THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 11, 2019 71
more or less the most popular man on
campus, obviously special yet one of
the boys. Everyone liked him because
there was nothing not to like, and be-
cause he was so gregarious, so gener-
ous, and so much fun. No wonder that
years later he wrote about these col-
lege years, “It never rained! It was al-
ways sunshine—then!”
By the time he left Princeton, he
had determined to become a writer,
and thanks to a modest bequest from
Uncle Newton he was able to spend
most of the next four or five years liv-
ing comfortably at home and more or
less paying his own way. As always, he
was formidably industrious—churning
out stories and drawings and launch-
ing them to potential venues. They
came hurtling back as quickly as he
could send them off. This apprentice-
ship went on and on with little encour-
agement except from the family, while
neighbors and friends made it clear
they thought he was loafing.
The family, however, remained
staunch, and it was sister Hauté who
masterminded the eventual break-
through. In 1898, on a trip to New York,
she took with her (without his knowl-
edge) a manuscript of a short novel he
had written—a historical romance
called “Monsieur Beaucaire”—and an
introduction to the magazine and book
publisher S. S. McClure. In his mem-
oirs, Tarkington recounts what hap-
pened. Hauté left off the manuscript
at the publisher’s office, and when she
returned to hear the verdict she en-
countered one of McClure’s colleagues:
“Did he read it?” my sister asked.
“Well—no,” the associate admitted. “I read
it.”
“You did?” my sister asked. “Didn’t you
think the poetic quotations at the heads of
chapters quite good?”
“Oh, very,” he told her, for he wished to be
as kind as he could. “The poetic quotations
were excellent.”
“There aren’t any,” she said. “Where’s Mr.
McClure?”
McClure appeared, agreed to read
“Beaucaire” himself, hesitated over it,
but, when Hauté mentioned that her
brother was just finishing a long novel
set in Indiana, asked to see that one,
too. Booth sent off the manuscript, and
two weeks later received a letter from
the esteemed writer and literary ad-
viser Hamlin Garland. “Mr. McClure
has given me your manuscript, The
Gentleman from Indiana, to read,” it
began. “You are a novelist.” “I couldn’t
imagine anybody’s saying such a thing,”
Tarkington would write years later. He
always recalled Garland’s letter as the
thing “that changed everything for me.”
He was just short of thirty years old.S
ummoned by McClure to New York
to reduce his novel sufficiently to
make it practical for serialization, Tar-
kington was suddenly immersed in the
literary/publishing world, meeting ce-
lebrities (Kipling, for one), being touted
by the hyperbolic McClure to Ameri-
ca’s foremost muckraking journalist, Ida
Tarbell: “This is to be the most famous
young man in America.” (Reporting to
his parents, he wrote, “I felt like a large
gray Ass!—and looked like it.”)
“The Gentleman from Indiana” was
published in late 1899, and was an in-
stant success. “Monsieur Beaucaire” fol-
lowed soon after (and equally success-
fully), and the contrast between the two
books can stand for the two veins of
Tarkington’s early career as a novelist.
“The Gentleman,” despite its some-
what melodramatic plot about a cru-
sading young journalist triumphing
over vicious opposition in a small town,
is an early venture into descriptive
realism. “Beaucaire”—written at the
height of the fashion for historical ro-
mance—is a clever pastiche of eigh-
teenth-century derring-do: “The Duke’s
mouth foamed over with chaotic re-
vilement.” (Surprise! Beaucaire, posing
as a barber, is in reality the prince Louis-
Philippe de Valois, Duke of Orléans!
He will be the only character ever to
be played on the screen by both Ru-
dolph Valentino and Bob Hope.)
Then, in 1902, everything happens
at once. A new novel, “The Two Van-
revels,” is published—another histori-
cal romance and another best-seller.
Two friends and partners are in love
with the same girl, there’s a big fire,
one of the young men is shot by the
girl’s father, there’s the Mexican-Amer-
ican War of 1846, there’s a genial old
“negro” and a robust older woman full
of wisdom—in other words, there’s
plot, plot, plot, although Tarkington, a
passionate admirer of Howells and
Henry James, has already grasped thatplot is not the road to distinguished
fiction. He can’t help himself, though;
he’s conditioned by the plays he keeps
turning out—plays that required either
comic plots or melodramatic plots.
Somehow he finds himself (with-
out campaigning) a candidate for the
Indiana state legislature, and (barely
campaigning) wins the seat: politics
run in the family. More important, he
finds himself a married man. There
have been several misfires, but now he
woos and wins Louisa Fletcher, the
daughter of an Indianapolis banking
family, a graduate of Smith College,
and ten years his junior.
Although he’s morbidly terrified of
public speaking (“I would as soon be
sent to jail as to have to make a speech”),
he’s active in the legislature, enthusias-
tically supporting a proposed law le-
galizing Sunday baseball. It lost by one
vote, undone by what Woodress calls a
“barrage of pulpit oratory,” and wouldn’t
be enacted for half a dozen years.
The most significant result of his
time as a legislator was a group of six
well-observed and convincing politi-
cal stories that were published in 1905,
in a collection called “In the Arena”
(generously included in the new Li-
brary of America volume). These sto-
ries attracted a great deal of attention,
including a summons to the White
House from President Theodore Roo-
sevelt. At lunch, Tarkington wrote to
his father, the President made “a long &
generally favorable comment” about
the stories. (“Of course, I just sat &
purred—too pleased to eat.”)
In 1903, Tarkington fell desperately
ill with typhoid fever. To help him re-
cover, his doctor prescribed “the health-
iest place in the United States,” Ken-
nebunkport, Maine—a prescription
that would change his life. Eventually,
he would spend half of every year there.
Meanwhile, to further his recuper-
ation, he set out for Europe on an ex-
tended version of the Grand Tour. For
eleven months, he and Louisa—to-
gether with his parents!—explored the
Continent, particularly attracted to
Paris, Capri, and Rome, where he could
indulge himself in his lifelong passion
for acquiring paintings and objets d’art.
One consequence of this marathon of
travel was the stream of letters he com-
posed (and illustrated) for Hauté’s three