Making Light :: Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis :: comments http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#comments Language, fraud, folly, truth, history, and knitting. Et cetera. en Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:40:58 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.261 <i>Bits of Gossip</i> by Rebecca Harding Davis Now, I forget just what it was I was looking for when I stumbled across Rebecca Harding Davis's Bits of... Now, I forget just what it was I was looking for when I stumbled across Rebecca Harding Davis's Bits of... http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #1 from pericat comment from pericat on 23.Jul.03 What a wonderful find. Thank you.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 12:06 AM by pericat</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24218 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24218 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 00:06:13 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #2 from Claude Muncey comment from Claude Muncey on 23.Jul.03 I am entranced and grareful. What this reminds me of is the writings of Lewis and Tolkien and Bede Griffiths about the England or Ireland of their childhood and how it had disappeared. I specifically remember one essay by Lewis, titled something like "The Great Divide", that hw wrote or gave as a talk when he was named Professor of Medieval and Reniassance English at Cambridge. He said that the truly great divide was not between the medieval and the reniassance, but between the modern 20th century culture and all that came before it. He felt that, as a person educated before the first World War with a strong grounding in the classices, he had more in common intellectually with any medieval scholar than with anyone with a "modern" education.

Again, thanks!

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 12:18 AM by Claude Muncey</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24219 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24219 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 00:18:02 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #3 from clew comment from clew on 23.Jul.03 While there are arguments for Lewis' opinion, it is also suspiciously common that agèd men tell us that Everything Changed just when they were young; just as Young Turks tell us that everything is about to change right now. (_Wired_ written by CS Lewis...)

More from _...Gossip_:

a0It is a good rule never to see or talk to the man whose words have wrung your heart, or helped it, just as it is wise not to look down too closely at the luminous glow which sometimes shines on your path on a summer night, if you would not see the ugly worm below.

a0a0a0a0a0a0a0a0But the poor unknown scribbler outside of the gates of literature has no reputation to keep up. He need not pose. Nobody mistakes his old hat for a halo. You have no illusions about him; nothing that he can do will disappoint you.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 1:29 AM by clew</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24226 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24226 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 01:29:33 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #4 from Robert L comment from Robert L on 23.Jul.03 Marvelous writing! Will have to check out some more of this lady when i get a chance. Was she any relation to Richard Harding Davis?
What it reminds me of most is a book by one of my favorite writers, Edmund G. Love, called The Situation in Flushing. The Flushing in question is not the one in Queens, but Flushing, Michigan, where the author spent his youth in the early part of the 20th century. He manages to re-create the richness of small-town life in that bygone era with the same skill that he used to portray New York City eccentrics in his best-known book, Subways Are for Sleeping.
I recently read Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, and there's more than one dig at Emerson in it. I have a feeling the New England Transendentalists were every bit as snide about each other, in their own WASPy way, as the Algonquin Round Table, Bloomsbury, or other well-known literary circles.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 1:34 AM by Robert L</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24227 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24227 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 01:34:34 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #5 from Larry Lurex comment from Larry Lurex on 23.Jul.03 The writing is good - but good writing should be like glass. Transparent, so you can see what the writer was talking about. She describes her time quite well, and the quietness there must have been seems remarkable. Finding that great cities used to have only 8,000 people or so in them in the 19th century also comes as a shock. The small town my mother lives in now has more than double that.

It was an interesting find but I am puzzled by the phrase "If she weren92t a woman who92d gone on to write about feminism and labor issues, I92d be astonished that such a charming and readable book had fallen into obscurity." - so is she obscure or not?

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 4:30 AM by Larry Lurex</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24230 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24230 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 04:30:12 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #6 from Jane Yolen comment from Jane Yolen on 23.Jul.03 "War may be an armed angel but she has the personal habits of the slums."

I must find out more about this writer.

Jane

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 6:48 AM by Jane Yolen</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24233 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24233 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 06:48:31 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #7 from Janeyolen comment from Janeyolen on 23.Jul.03 "War may be an armed angel but she has the personal habits of the slums."

I must find out more about this writer.

Jane

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 6:49 AM by Janeyolen</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24234 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24234 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 06:49:16 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #8 from Lois Fundis comment from Lois Fundis on 23.Jul.03 We don't seem to have any of her books, which is strange considering that she's a local author -- Washington, Pa. (where she went to "seminary"), and Wheeling are both only about 30 miles from here. We have a volume about her from the Twayne's U.S. Authors series, which I think I'm going to check out, and a bio of her son Richard Harding Davis, which I might also look at.

Life in the Iron Mills is available in several different editions on Amazon.com. That and Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day seem to be the only ones of her books actually now in print. (Margret Howth is a novel, it seems.) I think I may try to get a copy of Life in the Iron Mills, at least, for our library. (Steelmaking in the Ohio Valley is always a big topic here.) There are some other bios and critical works about her listed too.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 10:48 AM by Lois Fundis</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24236 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24236 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 10:48:12 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #9 from David Moles comment from David Moles on 23.Jul.03 Larry — had you ever heard of her before Teresa discovered her? I hadn’t. And if Teresa hadn’t, then I would suspect she must be very obscure indeed.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 11:29 AM by David Moles</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24238 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24238 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 11:29:37 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #10 from David Moles comment from David Moles on 23.Jul.03 This (on the effect of the Civil War upon the nation as individuals) is one of the most beautiful lines I’ve ever read:
A man cannot drink old Bourbon long and remain in his normal condition. We did not drink Bourbon, but blood.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 11:37 AM by David Moles</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24240 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24240 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 11:37:41 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #11 from Mr Ripley comment from Mr Ripley on 23.Jul.03 Teresa said that the book, i.e. Bits of Gossip, had fallen into obscurity. If she'd said "Rebecca Harding Davis is an obscure author", using the present tense, I'd have disagreed. I think of RHD as one of the authors, along with Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Catherine Maria Sedgwick, and Zora Neale Hurston, who was recovered by second-wave feminism in the Seventies. Tillie Olsen's feminist classic Silences contains "Life in the Iron Mills" as an appendix, IIRC. But it seems like that recovery has only gone so far and, as with those other three authors, it can be hard to find someone who can name more than her One Famous Work.

It's not too surprising that Bits of Gossip in particular fell into obscurity --how many works of reminiscence/memoir from that era retained widespread currency? But it's full of gorgeous, wise, and/or charming material. Wow. Thanks.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 11:13 PM by Mr Ripley</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24298 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24298 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:13:39 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #12 from Teresa Nielsen Hayden comment from Teresa Nielsen Hayden on 23.Jul.03 Mr. Ripley, I don't mean to suggest that feminist classics aren't fun to read, but this book goes down as easy as alligators eating marshmallows. It should have more currency than it does.

]]> <p>Posted July 23, 2003 11:27 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24299 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24299 Wed, 23 Jul 2003 23:27:22 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #13 from Claire comment from Claire on 24.Jul.03 Thank you. Ben is studying American history this year and I have printed out a copy. Once again, you prove yourself as the wonderful scholarly treasure that we all know you are...

]]> <p>Posted July 24, 2003 10:37 PM by Claire</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24372 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24372 Thu, 24 Jul 2003 22:37:45 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #14 from James D. Macdonald comment from James D. Macdonald on 27.Jul.03 It always has seemed to me that each human being, before going out into the silence, should leave behind him, not the story of his own life, but of the time in which he lived, - as he saw it, - its creed, its purpose, its queer habits, and the work which it did or left undone in the world.

And alas! for the nature of the 'Net, some fifteen mintues after you depart this sphere (or you stop paying the bills to your ISP, or the ISP goes bankrupt), all of this writing will vanish, never to reappear. Not as collected letters in a trunk in someone's attic, not as a privately printed volume found in a used-book shop. Gone.

As will be so much else of this our written world.

]]> <p>Posted July 27, 2003 6:08 PM by James D. Macdonald</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24436 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24436 Sun, 27 Jul 2003 18:08:30 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #15 from David Foster comment from David Foster on 31.Jul.03 This is really interesting stuff, Teresa. Thanks!

]]> <p>Posted July 31, 2003 6:30 PM by David Foster</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24560 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24560 Thu, 31 Jul 2003 18:30:47 -0500 Bits of Gossip by Rebecca Harding Davis -- comment #16 from Teresa Nielsen Hayden comment from Teresa Nielsen Hayden on 1.Aug.03 You're welcome, David.

James: All the more so if it's written on someone else's computer.

]]> <p>Posted August 1, 2003 2:40 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden</p> http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24590 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003097.html#24590 Fri, 01 Aug 2003 02:40:58 -0500