back to notes

Macomb-Born writer Louise Jordan Miln

Opinion Macomb-Born writer Louise Jordan Miln

By John Hallwas The McDonough County Voice. Posted Oct 17, 2014 at 9:24 PM
https://www.mcdonoughvoice.com/article/20141017/Opinion/141019421

The most prolific writer born in Macomb was Louise Jordan Miln, who was much-celebrated in the 1920s and 1930s. Now an obscure figure, she was once famous for her novels set in China—a sort of precursor to Pearl Buck. She was also a complicated and headstrong individual who led a life that often challenged traditional values.

The most prolific writer born in Macomb was Louise Jordan Miln, who was much-celebrated in the 1920s and 1930s. Now an obscure figure, she was once famous for her novels set in China—a sort of precursor to Pearl Buck. She was also a complicated and headstrong individual who led a life that often challenged traditional values.

An only child, Louise was born 150 years ago, in 1864. Her father was Dr. T. M. Jordan, a prominent local physician and civic leader. In fact, he was also a banker and, during the mid-1860s, was the Mayor of Macomb for three years. Louise’s mother was Annie (Wells) Jordan, who is buried in Oakwood Cemetery. (I tell her story in “Here to Stay.”) The Jordans moved to Chicago in 1869, when Louise was five. The family soon lost their home in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but Dr. Jordan became wealthy as a member of the Chicago Board of Trade.

As a child, Louise saw herself as a kind of miniature adult. Indeed, she later said in one of her books, “I remember that, as a child, I disliked children....” Her sense of independence was surely fostered by her father, to whom she was very close. As she later said, “I grew up among books, the spoiled child, and the companion, of a booky man.” Young Louise often traveled in the U.S. and abroad with him while her mother, who was not adventurous, commonly stayed home. Louise later dedicated her first book to her father, “whose love never failed me, and who never misunderstood me”—which suggests that she did not feel the same toward her mother.

However, during her early years, she sometimes spent long visits with relatives in Macomb.

In her teens, Louise attended Vassar, but health problems interrupted her studies. She soon became an actress. Her 1933 obituary in the “Macomb Journal” describes her early career:

“At 18 Louise Jordan went on the stage, where in the first season, she played small parts with [famous actor] Edwin Booth. She then joined a traveling theatrical company. . . and she soon married an English actor, George Crichton Miln. . . .”

That brief account overlooks a great deal. As a young actress, she had an affair with Miln, who ran that Chicago-based theatre company. A former minister, he had been married since 1872 and had several children. Their 1887 affair included sexual encounters while they traveled together, and it led to Miln’s divorce in mid-1888. That sensational divorce case, in which Louise was named as “the other woman,” was vividly reported in the “Chicago Tribune.”

By that time, Louise already had a baby, born in 1887. Miln soon married her, and he continued to work in theatre, but outside of the U.S. In fact, later in 1888, the Milns traveled to Australia, where George struggled for work as a Shakespearean actor. An 1890 letter by Annie Jordan reveals the hard life in that era for her daughter:

“She [Louise] now has three babies—the last being born June 12, and her eldest was not three years old until August 31. . . . Louise always writes cheerfully and hopefully, and seems to be a devoted mother. . . . But we hear through others who have written to us that her husband has never been able to make a living, and that they are in great destitution. She of course cannot play [that is, act in plays] when having children so fast, and has had to receive assistance from friends whom she has made in that far away country. [Her husband] has now gone to New Zealand, leaving her and the children in Sydney, entirely dependent on charity. . . . She is having a bitter experience, and she brought it on by her own waywardness.”

Because the Milns eventually acquired some annual income from Dr. Jordan’s estate, they traveled to the Far East, where they performed in plays and experienced the cultures of India, Burma, China, Japan, and Korea. Louise loved it all, but was especially fascinated with China and India. Also, she continued to have children (until the Milns had seven) and also began writing books. Her first, “When We Were Strolling Players [actors] in the East” (1894), is a fine travel memoir. She soon followed it with another memoir, titled “Quaint Korea” (1895).

Perhaps encouraged by her writing achievement, the Milns moved to London, in 1896, where they soon bought a monthly magazine called “The British Realm,” which George edited. Louise wrote many articles for periodicals, plus two other nonfictional books, “Little Folks of Many Lands” (1899), on children in various cultures, and “Wooings and Weddings” (1900), depicting the female marriage situation in many countries. Then she turned to writing novels.

A short memoir by their daughter Dagmar mentions that growing up in the Miln household was difficult, and that Louise was sometimes not much of a mother: “Many a time when we were children, we [found] . . . Mother’s door shut, with the familiar sign up that meant she was working.” She concluded, “It’s no fun being the daughter of a novelist.”

In 1903 a member of the Wells family in Macomb (who was executor of the Jordan estate), sued to deprive Louise of further income from it—perhaps to help struggling Annie—and in 1904, the Milns sued in response, to receive more income. It is unclear how that conflict was finally settled, but it permanently damaged the relationship between Annie and Louise.

George Miln eventually died in 1917. Louise’s career really took off a few years later, in 1920, when she was 56, with a novel titled “Mr. Wu,” based on a popular play. It is a love story focused on an American woman and a wealthy Chinese mandarin, and it was widely praised, in both England and America. The book was eventually made into a film starring Lon Chaney.

That led to 15 other novels, mostly romances set in China, including such titles as “The Feast of Lanterns” (1921), “In a Shantung Garden” (1924), “It Happened in Peking” (1926), and “Chinese Triangle,” (1932). Louise Jordan Miln became a noted fiction writer whose books were widely praised, especially for their appreciation of the Orient and insight into the Chinese mind.

The details of her later life are sketchy, but Louise lived with her daughter Dagmar, in London, for over ten years. Eventually, she acquired a home in Trepied, France, just across the English Channel, where she died in 1933. Altogether, she produced some two dozen books.

Seldom has someone born or raised in Macomb lived a life so remote from the values and traditions of small-town America. Indeed, Louise Jordan Miln had obvious inner complexity: a lover of tradition-bound China but an assertive female, a woman determined to raise a family but a career-driven figure, a notably social person who appreciated people of many cultures but also a self-focused individual; a creator of engaging, sympathetic characters but someone who realized her profound difference from others, including her mother. She was more complex than any of the figures in her novels, but we’ll never know the full story.

Author and local historian John Hallwas is a columnist for the “McDonough County Voice.”