Books: Rebel Romance

MISS RAVENEL'S CONVERSION—J. W. De Forest—Harper ($2.50).

The story of this novel is unsparing enough now to disturb most modern readers. Seventy-two years ago it was so shocking it blew its gifted author into literary oblivion. One of the best war stories in U. S. fiction, the first and one of the best realistic portraits of a young American girl, the slyest commentary on the difference in romantic Southern and Northern ways of doing the same thing, it was also one of the greatest failures in U. S. publishing. The book went out of print; the blonde and charming Miss Ravenel was forgotten, along with her dashing but dishonest Colonel Carter; their creator, John William De Forest of New Haven, who died in 1906, became a footnote in college textbooks, someone greatly admired only by William Dean Howells.

Last week Author De Forest's masterpiece was republished. Originally purchased for serialization in Harper's Monthly (Oct. 27, 1866) for $1,250, it was found too strong for the magazine, was brought out as a novel, fell flat despite Howells' enthusiastic review. Twenty-one years later De Forest rewrote it, tried unsuccessfully to persuade Harper to bring it out again. At last, prodded by renewed interest in the Civil War, the changed attitudes toward candor in fiction, the publishers have belatedly acknowledged that De Forest and Howells were right, that their predecessors and public opinion had been wrong.

The Story. Miss Lillie Ravenel was a rebel. At 19 she was tall, slender, graceful, blushed easily and had a way of looking at a young man with her blue eyes so lively and intent that each thought she was especially interested in himself. And, says De Forest, this "was frequently not altogether a mistake." Miss Ravenel was born in New Orleans, loved it, admired it, complained that she was lonely as a mouse in a trap in the New Boston House in New England, whither her father carried her when Louisiana seceded. New Englanders, she said, were right poky, and all the beaux so immature and awkward she thought the Yankees must execute their men at 21. When one of these milksops announced the first defeat at Bull Run with tears in his eyes—"Our men are running, throwing away their guns and everything"—Miss Ravenel gave a shriek of joy, and then, being polite, ran upstairs to dance alone in her room.

Dr. Ravenel was a goodhearted, long-winded, affable Unionist who predicted that the Southerners would fight like jackasses and heroes. Southerners, said he, were an honor to the fortitude, but an insult to the intelligence, of the human race. Why, sir, they would become an example in history of much that was great and of everything that was wrongheaded. Father and daughter argued without listening to each other. He said that once when he got hit on the head, after returning to New Orleans, he knew instantly he was in the South, like the shipwrecked sailor who knew he was in a Christian land as soon as he saw the gallows. Miss Ravenel would be embarrassed by such remarks in company: "Papa," she would say, "what a countrified habit you have of telling stories." "Don't criticise, my dear," the doctor would reply, "I am a high toned gentleman and always knock people on the head who criticise me."