The Road to Understanding
In Eleanor Porter’s eleventh novel she shows how a difference in musical taste can make an unhappy marriage worse, and how music appreciation can bring marital harmony — but, in this book the music is on phonograph records. No musicians are necessary. This is the story of Helen and Burke Denby: why they separated and how they got back together.
“ … They were miles apart at the start—miles apart in tastes, traditions, and environment. In one respect only were they alike: undisciplined self-indulgence—a likeness that meant only added differences when it came to the crossing …” — Chapter 8
PLOT SUMMARY — Spoiled young Burke Denby is heir to an iron works in the New England town of Dalton. He is smitten by Helen Barnet, a pretty babysitter. In ignorance, he sees her as oppressed and courts her out of pity. His widowed father, John Denby, objects to marriage: she lacks “taste and training.” He disowns the newlyweds, leaving them poor. They move to an apartment and bicker. Dr. Frank Gleason, family friend, observes that they have confused expectations of each other. Helen is inept domestically, runs up accounts at merchants, and uses slang. They can’t agree on manners, meals or music. They have a baby called Betty.
Father takes Burke to Alaska for two years and gives Helen $10,000 to “go away for a time.” Helen and Betty go to Boston to find Dr. Gleason’s sister, Edith, on Beacon Hill. Edith will instruct Helen on how to be a lady. Helen “Darling” (false name) stays with Edith three years, then goes to England with Betty and stays ten years. John Denby (father) dies, and Burke owns the iron works.
Back home, Helen, now incognito and cultivated, takes an apartment in Dalton. Betty is eighteen and cultured. Helen sends her to be Burke’s secretary. Unrecognized, Betty performs songs for Burke. He begs to adopt her, but an old woman tells her that Burke is her father (true) and that he mistreated her mother (false). Appalled at the falsehood, Helen meets with Burke, and they discover a new and lasting “Understanding.” — END
RAGTIME
In The Road to Understanding, Eleanor Porter uses “ragtime” to signal contrasts between Burke and Helen’s social strata.
Helen complains:
"… Day after day I've gone into the music-room and put in those records,—the classics and the operatic ones that are the real thing, you know,—but I can't like them; and I still keep liking tunes and ragtime. …” — Chapter 15
Burke invokes classical music to complain:
“But it never occurred to me that my soft greens and browns and Beethoven harmonies got on her nerves just exactly as her pinks and purples and ragtime got on mine.” — Chapter 18
In 1901, the year Eleanor launched her writing career, the American Federation of Musicians condemned ragtime music as “unmusical rot.” Ragtime was a genre of piano music that arose in the South in the late 1800s. Its style of thumping bass and catchy, syncopated melody was adapted to hundreds of orchestrations and influenced much 20th-century American music.
Early in the book Burke Denby complains of these recordings; yet, by the end of the story, Burke enjoys ragtime music (performed in person by his daughter). Here is a 1912 ragtime recording as Burke might have heard it:
What did Eleanor Porter actually think of ragtime music? As a writer, she adopted the word as shorthand for culturally unsophisticated and showy. As a musician, her appreciation was more nuanced. She had known ragtime as sheet music and likely had played a tame version of “ragtime” piano as a performer. Even John Phillips Sousa included ragtime in his repertoire. At the pinnacle of the new genre was Scott Joplin.
Scott Joplin (1868-1917) was pretty near Eleanor’s exact contemporary. He began publishing sheet music in 1895, at the time when he and Eleanor were still giving piano lessons. He became rich and famous after his Maple Leaf Rag (1899) had elevated honky-tonk music to “Classic Rag.” His publisher at first despaired of selling such complex sheet music to saloon piano players, his main customers, but, by, 1914, the "Maple Leaf Rag" had sold one million copies.
A Ragtime-Classical Spectrum?
In a climactic scene, Eleanor uses Betty to resolve the conflict of musical tastes and bring The Road to Understanding to its destination. Burke Denby has not seen Betty since she was a toddler. Nor is he aware that Helen has returned from Europe with an appreciation of Burke’s poetry and music. Helen sends unwitting Betty to be unwitting Burke’s secretary. In this scene, Betty tells her mother how she entertained Burke without either of them knowing he is really her father.
"But what did you sing? Oh, you—you didn't sing any of those foolish, nonsensical songs, did you?" implored Helen, half rising from her chair.
"But I did," bridled Betty. Then, as her mother fell back dismayed, she cried: "Did you suppose I'd risk singing solemn things to a man who had just learned to laugh?"
"But, ragtime!" moaned Helen, "when he's always hated it so!"
"'Always hated it so'!" echoed Betty, with puzzled eyes. "Why, I hadn't played it before, dearie. I hadn't played anything!"
"No, no, I—I mean always hated everything gay and lively like ragtime," corrected Helen, her cheeks abnormally pink, as she carefully avoided the doctor's eyes. "Why didn't you play some of your good music, dear?"
"Oh, I did, afterwards, of course,—MacDowell and Schubert, and that lullaby we love. But he liked the ragtime, too, all right. I know he did…"
Eleanor suggests that good musical taste can exist on a spectrum from ragtime to classical, which seems a facile way to resolve marital misunderstandings and which also avoids offending readers who prefer one or the other. In a way, Betty’s performance sanitizes the former saloon music, by moving it to a posh parlor.
We are not told what instrument Betty plays nor what songs she sings, but we know that she specifically played a composition by Boston composer Edward MacDowell (1860 – 1908). (Eleanor mentions only him and Schubert.) Boston-based and recently deceased, MacDowell was an esteemed pianist, conductor and composer. Among his many short pieces, this one may be best remembered (by piano students):
Edward’s wife, Marian (Nevins) MacDowell, herself a concert pianist, housed the MacDowell Colony at Edward’s retreat at her farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire, and after Edward’s death at age forty eight, Marian managed the development of the residential colony which grew to host the nations’ outstanding composers, artists, writers and other creative artists. When The Road to Understanding was published, Boston’s music community was raising funds for the new Colony. This may explain Eleanor’s deliberate mention of MacDowell.
Edward MacDowell’s piano compositions, are enjoying revived appreciation at The MacDowell Project on YouTube.
Key to the plot of The Road to Understanding (1917) is Helen’s transformation into a mannered lady — a notion that was in the air at the time; it was the theme of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, that had opened in New York in 1914. Based on a Greek myth, Pygmalion’s story would be told again with in 1956 with Eliza Doolittle’s glamorous transformation in My Fair Lady, a musical that Mrs. Porter would surely have loved.
This book is free at Gutenberg.org: The Road to Understanding
Only a little bit of music is taught, performed or enjoyed in Eleanor Porter’s Oh, Money! Money! (1918), the next entry in Glad Refrains. It is an amusing story of three middle-class families granted sudden wealth, and how they handle the complications it causes. Among the snares are class divisions — the same as Helen and Burke Denby. An adult love story provides romance, and family dilemmas provide lessons from the School of Gladness.