THERE is an ineffable charm about an old town that has outlived its ambition to be a great city, and Crawfordsville is a fine type of such a place. The region was settled in 1823, and the Montgomery County people, both farmers and townfolk, have long been counted among the sturdiest and most intelligent in the State. A cultivated society has always existed at Crawfordsville, and as the seat of Wabash College it acquired in its youth an academic air that it has never shaken off. The town has been called “The Hoosier Athens,” by envious and less favored neighbors. The analogy is not wholly fortunate, as there are neither porticoes nor statues on the college campus, and no Cimon found occupation here, as at the elder Athens, in tree-planting. Nature had anticipated the need of “groves of academe,” and the trees about the college and through the town are truly of the forest primeval, giving the agreeable impression of a rus in urbe. Crawfordsville has often sent young men elsewhere to find occupation; but if its commercial attractions have been slight, its educational advantages have been proportionately great, and Wabash is able to point to a long list of successful alumni. The spirit of change has rarely invaded the college, and men are now holding chairs who have grown old in its service. Wabash has been content to do honest college work and has never made false pretensions as to its ability to do more. “Mere literature,” as Bagehot fondly called it, has not been disregarded, and in no college of ampler endowment have the classics been taught more sympathetically or intelligently. It is one of the few colleges remaining at the West which close their doors to women, although importunate hands have long besought the wicket.
The honor and dignity of learning have come to have a real meaning here, not only to those who seek instruction at the college, but to the people of the town as well. Wabash may not have directly influenced those who made Crawfordsville a seat of authorship, but certainly a fortunate chance led makers of books to seek the congenial atmosphere created by the college. In such a place one may not grow rich, but one may dwell contented; and while coarser commerce has not flourished greatly, much valuable manuscript has freighted the east-bound mails from Crawfordsville. Authorship and scholarship alone have not engaged the inhabitants. Joseph E. McDonald, later a senator in Congress, once lived here, as did also John M. Butler, who became McDonald’s law partner at Indianapolis and one of the ablest men of the Western bar. Butler’s son, John Maurice Butler, was born at Crawfordsville, and his untimely death (1896) removed the man of most charming personality, and the keenest wit of his generation at the capital. Henry Beebee Carrington had identified himself with Indiana’s participation in the War of the Rebellion before he became (1870-1873) professor of military science at Wabash. His stay at Crawfordsville was brief, but the inhabitants prefer to believe that as he once breathed the Athenian air they are entitled to share with Connecticut, his native State and later home, in the credit for his writings. The Whitlocks and the Elstons were among the first settlers, and were prominent in all the earlier labors of the community. Henry S. Lane, General Wallace’s brother-in-law, was a senator in Congress (1860-1867), and lived and died here.
General Lew Wallace, whose varied achievements have contributed so largely to the town’s fame, was not born at Crawfordsville, but at Brookville, in Franklin County, April 10, 1827. His father, David Wallace, had resigned from the regular army soon after his graduation from West Point in 1821. He studied law at Brookville, and soon began an interesting public career. He was one of the political giants of the State in his day, holding many offices and positions of honor. His first wife, General Wallace’s mother, was the daughter of John Test, of a family long prominent in the State. General Wallace was an adventurous boy, impatient of all restraint, and fond of wandering, and he therefore received little systematic education; but his father owned an excellent library, and, as has happened with other boys who have refused to submit to the schoolmaster, he found his own way to the book shelves. He was for a time a student at Hoshour’s school at Centerville; and he once ran away to join an older brother at Wabash; but he was either unwilling or unable to break his nomadic habits, and continued to roam the woods until, at sixteen, his school bills were audited for the last time. He was beset by several ambitions; literature, art, and a military career invited him. He had some skill at sketching, and painted a portrait of Black Hawk, the Indian chief, drawing on the family medicine chest for castor oil to use in mixing his colors. He also completed a novel, “The Man at Arms: A Tale of the Tenth Century,” of which he remembers little; but Sulgrove in one of his chronicles darkly hints that it was of the school of G. P. R. James. Robert Duncan, clerk of Marion County, in which Indianapolis is situated, employed him as copyist, and he varied this prosaic occupation by reading law in his father’s office. The Mexican War now broke upon the country, and as Lewis—the second syllable disappeared during the Civil War—had painted a picture and written a romance, he now turned naturally to his third ambition. He organized a company and went south with the First Indiana Infantry. The regiment saw little of the war, but the campaign and his personal experience in military matters confirmed young Wallace’s purpose to write a novel of Mexico, for which, by a kind of prevision and the inspiration of Prescott, he had already made tentative sketches. On his return to Indiana he again took up the law, and practised at Covington until 1852, when he removed to Crawfordsville, which has ever since been his home. He presently organized a military company, known as the “Montgomery Guards,” and equipped it with the Zouave uniform. This furnished an outlet for his ceaseless energy, and also for his pocket-book, as the State contributed nothing to the company’s support. He brought it to a high standard of efficiency, and at the outbreak of the Civil War it was one of the best-drilled military organizations in the country. Governor Morton appointed Mr. Wallace adjutant-general of the State at the first sign of hostilities, but he served in this capacity for a short time only, and organized the Eleventh Indiana Regiment, with his original Crawfordsville company as nucleus, and began an active and brilliant career in the army. Almost immediately his regiment distinguished itself in West Virginia. He was a brigadier-general before the capture of Fort Henry, and was made major-general for gallantry at Donelson. A year after Shiloh, a friend called General Wallace’s attention to the official reports of that engagement, and he learned for the first time that he had been censured for his conduct on the first day of the battle. He asked at once for a court of inquiry, which was denied, and a long controversy followed. This died out for a time, but was renewed when Grant began the serial publication of his memoirs. It was always maintained by General Wallace’s friends that Grant was unjust to Wallace; that the Indiana officer faithfully obeyed orders actually given him; and certainly no one who ever had any acquaintance with General Wallace would believe him capable of intentionally taking a circuitous route to a battle-field. The effective service of his command on the second day of the battle should forever have stilled criticism; as it was, Grant wrote in his memoirs—the last words that ever came from his pen—a footnote to his account of Pittsburg Landing that fairly acquitted General Wallace of all blame. Much has been written, by participants and others, touching the incident, and it has been made the subject of an exhaustive study by George F. McGinnis.[43] While stationed at Baltimore, in 1864, General Wallace prevented a Confederate descent upon Washington by intercepting Jubal Early at Monocacy. He threw 6,000 men against Early’s force of 28,000, suffering defeat, but detaining the enemy until Grant could send reënforcements from Virginia. This was one of the most important of all his military services, and he received for it Grant’s cordial praise. General Wallace was a member of the court that tried the conspirators implicated in the assassination of Lincoln; and he was president of the commission that tried and convicted Captain Henry Wirz, commandant of Andersonville Prison.
When General Wallace returned to Crawfordsville at the close of the war he was thirty-eight; he had served creditably in one war and with enviable distinction in a second, and he turned to the arts of peace from a military experience that had given him wide reputation and acquaintance among public men of the Civil War period. He began industriously to reëstablish himself in his law practice, and varied his occupation with study and literary work. “The Man at Arms,” his youthful attempt at “A Tale of the Tenth Century,” had disappeared during his absence in Mexico; but the ambition to write a romance of the invasion of Cortez, and his manuscript beginnings of it, had survived two wars, and he now set about finishing the story. He had at this time no definite ambition to become an author, and he gave his evenings to the writing of “The Fair God” with little idea of ever publishing it. After its completion he carried it East with him on a business journey. Whitelaw Reid gave him an introduction to a Boston publisher, and the result was the appearance of the tale in 1873. He had spent in all about twelve years on the book, part having been written, as already stated, in his boyhood; and the author’s faithfulness to his early purpose through many years that had brought new duties and obligations is in keeping with his whole character.
The scenes of “The Fair God” were unfamiliar to the novel reader, and the very names in the book were somewhat disconcerting; but the tale was received in the beginning with a fair degree of interest, and it has ever since enjoyed a steady sale. The subsequent success of “Ben Hur” directed attention anew to General Wallace’s earlier tale, but the romance was something more than an amateur effort, and time has not diminished its entertaining qualities. As a picture of Aztecan civilization it is accurate, and the incidents are related in an orderly and natural manner that holds the attention. The devotion of the people to their religion is impressive; but the tale is essentially a military romance. The battle scenes following the appearance of Cortez and his Spaniards are described with an animation and an amplitude that impart to the reader the sense of beholding a series of great spectacles. The book is rich in those surprises which it is the business of the romancer to produce; and the chapters descriptive of the battle towers (mantas) which were among the European’s resources, and of the retreat of the invaders, are noisy with the clang of battle. The prophecies of the mystic priest Mualox, who sees through the eyes of a child the coming of the Spaniards, are interesting; and curiously enough they had their origin in an incident of General Wallace’s own experience in Indiana, showing how the imagination may play upon the commonplace. When he lived at Covington, he formed the acquaintance of a tailor who was deeply interested in the occult sciences, and who once invited General Wallace to his shop to witness manifestations of his powers. The tailor placed his apprentice under a kind of hypnotic influence, and told General Wallace to take the boy’s hand and to follow in his own mind some route with whose details he was familiar. General Wallace obeyed, mentally reviewing a highway that led to the house of a farmer client. The boy’s lips moved, and he coherently described the road, and presently the farmhouse, just as General Wallace saw them; then he abruptly ceased to follow the leader’s train of thought. He said that it was night; that some one came out of the house with a light, walked about inspecting the barnyard, and then returned to the house. The boy had now become exhausted; the tailor revived him, and General Wallace went on to his home. A few days later, when the countryman whose farm had figured in the incident came to town, General Wallace asked him if he had been at home at the hour mentioned; he replied that he had been at home and asleep. Further questioning elicited the statement that at about the time of the experiment at the tailor shop he had been aroused by noises in the barnyard, and that, fearing some marauder was after his fowls, he had taken a light and gone out to see that all was secure.
The friendly reception of “The Fair God” did not awaken any unusual interest in General Wallace as a writer. He continued at Crawfordsville the life of a lawyer of polite tastes, keenly interested in politics. “The Fair God” out of the way, he began almost immediately to cast about for some new literary employment. In about 1874 it occurred to him to write a novelette, whose principal incident should be the meeting of the Wise Men in the Desert and the birth of Christ. The brief account in the Gospels had long appealed to his imagination, and he wrote what is now the first book of “Ben Hur,” intending to offer it to some magazine for publication as a sketch, with illustrations. While the manuscript still lay in his desk, he met on a railway journey an old friend, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, and in the course of conversation the famous sceptic touched on the subject of Christianity. General Wallace had always been indifferent in religious matters, neither denying nor affirming; but Ingersoll’s downright iconoclasm alarmed him. He determined to investigate the subject and form his own conclusions; and he began researches and studies which continued through five years. When he had concluded, he fully accepted the tenets of Christian faith, and he had amplified his sketch of the Wise Men into the novel “Ben Hur.” Continuous labor had not been possible during the writing of this tale: he had been busy with everyday affairs; politics received a share of his attention; and he became, in 1878, by appointment of President Hayes, governor of New Mexico Territory. He lived at Santa Fé for three years, and much of “Ben Hur” was written in the governor’s house there. General Wallace had never visited Palestine when he wrote “Ben Hur,” but there are points of resemblance between the landscape of New Mexico and that of the Holy Land, and these were of assistance. He procured a profile map of Palestine, and was so attentive to topographical detail that later, when he visited the scenes of his story in company with a recognized authority in ancient history, every feature of the country as described in the book was verified. An immense amount of labor is represented in this novel. Many volumes were consulted in the search for antiquarian lore, that it might lack nothing that would aid in conveying an accurate impression of the period.
The book was capitally planned, striking episodes falling into place naturally, and not too abundantly. The meeting of the Wise Men, the sea fight, and the chariot race are dramatic to a degree; but the sombre picture of the crucifixion is unmarred by excess. The reverence which characterizes every mention of the Saviour is the author’s happiest achievement in the story. The subject is difficult, but it is handled with admirable taste and refinement. However, the book does not depend for continued attention on its interest as a religious novel; it is equally noteworthy for its comprehensive grasp of the politics of the period, its picture of the various peoples that flowed through the streets of Jerusalem and Antioch, and the suggestion of a romantic commerce whose exploits lay in strange seas and beyond the deserts. Nothing in the book is accomplished more skilfully than the slow extinction of the idea of the coming of a great ruler of the world, to rebuild the throne of Solomon, and the gradual acceptance of the spiritual significance of Christ’s advent; and it may be taken, in connection with the history of the novel, as a revelation of the growth in the author’s own mind of a belief in the divine Saviour. Historical novels, particularly those that look to antiquity for subjects, follow necessarily certain traditions, and these are observed carefully by General Wallace. Scott, more than any other, helped him, and “Ivanhoe,” in particular, was his model. The writing in “Ben Hur” is uniformly good, and the dialogue in archaic speech is well sustained. General Wallace wrote out of an ample vocabulary enriched by the constant reading of Oriental narrative, and in his descriptions the epithets are always apposite. The success of “Ben Hur” was not immediate. It sold slowly for several years, but it gained steadily in popularity and continues in favor with the booksellers. It has been translated into all the European languages, into Arabic and Japanese, and it is accessible to the blind in raised-letter. The sale of the copyright edition in America (1900) exceeds 1,200,000, which is probably greater than that of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Many playwrights and actors proposed to General Wallace from time to time the dramatization of “Ben Hur,” but he feared that the spirit of reverence, which he had so consistently communicated to the novel, would be lost in any play founded upon its incidents. He declined all offers until, in 1899, a plan was submitted which met his approval, and in the fall of that year the play was given its first presentation at New York.
When President Garfield appointed General Wallace minister to Turkey, he wrote across his commission “Ben Hur.” General Wallace called at the White House, just before leaving for his post, to pay his respects to the President, and Garfield said to him: “I expect another book from you. Your official duties will not be so onerous that you cannot write it. Make the scene Constantinople.” The opportunity thus presented for further literary work was a consideration in accepting the post. The Turkish occupation of Constantinople is an incident of great historical importance, and in his search for material for a new romance, General Wallace determined to write a tale that should present a picture of the fierce struggle between Christian and Moslem. His studies at Constantinople led to the writing of “The Prince of India.” The Prince is “The Wandering Jew.” He appears as a man of mysterious gifts, who wields great wealth and power. He has discovered what he believes to be common ground upon which all the spiritually minded may meet, irrespective of religion. He appears before the Emperor Constantine and presents his plan for a universal religious union, but he horrifies the theologians, and finding the Christians unsympathetic, he turns to Mohammed, and bestows upon him the sword of Solomon, the sign of conquest, which he had found in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre. The tale has neither the interest of “Ben Hur” nor the novelty and military ardor of “The Fair God.” The subject required deliberate treatment, and the hero, who is a scholar and a mystic, naturally deals in words oftener than in actions.
General Wallace’s other writings are “The Boyhood of Christ” (1889), and “The Wooing of Malkatoon: a Turkish Tale, with Commodus, a Play” (1898), both in blank verse.
There is nothing in General Wallace’s literary career to encourage hasty and careless workmanship. His methods have been, from the beginning, those of a conscientious artist, who strives for excellence and is capable of cheerfully casting aside the work of many days if, by additional labor, he can gain better results. He parleys with a sentence or debates with a synonym with a caution that is akin to Oriental diplomacy. He has probably never written even a social letter carelessly, and if his correspondence were to be collected, it would prove to be of the same quality as his best printed work. There has always been a dignity in his ambitions. Military leadership came to him naturally, and when he took up literature, it was in a serious way, with subjects that were new and daring. By making every stroke count, and paying no heed to changing literary fashions, he has, in the intervals of unusually varied and exacting employments, cultivated the literary art with enviable success.
Heredity and environment explain nothing in General Wallace. He is an estray from the Orient, whom Occidental conditions have influenced little. This is proved by all his imaginative writing, by his military tastes, by many qualities of his personality, and by his appearance and bearing. He has never written of American life, and the attraction of Mexico as a field for fiction lay in the splendor and remoteness of the early civilization of the country, combined with the romance of its conquest by soldiers of Spain. In like manner, “Ben Hur” and “The Prince of India” are such subjects as would naturally appeal to him. His fancy has delighted always in the thought of pageantry, conquest, mystery, and mighty deeds; it has pleased him to contemplate the formal social life of the old heroic times. The beginning of his friendship with the Sultan illustrates a sympathy, native in him, with the Oriental character. General Wallace had reached Constantinople after his appointment as minister, but had not been formally received. On Friday, the Moslem Sunday, he went with the multitude to see the Sultan go to prayer. General Wallace was entitled, by act of Congress, to wear the uniform of a major-general in the United States army, and he was clad in all the regalia of the rank. Between the gate of the imperial park and the Mosque which the Sultan attended was a small house, with a platform in front of it, set apart to strangers, and there General Wallace viewed the procession. The dark man in the rich uniform attracted the attention of the Sultan as he passed, and from the Mosque he sent Osman Pasha, the hero of Plevna, then marshal of the palace, to learn the identity of the stranger. On finding that he was the new American minister awaiting audience, the Sultan sent an invitation to General Wallace to accompany him on his return to the palace, an honor never before accorded to a minister not yet received. A carriage was sent for the American, who returned in the brilliant cortège next to the carriage of the Sultan. The reception at the palace was particularly distinguished, and thereafter the relations between the two were intimate and cordial. The Sultan often summoned the minister to the palace, sometimes requesting interviews at the dead of night. All their conversation was through an interpreter, as the Sultan knew no English and General Wallace did not speak French.
There was early stamped upon General Wallace an air of authority that went well with the military profession; but later years have softened this into a courtliness and grace of manner wholly charming. The Oriental strain in him has become more and more pronounced, suggesting that the years spent in the study of Eastern history, and his actual contact with Oriental peoples, have emphasized it.
Mrs. Wallace (born Susan Arnold Elston) is a native of Crawfordsville. Her father was a pioneer of central Indiana. The homes of his descendants are grouped in Elston Grove, one of the prettiest spots in Crawfordsville. General and Mrs. Wallace were married in 1852, and she is “the wife of my youth,” to whom “Ben Hur” was dedicated. He received so many consolatory letters based on this inscription, which seemed to be misunderstood, that in later editions he changed it, adding “who still abides with me.” Mrs. Wallace began writing at an early age, both prose and verse. She has never collected her poems, though several of them, as “The Patter of Little Feet,” written years ago, are frequently brought to the attention of a new audience by the newspapers. She has printed one book of fiction, “Ginevra” (1887), and three books of travel sketches, “The Storied Sea” (1884); “The Land of the Pueblos” (1888); and “The Repose in Egypt” (1888). Mrs. Wallace has a happy manner of describing places and incidents, and the papers in these volumes show the spontaneity and ease of good letters, and are without the guide-book taint. They were intended, as the author stated in the preface to “The Storied Sea,” for patient, gentle souls seeking rest “from that weariness known in our dear native land as mental culture.” Mrs. Wallace shares her husband’s liking for Eastern subjects, and her Egyptian and Turkish papers, in particular, are delightful reading.
No other Indianian has lived so faithfully as Maurice Thompson a life devoted to literary ideals, and none of his contemporaries among writers of the West and South has been more loyally devoted to pure belles-lettres than he. Abstract beauty has appealed to him more strongly than to any other writer of the Indiana group, and he has expressed it in his poems, through media suggested by his own environment, with charm and grace. He is a native of Indiana, having been born at Fairfield, near Brookville, September 9, 1844. His father was of Scotch-Irish ancestry; his maternal grandfather was of Dutch origin; and both lines were represented in the Southwestern migration at the beginning of the century. In Maurice’s childhood his father, who was a Baptist clergyman, made several changes of residence, all tending southward, removing first to southeastern Missouri, then to Kentucky, and again within a few years to the valley of the Coosawattee in northern Georgia. Here the senior Thompson became a planter, and Maurice enjoyed thereafter, until he reached manhood, a life in which the study of books was ideally blended with the freedom of the country. He has always expressed great obligations to his mother’s influences during these years; her literary tastes were sound, and she imparted to her children the love of good books, overcoming by her own encouragement and guidance the absence of schools in their neighborhood. Tutors were procured for higher mathematics and the languages; but the chief impulse to the study of the old literatures lay in the youth’s own taste and temperament. Like Lanier, Hayne, Esten Cooke, John B. Tabb, and others who were to become known in literature, he entered the Confederate army (1862), and saw hard service until the surrender. Even these years of soldier experience did not interrupt wholly his studies, for he usually managed to carry with him some book worth reading, the essays of De Quincey and Carlyle belonging to this period. Mr. Thompson returned to his father’s plantation at the close of the war, and remained there for three years, continuing his studies as before, but substituting hard manual labor for the life of pleasant adventure by field and flood that had given him from boyhood into early manhood an intimate acquaintance with wild things. He now began, of necessity, to accommodate himself to the changed conditions of the community and of his own family. He had studied engineering, and he perfected himself in it, and read law. Reconstruction moved forward slowly, and wishing to get as quickly as possible into a region where his material prospects could be improved, he went to Crawfordsville, without fixed purpose, and found employment with a railway surveying party. He supported himself by engineering until he felt justified in taking up the law, in which he was successful, and to which he was constant until the increase of literary reputation and steady employment in more congenial labor made it possible for him to abandon it. His marriage to a daughter of John Lee, an influential citizen of the county, fixed him as a resident of Crawfordsville, which has since remained his home. For a number of years he was prominent in local politics. He sat once in the State legislature, and he was appointed State geologist in 1885.
Mr. Thompson had written experimentally in boyhood, and after his removal to Indiana he continued the cultivation of his gifts, and beginning slowly, attained to an abundant production, in both prose and poetry, that made him through many years the Western author whose name most frequently occurred in the indices of the best magazines. During his youth in the Cherokee country he had been initiated into the mysteries of archery by a hermit who lived in the midst of a pine forest near his home. Mr. Thompson and his brother, Will H. Thompson, were both enthusiastic archers and hunters, and their adventures in the wilds of Florida were full of romantic interest. The bow was with them a kind of protest against the shot-gun, and assured a less murderous extirpation of game. Their own skill with the primitive weapon was remarkable, and as a recurrence of interest in the bow in this country is not imminent, they may be considered the last of American archers. Proficiency in this sport and the acquaintance with woodcraft to which it led were important influences in Mr. Thompson’s first literary work. In the seventies, a great revival in archery swept the country, and this was wholly due to a series of articles on archery and on hunting with the long bow which Mr. Thompson printed in the periodicals. These papers were gathered into a book (1878), and although he had published three years before a volume of sketches called “Hoosier Mosaics,” his writings on this subject, with the attractive title “The Witchery of Archery,” gave him his first footing as an author. The long bow has again fallen into disuse, but the freshness and zest of those sketches have not passed away. However, the archer had found in his woodlands more important material than he had yet made use of; for while he was following Robin Hood, he was also the servant of Theocritus and Meleager, and he wrote at this period many lyrics that suggested, by their spirit at least, the Greek pastoral poetry more than anything in English. They were published under the descriptive title “Songs of Fair Weather” (1883), and are included also in a larger volume of Mr. Thompson’s verse, “Poems” (1892). E. S. Nadal writes[44] that he has never known any scenery so classical as the glades which border the forests of Ohio and Indiana. In fancy, he is able to people them with figures of mythology, and in no other spots, he says, has his imagination been equal to this task. It is pleasant to find this comment running into a reference to Mr. Thompson: “When I was the literary reviewer of a New York daily,” says Mr. Nadal, “I was always on the lookout for the verses of a young poet who lived in this part of the world. I remember that one of his poems related how that once when Diana was at her bath in some clear spring, no doubt known to the poet, a sort of sublimated Hoosier of the fancy, himself quite nude and classic, passed near by. He quickly, however, ran away far through the green thick groves of May,—
“‘Afeard lest down the wind of Spring
He’d hear an arrow whispering.’”
There is a great deal of the Indiana landscape to be found through Mr. Thompson’s poems, though he often looks southward to the north Georgia hills and to Florida. Servile descriptions he does not give, but against backgro