Experiment in Launching a Biography: Three Vignettes of Charles Erskine Scott Wood

Abstract

Charles Erskine Scott Wood (1852-1944) fitted three distinct careerssoldier, lawyer, writer-into nearly ninety-two years of living. The range and span of the man may be suggested simply by listing a few of his friends: General 0. 0. Howard, commander of the Military Department of the Columbia; Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce; Mark Twain; James J. Hill of the Great Northern; Childe Hassam, American impressionist painter; Lincoln Steffens; William S. U'Ren, Oregon Progressive; William Rose Benet; Robinson Jeffers; Mark Van Doren; and Yehudi Menuhin. Although a Pennsylvanian by birth and through early boyhood, and a Baltimorean in his teens, from the time of infantry service as a young lieutenant in Alaska, Oregon, and Idaho Wood's life was linked with the Far West. Resigning his commission in 1884 Wood practiced law in Portland, Oregon, through the first world war. During these years he played a variety of roles. He was poet, social critic, corporation attorney, painter, defender of radicals, land agent, after-dinner speaker, proponent of direct legislation, bon vivant, husband, and father of five. As the twenties began Wood left the lawv and gave the rest of his life-more than a score of years-to creative writing and living on a California hilltop in Los Gatos. Overall C. E. S. Wood emerges as an expansive, individualistic man of engaging simplicity, warmly human, profoundly responsive to the world of nature, an eloquent advocate of radical social change, yet moving easily and without affectation within the sophisticated circles of business and society. The vignettes that follow are designed to provide an unconventional introduction to a projected biography of this many-faceted, unconventional man. Each sketch is an attempt to catch Colonel Wood at full stride in one of three phases of his long life. Although there is some backing and filling in each vignette, the intent is to keep them separate and distinct, so that the prospective reader will be tempted to move into the biography in a quest for fuller understanding of the man.