It seems somehow more nearly an irreparable loss to us than to "H. H."
that she did not live to taste her very substantial fame in Southern
California. We should have had such delight in her unaffected pleasure in
it, and it would have been one of those satisfactions somewhat adequate
to our sense of fitness that are so seldom experienced. It was my good
fortune to see Mrs. Jackson frequently in the days in New York when she
was writing "Ramona," which was begun and perhaps finished in the
Berkeley House. The theme had complete possession of her, and chapter
after chapter flowed from her pen as easily as one would write a letter
to a friend; and she had an ever fresh and vigorous delight in it. I have
often thought that no one enjoyed the sensation of living more than Mrs.
Jackson, or was more alive to all the influences of nature and the
contact of mind with mind, more responsive to all that was exquisite and
noble either in nature or in society, or more sensitive to the
disagreeable. This is merely saying that she was a poet; but when she
became interested in the Indians, and especially in the harsh fate of the
Mission Indians in California, all her nature was fused for the time in a
lofty enthusiasm of pity and indignation, and all her powers seemed to be
consecrated to one purpose. Enthusiasm and sympathy will not make a
novel, but all the same they are necessary to the production of a work
that has in it real vital quality, and in this case all previous
experience and artistic training became the unconscious servants of Mrs.
Jackson's heart. I know she had very little conceit about her
performance, but she had a simple consciousness that she was doing her
best work, and that if the world should care much for anything she had
done, after she was gone, it would be for "Ramona." She had put herself
into it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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