Pelham in Fiction: The Long Roll
Mary Johnston's controversial novel, The Long Roll, was published some fifty years after Cooke's, in 1911. Writing styles had changed. The desire was not to glorify historical personages but to make them real f lesh-and-blood characters, and if their image suffered, well, that was life. No out-and-out falsehoods, as you may find in today's novels, but no white-washing either. This was not much appreciated by readers in the South, who still venerated its Confederate heroes. The author's treatment of Stonewall Jackson was not considered complimentary and she was criticized for it. In a nutshell, Richard Cleave, a young infantry officer, is cleverly set up by a jealous staff officer -- a rival in love -- to appear as if he acted in direct violation of Jackson's orders, thus culminating in a court martial and Cleave's dismissal from the army. He cannot bear not serving his country, however, and in disguise enlists in Pelham's battery.
Aha! you may think, what a great opportunity to portray Pelham. Unfortunately, not so. The book was written from the omnipotent point of view; we get snippets of scenes from everyone's viewpoint and interwoven among the central characters' tales are several secondary plots that get in the way whenever the reader begins to identify with one person. The author merely dallies with beings, both historical and fictional, and lets them slide unattended from her fingers.
Yet the few scenes that involve Pelham place him firmly on the ground if not fully fleshed. On page 420 he is introduced. It is a social event in Richmond in 1862; here Pelham meets the painter, Washington, who wishes to paint the burial of Latané.
At Second Manassas, Pelham is found on the field of battle. He appears as calm and capable, but his speech is more terse than I would expect of the real man. In this incident, Richard Cleave, alias Philip Deaderick, enlists in the Horse Artillery. He is acceptable to Pelham, who says:
I haven't any awkward squad into which to put you. You'll have to learn, and learn quickly by watching the others. Take him and enroll him, Haralson, and turn him over to Dreux and the Howitzer. Now, Deaderick, the Horse Artillery is Heaven to a good man who does his duty, and it's Hell to the other kind. I advise you to try for Heaven. That's all. Good night. |
The horse artillery is next shown in action at Chantilly (page 560) and the
author's description is worth note:
He saw to the right, on a bare rise of ground, Pelham's guns... A great lightning flash lit them, ranged above him. All their wet metal gleamed; about them moved the gunners; a man with a lifted sponge staff looked an unearthly figure against the fantastic castles and battlements, the peaks and abysses of the boiling clouds. The light vanished; Stafford came level with the guns in the dusk. |
The battery continues its fight, but the concentration is upon the staff officer
and not Pelham and the horse artillery. It is seen only from a distance, until
we get to Sharpsburg. Here is a valid picture of the battery in action:
The Horse Artillery occupied a low ridge like a headland jutting into a grassy field. Below, above, behind, the smoke rolled; in front the flame leaped from their guns, the shells sped...John Pelham stood directing. Six guns were in fierce and continuous action. The men serving them were picked artillery men. To and fro they moved, down they stooped, up they stood, stepped backward from the gun at fire, moved forward at recoil, fell again to the loading with the precision of the drill ground. They were half naked, they were black with powder, glistening with sweat, some were bleeding. In the light from the guns all came boldly into relief; in the intermediate deep murk they sank from sight, became of the clouds, cloudy, mere shapes in the semi-darkness. |
Stonewall Jackson arrives on the scene; Pelham reports. Jackson lingers, almost is hit by a shell, and Pelham asks him, in strong terms, to leave the field. But that is the last of it. Pelham at Fredericksburg is almost verbatim from the history books. He passes from the novel with one sentence mentioning Kelly's Ford. However briefly Pelham appears, he appears as a real man, not the demi-god of Cooke, and in Johnston's novel you can smell the smoke of battle. Unfortunately, there is no real characterization of Pelham, for none is needed in this type of story.
This article first appeared in Volume 4, No. 6 of The Cannoneer.
Source:
Mary Johnston, The Long Roll, London, Constable & Co., Ltd., 1911,
pp. 420, 548-50, 560, 600-01.
