But she works in a bare studio, close by, away from the telephone and too friendly visitors. Every morning she sits down at the typewriter and works—and most afternoons. No writer produces good work without wearying effort, long hours of concentration, and at times great discouragement.
What Miss Ferber wears while she works, whether dress, sweater, or smock, I do not know, for she does not do her writing in public as a prize fighter trains for a battle. Her battles are fought out alone.
One of her old and understanding friends, William Allen White, has written a most illuminating account of her life, her struggles, and her achievement. Mr. White being a Middle Westerner himself, quite understands Edna Ferber’s point of view. The following extract is taken from an introduction by the famous editor of the _Emporia Gazette_ for an edition of “Cheerful by Request”:
“Edna Ferber’s pasture is long and narrow geographically; ranging from a thin pennant running westward to the mountains, to a slim tatter as far east as Vienna. But it is close clipped around Chicago, in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin; and well cropped in and about New York. In its social boundaries her field is more compact; chiefly lying in the middle class, sometimes taking in those who are just climbing out of poverty, and often considering those who are happily wiggling into our plutocracy. But one thread will string every character she ever conceived; all her people do something for a living. She is the goddess of the worker. And from her typewriter keys spring hard-working bankers, merchants, burglars, garage-helpers, stenographers, actors, traveling salesmen, hotel clerks, porters and reporters, wholesalers, pushcart men, wine touts, welfare workers, farmers, writers—always doers of things: money makers, men and women who pull their weight in the boat. And her stories chiefly tell what a fine time these hardworking Americans have with their day’s work.
“In the Great American Short Story, which must tell of American life rather than our Great American Novel, Edna Ferber’s section will be among the workers. Mrs. Wharton and Henry Fuller and Sherwood Anderson can have the loafers, in high life and low life. But Miss Ferber’s people will come from the stores and offices and workshops. They will, as the Gospel Hymn has it, come rejoicing, bringing home the bacon. Their dramatic moments are oftenest in aprons, shirt-sleeves, overalls, at desks, behind counters, in kitchens, behind stage curtains, in the midst of the business of earning a living. Precious little is done in the Ferber stories ‘in God’s great out of doors—in the wide open spaces.’ When anything has to be open in Miss Ferber’s work it is a lively and festive wide-open town.