James Branch Cabell

The Line of Love James Branch Cabell

Publisher Marketing: "He loved chivalrye, Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye. And of his port as meek as is a mayde, He never yet no vileinye ne sayde In al his lyf, unto no maner wight. He was a verray parfit gentil knyght." Introduction The Cabell case belongs to comedy in the grand manner. For fifteen years or more the man wrote and wrote-good stuff, sound stuff, extremely original stuff, often superbly fine stuff-and yet no one in the whole of this vast and incomparable Republic arose to his merit-no one, that is, save a few encapsulated enthusiasts, chiefly somewhat dubious. It would be difficult to imagine a first-rate artist cloaked in greater obscurity, even in the remotest lands of Ghengis Khan. The newspapers, reviewing him, dismissed him with a sort of inspired ill-nature; the critics of a more austere kidney-the Paul Elmer Mores, Brander Matthewses, Hamilton Wright Mabies, and other such brummagem dons-were utterly unaware of him. Then, of a sudden, the imbeciles who operate the Comstock Society raided and suppressed his "Jurgen," and at once he was a made man. Old book-shops began to be ransacked for his romances and extravaganzas-many of them stored, I daresay, as "picture-books," and under the name of the artist who illustrated them, Howard Pyle.