Humour and History
When West was West. By Owen Wister. (Macmillan. 7s. 6d.) THESE new tales of Mr. Owen Wister show us an 'America now far in the past, the America of the 'eighty's. He writes of the Red Indians ; their last raids upon the mail7coaches, their last hold upon their traditional dignity. Some of the small frontier towns were still fortresses. The old aristocracy of the South still survived ; codes of conduct were rough and ready : there were lynchings, loneliness, and eccentricity. He tells his stories with his customary skill and tranquillity. No one knows better than Mr. Wister how to keep interest alive, or how to introduce incidents at the most telling moment. His style, too, is clear and smooth-flowing ; and he never leaves us long without the delight of his quiet and taking humour.
We meet, for example, the great virago, Professor Salamanca, the terror of Flanagan County, Texas. She keeps the country- side in subjection by the stuffed crocodile, the gilt lobsters, and the astrological charts of her consulting room. She is quite without scruple. If she takes a dislike to her neighbours they receive warnings and find it profitable to move elsewhere. Even Doe Leonard, the new Yankee doctor from Harvard, can make no headway. He has no such paraphernalia to excite awe, and the Professor brooks no rivals. When a man or two has been shot or strung up on a tree, and when Doc Leonard himself has barely escaped being blown up by dynamite, it is no blemish on his courage that he quits and leaves her the monopoly of the sick.
Her only match is the old Confederate Colonel, Steptoe McDee. The crocodile and the evil eye hold no terrors for him. He is quick-witted and determined ; and he keeps the respect of the whole community. When the Professor decides to meddle in politics and puts up a candidate of her own the real struggle begins. She chooses a " strong " candidate, with the true demagogue's baby-patting geniality and long heroic stories of his experiences in " the War for Southern Independefice.'!- The- Colonel and his friends- find a -way to expose him, and the Professor settles the rest of the business herself.
We learn of the startling modesty of those villages where bulls, boars, and cocks must never be mentioned in a lady's presence ; they must be referred to as male cows, male pigs, and male hens. In these far regions every -one must 'find some hobby to run, or he will be swallowed up by boredom and isolation. There is, for example, the parson who spends his time with the poor, disheartened Indians, persuading them that they are the lost ten tribes and making violent Attempts to retrieve their ancestral memories.
Mr. Wister is at his best in pure social comedy. In one story the hard-fighting, wary, and self-controlled Captain James Monk and his gentle, sweet, and harmless wife have a life-long battle on the subject of pipes, cigars, and cigarettes. How keenly all the ladies of the district follow the campaign Every gesture is enlarged to a crisis ; allusions and nuances, which leave the male mind blank and uninstructed, convey a world of significance to womankind over the tea-tables. The final settlement of the struggle must be left to Mr. Wister to describe ; but the delicacy and subtlety of his humour have never shown themselves more fully than in this story. In one or two tales Mr. Wister allows himself a touch of the supernatural, and these are the least happy, the most con- ventional. But in all of them he keeps his technical mastery ; in its own way, the air of old days, strange memories, and the conflict of standards and outlooks.
A. P.
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