8 — THE CHRONICLE
OFFBEAT OREGON HISTORY
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2019
Oregon’s first published book was a torrid page-turner in its day
BY FINN J.D. JOHN
FOR THE CHRONICLE
E
arly in the summer
of 1854, an adver-
tisement appeared
in the Portland
Oregonian – a tantaliz-
ingly feisty one, from
an author braced for
combat and essentially
inviting the world to
“bring it on”:
“A new work will be
published, about the 1st of
August, the first number of
‘The Grains; or, Passages in
the Life of Ruth Rover’ ...
by Margaret Jewett Bailey,”
it began; then launched into
a ferocious little stanza of
unrhymed mixed-format
verse:
“Thou Monster Evil –
stand forth!/ And in what-
ever garb thou mayst appear,/
Whether harlot, villain, priest
or Pope,/ I challenge thee to
single combat.”
The ad finished with
some business details: the
book would be published in
“monthly numbers” until it
was completed; and to order
a copy, one was invited to
write to Jewett in care of the
publishers of the Portland
Times newspaper, with which
she had contracted to publish
it.
This ad likely generated
quite a bit of buzz, with its
coy references to harlots and
popes; but it’s also likely
that it would have gener-
ated plenty of attention even
without them. The news that
Margaret Jewett Bailey was
about to publish a tell-all
has to have gone through the
tiny Oregon frontier commu-
nity like an electric current.
Bailey was, by the time she
wrote her book, a little noto-
rious.
She had been one of the
first white women to come
to the territory, back in the
1830s, when she joined Jason
Lee’s Methodist mission
near Salem, and her volu-
ble personality caused all
kinds of drama and trouble
there – culminating with
her fiance’s attempt to pres-
sure her into going through
with their planned marriage
by “confessing” to having
had premarital sex with her.
Professionally ruined by this,
she’d left the mission and
married a wealthy and prom-
inent (but unpleasant and
alcoholic) physician. Then
she’d become Oregon’s first
female journalist, publishing
a poem in the very first issue
of The Spectator, Oregon’s
very first non-handwritten
newspaper, and running the
women’s page for a couple
months before feuding with
the editor and quitting in
disgust.
She had a record of unin-
hibited and acerbic writ-
ing; she was preparing what
appeared to be a super-racy
tell-all memoir; and she had
just secured a divorce from
a prominent community
member about whom they’d
all heard some pretty tanta-
lizing rumors. What was not
to like?
Well, plenty, if you ask any
The title page from the original 1854 edition of Part Two of the first novel-length
work of (alleged) fiction ever published in Oregon, by Margaret Jewett Bailey.
IMAGE: OREGONENCYCLOPEDIA.ORG
of the various journalists who
reviewed the first installment.
C.L. Goodrich, the editor
of the Spectator, was already
embroiled in a hot feud with
his former columnist, and
seems to have been a little
bitter about her decision
to have her book printed
at the Times instead of the
Spectator. Upon her depar-
ture, he wrote, “We promise
to allude no more to the lady
who asked us how much we
would take to print ‘her life
and sufferings,’ after we had
positively told her nine differ-
ent times that we didn’t want
the job at any price.”
That kind of petulance has
to have raised a few eyebrows
among readers, especially
after the job was happily
taken up by Goodrich’s
competitors at the Times, and
that may be why his review of
the book was short and rela-
tively noncommittal, merely
mentioning that his opinion
of its low quality had not
changed.
In the Oregonian, though,
a pseudonymous reviewer
calling himself “Squills”
went after it with astonishing
savagery. After expressing
his belief that women should
stick to “darning stockings,
pap and gruel, children,
cookstoves, and the sundry
little affairs that make life
comparatively comfortable,”
he added, “Afflictions will
come upon us, even here in
Oregon; where we are casti-
gated with so many already. It
is bad enough to have unjust
laws – poor lawyers and
worse judges – taxes, and
no money ... without this last
visitation of Providence – ‘an
authoress.’”
Then, following several
paragraphs that drip with
sarcasm and vitriol, he
finishes with this little
nugget:
“To call it trash would
be impolite, for the writer
is an ‘authoress.’ ... When a
Napoleon, a Byron, or any
other lion makes his exit, it
is well enough to know ‘How
that animal eats, how he
snores, how he drinks.’ But
who the dickens cares about
the existence of a fly, or in
whose pan of molasses the
insect disappeared.”
Copies of the first install-
ment must have sold well –
which is not surprising, with
that kind of press out there.
Surely everyone had to at
least glance at a copy and
see what the fuss was about.
And at $1.50 a copy, it was far
from cheap; so most likely
Margaret made a profit on
the first part.
She may not have done as
well on the second, though.
By the time it came out,
everyone had seen what all
the fuss was about; and the
first part of the book builds
fairly slowly, with dozens of
pages recounting the life of a
virtuous young woman with
a passion for Jesus defying
her father to join a faraway
mission and journeying to
Oregon via Hawaii, before
getting to the juicy parts. At
the end of it, “Ruth Rover”
meets “Dr. Binney” (in real
life, Bailey) on March 3;
marries him on March 4; and
leaves the mission that very
day.
“In our next number we
will continue our narrative of
Ruth Rover, and endeavor to
show how fully she drank the
‘cup of sorrow to the dregs’!”
it finishes.
With Part 2, she included
a witty and cutting personal
note to “Squills” in the
epilogue that really show-
cased her skills as a writer,
which were noticeably
superior to those shown
in “Squills”’s column.
“Squills,” in his response,
resorted to claiming that the
second installment was too
smutty to review or quote
from, and instead actually
quoted a passage from the
Oregon Territory’s obscen-
ity law. This cannot possibly
have had a negative impact
on sales. One almost grows
suspicious that the two of
them were in cahoots.
If they were, though, it
apparently wasn’t effec-
tive enough. The second
installment of Grains was
destined to be the last. It’s
also less interesting than the
first installment, being basi-
cally the complete story of
a very unfortunate 15-year
marriage, from “I do” to
“You’re fired”; and it was
pitched openly as a sob story,
rather than a titillating tell-
all. Most people don’t want
to read sob stories.
Whether for that reason
or others, no more of “Ruth
Rover” was ever published.
The book’s halflife in the
marketplace was very short.
People read it with avidity
and then threw it away like
yesterday’s newspaper. For
many years it was thought
that no copies had survived,
and people who disapproved
of Margaret claimed that
was because the book was an
obscene and badly written
failure, and the few copies
that did sell had all been
destroyed by outraged read-
ers. This is patent nonsense.
“It was the true-confes-
sional tale of its day, laying
bare a scandal involving well-
known figures, and so inter-
esting reading that the slender
96-page books could be sold
for $1.50 each,” historian
Herbert Nelson writes in his
1944 article. ($1.50 in 1854
was worth the equivalent of
almost $50 today – rather a
lot for half a novel.)
But “Ruth Rover” was
essentially the 1850s equiv-
alent of an airport novel-
ette, and nobody was going
to bother saving a copy of
it, especially in an age when
old Sears catalogs and other
unimportant books and
papers were being regularly
repurposed as toilet paper.
Fortunately, a copy of
the second installment was
discovered in 1935, and a
mostly complete copy of the
first surfaced several decades
after that. In 1986, the Oregon
State University Press under-
took to consolidate and
republish the whole thing, in
what can only be described
as a generous act of historical
curation; it’s inconceivable
that this turgid-but-import-
ant historical book will ever
sell enough copies to be prof-
itable. But, as a result, the first
novel-length work of alleged
fiction can now be read and
studied.
As for its author, for the
rest of Margaret Jewett
Bailey’s life, through several
marriage-induced changes of
surname, she was constantly
being referred to as “Ruth
Rover.” The claim that her
book was about someone
else was never bought for an
instant.
She continued to be some-
thing of a stormy petrel;
drama always seemed to seek
her out. She married again, to
another horrible man, whom
she divorced after claiming to
have discovered that he had
impregnated his own daugh-
ter while married to her. The
argument over whether he did
or not ended up playing out
in back-and-forth paid adver-
tisements in newspapers.
She married a third time,
to a man named Crane, after
moving to Washington; and
maybe this marriage took
– we know nothing about
him, which for a husband
of Margaret Bailey is a very
good sign. She died in May of
1882; and the first line in her
obituary in the Puget Sound
Weekly Courier read, “Mrs.
Margaret J. Crane, author
of ‘Ruth Rover,’ a novel that
created a great sensation in
Oregon in early days, died
in Seattle Tuesday night of
pneumonia.”
Not bad for a “fly,” about
whose existence “who the
dickens cares.” One wonders
if “Squills,” whoever he was,
ever did half so well.
(Sources: “First True
Confession Story Pictures
Oregon ‘Moral’” (sic), an
article by Herbert R. Nelson
published in the June 1944
issue of Oregon Historical
Quarterly; “The Grains;
or, Passages in the Life of
Ruth Rover…”, a book by
Margaret Jewett Bailey, in
an edition edited by Evelyn
Leasher and Robert J. Frank,
published in 1986 by OSU
Press)
Finn J.D. John teaches at
Oregon State University and
writes about odd tidbits of
Oregon history. His book,
Heroes and Rascals of
Old Oregon, was recently
published by Ouragan House
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