FREMONT OWED HIS SUCCESS TO JESSIE
Hesseltine, William B.
Fremont Owed His Success To Jessie immortal, wife. the Biographical Novel of Jes-sie Benton Fremont, by Irving Stone. Doubleday, Dor-an. $3. Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine AS literary forms,...
...She wrote the reports which made her husband famous, bore his children, made him socially acceptable to Washington, New York, and Paris, managed his Presidential campaign, was his unofficial chief of staff in Missouri, and supported him when poverty overtook them...
...SO measured, most biographical novels fall short of the mark...
...The novelist is free to concoct situations to which his characters may react...
...He must study the documents, analyze their meaning, and present a story which conforms rigidly to verifiable fact...
...He gives, of course, a wife's-eye view of Fremont, and he sees Tom Benton as only a devoted daughter could have seen him, but his portrayal of Jessie, the immortal wife, is full-bodied, well-rounded, and entirely credible...
...After his wrath cooled, Sen...
...Apparently—since the market for sueh hybrids is good—the average would-be biographer-novelist props a biography of his subject before him on his writing desk, sharpens his pencils, and proceeds to "fictionalize" the material...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine AS literary forms, the novel and the biography are two different things...
...The writer of a-" biographical novel must portray an actual person acting in historical situations...
...Around the thesis that Jessie wanted to make their marriage a success, and that she was a devoted wife, the author wraps an interesting and persuasive study of character...
...Or, in other words, why would a woman of the stature of Tom Benton's daughter waste her talents on John Fremont...
...After the war, he returned to railroad promoting, lost his fortune, and, after some years of poverty, became territorial governor of Arizona...
...Courtmartialed and dismissed from the service—largely because the Government couldn't admit instigating the California rebellion—Fremont returned to California to develop the gold fields of the Mariposa...
...In 1861, he was major general in command of Missouri until he issued a premature emancipation proclamation which Lincoln rescinded...
...In 1856, the new Republican Party ran him for President...
...He must show his subject's reaction to historical events and to historical forces...
...Author Stone's answer seems perfectly plausible—she was in love with the man...
...He served three weeks as California's first Senator, became a millionaire from his gold mines, and promoted a railroad to the coast...
...At the age of 17, the headstrong Jessie, as strong minded and as shrewd in other respects as her indomitable father, secretly married Lt...
...The career of the Fremonts was a succession of successes and failures...
...In 1864, the radical Republicans ran him for the Presidency against Lincoln...
...He may move his characters about at will, and he may show forces operating upon his characters to bring about those developments he wishes to depict...
...He may not invent forces, concoct situations and characters, or allow his imagination to play with probabilities...
...Clearly, a combination of these two literary forms presents almost insuperable problems...
...The author has solved the problem of blending the best features of biography and the novel, and the result is wholly satisfactory...
...A novelist may be measured by his skill in presenting a well-rounded, credible character or by his ability to unravel the tangled skeins of a plot...
...A biographer-novelist must be measured by both standards...
...His wife, on the other hand, was a woman of ability, charm, and courage...
...Benton smoothed the way for the insignificant Fremont's rise to national prominence...
...John Fremont of the topographical corps...
...A biographer must be measured by the extent of his research, his knowledge of history, and his ability to handle technical problems of historical criticism...
...His characters must be real people whose thoughts, words, and deeds conform to the known facts...
...The Senator had the lieutenant assigned to command successive exploring expeditions, which, almost without exception, were failures...
...On the eve of the Mexican War, Fremont was in California with a detachment of troops...
...But Jessie wrote her husband's reports and won for Fremont the inaccurate title, "Pathfinder of the West...
...The biographer, on the other hand, must follow a life through its real course...
...An exception to the rule is Irving Stone's story of Jessie Fremont, daughter of Missouri's Sen...
...Fremont promptly became military governor of California, and as promptly quarreled with his superior officers of the Army...
...Ostensibly, they were on a scientific expedition, but - they were convenient when American agents stirred up a rebellion...
...And he does it without resorting to psychoanalytic hokum and without a perversion of history...
...The problem of Jessie—which either a historian or a novelist must face—was best summarized by one bitter wag who remarked that "if you hit Jessie Benton in the head, you'll knock Fremont's brains out...
...JOHN CHARLES FREMONT was an inept man, lacking both the character and the mentality to play his prominent role...
...He is limited to the materials which his research may unearth...
...The biography is concerned with an analytical narrative of the life of an actual person, while the novel is a form of fiction, dealing, at its higher levels, with problems in the development of human character...
...The biographer-novelist must undertake to present character development in a real situation...
...Tom Benton, ardent Jacksonian expansionist, and wife of John C. Fremont, pathseeker of the far West and the Republicans' first Presidential candidate...
...He creates new characters as he needs them, invents situations, and perverts the facts of history to fit his fancy...
...The result, usually, is incredible nonsense...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 51
