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George Washington Harris (1814–1869)
- University of Missouri Press
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70 George Washington Harris (1814–1869) George Washington Harris was neither a writer by trade nor a southerner by birth. But he contributed to American literature one of its most distinctively southern comic figures in Sut Lovingood and brought the American literary vernacular to its highest level of achievement before Mark Twain. Harris was brought as a child to Knoxville, Tennessee, by his half-brother from the place of his birth in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. He adapted to the attitudes and mores of the antebellum South with spirit and enthusiasm. He had little education in the formal sense, but he followed a wide cross-section of occupations, including metal working , serving as captain of a steamboat, farming, running a glass works and a sawmill , surveying, running for political office, serving as a postmaster, and working for the railroad. Such diverse occupations provided Harris with a rich education in life and a large reservoir of material from which to draw in his writing. Writing was a leisure-time activity for Harris, who began as an author of political sketches for local newspapers and sporting epistles for the nationally popular New York Spirit of the Times. He quickly developed a facility for local color and dialect and a skill for bringing to life backwoods scenes and events on the printed page. When he contributed his first Sut Lovingood sketch to the Spirit of the Times on November 4, 1854, he outdistanced all the other humorists of the Old Southwest by allowing one central character to tell his stories in his own crude vernacular and by granting that character his full independence in thought and action. Mark Twain, who reviewed Harris’s one book in 1867, Sut Lovingood: Yarns, would learn those lessons well and later put them to effective use in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Harris had collected a second set of stories but died on a return train trip to seek a publisher in 1869. He was buried in Trenton, Georgia, and the manuscript has never been found. What makes Sut distinctive is the combination in his character of such human failingsasbigotry,vulgarity,cowardice,andbrutality,alongwith,moreadmirably, a steadfast opposition to hypocrisy,dishonesty,and all limitations set on personal andsocialfreedom.ManyreadersfinditdifficulttolikeSut,butfewfinditpossible to resist his appeal, especially those who enjoy watching hypocrites exposed and George Washington Harris 71 those who take advantage of innocence appropriately punished. While authors and critics such as William Dean Howells and Edmund Wilson found Sut objectionable on grounds of good taste, others such as Twain, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and F. O. Matthiessen paid tribute to Harris’s influence and genius. Sut’s wildly funny pranks and incorrigible nature make him one of the most intriguing characters in American literary history. Texts:“Sut Lovingood’s Daddy, Acting Horse”and“Parson John Bullen’s Lizards,”from Sut Lovingood: Yarns Spun by a “A Nat’ral Born Durn’d Fool, Warped and Wove for Public Wear” (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1867). “Sut Lovingood Reports What Bob Dawson Said, After Marrying a Substitute,” Chattanooga Daily American Union, November 27 and 28, 1867.“Well! Dad’s Dead,” Knoxville Daily Press and Herald, November 15, 1868. Sut Lovingood’s Daddy, Acting Horse “Hole that ar hoss down tu the yearth.”“He’s a fixin fur the heavings.”“He’s a spreadin his tail feathers tu fly. Look out, Laigs, if you aint ready tu go up’ards.” “Wo, Shavetail.” “Git a fiddil; he’s tryin a jig.” “Say, Long Laigs, rais’d a power ove co’n didn’t yu?”“Taint co’n, hits redpepper.” These and like expressions were addressed to a queer looking, long legged, short bodied, small headed, white haired, hog eyed, funny sort of a genius, fresh from some bench-legged Jew’s clothing store, mounted on “Tearpoke,” a nick tailed, bow necked, long, poor, pale sorrel horse, half dandy, half devil, and enveloped in a perfect net-work of bridle, reins, crupper, martingales, straps, surcingles, and red ferreting, who reined up in front of Pat Nash’s grocery, among a crowd of mountaineers full of fun, foolery, and mean whisky. This was SUT LOVINGOOD. “I say, you durn’d ash cats, jis’keep yer shuts on, will ye? You never seed a rale hoss till I rid up; you’s p’raps stole ur owned shod rabbits ur sheep wif borrered saddils on, but when you tuck the fus’ begrudgin look jis’ now at this critter, name Tearpoke, yu wer...