Upon Provincialism: Southern Literature and National Periodical Culture, 1870–1900

Epilogue

Epilogue Upon Provincialism has examined local color’s depiction of the South in the most prominent national periodicals. In this literature, the trope of the outside traveler visiting a foreign South became the central means of bridging the imaginative gap between the national audience and the local subject matter. I have argued that charting the nexus of reader, writer, and editor expectations about this material reveals the role that the South played in national imaginings about pressing issues, from shifting racial/ethnic demographics, to postwar national reconciliation, to immigration. The majority of this book has focused on how these imaginings were filtered through the elite national periodicals housed in the northeastern urban centers of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. I would like to conclude Upon Provincialism with an obscure novella that strays from this dynamic a bit. Eliza Ross, written by the Georgian author A. M. Meeker, was not printed in a national periodical, and was published , instead, in Atlanta, Georgia in 1870. This text does not appear in contemporary local-color conversations or anthologies, and it has not received attention in any prominent discussions of the era’s literature. Even so, Eliza Ross clearly relies on the conventions of local-color writing in its use of the plot device about travel to the South by an outsider, its emphasis on the unique qualities of the southern environment, and its suggestion that the region’s resources are primed for capitalist investment . In short, its acknowledgement of the national interest in southern scenes perfectly captures many of the imperatives of this book; it also 146 / upon provincialism reiterates the points of intersections among readers, region, and travel that undergird Upon Provincialism. Before releasing Eliza Ross, Meeker had a modest reputation as the author of the historical fantasies Kernwood and Castle Malone. She sought to create in Eliza Ross a hybrid text, one that tapped into the post–Civil War national desire to know and experience the South. Set in the area around what is now Chattanooga, Tennessee, the text is in part historical fiction, as it depicts the Chattanooga area before white development , when the Cherokee controlled and lived in the area. It is in part race melodrama, as the story traces the romance between Eliza Ross, the niece of the famous Cherokee leader and politician John Ross, and John Brown, a child of white settlers whom Eliza rescues during a Cherokee ambush. It is also in part travel guide, providing its readers very specific directions to such Chattanooga-area landmarks as Lookout Mountain, Leonora Springs, and Shelter Rock, as well as several other tourist attractions , caves, and Civil War battlefields. It is also a narrative enmeshed in late nineteenth-century travel and transportation. “The easiest mode of reaching [Lookout] cave,” Meeker informs us in the middle of the narrative , “is to take the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, and get off at the mouth” of the cave.1 The narrative is part tourist propaganda as well, fusing descriptions of rustic charm and natural splendor with railroad schedules and business directories. The text then is a chronological hybrid too, as it merges the contemporary reader’s experience with the historical tale of Eliza. Eliza Ross begins with an encomium to the beauty of the mountains surrounding Chattanooga: “In attempting to describe the sublime grandeur of this mountain, whose majestic old brow is crowned with laurels that no human hand can wither by its ruthless touch, we feel how truly insignificant we are.”2 This opening feels familiar enough to readers of local color, as celebrations of the beauty of local landscapes are more or less required elements of regional writing. After a brief summary of the Cherokee family that remains at the center of the fictional portion of the text, Meeker’s narrative quickly shifts to testimonials about current business leaders of Chattanooga. Mr. Stanton is “a most enterprising and amiable gentleman,” who happens to be building a “large, fine hotel” located near the Alabama & Chattanooga railroad. One version of the text provides an illustration of the hotel in the supplemental material.3 Mr. Stanton and his associate H. I. Kimball, Meeker assures the reader, are working feverishly to have the hotel ready in time for the Georgia State Fair. epilogue / 147 One advertisement serving as a preface to the guide reveals its intended audience of national vacationers, as it hawks Pullman day and sleeping coaches to “Pleasure-Seekers and...