NOTES FROM THE LIBRARY

A NOVEL and miss that Aristotelian verisimili- tude which is higher than actual histor- THE BRIDE AND THE PENNANT. By ical truth, or they become unbearably Frank L. Chance. With a preface by "lit'ry" and serve up the pure con- Charles A. Comiskey, President of ventions of prevailing literary fashion. the White Sox. Chicago, Laird and Chance falls into both of these pit- Lee, 1910. falls. The romantic part of his novel Everyone who speaks American has is as dated as the Gibson Girl, the heard of Tinker to Evers to Chance. linen duster, and the chafing dish. The baseball literate know that this The baseball part, on the other hand, was the -play combination of is close to thinly disguised National the of 1909 and 1910. League reality. Older fans remember Frank Chance Here is the plot. Harry Sherman, not only as a great and star pitcher of the University of Chi- hitter but as the of the cago nine, has become ineligible. This Chicago Cubs of those years, then fact is brought home to the reader considered one of the greatest teams ever assembled. Baseball fans with starkly in the first sentence: "He had very good memories indeed will also flunked!" He joins the Chicago Cubs, recall that Chance returned to base- masking as Bears, and learns to be a ball for a brief period as manager of real major leaguer. His Lucile, how- the Red Sox about 1923, at a time ever, appears to become indifferent to when the fortunes of that team were him and even snubs him cruelly. This dismal and they were about to field leads to a decline in his pitching for- some of the most dreadful hooligans tunes. In the final games of the sea- ever seen in . son, with the pennant at stake, he Chance died in 1924 and in 1946 recovers his poise, inspired by the was recognized by the Baseball Hall sight of Lucile in the grandstand of Fame. waving a pennant, and ends in the Few indeed are the persons who Frank Merriwell tradition by striking think of Frank Chance as a writer. out the side and then hitting a pen- The Rutgers University Library, nant-clinching home off Babe through the courtesy of Mr. J. G. E. Adams of the , Hopkins, the well-known Scribner's thinly disguised as Pitcher Adam of editor and book collector, has possessed the Buccaneers. The final strike-out since 1949 Chance's paper-bound nov- was a memorable one, for the batter el, The Bride and the Pennant. was Hans Magner (surely recogniz- Let it be said at once that the able to all readers as Wagner) and the position of Balzac and Flaubert, Dick- final strike was a straight ball over ens and Dostoievsky as masters of the heart of the plate, signaled for the novel is in no way challenged by by none other than Lucile herself, Frank Chance. Amateur writers of which completely crossed up the Na- fiction have a way of falling into one tional League's greatest right-hand or the other of two pitfalls. Either they hitter. stick too closely to actual experience The baseball portions of the nar- RUTGERS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 61 rative make the best reading. There of a cram, and everybody thought you is some good advice to pitchers from had a cinch. I tell you, there is no Three-fingered bucking these faculty guys. If they (here called Black). The disguising want to get you, they'll get you. I'll of as Beavers clinches swear Prexy's got a bet on Michigan once and for all the question of how for this season! Moly Hoses! . . . to pronounce his name. No baseball Why, Northwestern'll beat us!"— fan of whatever age has much diffi- "Cut out the jollying, Tubby," re- culty in recognizing the characters, turned Harry. "I can stand that all but to dispel all doubt the publishers right, but how in the name of the have kindly afforded a key. It is not deuce can I face the pater and the quite complete, and the reviewer can mater? . . . Don't speak of it! Chop point out that Manager McGrabb of it! ... Tubs, I am not going to go the Goliaths is a certain John McGraw back home and tell the mater her little and that his star pitcher Masterson boy is on the pazazz." is to be interpreted as Mathewson! This curious little book is of un- A searching analysis of the latter's doubted interest to the baseball fan or weaknesses as a pitcher is given and to the baseball historian. As literature, may be of interest to old-time fans. it does what the minor works of a Much of the wisest baseball advice period always do: it throws into re- comes from the lips of the lief, as by a process of caricature, the Bowman. This pseudonym is the one conventions and fads of the moment really poetic one in the lot, and stands and becomes thus a kind of sad and of course for Jimmy Archer, a great amusing footnote to Edith Wharton. catcher whose name still appears from CLARENCE E. TURNER time to time on all-time all-American teams. He must have been embarrassed to see himself described in Chance's FRENE AU AND BION prose as "of middle height and rather slender build, with two keen dark PHILIP FRENEAU was an admirer of eyes looking out from between dark Bion, the ancient Greek bucolic poet eyebrows." and philosopher, for almost certainly Except that it is suspiciously un- he contributed a translation of a Bion profane, the baseball dialogue has an "idyllium" to five newspapers, though authentic ring about it. The author's he never included it in his collections. desire to represent baseball as a re- These contributions were made at spectable profession is evident, and widely separated intervals: in The accounts for the enthusiasm with Freeman?s Journal (Philadelphia, Sep- which the college athlete is received tember 29, 1784); The Daily Ad- into the professional ranks. It is ironi- vertiser (New York, December 16, cal that today that particular shoe 1790) ; the National Gazette (Phila- seems to be on the other foot. delphia, October 16, 1793); The If the baseball dialogue rings rea- True American (Trenton, November sonably true, the same can not be said 23, 1822) ; and The Fredonian (New of this conversation in a fraternity Brunswick, N.J., November 28, house : "You certainly put over a peach 1822). Of the first and second, Fre- 62 THE JOURNAL OF THE

neau was a sort of assistant editor, of For if great Jove or Fate would the third the responsible editor, and of stretch our span, the others a contributor. The transla- And give of life a double share tion as it appeared in the National to man, Gazette follows: One part to pleasures and to joy ordain, IF God, or Fate, to man would And vex the other with hard toil give and pain; In two successive states to live; With sweet complacence we The first, in pain and sorrow might then employ pass'd [.] Our hours, for labour still en- In ease, content, and bliss the last, hances joy. I then would rack my anxious But since of life we have but one brain small share, With study, how that state to A pittance scant which daily toils gain, impair, No task too hard, too rough no Why should we waste it in pur- road suit of care ? That led to that serene abode— Why do we labour to augment But since to all impartial our store, heaven The more we gain, still coveting One fleeting life has only given, the more? 'Twere madness, sure, that time Alas, alas! we quite forget that to waste man In search of joys I ne'er can Is a mere mortal, and his life a taste ; span.1 What hope can bloom on life's last stage Freneau differs from Fawkes in the When each delight is pall'd by conclusion, decrying the pursuit of age! pleasure rather than of wealth. The word involved is 'SXySco, whose literal This version may be compared with meaning is happiness or prosperity, but that of Francis Fawkes, who includes which is here used to mean pleasure several lines of an introduction omitted in material wealth. And Freneau gives by Freneau: to Bion a yearning for bliss absent in Fawkes, whose objective interpreta- IDYLLIUM V. tion is supported by Edmonds in a prose rendition: LIFE TO BE ENJOYED. I know not, and 'tis unseemly to If merit only stamps my former labour aught we wot not of. If my lays, poor songs are good, I shall have fame And these alone shall give me out of such things as Fate hath be- deathless praise, stowed upon me already—they will But if ev'n those have lost their be enough; but if they are bad, what bright applause, 1A Complete Edition of the Poets of Why should I labour thus with- Great Britain, Robert Anderson, editor out a cause? (London, 1795), XIII, 214. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 63 boots it me to go toiling on? If we comments, moreover, ignore Bion's men were given, be it of the Son of conclusion, which returns to the pagan Cronus or of fickle Fate, two lives, the view. On a cool appraisal, the Greek one for pleasuring and mirth and the poet—who according to Fawkes and other for toil, then perhaps might one Edmonds was interested, not in im- do the toiling first and get the good mortality, but in another life of pleas- things afterward. But seeing Heaven's ure—appears to be a poor prospect for decree is, man shall live but once, and Christian conversion. But how could that for too brief a while to do all he a romanticist like Freneau dwell on would, then O how long shall we go anything but his possible yearning for thus miserably toiling and moiling, and Heaven? how long shall we lavish our life upon The ascription to Freneau is nearly getting and making, in the consuming certain. The appearance of the same desire for more wealth and yet more ? translation, with similar prose com- Is it that we all forget that we are ments, in five newspapers of which he mortal and Fate hath allotted us so was editor or contributor or both, and brief a span?2 especially in the National Gazette, "By With each insertion, Freneau added Philip Freneau" (of which he was a paragraph of comments, pointing out editor, contributor, and to a large the striking idea that a pagan could degree the writer), with comments be attracted by a Christian conception, obviously as an editorial insert, is con- of doing penance for the reward of vincing enough. The item in The happiness hereafter: True American is signed "R."—part The above lines, in the original, of a pattern of Freneau signatures were written by BION, a celebrated noted by Leary.4 heathen philosopher of Smyrna, in the Interestingly, each insertion ap- lesser Asia, and commonly classed peared near the end of an editorial or among the minor Greek Poets. He is contributory service, as if, weary from very ancient, and not long after the struggles with a recalcitrant world, time of Homer. From many passages Freneau turned to Bion, like him in the fragments in his writings that yearning for a haven of rest. remain it appears he believed that the soul and body died together, that the PHILIP MARSH former could not exist without the or- MIAMI UNIVERSITY ganization of the latter. Yet it is re- 2 J. M. Edmonds, The Greek Bucolic markable, he here declares that if he Poets (London, 1925), pp. 409-411. could persuade himself there was to 3 The True American (Trenton, N.J.), be a future state of happiness to those November 23, 1822. 4 who deserved it, he would think no Lewis Leary, That Rascal Freneau (New Brunswick, N.J., 1941), pp. 355- diligence or pains too much, to be 362, 475-479. Leary mentions the item on partaker of that eternal inheritance. page 445 as appearing in The Fredonian, What a lesson for the professors of stemming from a similar one in The Daily Christianity from the pen of a child Advertiser, apparently missing those in The of nature and heathenism !3 Freemarûs Journal and The True Amer- ican, but noting printings in the National Freneau is inexact as to Bion's time, Gazette, The Boston Gazette (1793), and which is the third century B.c. His The Kentucky Gazette (1797).