Another clever choice on the part of our author was to put the telling of the story in the mouth of his heroine"s contemporary. This, of course, had often been done by romancers before Mr. Major, but he chose well, nevertheless. Fine literary finish was not to be expected of a Master of the Dance early in the sixteenth century; so that Sir Edwin Caskoden, and not Mr. Major, is accepted by the reader as responsible for the book"s narrative, descriptive and dramatic style.
This ruse, so to call it, serves a double purpose; it hangs the glamour of distance over the pages, and it puts the reader in direct communication, as it were, with the characters in the book. The narrator is garrulous, and often far from artistic with his scenes and incidents; but it is Caskoden doing all this, not Mr. Charles Major, and we never think of bringing him to task! Undoubtedly it is good art to do just what Mr. Major has done--that is, it is good art to present a picture of life in the terms of the period in which it flourished.
It might have been better art to clothe the story in the highest terms of literature; but that would have required a Shakespeare.
The greatest beauty of Mr. Major"s story as a piece of craftsmanship is its frank show of self-knowledge on the author"s part. He knew his equipment, and he did not attempt to go beyond what it enabled him to do and do well.
His romance will not go down the ages as a companion of Scott"s, Thackeray"s, Hugo"s and Dumas"; but read at any time by any fresh-minded person, it will afford that shock of pleasure which always comes of a good story enthusiastically told, and of a pretty love-drama frankly and joyously presented. Mr. Major has the true dramatic vision and notable cleverness in the art of making effective conversation.
The little Indiana town in which Mr. Major lives and practices the law is about twenty miles from Indianapolis, and hitherto has been best known as the former residence of Thomas A. Hendricks, late Vice-President of the United States. Already the tide of kodak artists and autograph hunters has found our popular author out, and his clients are being pushed aside by vigorous interviewers and reporters in search of something about the next book. But the author of When Knighthood was in Flower is an extremely difficult person to handle.
It is told of him that he offers a very emphatic objection to having his home life and private affairs flaunted before the public under liberal headlines and with "copious ill.u.s.trations."
Mr. Major is forty-three and happily married; well-built and dark; looking younger than his years, genial, quiet and domestic to a degree; he lives what would seem to be an ideal life in a charming home, across the threshold of which the curiosity of the public need not try to pa.s.s. As might be taken for granted, Mr. Major has been all his life a loving student of history.
Perhaps to the fact that he has never studied romance as it is in art is largely due his singular power over the materials and atmosphere of history. At all events, there is something remarkable in his vivid pictures not in the least traceable to literary form nor dependent upon a brilliant command of diction. The characters in his book are warm, pa.s.sionate human beings, and the air they breathe is real air.
The critic may wince and make faces over lapses from taste, and protest against a literary style which cannot be defended from any point of view; yet there is Mary in flesh and blood, and there is Caskoden, a veritable prig of a good fellow--there, indeed, are all the _dramatis personae_, not merely true to life, but living beings.
And speaking of _dramatis personae_, Mr. Major tells how, soon after his book was published, his morning mail brought him an interesting letter from a prominent New York manager, pointing out the dramatic possibilities of When Knighthood was in Flower and asking for the right to produce it. While this letter was still under consideration, a telegram was received at the Shelbyville office which read: "I want the dramatic rights to When Knighthood was in Flower." It was signed "Julia Marlowe." Mr. Major felt that this was enough for one morning, so he escaped to Indianapolis, and after a talk with his publishers, left for St. Louis and answered Miss Marlowe"s telegram in person. At the first interview she was enthusiastic and he was confident. She gave him a box for the next night"s performance, which Miss Marlowe arranged should be "As You Like It." After the play the author was enthusiastic and the actress confident.
At Cincinnati, the following week, the contract was signed and the search for the dramatist was begun. That the story would lend itself happily to stage production must have occurred even to the thoughtless reader. But it is one thing to see the scenes of a play fairly sticking out, as the saying is, from the pages of a book, and quite another to gather together and make of them a dramatic ent.i.ty. Miss Marlowe was determined that the book should be given to a playwright whose dramatic experience and artistic sense could be relied on to lead him out of the rough places, up to the high plane of convincing and finished workmanship. Mr. Paul Kester, after some persuasion, undertook the work. The result is wholly satisfactory to author, actress and manager--a remarkable achievement indeed!
Mr. Major"s biography shows a fine, strong American life. He was born in Indianapolis, July 25, 1856. Thirteen years later he went with his father"s family to Shelbyville, where he was graduated from the public school in 1872, and in 1875 he concluded his course in the University of Michigan. Later he read law with his father, and in 1877 was admitted to the bar. Eight years later he stood for the Legislature and was elected on the democratic ticket. He served with credit one term, and has since declined all political honors.
The t.i.tle, When Knighthood was in Flower, was not chosen by Mr. Major, whose historical taste was satisfied with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. And who knows but that the author"s t.i.tle would have proved just the weight to sink a fine book into obscurity? Mr. John J.
Curtis, of the Bowen-Merrill Company, suggested When Knighthood was in Flower, a phrase taken from Leigh Hunt"s poem, the Gentle Armour:
"There lived a knight, when knighthood was in flower, Who charmed alike the tilt-yard and the bower."