Talk:Wolfville
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| Notes: | Reviews from the Bookman (US and UK, resply.), 1897 |
Reviews
[edit]1 The Bookman (UK) November 1897: The components of Mr. Lewis's humour may be frowned on by your precisian in fun. They are a plentiful supply of malaprops, a habit of ingenious circumlocution, some very imaginative strong language, and a general atmosphere of solemn topsy-turveydom. The result comes out all right. But it is quite foreign humour, for we are terribly slow in the adoption of American mental processes. Mr. Jacob's comes nearest to it in quality and tone. In a true English reader it can hardly produce a guffaw; but it brings on a hard, steady grin, and a puckering of the eyebrows. It has something of the laborious quality of Scottish (eastern counties) humour. But here, in case this analysis sounds forbidding, we stop it to say that Wolfville is a western mining community, full of personages more varied in angularities and character knots than Bret Harte's gallery, but like his in their passions and generous virtues. Cherokee Hall, Texas Thompson, Doc Peets are great men, and like all barbarians of fine stock have an inexhaustible flow of rhetoric. When Cherokee sees off old Wilkins's girl to the States, he does not merely wring her hand and ask her if her ticket is safe, as an English lord would do. Emotions don't choke such eloquence as his. "Now, you remember, shore; whatever game's bein' turned back thar, if it goes ag'in you, raise the long yell for a sharp called Cherokee Hall! an' his bank's yours to go behind your play." The Old Cattleman tells his tale in a terrible lingo, but we can stand having to scrape through the daubs of local colour, for the sake of the fun behind—a little difficult in its appeal, yet perfectly genuine.
2. By James L. Ford in The Bookman (US) October 1897: Under the name of "Dan Quin" Mr. Alfred Henry Lewis has been known for some years to readers of Western papers as the author of many humorous and entertaining stories of life on the plains. These stories have now been gathered together and printed in book form with a score of illustrations by Mr. Frederic Remington. The pictures will undoubtedly serve to commend Wolfville to that large part of the reading public which cherishes a fondness for the literature of the plains. But once introduced, the letter-press will tell its own stories, and it will be found that the utterances of the philosophic old cattleman will need no further bush. I believe that this is Mr. Lewis's first appearance between covers, although he has been for several years a writer not only of humorous stories, but of political essays as well.
Mr. Lewis has one peculiarity which I commend with all due respect to our brothers and sisters in letters. He seldom writes on any subject with which he is not familiar He understands national politics and the men who find themselves bedfellows in that great game, and he writes of them in a manner that betrays the keenest sort of insight and a broad knowledge of American statesmanship of the past and present. I have long regarded him as the one man in this country who possessed the art of making American politics interesting.
He knows the plains as well as he knows Washington, and in Wolfville he gives us the cream of many years' experience in the Far West and Southwest. All that he has to say comes from the lips of a typical old cattleman, whose face, with its mingled shrewdness, determination, and straightforward kindliness, Mr. Remington has admirably portrayed in a frontispiece. The stories that he has to tell are of the inhabitants of that tough living, quick dying, hard drinking, high playing Southwestern town of Wolfville. He deals with such folks as Tucson Jennie, Cherokee Hall, Faro Nell, Doc Peets, and others calculated to awaken memories of Bret Harte. But the characters are not those of Bret Harte, nor is the book in any way an imitation of the half dozen idealised mining stories that made the California story-teller's fame a quarter of a century ago. Mr. Lewis has not fallen into that too common error of monkey-like imitation. He knows the life and characters that he describes, and he tells his stories in his own way.
There are two dozen of these tales in Wolfville, and I find it no easy matter to say of any one of them that it is the best. The first of them is called "Wolfville's First Funeral," and it tells of the burying of one Jack King, who is, according to the narrator,
"corpse eemergin' outen a game of poker as sech. Which prior tharto, Jack's been peevish, an' pesterin' an' pervadin' 'round for several days. The camp stands a heap o' trouble with him an' tries to smooth it along by givin' him his whiskey an' his way about as he wants 'em hopin' for a change. But man is only human, an' when Jack starts in one night to make a flush beat a tray full for seven hundred dollars, he asks too much."
It is the first chance that the town has had for a funeral of its own, and the citizens resolve to take the best possible advantage of it. Doc Peets, a gentleman in whose higher culture and sound horse sense the town has unlimited faith, is appointed to "deal the game," and instantly gives orders to have the grave dug at least one mile from the camp, saying:
"In order to make a funeral a success you needs distance. That's where deceased gets action. It gives the procession a chance to spread an' show up. You can't make no funeral imposin' unless you're plumb liberal on distances."
Doc Peets preaches the funeral discourse, referring to the departed as
"a very headstrong person, who persists yesterday in entertainin' views touchin' a club flush, queen at the head, which results in life everlastin'."
At the conclusion of his remarks
"the little girl from Flagstaff cl'ars her valves with a drink, an' gives 'The Dyin' Ranger;' an' when the entire congregation draws kyards on the last verse it does everybody good."
The grave is marked with a headboard bearing this epitaph:
"Jack King. Life ain't in holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well."
Another story, called "Tucson Jennie's Heart," affords the cattleman a chance to moralise as follows:
"You've got to ketch folks young to marry 'em. After they gets to be thirty years they goes slowly to the altar. If you aims to marry a gent after he's thirty you has to blindfold him an' back him in. Females, of course, ain't so obdurate."
Tucson Jennie comes to the local restaurant under contract to its proprietor to fry flapjacks, and proves such an attraction that Mr. Jim Baxter sets out in dead earnest to win her. The camp takes an interest in the affair, and finally decides to bring matters to a head by pretending to shoot Baxter in order to force the coy maiden's hand and make her show her real feelings. It is arranged also to give a touch of reality to the scheme by pretending to lynch Dave Tutt, the murderer. The game is well carried out, and although Baxter is laid out in such a way that Jennie can "swarm in at him" and embrace him, that young woman upsets all previous calculations by rushing into the Red Light saloon, where the vigilance committee is in session, and falling upon the neck of Dave Tutt.
"'You-alls should have asked me,' says Faro Nell, who comes in right then an' rounds up close to Cherokee. 'I could tell you two weeks ago Jennie's in love with Tutt. Anybody could see it. Why she's been feedin' of him twice as good grub as she does anybody else.'"