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 1879 - 1958 (79 years)
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| Name |
James Branch Cabell |
| Birth |
14 Apr 1879 |
Richmond, Virginia, USA  |
| Gender |
Male |
| Death |
5 May 1958 |
| Burial |
Hollywood Cem., Richmond, VA |
| Person ID |
I66184 |
Bob Juch's Tree |
| Last Modified |
31 Dec 2022 |
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| Notes |
- James Branch Cabell
1879-1958
Richmond author James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) is best known for his controversial Jurgen (1919), one of several ironic fantasies he wrote that took place in Cabell's mythical medieval world of Poictesme (Pwa-tem). Jurgen, laced with erotic overtones, was considered pornographic by some and a trial over its content brought the reclusive writer national fame. Throughout the 1920s, Cabell was highly regarded by his literary peers -- H.L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, and others praised his works. His medieval romanticism and fantasy were in fact thinly disguised commentary on the manners of those times.
Cabell was born in Richmond, Virginia on April 14, 1879 at 101 E. Franklin St., the present site of the Richmond Public Library. His father was Robert Gamble Cabell, II (1847-1922), a physician; his mother Anne Harris (1859-1915), daughter of Col. and Mrs James R. Branch. Cabell's great grandfather was William H. Cabell, governor of Virginia from 1805-1808. Cabell had two brothers, Robert Gamble Cabell, III (1881-1968) and John Lottier Cabell (1883-1946). His parents separated and were later divorced in 1907.
After attending William and Mary College (1893-1898), where he taught courses in French and Greek while an undergraduate, Cabell worked briefly at the Richmond Times as a copy-holder. Beginning in 1899 he lived for two years in New York City, working for the New York Herald as a social reporter, serving for a time in the paper's Harlem office. In 1901 he returned to Richmond and worked several months on the staff of the Richmond News. During the next ten years he performed genealogical research and wrote many short stories and articles, contributing to national magazines such as Harper's Monthly Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post.
In 1911, he was employed as a bookkeeper in the office of his uncle's (James R. Branch) coal mine in West Virginia. He returned to Richmond in 1913 and married Rebecca Priscilla Bradley Shepherd (1874-1949), a widow with five children by her previous marriage. They had one son, Ballard Hartwell Cabell (1915-1980).
Although he had written for newspapers, Cabell's first work to be published in a journal was a college paper entitled The Comedies of William Congreve which appeared in the April 1901 edition of International. His first book, The Eagle's Shadow, was published in the autumn of 1904 after it appeared serially in the Saturday Evening Post during that summer. Whether it was his highly mannered prose or the fact that he was writing ironic romances, his work was slow to draw critical attention. By 1918 he had published 10 major works and began to attract critical admirers. In an article published that year in the New York Evening Mail, H.L. Mencken described Cabell as "the only first-rate literary craftsman that the whole South can show." Cabell's stature and fame as an author grew immensely with the 1919 publication of Jurgen.
On January 14, 1920, the New York State Society for the Prevention of Vice charged Cabell's publishing editor, Guy Holt, with violation of the anti-obscenity provisions of the New York State Penal Code by publishing Jurgen. The controversy over the charges and the attempt at censorship brought the shy Cabell much notoriety. Writers defended the artistry of Jurgen and Cabell's right to publish it. College students and others read it because it had been banned.
The obscenity trial over Jurgen began October 16, 1922, and ended three days later with an acquittal of all charges. Judge Charles C. Nott, the presiding judge, wrote in his decision that "...the most that can be said against the book is that certain passages therein may be considered suggestive in a veiled and subtle way of immorality, but such suggestions are delicately conveyed" and that because of Cabell's writing style "...it is doubtful if the book could be read or understood at all by more than a very limited number of readers."
Throughout the 1920s, he continued to publish in the style of Jurgen, a combination of satire, symbolism and fantasy, set in a mythical medieval French provence, called Poictesme (Pwa-tem). The name was a compound of two provinces located in the south of France, Poitiers and Angouleme. In these books, Cabell blended an assortment of myths and legends laced with puns, anagrams, and allegories. These works eventually became part of an eighteen-volume collection entitled The Biography of the Life of Manuel. The last volume was published in 1930.
Cabell had become well regarded by prominent writers of the period and maintained an extensive correspondence with a wide circle of literary artists and friends, including Mencken, Joseph Hergesheimer, Burton Rascoe, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Carl van Vechten, and fellow Richmonder and close friend Ellen Glasgow. He had known Glasgow since at least his days at William and Mary College (as children they had lived only blocks away from each other in Richmond). He also served as editor of the Virginia War History Commission (1919-1926) and later joined Dreiser, Eugene O'Neil and others on the editorial board of the American Spectator (1932-1935). In 1937, Cabell was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
While the controversy over Jurgen insured Cabell an audience throughout most of the 1920s, interest in his books dropped sharply in the New Deal era of the 1930s and continued to decline. His work was considered outdated, his writing too stylized.
In 1932, in an attempt to break away from his past, he began to publish work under the name Branch Cabell. During the next three decades he wrote and published nearly twenty more books. They were grouped in a series of trilogies. He returned as James Branch Cabell in 1947 with the publication of Let Me Lie. It was the first installment of his fifth and last trilogy, consisting largely of semi-autobiographical essays, filled with remembrances of Virginia. Cabell continued to live and work in Richmond, residing at 3201 Monument Avenue. He and his family began to spend most of their winter months in St. Augustine, Florida after Cabell began to suffer from attacks of pneumonia in 1935. During their stay in Florida in 1949, his wife died of heart failure. In 1950, he married Margaret Waller Freeman (1893?-1983), whom he had known for many years. Cabell suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 1958 and on May 5, he died at his home in Richmond.
Cabell's writings, published in various magazines, newspapers and anthologies, included numerous short stories, poetry, essays, book reviews and one play. He had authored more than 52 volumes of work, including three devoted to genealogy. Today, some recognize Cabell as one of the first contemporary writers from the South. Like his friend and fellow Richmond writer Ellen Glasgow (1873-1945), Cabell was not afraid to satirize what he saw as the South's contradictions. Others, noting Cabell's unique blending of classic myths and legends with his own imagination, consider him a pioneer of fantasy writing. His work has been admired by a diverse group of writers, including Carl van Vechten, Margaret Mitchell, Edmund Wilson, Robert Heinlein, and Neil Gaiman.
Soon after Virginia Commonwealth University was established in 1968, when the Medical College of Virginia merged with Richmond Professional Institute, the University began plans for a new library for the Academic Campus. In 1970, the James Branch Cabell Library, named for one of Richmond's most respected writers, opened its doors.
Mother Goose Party.
Rarely in this hum-drum life of ours do we become participants in so beautiful a scene as the one we had the pleasure of witnessing on Easter Monday from 6 to 9 o'clock P.M. The occasion was the fifth birthday of Master James Branch Cabell, the eldest grandson of Mrs. M. L. Branch, and her house, No. 101 east Franklin, upon that night was the theatre of the prettiest Mother Goose party ever seen in our midst.
The juveniles ranked in number about seventy-five and from the ages of two years to ten. The hero of the occasion headed the grand march (which was played by Prof. Shepperdson) as Mother Goose's son Jack, in a lovely costume of pink and green satin, perfectly gotten up, even to the golden egg in his hand. By his side walked Mother Goose herself--viz., Miss Ella [Gabriella] Moncure. The quaint figure performed her part to the life, watching over her son Jack and his precious egg with a vigilant eye. Masters Robert G. Cabell and John Lottier Cabell were Little Boy Blue and Lavender Blue, two of the most attractive characters of the evening. Master Thomas McAdam[s] represented the Little Soldier no Bigger than my Thumb, and was so perfect in looks and so military in bearing as to win the hearts of all the young damsels, especially of Dame Trot, an old lady in name, but in reality a miss of four years--Miss Kate Minor, a sweet creature, who is destined to be one of our future belles. Little Master Bowie, aged eighteen months, as Bobbie Shafto, in blue satin sailor suit and bearing a comb to use as "combing down his yellow hair," was the observed of all observers.
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