Angelic Rodgers
  • The Octave Thanet Project
  • About
  • Privacy
    • Angelic Rodgers >
      • Signed Copies of Homecoming >
        • Signed copies of Elegant Freefall

"The First Mayor"

6/23/2021

0 Comments

 
  • First appeared in Atlantic Monthly, LXIV (November 1889 (pp. 611-27). Reprinted in Otto the Knight (1891). 
  • Only mentioned in McMichael on page 125 as part of Otto, but also he reprints from a letter by Alice French to Horace Scudder, July 31, 1890 (part of the Harvard College Library collection):  "I'm afraid there is a load of dialect in the stories written before I tried to reduce my dialect to the smallest proportions as I do now. . ./ Should we include other stories, there are two courses open. We might call the book 'Old and New Poor Folks,' and add two stories of the time of Edward VI. . .or we might add, instead, (a more feasible scheme, I fancy) three Western Stories, The Governor's Prerogative, The Day of the Cyclone, and The First Mayor. I will send you the stories tomorrow and you can judge for yourself about their value. / Were the book only about Arkansas, I should call it By the Cypress Swamp; but if we mix it up with the West, that won't do."

Basic summary: This is the story of Atherton--both the Western town and the man it was named for. Katy and Tom Ransome, young lovers who married despite family objections, are lured to Atherton for Tom to become the editor of the paper, The Citizen. Once there, they meet Atherton--the first mayor of the town, his wife (the widow Bainbridge and her daughter), and Renee, the Louisiana native who also followed the Westward expansion.

Initially, Katy is put off by Atherton, but the more she learns about him, the more she likes him. Over and over again he puts himself at risk to help others--first, it is the man who confronts him for putting him out of business. We learn later that he hired the man at a salary higher than he ever made when running the business, though, and that the business failing was a blessing. After his wife and children died of Cholera, he married the widow Bainbridge who was destitute after her own husband died. Her daughter Rose tried to stab Atherton with a penknife on their wedding day, but he was later her friend.

Atherton has gone so far as to guarantee currency, and when the bank goes bust, he is elected out of office. His wife dies in a carriage accident, and he winds up having a fit of apoplexy. Katy and Tom move, and when they return ten years later, the town has been renamed and it is only by finding the monument Atherton had built for his first wife and three lost children that they realize they've found his grave, as well.

Items of note: 
  • Mrs. Atherton mentions early on that her husband hopes to attract Germans to the area as they will remake the town. "The Governor's Prerogative" in this same collection also focuses on German immigrants.
  • Early in the story, there is mention of the railroad passing Atherton by; this is also mentioned in the story "Trusty, No. 49." Instead of Germans coming to save the town in that story, however, it is Thornton, the Northerner who plans to open a cannery in Lawrence County that is seen as the great hope.
  • Katy assumes that there is duty rather than love between the Athertons. When Miss Bainbridge tells how her stepfather saved her life and her mother's by marrying Mrs. Atherton, Katy assumes there's no love there, but only obligation.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    About this project:

    I've been saying since 2004 that I was going to write a critical biography of Octave Thanet (Alice French). This blog is the start of that work and will include notes, links to research, and other OT related tidbits.

    Archives

    February 2022
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021

    Categories

    All
    1878
    1879
    1880
    1884
    1885
    1887
    1888
    1889
    1890
    1891
    1893
    1896
    1897
    Abandoned Child
    Arkansas
    Aunt Callie
    Caldonia
    Catholicism
    Century Magazine
    Chicago Railroad Strike 1877
    Civil War
    Clover Bend
    Conjure
    Convict Camps
    Cotton Pickers
    Dialect
    Digital Texts
    Domestic Violence
    Economics
    Essays
    Expiation
    Francis Plantation
    Highlights & Notes
    Hot Springs
    Howells
    Image Of The South
    Immigrants & Naturalization
    Knitters In The Sun
    Lost Texts
    Lum Shinault
    Native American
    Novels
    Otto The Knight & Other Trans Mississippi Stories
    Photography
    Politics
    Poor
    Race
    Racial Stereotypes
    Racism
    Racist Language
    Racist Sterotypes
    Railroad
    Realism
    Research Tools
    Scribner's
    Scudder
    Seminole
    Southern Myth
    Stories Of A Western Twon
    Suffrage
    Tenant Farming
    Tenements
    The Atlantic Monthly
    The Missionary Sheriff
    Unionization
    We All
    Western Stories
    Witchcraft

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • The Octave Thanet Project
  • About
  • Privacy
    • Angelic Rodgers >
      • Signed Copies of Homecoming >
        • Signed copies of Elegant Freefall