Reviews of Mary Tappan Wright’s A Truce, and Other Stories (1895)
compiled by Brian Kunde
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| American Engineer, 5/9/91 | American Stationer, 1/15/91 | Atlantic Monthly, 11/95 | Book Buyer, 5/1/95 | | Book News, 6/95 | Book Reviews, 5/95 | Bookman, 6/95 | Boston Morning Journal, 5/14/95 | | Christian Work, 9/20/94 | Christian Union, 5/18/90, 1/8/91 | Congregationalist, 6/6/95 | Critic, 6/9/94, 6/20/96 | | Daily Mail and Empire, 7/6/95 | Daily Picayune, 6/3/94, 9/30/94 | Green Bag, 6/91 | Independent, 8/29/95 | | Life, 6/13/95 | Literary World, 5/10/90, 1/3/91, 5/9/91, 6/2/94, 10/6/94, 6/15/95, 8/10/95 | | Medical Age, 10/25/94 | Milwaukee Sentinel, 6/3/95 | Munsey’s Magazine, 8/95 | Nation, 1/16/96 | | New Haven Evening Register, 4/20/91 | New York Observer and Chronicle, 6/13/95 | New York Sun, 8/9/95 | | Outlook, 8/3/95 | Publishers’ Circular, 6/9/94, 10/6/94 | Punch, 5/17/90 | Review of Reviews, 9/95 | | Springfield Republican, 6/2/95 | Sun, 6/11/95 | To-Day, 10/95 | Vogue, 7/25/95 | | Washington Post, 12/14/90, 4/18/91 | Watchman, 6/20/95 | Worcester Sunday Spy, 8/4/95 | Writer, 5/91 | | Zion’s Herald, 5/14/90 | | A Truce | “As Haggards of the Rock” | “A Portion of the Tempest” | From Macedonia | Deep as First Love | | A Fragment of a Play, With a Chorus | the collection | These contemporary reviews of Mary Tappan Wright’s A Truce, and Other Stories, and of some of its component stories in their earlier magazine printings, are reproduced complete, with both positive and negative judgments intact, in the order of their original publication. When incorporated in a larger review also encompassing other writers’ works the works of the other writers may be omitted. “Review” is here broadly defined as any piece providing information on a work or its author beyond simple bibliographic information, publishers' paid advertisements excluded. Note, however, that review material quoted in such advertisements may be reproduced here when the original of the material quoted has not been found, and that some the review material below may actually be publisher-produced promotional boilerplate printed by the review organs as if original to them. —BPK, March 31, 2008, rev. February 16, 2010. As of the latest update, this page features 49 reviews, 23 on the stories prior to publication of the collection, and 26 regarding the collection. —BPK, August 29, 2013.
<— Christian Union, May 8, 1890, page 667:
<— The Literary World, May 10, 1890, page 159:
Scribner’s Magazine for May . . . The fiction of the number is interesting; [including] a wild ghost story of New England, “As Haggards of the Rock,” by Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright . . .
<— Zion’s Herald, May 15, 1890, page 155:
<— Punch, May 17, 1890, page 231:
READ “As Haggards on [sic] the Rock” in Scribner’s for May. It is a weird tale, but nothing whatever to do with “HAGGARD” (“RIDER” of that ilk), which may or may not be an additional attraction, according to the taste and fancy of the reader.
<— The Washington Post, December 14, 1890, page 4:
Mary Tappan Wright has written a powerful short story, entitled “A Truce,” for the January Scribner’s. It is prefaced with an unpublished poem by Arthur Sherberne Hardy, the author of “But Yet a Woman.”
<— The Literary World, January 3, 1891, page 13:
Scribner’s Magazine for January . . . Of the fiction, “A Truce,” by Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright. is subtly conveyed and very dramatic; her work needs, however, more of solidly ascertained reality, and it is rather dismal.
<— Christian Union, January 8, 1891, page 55: With the January number Scribner’s Magazine enters on its fifth year—a year, one cannot doubt, of continued and consistently growing popularity and literary as well as material success. . . . The story [“A Truce”] by Mary Tappan Wright is really an extraordinary piece of imaginative writing, though unpleasant to a degree in its conclusions.
<— The American Stationer, January 15, 1891, page 143:
. . . Scribner’s for January . . . . . . The story called “A Truce,” by Mary Tappan Wright, is intensely striking, and shows the possession of descriptive powers of a high order.
<— The Washington Post, April 18, 1891, page 4:
Mary Tappan Wright (who wrote two strange stories for Scribner’s—“As Haggards of the Rocks” [sic] and “A Truce”) contributes to the May number a bright and cheery story entitled “A Fragment of a Play.” Mrs. Wright is the wife of a Harvard professor.
<— The New Haven Evening Register, April 20, 1891, page 2:
———
<— The Writer, May, 1891, page 106:
Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright, who contributes to the May number of Scribner’s a bright and cheery story, entitled “A Fragment of a Play,” is the wife of a Harvard professor.
<— The American Engineer, May 9, 1891, page 190:
<— The Literary World, May 9, 1891, page 165:
Scribner’s Magazine for May is varied in its contents. . . . The fiction is good. . . . “A Fragment of a Play” is ingenious, with many good touches of dialogue, but Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright is likely to succeed better in comedy than in tragedy.
<— The Green Bag, June 1891, pages 302-303:
SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE for May . . . In addition there are two complete short stories,—“A Fragment of a Play,” by Mary Tappan Wright, who wrote that weird tale, “A Truce;” and . . .
<— The Literary World, June 2, 1894, page 172:
. . . in the June Scribner’s. . . . [is] a good story by Mary Tappan Wright, “A Portion of the Tempest,” . . .
<— The Daily Picayune, June 3, 1894, page 11: SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE for June . . . Mary Tappan Wright has a story under the title “A Portion of the Tempest,” and it is a very good one.
<— The Critic, June 9, 1894, page 394:
<— The Publishers’ Circular and Booksellers’ Record of British and Foreign Literature, June 9, 1894, page 615:
. . . Scribner’s Magazine . . . In fiction there is less variety than usual; the conclusion of ‘A Pound of Cure,’ several further chapters of Mr. Cable’s ‘John March, Southerner,’ and one short story by Mary Tappan Wright, entitled ‘A Portion of the Tempest,’ being all; but the quality is excellent.
<— The Christian Work: Illustrated Family Newspaper, September 20, 1894, page 471:
The unusual theme for a short story of the consecration of a bishop appears in “From Macedonia,” by Mary Tappan Wright, in the October Scribner.
<— The Daily Picayune, September 30, 1894, page 24: SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE for October . . . Mary Tappan Wright winds up the contributions with a story, “From Macedonia,” and it is a good one.
<— The Literary World, Oct. 6, 1894, page 332:
. . . in the October Scribner’s . . . [t]he conclusion of Mr. Page’s “Little Darby,” the continuation of “John March, Southerner,” by Mr. Cable, and a serious story, “From Macedonia,” by Mary Tappan Wright, supply the fiction of a well-balanced number.
<— The Publishers’ Circular and Booksellers’ Record of British and Foreign Literature, Oct. 6, 1894, page 399:
Scribner’s Magazine has, as usual, an attractive arraty of contents, both literary and pictorial. Fiction is well represented by . . . and a charming short story, ‘From Macedonia,’ by Mary Tappan Wright. . . .
<— The Medical Age, Oct. 25, 1894, pages 632, 634:
SCRIBNER’S MAGAZINE. Price, 25 cents; $3.00 a year. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York. The October number . . . The number is strong in fiction, containing a short story by Mary Tappan Wright, entitled “From Macedonia;” . . .
<— Book Reviews, May, 1895, page 12: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS have just published a collection of the stories of Mary Tappan Wright, which have been appearing in Scribner’s Magazine and which have won already such wide success. Mrs. Wright is the wife of Prof. John H. Wright of Harvard, who is himself engaged on the translation and revision of an important work.
<— The Book Buyer, May 1, 1895, page 239:
NEW FICTION.
A Truce and Other Stories, by Mary Tappan
Wright, is a volume of characterizations
set in a framework of landscape,
which is made a sympathetic background.
Each story is the tale of a
man and woman. Each theme is
the oldest and the newest that the
world holds—love. There is no
plot to speak of, very little incident.
The interest lies in the working
out of the type of character. The
studies of women are very close
and sympathetic. The workmanship
is delicate, and if the general
effect is sombre, it is because
life seems gray to the sensitive
vision of the author. [Scribners,
12mo, $1.25.]
<— Boston Morning Journal, May 14, 1895, page 6:
SUMMER FICTION.
A Truce–Women’s Tragedies–The Beautiful Soul–Corona–Romance of the Sword.— “A Truce and Other Stories” is a collection of very interesting short stories by Mary Tappan Wright. The first story in the book, “A Truce,” gives the volume its title. All of the stories show the touch of a master hand, and are the product of a literary artist. The book is gotten up in attractive style by the Scribners, and is neatly bound and printed. It can be purchased for $1. [paragraph on Women’s Tragedies omitted] “A Truce and Other Stories.” By Mary Tapan Wright. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Price $1. [remainder of article on other works omitted] —
<— Book News, June, 1895, pages 413-414, 431:
BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS. There is a power, familiar to every watchful student in letters, of leaving an impression on the mind that something has happened. The vision of print is left somehow on the mental retina, as the sun’s is on the eye. This power appears in “A Truce and Other Stories,” by Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright (Mrs. John H. Wright), of Cambridge. Three of the stories,—“A Truce,” “As Haggards of the Rock,” “A Portion of The Tempest”—grip. The last was in Scribner’s and so was “From Macedonia” and “Deep as First Love,” As usual, the magazine did not take the best stories; but magazine readers like it pleasant. The storm hangs heavy in these stories. There is much talk and what happens is thrown up like a larger shadow. Now and then this note pushed too far becomes a falsetto, but in the main it is held. ==A collection of the stories of Mary Tappan Wright, which have been appearing in Scribner’s Magazine, has been published under the title “A Truce and Other Stories.” Mrs. Wright is the wife of Professor John H. Wright, of Harvard, who is himself engaged on the translation and revision of an important work.
<— The Bookman; an Illustrated Literary Journal, June 1895, pages 294, 347-348:
Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright, whose remarkable stories are noticed in our Novel Notes, is the wife of Professor Wright of Harvard. A TRUCE, AND OTHER STORIES. By Mary Tappan Wright. New York. Charles Scribner’s Sons. $1.00.
To call this volume a collection of
dramatic fragments or episodes would
be nearer the truth than to style these
vistas of life stories. In sculpture they
resemble the torso, in music a song
sometimes begun, but never ended.
Mrs. Wright is conscious of this herself,
for she calls one of her sketches “A
Fragment of a Play, with a Chorus.”
But it is this very dramatic and fragmentary
form which gives her character-studies
their peculiar force and charm.
There is a blending of realism and romance,
of comedy and tragedy, of smiles
and tears which makes havoc with the
reader’s emotions. It is especially in
her power to discern the tragedy of the
commonplace, and the pleasure she
takes in reducing us to a strange despair
at the sorry spectacle of a relentless,
ironic nemesis playing fast and loose
about us, that she fascinates and holds
our interest whether we will or no.
Even in her humour there is a touch of
impatience and sternness. We discern
in her the severity and tragic fire of the
Greek spirit refined and softened as it
mingles with the gentleness of the woman.
In the opening story, “A Truce,”
we have a veritable cataclysm of the
Greek drama. Over the face of Life
and Love, which for one day made a
truce together, falls a sudden pall which
darkens the heavens and sweeps the
stars from the firmament at one fell
swoop. “As Haggards of the Rock”
and “A Portion of the Tempest” deepen
this impression and trouble the waters
of life with a blind, unreasoning
fury, against which the heart cries out
under the mystery of its unintelligible
burden.
There was a low roar in the west, a creaking in
the trees near at hand, and a cracking far away.
Something hurled from a distance struck the roof
like a stone. Across the darkness outside the
door he could see the flash of an electric-car as it
passed on the other side of the cove.
Whether because we had previously read “From Macedonia” in Scribner’s, where some of these stories first appeared, is not clear, but it certainly is the least pleasing, and leaves one vaguely wondering what it is all about. “Deep as First Love” is an idyll of wonderful beauty; it is the sort of thing one turns to and reads again and again with ever-increasing delight. Poor old Mrs. Hathaway, climbing up the Dogtown Road and out upon the moors, till she reaches the point at the top of the hill where forty-two years ago she bade farewell to her lover, Joe, for good and all, is as pathetic a figure as you will meet with in a wide range of fiction. We wish we had space to give the closing passage, which describes the scene of a young man and a girl wandering hand in hand among the rosy lights playing through the wet grasses, as conjured by the strange fancy of the old woman, whose brain has been turned by the overpowering memories of her youth. “I loved him, I loved him, I loved him!” she sobbed. “It’s the only thing that lasts.”
<— Springfield Republican, June 2, 1895, page 11:
LONGER AND SHORTER STORIES
“A Truce and Other Stories,” by Mary
Tappan Wright, published by the Scribners,
is a collection of rather high-strung
short stories, which suffer from a tendency
to allusiveness and an unwillingness to
state things in plain language, which
makes them rather hard reading unless one
have leisure to pore over every word. The
longest story in the collection is the one
from which it takes its title, “A Truce.”
It is named, not very obviously, from Arthur
Sherburne Hardy’s poem beginning:– If life had made a truce with love
It is difficult to find anything in the poem
to justify the application of the title to
the story of a girl who is engaged to one
young man, who loves another, and is
killed by the first from jealousy. The story
is much overwrought and the characters
are little more than puppets. Two of the
stories, “A Portion of the Tempest” and
“A Fragment of a Play,” are told in an
ingenious form, as overheard by the narrator
from the lips of the chief actors. The
former is an uncommonly picturesque tale
of the tragic love of two for whom love is
forbidden, as overheard in a seaside studio
in which they have taken refuge from a
tempest, which is described in a graphic
manner. “A Fragment of a Play” is a
lively bit of comedy which gives an entertaining
variation from the tenser stories.
The other stories in the collection are “As
Haggards of the Rock,” “From Macedonia,”
and “Deep as First Love.”
And hand in hand together Made earth as fair as heaven above, That day, my own, were mine alone, Of all time’s stormy weather.
<— The Milwaukee Journal, June 3, 1895, page 8:
FROM THE BOOK TABLE.
A TRUCE, AND OTHER STORIES. By Mary Tappan Wright. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Milwaukee: Des Forges & Co. Price, $1.00. None of the fiction of the week is in the least phenomenal, but it averages well. Each and every one of the half dozen volumes named above has its distinct good points. But one of them all has run the preliminary gauntlet of the magazines before taking to itself covers: that is Mary Tappan Wright’s collection of short stories which added to the attractions of Scribner’s Magazine in times past. Mrs. Wright’s instrument has but a narrow range, but some of its tones are thrillingly sad and tender. The tragedy of life, enwoven curiously with the commonplace, can produce a strangely weird ensemble when blent by a cunning hand. Such a stormy nocturne as “A Portion of the Tempest,” one so full of mystery as “Deep as First Love,” or thrilling with such angry passionate chords as “A Truce,” implies a close acquaintance with obscure depths of the emotional nature. Curiously, out of six stories but one is not a night-piece. Those unforgettable impassioned moments when life is laid bare belong rightly to silence and enfolding darkness. The vagueness and indefiniteness of these tales in all save the vital episode seems a part of the natural method, not to be regretted or complained of. A delicate effectual handling of the emotions, the relations of women and men—the passions one might say, did not the fineness and spirituality of treatment seem to forbid—is their distinguishing feature. But feeling is profound and impassioned, even if restrained, and these breathless decisive interludes out of peoples’ lives are finely imagined.
<— Congregationalist, June 6, 1895, page 891:
Mary Tappan Wright’s A Truce and Other Stories [Charles Scribner’s Sons. $1.00] affords a marked contrast to the immediately foregoing books, for it exhibits unusual ability. That this ability illustrates itself in the line of the eccentric and tragic and even weird renders it the less agreeable at times, but does not diminish its force. From the point of view of the literary artist, also, it exhibits unusual skill in both conception and portrayal. It only needs a little sweetening, so to speak, to be one of the most charming, as well as one of the most striking, books of short stories of recent months.
<— The Sun, June 11, 1895, page 6:
We give the titles of the “Other Stories,” as a title sometimes gives us a useful hint of the character of what follows. “As Haggards of the Rock” is the second tale, and then “A Portion of the Tempest,” “From Macedonia,” “Deep as First Love,” and “A Fragment of a Play, with a Chorus.” The last we may dismiss as too much of a fragment to be satisfactory. All the remaining five deal with the love relations of a man and a woman—generally from the point of an eavesdropper, or an onlooker. The reader will be repelled by the first story, which is that of a man, a woman and a friend. The woman is apparently engaged to the man, but loves the friend, who unexpectedly appears on the desolate seacoast, to which the woman, for some unexplained reason, had been conveyed. The result is a murder on the sands. The lover choked the woman, who is a good woman, and has been “agonizing” for some time because she cannot love him, to death with his hands with utterly unnecessary cruelty and brutality. Then, afterward, “laughing, laughing, he ran out of the hills down across the beach to tell it, and when they turned to him he fell on them furiously, lest they should go also and find her, and they bound him and carried him away in the boat raving.” They never found the young woman. But since that time, in the clear moonlight, in the shifting fog, “a man may see a little face lying flower-like in the sand—flower-like, with dewy eyes and self-curling hair. The delicate hand rests lightly on the breast, and he that sees forgets not.” Too obviously the whole situation forces the note of pathos—it is not a cry; it is a wail. But this is the worst. Why the author put it first and made of it the title story passes comprehension. The second story is better, the third rouses curiosity, and the other—”A Cry from Macedonia” [sic] —has a subtle power of painting strong suspense and dealing clearly with a striking situation that redeems the book and proves that Miss [sic] Wright can do better work than picturing the emotional woman in her strife between love and duty.
<— Life, June 13, 1895, page 390:
HERE are a few books that LIFE can recommend
for these material reasons,
and also can say a few words for what is inside
of the covers:
Droch.
<— New York Observer and Chronicle, June 13, 1895, page 788:
A Truce, and Other Stories. By Mary Tappan Wright. This volume of six stories contains a variety rarely offered by a single writer in so small a collection. Mrs. Wright possesses dramatic power of a high order united with keen fancy and sparkling wit. Each story is admirable and unlike all of its companions, and together they make a charming book. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
<— The Literary World, June 15, 1895, page 184:
WHAT is there in the writing of tales that
makes so many authors, both new and
experienced, construct a plot which, notwithstanding
its cleverness and interest, leaves the
reader despairing and sad, and renders him for
the time being a pessimist? For the sake of
illustration let us suppose we know a talented
woman, Mrs. Black, who possesses unusual intelligence
and power of dramatic conversation,
and a man endowed to some less degree in like
manner, Mr. Gold. Mrs. Black is more than
likely to greet us when we meet with a sorrowful
expression, and then to discourse upon some
tragic experiences of a friend or acquaintance of
hers which makes us miserable. She may use
consummate art in her telling; she may thrill us
with the incidents of the story and have us
weep in sympathy for the heroine. Probably we
will turn from Mrs. Black, our hearts filled with
pity and indignation; and yet, after we have
been through this experience several times,
would it not be natural for us to cross the
street when next we see her approaching in
an endeavor to avoid her? We have our own
troubles; we have friends whose lives are more
or less interwoven with our own, who have their
sorrows, their tragedies, their disappointments,
and these we feel more keenly than those we
simply hear about, be they imaginary or real.
[Succeeding paragraphs contrasting the pieces by Grant and Bangs after the example of the initial paragraph are omitted.]
HENRY EDWARD ROOD.
<— The Watchman, June 20, 1895, page 19: A Truce, and Other Stories, by Mary Tappan Wright, contains a series of highly wrought, but, on the whole unsatisfying sketches of love matches ill-begun or ill-ended. The writer has talent that could be put to better use than the compelling of the reader to become an eaves-dropper listening to the unprofitable wrangle of soured lovers, or to piece out to intelligible fulfilment dark hints of an untold story, given as a “smashed-up locomotive” is given to a child, to provoke as well as train the wit. (New York: Chas. Scribner’s Sons. 1895. Pp. 287. $1.)
<— The Daily Mail and Empire, July 6, 1895, page 7:
——— VOLUMES OF FACT AND FICTION LATELY RECEIVED.
A Truce, and other Stories. By Mary Tappan Wright. New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons ;
<— Vogue, July 25, 1895, page 64:
A TRUCE. BY MARY TAPPAN WRIGHT A collection of short stories already familiar through the pages of various periodicals, and having a puzzling yet not unagreeable flavor of their own. It is safe to say puzzling, for not one is without a certain element of unresolved mystery. Whether this adds a piquancy to the tales, or is only provoking, must be decided by each individual reader’s taste. Certainly the stories are well written, somewhat florid in style, modeled evidently on that of Harriet Prescott Spofford. Precisely what meaning the author attaches to the phrase “As Haggards of the Rocks,” which she uses as a title, it would be hard to say. This story, however, is decidedly the best of the collection. All are sufficiently agreeable reading, however, but one feels devoutly thankful that such perverse hair-splitting misunderstanding and morbid self-and-other-analyses are not often encountered in real live. (Charles Scribner’s Sons.)
<— Munsey’s Magazine, August 1895, page 554:
MARY TAPPAN WRIGHT, the wife of Professor
John H. Wright, of Harvard, is the author of
“A Truce, and Other Stories.” She began
writing several years ago, starting in with tales
for young people. But surely she has departed
widely from her early training in this field, for
the child always wants to know how everything
“turned out,” and Mrs. Wright has developed
into an able exponent of the “unfinished story.”
This may call for clever writing, but the result
is distressingly unsatisfying. Perhaps
Mrs. Wright knows what it is she intends to
convey by describing at the conclusion of a
story a man standing for a moment in the glare
of the sunshine and then disappearing, or a
woman standing in the twilight wringing her
hands, but if she does she conceals her meaning
with surpassing skill, and the reader is left
to wonder what the long mysterious conversations
were all about, any way, and who the
people were, and what happened to them after
all. Now, with all due respect to Mrs. Wright,
that is no way to write a story. We can see
people sigh, women turn sadly into houses, and
men stand in the sunlight twenty times a day
without knowing the reason therefor, but when
we have patiently and conscientiously read a
book we want to something to happen, however
trivial. Two of Mrs. Wright’s own characters
sum up the whole volume admirably, as
follows:
“Well—but—” hesitated the master of the
house. “How did it all end?”
<— Outlook, August 3, 1895, page 184:
A Truce, and Other Stories, by Mary Tappan Wright, is a
volume notable for its strong individuality. Some of the stories
are defective in construction. They are, indeed, not properly
stories, but sketches. As sketches they have two notable qualities—freshness
of imagination and suggestiveness. It is not
always easy to gather their meaning on the face, but one feels
that they have a meaning. In more than one case they reveal a
genuine power, and in no instance are any of these stories commonplace.
(Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.)
<— Worcester Sunday Spy, August 4, 1895, page 5:
BOSTON CAUSERIE,
— Men, Women and Books. — Richard le Gallienne’s New Poems–A Taste of Their Quality–Mary Tap- pan Wright–Her Dramatic Epi- sodes–Kirk Munroe and His Work for Boys–Mrs. Bloomfield Moore, Friend of Robert Browning. — (Regular Correspondence of the Spy.) Boston, Aug. 1, 1895.
. . .It is a pleasure to chronicle the advent of a new story-teller. Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright has given hostage to fame in a volume of dramatic sketches called “A Truce and Other Stories.” I must confess to small enjoyment of the average short story found in our magazines. They usually are like blind alleys that end nowhere. But the six episodes in Mrs. Wright’s new volume have a strength and fascination that recently held me captive till nearly midnight, one warm summer evening. They are far removed from the commonplace, and the selection of unique incidents, as well as the forceful way in which they are worked out, betray signal ability. Mrs. Wright is the wife of Professor Wright of Harvard University, and so profound is his learning that he has been designated as “the scholar of Cambridge,” a distinction which gains in value by recalling his erudite confreres. While the professor has been absorbed in Greek lore of the past, Mrs. Wright has studied the world of men, and today’s tragedy of the commonplace has bitten into her consciousness with the keen incisiveness of aqua-fortis. The Nemesis which stalks after the men and women whom we meet in the streets or by the fireside is as exacting today as in the far, sad days of Antigone. Mrs. Wright has penetrated to the heart of things by the divine gift of imagination and revealed to us the infinite pathos of life. She loves nature in her wildest moods, the fury of the waves, the havoc of the thunder storm, and she sketches the mist-shrouded moors, the rock-bound cove, or the wind-swept sky, with the swift, sure touch of a painter. The realism and tragic intensity of “A Truce” carries the reader breathlessly on, and the weird mystery of “As Haggards of the Rock” holds him captive. The consecration of a bishop in the sketch, “From Macedonia,” calls out a vehement protest from the old preacher’s burning heart, against the indifference of the church to the world’s woes. And you feel sure the writer expressed her own protest as well. “Deep as First Love” is full of idyllic beauty, but even under the lighter touches, “There surges the Virgilian cry,
Did ever love find more pathetic expression
than in the cry of poor, old,
bewildered Mrs. Hatheway—“It’s the
only thing that lasts!” Mrs. Wright
has had a happy experience of life despite
the tragic side she loves to paint.
She was the only daughter of Professor
Tappan, who filled the chair of Belle
Lettres in a western college and she
was brought up in a scholastic atmosphere.
The large and valuable library
ranged round the walls of the hall in
her Cambridge home is a legacy from
her father. Nature not only endowed
her with mental gifts, but gave her a
commanding presence, a buoyant manner
and the ready smile and social tact
that well become her position. She
possesses much of the quality or qualities
which we sum up under the word
“attractive.” Her friends are loyally
devoted and look up to her as a leader.
During Professor Wright’s service at
Dartmouth College and at Johns Hopkins
University, Mrs. Wright was in a
congenial atmosphere. At Cambridge,
nearly everybody of distinction who
gravitates to the old university town is
her guest and this friendly intercourse
with the best minds has brought enrichment
to a personality alive to every
impression. Mrs. Wright has several
little children and during the past
year she has been in Europe helping
the professor to enjoy his sabbatical
year.
The sense of tears in mortal things.”
<— The Literary World, August 10, 1895, page 255:
— A collection of the stories of Mary Tappan Wright, which have been appearing in Scribner’s Magazine, has been published under the title A Truce, and Other Stories. Mrs. Wright is the wife of Prof. John H. Wright of Harvard.
<— The Independent, August 29, 1895, page 18:
A Truce, and Other Stories. By Mary Tappan Wright. (New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons. $1.00) A book made up of six excellent short stories by a writer who never does slovenly work. We hardly know where can be found stronger descriptive passages or dramatic scenes more sharply set than in one or two of Mrs. Wright’s sketches.
<— New York Sun, August/September 1895:
By Mary Tappan Wright. 16mo, $1.00. “We congratulate Mrs. Wright upon her exceedingly capable work. It is a long time since we have read a better ghost story than ‘As Haggards of the Rock.’ ‘A Truce’ is also an able story, full of sensitive and effective work.’ ‘From Macedonia’ is still another very able tale, remarkable, it seems to us, for its originality in both conception and treatment.” [Quoted in a Scribner’s display advertisement in The Bookman, August/September 1895, page VI; complete review not yet located.]
<— The Review of Reviews, September 1895, page 372:
A Truce, and Other Stories. By Mary Tappan Wright.
16mo, pp. 287. New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons.
$1.
<— To-Day, October 1895, page 534:
In attractive, handy style, uniform with Herold Frederick’s “Marsena,” and W. H. Bishop’s “Pound of Cure,” published last year, the Scribner’s [sic] bring out shortly two new books that will introduce to the public new writers of unusual promise: one, a romance of stirring adventure, entitled “Forward House,” by William Scoville Case, a writer of striking individuality and power; the other, a volume of short stories, entitled “A Truce, and Other Stories,” by Mary Tappan Wright.
<— The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1895, page 708:
A Truce, and Other Stories, by Mary Tappan Wright. (Scribners.) There is an intensity and a dramatic sense about these seaboard New England tales that gives them a good deal of power. In some of them, as in A Tone [sic: “A Truce”] and From Macedonia, this intensity, this stress of passion, is too strong for perfect art. The tragedy is too harsh. In the second story, [“As Haggards of the Rock,”] however, this vehemence of feeling is mitigated by the ghostly setting, and the result is a very successful piece of work.
<— The Nation, January 16, 1896, page 61:
A Truce, and Other Stories. By Mary Tappan Wright. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Mrs. Wright’s tales are ... of the coast, and are full of the mysterious weirdness of the sea. But the scenery is lamentably profuse; it for ever breaks in on incident and talk, and is, as Schopenbauer said of life, a needlessly interrupting episode. The worm will turn, and landscape-writing is becoming a pest whose counteractive bacillus the nations pray for. The reader of these stories is impressed, first of all, however, with their unusual quality, and this not so much because they are more or less indeterminate, since that is the order of the day, but because of the originality shown in their construction, their situations, and their conversations. They have some tragic force, much emotional turbulence, and an odd juxtaposition of the realistic, the spectral, and the humorous. With the development of their best traits, strong work may well be looked for from their author in future. On the other hand, they now hover dangerously near the region where power is caricatured into affectation and originality into formlessness.
<— The Critic, June 20, 1896, page 442:
And Other Stories. By Mrs. [Mary] Tappan Wright. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
MRS. WRIGHT possesses the qualities which should go to the
making of novels rather than of short stories. A lively imagination
leads her into the development of plots too complicated and
dramatic for brief narration. In such work pathos has its legitimate
place, but tragedy can only be employed by one so gifted
that the world allows him to make his own rules. Intensity of
passion is not within the scope of the short story, but Mrs.
Wright never spares one’s feelings. She tells of separation,
insane jealousy, horror—even murder,—until one begins to think
that these emotions are as common as shells on the seashore.
The misunderstandings and miseries of love seem to be her
favorite subjects of contemplation; but the artistic handling of a
trifling episode in such a way as to make it significant and memorable
is at present out of her reach. Nevertheless, there are
certain signs in this book which lead one to believe that such an
achievement may not be permanently beyond her power. It will
require a strong hand to curb her exuberant fancy and give her
the reserve and concentration which she needs. And the question
in regard to her future is whether she can gain this difficult
self-control.
These reviews were originally published in the journals credited.
The works here reproduced are in the public domain. All other material in this edition is
©2008-2018 by Brian Kunde.
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