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How the Greatest American Novel, the Last and
Came to Be W
row
the Late David Graham Phillip
Yet Reverent Presentation of the Greatest Social
Modern
l imes
desire to !r uence a better s
that type o soman who was
doubtless n .lized that most
dependency >f women In ore
taint of bar sr and sale, of ai
Part if sh< had no income o
bv working w it. She shoul
choice of a usband, or of chc
to friends, a well as wrote ir
"It isn't fair because she
him that a 1 anian should hav
His spe al aversion amo
woman. He declared her to
Li A Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no
* AK more.”
“ “ Many a pulpit discourse has been drawn froffl that text.
Many a book has been written upon the species of human frailty which in
spired its utterance by Divine lips. But it is a literary event when a nov
elist of these times ignores his opportunity of profitable appeal to sensa
tion seekers, and makes his whole effort conform to such a compassionate
purpose and example of our Saviour.
That was the ideal of the lamented young literary genius, David Gra
ham Phillips, when he wrote his last and greatest work of fiction called
“Susan Lenox; Her Fall and Rise.” He had pondered the theme since the
beginning of his writing career, its problems pursued him in the midst of
his labors on the published novels which brought him high recognition and
a competence. He had the genius to feel that the complete development
of this idea in a novel would be his worthiest undertaking, his master
piece, upon which his fame would rest securely long after its author had
ceased to be. *
Phillips firmly believed that this book would serve a high moral pur
pose; that it would help to right one of the most lamentable wrongs which
are due to phariseeism, the stupid conventions and the heartless artificial
ity of modern society. For six years he worked upon its text. It was to
be hiB crowning work—and it proved to be his last.
By no means the least part of the tragedy which saw Phillips, at the
height of his powers, the victim of a worthless assassin’s bullet lay in the
cutting off of a hopeful and purposeful young life; it was a tragedy which
robbed the world of serious, eager minds looking for the truth from one
who in many ways was best gifted to present it to them. Probably there
exists no honest critic of seasoned judgment who would not willingly tes
tify that David Graham Phillips was a genius—the novelist of brightest
promise produced in America in his generation.
He lived to finish his great novel, “Susan Lenox," but his life was
blotted out before he had made any arrangements for its publication. Still
a literary work of such value, such practical usefulness, could not long be
hidden away in its manuscript covers. It is now appearing as tne m
important serial given to the public in years. The brief scenes printed on
these pages, short as they are, and from the opening chapters of the story,
will serve as the reader's guaranty that the novel in its entirety is one of
the very few that can be missed without distinct personal loss. Here
indeed is the great American novel at last.
David Graham Phillips lived and labored long enough to find his
writings enthusiastically received by the best class of novel readers. Hardly
ever w - as a young, living novelist so much written about. It was character
istic of him that he should be deeply embarrassed by these public atten
tions. But they influenced him not at all, except—if that were possible to
spur him on to more serious endeavors in his chosen art. Long before a
crank's bullet sent him out of this life every newspaper and magazine
reader knew' that he was one of that gifted group of writers born and
reared in the State of Indiana—and a veritable giant among them. They
knew, too, that he was a man of force and deeds, as well as of moving
literary fancies. If august members of the august United States Senate
were found lacking in their duties to the people, Phillips did not fear to
lash them with his powerful and incorruptible pen. And how they some
times cringed under that lashing is a matter of record.
Phillips not only believed in work, with a capital “W,” but practised
what he believed. Without doubt he was the most indefatigable worker,
the most studious devote of literature in genearl of his productive period.
Nor was he satisfied simply to turn out examples of good and honest
workmanship, book after book, and collect his royalties. He felt that he
had a mission—it was a mission similar to that to which Tolstoi conse
crated his life, a mission to assist in the redemption of modern society
through the power of the lessons he promulgated in the guise of fiction.
But unlike Tolstoi, he would not lessen the value and effect of his teach
ing by sacrificing his finished art of the novelist to the tiresome and doubt
ful methods of the preaching propagandist.
Those who are familiar with the novels of Phillips do not need to be
told about his particular literary hobby—really amounting to a passion.
On page after page of various books are found evidences of his burning
coloring, lashes and byebr ws tiemained d
her eyes and the intense red of her lips
vicinage of contrast which s necessary to c
To look at her was to be a once fascinate:
violet-gray eyes—by their lolor, by their
by their regard of calm, gi ive inquiry, by
blue that matched her eyes and harmonized with her
coloring. She was looking her best, and she had the
satisfying, confidence-giving sense that it was so.
She had got only far- enough from the house to be
visible to the second story windows when a young
voice called:
"Ruthie! Aren’t you going to wait for me?”
Ruth halted; an expression anything but harmonious
with the pretty blue costume stormed across her face.
How Susan Awoke to Womanhood.
MOT quite seventeen years later, on a fine June
morning, Ruth Warham issued hastily from the
house and started down the long tanbark walk from
the front veranda to the street gate. She was now
nineteen—-nearer twenty—and a very pretty young
woman indeed. She had grown up one of those small,
slender blondes, exquisite and doll-like, who can not
help seeming fresh and sweet, whatever the truth
about them, without or within.
This morning she had on a new Summer dress of a
_ ....
the sorrows in which she had been entangled Dy an
impetuous, trusting heart. The apparition in the door-
way was commonplace—the mistress of the house,
Lorella's elder and married sister Fanny—neither
fair nor dark, neither tall nor short, neither thin nor
fat, neither pretty nor homely, neither stupid nor
bright, neither neat nor dowdy—one of that multitude
of excellent, unobtrusive human beings who make the
restful stretches in a world of agitations—and who
respond to the impetus of cricumstances as unresist
ingly as cloud to wind.
As the wail of the child smote upon Fanny’s ears
she lifted her head, startled, and cried out sharply,
"What’s that?”
“We’ve saved the baby, Mrs. Warham,’ replied the
young doctor, beaming on her through his glasses.
“Oh!” said Mrs. Warham. And she abruptly seated
herself on the big chintz-covered sofa beside the door.
"And it’s a lovely child,” pleaded Nora. Her
woman's instinct guided her straight to the secret of
the conflict raging behind Mrs. Warham’s unhappy
"The finest girl in the world," cried Stevens, well-
meaning but tactless.
"Girl!” exclaimed Fanny, starting - up from the sofa.
•’Is it a girl?”
Nora nodded. The young man looked downcast;
he was realizing the practical side of his victory for
science—the consequences to the girl child, to all the
relatives, especially to this woman and her own little
daughter, Ruth.
“A girl!” moaned Fanny, sinking to the sofa again.
"God have mercy on us!”
• • *
When young Stevens was leaving, George Warham
waylaid him at the front gate, separated from the spa-
cIoub old creeper-clad house “by long lawns and an
avenue of elms. "I hear the child's going to live,”
said he anxiously.
Stevens flushed a guilty red. “It's—it’s—a girl,” he
stammered.
Warham stared. “A girl!” he cried. Then his face
reddened and in a furious tone he burst out, “Now
don't that beat the devil for luck A girl!
Good Lord, a girl!”
“Nobody in this town'll blame her,” consoled Stevens.
"You know better than that. Bob! A girl! Why,
it’s downright wicked ... I wonder what Fanny
allows to do?” He showed what fear was in his mind
by wheeling savagely on Stevens with a stormy, “We
can't keep her—we simply can't!"
“What’s to become of her?” protested Stevens
gently.
Warham made a wild, vague gesture with both arms.
"I’ve got to look out for my own daughter. I won’t
have it. I won’t have it!”
Stevens lifted the gate latch. "Well
"Good-by, George. I’ll look in again this evening.”
And know ing the moral ideas of the town, all he could
muster by way of encouragement was a half-hearted
“Don’t borrow trouble."
But Warham did not hear ,He was moving up the
tan-bark walk toward the house, muttering to him
self. When Fanny, unable longer to conceal Lorella’s
plight, had told him. pity and affection for his sweet
sister-in-law, who had made her home with them for
live years, had triumphed over his principles. He had
himself arranged for Fanny to hide Lorella in New
York until she could safely return. But just as the
sisters were about to set out, Lorella, low in body and
in mind, fell ill. Then George—and Fanny, too—had
striven with her to give them the name of her be
trayer, that he might be compelled to do her justice.
Loretta refused.
thinly about her low br w, about her
modeled ears and at the b ck of her exqu
It was not strange or i excusable—that
and their parents had beg n to pity Susa
as this beauty developed, : id this persona
to exhale its delicious perl ime. It was b
that they should start' th i Whole town
kind to the poor thing.” ) And it was e<
matter of course that they i lould have aebi
object—should have impres ed the convent
culine mind of the town ith such a ser
"poor thing's” social isolatlt i and “impossifc
the boys ceased to be her eagerly admirir
were afraid to be alone wit her, to ask hei
Women are conventional as a business;
conventionally is t groveling sit
i’ne Late David Graham Philips Whose Greatest Story, ‘‘Susan Lenox” Is Now
Being Published in HEARST’S MAGAZINE.
From the Initial Instalment of f ‘The Story
of Susan Lenox--Her Fall and Rise.”
Printed by Permission from the June
Number of HEARST’S MAGAZINE
men . _
The youthB of Sutherland raged for, sigh*
alluring, sweet, bright Susan; bht they i
with all the women saying Poor thing! W
a nice man can't afford to have anything i
her.” It was an interesting typical exam
profound snobbishness of the male characte
On that bright June morning as the coi
up Main street together,' Sksan gave herst
the delight of sun and air
dens before the attractive 1
Ruth, with the day quite
gone, was fighting against
vicious that it made her af:
Two squares, and she wi
of Sutherland, the home <
starting on when she saw
man in striped flannel,
saw her.
After they had shaken hi
came almost to their shouli
on. Sam kept pace wdth h
fully trimmed boxwood ban
In about two weeks,” said
after Yale. I just blew i
father yet”
metrical form symmetrical to her and the doctor's
expert eyes. "Such a deep chest," she sighed. “Such
pretty hands and feet. A real love child.” There she
glanced nervously at the doctor: it was meet and
proper and pious to speak well of the dead, but she
felt she might be going rather far for a “good woman."
"I’ll try it,” cried the young man in a resolute tone.
"It can’t do any harm, and——”
Without finishing his sentence he laid hold of the
body by the ankles, swung it clear of the table. As
Nora saw it dangling head downward like a dressed
suckling pig on a butcher's hook, she vented a scream
and darted round the table to stop by main force this
revolting desecration of the dead. Stevens called out
sternly: “Mind your business, Nora! Push the table
ngainst the wall and get out of the way. I want all the
room there is.”
"Oh. doclor—for the blessed Jesus’ sake ”
"Push back tlmt table!"
Nora shrank before his fierce eyes. She thought his
exertions, his disappointment and the heat had com
bined to topple him over into insanity. She retreated
toward the farther one of the opefi windows. With
a curse at her stupidity Stevens kicked over the table,
using his foot vigorously in thrusting it to the wall.
"Now!” exclaimed he. taking his stand in the center
of the room and gauging the distance of ceiling, floor
and walls.
Nora, her back against the window frame, her
fingers sunk in her big, loose apron, stared petrified.
Stevens, like an athlete swinging an Indian club,
whirled the body round and round his head, at the
full length of his powerful arms. More and more
rapidly he swung it. until his breath came and went
in gasps and the sweat was trickling in streams down
his face and neck. Round and round between ceiling
and floor whirled the naked body of the baby—round
and round for minutes that seemed hours to the horri
fied nurse—round and round with all the strength
and speed the young man could put forth—round and
round until the room was a blur before his throbbing
eyes, until his expression became fully as demoniac
as Nora had been fancying it. Just as she was re
covering from her paralysis of horror and was about
to fly shrieking from the room she was halted by a
sound that made her draw In air until her bosom
swelled as if it would burst its gingham prison. She
crane:} eagerly toward Stevens. He was whirling the
body more furiously than ever.
Was that you?” asked Nora hoarsely, "or was It"—
She paused, listened.
The sound came again—the sound of a drowning
person fighting for breath.
' It's—it’s"— muttered Nora. "What is it, doctor?"
“Life!” panted Stevens, triumph in his glistening,
streaming face. “Life!”
The bedroom door opened. At the slight noise
superstitious Nora paled, shriveled within her green
and white check gingham. She slowly turned her
head as if on this day of miracles she expected yet
another—the resurrection of the resurrected baby's
mother, "poor Miss Lorella." But Lorella Lenox was
forever tmnailU in the sleep that engulfed her and
How Susan Awoke to Life.
"^i 1 V HE child’s dead," said Nora, the nurse.
| It was the upstairs sitting room in one of the
^ pretentious houses of Sutherland, oldest and
most charming of the towns on the Indiana bank of
the Ohio. The two big windows were open; their
limp and listless draperies showed that there was not
the least motion In the stifling humid air of the July
afternoon. At the centre of the room stood an oblong
table; over it were neatly spread several thicknesses
of white cotton cloth; naked upon them lay the body
of a new-born girl baby.
At one side of the table nearer the window stood
Nora. Hers were the hard features and corrugat id
skin popularly regarded as the result of a life of toll,
but in fact the result of a life of defiance to the laws
of health.
i passing the s
the Wrights,
rnong the tree
it the same
As additional penalties for that same self-
indulgence she had an enormous bust and hips, thin
face and arms, hollow, sinew-striped neck. The young
man, blond and smooth-faced, at the other side of the
table and facing the light was Doctor Stevens, a r«-
i cently graduated pupil of the famous Schulze of Saint
Christopher who, as much as any other one man, la
responsible for the rejection of hocus-pocus and the
injection of common sense into American medicine.
For upward of an hour young Stevens, coat off and
k shirt sleeves rolled to his shoulders, had been toiling
\ with the lifeless form on the table. He had tried
i \everything his training, his reading and his experience
\\jt*8ested -all the more or less familiar devices sirai-
\r to those indicated for cases of drowning. Nora
had watched him, at first with interest and hope, then
with interest alone, finally with swiftly deepening dis
approval. as her compressed lips and angry eyes plainly
revealed. It seemed to her his effort was degenerating
into sacrilege, into defiance of an obvious decree of
the Almighty. However, she had not ventured to
■ speak until the young man, wdth a muttered ejacula
tion suspiciously like an imprecation, straightened his
stocky figure and began to mop the sweat from his
face, hands and bared arms.
When she saw that her verdict had not been heard.
_ she repeated it more emphatically. "The child's dead."
said she, “as 1 told you from the set-out.” She made
the sign of the cross on her forehead and bosom, while
her fat. dry lips moved in a “Hail Mary."
Stevens was not listening. “Such a tine babv, too "
he said, hesitating—the old woman mistaking!! - fan
cied It was her wordb that made him pause. “I feel
no good at all," he went on, as if reasoning with him
self. “No good at all, losing both the mother and the
child.”
"She didn't want to live," replied Nora. Her glance
% sloie somewhat tearfully toward the door of the ad
joining room—the bedroom where the mother lay
dead. “There wasn't nothing but disgrace ahead for
. both of them. Everybody’ll be glad."
^ Such a fine baby,” muttered the abstracted young
■ttpetor.
children always is," said Nota. She was
sadly and tenderly down a; .»> tn-
“There’s nothing can be done to make things right
for a girl that’s got no father and no name.”
The subject did not come up between him and his
wife until about a week after Lorella's funeral. He
was thinking of nothing else. At his big grocery
store—wholesale and retail—he sat morosely in his
office brooding over the disgrace and the danger of
deeper disgrace—for, he saw what a hold the baby
already had upon his wife. He was ashamed to ap
pear in the streets; he knew what was going on be
hind the sympathetic faces, heard the whisperings as
if they had been trumpetings. And he was as much
afraid of his own soft heart as of his wife's. But for
the sake of his daughter, he must be firm and just
One morning, as he was leaving the house after
breakfast, he turned back and said abruptly: "Fan,
don’t you think you’d better send the baby away and
get it over with?”
"No,” said his wife unhesitatingly—and he knew his
worst suspicion was correct. "I've made up ay mind
to keep her.”
THE OTHER GIRL.
Ruth Warham, one of thds$ small
slender blondes, j5xqiAsite>>
and doll like.’-
THE MAN.
‘My but you are looking fine Susie,’ said Sam.” A Christy
Illustration from ‘‘The Story of Susan Lenox” Republished
by Permission of HEARST’S MAGAZINE.