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Janice Meredith by Paul Leiscester Ford

Feb15

OK, so older is not always better. The bestsellers of today are sometimes full of gratuitous sex and violence, without much depth of character and devoid of significant meaning.

Janice Meredith, one of the ten best selling novels of 1900, didn’t have any sex, other than a few stolen kisses, and the violence of the American Revolution was described somewhat obliquely through the eyes and experiences of the noncombatants, Janice and her mother. For example:

“Only with death did the people forget the enormities of those few months, when Cornwallis’s army cut a double swath from tide water almost to the mountains, and Tarleton’s and Simcoe’s cavalry rode whither they pleased; and the hatred of the British and the fear of their own slaves outlasted even the passing away of the generation which had suffered.”

Nevertheless, the character development in Janice Meredith is poor, and by today’s standards, the book could have been edited down from 503 pages to about half that. Janice herself begins the novel as a giddy teenager reading romance novels and indulging in romantic fantasies, and she ends the novel, after having bounced from one suitor to the next and back over a dozen times, indulging in her new romantic fantasy of marriage to dashing young officer with her father’s reluctant permission.

The characters of the Revolution –George Washington, Cornwallis, General Gates, General Lee, and others—appear with as much historical accuracy as can be expected in a romance novel. The battles and the deprivations that the people experience as the war drags on seem real, and if the language is little flowery, the descriptions are at least based on fact.

The main problem with the novel was that I never really liked wishy-washy little Miss Meredith. She never knew what she wanted. SHe ran away with one man and was fetched back by her parents. She promised herself in marriage to at least four different men over the course of the novel in return for their help to her and her family as they attempted to navigate the vicissitudes of war. Janice’s father promised her to several different men, usually the same ones Janice affianced, but at differing times. It made for several confusing reversals of plot, and Janice ended up seeming fickle and willing to give herself in marriage to the highest bidder.

If all of the bestsellers of 1900 are like this one, I feel sure that:

a) most of the books on the bestseller list must have been purchased and read by women. I can’t imagine any man reading through 500 pages of this.
b) surely Dickens’ and Thackeray’s heroines were a relief to the ladies of 1900 after reading about Miss Janice. At least Dora (David Copperfield) knows she’s found a good man in David, and Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair) could have transplanted herself to the New World and had a whopping adventure in the time it took Janice to dither around, flirt with half the British army, and then end up where she began with a penniless and somewhat immature American fiance.

Footnote: I looked up the author, Paul Leicester Ford, and his life, or more particularly his death, would make a rather lurid novel. (In fact this NY TImes article about Ford’s death reads like a novel. Ah, the good old days of yellow journalism!) Ford wrote biographies as well as novels, and his subjects were several of the founding fathers, including Washington. So I’m guessing his facts and characterizations are, as I said, quite accurate.

Galveston’s Summer of the Storm by Julie Lake

Jun27

Fried chicken and pinto beans. “I’d give my eyetooth” and “getting a goose egg on your head.” Iceboxes and clotheslines and feather beds and porch swings. Dr. Pepper and lemonade to drink. Playing dominoes in the parlour and croquet in the front yard. Hand-cranked ice cream and watermelon. The Tremont Hotel and Ashton Villa in Galveston and Hyde Park in Austin. I could tell that Julie Lake is a native Texan when I read about all these things and even more Texas-y stuff in this fiction book for elementary age children about the Galveston hurricane of 1900.

I read Isaac’s Storm by about a month ago, so it was interesting to compare the information in these two very different books about the same event. Isaac’s Storm is nonfiction, written for adult readers, and would be good background material for teachers or older children who read Ms. Lake’s book for fun or as an introduction to a study of hurricanes and natural disasters or Texas history.

Published by TCU Press, this story takes a long time to lead up to the crisis of the hurricane —all summer long, in fact. Fourteen year old Abby Kate is visiting her grandmother in Galveston for a few weeks. Illness in the family at home in Austin means that Abby Kate must stay in Galveston for a lot longer than originally planned. And she’s still there on September 9, 1900 when the deadliest disaster to ever hit the United States comes to Galveston Island, a category four hurricane.

I’m not sure that someone from, say Michigan, would enjoy this book quite the same way I did. The familiar colloquialisms and the comfort foods and the Texas details were so much fun. However, it’s a good story in its own right, and especially timely as we face another hurricane season a year after Katrina and Rita reminded us that even in the twenty-first century hurricanes can still wreak havoc. Not only does Ms. Lake spend several chapters leading up to the hurricane’s arrival, her descriptions of the event itself are vivid and compelling. Then the reader gets to see how people on the Island and on the mainland coped with the aftermath of the hurricane.

Lots of historical detail, information about sailing ships and steam trains, and book characters that make the history come to life all make this book an excellent choice for middle grade (3-6) readers and classrooms. I’m thinking that we could use it a the basis for a unit study in our homeschool co-op, tie in a field trip or two to Galveston and to the Weather Service. Yes, I definitely recommend this one for Texas readers and for others who are interested in the turn of the century history and or in Texas history or in the history of natural disasters.

Isaac’s Storm by Eric Larson

Jun1

“As we watched from the porch were amazed and delighted to see the water from the Gulf flowing down the street. ‘Good,’ we thought, ‘there would be no need to walk the few blocks to play at the beach, it was right at our front gate.'”


The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history was not the one that hit New Orleans last year. It was the Galveston hurricane of September 8,1900; author Eric Larson calls it “Isaac’s Storm.” (Hurricanes did not begin receiving official names from the U.S. Weather Bureau until the late 1940’s.) Isaac Cline was the chief weatherman for the U.S. Weather Bureau on Galveston Island in the year of the hurricane.

This history is not the best organized one I’ve ever read. The narrative skips back forth from Thursday to Saturday to Friday and back again. However, I did learn some fascinating facts about the Galveston Hurricane and about Isaac Cline:

1) Before being sent to Galveston, Isaac Cline was stationed at Fort Concho in West Texas, a fact which is of interest to me because I was born and grew up in San Angelo, Texas, the town that formed in the shadow of Fort Concho.

2) On Galveston Island at least 6000 people died in the hurricane, possibly as many as 10,000. Records were not carefully kept, and the dead had to be buried or burned rather quickly to prevent disease.

3) In 1891 Isaac Cline wrote that “[t]he coast of Texas is according to the general laws of the motion of the atmosphere exempt from West India hurricanes and the two which have reached it followed an abnormal path which can only be attributed to causes known in meteorology as accidental.” The two hurricanes of which he wrote struck Indianola, Texas in 1875 and again in 1886. After the second hurricane, the town was abandoned.

4) After the Indianola hurricanes, the residents of Galveston did make plans to build a seawall, but it was never built—until after 1900.

5) The storm surge in 1900 covered the island with water, uprooted trees, toppled houses, and carried masses of debris that did as much damage as the water itself.

6) Isaac Cline’s pregnant wife, Cora, died in the hurricane, and Cline’s brother, Joseph, who also worked for the Weather Bureau, became estranged from Isaac apparently as a result of the events of that day.

The most interesting aspect of the story was the failure of the U.S. Weather Service to warn Galveston of the approaching hurricane. Weather forecasting methods were not as sophisticated or accurate as they are now, but other problems included a rivalry between the U.S. Weather Bureau in Cuba and Cuban weather forecasters and a reluctance to frighten the public with possibly false alarms. In fact weather forecasters were not even allowed to use the word “hurricane” in their forecasts without permission from Washington. This failure followed upon the the failure of the weather service to warn the public of the Blizzard of 1888 and both caused people to further lose faith in the ability of the weather service to predict storms and precipitated changes in the organization and leadership of the weather bureau in order to improve its performance.

Nevertheless, we are dealing with some of the same problems today. When is it prudent and/or necessary to tell the people of a large metropolitan area to evacuate in the face of a possible hurricane? How accurately, even now, is it possible to predict the path of such a hurricane? Can we trust the instructions given by government bureaucrats, or should we trust our own judgment? Even as the freeways backed up and became impassable in Houston before Rita, we were being told not to leave yet, but rather to wait until the next day. Was this advice, heeded by hardly anyone, good or bad? Would it really be possible to evacuate Galveston Island and the coastal areas behind the Island and up towards Houston in the face of a major storm? Would people listen to evacuation notices, or was Rita the “false alarm” that would cause people to stay home and take their chances rather than face gridlock and dehydration and gas lines on the freeways again?

Lots of unanswered questions even 100 years after the Galveston Hurricane that practically destroyed that city once. By the way, hurricane season in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico officially begins today.