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VII. EDITORS OF THE NINETIES SOUTHERN NOVELISTS THE KLONDIKE by Hamlin Garland

HE PLAYERS was a great place at which stockbroker and his stories at the club, and to drop in for breakfast in the late honored him as a scholarly and charming T nineties and the early years of the man of letters as he sat behind his desk sur­ new century. And indeed it still is one of the rounded by treasured portraits, manuscripts most friendly and interesting haunts in New and letters. He knew almost every distin­ York. It was there, over coffee and rolls, that guished writer in England and America, by I frequently sat with Edmund Clarence Sted- correspondence at least, and his judgments on man whose "Pan in Wall Street" and "Creole the' whole were sound. There was nothing Lover's Song" still endure to prove him a malicious or bitter in his criticism. Like Gil­ fine poet. der and Howells he desired to be helpful and Stedman's home was out of the city but he was especially hospitable to young poets. Per­ usually came to town for the winter. He was haps, like Howells, he isometimes took prom­ growing gray and his face was often worn ise for achievement, but our verse writers' and sad. He complained continually of over­ needed just such an advocate at this time. work and often spoke of a pain in the back That a man so fine, so learned in letters as of his head, keeping his hand pressed against he, should be forced to descend into Wall it as if to relieve the ache; but he seemed fo Street and fight for money with which to enjoy the thought of his serious condition. keep the roof above his books and manu­ "It is my heart," he said; "I expect to fall scripts was sadly disconcerting. dead some day." Notwithstanding his aphasia, his memory Unlike Howells, he spoke openly of his for poetry was amazing. He could quote, and troubles, of his sickness and of his discon­ did quote, long passages from all the poets tent with his home. He characterized his and essayists he most admired, a faculty work on the stock exchange as "mere gam­ which Howells apparently did not possess. bling". His manner impressed me as that of a Howells seldom quoted anything and never poet driven to imperil his life in every way in to make display of his reading, which was the v^ar of business—yet enjoying it. Spright­ wide and thoughtful. He belonged to the ly, airy, not too refined, a boy with the boys, modern type of literary man who has no he refused to grow old. need to illustrate his point by quoting from He had a house in Lawrence Park, some another author or from another language. fifteen miles north of the city, and I some­ Stedman was naturally much beloved by times went out there on Sundays. In his study Southern writers for he had been generous in he was wholly admirable. I forgot his work as his estimate of their work. In The Poets of 196

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America, he had given adequate space to time to time. As near as I could understand Timrod, Haynes, Lanier, Poe and other men it, he was discoursing on the mystery and the whom other Northern critics had minimized; beneficence of death; but I hardly under­ and he had been quick to praise James Lane stood two connected sentences of that four- Allen, Thomas Nelson Page, George W. Ca­ hour irionologue. I comprehended the words ble and others of the younger Southern nov­ but the argument was a mist, a bleak ob­ elists. His influence was altogether helpful to scurity. I did my best to look interested and authorship. To me, he was one of the sav­ with an occasional "I see it!"—"Quite so", ing graces of New York. Like Gilder and tried to follow him, pinching myself now and Howells he stood for plain living and high again,to keep awake. thinking quite as distinctly as Emerson and It was a torturing session and I never was Lowell had done in their time, and held ah more relieved in my life than when, along even clearer notion of what American lit­ about one o'clock he paused and remarked, erature and art should become. with a kindly beam in his eye, "Whenever With a similar high standard of workman­ you feel like retiring—." Springing instantly ship, Henry M. Alden was editing Harper's to my feet I assured him that I felt very Magazine. His office which was two flights much like it, so he showed me to my room. up a circular iron stairway, was a queer little As he said good night, I vowed riever to put box of a room hardly larger than a closet, a myself into his hands in that way again. den in which he had worked for nearly fifty As an author he was of subordinate rank. years. Just large enough for a battered desk His writing was dignified and weighty but and an extra chair for a caller, its window without special distinction. Sitting in judg­ almost touched the elevated road and when ment as he did on the manuscripts of all a train passed its rattling thunder made con­ the writers of his time, he failed to compose versation difficult. Nevertheless the inhabitant a book of any permanent value. Whether he of this dusty closet was a power for good was a great editor or not is debatable, but in American literature. He was a kindly there can be no doubt as to his effect on the dragon, so low-voiced that I missed something young writers of that day. His kindliness, of his monologue even when the street was his sympathy and the nobility of his taste quiet. For all his gentleness and remoteness profoundly aided in the development of a he was a shrewd and practical trader when characteristic American fiction. Like Gilder, it came to dealing with an author, a curious he was receptive to the vernacular whenever blend of the mystic and the Yankee. With it was truthfully and artistically employed; well-defined notions of what fiction should but he never edited down to his readers. He be, he let his writers know very firmly that bought what appealed to him and not the he was editing a magazine to suit himself. kind of stuff which the millions were sup­ And authors in discussing their work with posed to want. one another often asked, "Is this the kind of thing Alden would like?" When at leisure he was inclined to philoso­ LVI . phize along certain lines of a foggy transcen­ Meanwhile another editorial group was dentalism; and once when I wentout to visit coming into power, led by Sam McClure and him in his New Jersey home, he took me to Edward Bok, men who believed in reaching his study after dinner, and there talked and the millions. Associated with them were John talked and talked, smoking cigar after cigar S. Phillips and Walter Page. Bok, the most ' while I kept myself awake by gripping the successful of them all, lived in Philadelphia, arms of my chair and leaning forward from and I was often an over-night guest at his

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED igS' THE BOOKMAN for APRIL & MAY I93O house. It was the fashion in New York to Whether Gilder and Alden saw the end'of sneer at Bok's Ladies' Home. Journal, and their reign before it came I cannot say, but I professional jesters hke James L. Ford made think they did. They lasted well on towards sport of its "Heart to Heart Talks" and cul­ 1900, maintaining themselves and their maga­ inary department; but this was a very super­ zines side by side with the on-rushing stream ficial view of the magazine. Bok had a well- of "flat magazines", supported by a diminish­ defined policy: he employed the best writers ing list of subscribers, men and women of and paid them well. His Journal carried adult intelligence whose tastes were for the household hints but it also included excellent carefully considered page, content to get their fiction (some of mine) and stood editorially news from other periodicals. for the highest ideals in social and political As a lover of literature I leaned to the side life. It catered to an enormous list of readers, of Gilder and Alden, but I sold most of my and remained essentially aspiring. Bok and stories to Bok and McClure. Corrupted with­ McClure, like' Lorimer of the Post, had the out realizing it, I pretended to scorn, the will and the skill to represent the American tempter. One day McClure turned on me. mind. The invasion from' the south of Eu­ "Garland, you're on the wrong track. You rope had not yet colored their periodicals. despise journalism but the journalist is the Sam McClure represented the conquering man who wins. Now you can write, but you side of the editors' guild. He was all for write of people and subjects that only a few making a magazine popular, and James L. care about. Why not take subjects which in­ Ford or some other wicked paragrapher re­ terest everybody.? You would then stand a ported McClure as demanding of a noted au­ double chance of winning. Drop your liter­ thor that he make his life of Christ "a little ary pose and come in with us. Use your skill more snappy". This may have been a wheeze on topics of the day, or stories of big,per­ but the spirit of the new editor was in this sonalities and you'll make a place for yourself, jest. The editor of the popular periodicals as Miss Tarbell and William Allen White regarded magazines like Scribner's, the have done". Century and the Atlantic Monthly with good- He was right. I knew he was right, but I natured contempt. They were journals for refused to go over to his side. I temporized. the few—his was for the many. Striving for I did a few things along his line but held on wider "circulation" and knowing that for to my hope of creating something of per­ every added hundred thousand readers ad­ manent value. I had the wish to be a kind of vertising rates could be advanced, he con­ social historian and in the end fell, inevita­ sulted the wishes of the average reader—or bly, between two stools. I failed as a reporter the reader,below the average. and only half succeeded as a novelist. Under this plan literature became an aid In the beginning these popular editors were to trade and magazines turned into adver­ so high in mind, so genial and so persuasive tising bulletins. Subscribers counted for less that they won me to their plans before I and less, it was the news stand sale that mat­ realized my danger. Page, Bok, Doubleday, tered; and in the end the price of the peri­ Phillips, Lorimer and McClure appeared so odical fell below the cost of its raw paper. genuinely interested in me that it was hard The advertisers paid the bill. In this scheme not to write to their order, especially as I was the money paid for manuscripts was but a poor and could only now and again finish a small item of the annual budget and the story which Alden or Gilder considered prices paid for popular material became as- worthy of their approval. Therefore I found founding. Authors received four or five times myself writing threcrpart romances for the the sums they had hitherto enjoyed. Ladies' Home Journal, essays on Ibsen, Im-

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pressionism and other controversial subjects did not—although he had occupied an edi­ for the Forum, biographical studies for Mc- torial chaii: in the office of the World. His Clure's and stories of the mountain West for mind was on the North Country and he was Lorimer's Vost.\ claim no alibi. I£ I am less even then beginning a book which was to guilty than other writers, it is only because outsell all of its contemporaries and take I had less ability. My journalistie efforts were him permanently out of journalistic life. He too foeble, too half-hearted to be of much had begun to write Eben Holden, but I did service. I wrote for McClure's but I continued not know it then, and I went away won­ to visit the Century's literary salon. dering if his syndicate could possibly make its way in opposition to that of McClure's. His manuscripts, like his letters, were ex­ LVII quisitely written, in fine, formal script as reg­ One of the journalists who interested me ular as an ancient scroll; and I have preserved at this time was Irving Bacheller, who had es­ them all—even the most unimportant notes tablished a syndicate somewhat on McClure's —for they were too beautiful to tear up. •lines; and in one of my days of depression Although Brander Matthews was born in I went in to see him concerning ^ series of New Orleans he was the essence of New articles which he had suggested. York City. I never thought of him as having I found him in an office on the north side been anywhere in the West "or South, and of a building in midtown. He was. a large, yet he had as a boy taken a long trip into the blond young man of slow speech and slow West. Perhaps it was this experience which motions, frank, kindly, but curiously absent- made him so kindly disposed toward my own minded. I recall that as I entered he was sit­ work. He often dropped in at the Players to ting at his desk, gazing out of the window at sit for an hour with his cronies, jesting and a blank and ugly wall, evidently dreaming telling stories. Like Stedman he was a talker, of something beside baseness for the glance but a witty one. His jests were often barbed which he turned upon me was that of a man and I congratulated myself on his friendship, concerned with visions. for he was an enemy to be avoided. I liked his face and voice, and as we talked We had a common bond in Ho wells, I learned that our lives were singularly sim­ whom we loved and admired. He never failed ilar. He was born of a New England family to defend him when someone attacked him, . in the North Country, and had come to New for he was a loyal friend. Unlike Howells, he York as I had gone.to Boston. He knew my kept in close touch with England and knew people as I knew his. We had studied the many of the leading English authors. Kipling y same school books and remembered the same was his friend and he spoke often of Edmund songs and poems. He had gone into journal­ Gosse, Andrew Lang and others of the schol­ ism to earn a living whilst I had boiled my arly group. Mark Twain was his intimate pot by teaching and lecturing. My stories of friend and he had known Edwin Booth. boy life on the prairie had interested him, and With so many mutual interests I always wel­ he had in mind an- arrangement whereby he comed an hour with him, although I could could be sure of a series of stories and never find a moment in which to twinkle on sketches of the Wisconsin pioneers. my own account. He bewildered me by his As he talked I marveled at his ability to swift allusions and his wide and definite sustain himself in the journalistic world—so knowledge oi things on which I had only, a much of the dreamer and poet he appeared. vague report. McClure belonged to the hustle of the New I frequently made one of a small circle York newspaper world, but Irving Bacheller about his fire on Sunday evenings. His li-

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 200 THE BOOKMAN for APRIL & MAY I93O brary was almost equal to Stedman's, but his tastes ran more to critical literature, for he LVIII was a professor in the English department When I first began to study the local-color at Columbia University, and his callers were novelists of the South I had no expectation seldom poetasters. There was something of ever meeting any of them personally, but keenly frosty in his attitude toward poets. one by one they crossed my path. These con­ They must bring him something very defi­ tacts came without effort for the most part, nitely good or he Would have none of them just in the way of trade, one might say. —his generous aid went out to young play­ Among the first of the writers whom I met wrights and novelists, who derived great in this way was Ruth McEnery Stuart, who inspiration from his criticism and his im­ came to Boston with her sister to visit friends mensely- cosmopolitan viewpoint. His as­ who by happy chance were members of my sociates were Bronson Howard, Augustus circle and gladly introduced me to this Lou­ Thomas, Augustin Daly, Williarn Gillette isiana novelist whose stories I had read and and other dramatists and actors. greatly enjoyed. He was an authority on the drama— Ruth McEnery Stuart was one of the "new French, as well as English—and though I school" of Southern novelists. She had never heard him in the classroom! can im­ reached the point of describing the Negro in agine the humorous incisiveness of his com­ a direct and understanding way (much as ment and the interest which he aroused and Harris Dickson did a few years later), but held. Henry Arthuir Jones and Arthur Wing she had not touched on the darker phases of Pinero were chief among the English dram­ his character. She pictured him and his atists of the times, and Jones was often women as she saw them on her lawn and in his guest while in New York. Matthews ap­ her kitchen, amused by their primitive disre­ peared to be almost as minutely informed of gard of marriage customs and the laws of what was going on in London as he was of property, and by their notions of medicine New York, and one night he spoke of Eliza­ and religion. Her negroes were themselves beth Robins. She and a Miss Lee, another tolerant, humorous, jocose critics of one an­ American girl, had made a great stir in Eng­ other. All this was new and valuable. land by establishing a theatre of their own I often saw her at her home in New York and producing several of the plays of Jbsen. or at teas and dinners, and always found her Shortly after this, at a dinner given by An­ a delightful companion. She told stories with nie Nathan Meyer, I met Miss Robins and artistic plan and precision, with a chuckle in we had a great deal of talk together. Our her voice and a comic light in her gray eyes. great bond was the Klondike. Her brother I often said in speaking of her, "She's a good had gone into the Yukon and she was fellow", meaning that she was like a genial greatly alarmed and anxious about him. She refined man with a humorous outlook. She told me that she was a Kentuckian but had could jest about herself, which was rare lived eight years in London. "I am to produce among women then and is not common now, Hedda Gabbler at a matinee soon, and I although I hear self-derisive feminine com­ want you to come". ment more often today than yesterday. This I promised to do, for she impressed Joel Chandler Harris I saw but once. On me as a powerful personality, serious and one of my lecture tours I called upon him strenuous. Although plain of feature she had at the Atlanta Constitution office. He was burning, intense gray eyes. Thin of frame, not prepossessing in appearance and plainly large of hand, she was a woman of marked showed that he was aware of it. He was individuality and power. short, red-haired and ungainly, but his face

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'was interesting and his eyes attractive. He Mark Twain were induced to appear together was sitting at his desk. in his shirt sleeves, on the platform, two most divergent types. and his'office, quite Hke that o£ a country, edi­ My first sight of them both was in the Bos­ tor, was cluttered, ugly and noisy. ton Music Hall, where they gave a program He cleared a chair for me and for an hour of readings. Mark appeared to be over six we chatted in most neighborly fashion, dis­ feet tall by contrast with Cable, and for many cussing our many mutual friends and listing years I thought of him as a tall thin man. the makers of Southern literature. He talked Not until I met him in his own home some easily and well but was inclined to let me ten years later did I find him of about my take the lead which I did by asking questions. own height. He had few illusions about the South. He John Fox, Jr., saw the mountaineers with saw it somewhat as I did, a place of mental clear gaze and reported them in Hell-For- emptiness as well as of physical unkemptness, Sartin Cree\ with something like the humor­ but believed that it was changing for the bet­ ous precision and brevity which character­ ter although not so rapidly as he wished. ized Harris's "At Teague Poteet's". He told me that he was of mountain stock Fox, although a Kentuckian, was often in and that he had worked his way at every New York. His joyous spirit, his liking for foot of his upward path. His life had been good clothes and gay company, his popularity somewhat like my own and his stories of the 'as a diner-out, put him as far from Harris's mountain folk were akin to my Main-Trav­ way of life as a man could possibly be, and elled Roads, though much more humorous. I ' yet their short stories were closely akin. Fox think I surprised him by dwelling in praise did not imitate Harris, but he studied the upon his stories of the . mountaineers at same people and saw them in much the same Teague Poteet's, rather than upon his Uncle light. . • Remus tales. He knew the Negro's soul bet­ Fox and I met only occasionally, for his ter than any of his contemporaries, but he way led among the younger fashionables, but also knew the men and women of the moun­ I always enjoyed a chat with him. He talked tains. He painted the aristocratic planter from crisply, clearly, and always had a good story an entirely different angle than Thomas Nel­ to tell. He often read his stories from the son Page's. He was bluntly critical of "the platform, and read them extremely well. He old regime". was most successful in suggesting the moun­ I asked him if he ever came to New York tain dialect—almost as successful as Riley had and he smiled as he answered, "No, I stay been with his Hoosier characters—and was in right here, summer and winter". high demand. He died comparatively young, I .suspect he knew that-1 was thinking of but left a considerable list of stories which the time when he failed to appear at a dinner cannot be neglected in a general study of in New York at which he was listed as a Southern literature. guest of honor. He got as far as Baltimore and turned back, unable to face the bright lights and the speeches which awaited him. LIX No doubt he dreaded the remark "Is that During all these months, while meeting Joel Chandler Harris.? Well I didn't know he Roosevelt, Barrie and,other interesting men was red-haired". and women, I was at work gathering the ma­ George W. Cable was an unimpressive, terial for my Life of Qrant. Part of the spring dapper Mtde man, a.dignified lecturer not­ I spent in Washington and several weeks in withstanding his slimness and his high-keyed, St. Louis. I had visited Vicksburg, the Wil­ soft-toned voice. In some_ strange way he and derness, Chattanooga and other of the great

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 202 THE BOOKMAN for APRIL & MAY I93O commander's battle fields and the closer I took on distance, doubly historic. Heroes of got to the actual man, the simpler and gentler the Civil War were no longer of vital inter­ he became. The mythical Grant, the silent, est. My book received indifferent attention, grim, remorseless Grant, disappeared and a and had -but a small sale. low-voiced, modest, kindly citizen took his Nominally my home was still in Chicago, place. Even those who spoke of his weakness and I did, indeed, do a considerable part of for drink, which was most in evidence at the my writing there, but I looked to the East for time of his deepest discouragement, declared companionship as well as for my living. \The that his native dignity was never lost. literary and artistic group which the World's As I talked with these men in their homes Fair had brought together had broken up. or offices I found it difficult to imagine them The hopes of those who predicted Chicago in the high command in which they once as a literary center second only to New York were seated. I think.they had come to doubt were frosted before they flowered. As the it themselves. They would not express their great buildings of the Fair were dismantled, feeling in words, but their eyes dimmed with and the foreign artists and eastern writers emotion as they recounted these, their heroic went away to Paris or New York, the city hours. Some, like Longstreet, resembled aged became almost as unesthetic as before. captive eagles brooding over their wide flight As I returned to it after a month or two in above seas and cliffs. Others were boastful. the East, it all seemed crude and raw. The That I was marching in the rear ranks of a only spot of light was the tenth floor of disappearing army was evident. I began to the new Fine Arts Building, on which my understand the early blunders, defeats and friends Oliver Dennett Glover, Ralph Clark- blind marching of our democratic armies. son, Bessie Potter and Lorado Taft had Our soldiers were not warriors and their lead­ grouped their studios. Clarkson's studio be­ ers, for the most part, knew nothing of mili­ came a meeting place of the "Little Room", tary strategy. Those who had received a West an informal literary and artistic club, and Point training had never commanded a thou­ there I not only met my friends but many sand men. At the opening of the war Grant celebrities from the East and from England. himself, a humble ex-Captain, could find no The name of this club was taken from a opportunity to test his training. sketch by Madeleine Yale Wynne, in a vol­ For two years I lived among these dying ume published in 1894. It was the story of a giants, absorbing their concepts, trying to mysterious little room in a New England organize their confused memories, and even farm-house, which appeared and disappeared as I worked at their records they died. My during the childhood, girlhood and maturity work had begun not a moment too soon. In of the writer, ostensibly herself. As our club truth it had not begun soon enough, for had no home of its'own, and used Bessie many of the most valuable of Grant's asso­ Potter's studio Friday afternoon, someone ciates had been mustered out before I began suggested naming the club "The Little my study. Room". The book itself suffered defeat. It came out Obscure as this organization seems, it was in the midst of the Spanish War, and was an attempt at organizing the literary forces forced to contend with a crop of new slogans of the city and most of the men and women and new heroes. The war of Grant and Lee, who were notable for creative work in archi­ was thrust far into the background of pubUc tecture, sculpture, painting and music were interest by the exploits of Dewey and Evans, in some degree represented. From the stand­ Roosevelt and Wood. Colonel Fred Grant point of London or New York it was, I am became General Grant, and the Civil War afraid, a meagre showing.

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With the failure of Stone and Kimball I thought well of it, but warned me that it was was left without a publisher, but the maga­ a bit overwrought and that danger lay in zines were hospitable to my stories, and Ed­ that direction. ward Bok, editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, was appreciative and generous. In one of my trips to Cripple Creek, I came out LX by stage and in the seat behind me I over­ When I returned to Washington in Jan­ heard two mining men discussing mines and uary, 1898, I found Roosevelt there. He had mining. One of them said, "We put a hun­ resigned his position as Police Commissioner dred dollars into experiments on reducing to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy. that ore. The gold was there, but how to get He at once gave me the freedom of his of­ it out was our problem. I've never encoun­ fice. "Come in any time," he said, "and see tered a more refractory ore. One day I scraped the wheels go round." some of the amalgam off the plates and Naturally I seized upon the opportunity. poured it into a small vial and put this in my It amused and flattered me to be treated as a vest-pocket and carried it to Denver. When privileged guest. Roosevelt gave me a seat I looked at it there, I was amazed to find .that near his private desk and while we talked he it had turned green. I was stumped. How­ continued his routine, receiving reports and ever, I wouldn't be beat. I knew I could solve signing papers, exactly as he had said he that ore and I asked the company for a little would. I saw the wheels go round. Whatever more time and a little more money. Ulti­ John D. Long thought of him, Roosevelt was mately I won out". Chief of the force. This conversation furnished me with a Nevertheless I expressed my regret that he theme to my liking. I at once planned a story had given up his Commissionership. "That in which a young miner with two unskilled was a big job." partners had chanced upon such an ore, and He smiled, with a peculiar twist of his lips with a confident belief in his ability to solve and said, with humorous inflection, "This is the, mystery, the engineer bought out his dis­ a big job, if our navy is ever to count for heartened partners. The interesting moral anything",, and as I heard him outline plans question then arose in his mind, "Is it right for increase of gun power and approve more for me to take advantage of the ignorance frequent target practice, I perceived that he and discouragement of my fellow toilers, meant that it should amount to something. when I believe I could sometime solve the One of his most intimate friends was Sen­ ore.?" The question became actually disturb­ ator Lodge of Massachusetts, and I suspect ing when he had won the love of a fine that an invitation that I received to dine at yvoman. Lodge's house came at Roosevelt's sugges­ I called this three-part novelette "Witches' tion. Lodge had the calm grace of an intellec­ Gold" but Bok, who liked the story, asked tual aristocrat, but was a very able politician me to leave off the first part of it and call it and parliamentarian, as some of his bluster­ "The Spirit of Sweetwater". This I did and ing colleagues discovered. it proved to be one of the most successful of He was a writer as well as a scholar, and all my novelettes and led Bok to ask for more. was said to own one of the finest private li­ Later this story was published by Double- braries in Washington. As I entered, it that day, McClure and Company and was success­ night, it gave me very high respect for its ful-—as my successes went—and later still owner. It was a. working library. It suggested I restored the first part and pubUshed it un­ the historian and essayist. It was spacious, der its original title, Witches' Gold. Howells with chairs and lights which' invited one to

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 204 THE BOOKMAN for APRIL & MAY I93O read, a refuge from all the tumults of business One of the most notable men with whom I and politics. talked in Washington was John Hay, who The guests that night were few: Brooks lived in a noble mansion across the square Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and myself. The from the White House. He was a small man, talk at the table was good, but my most vivid dapper in dress and cultivated in speech, a memory is of the heckling to which I was person of great dignity, admittedly a very subjected by Roosevelt after dinner. able diplomat and statesman. After explaining that I had enjoyed an ex­ He received me most genially and related ceptional opportunity to study the West and some pleasing stories of Grant, whom he had South, Roosevelt began to question me for seen during the war and afterward. He was the benefit of Lodge and Adams whom he distinctly literary in his speech and interests, called "you Easterners" ranking himself with and made a very delightful host. At the end me as a Westerner. "I am of the short-grass of half an hour's talk he said, "I njust go up country; Garland is of the prairie lands." to the Army and Navy Club. Perhaps you'll These men listened to me, I don't know walk with me". why, while I told them what the West was I was glad of the opportunity and as we complaining about. At Roosevelt's repeated walked along he confided his great regret urging to speak my mind freely, I said my that he had never been able to follow out his say and he applauded me. I asked them how ambition to be a writer. He spoke of his share they could expect the farmers, two thousand in the Lincoln biography, and asked me if I miles from the seashore, to take an interest had seen Nicolay, intimating that more peo­ in shipping or the building up of the navy. ple knew of his Pike County ballads than of "Theoretically they are all patriotic but their his work as historian. We talked of Howells interests are not all yours." and I was glad to have him speak so warmly Then Adams took the floor. He had a of his work. Altogether I made the ac­ theory that the equatorial zone of the earth' quaintance of the literary John Hay, rather was the furnace into which for a million than the statesman and diplomat. years the weaker races of the world had been I found Nicolay living in a modest house crowded and consumed. In the north temper­ on Capitol Hill, surrounded by books, very ate zones men came to greatest power as plainly a working historian. He was a coun­ warriors as well as food producers. Nothing tryman in tone and manner, but scholarly in worth while ever came out of the equatorial a non-literary way. He had little to tell me belt, he asserted, and just what its bearings of Grant, however, and made upon me the were he did not say, but I recall that in all impression of an man forgotten—one who he said he was the unrelenting pessimist in had had a tremendous opportunity but had tone as well as in words; the scholar, the man not been able to make the most of it. of secure position, the autocrat, but ridden by a remorseless theory. Roosevelt appeared to enjoy this exquisitely LXI phrased diatribe against God and civilization. In the autumn of 1871, when I was eleven No doubt he had heard something like it years of age, my father brought back from the from Adams before, but if he had not, he county town one day a copy of a little month­ was too soundly the optimist to be disturbed ly magazine called Hearth and Home, which by it. He did not smile easily, but he turned had in it the beginning of a story which a humorous look on me now and again as if marks an epoch in American fiction as it to warn me not to take the savage philoso­ marked an epoch in my own literary life. pher too seriously. This story was The Hoosier Schoolmaster.

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Up to this time I had beHeved, as children published in book covers in French, German naturally do, that literature was concerned and Danish and perhaps other tongues. This with something far off and romantic. The copy has all the original crudities, exuberances stories I was reading concerned themselves and violations of artistic canons that have helped either with Indians and trappers in the far to give the book a sale of naore than a hundred West, or with dukes and duchesses in ances­ thousand in the United States. tral castles. The Hoosier Schoolmaster was These facts are set down here for my good my first realization that stories could be writ­ friend, Mr. Hamlin Garland, with the sincere ten of people very like my father's friends and regards of _ _ ' neighbors. I had the feeling that if I mounted ° EDWARD EGGLESTON. my pony and rode'away to the east I might A second visit to him at his home added conceivably pass the door of Old Man Mean's to my liking for him. I enjoyed his hearty, cabin, and the schoolhouse iri which Ralph mellow and gracious personality. We fell at Hartsock. was a teacher, or catch a glimpse once, quite naturally, into a discussion of his of little Sharkie coming down the road to Hoosier Schoolmaster, the inception of which school. The fact that thereafter this maga­ was of interest to me historically. He told zine was on arrival a bone of contention be­ me that it was written after he left the min­ tween my sister and myself proved its power istry and while he was editing Hearth and to interest. Home in Chicago. "It was written to fill the In the years which followed I read every columns of the magazine," he admitted with new book which came from the pen of Ed­ humorous inflection. "I had no idea of its ward Eggleston, but I had no expectation of value to my readers. As it went on the inter­ meeting him. Now here he was, only a few est in it grew. I was born in Vevay and grew blocks away. to manhood there, but only part of my liter­ ary material relates to that period of my life. I found him a big hearty man, gray of hair, The Mystery of Metropolisville is based upon leonine of head and ruddy of complexion. my life in southern Minnesota, where I went His laugh was frank and his manner cordial. for my health. In those days Minnesota was He gave me some valuable reminiscences supposed to be a place of healing airs and concerning Grant. waters—a place to which doctors sent their He was a tremendous talker—but a talker hopeless cases. All my writing was done after who had something to say. So well stored I left the backwoods and most of it after I was his mind that a word sufficed to set in came to New York. I realized that I was not motion the vast fund of his learning. giving my material the best form but my In my copy of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, intent was to do what the Dutch painters had a copy of the first edition with all of its atro­ done, paint the homely and grotesque men cious illustrations, he wrote the following and women I knew, in the most artistic man-, lines: ner possible. I was breaking new ground. It This story was published in Hearth and was an attempt at the right thing." Home in October, November and December of The effect of his work on American fiction 1871 and in book form, December 15. It sold cannot be overestimated. And yet there was about ten thousand copies the first six months a time when Indiana did not honor him. I and about ten thousand in each of the two fol­ am not sure that his pictures of backwoods lowing half-years. It was pirated and sold in England in an edition of ten thousand copies, life are not held by many people to be cari­ and has since been reprinted there with no profit catures even today, and yet at a dinner to to the author. Madame Blanc rendered it into Booth Tarkington at the Lotus Club some French for the Revue des Deux Mondes. It was years ago when I said, in making my speech,

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 206 THE BOOKMAN for APRIL & MAY I93O "Edward Eggleston is the father of us all", Flesch, sauntering along one of the Capitol Tarkington, looking up at me, said heartily, vvalks with a pretty girl, and we had a few ' "You are entirely right". minutes talk together. He told me that Alice My Life of Grant was now so nearly fin­ Fletcher (who was making a book of Omaha ished that I felt free to begin a work I had songs) wanted to see me and gave me her long meditated. I began to dictate to my sten­ address. There was not a trace of Omaha in ographer a rough outline of the life I had led his speech, on the contrary his diction was as a boy in Wisconsin and Iowa. Each morn­ notable for its succinctness, definiteness and ing was spent at this task. In my walks about' clarity, and as he walked away I thought, the suburbs or in the parks, I was constantly "There is the subject for a novel. Think of reminded of scenes of long ago. The keen, that man's derivation and his psychological harsh wind, sheep feeding on sunny slopes, inheritances. What a chance for some man the frogs beginning to croak, all brought spir­ or woman to discover his real character, to itual refreshment, clearing my brain of library unlock his psychologic closets, to discover his dust and drowning out the rumors of war. loves and hates". The manuscript I produced was rough and The following evening I met him again, shapeless, but it contained many of the es­ in the home of his patron saint, Alice Fletch­ sentials of our pioneer life. er. Miss Fletcher sang some of the plaintive songs she had collected whilst Peter accom­ panied her on the flute. The effect was melo­ LXII dious, but gave, in some cases, only a weak One evening at one of the "literary eve­ dilution of the actual songs as I had heard nings" which Major Powell arranged at his them sung. As MacDowell had said, in trans­ home, I met Dr. Edward Everett Hale, whom posing them to the conventional scale for the I had not seen for ten years. He was sadly piano Miss Fletcher had stripped them of aged but greeted me in a bluff yet cordial their fire and speed and savage rhythm.' tone. He was staying in Washington as Nevertheless she had done a useful work in Chaplain of the Senate. He still wore a wide collecting them. Western hat and was a most noticeable figure James Lane Allen had a home in Wash­ as he walked about the city. ington in 1898, and in my diary I find a rec­ He counted himself a man of letters, al­ ord of meeting him. ' He is big and blond, though essentially the teacher and preacher, six feet and more in height, muscular and and enjoyed the society of those who wrote. deep chested. He looks like a serious-minded He and Major Powell made a most pic­ young physician. His voice is soft and his turesque pair. The major, a short, one-armed, words well chosen. Under his softness, how­ bewhiskered man, looked up into Hale's face ever lies a very rigid and well-developed with a quizzical squinting glance, as though theory of fictional art. He can become argu­ puzzled by his towering visitor's greeting. mentative and dogmatic on occasion. . . . Abrupt, almost explosive of speech, yet gentle, He and John Fox are the leading represen­ the major was a great figure in Washington. tatives of Kentucky aiithorship, although Fox He had been an engineer under Grant at is Northern in his relationship." Vicksburg. He had been the first to explore The longer I stayed in Washington the the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and he more I marveled over its failure as a literary was head of the Ethnological Bureau of the center. It seemed an ideal place in which to Smithsonian Institution. write. Its clear air, its leisurely movement, its A day or two later I met one of Powell's beauty of buildings and streets, its quiet, assistants, an Omaha, Indian called Peter La made it an almost- ideal city for authors. Yet

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED ROADSIDE MEETINGS OF A LITERARY NOMAD hf HAMLIN GARLAND 2O7 only a few could be found, and they, like Telegraph Trail and for seventy-eight days myself, were transient guests. The lure of struggled through the mud and rocks of end­ New York was all embracing. less forests. High in the mountains we got Among the writers resident in Washing­ beyond any trail. Travelling alone we found ton at this time none was more exotic than our way across the tundra of the Alpine Charles Warren Stoddard, a Californian and Meadows by "the lay of the land". author of South Sea Idyls. An invalid, he It was not a dangerous journey biit it was complained of the cold and damp of the city not a pleasant one. It rained almost every day and of his overheated apartment. He was a in the Skeena valley. We camped in the rain, fine-featured gray-haired man of sixty, with cooked in the rain, saddled in the rain and something notably distinguished in manner rode in the rain, while the wet willows and speech. Tender and wistful at times, he sloshed millions of tons of water upon us. was withal a man of power and imagination. • After some eighty days of this wearing Dreaming of his beloved Islands he had not progress, with other bands of gold seekers, we been able to make a home in Washington. came down to the Third Fork of the Stikine As professor of literature at a Catholic uni­ River, ragged, hungry and discouraged, too versity he lectured only three times a week, late'in the season to cross the divide between and yet he bitterly declared it to be a grind. the Stikine and the Hootalinqua, as we had "I do it only because I must pay my board," planned to do. After resting for several weeks he admitted. at Glenora, I decided that to attempt to raft All about his study were rows of auto­ down the Yukon would be to "freeze in" graphed books, shells from the South Seas, ^ somewhere on the shores, and as the news braided mats, embroidered cloths and images. from my mother was not reassuring, I turned Mingled with these primitive objects were the outfit over to my partner, reserving only carven figures of Christ,, sadly painted Ma­ my horse, Ladrone, a perfect saddler, Arabian donnas, and other Catholic emblems. How in his markings and intelligence. Purchasing much these symbols meant to him I could a place for him as well as for myself, I em­ not discover, but they did not lighten his sor­ barked on the last Hudson Bay trading boat, rows. He suggested a lion suffering through and started for the coast with intent to catch no fault of his own, patient, yet breaking a steamer for Seattle. While waiting at Wran- forth occasionally in growls of pain. gell the news of a new gold rush from Skag- way into the Atlin Lake country reached me and to take a hand in it seemed necessary to LXIII complete my education. Leaving my horse in pasture, I sailed for Skagway on a small For several years I had been going to the boat densely crowded with other excited pros- Rockies but they were no longer wild enough . pectors. to suit me; I wished to explore the primitive. Believing this to be the last opportunity to Outfitting again in Skagway, I crossed the share in a Westward march in any degree infamous White Pass, a grave and grievous comparable to that which my ancestors had way, and took passage on a scow from Lake made across the Alleghany Mountains, I set Bennett to Tagish Water, where we portaged forth into the North. over to Atlin Lake. From that point I pros­ Babcock met me at Ashcroft and we at pected the neighboring streams and finally once outfitted a train of pack ponies and two located a placer claim. Late in September I saddle horses and started for Quenelle on the packed my kit, turned my mine over to an­ Fraser. At Fraser with an additional pack other man, an Englishman, and left for the animal we entered upon the almost forgotten coast and home.

PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED 208 THE BOOKMAN for APRIL & MAY I93O From Lake Bennett I walked thirty-five who handed me a package from the post- miles in less than ten hours over a high pass office. It was a copy of my Life of Grant, the through fog and rain and down to Dyea har­ first one I had seen. I opened it, and glanced bor. This was one of the most laborious days through it, while my father waited impa­ I ever endured. During the last two hours tiently for me. Then putting it on the top of I waded an icy stream in the dark, my legs a post I returned to my spade! so numb with cold and weariness that I could In the same mail came a letter from John not feel the ground beneath "my feet. At ten Phillips saying "I have read your bundle of o'clock I reached a hotel, a fire and some Klondike poems and I like them so well that hot soup! I intend to print several pages of them in the At Seattle I locked Ladrone in a car with November number". a supply of hay and water, and set out over This gave me more pleasure than the pub­ the range on the Northern Pacific Railway, lication of any prose would have done, for reaching the family homestead at West Salem, these lines had been written on the trail, in Wisconsin, on the twenty-first of September. the saddle, or at the camp fire. Whatever else Three days after my return, while helping they lacked, they were direct reactions from my father build a fence to form a pasture for the environment they claimed to depict. my horse, I was approached by a neighbor. (To be continued)

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FICTION

STEPHEN ESCOTT by Ludwig Lewisohn central, as pervasive"; the "animal" side of his (HARPERS. $2.50) love was "imperious"; and since the .six stories have "unity" only "from the fact that MR. LEWISOHN'S Stephen Escott is an artistic they all center about the play of the repro­ and dramatic externalization of problems of ductive instinct", one suspects at times that sex and marriage in relation to modern Stephen is somewhat oblivious, in his plea economic" life, the modern individualistic for complete living, of the multitude of dis­ woman, winds of radical doctrine, and in­ tinctly human satisfactions—somewhat ob­ herited inhibitions. A divorce lawyer, Stephen livious, in his obsession with sex, of the Escott, sketches six sorts of love, typical of ideal of human variety and proportioriate- various strata of American life and thought. ness. Even Byron, who was not a New Eng­ Three marriages suggest the evil of various land Puritan, concluded that "man's love levels of inhibition and repression, as em­ is of man's life a thing apart". Stephen, who bodied in Stephen's father, Stephen, and Clay­ "has a Jewish heart", summarizes his ex­ ton. Stephen's experience with Beatrice perience with Dorothy as representative of suggests the futility of rnere animalism, and what happens "daily in a thousand breasts"; Paul Glover's murder of his "emancipated" while he admits "a division and a schism" wife's lover is supposed to indicate the hollow- in the human soul, he believes that "to inter­ ness and peril of Greenwich Village radical­ pret that division as one between a higher ism. Through the murky gloom of these and a lower, a nobler and a baser, nature . . . five' stories, as a sort of beacon of peace, is . . . an endless and horrible futility". He shines the love of David and Ruth, true to • adopts the romantic notion of naturally good the ancient Hebrew tradition. As a novel the instincts thwarted by civilization. "Our civ­ book is not without a certain lurid power de­ ilization was built upon wrong principles pendent upon its frankness, imagery and and upon a mistaken view of our inevitable swiftness. Most interesting is Paul Glover's nature, and . . . critical observation of both introspective analysis of the fine nuances of the self and the world will shift the center eniotion which led to the murder. But the of conflict from the soul to the rules by novelistic structure, eflective as it is, is pri­ which we are supposed to live, and instead marily a means of presenting ideas; and it is of pronouncing the former sinful, stigmatize with these that we are mainly concerned. the latter as unjust and wrong." Fundamentally, I venture to think that Certainly this endeavor of a character with Stephen's philosophy of sex is a unique con­ "a Jewish heart", reverencing the great fusion of modern sophistry, reminiscent of Hebrew tradition, to "shift the center of Freud, and of sound wisdom reminiscent of conflict", to deny "a higher and a lower" self, the Hebrew tradition. One wonders occasion­ contrasts oddly enough with the wisdom of ally whether, in revolting from a repressive another Jew who saw life as an inner con­ Puritan oncrsidedness Stephen is not in dan­ flict between the "law of the members" and ger of embracing another sort of one-sided- the "law of the spirit". It is precisely here, ness no less extreme. Stephen sees sex "as it seems to me, that the confusion of thought

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