Ruggles of Red Gap/Harry Leon Wilson
HARRY LEON WILSON[1]
The simple theme of "Ruggles of Red Gap," which is of very complex humour and uncommon art is the autobiographical story of the "man" of the Hon. George Basingwell, who loses him at draw-poker to a wild American in Paris, known as Cousin Egbert to his family and as "the Senator" to his constituents at Red Gap, where he represents them in the state Legislature.
The details are of a richness kept from rankness, and of a pleasant mockery which could not be easily imparted at second hand. The work, which is almost quite of a new kind, but suggests the attitude of Charles Yellowplush now and then, is, upon the whole, a fresh contribution to the stock of American humour, which it enriches from sources as novel as those of Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams.
It is not to be supposed that such a merry jest as the story must be taken in any wise seriously; but we cannot help seeing in it a phase of civilization which will interest the student of the world's future democracy. Our vision, of course, involves the firm faith which we share with the rest of mankind in a world of accepted right as might reconstituted on the ruins of Kultur and Schrecklichkeit. We expect, as firmly as we can expect anything, that autocracy is by way of coming to grief and that democracy is waiting to come into its own, in the realized ideals of that Declaration which puzzled a belated Englishman like Ruggles, but which is as divinely postulated as the authority of kings used everywhere to be.
- ↑ By permission, from Harper's Magazine. Copyright, 1918, by Harper & Brothers.