August Derleth - Wisconsin's Historical Perspective

August Derleth - Wisconsin's Historical Perspective

A Biographical Perspective

Books by August Derleth

August Derleth (1909-1971) has drawn the most detailed literary picture of Wisconsin. Whereas some of the other Wisconsin writers lived elsewhere for decades, Derleth did so for only half a year, and aside from four years at the University of Wisconsin, he resided in Sauk City. To paraphrase his intellectual hero, Henry Thoreau, he traveled much in Sauk City, probing into its history and natural setting and into its citizens' lives. Choosing to make his living with his pen, supplemented by his own publishing business, Derleth, working quickly, wrote more than 100 books. He wrote one of his novels at the rate of 5,000 words a day while composing a book of poems, keeping up his journal and his correspondence and lecturing at the University of Wisconsin. Inevitably much of this work shows signs of haste, but much of it is good, and there is something noble about a person staying where he is, taking it all in and getting it all down in writing, speaking up for the mute hundreds who lived in Sauk City when he did.

Derleth's life and works.

Derleth traced his family back to a Count d'Erlette, who fled France for Bavaria during the revolution. Derleth mentions this name in his two historical novels about Sauk City. Some of the count's descendants, their name changed to a German form, came to Sauk City in 1852. August Derleth, who was born in 1909, not only decided early to be a writer but also fulfilled his ambition early, publishing his first story at the age of fifteen. Soon afterwards he and Mark Schorer began writing a story a day, sold them and later collected them in Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1930 and later acknowledged that he was helped by all four of his writing teachers there. He was most significantly influenced, however, by a philosophy professor, Max Otto, one of the best known University of Wisconsin professors of that era and a successful author. Derleth heard Otto speak in Sauk City and he later wrote, "in quotation after quotation he echoed many of my innermost convictions - or I adopted his without cavil." After graduation Derleth spent his half-year out of the state, working as an associate editor in Minneapolis. In 1938 he won a Guggenheim Prize. His work includes several categories that are not relevant to this study: horror stories, books about Solar Pons (a replica of Sherlock Holmes} and books for children and juveniles (although some of them, such as Oliver, the Wayward Owl, are set in Wisconsin}. Even after these works are eliminated, an enormous quantity remains. A dozen or so of these books, however, accurately show his conception of Wisconsin and constitute most of his best work.

The historical dimension of Derleth's work.

A statement that Derleth makes in Writing Fiction (1946) suggests an efficient way to analyze his treatment of Wisconsin: "the writer of regional prose must know what has gone into the history of his region, what has influenced his people, what is responsible for their thought patterns; he must know, in short, what specific problems determine what they say and do, and fix the patterns of their lives." Although in this book he argues that a regional writer should subordinate historical narrative to presentation of characters and action, he believes that such a writer must understand the region's history. Because Derleth thought this, it makes sense to study his historical works before his works about contemporary Sauk City. Except for a few brief references to earlier periods, his historical books describe events that occurred during the nineteenth century, especially during the middle of that century, at about the time Wisconsin became a state. These books constitute the historical background for Derleth's books about twentieth-century Sauk City and Prairie du Sac (which he calls Sac Prairie): journals published as books, such as A Countryman's Journal, poetry, such short story collections as Sac Prairie People and his two major works (Walden West and Return to Walden West).

Derleth practiced what he preached about understanding history and became a competent amateur historian. In the preface of some of his historical novels he lists his sources - books, diaries, public records and newspaper files - and acknowledges help from other people. His most impressive research concerns Hercules Dousman, the subject of two of his novels. Some of Dousman's descendants allowed Derleth to examine unpublished material, from which he learned, to the descendants' surprise, that Dousman had been married and had had two children before he married his partner's widow. Derleth discovered this after he wrote the first of these two novels and, because he had described in it the first wife's death, he had to invent a character to be the second child's mother. This necessary distortion of history in his books is rare, however; Derleth, as he admits, for fictional purposes does manipulate time sequences and invent characters, but otherwise he is scrupulous about historical facts. Because of this accuracy and his concentration on a brief historical period, Derleth paints a fairly extensive picture of Wisconsin's formative years. He describes some events and some characters, especially Dousman, in more than one book. Although other books, such as The Hills Stand Watch, are exceptions, in each of the six historical books to be discussed here he organizes his historical material by concentrating on one important character. All these characters except Pierneau in Restless Is the River are actual people and important to Wisconsin history.

Hercules Dousman.

The central character in Bright Journey (1940) and The House on the Mound (1958) is Hercules Dousman (1800-1868), an early Wisconsin millionaire and an important person during several eras of this state's financial history because he was active in the fur trade, wheat farming and railroad construction, as well as in real estate and other enterprises. The first of these books ends in 1843, as Dousman anticipates his marriage in a year to Jane Rolette and the completion of his imposing house, Villa Louis, which still stands in Prairie du Chien. As Derleth recommends to historical novelists in Writing Fiction, he presents in Bright Journey real people as they appeared to others during the time when they lived. He paints unflattering portraits of William Henry Harrison and Henry Dodge (the first governor of the Territory of Wisconsin). Zachary Taylor and his son-in-law, Jefferson Davis, who were stationed at Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien, have minor roles, and their later importance is not mentioned. Augustin Haraszcy appears as Count Brogmar, and Derleth describes Dr. William Beaumont and his important observation of digestion through a wound in the side of a fur trapper. In The House on the Mound some of these characters also appear, as do James Doty, Nelson Dewey (the first governor of the State of Wisconsin) and Ulysses Grant.

Two themes dominate these novels. Derleth deals more incisively with them in the earlier book, less incisively in the later book, which has a more intricate and exciting plot. The first theme is nature, a prominent topic in most of Derleth's books. He demonstrates his careful observation of nature by his discriminating identification of its colors: "the sun was not yet up, but the light had now grown so that it was spread over the entire sky, amethyst above, an effulgent salmon and magenta glowing along the eastern sky." The opening of The House on the Mound indicates Derleth's sensitivity to the land and establishes it as an enduring context for the human struggles on it: "always the land was there - the rising mound between the great river on the west and the long, sluggish water on the east." Derleth's occasional references to the constellations similarly create a long-enduring backdrop for his books' plots. Nature's importance makes more comprehensible Dousman's upwelling of passion in Bright Journey: his affair with Margaret Campbell and his love for his partner's wife, which break through social restraints.

Derleth's other main theme in these two books is compromise, especially between idealism and practicality and between what one wants and what one can obtain. On the second page of Bright Journey a dispute between Hercules and another boy about a toy soldier is the occasion for his father to teach him the value of compromise. Hercules later remembers his father's insistence on this strategy: "his father's voice still echoed in his memory: compromise, compromise, compromise; if you don't, life will beat you down." During the War of 1812 his father shows his willingness to compromise by helping the British take over Fort Mackinac from the American garrison, who had an untenable military position. In contrast, Hercules' uncle John, an idealist, opposes the British. Hercules and his father both compromise some of their moral principles to work for unscrupulous John Jacob Astor. Hercules does hold to some idealism, dreaming "with a certain practical common sense of the slow accumulation of wealth which must certainly give him soon the power to rectify the evil that flourished all around him." He believes that money has this capacity even though his father had told him that “‘men change their conceptions of honesty after acquiring wealth’." Many years later, however, he writes to his father, "I was once naive enough to think that a man of wealth and power might do much for his fellowmen. I have wealth, but I have rejected power; I learned in time that I was wrong, even with the best intentions a man can have."

In The House on the Mound the idealists who contrast most vividly with Dousman are Astor's enemies, the independent traders, and Sark, the son of one of them who works for Dousman in order to identify his father's murderers. Dousman keeps trying to use his money and influence for good, being generous to many people and helping Indians, particularly in their dealings with the United States government. At the end of this novel, too, Dousman evaluates his strategy of compromise. This time he wonders "whether man's hopes inevitably came to this end: warping futility and despair. He had compromised with life more often than life had compromised with him." By narrating Dousman's life in two novels, Derleth thus extensively analyzes the necessity for compromise, but this final comment does not clearly reveal his own attitude, He does make clear, however, as he does in many of his books, that people, even those as apparently successful as Dousman, are usually unhappy.

The Shadow in the Glass.

In the plot of The Shadow in the Glass (1963) Derleth has an effective means to make his point about the preponderance of human misery. In this novel he tells the story of Nelson Dewey, whose unhappiness Derleth cleverly emphasizes by beginning with a prologue describing Dewey in 1887, two years before his death, preparing to travel from Cassville to Madison to see President Cleveland and thinking about his wife and children, who have left him. This unhappy context casts a pall over the rest of the novel, including the accounts of Dewey's financial and political triumphs. It also prepares for Dewey's humiliation in the last scene, when the narrative reaches the trip to Madison. Everyone at the reception forgets him, although he was the state's first governor and belongs to the President's political party. The primary agent of Dewey's despair is his wife Kate, who, along with his own generosity and overextension, ruins him financially. She also deserts him. Derleth makes evident the signs of future marital disaster: the youthful Kate's sauciness the first time he sees her, her postponement of the marriage for a year - until she can see whether or not he will be re-elected governor - warnings from several people, including her father, about her willfulness and her extravagance. After she realizes that he will never go to Washington - he lost a senate seat once by one vote in the Legislature - she becomes even worse. Dewey's fate is another of the tragedies in the relations between men and women that Derleth presents: marriages delayed, prevented, cut short or unhappy. The early death of a son, a fire at his home and the knowledge that he lost a much better woman to his law partner exacerbate Dewey's despair.

Although today Dewey's terms as governor seem unexceptional, Derleth credits him with impressive service in order to make his tribulations appear unmerited. Derleth frequently mentions Dewey's honesty. Henry Dodge, for example, calls Dewey "'a man of absolutely uncompromising honesty'." Derleth also mentions Dewey's efficient organization of state government. Not open to question is Dewey's willingness for public service. After his terms as governor he took a number of other political positions, some of them very minor. Whatever the value of Dewey's career, Derleth correctly identifies the reason why it faded after his early success. Dewey was a Democrat when that party's concessions to slavery weakened it in the north. Although he opposed slavery, Dewey would not change parties; in Dousman's terms, he would not compromise. The Shadow in the Glass fits into the web Derleth weaves with nineteenth-century Wisconsin history, because some of its characters appear in other books, such as Dousman, whom Dewey meets several times, once during the small pox epidemic that is a major crisis in Bright Journey. Another visit is prevented by Dousman's death a few hours before Dewey arrives. Alexander Mitchell, as he is in a later novel, is honest. In contrast, James Doty is a scoundrel, as he is elsewhere in Derleth’s work. In short, by the time he wrote this book Derleth had firm opinions about this era in Wisconsin’s history and the people who shaped it.

The Wind Leans West.

Alexander Mitchell is the focal point of The Wind Leans West (1969). Mitchell arrived in Wisconsin from Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1836 to be George Smith's agent at the Wisconsin Marine and Fire Insurance Company, which, although it did sell insurance, was designed primarily to circumvent Wisconsin's laws against banking. It issued bank notes that looked like government currency and made loans, mainly for land purchases but also to the Territory of Wisconsin. Mitchell persists with his business, despite the efforts of politicians and rival bankers to stop him, and he exhibits physical courage and endurance as well as financial acumen. Meanwhile he invests in land and eventually accumulates enough capital to buyout Smith, the event that ends this novel. He also triumphs when the voters reject the first state constitution, which contained an anti-banking article. Mitchell's success and his happy marriage contrast with the troubles of Dewey and even of Dousman and suggest that Derleth late in his career may have become more sanguine about the chances for people to be happy.

This novel's historical background is accurate. Derleth presents a vivid picture of early Milwaukee: its physical condition and its settlers, such as impressive Solomon Juneau and Byron Kilbourn, an erratic booster. He is also correct that Mitchell conducted banking in everything but name; in 1852 his company had a million and a half dollars in its notes in circulation. The devastation of Wisconsin's banks by the Panic of 1837 and unscrupulous practices by some banks caused opposition to banking. On the other hand, the complete prohibition of banking made little sense, as Mitchell demonstrated by pointing out that his company was the only source of credit for the territorial government. Moreover, the three members of the Legislature who led the fight against Mitchell - Edward Ryan, Moses Strong and Marshall Strong - appear from this perspective to have been wrong, and Moses Strong’s financial and political careers were marked by questionable actions. Derleth also is correct that Mitchell had considerable support in Milwaukee from business leaders such as Juneau and from the Milwaukee Sentinel, for example, in an editorial that it published on February 7, 1845. Derleth does not extend his account of Mitchell to include his other effects on Wisconsin's history, such as his political influence, usually for the Democratic Party, his stabilization of Wisconsin's banking during the Civil War and his control of this state's railroads. As to the latter, by 1869 he was the head of both the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad and the Milwaukee Road, which together owned all but 80 of the 2,300 miles of track in Wisconsin.

Wind Over Wisconsin.

The first of Derleth's novels about Sac Prairie's history is Wind Over Wisconsin (1938). Although its main character, Chalfonte Pierneau, is imaginary, many real, historically important persons appear in it. Derleth alludes to Marquette and Joliet's trip down the Wisconsin River, past the present site of Sauk City, in 1673; and Zachary Taylor, Jefferson Davis, Jonathan Carver (an early explorer), Captain Marryat, Augustin Haraszcy (called Count Brogmar) and Father Mazzuchelli (who built a series of churches in the state) appear in cameo roles. Derleth also sketches in social and economic changes that occurred during the 1830's: the gradual settlement and the conversion from fur trapping to wheat farming (Pierneau first plants this crop during 1833). As usual, Derleth is attuned to the natural setting of historical action; in fact, because he is writing about his native region he is particularly sensitive to nature. For example, as he is about to narrate the Battle of Wisconsin Heights he pauses to describe the animals' activities: "over the river, the swifts and martins circled and soared, and the flies began to bite, as if to emphasize again the imminence of rain by a score of small, prophetic signatures." Then he describes the terrain, which will endure regardless of the battle's outcome

Derleth uses Black Hawk, Hercules Dousman and the Black Hawk War (1832) to develop his familiar themes. As he mentions in Writing Fiction, this novel's main theme is the conflict between idealism and materialism, although practicality is probably a more accurate term than materialism for the quality he portrays. Pierneau is an idealist who has "a deep-grained belief in co-operation among men to effect change without violence and grief, without treachery and death." He lives by this creed in his dealings with his employees, his neighbors and the Indians. However, events beyond his control challenge his idealism. For example, his wife dies of the after effects of a slight wound inflicted by the Sioux, so Pierneau is another of Derleth’s characters who do not have a long, happy marriage. The most serious strain on his idealism and hopes is the Black Hawk War, a despicable series of battles interspersed by the aged chief’s attempts to surrender, all but the last of which led only to further carnage for his followers.

Black Hawk and Dousman are Pierneau's mentors in the art of compromise and the dangers of idealism. Black Hawk had been idealistic enough to lead his people in a just but hopeless war, but after his surrender he accepts, even enjoys, the trip that the Federal Government forces him to take, on which they exhibit him as an object lesson. Then he moves to Minnesota and passively accepts his lot, to Pierneau's dismay. Dousman always acts practically, as he does in the two novels that Derleth later wrote about him. He tells Pierneau that “‘the only happy idealist is the one who has learned to compromise with the world around him'." During this conversation he predicts the Black Hawk War and its outcome. After the war he tells Pierneau, “‘as to Black Hawk - don't think too harshly of him; resignation to defeat is better than futile struggling. Only a fool refuses to recognize futility, only a fool sacrifices himself to a cause manifestly lost'." Near this novel's conclusion Pierneau does renounce his long-lasting and self-righteous anger at his wife's sister, so Dousman - and events - temper his tenacity and idealism.

Restless Is the River.

Restless Is the River (1939) begins in 1839, one year after the last events narrated in Wind Over Wisconsin, and it ends in 1850. During this period Sac Prairie changes from essentially Pierneau’s domain into a village. This transformation attracts land speculators, and Derleth describes two dishonest ones and their eviction from the town. During this era Wisconsin grew disruptively. For example, Derleth shows uncivilized behavior at the territorial capitol by presenting the murder of one legislator (Arndt) by another (Vineyard). This novel, however, is more insular than Wind Over Wisconsin; in it Derleth is less concerned with events that were important to the state, such as the Black Hawk War, and more interested in purely local events.

Derleth announces that the principal characters of Restless Is the River are purely fictional, and this is true of Pierneau, but not of others. Ralsa Hollascz is the Franz Kahlansz of Schorer's A House Too Old and the Charles Halasz of the English translation of Haraszcy's memoirs. Frederick Lueders, a German who travels through much of the United States collecting botanical specimens and later settles in Sac Prairie is also a historical character. In fact, as he mentions in Return to Walden West, Derleth bought from Lueders' daughters the land on which Lueders settled and had a house built on it. This land borders on Lueders Road on the west side of Sauk City, a little south of Highway 12. It is appropriate that a botanist and an avid natural historian lived on the same land.

Count Brogmar, the main character in Restless Is the River, is a fictional representation of Augustin Haraszcy, although, like the source of A House Too Old, the source of this novel is not certain. Derleth's book appeared before the English translation of Haraszcy's memoirs, although one of his many friends in the State Historical Society, which publishes the journal where the translation appeared, may have shown him a copy before it was published. Brogmar, like many of Derleth's characters, is restless and ambitious. He falls victim to his own desire for rapid financial expansion, to bad judgment - such as taking a steamboat on the river as the ice freezes - and to bad fortune, such as the attack of chinch bugs on his wheat. Also, like many of Derleth's other characters, he has an unhappy marriage. His wife, who because of her aristocratic childhood and youth cannot survive on a frontier, gradually goes insane and finally drowns herself. In 1848 he leaves for California, where he has much better fortune; he writes Pierneau that he has found gold. His legacy remains in Sac Prairie, as Pierneau realizes at this novel's conclusion: “he knew that the village itself was a monument to Augustin's brief time on the land, he knew that none who had ever known him would forget the man he was."

In this book, too, Hercules Dousman preaches compromise. About the iniquitous James Doty he says “‘I can't effect his passage. If I can do anything to speed it up, I’ll do it. Meanwhile, bear him in fortitude. After all, my friend, the wise man learns quickly enough to endure many things not to his liking'." The narrator concurs and thinks that compromise is necessary in marriages; he calls the Brogmars' dream of finding the perfect mate "a dream inexorably doomed to disappointment unless wisdom and understanding of life have intervened to effect the necessary compromise between ideal and reality." But some of the characters persist in their idealism. When Wisconsin's semi-wilderness shatters the idealistic conceptions of Brogmar's wife she can find no refuge but insanity.

The constants that Derleth sees in nineteenth-century Wisconsin history.

Derleth thus finds recurrent traits and experiences in the characters and lives of the Wisconsin pioneers about whom he writes. Many of them were idealists who believed that they could build a just, attractive society and achieve personal success and happiness. Dousman is an exception, but as a young, man he, too, had high hopes, and he did occasionally act idealistically, as in his generosity and his just treatment of Indians. This idealism caused restlessness, a continual striving for new accomplishments, a quality most pronounced in Brogmar and one that made possible the building of a state. That last achievement is impressive because of the harshness of the environment and the scarcity of technical means to alleviate that harshness. The difficulty of pioneering and personal tragedies produced unhappiness. Derleth s historical novels contain so many accounts of unhappiness, such as in marriage, that a melancholy tone pervades them. Although many of his major characters become rich, they are not greedy, as are some minor characters. Derleth, following his own advice to regional writers that they immerse themselves in the history of their region, sees these same phenomena in contemporary Sauk City.

Derleth's journals and Sac Prairie stories.

For many years Derleth kept a journal, which provided material for other projects. Parts of it, such as Countryman's Journal (1963), were later published. This book seems to record the events of two years but it actually telescopes several years into those two, as one can deduce from the fact that a young Sac Prairie man is a high school student during the first year and a college student during the second. Derleth does not specify the timespan that the journal covers, but several references indicate that he is writing about the World War II years. Derleth carefully observes nature and his neighbors, but he does not probe deeply into the town's life; this is basically an entertaining, rather than a philosophical, book. Much of the entertainment results from his comic pictures of townspeople's eccentricities, such as their colorful speech, and their dry wit. Conversely, the transience of human existence, evident in the many deaths, contrasts with nature's survival, which he emphasizes by describing nature's recurring seasonal changes. Derleth also reveals something about himself. He is both gregarious, which made it possible for him to learn much about others, and mildly abrasive, as shown by his running battle with one of the local priests.

Sac Prairie People (1948) shows Derleth's belief that the problems he found in nineteenth-century Sauk City lasted into this century. For instance, like most of the main characters in his historical novels, many of the characters in these stories have trouble finding and keeping a suitable spouse. "McCrary's Wife" is a wistful tale about a man who by coincidence rides on a train with a friend's attractive wife. On many trips afterwards he invents elaborate lies about himself and her to tell the conductor, who thinks that they are married. In "The Night Light at Vordens" a widow “protects” her daughter from men for a long time, but finally the daughter elopes with the school principal. The widow leaves the porch light on, having convinced herself that her daughter will soon return. Several of these stories are about Steve, the narrator, and his girlfriend Margery, which, according to Walden West, was also the name of one of Derleth's girlfriends. In the last story, "I Was Walking Helen Home," Steve's memory of an earlier walk with Margery is sad, because her parents had kept them apart. In short, to develop this theme of frustrated love Derleth seems to be drawing on both his knowledge of history and on autobiographical material. In fact, this volume is less interesting in itself than as a revelation of Derleth and his conception of his home town.

Derleth's poetry.

The poems that Derleth wished to preserve appear in his Collected Poems (1967), another book about contemporary Sac Prairie, as the titles of its sections indicate: Of Nature, Of Love, Of This World, Sac Prairie People and Homage to Thoreau. The final section shows the way that Derleth looks at the material in the other sections: as did Thoreau, an observer of nature and of others' quiet desperation. "Rendezvous in a Landscape" mentions Thoreau's sensitivity to nature, calling him an

inspector

(self appointed) of snow-storms, rains,

of lightning and the thunder;

accountant of man's humble wonder

under heaven

Derleth does not acknowledge so clearly his poetic debt to Robert Frost, another keen observer of nature and recorder of human unhappiness, but the first lines of two successive poems show his familiarity with Frost's verse by alluding to two of Frost's best-known lines: "something there is that has belled the spring" (Frost: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall") and "Whose elm this is, I think I know" (Frost: "Whose woods these are I think I know"). Another important writer in this collection is Zona Gale, not because of her influence but because of Derleth's moving "Elegy: On a Flake of Snow." In it he expresses his high regard for her character and talent, as he does in his biography of her, Still Small Voice. The "Apologia" that appears at the beginning of his Collected Poems introduces his treatment of nature:

Early, early in my young and tender years

led astray by wind and au, by lonesome water

talking to the core inside, charmed away

by sunlight dappling pond and forest floor –

This book is full of descriptions of natural scenes, many of them poetically effective, such as:

Who gathers sap here will not mind, I know,

my standing just to listen, when the owl by being still

permits, to dripping sap like bells beyond the hill

where spring comes up the edge of April snow.

The echoes of Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" add to that passage's effectiveness, Derleth suggests that the natural world is very different from and far superior to the human world

King of a field of daisies nodding in the wind of June,

he does not this moment ask for more;

he has gone through the door

of here and now and lives in an afternoon

apart from time.

In contrast, the Sac Prairie people endure suffering. A typical one, Effie Kahlmann, "left behind in needlework most exquisitely made, her tears, her loneliness, the hidden places of her heart.

Walden West.

Derleth's work is like a pyramid, with his historical novels as the base, his other Sac Prairie books as the next level and Walden West (1961) and Return to Walden West (1970) as the apex. Those last two books are his best and, as the culmination of the largest body of Wisconsin literature, the closest thing we have to essential literary illuminations of life in Wisconsin. In these books Derleth reached new heights not only because he had a large volume of previous work to sum up but also because he found a form that allowed more extensive integration of two of his major themes. Each book begins with the announcement that it is "an exposition on three related themes: 1. On the persistence of memory. II. On the sounds and odors of the country. III. Of Thoreau: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." The first theme merely indicates the source his material; the other two are the vital ones, as they are in many of his books. In both books Derleth alternates descriptions of nature and vignettes about Sac Prairie people. Often he juxtaposes a vignette and a description of a natural object in order to show their similarity. John Kleinlein lives in two houseboats on the river and invents elaborate fictions about himself and "fantastic explanations of the simplest events." After his section on him, Derleth writes about the song sparrow, which also lives in the river bottoms and has a strange, insistent song. In many other ways Derleth compares the human and natural realms, such as pointing out the transience of the former, the constancy of the latter, the desperation of the former, the peace of the latter.

In Walden West Derleth credits the newspaper clippings that Annie Maegerlein gave him when he was seven or eight, and Sister Isabelle's nature hikes with her grade school class, for stimulating his interest in nature. He states that he learned early that "of all aspects of life, nature alone offered the only constant. ' Recognizing this constancy, he begins to record "spring voices, arrivals, autumn and late summer departures…. It spaced the year, measuring time, as it were, on a different clock." He noticed that other people In the town, such as Kleinlein, Sam Schroeder and Joe Lippert, were obsessed with the Wisconsin River and almost always stayed near it. They, however, were not capable, as was Derleth, of articulating their response to nature in prose such as this:

every aspect of the hills has its significance - the pasque flowers and hepaticas, the flowering birch and wild honeysuckle, the birdfoot violets and the delicate, aromatic white violets deep in a pocket of the hills, the soaring hawk and the pensive song sparrow, the mulberry tree and the old cottonwoods, the wing dam down along the river and the slopes where once, as boys, we shouted and cried at play - all signify an act, a state of mind, an experience, a mood which, taken together, make up the texture of a life.

The main reasons for the quiet desperation in Walden West are the two that Derleth usually cites. First, some of the people cannot achieve happy marriages, often because parents keep them apart. Ella Bickford's parents prevent her from marrying, so she goes insane. The failure of Rich Monn's only romance makes him drink too much. Second, some are afflicted with a problem like Beau Wardler's: "he had come to one disillusionment after another but, unlike many other men and women around him, he lacked other ideals with which to replace those lost, and the compromises he was forced to make were demeaning." This book is full of references to insanity, alcoholism and suicide. Derleth reports much unhappiness partly because he sees beneath the surfaces of people. Beneath Billy Ynand's oppressive affability, for instance, Derleth sees his loneliness.

His perceptiveness allowed Derleth to escape unhappiness while he was describing it. That is, amidst all these tales of woe is the story of the growth of a writer, with the help of Sister Isabelle's encouragement, the physical attractiveness of an English teacher {Miss Schroeder) which stimulated Derleth to please her academically, and the advice of H.P. Lovecraft that he should use the roots he had established in his home town rather than leave.

Return to Walden West.

Derleth's first comment on nature in Return to Walden West shows the attitude that he illustrates later: "now and then, in the course of my walks in the hills or marshes, there were brief periods when awareness of unity with all nature burgeoned - a sense of utter harmony with all things: leaf, stone, soil, blade, water, air." At the very end of this book he re-states this attitude and presents his attitude toward the material he develops in these two Walden books:

I walk among them, it often seems, increasingly an alien, informed by compassion and understanding, but less content among my fellow men than in the marshes or the hills, on the river or along a country road at night, where I am closer to coming full circle, to awareness of that ultimate darkness that is the merging of the self with time and the inevitable dust.

The human world in this book is at least as desperate as the one described in Walden West. Gustav Naffz, who spends his lonely life needlessly caring for his financially comfortable sisters, and Norman Kralz, whose mother tries to poison him, are among the most poignant characters. On the other hand, Derleth sees more nobility than he does in his earlier book. By looking beneath the surface that does not impress others, he sees a good deal to admire in Lawrence Goodyear, and the last character sketch describes a paragon, Jim Hill, who practices law in Baraboo.

Evaluation of Derleth.

A passage about nature in Walden West, because it symbolically and probably inadvertently shows Derleth's relation to the town whose life he carefully investigated and artistically rendered, could serve as a summing up of his life work:

What is it about hawks that strikes the note of kinship with which I am always moved at sight of them - a feeling amounting almost to the conviction of sharing the hawk's solitude as well as its ecstasy in night, which enables me to float aloft while I am prone upon a hilltop, watching that magnificent bird ride the air currents invisible to any human eye, high up, remote in heaven? Surely the hawk is master of all it sees -as much king of this domain as its majesty implies!

Source: 1977 Wisconsin Blue Book