditional theory that the function of a critic toward new-born talent
is analogous to that of Pharaoh toward the infant Jewish population[1].

During the first year after its publication "The Hoosier School-Master"
was translated into French and published in a condensed form in the
_Revue des Deux Mondes_. The translator was the writer who signs the
name M. Th. Bentzon, and who is well known to be Madame Blanc. This
French version afterward appeared in book form in the same volume with
one of Mr. Thomas Bailey Aldrich's stories and some other stories of
mine. In this latter shape I have never seen it. The title given to the
story by Madame Blanc was "Le Maitre d'Ecole de Flat Creek." It may be
imagined that the translator found it no easy task to get equivalents in
French for expressions in a dialect new and strange. "I'll be dog-on'd"
appears in French as "devil take me" ("_diable m'emporte_"), which is
not bad; the devil being rather a jolly sort of fellow, in French. "The
Church of the Best Licks" seems rather unrenderable, and I do not see
how the translator could have found a better phrase for it than
"_L'Eglise des Raclees_" though "_raclees_" does not convey the double
sense of "licks." "_Jim epelait vite comme l'eclair_" is not a good
rendering of "Jim spelled like lightning," since it is not the celerity
of the spelling that is the main consideration. "_Concours
d'epellation_" is probably the best equivalent for "spelling-school,"
but it seems something more stately in its French dress. When Bud says,
with reference to Hannah, "I never took no shine that air way," the
phrase is rather too idiomatic for the French tongue, and it becomes "I
haven't run after that hare" ("_Je n'ai pas chasse ce lievre-la_").
Perhaps the most sadly amusing thing in the translation is the way the
meaning of the nickname Shocky is missed in an explanatory foot-note. It
is, according to the translator, an abbreviation or corruption of the
English word "shocking," which expresses the shocking ugliness of the
child--"_qui exprime la laideur choquante de l'enfant_."

A German version of "The Hoosier School-Master" was made about the time
of the appearance of the French translation, but of this I have never
seen a copy. I know of it only from the statement made to me by a German
professor, that he had read it in German before he knew any English.
What are the equivalents in High German for "right smart" and "dog-on" I
cannot imagine.

Several years after the publication of "The Hoosier School-Master" it
occurred to Mr. H. Hansen, of Kjoege, in Denmark, to render it into
Danish. Among the Danes the book enjoyed a popularity as great, perhaps,
as it has had at home. The circulation warranted Mr. Hansen and his
publisher in bringing out several other novels of mine. The Danish
translator was the only person concerned in the various foreign
editions of this book who had the courtesy to ask the author's leave.
Under the old conditions in regard to international copyright, an author
came to be regarded as one not entitled even to common civilities in the
matter of reprinting his works--he was to be plundered without
politeness. As I look at the row of my books in the unfamiliar Danish, I
am reminded of that New England mother who, on recovering her children
carried away by the Canadian Indians, found it impossible to communicate
with a daughter who spoke only French and a son who knew nothing but the
speech of his savage captors. Mr. Hansen was thoughtful enough to send
me the reviews of my books in the Danish newspapers; and he had the
double kindness to translate these into English and to leave out all but
those that were likely to be agreeable to my vanity. Of these I remember
but a single sentence, and that because it was expressed with felicity.
The reviewer said of the fun in "The Hoosier School-Master:" "This is
humor laughing to keep from bursting into tears."

A year or two before the appearance of "The Hoosier School-Master," a
newspaper article of mine touching upon American dialect interested Mr.
Lowell, and he urged me to "look for the foreign influence" that has
affected the speech of the Ohio River country. My reverence for him as
the master in such studies did not prevent me from feeling that the
suggestion was a little absurd. But at a later period I became aware
that North Irishmen used many of the pronunciations and idioms that
distinctly characterized the language of old-fashioned people on the
Ohio. Many Ulster men say "wair" for were and "air" for are, for
example. Connecting this with the existence of a considerable element of
Scotch-Irish names in the Ohio River region, I could not doubt that here
was one of the keys the master had bidden me look for. While pursuing at
a later period a series of investigations into the culture-history of
the American people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I
became much interested in the emigration to America from the north of
Ireland, a movement that waxed and waned as the great Irish-linen
industry of the last century declined or prospered. The first American
home of these Irish was Pennsylvania. A portion of them were
steady-going, psalm-singing, money-getting people, who in course of time
made themselves felt in the commerce, politics, and intellectual life of
the nation. There was also a dare-devil element, descended perhaps from
those rude borderers who were deported to Ireland more for the sake of
the peace of North Britain than for the benefit of Ireland. In this
rougher class there was perhaps a larger dash of the Celtic fire that
came from the wild Irish women whom the first Scotch settlers in Ulster
made the mothers of their progeny. Arrived in the wilds of Pennsylvania,
these Irishmen built rude cabins, planted little patches of corn and
potatoes, and distilled a whiskey that was never suffered to grow
mellow. The forest was congenial to men who spent much the larger part
of their time in boisterous sport of one sort or another. The
manufacture of the rifle was early brought to Lancaster, in
Pennsylvania, direct from the land of its invention by Swiss emigrants,
and in the adventurous Scotch-Irishman of the Pennsylvania frontier the
rifle found its fellow. Irish settlers became hunters of wild beasts,
explorers, pioneers, and warriors against the Indians, upon whom they
avenged their wrongs with relentless ferocity. Both the Irish race and
the intermingled Pennsylvania Dutch were prolific, and the up-country of
Pennsylvania soon overflowed. Emigration was held in check to the
westward for a while by the cruel massacres of the French and Indian
wars, and one river of population poured itself southward into the
fertile valleys of the Virginia mountain country; another and larger
flood swept still farther to the south along the eastern borders of the
Appalachian range until it reached the uplands of Carolina. When the
militia of one county in South Carolina was mustered during the
Revolution, it was found that every one of the thirty-five hundred men
enrolled were natives of Pennsylvania. These were mainly sons of North
Irishmen, and from the Carolina Irish sprang Calhoun, the most
aggressive statesman that has appeared in America, and Jackson, the most
brilliant military genius in the whole course of our history. Before the
close of the Revolution this adventurous race had begun to break over
the passes of the Alleghanies into the dark and bloody ground of
Kentucky and Tennessee. Soon afterward a multitude of Pennsylvanians of
all stocks--the Scotch-Irish and those Germans, Swiss, and Hollanders
who are commonly classed together as the Pennsylvania Dutch, as well as
a large number of people of English descent--began to migrate down the
Ohio Valley. Along with them came professional men and people of more or
less culture, chiefly from eastern Virginia and Maryland. There came
also into Indiana and Illinois, from the border States and from as far
south as North Carolina and Tennessee, a body of "poor whites." These
semi-nomadic people, descendants of the colonial bond-servants, formed,
in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the lowest rank of
Hoosiers. But as early as 1845 there was a considerable exodus of these
to Missouri. From Pike County, in that State, they wended their way to
California, to appear in Mr. Bret Harte's stories as "Pikes." The
movement of this class out of Indiana went on with augmented volume in
the fifties. The emigrants of this period mostly sought the States lying
just west of the Mississippi, and the poorer sort made the trip in
little one-horse wagons of the sorriest description, laden mainly with
white-headed children and followed by the yellow curs that are the one
luxury indispensable to a family of this class. To this migration and to
a liberal provision for popular education Indiana owes a great
improvement in the average intelligence of her people. As early as 1880,
I believe, the State had come to rank with some of the New England
States in the matter of literacy.

The folk-speech of the Ohio River country has many features in common
with that of the eastern Middle States, while it received but little
from the dignified eighteenth-century English of eastern Virginia. There
are distinct traces of the North-Irish in the idioms and in the peculiar
pronunciations. One finds also here and there a word from the
"Pennsylvania Dutch," such as "waumus" for a loose jacket, from the
German _wamms_, a doublet, and "smearcase" for cottage cheese, from the
German _schmierkaese_. The only French word left by the old _voyageurs_,
so far as I now remember, is "cordelle," to tow a boat by a rope carried
along the shore.

Substantially the same folk-speech exists wherever the Pennsylvania
migration formed the main element of the primitive settlement. I have
heard the same dialect in the South Carolina uplands that one gets from
a Posey County Hoosier, or rather that one used to get in the old days
before the vandal school-master had reduced the vulgar tongue to the
monotonous propriety of what we call good English.

In drawing some of the subordinate characters in this tale a little too
baldly from the model, I fell into an error common to inexperienced
writers. It is amusing to observe that these portrait characters seem
the least substantial of all the figures in the book. Dr. Small is a
rather unrealistic villain, but I knew him well and respected him in my
boyish heart for a most exemplary Christian of good family at the very
time that, according to testimony afterward given, he was diversifying
his pursuits as a practising physician by leading a gang of burglars.
More than one person has been pointed out as the original of Bud Means,
and I believe there are one or two men each of whom flatters himself
that he posed for the figure of the first disciple of the Church of the
Best Licks. Bud is made up of elements found in some of his race, but
not in any one man. Not dreaming that the story would reach beyond the
small circulation of _Hearth and Home_, I used the names of people in
Switzerland and Decatur counties, in Indiana, almost without being aware
of it. I have heard that a young man bearing the surname given to one of
the rudest families in this book had to suffer many gibes while a
student at an Indiana college. I here do public penance for my culpable
indiscretion.

"Jeems Phillips," name and all, is a real person whom at the time of
writing this story I had not seen since I was a lad of nine and he a man
of nearly forty. He was a mere memory to me, and was put into the book
with some slighting remarks which the real Jeems did not deserve. I did
not know that he was living, and it did not seem likely that the story
would have vitality enough to travel all the way to Indiana. But the
portion referring to Phillips was transferred to the county paper
circulating among Jeems' neighbors. For once the good-natured man was,
as they say in Hoosier, "mad," and he threatened to thrash the editor.
"Do you think he means you?" demanded the editor. "To be sure he does,"
said the champion speller. "Can you spell?" "I can spell down any master
that ever came to our district," he replied. As time passed on,
Phillips found himself a lion. Strangers desired an introduction to him
as a notability, and invited the champion to dissipate with them at the
soda fountain in the village drug store. It became a matter of pride
with him that he was the most famous speller in the world. Two years
ago, while visiting the town of my nativity, I met upon the street the
aged Jeems Phillips, whom I had not seen for more than forty years. I
would go far to hear him "spell down" a complacent school-master once
more.

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