Emerson Hough’s Heart’s Desire: Revisit to Eden

D. E. W Y L D E R Colorado State University Emerson Hough’s Heart's Desire: Revisit to Eden It is unfortunate that, as late as 1966, Emerson Hough, if known at all, is known by students of American literature as the author of The Mississippi Bubble and a number of lesser novels. Paperback readers, of course, recognize his name as having appeared on the covers of North of 36 and The Covered Wagon, both of which are still in print. Except to a relatively few scholars of Southwestern American literature, Hough’s best novel— and the one which gives him just claim to a position in American literary history— is not well known, nor has it been reprinted for years. This novel is Heart’s Desire, and in it, Hough— whether consciously or not is of little importance— was able to blend the romanticism that would weaken his later novels with a realistic treatment of the American West in a manner that, perhaps, should have made Heart’s Desire the germinal novel from which a more intelligent and complex genre of “Westerns” could have developed. Had Heart’s Desire been recognized as the novel which treated the characteristics of the West and its people with understanding, the literature of the Amer­ ican West might not have the unfortunate reputation that has re­ sulted from its development from Wister’s The Virginian, and the Beadle novels. For in Heart’s Desire, Hough treats the major con­ flicts in the Western frontier spirit with a complexity and an under­ standing that he himself romantically distorted in later novels like The Way of a Man, North of 36, and The Covered Wagon. With the exception of the recent novels of William Eastlake and Ed Abbey, Heart’s Desire remains one of the few novels of the West All page references are to Emerson Hough. Heart’s Desire: The Story of a Con­ tented Town, Certain Peculiar Citizens and Two Fortunate Lovers. (N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, 1907, Original Copyright 1905 by Emerson Hough and MacMillan. Emerson Hough’s Heart’s Desire 45 that demonstrates, successfully, the paradoxical nature of individ­ ualism on the frontier, and the problems caused by the hated— yet desired— encroachment of civilization. Finally, it is a novel that places the cowboy in the Western perspective rather than roman­ ticizing his role into rather absurd proportions. Hough achieves his success through the use of the concept of the fortunate fall. Although the twentieth century reader may find his treatment of this theme a bit too obvious, here is a basic irony hat Hough achieves through the merging of symbol, state­ ment, and character, which is subtle enough for the contemporary reader. The novel is set in New Mexico; Heart’s Desire is a town modeled after White Oaks, the small hamlet where Hough once lived, and it is described as a semi-arid Garden of Eden. In fact, the basic nature of the setting and the human paradox with which Hough is concerned are indicated in the title and subtitle of Chapter V, “Eden at Heart’s Desire— This being the Story of a Paradise; also showing the Exceeding Loneliness of Adam.” The basic loneli­ ness of Adam (Dan Anderson, the protagonist) and the rest of the citizens of this small community— mostly male— has already been demonstrated in the earlier chapters. Hough does not merely write a rather sentimental romantic novel about two almost-starcrossed lovers, he writes of the basic inability of mankind to live in Eden, or even the wilderness, without bringing to it an order we call civilization— an order reflected in his need for the law, for culture, and for women. As Hough’s narrator, identified only as “the Learned Counsel,” states it: . . . Heart’s Desire had wilfully been but an unorganized section of savagery; but your Anglo Saxon, craving ever savagery, has no sooner found it than he seeks to civilize it; there being for him in his aeon of the world no real content or peace, (p. 16) Hough’s characters are not the lawless and savage mountain men who essentially adopt the customs and manners of the Indians with whom they...