Journal I.
BOOKS I HAVE| READ| “reading maketh a full man” [italics]| Bacon| [printer’s device]| NEW YORK| DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY| 1905
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1889, by Albert S. Pease. In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D.C. All Rights Reserved Copyright, 1899, by Dodd, Mead & Co. The Caxton Press. New York.
Name and address of the owner of this Book, and the date when it was acquired.
Name. Alice Moore Dunbar
Residence. 1008 French Street
Date. June 1906
Preface [v-vi]
2 Books I have Read
Title, Gargantua and Pantagruel
Author, Rabelais
When and Where Read, July 6, Wilmington, Del.
Department of Literature, Satire (Middle Ages)
Sketch of Contents,
Ten books of the Adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Expurgated edition Translated by Urquhart and Peter Motteux. Introduction by Saintsbury.
Page References,
See description go Diogenes and his tub.
See how Friar John worsts the assailants of the vineyard. See the letter which Gargantua writes to Pantagruel.
Books I Have Read 3
Comments and Quotations
A whirling hodge-podge of words, words, words, oft times efficiently foolish, but veiling some mighty hidden purpose—the satirizing of the abuses of the monks and clergy of the fifteenth century. A forerunner of the Reformation. Baron Munchhausen and Mandeville, and Sinbad the Sailor are here outdone, outclassed, outtalked, and out-lied. Rabelais is a mixture of all the adventurers and wine-bibbers and scoffers the world has known. And yet, while he seems to be laughing at you, with his finger by his nose and one eye closed, we can feel his great heart beating nobly and true beneath it all.
4 Books I Have Read
Title, The Little White Bird
Author, J. M. Barrie
Publisher, Little, Brown & Company
When and Where Read, July 14, 1906. Wilmington, Del.
Department of Literature, Fantasy, hardly novel.
Sketch of Contents,
The fantastic tale of an old-bachelor and his little protégé, David, in whose father and mother he had taken an interest from watching their courtship from his curb-window. Here also is found the wondrous, Peter Pan.
Page References,
See the story of Peter Pan
Books I Have Read 5
Comment and Quotations,
Certainly the sweetest, tenderest, daintiest little fantasy. One of which the tears and the tender smile mingle and flow together. One moment we are exasperated by the crusty bachelor’s treatment of Mary, the next we want to wring his hand in sheer delight. And as for Peter Pan, who could help feeling the tenderest sympathy for the poor little “Betwixt-and-Between” who dallied until his mother had another? Perhaps to me that is the message of the whole book: That we dally and delay seizing the live opportunities until our place is filled and we are no longer wanted.
6 Books I Have Read
Title, Tartarin of Tarascon and Tartarin in the Alps
Author, Alphonse Daudet
Publisher, Little, Brown & Company
When and Where Read, July 15, 1906. Wilmington.
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley. Adventures of the redoubtable Tartarin of Tarascon. How he becomes a great lion-slayer and Alps Climber.
Page References,
See the “positions of the fez” in the Chapter 1, Second Episode.
See the dance in the Rigi-Kulm in Chap. 1 of Tartarin on the Alps.
The sunrise in the Rigi-Kulm suggests Mark Twain’s description in Innocents Abroad.
Books I Have Read 7
Comment and Questions,
Don Quixote out Don-ed. A joy; a wholesome, wholesale huge joy. You smile from the beginning and your smile remains even when Tartarin is lost on Mount Blanc, for we know instinctively that he will rise from the crevasse bold and intrepid as ever. A pure and delicious joy from the first cap-hunt to his own funeral. Best of all is this;—
“It is time to come to an understanding once for all about that reputation for lying which the men of the North have when put upon Southerners. There are no liars in the South××× The man of the South does not lie, he deceives himself××× A lie in him is not a lie, it is a species of mirage××× Ha! The sole liar in the South (if there is one) is the sun. All that he touches he exaggerates.”
8 Books I Have Read
Title, Coniston
Author, Winston Churchill
Publisher, McMillan Company
When and Where Read, July 18, Wilmington, Del.
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
Study of Political Conditions in New Hampshire—which may stand for any state—in the later 70s and early 80s. The apotheosis of boss rule and corrupt politics, with a powerful character sketch and pretty love story through the whole.
Page References,
See descriptions of Jethro Bass’ interview with Grant.
Books I Have Read 9
Comment and Questions,
To my mind the best novel that Mr. Churchill has written and one of the best I have read in many a day. In addition to being a strikingly presented picture of political conditions in the 70s and 80s, the character of Jethro Bass must stand out as a decided contribution to the gallery of American characters. It is a powerful story—well written. Best of all is the style in which the tale is told; none of the hurry and bustle and confusion twentieth century haste. The author takes you by the hand and settles down in almost a Thackeryan style and you forget the hurry of the present-day writer in the charm of his almost 18th century style.
10 Books I Have Read
Title, Sophy of Kravonia
Author, Anthony Hope
Publisher, Serial in Associated Sunday Mag.
When and Where Read, July 22. Wilmington, Del.
Department of Literature, Novel – Romantic
Sketch of Contents,
A French governess goes to a little kingdom[let] in an imaginary spot on the map of Europe, gets mixed up in its politics, marries the prince, who is afterwards killed, avenges his death, and disappears to take up her former life in Paris.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 11
Comment and Questions,
The trashiest, poorest and most plotless of farce-romance possible. Anthony Hope tries to repeat the success of his “Princess of Zenda” and fails miserably.
12 Books I Have Read
Title, A House Boat on the Styx
Author, John Kendrick Bangs
Publisher, Harper Brothers
When and Where Read, July 24, Wilmington, Del.
Department of Literature, Story
Sketch of Contents,
The Associated Shades of Hades form a club whose quarters are in a wooden houseboat on the river Styx, with Charon for janitor.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 13
Comment and Questions,
This is the third re-reading. It is such a ridiculous farcical skit, so absurdly silly and foolish that it is just the thing to pick up for an hour’s reading when one is blue and tired and doesn’t wish to be “improving the moments.”
14 Books I Have Read
Title, The Jungle
Author, Upton Sinclair
Publisher, Doubleday, Page & Co.
When and Where Read, Wilmington, July 26, 1906
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
Story of a Lithuanian Family who emigrate to Chicago and find their doom in the employ of the Packing Houses. The hero, Jurgis Rudkus, suffers many vicissitudes, but finds his refuge in Socialism.
Page References,
See – the description of the wedding is the best bit of description.
Jurgis[’s] love for his little son, Antanas.
Books I Have Read 15
Comment and Questions,
While the descriptions of the stockyards and packing houses [sic] is excellent and serves its purpose, there is too much agony: it is all too long-drawn and too much of piling Ossa upon Pelion. Mr. Sinclair emulates Zola in calling things by their names, but sometimes it seems a piling up of unnecessary filthy details. In bringing the conditions of the packing houses to the public, the book has done a great good, but in the addenda: i.e. the last hundred pages on socialism, the author fails his purpose. The reader is tired of the horrible details, and the slump into a socialistic tract is weak and trashy. It sounds incredible that Jurgis should have found his refuge so easily. Still, the first part of the book is tremendous; a twentieth century Tom’s Cabin.
16 Books I Have Read
Title, Photographs of Birds
Author, Earnest Thompson-Seton
Publisher, Scribner’s
When and Where Read, August 1, Wilmington
Department of Literature, Nature Studies
Sketch of Contents,
Photographs of Birds with brief sketches of their habitat, habits, and appearance.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 17
Comment and Questions,
An excellent work for the beginner in bird-studies, clear, able and comprehensive.
18 Books I Have Read
Title, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Author, Thomas Hardy
Publisher, Harper Brothers
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Del. July 29, 1906
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
“Story of a pure woman” who is wronged and the trail of unhappy consequences ensuing to her and to those who were associated with her.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 19
Comment and Questions,
It is late to read a book that was one of the “best sellers” fifteen years ago, but Hardy was one of the delectable fields yet unexplored by me, and joys are awaiting me every time I pick up one of his here-to-fore neglected books.
Tess brought all her misery upon herself in her desire to help her shiftless family. In her purity—and generosity—she ruined her life and theirs and Angel Clare’s. Angel himself is a type of “holier-than-thou” man, intolerant of sin and sensitive to impurity of other; unheeding the merciful cries of his own heart.
It is a sad book, a disheartening book—one to make you lose your love for life and life’s inscrutable ways. But it is beautiful.
20 Books I Have Read
Title, That Mainwaring Affair
Author, J. Maynard Barbour
Publisher, J. B. Lippincott Company
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Aug. 2, 1906
Department of Literature, Detective Novel
Sketch of Contents,
Story of a mysterious murder, secretion of a will, changed identities, and hidden sons suddenly brought to light, and of the mystery’s final clearing in a dramatic and highly sensational manner.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 21
Comment and Questions,
A clever detective story with all the usual stock in trade of the clever detective story. The denouement is cleverly managed. I could not put it down until I had finished it so fascinating did it prove.
22 Books I Have Read
Title, Plays,
Les Précieuses Ridicules
George Dandin
Tartuffe
Author, Molière, edited by Saintsbury
Publisher, Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Aug. 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents,
Three of Molière’s satiric plays. Tartuffe satirizes false piety, Les Précieuses Ridicules satirizes the denizens of the famous Hotel Rambouillet, and George Dandin satirizes the impure wife who hoodwinks her husband.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 23
Comment and Questions,
The best of Molière, too good for a tyro to comment upon. So simple that at first sight one is tempted to exclaim, “I would have done that.” So subtle that the pleasure is exquisite, so ironical that you can see all your friends in the various personages. As good as Shakespeare’s best comedies.
24 Books I Have Read
Title, Editorial Wild Oats
Author, Mark Twain
Publisher,
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Aug., 1906
Department of Literature, Short Stories
Sketch of Contents,
Series of light-sketches in highly ludicrous fashion purporting to tell the story of Mr. Clemens’ early journalistic ventures.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 25
Comment and Questions,
Very poor for Mark Twain. Humor of the slap-dash tumble and get-up variety.
Books I Have Read 26
Title, The House of a Thousand Candles
Author, Meredith Nicholson
Publisher, Bobbs-Merrill Company
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Aug. 16, 1906
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
A highly improbable novel of adventures and happenings in a queer house in Indiana, with an eccentric grandfather, a mysterious servant, underground passages, secret vaults, and a noisome maiden to complete the story.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 27
Comment and Questions,
Good enough for an idle hour; very improbable and not too well written.
28 Books I Have Read
Title, New Canterbury Tales
Author, Maurice Hewlett
Publisher, Macmillan Company
When and Where Read, Aug. 22, 1906 Wilmington
Department of Literature, Short Stories
Sketch of Contents,
Purporting to be the tales recounted by some other pilgrims than those described by Chaucer.
Page References,
- “All men are fools. My son is a great fool… My son is a great man.”
- “All men are fools. Eugenio is no fool… Eugenio is no man.”
Books I Have Read 29
Comment and Questions,
So cleverly has the author caught the spirit of the Middle Ages that not only are you transported to the days of Chaucer, but you are almost fooled into believing these some lost tales of Boccaccio or Bandello.[i] We have met Captain Brazenhead, Percival Perceforest, Mawdleyn Touchstone and the rest in another one of Hewlett’s inimitable stories
The best one of all is the Prioress’s tale of St. Gervase of Plessy. It’s a frank imitation in man’s ways than one of the Prioress’s tale of Hugh of Lincoln, save that it has a pleasanter ending. Its air of verisimilitude is stronger than the others.
30 Books I Have Read
Title, The Aristocrats
Author, Gertrude Atherton
Publisher, John Lane
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Aug. 1906
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
An Englishwoman brings her brother who is afflicted with tuberculosis, to a camp in the Adirondacks in the hope of restoring him to health. They met with two sets of so-called “aristocrats,” and Lady Helen chronicles her impressions in a series of letters to her English friend, the Countess of Edge and Ross.
Page References,
Page 160. “Do you pretend to ignore the fact that hundreds of thousands of women have lovers?”
“I will not admit it.”
“But you know it, if you know anything at all. Like your literature you blink it as you blink every other fact connected with real life.”
Books I Have Read 31
Comment and Questions,
A clever little satire in an inimitable style, yet not so brilliantly witty as to come under the ban of the very novels which Lady Helen satirizes. The views of life are singularly frank and visible in this “sweetness and light” and Edward Howard Griggs and Newell Dwight Hillis ridden age.[ii] Stranger that everyone know life as it is and realize it fully, yet is so loth to admit that things do exist but will deny truths that are self-evident.
The pictures of Mrs. Laurence are delicious; the one particularly where she “swishes her train about until it hisses like an angry snake” could not be improved upon.
32 Books I Have Read
Title, John Gabriel Borkman
Author, Henrik Ibsen
Publisher, Stone and Kimball
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Aug. 27, 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents,
At the time the action begins John Gabriel Borkman, formerly a bank director, has served his five years term of imprisonment for embezzlement of funds, and has lived eight years in seclusion. The action takes place in one evening and tells the rest of his and his family’s life story.
Page References,
Page 83, “I feel like a Napoleon who has married in his first battle.”
Page 84, “And now I have to sit here like a wounded eagle and look on while others pass me in the race and take everything away from me piece by piece.”
Page 90, “Friendship means—deception.”
Page 111, “The great unpardonable sin is to marauder the lobe-life in a human soul.”
Books I Have Read 33
Comment and Questions,
A terrible thing; a play to make one shudder with distress at the horrible inevitability of the world’s punishment, and the insistent demands of youth for its own happiness; so insistent that it rides over age and cripples it, if need be.
Yet, though we are carried away by the terrible realism of the story, we cannot but stop to admire the perfect construction. Surely, never since the [sic] greek writers were overthrown by Shakespeare have they been so well observed as in John Gabriel Borkman.
It is a perfect play, but a terrible story.
34 Books I Have Read
Title, Little Eyolf
Author, Henrik Ibsen
Publisher, Stone and Kimball
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Aug. 31, 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents, [sic] Alfred Astman returns from a tour in the mountains with renewed interest in his son Eyolf. Rita, the wife is jealous and in the midst of a passionate discussion as to rights as a wife word is brought that little Eyolf is drowned. The rest of the play shows their remorse and renunciation of the follies of life and resolution to devote themselves to other and poorer children, Astman’s sister presents the most serious problem in understanding the play.[iii]
Page References,
Books I Have Read 35
Comment and Questions,
Someone has said that this book is tender, perhaps it is. At any rate the end is morally satisfying to the reader, but perhaps too much so for the artist. Such grim picturing; such a weird comingling of the supernatural in the Pied Piper-like figure of the Rat-Wife. So intensely is Ibsen weighing against the mere love of the senses that one is almost stricken in the horror at Rita’s memory of “that intensely beautiful hour.” Astman is looking with cold eyes upon her of the broad, green forests, but one cannot help wondering what would be the outcome were he and the sister to be left long alone with the consciousness of their changed relationships. A most uncomfortable story with an almost flat ending.
36 Books I Have Read
Title, Reynard the Fox
Author, Unknown
Publisher, Dana Estes and Company
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 4, 1906
Department of Literature, Satiric Poem
Sketch of Contents,
The 15th century poem which is a sort of satire on the evils of the Church. Reynard is constantly getting into trouble but by his cleverness escapes punishment and death.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 37
Comment and Questions,
A clever poem, if it has been adopted by the children. It is Aesop and La Fontaine and Piers Plowman and Skelton rolled into one. The translation is poor, but perhaps good for children, and the rhymed couplet seems somehow to fit the ridiculous tales of Reynard and his almost miraculous pranks.
38 Books I Have Read
Title, Concerning Paul and Fiamnetta
Author, L. Allen Harker
Publisher, Scribner
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 5, 1906
Department of Literature, Child’s Story
Sketch of Contents,
The tale of some particularly engaging children; not a story but a chronicle of their daily doings.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 39
Comment and Questions,
Certainly one of the most fascinating child’s stories lately, saving only Mrs. Wiggin’s. The children are sweet and alive and English, almost at times unfamiliarly so. Delightful it is, beyond compare.
40 Books I Have Read
Title, [sic] A Week on the Concord and Merrimac
Author, Henry Thoreau
Publisher,
When and Where Read, Wilmington, July & August, 1906
Department of Literature, Essay
Sketch of Contents,
The author and his brother embark from Concord in a flat bottomed boat for a week’s drifting down the rivers.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 41
Comment and Questions,
A book not to be read hastily but slowly, carefully, and lingeringly. Here the bits of nature description and the interlineations of quaint history play a small part compared with the moralizing and philosophizing of the author as he lets his fancy wander where it lists. Especially good are his moralizing on religion, such breadth of vision and thought is refreshing and clarifying, like an uplifting breath of mountain air after the stupefying closeness of the valley.
42 Books I Have Read
Title, Hedda Gabler
Author, Henrik Ibsen, Wm. Archer, Trans.
Publisher, Walter Scott, London
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 3, 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents,
A dissatisfied woman, rather an unsatisfied woman has the courage to go out of life rather than live a lie.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 43
Comment and Questions,
It seems to be a favorite theme of Ibsen’s this woman who has a past which she cannot share with her husband and which eventually drives her to death. Hedda Gabler is a product of the age, the unrest, the longing, the realization of the narrowness and the graspingness of life. The strange cat-like love and jealousy of the woman first and her husband’s fame next might seem incomprehensible to some, but I understand Hedda— too well, too well.
44 Books I Have Read
Title, Rosmersholm
Author, Henrik Ibsen, Wm. Archer, Trans.
Publisher, Walter Scott – London
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 6, 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents, Rebecca West hounds a woman to her death with a lie and meets her retribution. A curious study of political conditions in Norway in the latter 19th century.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 45
Comment and Questions,
A strange study of the influence of political conditions on the private lives. Rebecca West is saturated with the spirit of reform that seethes throughout Norway, and for this she worms her way into Rosmer’s heart, drives poor Beata to her death—and suffers retribution with Rosmer. A terrible story, a saga of crushed ideals and wrecked hopes in character in the paly.
46 Books I Have Read
Title, The Lady from the Sea
Author, Henrik Ibsen, Wm. Archer, Trans.
Publisher, Walter Scott, London
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 7, 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents, The fascination of the sea for the sea-born. What absolute freedom will do towards restoring a woman to her sense of duty and responsibility.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 47
Comment and Questions,
When a human being is bound down and told to do thus and so, he is apt to rebel but when absolute freedom and power of choice is given the natural creature turns to that which is right and remembers responsibility and duty and right. This is the problem in The Lady from the Sea. Combined with the alluring nostalgie de mer which haunts every line, this is the most satisfying, least terrible, if strangest of the three dramas in the volume.
48 Books I Have Read
Title, Love’s Comedy
Author, Henrik Ibsen, Trans. by C. H. Herford.
Publisher, Chas. H Sergel Company
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 13, 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents, A satire on the conventions of engagements and marriage. A plea for the loveless marriage de convenance rather than the stifling of love in the stuffy conjugal relation.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 49
A most biting satire on the conventionalities of the respectably married and engaged. You can almost hear Man and Superman in every line. Such a scathing arrangement of all that kills the poetry and romance of love was surely never written before. You agree with Ibsen; love of the poetic, on-the heights-kind, must stifle inevitably in the sordid arc lighted atmosphere of social and domestic approval. It cannot live in such air; it must flourish in quiet nooks and from under the ban of commonplace approval. Romance and engagement calls; ardent passion and butcher bills cannot live together; one or the other must inevitably go, and since society and the comforts of life decree that the calls and bills are necessary, it is better, Ibsen argues, to have no romance or ardent passion so that the sensitive soul is not pained by seeing its early death. But if you have true love and passion, part from it, ere the glamour becomes a miserable memory in your life [or] devolves into a wretched fawning of the gray ashes of your romance. Fortunately, for the conventions and for the respectability of society, there is little of the on-the-heights variety of love. The poetry of the drama in places is exquisitely lyrical and delicate; in most places baldest prose.
50 Books I Have Read
Title, The Awakening of Helena Richie
Author, Margaret Deland
Publisher, Harper Bros.
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 14 1906
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
The regeneration of a woman from a wretched and unhappy life of selfishness by the love of a little boy.
Page References,
“She knew the taste of fear in mouth.”
“You can’t go back behind and begin over again.”
Books I Have Read 51
Comment and Questions, To read this book after the awful pessimism of Ibsen is like a breath of fresh country air after the stifling noisomeness of cities. Nothing could be further apart in moral theory than the views on marriage entertained by Falk and Dr. Lavender.[iv] The one is American, bourgeois, perhaps, and middle-class, but the view on which the superstructure of the great nations of the world must rest. The other view is continental, upsetting, untenable. You feel the source of its truth, but you shrink and are repelled, but the gentle homely philosophy of our dear old friend, Dr. Lavender comforts and gives peace, even as poor storm-tossed wayward Helena eventually found peace in its shelter. Dear old familiar Dr. Lavender of Old Chester Tales! How much Americans have to thank Mrs. Deland for creating him. Helena Ritchie’s unfortunate life in Old Chester ought to be a lesson to every woman contemplating a liaison. The consequences of her sin were farther reaching than she could have foreseen in the beginning.
52 Books I Have Read
Title, The Tides of Barnegat
Author, Francis Hopkinson Smith
Publisher, Scribner’s Sons
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 19, 1906
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents, A young girl breaks the moral law and is shielded by her elder sister at the expense of her own and her lover’s happiness. The girl proves false and ungrateful, and after seventeen years the sister comes into her own, though Lucy, the younger sister is made to suffer all in the end that she would have suffered at first.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 53
Comment and Questions, Surely a more awful and sinister story than this can hardly be conceived. Mr. Smith seems to have gone out of his way to depict a woman as base, as immoral and as false as if Satan had spawned her. It seems incredible that Lucy and Jane could be sisters. No ideal of duty that could be set by the sternest moralist imaginable is as high as the false ideal of Jane’s; false in that it was not duty so much as inordinate pride and lust of good name which blinded her to her real duty towards Dr. John.
It is a powerful story, but seriously marred in places by cheap workmanship. There are places when the style is almost wishy-washy; especially the descriptions of John and Archie. They are not live men; they do not breathe and move as do Jane and Lucy and Martha. The climax is wonderfully well-handled.
54 Books I Have Read
Title, Emperor and Galilean
Author, Henrik Ibsen – Wm. Archer. Trans.
Publisher, Walter Scott
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Sept. 27 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents,
Two historical dramas centering around the life of Julian the Apostate. The first, Caesar’s Apostasy; the second, the Emperor Julian.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 55
Comment and Questions,
A magnificent duo of dramatic force; finely conceived and perfectly executed. These plays are as unlike Ibsen as if conceived and executed by another man. Unlike, except for the wielding of the scalpel in Julian’s soul; the visions and hallucinations which all of Ibsen’s protagonists experience before the darkness of eternity overcomes them.
The character of Julian is painted with fine care, almost etched, though broad strokes are used in places. The persecution of the Galileans because of the fear of the influence of the Nazarene within himself is painted in a manner to strike awe into our heart. May not more than one lesson be taken from this phase of Julian’s character?
56 Books I Have Read
Title, The Doll’s House
Author, Henrik Ibsen
Publisher, Stone and Kimball
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Oct. 1 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents,
Nora awakens to find herself in a doll’s house, and having awakened, she proves herself a woman and goes away.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 57
Comment and Questions,
I wonder if Nora did have a soul, or was her doll’s pride merely touched? She is such a fascinating little squirrel creature, that even the supreme sacrifice of obtaining the money for her husband seems at times like the maternal instinct of the animal defending its young rather than the conscious sacrifice of a woman rising to her honor to save an unappreciative husband. It is such a pitiful, sordid, home-thrusting story! Oh Nora, Nora how I do know by myself, and for that reason I question whether you had a soul.
58 Books I Have Read
Title, Cymbeline
Author, Shakespeare
Publisher, University Edition
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Oct. 27 1906
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents,
Page References,
Books I Have Read 59
Comment and Questions,
It seems strange for a student and teacher of English to be coming to Cymbeline for the first time. If I have read it before it was twenty years ago. The story was familiar enough, perhaps from Lamb’s Tales, perhaps from a forgotten previous reading.
If the blasé Shakespearian could have been in my place that night he would have envied me; all the freshness and delight and pure joy of knowing this exquisite tale for the first time; the same delight with which I remember reading its prototype Snow White and Rose Red for the first time. I am glad that there are still some, many, ancient masterpieces for me to enjoy.
60 Books I Have Read
Title, Autobiography
Author, Benjamin Franklin
Publisher, Lippincott
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Oct. 24, 1906
Department of Literature, Biography
Sketch of Contents,
Page References,
Books I Have Read 61
Comment and Questions,
Another delightful book to be coming to the first time. So intensely interested I have been for the past two nights that I have snatched every moment to can this as if it were some blood and thunder detective story. Franklin’s chaste, concise and clear cut English is a joy after the circuitous mouthings of latter day prophets. It’s plain “I did(s)” and “I did not(s)” are positively eloquent in their avoidance of unnecessities.
I would that I could practise his thirteen rules of good living and attain to them by the same genius denials, even though I might decide that I am a “speckled axe.”[v]
62 Books I Have Read
Title, Peer Gynt
Author, Henrik Ibsen, Trans. by Wm. & Chas. Archer
Publisher, Walter Scott, Co. London
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Oct. 25
Department of Literature, Drama
Sketch of Contents,
A species of half mystical troll, fairy, legendary drama of a human soul.
Page References,
Books I Have Read 63
Comment and Questions,
It is an incomprehensible, un-understandable thing. Just when I would think that I have fathomed the meaning, it is all gone, lost, elusive. Does Ibsen mean to portray the human soul thirsting to find itself; to be itself and failing because of the sense temptations put in its way? This seems the nearest to the solution of the riddle.
It is a weird, beautiful, fascinating poem; as wildly mystical as the great poems of Wagner, and like his poems drawing upon Norse legend for its existence.[vi]
It must mean that the human soul is unto itself a law and should be enough. “To be oneself is; to stay oneself.”
64 Books I Have Read
Title, Puck of Pook’s Hill
Author, Rudyard Kipling
Publisher, Doubleday, Page, & Co.
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Nov. 4, 1906
Department of Literature, Short Stories
Sketch of Contents,
Page References,
Books I Have Read 65
Comment and Questions,
66 Books I Have Read
Title, Prisoners
Author, Mary Cholmondeley
Publisher, Dodd, Mead & Company
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Dec. 17, 1906
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
Page References,
Books I Have Reda 67
Comment and Questions,
68 Books I Have Read
Title, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
Author, Anatole France
Publisher, Harpers
When and Where Read, Wilmington, Jan. 7, 1907
Department of Literature, Novel
Sketch of Contents,
Page References,
Books I Have Read 69
Comment and Questions,
Notes
[i] Here, Dunbar-Nelson is referring to late medieval/Renaissance period Italian author Matteo Bandello (1480 – 1562), known for his novellas, some of which were the basis for a number of Shakespearean plays including parts of Cymbeline and Twelfth Night.
[ii] Edward Howard Griggs and Newell Dwight Hillis.
[iii] It is likely that at some point Dunbar-Nelson incorrectly recalled the family’s surname of “Allmers” as “Astman” in her remembering of Ibsen’s play, as it was not the result of an editorial error in the 1906 Stone and Kimball edition of the work; most likely, a conflation of the character “Asta” with the actual surname used in the story.
[iv] Dunbar-Nelson is making a comparison of Ibsen’s character “Falk” from Love’s Comedy with “Dr. Lavender” from Deland’s novels.
[v] Refers to an allegorical story recounted by Franklin in his biography on the nature of mediocrity and accepting one’s flaws in place of striving for moral and physical perfection.
[vi] In this entry, one can read the word in question as “wisely,” for the word has been either crossed-out or written over, rending it somewhat illegible.
