A New Orleans Author in Mark Twain's Court: Letters from Grace King's New England Sojourn ed. by Miki Pfeffer (review)

Miki Pfeffer's collection of the colorful, richly detailed letters New Orleans writer Grace King (1852–1932) wrote to her family describing her experience of life among Hartford's Nook Farm elites in the late 1880s and early '90s is a revelation. And a guilty pleasure, too—a bit like listening to a witty, sharp-eyed friend dish on the personalities and social relations of people for whom she paradoxically feels both affection and a degree of disdain. King, a thirty-four-year-old fledgling author who first arrived in Hartford in May 1887 at the invitation of her mentor Charles Dudley Warner, was an astute—if at times wildly contradictory—observer. Yet these contradictions are precisely what make her perspective so fascinating. King attends recitals, teas, elaborate dinner parties, and church services, mingling politely with these "Yankees" while at the same time coolly assessing their appearance and demeanor. On some occasions, she regards Hartford's citizens as "the quintessence of elegance" (52); on others, she acerbically notes their smugness and complacency, telling her sister "the people here … have the contented expression of face and speech of souls assured of salvation in the next life and prosperity in this" (47). Similarly, a concert King attends with Charles and Susan Warner is most memorable not for its "very delightful" musical program, but the opportunity it afforded her to "study the character of the Hartfordians; and I must say they are a hard-featured set and illy dressed. I looked in vain for any evidence of culture on their faces and persons, and yet some of them as I afterwards learned were wealthy, traveled and artistic" (54).

Although King is warmly welcomed into the Nook Farm community, the "otherness" of her Southern identity is a constant subtext, the cultural yardstick by which she measures this new social milieu. Indeed, one senses these letters home were a deeply cathartic exercise for King, affording her a safe space in which she could candidly unburden herself, expressing views that she dared not to share openly with her hosts. King's acute awareness of her status as a "double agent" of sorts is reflected in a July 1891 letter to her sister May: "Every thing I see everything I do or hear, I want immediately to write all about it to my own people—… all the time, I am down stairs I am playing two roles, that of observer—& commentator" (186). King's second, 1888 visit to Hartford, which coincided with the presidential election pitting Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison against incumbent Democrat Grover Cleveland, offers a perfect example of this complex dynamic. While most residents of Nook Farm enthusiastically endorsed Harrison, Clemens broke ranks and supported Cleveland. Soon after the election, King vented to May, "How I loathe, despise, and hate the Republicans!" (135) yet remained outwardly neutral.

Though King was largely a model of restraint and propriety, there were a few notable occasions on which she could not—or would not—suppress her opinions, and suffered adverse consequences as a result. In late 1888, her relations with Charles and Susan Warner grew strained when she informed Susan of gossip she had overheard about Charles's involvement with a North Carolina writer named Isa Cabell. An unpleasant confrontation occurred when the couple dropped her off at the Hartford train station, prompting a long, agonized letter on December 1:

I hope never as long as I live, to merit such a good-bye as that of last Wednesday morning. … It never occurred to me to suppose that you and Mr. Warner could seriously disapprove or snub me. I knew that education, blood, sectional differences, even opinions about religion, separated us—but I thought that we all could meet in our natural characters and enjoy even the expression of such difference.

(146)

King also alludes to Susan...