From a Southern Porch

New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. Very Good. 1919. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. ix, 318 pages; Publisher's putty-colored cloth, decoratively stamped in green and lettered in white. Minor rubbing and wear at the tips of the spine ends and the points of the corners, browning to the endpapers (a transfer from glue used in the binding), faint pencil signature (see below). A decorative cover, with some rubbing affecting some areas of the foliage-inspired frame to the front cover -- (there are no designer's initials or monogram for this binding). First edition of an interesting example of Southern literature, and a specimen of the early collecting of African American folk song. The author, Dorothy Scarborough, was born in Mount Carmel, Texas; her father was John Bledsoe Scarborough, a Confederate veteran from Louisiana and successful Texas lawyer. At the age of four her family moved to Sweetwater, Texas for her mother's health, and then on to Waco, in pursuit of superior educational opportunities. Dorothy's own education included studies leading to a B.A. from Baylor in 1896 followed by her M.A. in 1899. After teaching at Baylor, her studies continued at the University of Chicago, Oxford University and Columbia University, where she was awarded a PhD., and began teaching in 1916. After an early published volume of poems and a book version of her doctoral thesis ['The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction' (1917)] -- this charming 1919 volume is next, loosely organized around the author's stated amiration for the porch. From her introduction: "The porch is the soul of a house. Poor and dispirited indeed is that structure which lacks it! ... Small wonder that city houses, conscious of the moral indignity of their appearance, huddle together in shame like criminals seeking to hide themselves in a crowd. ... This, then, is a tribute of love to porches, and meant only for the eyes of fellow-porchers, not at all for the critical gaze of folk who sit shut up in houses. The colored people in Virginia have a saying that all kinds of meat are to be found in the turtle's flesh. This volume might be considered mock-turtle's meat, for it is a joyous, irresponsible jumble of things I like... It has written itself with tongue acheek, breaking all the laws I know of unity, coherence, and continuity, and should be read on a friendly Southern porch. The "ballets" and "reels" included here are given just as they were taken down from dusky lips in Texas and Virginia. They are genuine negro folk songs, not "cooked" or edited in any way, and, so far as I can learn, have not been previous published." The author's tagline to this foreword is "Richmond, Virginia / July, 1919." -- perhaps she required a summer residence, as, even 94 years ago, Morningside Heights in Manhattan was not richly endowed with houses graced by front porches. Six years later, having continued her academic and personal collecting of African American folk material, Dorothy Scarborough published "On the Trail of Negro Folksongs" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925) -- a classic reference in the field. She was an early member of the Texas Folklore Society, which was founded in 1910, and served as president of the society in 1914–15. Alas, her next scholarly publication as a folklorist was posthumous -- ["Song Catcher in Southern Mountains: American Folk Songs of British Ancestry" (1937)]. The rest of her writing life was devoted to novels and stories, including a novel which appeared, without its author's name, as "The Wind." The handbook of Texas Online gives a useful summary of that "...controversial novel, in which a gentle heroine is driven insane by the incessant wind and drought-plagued frontier environment, has assured her reputation as an American regional novelist. The book created a furor in Texas when it was published because of its negative portrayal of frontier living conditions on the cattle ranges around Sweetwater in the 1880s. The book was also published anonymously as a publicity ploy. Today, however, many critics regard this novel as a Texas classic ..." J. Frank Dobie further reported that -- [The Wind] "excited the wrath of chambers of commerce and other boosters in West Texas--a tribute to its realism." Hollywood noticed 'The Wind' -- and a version, with a tacked-on happy ending, was made into a silent movie in 1927 starring Lillian Gish and Lars Hansen. Scarborough published other novels dealing with African Americans, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, cowboys, and women of all sorts and conditions-- ['In the Land of Cotton' (1923), 'Can't Get a Redbird' (1929), and 'The Stretch-Berry Smile' (1932)]. Through all of these books, Scarborough continued her academic career at Columbia, gaining a promotion to lecturer in the year our book was published, 1919; and further promotions to assistant professor in 1923, and to associate professor in 1931. In her Columbia career, centering on creative writing classes, Dorothy Scarborough made a further, most notable, contribution to modern Southern literature. Carson McCullers took her first college writing class from Scarborough while she attended night classes at Columbia University (as Lula Carson Smith). This well preserved copy of Dorothy Scarborough's first literary work in prose appropriately belonged to just the sort of reader she hoped, in her "foreword" to find. The front free endpaper of this copy has the pencil signature of "Wm. P. Boatwright" dated 1920. This was William Penick Boatwright (1866-1949) who was born in Danville, Virginia, the son of John Guerrant Boatwright, Civil War Surgeon in charge of the Blackie Hospital. The elder Boatwright graduated in medicine from the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia after having spent two sessions at the University of Virginia, and practiced his profession in Buckingham until the Civil War and was made an Army surgeon on the staff of the General Hospital of Confederacy at Farmville, Prince Edward County in 1862. After the war he moved with his family to Danville, Virginia. The unusually detailed Boatwright family genealogy includes a picture of the handsome frame house in Danville that the owner of our copy built in 1901 and lived in for the rest of his life. It is most gratifying to report that the main feature of the facade of William Penrick Boatwright's house, with excellent fretwork and nice proportions, is a large, curved porch. [See OCLC Number: 1263963] .