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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34313-8.txt b/34313-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c51ed10 --- /dev/null +++ b/34313-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6461 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Literature in the Making, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Literature in the Making + by some of its makers + +Author: Various + +Editor: Joyce Kilmer + +Release Date: November 13, 2010 [EBook #34313] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERATURE IN THE MAKING *** + + + + +Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Suzanne Shell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + LITERATURE IN THE MAKING + BY + SOME OF ITS MAKERS + + PRESENTED BY + JOYCE KILMER + + [Illustration] + + HARPER & BROTHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + + + + + Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers + Printed in the United States of America + Published April, 1917 + + + + + TO + LOUIS BEVIER, PH.D., LITT.D. + AND + LOUIS BEVIER, JR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +_WAR STOPS LITERATURE_ 3 + + WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS + + William Dean Howells, the foremost American novelist of + his generation, was born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, March + 11, 1837. Most of his many novels have been realistic + and sympathetic studies of contemporary American life. + For some years he has written "The Editor's Easy Chair" + in _Harper's Magazine_. He has received honorary + degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Columbia, and + in 1915 the National Institute of Arts and Letters + awarded him its Gold Medal "For distinguished work in + fiction." _The Daughter of the Storage_ and _Years of + My Youth_ are his latest books. + + +_THE JOYS OF THE POOR_ 19 + + KATHLEEN NORRIS + + Kathleen Norris was born in San Francisco, California, + July 16, 1880. She is the wife of Charles Gilman + Norris, himself a writer and the brother of the late + Frank Norris. Among Mrs. Norris's best-known novels are + _Mother_, _The Story of Julia Page_, and _The Heart of + Rachel_. + + +_NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART_ 35 + + BOOTH TARKINGTON + + Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, + July 29, 1869. A prolific and brilliant writer, he has + scored many successes of different types, being the + author of the romantic drama _Monsieur Beaucaire_, and + of many novels dealing with contemporary Middle-Western + life. Recently he has, in _Seventeen_ and the "Penrod" + stories, given his attention to the comedies and + tragedies of American youth. + + +_ROMANTICISM AND AMERICAN HUMOR_ 45 + + MONTAGUE GLASS + + Montague Glass was born at Manchester, England, July + 23, 1877. Coming in his youth to the United States, he + brought into American fiction a new type--that of the + metropolitan Jewish-American business man. His _Potash + and Perlmutter_ and _Abe and Mawruss_ have given him a + European as well as an American reputation. + + +_THE "MOVIES" BENEFIT LITERATURE_ 63 + + REX BEACH + + Rex Beach was born at Atwood, Michigan, September 1, + 1877. His novels deal chiefly with the West and the + North, and his favorite theme is adventurous life in + the open. Among his best-known books are _The + Spoilers_, _The Silver Horde_, and _Rainbow's End_. + + +_WHAT IS GENIUS?_ 75 + + ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + Robert W. Chambers was born in Brooklyn, New York, May + 26, 1865. One of the most widely read writers of his + time, he has given his attention chiefly to English and + American society, making it the theme of a large number + of novels, among which may be mentioned _The Fighting + Chance_, _Japonette_, and _Athalie_. + + +_DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY_ 89 + + JAMES LANE ALLEN + + James Lane Allen was born near Lexington, Kentucky, in + 1849. In 1886 he gave up his profession of teaching to + devote his attention to literature. Many of his novels + deal with the South. Of them perhaps _The Kentucky + Cardinal_ and _The Choir Invisible_ are best known. + + +_SOME HARMFUL INFLUENCES_ 101 + + HARRY LEON WILSON + + Harry Leon Wilson was born in Oregon, Illinois, May 1, + 1867. He was co-author with Booth Tarkington of _The + Man from Home_, and his _Bunker Bean_ and _Ruggles of + Red Gap_ have given him a great reputation for + irresistible and peculiarly American humor. + + +_THE PASSING OF THE SNOB_ 119 + + EDWARD S. MARTIN + + Edward Sandford Martin was born in Willowbrook, Owasco, + New York, January 2, 1856. His keen yet sympathetic + observation of modern life finds expression in essays, + many of which have been used editorially in Life. + Several volumes of his essays have been published, + among which may be mentioned _The Luxury of Children, + and Some Other Luxuries_ and _Reflections of a + Beginning Husband_. + + +_COMMERCIALIZING THE SEX INSTINCT_ 131 + + ROBERT HERRICK + + Robert Herrick was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, + April 26, 1868. He has been until recently a professor + at the University of Chicago. He is a critic and a + writer of realistic novels. _The Web of Life_, _The + Common Lot_, _Together_, and _Clark's Field_ are novels + that show Mr. Herrick's questioning attitude toward + some modern social institutions. + + +_SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS_ 145 + + ARTHUR GUITERMAN + + Arthur Guiterman was born of American parents in + Vienna, Austria, November 28, 1871. He is a writer of + deft and humorous light verse, of which a volume was + recently published under the title _The Laughing Muse_. + He contributes a weekly rhymed review to _Life_. + + +_MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION_ 157 + + GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON + + George Barr McCutcheon was born on a farm in Tippecanoe + County, Indiana, July 26, 1866. He is a short-story + writer and novelist, devoting himself chiefly to tales + of adventure. _Beverley of Graustark_ and the volumes + that succeeded it have gained him many admirers among + lovers of romance. + + +_BUSINESS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ART_ 169 + + FRANK H. SPEARMAN + + Frank H. Spearman was born at Buffalo, New York, + September 6, 1859. He is known both as a short-story + writer and a writer of articles on economic topics. His + novels are founded chiefly on themes dealing with the + great industrial enterprises of the West, especially + the railroads. The best known of these are _The + Daughter of a Magnate_ and _The Strategy of Great + Railroads_. + + +_THE NOVEL MUST GO_ 187 + + WILL N. HARBEN + + Will N. Harben, who was born in Dalton, Georgia, July + 5, 1858, began his career in business in the South. His + entrance into literature began with the assistant + editorship of the _Youth's Companion_. He had gained a + distinctive place as an interpreter of phases of + Southern life in the company which includes Cable, + Harris, and Johnston. His novels include _Pole Baker_, + _Ann Boyd_, _Second Choice_, and many others. + + +_LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGES_ 199 + + JOHN ERSKINE + + John Erskine was born in New York City, October 5, + 1879. He is Adjunct Professor of English at Columbia + University, the author of many text-books and critical + works, of _Actæon and Other Poems_ and of _The Moral + Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays_. + + +_CITY LIFE VERSUS LITERATURE_ 213 + + JOHN BURROUGHS + + John Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New York, April 3, + 1837. He taught school in his early years, and held for + a time a clerkship in the United States Treasury. Since + 1874 he has devoted himself to literature and fruit + culture. Among his well-known "Nature" books may be + noted _Wake Robin_, _Bird and Bough_, and _Camping and + Tramping with Roosevelt_. + + +_"EVASIVE IDEALISM" IN LITERATURE_ 229 + + ELLEN GLASGOW + + Ellen Glasgow was born in Richmond, Virginia, April 22, + 1874. Her novels, among which may be mentioned _The + Voice of the People_, _The Romance of a Plain Man_, and + _Life and Gabriella_, deal chiefly with social and + psychological problems, and their scenes are for the + most part in the southern part of the United States. + + +_"CHOCOLATE FUDGE" IN THE MAGAZINE_ 241 + + FANNIE HURST + + Fannie Hurst was born in St. Louis, October 19, 1889. + She has served as a saleswoman and as a waitress and + crossed the Atlantic in the steerage to get material + for her short stories of the life of the working-woman, + selections of which have been published with the titles + _Just Around the Corner_ and _Every Soul Hath Its + Song_. + + +_THE NEW SPIRIT IN POETRY_ 253 + + AMY LOWELL + + Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, + February 9, 1874. She is prominently identified with + _vers libre_, _imagisme_, and other ultra-modern poetic + tendencies. She has published a volume of essays on + modern French poetry and three books of poems, of + which _Men, Women, and Ghosts_ is the most recent. + + +_A NEW DEFINITION OF POETRY_ 265 + + EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON + + Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine, + December 22, 1869. He has written plays, but is chiefly + known for his poems, most of them studies of character. + His most recent volume is _Merlin: A Poem_. + + +_LET POETRY BE FREE_ 277 + + JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY + + Josephine Preston Peabody was born in New York City. + She won the Stratford-on-Avon Prize for her poetic + drama _The Piper_. She has published many books of + verse, one of which, called _Harvest Moon_, deals + chiefly with woman's tragic share in the Great War. She + is the wife of Prof. Lionel Simeon Marks of Harvard. + + +_THE HERESY OF SUPERMANISM_ 289 + + CHARLES RANN KENNEDY + + Charles Rann Kennedy was born at Derby, England, + February 14, 1871. His plays, dealing with social and + religious questions, include _The Servant in the + House_, _The Terrible Meek_, _The Idol-Breakers_, and + _The Rib of the Man_, his latest work. + + +_THE MASQUE AND DEMOCRACY_ 305 + + PERCY MACKAYE + + Percy MacKaye was born in New York City, March 16, + 1875. He has written many poems and plays, and has been + especially identified with the production of community + pageants and masques, having written and directed the + St. Louis Civic Masque in 1914, and the Shakespeare + Masque in New York City in 1916. Among his published + works may be mentioned _The Scarecrow_, _Jeanne d'Arc_, + _Sappho and Phaon_ and _Anti-Matrimony_ (plays) and + _Uriel and Other Poems_. + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +This book is an effort to bridge the gulf between literary theory and +literary practice. In these days of specialization it is more than ever +true that the man who lectures and writes about the craft of writing +seldom has the time or the inclination to show, by actual work, that he +can apply his principles. On the other hand, the successful novelist, +poet, or playwright devotes himself to his craft and seldom attempts to +analyze and display the methods by which he obtains his effect, or even +to state his opinion on matters intellectual and æsthetic. + +Now, the professor of English and the literary critic are valuable +members of society, and the development of literature owes much to their +counsel and guardianship. But there is a special significance in the +opinion which the writer holds concerning his own trade, in the advice +which he bases upon his own experience, in the theory of life and art +which he has formulated for himself. + +Therefore I have spent considerable time in talking with some of the +most widely read authors of our day, and in obtaining from them frank +and informal statements of their points of view. I have purposely +refrained from confining myself to writers of any one school or type of +mind--the dean of American letters and the most advanced of our newest +poetical anarchists alike are represented in these pages. The authors +have talked freely, realizing that this was an opportunity to set forth +their views definitely and comprehensively. They have not the time to +write or lecture about their art, but they are willing to talk about it. + +They knew that through me they spoke, in the first place, to the great +army of readers of their books who have a natural and pleasing curiosity +concerning the personality of the men and women who devote their lives +to providing them with entertainment, and, in some cases, instruction. +They knew that through me they spoke, in the second place, to all the +literary apprentices of the country, who look eagerly for precept and +example to those who have won fame by the delightful labor of writing. +They knew that through me they spoke, in the third place, to critics and +students of literature of our own generation and, perhaps, of those that +shall come after us. How eagerly would we read, for instance, an +interview with Francis Bacon on the question of the authorship of +Shakespeare's plays, or an interview with Oliver Goldsmith in which he +gave his real opinion of Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and Boswell! A century or +so from now, some of the writers who in this book talk to the world may +be the objects of curiosity as great. + +The writers who have talked with me received me with courtesy, gave me +freely of their time and thought, and showed a sincere desire for the +furtherance of the purpose of this book. To them, accordingly, I tender +my gratitude for anything in these pages which the reader may find of +interest or of value. Their explanations of their literary creeds and +practices were furnished in the first instance for the _New York Times_, +to which I desire to express my acknowledgments. + + JOYCE KILMER. + + + + +LITERATURE IN THE MAKING + + + + +_WAR STOPS LITERATURE_ + +WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS + + +War stops literature. This is the belief of a man who for more than a +quarter of a century has been in the front rank of the world's +novelists, who wrote _The Rise of Silas Lapham_ and _A Modern Instance_ +and nearly a hundred other sympathetic interpretations of American life. + +Mr. William Dean Howells was the third writer to whom was put the +question, "What effect will the Great War have on literature?" And he +was the first to give a direct answer. + +A famous French dramatist replied: "I am not a prophet. I have enough to +do to understand the present and the past; I cannot concern myself with +the future." A famous English short-story writer said, "The war has +already inspired some splendid poetry; it may also inspire great plays +and novels, but, of course, we cannot tell as yet." + +But Mr. Howells said, quite simply, "War stops literature." He said it +as unemotionally as if he were stating a familiar axiom. + +He does not consider it an axiom, however, for he supplied proof. + +"I have never believed," he said, "that great events produced great +literature. They seldom call forth the great creative powers of man. In +poetry it is not the poems of occasion that endure, but the poems that +have come into being independently, not as the result of momentous +happenings. + +"This war does not furnish the poet, the novelist, and the dramatist +with the material of literature. For instance, the Germans, as every one +will admit, have shown extraordinary valor. But we do not think of +celebrating that valor in poetry; it does not thrill the modern writers +as such valor thrilled the writers of bygone centuries. When we think of +the valor of the Germans, our emotion is not admiration but pity. + +"And the reason for this is that fighting is no longer our ideal. +Fighting was not a great ideal, and therefore it is no longer our ideal. +All that old material of literature--the clashing of swords, the thunder +of shot and shell, the great clouds of smoke, the blood and fury--all +this has gone out from literature. It is an anachronism." + +"But the American Civil War produced literature, did it not?" I asked. + +"What great literature did it produce?" asked Mr. Howells in turn. "As I +look back over my life and recall to mind the great number of books that +the Civil War inspired I find that I am thinking of things that the +American people have forgotten. They did not become literature, these +poems and stories that came in such quantities and seemed so important +in the sixties. + +"There were the novels of J. W. De Forest, for instance. They were well +written, they were interesting, they described some phases of the Civil +War truthfully and vividly. We read them when they were written--but you +probably have never heard of them. No one reads them now. They were +literature, but that about which they were written has ceased to be of +literary interest. + +"Of course, the Civil War, because of its peculiar nature, was followed +by an expansion, intellectual as well as social and economic. And this +expansion undoubtedly had its beneficial effect on literature. But the +Civil War itself did not have, could not have, literary expression. + +"Of all the writings which the Civil War directly inspired I can think +of only one that has endured to be called literature. That is Lowell's +'Commemoration Ode.' + +"War stops literature. It is an upheaval of civilization, a return to +barbarism; it means death to all the arts. Even the preparation for war +stops literature. It stopped it in Germany years ago. A little anecdote +is significant. + +"I was in Florence about 1883, long after the Franco-Prussian War, and +there I met the editor of a great German literary weekly--I will not +tell you its name or his. He was a man of refinement and education, and +I have not forgotten his great kindness to my own fiction. One day I +asked him about the German novelists of the day. + +"He said: 'There are no longer any German novelists worthy of the name. +Our new ideal has stopped all that. Militarism is our new ideal--the +ideal of Duty--and it has killed our imagination. So the German novel is +dead.'" + +"Why is it, then," I asked, "that Russia, a nation of militaristic +ideals, has produced so many great novels during the past century?" + +"Russia is not Germany," answered the man who taught Americans to read +Turgenieff. "The people of Russia are not militaristic as the people of +Germany are militaristic. In Germany war has for a generation been the +chief idea of every one. The nation has had a militaristic obsession. +And this, naturally, has stifled the imagination. + +"But in Russia nothing of the sort has happened. Whatever the designs of +the ruling classes may be, the people of Russia keep their simplicity, +their large intellectuality and spirituality. And, therefore, their +imagination and other great intellectual and spiritual gifts find +expression in their great novels and plays. + +"I well remember how the Russian novelists impressed me when I was a +young man. They opened to me what seemed to be a new world--and it was +only the real world. There is Tcheckoff--have you read his _Orchard_? +What life, what color, what beauty of truth are in that book! + +"Then there is Turgenieff--how grateful I am for his books! It must be +thirty years since I first read him. Thomas Sargent Perry, of Boston, a +man of the greatest culture, was almost the first American to read +Turgenieff. Stedman read Turgenieff in those days, too. Soon all of the +younger writers were reading him. + +"I remember very well a dinner at Whitelaw Reid's house in Lexington +Avenue, when some of us young men were enthusiastic over the Russian +novel, and the author we mentioned most frequently was Turgenieff. + +"Dr. J. G. Holland, the poet who edited _The Century_, lived across the +street from Mr. Reid, and during the evening he came over and joined us. +He listened to us for a long time in silence, hardly speaking a word. +When he rose to go, he said: 'I have been listening to the conversation +of these young men for over an hour. They have been talking about books. +And I have never before heard the names of any of the authors they have +mentioned.'" + +"Were those the days," I asked, "in which you first read Tolstoy?" + +"That was long before the time," answered Mr. Howells. "Tolstoy +afterward meant everything to me--his philosophy as well as his +art--far more than Turgenieff. Tolstoy did not love all his writing. +He loved the thing that he wrote about, the thing that he lived and +taught--equality. And equality is the best thing in the world. It +is the thing for which the Best of Men lived and died. + +"I never met Tolstoy," said Mr. Howells. "But I once sent him a message +of appreciation after he had sent a message to me. Tolstoy was great in +the way he wrote as well as in what he wrote. Tolstoy's force is a moral +force. His great art is as simple as nature." + +"Do you think that the Russian novelists have influenced your work?" I +asked. + +"I think," Mr. Howells replied, "that I had determined what I was to do +before I read any Russian novels. I first thought that it was necessary +to write only about things that I knew had already been written about. +Certain things had already been in books; therefore, I thought, they +legitimately were literary subjects and I might write about them. + +"But soon I knew that this idea was wrong, that I must get my material, +not out of books, but out of life. And I also knew that it was not +necessary for me to look at life through English spectacles. Most of our +writers had been looking at life through English spectacles; they had +been closely following in the footsteps of English novelists. I saw +that around me were the materials for my work. I saw around me +life--wholesome, natural, human. + +"I saw a young, free, energetic society. I saw a society in which +love--the greatest and most beautiful thing in the world--was innocent; +a society in which the relation between man and woman was simple and +pure. Here, I thought, are the materials for novels. Why should I go +back to the people of bygone ages and of lands not my own?" + +"Do you think," I asked, "that romanticism has lost its hold on the +novelists?" + +Mr. Howells smiled. "When realism," he said, "is once in a novelist's +blood he never can degenerate into romanticism. Romanticism is no longer +a literary force among English-speaking authors. Romanticism belongs to +the days in which war was an aim, an ideal, instead of a tragic +accident. It is something foreign to us. And literature must be native +to the soil, affected, of course, by the culture of other lands and +ages, but essentially of the people of the land and time in which it is +produced. Realism is the material of democracy. And no great literature +or art can arise outside of the democracy." + +Tolstoy was mentioned again, and Mr. Howells was asked if he did not +think that the Russian novelist's custom of devoting a part of every day +to work that was not literary showed that all writers would be better +off if they were obliged to make a living in some other way than by +writing. Mr. Howells gave his answer with considerable vigor. His calm, +blue eyes lost something of their kindliness, and his lips were +compressed into a straight, thin line before he said: + +"I certainly do not think so. The artist in letters or in lines should +have leisure in which to perform his valuable service to society. The +history of literature is full of heartbreaking instances of writers +whose productive careers were retarded by their inability to earn a +living at their chosen profession. The belief that poverty helps a +writer is stupid and wrong. Necessity is not and never has been an +incentive. Poverty is not and never has been an incentive. Writers and +other creative artists are hindered, not helped, by lack of leisure. + +"I remember my own early experiences, and I know that my writing +suffered very much because I could not devote all my time to it. I had +to spend ten hours in drudgery for every two that I spent on my real +work. The fact that authors who have given the world things that it +treasures are forced to live in a state of anxiety over their finances +is lamentable. This anxiety cannot but have a restrictive influence on +literature. It is not want, but the fear of want, that kills." + +"Still, in spite of their precarious financial condition, modern authors +are doing good work, are they not?" I asked. + +"Certainly they are," answered Mr. Howells, "the novelists especially. +There is Robert Herrick, for example. His novels are interesting +stories, and they also are faithful reflections of American life. Will +Harben's work is admirable. It has splendid realism and fine humor. +Perhaps one thing that has kept it, so far, from an appreciation so +general as it will one day receive, is the fact that it deals, for the +most part, with one special locality, a certain part of Georgia. + +"And in Spain--what excellent novelists they have there and have had for +a long time! The realistic movement reached Spain long before it reached +England and the United States. In fact, English-speaking countries were +the last to accept it. I have taken great pleasure in the works of +Armando Valdés. Then there are Pérez Galdós and Emilia Pardo Bazián, and +that priest who wrote a realistic novel about Madrid society. All these +novelists are realists, and realists of power. + +"Then there are the great Scandinavians. I hope that I may some time +attempt to express a little of my gratitude for the pleasure that +Björnson's works have given me." + +I asked, "What do you think of contemporary poetry?" + +"I admired chiefly that of Thomas Hardy," said Mr. Howells. "His poems +have force and actuality and music and charm. Masefield I like, with +reservations. Three modern poets who give me great pleasure are Thomas +Hardy, William Watson, and Charles Hanson Towne. The first one of Mr. +Towne's poems that I read was "Manhattan." I have not forgotten the +truth of that poetic interpretation of New York. His poems are beautiful +and they are full of humanity. In his latest book there is a poem called +'A Ballad of Shame and Dread' that moved me deeply. It is a slight +thing, but it is wonderfully powerful. Like all of Towne's poetry, it is +warm with human sympathy." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that the great social problems of the day, the +feminine unrest, for instance, are finding their expression in +literature?" + +"No," said Mr. Howells, "I cannot call to mind any adequate literary +expression of the woman movement. Perhaps this is because the women who +know most about it and feel it most strongly are not writers. The best +things that have been said about woman suffrage in our time have been +said by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She has written the noblest satire +since Lowell. What wit she has, and what courage! Once I heard her +address a meeting of Single-Taxers. Now, the Single-Taxers are all right +so far as they go, but they don't go far enough. The Single-Taxers +heckled her, but she had a retort ready for every interruption. She +stood there with her brave smile and talked them all down." + +"Do you think that Ibsen expressed the modern feminine unrest in _The +Doll's House_?" Mr. Howells was asked. + +"Ibsen seldom expressed things," was his reply. "He suggested them, +mooted them, but he did not express them. _The Doll's House_ does not +express the meaning of unrest, it suggests it. Ibsen told you where you +stood, not where to go." + +Mr. Howells had recently presided at a meeting which was addressed by +M. Brieux, and he expressed great admiration for the work of the French +dramatist. + +"He is a great dramatist," he said. "He has given faithful reports of +life, and faithful reports of life are necessarily criticisms of life. +All great novels are criticisms of life. And I think that the poets will +concern themselves more and more with the life around them. It is +possible that soon we may have an epic in which the poet deals with the +events of contemporary life." + +Mr. Howells is keenly awake to the effect which the war is having on +conditions in New York. And in his sympathy for the society which +inevitably must suffer for a war in which it is not directly concerned, +the active interest of the novelist was evident. "If all this only could +be reflected in a book!" he said. "If some novelist could interpret +it!" + + + + +_THE JOYS OF THE POOR_ + +KATHLEEN NORRIS + + +Any young woman who desires to become a famous novelist and short-story +writer like Kathleen Norris will do well to take the following steps: In +the first place, come to New York. In the second place, marry some one +like Charles Gilman Norris. + +Of course, every one who read _Mother_ and _The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne_ and +_Saturday's Child_ knew that the author was a married woman--and also a +married woman with plenty of personal experience with babies and stoves +and servants and other important domestic items. But not until I visited +Kathleen Norris at her very genuine home in Port Washington did I +appreciate the part which that domestic item called a husband has played +in Kathleen Norris's communications to the world. + +I made this discovery after Charles Gilman Norris--accompanied by +little Frank, who bears the name of the illustrious novelist who was his +uncle--had motored me through Port Washington's pleasant avenues to the +Norris house. Before a fire of crackling hickory logs, Kathleen Norris +(clad in something very charming, which I will not attempt to describe) +was talking about the qualities necessary to a writer's success. And one +of these, she said, was a business sense. + +Now, Mrs. Norris did not look exactly business-like. Nor is "a business +sense" the quality which most readers would immediately hit upon as the +characteristic which made the author of _Gayley the Troubadour_ +different from the writers of other stories. I ventured to suggest this +to Mrs. Norris. + +"I don't claim to possess a business sense," she said. "But my husband +has a business sense. He has taken charge of selling my stories to the +magazines and dealing with publishers and all of that. I do think that +literally thousands of writers are hindered from ever reaching the +public by the lack of business sense. And I know that my husband has +been responsible for getting most of my work published. My stories have +appeared since my marriage, you know. I don't need to have a business +sense, all I have to do is to write the stories. My husband does all +the rest--I don't need even to have any of the author's complacency, or +the author's pride!" + +Mrs. Norris's fame is only about five years old--about as old as her +son. I asked her about her life before she was known as a writer, +expecting to hear picturesque tales of literary tribulations among the +hills of California. But her description of her journey to success was +not the conventional one; her journey was not for years paved with +rejection slips and illumined with midnight oil. + +"It was New York that did it," she said. "When we first came to New York +from California the editor of a magazine with which Mr. Norris was +connected gave us a tea. Most of the people who were present were +short-story writers and novelists. It was pleasant for me to meet them, +and I enjoyed the afternoon. But my chief sensation was one of shock--it +was a real shock to me to find that writers were people! + +"I felt as if I had met Joan of Arc, Cæsar, Cleopatra, Alexander the +Great, and all the great figures of history, and found them to be human +beings like myself. 'These writers are not supermen and superwomen,' I +said to myself, 'they are human beings like me. Why can't I do what +they're doing?' + +"I thought this over after we went home that evening. And I made a +resolve. I resolved that before the next tea that I attended I would +tell a story. And when I next went to a tea I had sold a story." + +"To what publication had you sold it?" I asked. + +"To an evening paper," said Mrs. Norris; "but I had written and sold a +story. That was something; it meant a great deal to me. My first stories +were all sold to this evening paper, for twelve dollars each. This paper +printed a story every day, paying twelve dollars for each of them, and +giving a prize of fifty dollars for the best story published each week. +I won one of the fifty-dollar prizes." + +Any one who to-day could buy a Kathleen Norris story for fifty dollars +would be not an editor, but a magician. Yet the memory of that early +triumph seemed to give Mrs. Norris real pleasure. + +"I wrote _What Happened to Alanna_ two years before the Fire," she said. +("The Fire" means only one thing when a Californian says it.) "But most +of my stories have been written since I came to New York." + +I asked Mrs. Norris for the history of one of her earliest stories, a +story of California life which appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_. She +said: "That story went to twenty-six magazines before it was printed. My +husband had an alphabetical list of magazines. He sent the story first +to the _Atlantic Monthly_ and then to twenty-five other magazines. They +all returned it. Then he started at the top of the list again, and this +time the _Atlantic Monthly_ accepted it." + +The mention of Mr. Norris's activities in selling this story brought our +conversation back to the subject of the "business sense." + +"A writer needs the ability to sell a story as well as the ability to +write it," said Mrs. Norris, "unless there is some one else to do the +writing. Many a woman writes a really good story, sends it hopefully to +an editor, gets it back with a printed notice of its rejection, and puts +it away in a desk drawer. Then years later she tells her grandchildren +that she once wanted to be an author, but found that she couldn't do it. + +"Now, that is no way for a writer to gain success. The writer must be +persevering, not only in writing, but in trying to get his work before +the public. Unless, as I said, there is some one else to supply the +perseverance in getting the work before the public. + +"I think that the desire to write generally indicates the possession of +the power to write. But young writers are too easily discouraged. But I +have no right to blame a writer for being discouraged. I had frightful +discouragement--until I was married." + +It is easy to see that Kathleen Norris does not hesitate to find in her +own home life material for her industrious pen. Little Frank has +undoubtedly served his mother as a model many times--which is not meant +to indicate that he is that monstrosity, a model child. Indeed, Mrs. +Norris believes that a novelist should use the material which lies ready +at hand, instead of seeking for exotic and unusual topics. She sees that +people want to read about the things with which they are already +familiar, that they are not (as many young writers seem to think) eager +for novelties. + +"I cannot understand," she said, "how it is that writers will clamor for +recognition, and abuse the public for not welcoming them with +enthusiasm, and yet will not give the public what they know that the +public wants. So many people seem to want just their own sort of art, +but to want money, too. Now, I wouldn't write for a million dollars some +of those things that are called 'best sellers.' But I cannot see why a +writer who is avowedly writing for the public should think it beneath +him to treat the themes in which the public is interested. The greatest +tragedy of literature is the writer who persists in trying to give the +public what it does not want. Think of poor Gissing, for instance, dying +embittered because he couldn't sell his work!" + +Mrs. Norris's conviction that a writer should use the material around +him is so strong that she seems actually to be pained by the thought of +all the excellent things for stories that are going to waste. I asked +her if literature ever could come from apartment-houses. She said: + +"Of course it can! There is no reason why there shouldn't be good +stories and novels of apartment-house life. One reason why we are not +writing more and better stories of the life around us is because we are +living that life so intensely--too intensely. We live in this country so +close to our income that the problem of earning money makes us lose +sight of the essentials of life. It would be a fine thing for us, +mentally and spiritually, if we should live on less than we do. If, for +example, a family that found it was in receipt of a few hundred dollars +more a year than before should decide, therefore, to live under a +simpler scale than before, to do away with some really worthless +luxuries, what a fine thing that would be!" + +Of course many young writers come to Mrs. Norris for advice. And some of +them excellently illustrate the tendency which she deprecates, the +tendency to write about the unknown instead of the familiar. + +"I was talking the other day to a young girl of my acquaintance who is a +costume model," she said. "She has literary aspirations. Now, her life +itself has been an interesting story--her rise from a shopgirl to her +present position. And every now and then she will say something to me +that is a most interesting revelation--something that indicates the rich +store of experience that she might, if she would, draw upon in her +stories. On one occasion she said to me, 'I went home and put my +shoe-drawer in order.' + +"'What do you mean?' I asked. 'What is your shoe-drawer?' + +"'Why, my shoe-drawer!' she answered. 'You see, we costume models have +to have a drawer full of shoes, because we must change our shoes to +match every costume.' + +"Why is it," asked Mrs. Norris, "that a girl like that cannot see the +value of such an incident as that? That shoe-drawer is a picturesque and +interesting thing, unknown to most people. And this girl, who knows all +about it, and wants to write, cannot see its literary value! And yet +what more interesting subject is there for her to write about than that +shoe-drawer? I do not see why writers will not appreciate the importance +of writing about the things that are around them." + +Mrs. Norris gave a somewhat embarrassed laugh. "I really shouldn't +attempt to lay down the law in this way," she said. "I can speak only +for myself--I must write of the people and things that I know best, but +I ought not to attempt to prescribe what other people shall write +about." + +Mrs. Norris's chief literary enthusiasm seems to be Charles Dickens. +"When we were all infants out in the backwoods of California," she said, +"we battened on Dickens. Dickens and a writer whom I don't suppose +anybody reads nowadays--Henry Kingsley. The boys read Sir Walter +Scott's novels, and left Dickens to me. I read Dickens with delight, and +I still read him with delight. I have found passages in Dickens of which +I honestly believe there are no equal in all English literature except +in Shakespeare. I do not think that there is ever a year in which I do +not read some of Dickens's novels over again. Of course, any one can +find Dickens's faults--but I do not see how any one can fail to find his +excellences." + +"What is it in Dickens that especially attracts you?" I asked. + +Mrs. Norris was silent for a moment. Then she said: "I think I like him +chiefly because he saw so clearly the joys of the poor. He did not give +his poor people nothing but disease and oppression and despair. He gave +them roast goose and plum pudding for their Christmas dinner--he gave +them faith and hope and love. He knew that often the rich suffer and the +poor are happy. + +"Many of the modern realists seem ignorant of the fact that the poor may +be happy. They think that the cotter's Saturday night must always be +squalid and sordid and dismal, and that the millionaire's Saturday night +must be splendid and joyful. As a matter of fact, the poor family may +be, and often is, healthier and happier in every way than the rich +family. But these extreme realists are not like Dickens, they have not +his intimate knowledge of the life of the poor. They have the outsider's +viewpoint. + +"Too many writers are telling us about the sorrows of the poor. We need +writers who will tell us about the joys of the poor. We need writers who +will be aware of the pleasures to be derived from a good dinner of +corned beef and cabbage and a visit to a moving-picture theater. Often +when I pass a row of mean houses, as they would be called, I think +gratefully of the good times that I have had in just such places." + +The thought of that little Celtic Californian reading Dickens among the +redwood-trees appealed to me. So I asked Mrs. Norris to tell more about +her childhood. + +"Well," she said, "we hear a great deal about the misery, the bleak and +barren lives of the children who live in the tenements of New York's +lower East Side. But I think that an East Side tenement child would die +of ennui if it should be brought up as we were brought up. We had none +of the amusing and exciting experiences of the East Side child--we had +no white stockings, no ice-cream cones, no Coney Island, nothing of the +sort. + +"We never even went to school. We would study French for a while with +some French neighbor who had sufficient leisure to teach us, and then +we'd study Spanish for a while with some Spaniard. That was the extent +of our schooling. + +"My parents died when I was eighteen years old. I went to the city and +tried my hand at different sorts of work. For one thing, I tried to get +up children's parties, but in eighteen months I managed only one. Then I +did settlement work, was a librarian, a companion, and society reporter +on a newspaper. Then I got married--and wrote stories." + +Mrs. Norris was at one time opposed to woman suffrage. Now, however, she +is a suffragist, but she refuses to say that she has been "converted" to +suffragism. + +"I can't say that I have been converted to suffragism," she said, "any +more than I can say that I have been converted to warm baths and +tooth-brushes. And it does not seem to me that any women should need to +defend her right to vote any more than she should need to defend her +right to love her children. There is a theme for a novel--a big +suffrage novel will be written one of these days." + +It may be that the author of _Mother_ will be the author of this "big +suffrage novel." But at present she disclaims any such intention. But +she admits that there is a purpose in all her portrayals of normal, +wholesome American home life. + +"I don't think that I believe in 'art for art's sake,' as it is +generally interpreted," she said. "Of course, I don't believe in what is +called the commercial point of view--I have never written anything just +to have it printed. But I do not believe that there is any one standard +of art. I think that any book which the people ought to read must have +back of it something besides the mere desire of the writer to create +something. I never could write without a moral intention." + + + + +_NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART_ + +BOOTH TARKINGTON + + +Mr. Booth Tarkington never will be called the George M. Cohan of +fiction. His novel, _The Turmoil_, is surely an indictment of modern +American urban civilization; of its materialism, its braggadocio, its +contempt for the things of the soul. + +It was with the purpose of making this indictment a little clearer than +it could be when it is surrounded by a story, that I asked Mr. +Tarkington a few questions. And his answers are not likely to increase +our national complacencies. + +In the first place, I asked Mr. Tarkington if the atmosphere of a young +and energetic nation might not reasonably be expected to be favorable to +literary and artistic expression. + +"Yes, it might," said Mr. Tarkington. "There may be spiritual progress +in America as phenomenal as her material progress. + +"There is and has been extraordinary progress in the arts. But the +people as a whole are naturally preoccupied with their material +progress. They are much more interested in Mr. Rockefeller than in Mr. +Sargent." + +The last two sentences of Mr. Tarkington's reply made me eager for +something a little more specific on that subject. + +"What are the forces in America to-day," I asked, "that hinder the +development of art and letters?" + +Mr. Tarkington replied: "There are no forces in America to-day that +hinder the development of individuals in art and letters, save in +unimportant cases here and there. But there is a spirit that hinders +general personal decency, knows and cares nothing for beauty, and is +glad to have its body dirty for the sake of what it calls 'prosperity.' + +"It 'wouldn't give a nickel' for any kind of art. But it can't and +doesn't hinder artists from producing works of art, though it makes them +swear." + +"But do not these conditions in many instances seriously hinder +individual artists?" + +Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Nothing stops an artist if he is one," he said. +"But many things may prevent a people or a community from knowing or +caring for art. + +"The climate may be unfavorable; we need not expect the Eskimos to be +interested in architecture. In the United States politicians have +usually controlled the public purchase of works of art and the erection +of public buildings. This is bad for the public, naturally." + +"I suppose," I said, "that the conditions you describe are distinctively +modern, are they not? At what time in the history of America have +conditions been most favorable to literary expression?" + +Mr. Tarkington's reply was not what I expected. "At all times," he said. +"Literary expression does not depend on the times, though the +appreciation of it does, somewhat." + +I asked Mr. Tarkington if he agreed with Mr. Gouverneur Morris in +considering the short story a modern development. He did not. + +"There are short stories in the Bible," he said, "and in every +mythology; 'folk stories' of all races and tribes. Probably Mr. Morris's +definition of the short story would exclude these. I agree with him that +short stories are better written nowadays." + +"But you do not believe," I said, "that American literature in general +is better than it used to be, do you? Why is it that there is now no +group of American writers like the New England group which included +Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau?" + +"Why is there," Mr. Tarkington asked in turn, "no group like Homer +(wasn't he a group?) in Greece? There may be, but if there is just such +a modern group it would tend only to repeat the work of the Homeric +group, which wouldn't be interesting to the rest of us. + +"The important thing is to find a group unlike Longfellow, Whittier, +Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau. That is, if one accepts the idea that it +is important to find a group." + +Mr. Tarkington's criticisms of the modern American city have been so +severe that I expected him to tell me that all writers should live in +the country. But again he surprised me. In reply to my question as to +which environment was more favorable to the production of literature, +the city or the country, he said: + +"It depends upon the nerves of the writer. A writer can be born +anywhere, and he can grow up anywhere." + +There has recently been considerable discussion--Professor Edward +Garnet and Gertrude Atherton have taken a considerable share in it--on +the relative merits of contemporary English and American fiction. I +asked Mr. Tarkington if in his opinion the United States had at the +present time novelists equal to those of England. + +"That is unanswerable!" he answered. "Writers aren't like baseball +teams. What's the value of my opinion that _The Undiscovered Country_ is +a 'greater' novel than _A Pair of Blue Eyes_? These questions remind me +of school debating societies. Nothing is demonstrated, but everybody has +his own verdict." + +Until I asked Mr. Tarkington about it I had heard only two opinions as +to the probable effect on literature of the war. One was that which +William Dean Howells tersely expressed by saying: "War stops +literature," and the other was that the war is purifying and +strengthening all forms of literary expression. + +But Mr. Tarkington had something new to say about it. "What effect," I +asked, "is the war likely to have on American literature?" + +"None of consequence," he answered. "The poet will find the subject, war +or no war. The sculptor doesn't depend upon epaulets." + +Mr. Tarkington is so inveterate a writer of serials, and his work is so +familiar to the readers of the American magazines, that I desired to get +his expert opinion as to whether or not the American magazines, with +their remarkably high prices, had harmed or benefited fiction. His reply +was somewhat non-committal. + +"They have induced many people to look upon the production of fiction as +a profitable business," he said. "But those people would merely not have +'tried fiction' at all otherwise. Prices have nothing to do with art." + +Mr. Tarkington had some interesting things to say about that venerable +mirage, the Great American Novel. I asked him if that longed-for work +would ever be written; if, for example, there would ever be a work of +fiction reflecting American life as _Vanity Fair_ reflects English life. +He replied: + +"If Thackeray had been an American he would not have written a novel +reflecting American life as _Vanity Fair_ reflected the English life of +its time. He would have written of New York; his young men would have +come there after Harvard. The only safe thing to say of the Great +American Novel is that the author will never know he wrote it." + +Mr. Charles Belmont Davis had told me that a writer who had some means +of making a living other than writing would do better work than one who +devoted himself exclusively to literature. I asked Mr. Tarkington what +he thought about this. + +"I think," he said, "that it would be very well for a writer to have +some means of making a living other than writing. There are likely to be +times in his career when it would give him a sense of security +concerning food. But I doubt if it would much affect his writing, unless +he considered writing to be a business." + +Mr. Tarkington's answer to my next question is hereby commended to the +attention of all those feminine revolutionists who believe that they are +engaged in the pleasant task of changing the whole current of modern +thought. + +"How has literature been affected," I asked, "by the suffrage movement +and feminism?" + +Mr. Tarkington looked up in some surprise. "I haven't heard of any +change," he said. + +The author of _The Turmoil_ could never be accused of jingoism. But he +is far from agreeing with those critics who believe that American +literature is merely "a phase of English literature." I asked him if he +believed that there was such a thing as a distinctively American +literature. + +"Certainly," he replied. "Is _Huckleberry Finn_ a phase? It's a +monument; not an English one. English happens to be the language largely +used." + +The allusion in Mr. Tarkington's last reply suggested--what every reader +of _Penrod_ must know--that this novelist is an enthusiastic admirer of +Mark Twain. So I told him that Mr. T. A. Daly had classed Mark Twain +with Artemus Ward and Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P.B., and had said that +these men wrote nothing of real merit and were "the Charlie Chaplins of +their time." + +Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Get Mr. T. A. Daly to talk some more," he said. +"We'd like to hear something about Voltaire and Flo Ziegfeld. Second +thoughts indicate that 'T. A. Daly' is the pen name of Mr. Charlie +Chaplin. Of course! And that makes it all right and natural. I thought +at first that it was a joke." + + + + +_ROMANTICISM AND AMERICAN HUMOR_ + +MONTAGUE GLASS + + +Once upon a time William Dean Howells leveled the keen lance of his +satire against what he called "the monstrous rag baby of romanticism." +In those simple days, literary labels were easily applied. A man who +wrote about Rome, Italy, was a romanticist; a man who wrote about Rome, +New York, was a Realist. + +Now, however, a writer who finds his themes in the wholesale business +district of New York City does not disavow the title formerly given +exclusively to makers of drawn-sword-and-prancing-steed fiction. +Montague Glass is a romanticist. + +The laureate of the cloak-and-suit trade and biographer of Mr. Abe +Potash and Mr. Mawruss Perlmutter does not believe that romance is a +matter of time and place. A realistic novel, he believes, may be written +about the Young Pretender or Alexander the Great, and a romance +about--well, about Elkan Lubliner, American. + +Of course, I asked him to defend his claim to the name of romanticist. +He did so, but in general terms, without special reference to his own +work. For this widely read author has the amazing virtue of modesty. + +"I do not think," he said, "that the so-called historical novelists are +the only romanticists. The difference between the two schools of writers +is in method, rather than in subject. + +"A romanticist is a writer who creates an atmosphere of his own about +the things with which he deals. He is the poet, the constructive artist. +He calls into being that which has not hitherto existed. + +"A realist, however, is a writer who faithfully reproduces an atmosphere +that already exists. He reports, records; one of his distinguishing +characteristics must be his attention to detail. The romanticist is as +truthful as the realist, but he deals with a few large truths rather +than with many small facts." + +"And you," I said, determined to make the conversation more personal, +"prefer the romantic method?" + +"Yes," said Mr. Glass, "I do. I prefer to use the romantic method, and +to read the works of the writers who use it. I believe that there is +more value in suggestion than in detailed description. For instance, I +do not think that my stories would gain vividness if I should put all +the dialogue--I tell my stories chiefly by means of dialogues, you +know--into dialect. So I do not put down the dialogue phonetically. I +spell the words correctly, not in accordance with the pronunciation of +my characters. + +"This is not an invariable rule. When, for instance, Abe or Mawruss has +learned a new long word which he uses frequently to show it off, he +generally mispronounces it. He may say 'quincidence' for 'coincidence.' +Such a mispronunciation as this I reproduce, for it has its significance +as a revelation of character. But I do not attempt to put down all +mispronunciations; I let the dialect be imagined. + +"The romanticist, you see, uses his own imagination and expects +imagination in his readers. His method might be called impressionistic; +he outlines and suggests, instead of describing exhaustively. The +romanticist really is more economical than the realist, and he has more +restraint." + +"Who are the leading romanticists of the day?" I asked. + +"Well," Mr. Glass replied, "my favorite among contemporary romanticists +is Joseph Conrad. There is a man who is certainly no swashbuckling +novelist of the Wardour Street school. He writes of modern life, and yet +he is a romanticist through and through. + +"I think that I may justly claim to be one of the first admirers of +Conrad in America. I used to read him when apparently the only other man +in this part of the world to appreciate him was William L. Alden, who +praised him in the columns of the _New York Times Review of Books_. + +"I well remember my discovery of Conrad. I went to Brooklyn to hear +'Tosca' sung at the Academy of Music. I had bought my ticket, and I had +about an hour to spend before it would be time for the curtain to rise. +So I went across the street to the Brooklyn Public Library. + +"While I was idly looking over the novels on the shelves I came upon +Conrad's _Typhoon_. I sat down and began to read it. + +"When I arose, I had finished the book. Also, I had missed the first two +acts of the opera--and I had been eager to hear them. But Conrad more +than compensated for the loss of those two acts. + +"Many of the modern English writers are romanticists. Galsworthy surely +is no realist. And William de Morgan, although he writes at great length +and has abundance of detail, is a romanticist. He does not use detail +for its own sake, as the realists use it; he uses it only when it has +some definite value in unfolding the plot or revealing character. He +uses it significantly; he is particularly successful in using it +humorously, as Daudet and Dickens used it. Arnold Bennett is a realist, +and I think that one of the reasons why he is so widely read in the +United States is because the life which he describes so minutely is a +life much like that of his American readers. People like to read about +the sort of life they already know. The average reader wants to have a +sense of familiarity with the characters in his novels." + +Mr. Glass is a contrary person. It is contrary for the only novelist who +knows anything about New York's cloak-and-suit trade to be of English +birth and to look like a poet. It is contrary of him to have that +distinctively American play, "Potash and Perlmutter," start its London +run two years ago and be "still going strong." And it was contrary of +him not to say, as he might reasonably be expected to say in view of his +own success, that the encounters and adventures of business must be the +theme of the American novelists of the future. + +"No," he said, in answer to my question, "I do not see any reason for +the novelist to confine himself to business life. Themes for fiction are +universal. A novelist should write of the life he knows best, whatever +it may be. + +"I do not mean that the novelist should write about his own business. I +mean that he should write about the psychology that he understands. A +man who spends years in the cloak-and-suit business is not, therefore, +qualified to write novels about that business, even if he is qualified +to write novels at all. + +"I had no real knowledge of the cloak-and-suit trade when I began to +write about it. I made many technical blunders. For instance, I had +Potash and Perlmutter buying goods by the gross instead of by the piece. +And I received many indignant letters pointing out my mistake. + +"I had never been in the cloak-and-suit trade. But my work as a lawyer +had brought me into contact with many people who were in that business, +and I had intimate knowledge of the psychology of the Jew, his religion, +his humor, his tragedy, his whole attitude toward life. + +"The trouble with many young writers," said Mr. Glass, "is that they +don't know what they are writing about. They are attempting to describe +psychological states of which they have only third-hand knowledge. Their +ideas have no semblance of truth, and therefore their work is absolutely +unconvincing." + +"At any rate," I said, "you will admit that American writers are more +and more inclined to make the United States the scene of their stories. +Do you think that O. Henry's influence is responsible for this?" + +"No," said Mr. Glass, "I do not think that this is due to O. Henry's +influence. It was a natural development. You see, O. Henry's literary +life lasted for only about four years, and while he has had many +imitators, I do not think that he can be given credit for directing the +attention of American writers to the life of their own country. + +"Probably William Dean Howells should be called the founder of the +modern school of American fiction. He was the first writer to achieve +distinguished success for tales of modern American life. There were +several other authors who began to write about Americans soon after Mr. +Howells began--Thomas Janvier, H. C. Bunner, and Brander Matthews were +among them. + +"Kipling's popularity gave a great impetus to the writing of short +stories of modern life. It is interesting to trace the course of the +short story from Kipling to O. Henry. + +"Did you ever notice," asked Mr. Glass, "that the best stories on New +York life are written by people who have been born and brought up +outside of the city? The writer who has always lived in New York seems +thereby to be disqualified from writing about it, just as the man in the +cloak-and-suit trade is too close to his subject to reproduce it in +fiction. The writer who comes to New York after spending his youth +elsewhere gets the full romantic effect of New York; he gets a +perspective on it which the native New-Yorker seldom attains. The +viewpoint of the writer who has always lived in New York is subjective, +whereas one must have the objective viewpoint to write about the city +successfully. + +"I have been surprised by the caricatures of American life which come +from the pen of writers American by birth and ancestry. Recently I read +a novel by an American who has--and deserves, for he is a writer of +talent and reputation--a large following. This was a story of life in a +manufacturing town with which the novelist is thoroughly familiar. It, +however, appears to have been written to satisfy a grudge and +consequently one could mistake it for the work of an Englishman who had +once made a brief tour of America. For the big manufacturer who was the +principal character in the story was vulgar enough to satisfy the +prejudice of any reader of the _London Daily Mail_. Certainly the +descriptions of the gaudy and offensive furniture in the rich +manufacturer's house and the dialogue of the members of his family and +the servants could provide splendid ammunition for the _Saturday Review_ +or _The Academy_. The book appears to be a caricature, and yet that +novelist had lived most of his life among the sort of people about whom +he was writing! + +"And how absolutely ignorant most New-Yorkers are of New York. Irvin +Cobb comes here from Louisville, Kentucky, and gets an intimate +knowledge of the city, and puts that knowledge into his short stories. +But a man brought up here makes the most ridiculous mistakes when he +writes about New York. + +"I read a story of New York life recently that absolutely disgusted me, +its author was so ignorant of his subject. Yet he was a born New-Yorker. +Let me tell you what he wrote. He said that a man went into an arm-chair +lunch-room and bought a meal. His check amounted to sixty-five cents! +Now any one who knows anything about arm-chair lunch-rooms beyond the +mere fact of their existence knows that the cashier of such an +institution would drop dead if a customer paid him sixty-five cents at +one time. Then, the hero of this story had as a part of his meal in this +arm-chair lunch-room a baked potato, for which he paid fifteen cents! +Imagine a baked potato in such a place, and a fifteen-cent baked potato +at that!" + +Mr. Glass did not, like most successful humorists, begin as a writer of +tragedy. His first story to be printed was "Aloysius of the Docks," a +humorous story of an East Side Irish boy, which appeared in 1900. The +lower East Side was for many years the scene of most of his stories. But +he does resemble most other writers in this respect, that he wrote +verse before he wrote fiction. I asked him to show me some of his +poetry, and he demurred somewhat violently. But, after all, a poet is a +poet, and at last I succeeded in persuading him to produce this exhibit. +Here it is--a poem by the author of "Potash and Perlmutter": + + FERRYBOATS + + There sounds aloft a warning scream, + The jingling bell gives tongue below, + She breasts again the busy stream, + And cleaves its murky tide to snow. + Bereft of burnished glittering brass, + Ungainly bulging fore and aft, + Slowly from shore to shore they pass-- + The matrons of the river craft. + +Mr. Glass believes that humorous writing in America has changed more +than any other sort. But he does not, as I thought he would, attribute +this change to the increased cosmopolitanism of the country, to the +influx of people from other lands. + +"Certainly our ideas of what is funny have changed," he said. "Humor is +an ephemeral thing. A generation ago we laughed at what to-day would +merely make us ill. The subjects and the methods of the humorists are +different. Who nowadays can find a laugh in the pages of Artemus Ward, +Philander Q. Doesticks, or Petroleum V. Nasby? Yet in their time these +men set the whole continent in a roar. + +"Contrast two humorists typical of their respective periods--Bill Nye +and Abe Martin. I remember many years ago reading a story by Bill Nye +which every one then considered tremendously funny. He told how he went +downtown and got a shave and put on a clean collar and as he said, +'otherwise disguised himself.' When he got home his little dog refused +to recognize him, and several pages were devoted to his efforts to +persuade the dog of his identity. Then, failing to convince the dog that +he was really the same Bill Nye in spite of his shave and clean collar, +he impaled it on a pitchfork and buried it, putting over it the epitaph, +'Not dead, but jerked hence by request.' + +"Now contrast with that a good example of modern American humor--a joke +by Abe Martin which I recently saw. There was a picture of two or three +men looking at a tattered tramp, and one of them was represented as +saying: 'You wouldn't think to look at him that that man played an +elegant game of billiards ten years ago!' + +"It is an entirely different form of humor, you see. Bill Nye and the +writers of his school got their effects by grotesque misspelling, +fantastic ideas, and by the liberal use of shock and surprise. The +modern humor is subtler, more delicate, and more likely to endure. + +"I do not think that the fact that America has become more cosmopolitan +has anything to do with this altered sense of humor. The American +humorists do not select cosmopolitan themes; the best of them are +distinctively American in their subject. Irvin Cobb, George Fitch, Kate +Douglas Wiggin, Edna Ferber Stewart, who wrote _The Fugitive +Blacksmith_--all these people draw their inspiration from purely +American phases of the life around them." + +"What is it, then," I asked, "that has changed American humor?" + +"Leisure," answered Mr. Glass. "Philander Q. Doesticks and other +humorists of his time wrote to amuse pioneers, people rough and +elemental in their tastes. Their audience consisted of men who worked +hard most of the time, and therefore had to be hit hard by any joke that +was to entertain them at all. But as Americans grew more leisurely, and +therefore had time to read, see plays, and look at pictures, they lost +their taste for crude and violent horseplay, and the new sort of humor +came in. Undoubtedly the same thing occurs in every newly settled +country--Australia, for example. It is unlikely that the Australian of +one hundred years from now will be amused by the things that amuse +Australians to-day. + +"But the humor that entertains the citizens of a country of which the +civilization is well established is likely to retain its charm through +the years. Mark Twain's stories do not lose their flavor. But Mark Twain +was not exclusively a humorist; he was a student of life and he +reflected the tragedy of existence as well as its comedy. So does Irvin +Cobb, who is the nearest approach to Mark Twain now living. + +"One source of Mark Twain's strength is his occasional vulgarity. That +surely is something that we should have in greater abundance in American +humor. I do not mean that our humorists should be pornographic and +obscene; I mean merely that they should be allowed great freedom in +their choice of themes. There is no humor without vulgarity. Our +humorists have been so limited and restrained that we have no paper fit +to be compared with _Simplicissimus_ or _Le Rire_. + +"You see, a vulgar thing is not offensive if it is funny. Fun for fun's +sake is a much more important maxim than art for art's sake. The +humorists have a greater need for freedom in choice of themes than the +serious writers, especially the realistic writers, who are always +demanding greater freedom." + +Mr. Glass returned to the subject of the failure of cosmopolitanism to +influence American literature by calling attention to the fact that very +few American writers find their themes among their foreign-born +fellow-citizens. "Where," he asked, "are the German-Americans and the +Italian-Americans? No writer knows these foreign-born citizens well +enough to write about them. The best American stories are about native +Americans. I admit that my stories are not about people peculiar to New +York--you can find counterparts of 'Potash and Perlmutter' in Berlin, +Paris, and London. But mine are not among the best stories of American +character. The best story of American character is 'Daisy Miller.'" + +Mr. Glass believes that the technique of the short story has improved +greatly during the last score of years, but he is not so favorable in +his view of the modern novel, especially of the "cross-section of life" +type of work. He believes that the war will produce a great revival of +literary excellence in Europe, just as the Franco-Prussian War did; and +he called attention to something which has apparently been neglected by +most people who have discussed the subject--the tremendous inspiration +which Guy de Maupassant found in the Franco-Prussian War. But he said, +in conclusion: + +"But any man who sits down to judge American literature in the course of +a few minutes' talk is an ass for his pains. Literary snap judgments are +foolish things. Nothing that I have said to you has any value at all." + + + + +_THE "MOVIES" BENEFIT LITERATURE_ + +REX BEACH + + +Even the most prejudiced opponent of the moving pictures will admit that +they are becoming more intellectually respectable. Crude farce and +melodrama are being replaced by versions of classic plays and novels; +literature is elevating the motion picture. And Mr. Rex Beach believes +that the motion picture is benefiting literature. + +This author of widely read novels had been talking to me about the +departments of literature--the novel, the short story, and the rest--and +among them he named the moving picture. I asked him if he believed that +moving pictures were dangerous for novelists, leading them to fill their +books with action, with a view to the profits of cinematographic +reproduction. He said: + +"Well, authors are human beings, of course. They like to make money and +to have their work reach as large an audience as possible. I suppose +that the great majority of them keep their eyes on the screen, because +they know how profitable the moving picture is and because they want +their work seen by more people than would read their novels." + +"Do you think that this harms their work?" I asked. + +"It might if the novelists overdid it," he answered. "It would harm +their work if they became nothing but scenario writers. But so far the +result has been good. + +"The tendency of the moving picture has been to make authors visualize +more clearly than ever before their characters and scenes that they are +writing about. Their work has become more realistic. I do not mean +realistic in the sense in which this word is used of some French +writers; I do not mean erotic or morbid. I mean actual, convincing, +clearly visualized. + +"Literature has elevated the moving picture, keeping it out, to a great +extent, of melodrama and slap-stick comedy. And in return, the moving +picture has done a service to fiction, making the authors give more +attention to exact visualization." + +"Has American fiction been lacking in visualization?" I asked. + +"No," said Mr. Beach. "American novelists visualize more clearly to-day +than they did four or five years ago, before the moving picture had +become so important, but they always were strong in visualization. This +sort of realism is America's chief contribution to fiction." + +"Then you believe that there is a distinctively American literature?" I +asked. "You do not agree with the critic who said that American +literature was 'a condition of English literature'?" + +"I do not agree with him," Mr. Beach replied. "American writers use the +English language, so I suppose that what they write belongs to English +literature. But there is a distinctively American literature; Americans +talk in their own manner, think in their own manner, and handle business +propositions in their own manner, and naturally they write in their own +manner. American literature is different from other kinds of literature +just as American business methods are different from those of Europe. + +"Fiction written in America must necessarily be tinged with American +thought and American action. I have no patience with people who say +that America has no literature. They say that nothing we are writing +to-day will live. Well, what if that is true? It's true not only of +literature, but of everything else. + +"Our roads won't last forever; they're built in a hurry to be used in a +hurry. But they're better roads to drive and motor over than those old +Roman roads of Europe. Our office-buildings won't last as long as the +Pyramids, but they're better for business purposes. + +"Personally, I've never been enthusiastic over things that have no +virtues but age and ugliness. I'd rather have a good, strong, +serviceable piece of Grand Rapids furniture than any ramshackle, +moth-eaten antique." + +"But don't you think," I asked, "that the permanence of a book's appeal +is a proof of its greatness?" + +"I don't see how we can tell anything definite about the permanence of +the appeal of books written in our time. And I don't mean by literature +writings that necessarily endure through the ages. I believe that +literature is the expression of the mind, the sentiment, the +intellectual attitude of the people who live at the time it is written. +I admit that our literature is ephemeral--like everything else about +us--but I believe that it is good." + +Mr. Rex Beach was not pacing his floor nervously; he was crossing the +room with the practical intention of procuring a cigarette. +Nevertheless, his firm tread lent emphasis to his remarks. + +"There is a sort of literary snobbery," he said, "noticeable among +people who condemn contemporaneous literature just because it is +contemporaneous. The strongest proof that there is something good in the +literature of the day is that it reaches a great audience. There must be +something in it or people wouldn't read it. + +"The people are the final judges; it is to them that authors must +appeal. Take any big question of public importance--after it has been +discussed by politicians and newspapers, it is the people who at last +decide it. + +"A man may have devoted his life to some tremendous achievement, and +have left it as a monument to his fame. But it is to public opinion that +we must look for the verdict on the value of his life's work. + +"Take Carnegie, for example; when he dies, you bet people will have his +number! His ideas are a tremendous menace, and the people who believe +as he does about peace will find themselves generally execrated one of +these days. + +"It may seem to you that this has nothing to do with literature. But it +has a good deal to do with it. I know that many things have been said +about the effect on literature of the war. But I want to say that the +war will have, I hope, one admirable effect on American writers--it will +make them stir up the American conscience to a sense of the necessity +for national defensive preparation. The writers must educate the people +in world politics and show them the necessity for defensive action. +Americans have a sort of mental inertia in regard to public questions, +and the writers must overcome this inertia. + +"The writers must stir up the politicians and the people. There's been a +whole lot of mush written about peace. There always will be war. We +can't reform the world. + +"The pacifists say that it is useless to arm because war cannot be +prevented by armaments. The obvious answer to that is that neither can +the failure to arm prevent war. And the verdict after the war will be +better if we are prepared for it. The writers must call our attention to +the folly of leaving ourselves open to attack. + +"It's hard to reach the conscience of the American people on any big +issue. We are too independent, too indifferent, too ready to slump back. +That's one of the penalties of democracy, I suppose; the national sense +of patriotism becomes atrophied. It needs some whaling-big jolt to wake +it up. Every American writer can help to do this. + +"The trouble is that we have too many men with feminine minds, too many +of these delicate fellows with handkerchiefs up their sleeves. I can't +imagine any women with ideas more feminine than those of Bryan--could +any woman evolve anything more feminine than his peace-at-any-price +idea?" + +Mr. Beach smiled. "I suppose I should not be talking about world +politics," he said. "There are so many men who have specialized in that +subject and are therefore competent to talk about it. I am only a +specialist in writing." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that writers should be specialists in writing? +Some people believe that the best fiction, for example, is produced by +men who do some other work for a living." + +"I certainly believe that a writer should devote himself to writing," +said Mr. Beach. "This is an age of specialization, and literature is no +exception to the general rule. Literature is like everything else--you +must specialize in it to be successful." + +"This has not always been the case, has it?" I asked. "Has literature +been produced by people who made writing only an avocation?" + +"Surely," said Mr. Beach. "It is only within the last few years that +writers have been able to write for a living and make enough to keep the +fringe off their cuffs." + +I asked what had caused this change. + +"It has been caused chiefly by the magazines. The modern magazines have +done two important things for fiction--they have brought it within every +one's reach, and they have increased the prices paid to the authors, +thus enabling them to make a living by devoting themselves exclusively +to writing." + +"But it has been said," I ventured, "that a writer, no matter how +talented he may be, cannot make a comfortable living out of writing +fiction unless he is most extraordinarily gifted with ideas, and that, +therefore, a writer takes a tremendous risk if he throws himself upon +literature for support." + +"How is a writer going to get ideas for stories," asked Mr. Beach, in +turn, "unless he uses ideas? The more ideas a man uses, the more ideas +will come to him. + +"The imaginative quality in a man is like any other quality; the more it +is functioned the better it is functioned. If you fail to use any organ +of your body, nature will in time let that organ go out of commission. + +"It is just the same with imagination as with any organ of the body. If +a writer waits for ideas to come to him and ceases to exercise his +imagination, his imagination will become atrophied. But if he uses his +imagination it will grow stronger and ideas will come to him with +increasing frequency." + +Mr. Beach is an enthusiastic advocate of the moving picture. In the +course of his discussion of it he advanced an interesting theory as to +the next stage of its development. + +"The next use of the moving picture," he said, "will be the editorial +use. We have had the moving picture used as a comic device, as a device +to spread news, and as an interpreter of fiction. But as yet no one has +endeavored to use it as a means to mold public opinion in great vital +issues of the day. + +"Of course, it has been used educationally, and as part of various +propaganda schemes. But it will be used in connection with great +political problems. It will become the most powerful of all influences +for directing public opinion in politics and in everything else. + +"It will play a mighty part in the thought of the country and of the +world. + +"I have seen men and women coming from a great moving-picture show +almost hysterical with emotion. I have heard them shout and stamp and +whistle at what they saw flashed before them on a white sheet as they +never did in any theater. + +"What a strong argument 'The Birth of a Nation' presents! Now, suppose +that same art and that same equipment were used to present arguments +about some political issue of our own time, instead of one of our +fathers' time. What a force that would be!" + + + + +_WHAT IS GENIUS?_ + +ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + +Sentimental Tommy's great predecessor in the relentless pursuit of the +"right word" was, teachers of literature tell us, the unsentimental +Gustave Flaubert. But these academic gentlemen, who insist that the +writer shall spend hours, even days, if necessary, in perfecting a +single sentence, seldom produce any literature. I asked Robert W. +Chambers, who has written more "best sellers" than any other living +writer, what he thought of Flaubert's method of work. + +He looked at me rather quizzically. "I think," he said, with a smile, +"that Flaubert was slow. What else is there to think? Of course he was a +matchless workman. But if he spent half a day in hunting for one word, +he was slow, that's all. He might have gone on writing and then have +come back later for that inevitable word." + +"But what do you think of Flaubert's method, as a method?" I asked. "Do +you think that a writer who works with such laborious care is right?" + +"It's not a question of right or wrong," said Mr. Chambers, "it's a +question of the individual writer's ability and tendency. If a man can +produce novels like those of Flaubert, by writing slowly and +laboriously, by all means let him write that way. But it would not be +fair to establish that as the only legitimate method of writing. + +"Some authors always write slowly. With some of them it's like pulling +teeth for them to get their ideas out on paper. It's the same way in +painting. You may see half a dozen men drawing from the same model. One +will make his sketch premier coup; another will devote an hour to his; +another will work all day. They may be artists of equal ability. It is +the result that counts, not the method or the time." + +"And what is it that makes a man an artist, in pigments or in words?" I +asked. "Do you believe in the old saying that the poet--the creative +artist--is born and not made?" + +"No," said Mr. Chambers, "I do not think that that is the truth. I think +that with regard to the writer it is true to this extent, that there +must exist, in the first place, the inclination to write, to express +ideas in written words. Then the writer must have something to express +really worthy of expression, and he must learn how to express it. These +three things make the writer--the inclination to say something, the +possession of something worth saying, and the knowledge of how to say +it." + +"And where does genius come in?" I asked. + +"What is genius?" asked Mr. Chambers, in turn. "I don't know. Perhaps +genius is the combination of these three qualities in the highest +degree. + +"Of course," he added, with a laugh, "I know that all this is contrary +to the opinion of the public. People like to believe that writers depend +entirely upon an inspiration. They like to think that we are a hazy lot, +sitting around and posing and waiting for some sort of divine afflatus. +They think that writers sit around like a Quaker meeting, waiting for +the spirit to move them." + +"But have there not been writers," I asked, "who seem to prove that +there is some truth in the inspiration theory? There is William de +Morgan, for example, beginning to write novels in his old age. He spent +most of his life in working in ceramics, not with words." + +"On the contrary," said Mr. Chambers, "I think that William de Morgan +proves my theory. He really spent all his life in learning to write--he +was in training for being a novelist all the while. The novelist's +training may be unconscious. He must have--as William de Morgan surely +always has had--keen interest in the world. That is the main thing for +the writer to have--a vivid interest in life. If we are to devote +ourselves to the production of pictures of humanity according to our own +temperaments, we must have this vivid interest in life; we must have +intense curiosity. The men who have counted in literature have had this +intense, never-satiated curiosity about life. + +"This is true for the romanticists as well as the realists. The most +imaginative and fantastic romances must have their basis in real life. + +"I know of no better examples of this truth than the gargoyles which one +sees in Gothic architecture in Europe. These extraordinary creatures +that thrust their heads from the sides of cathedrals, misshapen and +grotesque, are nevertheless thoroughly logical. That is, no matter how +fantastic they may be, they have backbones and ribs and tails, and these +backbones and ribs and tails are logical--that is, they could do what +backbones and ribs and tails are supposed to do. + +"In real life there are no creatures like the gargoyles, but the +important thing is that the gargoyles really could exist. This is a good +example of the true method of construction. The base of the construction +must rest on real knowledge. The medieval sculptors knew the formation +of existing animals; therefore they knew how to make gargoyles." + +"How does this theory apply to poets?" I asked. + +"I don't know," answered Mr. Chambers, "but it seems to me to apply to +all creative work. The artist must know life before he can build even a +travesty on life." + +I called Mr. Chambers's attention to the work of certain ultra-modern +poets who deliberately exclude life from their work. He was not inclined +to take them seriously. + +"There always have been aberrations," he said, "and there always will +be. They're bound to exist. And there is bound to be, from time to time, +attitudinizing and straining after effect on the part of prose writers +as well as poets. And it is all based on one thing--self-consciousness. +It is self-consciousness that spoils the work of some modern writers." + +I asked Mr. Chambers to be more specific in his allusions. "I cannot +mention names," he said, "but there are certain writers who are always +conscious of the style in which they are writing. Sometimes they +consciously write in the style of some other men. They are thinking all +the while of their technique and equipment, and the result is that their +work loses its effect. A writer should not be convinced all the while +that he is a realist or a romanticist; he should not subject himself +deliberately to some special school of writing, and certainly he should +not be conscious of his own style. The less a writer thinks of his +technique the sooner he arrives at self-expression. + +"It's just like ordinary conversation. A man is known by the way in +which he talks--that is his 'style.' But he is not all the while acutely +conscious of his manner of talking--unless he has an impediment in his +speech. So the writer should be known by his untrammeled and +unembarrassed expression." + +I asked Mr. Chambers what he thought of the idea that the popularity of +magazines has vitiated the public taste and lowered the standard of +fiction. + +"I do not think that this is the case," he said. "I do not see that the +custom of serial publication has harmed the novel. It is not a modern +innovation, you know. The novels of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot +had serial publication. But I do believe that the American public reads +less fiction than it did a generation ago, and that its taste is not so +good as it was." + +This was a surprising statement to come from an author whom the public +has received with such enthusiasm, so I asked Mr. Chambers to explain. + +"In the days of our forefathers," he said, "this was an Anglo-Saxon +country. Then the average intelligence of the nation was higher and the +taste in literature better. But there came the great rush of immigration +to the United States from Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the +country was diluted. + +"You see signs of this lowered standard of taste in fiction and on +the stage. The demand is for primitive and childish stuff, and the +reason for this is that the audience has only a sort of backstairs +intelligence. If we had progressed along the lines in which we were +headed before this wave of immigration, we would not be satisfied with +the books and magazines that are given us to-day. + +"Of course the magazines are mechanically better to-day than they were a +generation ago. Then we had not the photogravure and the half-tone and +the other processes that make our magazines beautiful. But we had better +taste and also we had more leisure. + +"I remember when one of the most widely read of our magazines was a +popular science monthly, which printed articles by great scientists on +biological and other topics. That was in the days when Darwin was +announcing his theory of evolution--the first great jolt which orthodoxy +received. People would not take time to read a magazine of that sort +now. They are so occupied with business and dancing and all sorts of +occupations that they have little leisure for reading." + +Mr. Chambers stopped talking suddenly and laughed. "I'm not a good man +for you to bring these questions to," he said, "because I never have had +any special reverence for books or literature as such. I reverence the +books that I like, not all books." + +"And have you such a thing as a favorite author?" I asked. + +"Yes," said Mr. Chambers. "Dumas." + +During the 1870's Mr. Chambers was an art student in Paris, and he has +many interesting memories of the French and English writers and painters +who have made that period memorable. He knew Paul Verlaine (whose poetry +he greatly admires), Charles Conder, and Aubrey Beardsley. + +"One day," he said, "I was out on a shooting-trip--I think it was in +Belgium--and I met a young English poet, a charming fellow, whose work I +was later to know and like. It was the poet who wrote at least one great +poem--'Cynara'--it was Ernest Dowson. + +"I knew many of the Beaux Arts crowd, because my brother was a student +of architecture at the Beaux Arts. And they were a decent, clean +crowd--they were not 'decadents.' I do not take much stock in the pose +of 'decadence,' nor in the artistic temperament. I never saw a real +artist with the artistic temperament. I always associated that with +weakness." + +Mr. Chambers, although he has intimate knowledge of the Quartier Latin, +has little use for "Bohemia." + +"What is Bohemia?" he asked. "If it is a place where a number of artists +huddle together for the sake of animal warmth, I have nothing to say +against it. But if it is a place where a number of artists come to +scorn the world, then it is a dangerous thing. The artist should not +separate himself from the world. + +"These artistic and literary cults are wrong. I do not believe in +professional clubs and cliques. If writers form a combination for +business reasons, that is all right, but a writer should not associate +exclusively with other writers; he should do his work and then go out +and see and talk to people in other professions. We should sweep the +cobwebs from the profession of writing and not try to fence it in from +the public." + +To the somewhat trite question as to the effects of the war on +literature, Mr. Chambers made first his usual modest answer, "I don't +know." But when I told him of the author who had dogmatically stated +that war always stops literature, and that the Civil War had produced no +writing worthy of preservation, Mr. Chambers reconsidered. + +"Did he say that the Civil War had produced no literature worthy of +preservation?" he said. "He must have forgotten that the Civil War +caused one man to make contributions to our literature as valuable as +anything we possess. He must have forgotten Abraham Lincoln." + +Before I left, I mentioned to Mr. Chambers the theory that literature +is better as a staff than as a crutch, as an avocation than as a +vocation. This, like the "inevitable word" theory, is greatly beloved by +college professors. Mr. Chambers said: + +"I disagree utterly with that theory. Do you remember how Dr. Johnson +wrote _Rasselas_? It was in order to raise the money to pay for his +mother's funeral. I believe that the best work is done under pressure. +Of course the work must be enjoyed; a man in choosing a profession +should select that sort of work which he prefers to do in his leisure +moments. Let him do for his lifework the task which he would select for +his leisure--and let him not take himself too seriously!" + + + + +_DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY_ + +JAMES LANE ALLEN + + +That Edgar Allan Poe, in spite of his acknowledged genius, has had +practically no influence on the development of the short story in +America, and that the current short story written in America is inferior +to that written during the years between 1870 and 1895, these are two +remarkable statements made to me by James Lane Allen, the distinguished +author of _The Choir Invisible_, _The Mettle of the Pasture_, and many +another memorable novel. + +I found Mr. Allen in the pleasant workroom of his New York residence. +Himself a Southerner, he is an enthusiastic admirer of the poet whose +name is inseparably linked with Southern letters. But I was soon to find +that he does not share the opinion of those who consider Poe the +originator of the modern short story, nor does he rate Poe's influence +in fiction as very wide. + +"There is always much interest in short stories," he said, "among +authors, and in the great body of readers. You say that Mr. Gouverneur +Morris believes that except Poe almost no writer before our generation +could write short stories. + +"I do not wish to be placed in a position of publicly criticizing Mr. +Gouverneur Morris's opinion of the short story. But it may not seem +antagonistic to the opinion of any one to call attention to the fact +that, of all American short stories yet written, the two most widely +known in and outside our country were written independently of Poe. +These are _The Man Without a Country_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. + +"As the technique of the American short story is understood and applied +to-day, neither of these two stories can be regarded as a work of +impeccable art. But flaws have not kept them from fame. By a common +verdict the flawless short stories of the day are fameless. Certainly, +also, Hawthorne was uninfluenced by Poe in writing short stories that +remain secure among brief American classics. + +"This, of course, is limiting the outlook to our own literature. Beyond +our literature, what of Balzac? In the splendor of his achievements with +the novel, Balzac has perhaps been slighted as a master of the short +story. Think, for instance, of such a colossal fragment as _The Atheists +Mass_. + +"And what of Boccaccio? For centuries before Poe, the _Decameron_ shone +before the eyes of the world as the golden treasury of model forms for +the short story. + +"And centuries before Boccaccio, flashing from hand to hand all over the +world, there was a greater treasury still, the treasury of _The Arabian +Nights_. + +"It is no disparagement to Poe to say that his genius did not +originate the genius of the short story. His true place, his logical +place, in the development of the short story is that of a man with +ancestors--naturally! + +"Since there is a breath of nativity blowing through his stories, I +think it is the breath of far distant romance from somewhere. Certainly +his stories are as remote from our civilization and from all things +American as are Oriental tales." + +Mr. Allen showed he had given much thought to Edgar Allan Poe's place +among the American fiction writers, so I thought that he might also have +some interesting things to say about Poe as a poet. He had. He mentioned +a quality of Poe's verse which for some reason or other seems +heretofore to have escaped the notice of students of American poetry. + +"It may be worth while calling attention," he said, "to the fact that +nearly all of Poe's poems belong to the night. Twelve o'clock noon never +strikes to his poetic genius. His best poems are Poe's Nights, if not +_Arabian Nights_. + +"There is a saying that the German novel long ago died of the full moon. +To Poe the dead moon was the orb of life. The sun blotted him out." + +Great as is his admiration for Poe's genius, Mr. Allen does not believe +he has greatly influenced American prose. He said: + +"As to the influence of Poe's short stories in our country, this seems +to be a tradition mainly fostered by professors of English in American +universities and by the historians of our literature. The tradition does +not prevail among American writers. Actually there is no traceable stamp +of the influence of his prose writings on the work of any American +short-story writer known to me, save one. That one is Ambrose Bierce." + +"Why is it," I asked, "that Poe's influence on American fiction has been +so slight?" + +"The main reason," Mr. Allen answered, "why Poe's stories have remained +outside American imitation or emulation is perhaps because they are +projected outside American sympathies. They lie to-day where they lay +when they were written--beyond the confines of what the German calls the +literature of the soil. + +"Poe and Ambrose Bierce are at least to be linked in this: that they are +the two greatest and the two coldest of all American short-story +writers. Any living American fictionist will perhaps bear testimony to +the fact that he has never met any other writer who has been influenced +by the stories of Poe." + +"Mr. Allen," I said, "you believe that the American short story has not +been influenced by Poe; has the American short story, however, improved +since his time?" + +"The renascence of the American short story," said Mr. Allen, +thoughtfully, "its real efflorescence as a natural literary art form, +took place after the close of the Civil War. The historians of our +literature have, perhaps, as is customary with them, held to the strict +continuity of tradition as explaining this renascence. If so, they have +omitted one of the instinctive forces of human nature, which invariably +act in nations that have literatures and act ungovernably at the +termination of all wars. + +"After any war spontaneity in story-telling is one of the ungovernable +impulses of human nature. This can be traced from modern literature back +to primitive man returning from his feuds. When he had no literature, he +carved his story on the walls of his cave or on a bone to tell the glory +of the fight. Before he could even carve a bone he hung up a row of the +heads of the defeated. Perhaps the original form of the war short story +was a good, thick volume of heads. Within our own civilization the +American Indian told his short stories in this way--with American heads +or tufts of scalps--a sad way of telling them for our forefathers. + +"At the close of the American Civil War the atmosphere, both North and +South, was charged with stories. The amazing fact is not that short +stories should have begun at that time, but that they should have begun +with such perfection. This perfection expressed itself more richly +during the period, say, from 1870 to 1895--twenty-five years--than it +has ever done since. + +"The evidence is at hand that the best of the American short stories +written during that period outweigh in value those that have been +written later--with the exception of those of one man. And this evidence +takes this form--that these stories were collected into volumes, had an +enormous sale, had the highest critical appreciation, have passed into +the histories of literature written since, have gone into the courses of +English literature now being taught in the universities, and are still +steadily being sold. + +"Is this true of the best short stories being written now? Are any of +the short stories written since that period being bound into volumes and +extensively sold? Do the professors of English literature recommend them +to their classes? That is the practical test. + +"The one exception is O. Henry. He alone stands out in the later period +as a world within himself; as much apart from any one else as are +Hawthorne and Poe." + +Mr. Allen did not express an opinion as to the probable effects on +literature of the war. He said: + +"Now, the North and the South in the renascence of the short story after +the Civil War divide honors about equally. But it is impossible to speak +of the Southern short story, or indeed of Southern literature at all, +without being brought to the brink of a subject which lies back of the +whole philosophy of Southern literature." + +Mr. Allen paused for a moment. Then he continued, speaking with an +intensity which reminded me of his Southern birth and upbringing: + +"Suppose that at the end of the present European war Germany should be +victorious and France defeated. And suppose that in France there should +not be left a single publishing-house, a single literary periodical, a +single literary editor, a single critic, and scarcely even a single +buyer of books. + +"And suppose that the defeated French people wanted to cry out their +soul over their defeat and against their conquerors. And suppose that in +order to do this every French novelist, short-story writer, or poet, +unable to keep silent, should begin to write and begin to send his novel +or his short story or his poem over into Germany to be read by a German +editor, published by a German publisher, and sold in a German bookshop +to a German reader. What kind of French literature of the war do you +think would appear in Germany and be fostered there? + +"But this is exactly what happened after the war between the North and +the South. + +"The few voices that began to be sent northward across the demolished +battle-line could only be the voices that would be listened to and +welcomed on the other side. That is the reason why that first literature +was so mild, so tempered, so thin, so devitalized, that it seemed not to +come from an enraged people, but from the memories of their ghosts. + +"As a result of finding war literature inexpressible in such conditions, +the young generation of Southerners dropped the theme of war altogether +and explored other paths. So that perhaps the most original and +spontaneous fragments of this new Southern post-bellum literature are in +the regions of the imagination, where no note of war is heard. + +"It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that if Joel Chandler +Harris, a young Southerner, had possessed full freedom to wreak his +genius on the war, the world might never have heard of 'Uncle Remus.' +The world might never have known that among the cotton-plantations there +dwelt a brother to Æsop and to La Fontaine." + + + + +_SOME HARMFUL INFLUENCES_ + +HARRY LEON WILSON + + +From the Pacific Coast--from what is enthusiastically termed "the Golden +West"--from that section of the United States which is large and +chivalrous and gladly suffers suffrage--comes a voice, replying to my +question: "What is the matter with contemporary fiction?" + +And the voice says, "_Cherchez la femme!_" + +It is the voice of Mr. Harry Leon Wilson, author of _Bunker Bean_, +_Ruggles of Red Gap_, and many another popular novel, and co-author with +Mr. Booth Tarkington of several successful plays. Mr. Wilson believes +that the dullness and insincerity of our novels are due to the taste of +most of their readers--that is, to the taste of the women. + +I asked Mr. Wilson what, in his opinion, was the influence most harmful +to the development of literature in America. + +"I know little about literature," Mr. Wilson replied, "but if you mean +the novel, I should say the intense satisfaction with it as it is, of +the maker, the seller, and the buyer. And to trace this baneful +satisfaction to its source, I should say it lies in the lack of a +cultivated taste in our women readers of fiction. + +"Publishers are agreed, I believe, that women buy the great bulk of +their output. The current novel is as deliberately planned to please the +woman buyer as is any other bit of trade goods. The publisher knows what +she wants to read, the writer finds out from the publisher, and you can +see the result in the advertisements--and the writer's royalty +statements. + +"'We want,' says the publisher, 'a stunning girl for the cover and a +corking good love interest to catch the women.' (Publishers do talk that +way when they have safely locked themselves in their low dens.) + +"This love interest is always said to be wholesome and sweet. I don't +know. Certainly it is sweet enough. In the trade novel it's as if you +took a segment of rich layer cake, the chocolate-and-jelly kind, poured +over it a half-pint of nice thick molasses, and then, just to make sure, +sprinkled this abundantly with fine sugar. + +"Anyway, that's what the publisher has found--and he has the best means +of knowing--that the American woman will buy year in and year out. And +you can't blame him for printing it. A publisher with ideals of his own +couldn't last any longer than a grocer with ideals of his own, or a +clergyman. + +"And least of all can you blame the author for writing this slush, +because nine times out of ten he doesn't know any better. How should he, +with no one to tell him? + +"And that," said Mr. Wilson, "is another evil almost as great in its +influence as the undeveloped taste of our women readers. I mean our lack +of authoritative criticism. Now we really do get a good novel once in a +blue moon, but one who has been made wary by the mass of trade novels +would never suspect it from reading our book reviews. The good novel, it +is true, is praised heartily, but then so are all the bad novels--and +how is one to tell? + +"At least eighty-five per cent. of our book reviews are mere amiable, +perfunctory echoes of the enthusiastic 'canned' review which the +publisher obligingly prints on the paper jacket of his best seller. I +sometimes suspect this task is allotted to a member of the staff who is +known to be 'fond of reading.' + +"Another evil influence is often alleged--the pressure the business +office puts on the reviewer to be tender with novels that are lavishly +advertised, but I have never thought there was more than a grain of +truth in this. + +"Perhaps a publisher wouldn't continue to patronize a sheet that +habitually blurted out the truth about his best sellers, but I really +doubt that this was ever put to an issue. I don't believe the average +book-reviewer knows any better than the average novelist the difference +between a good and a bad novel. + +"It isn't so with the other arts. We have critics for those. Music, +sculpture, painting--we know the best and get the best. + +"But, then, the novel is scarcely considered to be an art form. Any one +can--and does--write a novel, if he can only find the time. It isn't +supposed to be a thing one must study, like plumbing or architecture. + +"The novelist who wants to write a best seller this year studies the +best seller of last year, and wisely, because that is what the publisher +wants--something like his last one that sold big. He is looking for it +night and day and for nothing else. He wants good carpenters who have +followed the design that women have liked. Fiction is the one art you +don't take seriously, and there is no one to tell us we should; there +are no critics to inform the writers and the readers and make the +publishers timid. + +"True, we have in this country two or three, possibly four, critics who +can speak with authority, men who know what the novel has been, what it +is with us, what it ought to be. One of them is a friend of mine, and I +reproached him lately for not speaking out in meeting oftener. + +"His defense was pathetic. First, that ninety out of a hundred of our +novels are beneath criticism. Second, as to the remaining ten that would +merit the rapier instead of the bludgeon--'criticism is harder to sell +than post-meridian virtue. I have tried.' + +"And he has to eat as often as any publisher. So there you are! People +are not going to pay him for finding fault with something they are +intensely satisfied with. It all comes back to the women. When their +taste is corrected we shall have better novels. But not before then!" + +"Mr. Wilson," I said, "do you believe that the development of the +magazine, with its high prices and serialization, has been harmful or +beneficial to fiction?" + +"In the first place, the magazine hasn't developed," he answered. "It +has merely multiplied--the cheap ones, I mean. And prices have not +increased except to about a dozen of our national favorites. Where there +is one writer who can get fifteen hundred dollars for a short story, or +fifteen thousand dollars for the serial rights to a novel, there are a +thousand who can get not more than a fifteenth of those prices. + +"On the whole, I think that the effect of the cheap monthlies has been +good. They are the only ones that welcome the new writer. They try him +out. Then, if the public takes to him, the better magazines find it out +after a while and form an alliance with him--that is, if his characters +are so sweet and wholesome that the magazine can still be left on the +center-table where Cuthbert or Berryl might see it after school. + +"Nowadays I never expect to find a good short story in any of the cheap +magazines. Of course, it does happen now and then, but not often enough +to make me impatient for their coming. And, of course, the cheap +monthlies do print, for the most part, what are probably the worst +short stories that will ever be written in the world--the very furthest +from anything real. + +"These writers, too, like the novelists, study one another instead of +life. We will say one of them writes a short story about a pure young +shopgirl of flower-like beauty who, spending an evening of innocent +recreation in a notorious Tenderloin dive (one of those places that I, +for one, have never been able to find), is insulted by the leader of +Tammany Hall, who is always hanging around there for evil purposes. At +the last moment she is saved from his loathsome advances by a dashing +young stranger in a cute-cut blue serge suit, who carries her off in a +taxicab and marries her at 2 A.M. And he, of course, proves to be the +great traction magnate who owns all the city's surface-car lines. + +"The other writers, and some new ones that never before thought of +writing, read this story, which is called 'All for Love,' and learn to +do the 'type'--the pure young shopgirl, a bit slangy in spite of her +flower-like beauty; the abhorrent politician (some day he will have a +distressing mix-up with his very own daughter in one of these evil +places--see if he doesn't!), the low-browed dive-keeper, and the honest +young traction magnate. They will learn with a little practice to do +these as the dupes of the 'Be-a-cartoonist!' schools learn to draw 'An +Irishman,' 'A German,' 'A Jew,' and the dental façade of Colonel +Roosevelt. + +"But we must remember that O. Henry came to us from the cheap magazines, +never did get into the higher-priced ones, and was, by the way, +wretchedly paid for his stories. True, he received good prices in his +later days, but I doubt if they raised the average for his output to two +hundred dollars a story. He neglected to come to the feast in a wedding +garment, so the more pretentious magazines would have none of him. + +"For one O. Henry, then, we can forgive the lesser monthlies for the +bulk of their stuff that can be read only by born otoliths. The more +magazines, the better our chance of finding the new man, and only in the +cheap ones can he come to life." + +Many dogmatic statements have been made concerning the great American +novel. I have been told that it would come from the South, that it would +come from the West, that it would never be written. But Mr. Wilson has a +new and revolutionary theory. + +"Will there," I asked, "ever be the great American novel? That is, will +there ever be a novel which reflects American life as adequately as +_Vanity Fair_ reflects English life?" + +"There have already been dozens of them!" was Mr. Wilson's emphatic +reply. "To go no farther back, Booth Tarkington wrote one the other day, +and so did Theodore Dreiser. (Dreiser's story, 'The "Genius,"' of course +couldn't have appeared in any American magazine. Trust your canny +publisher not to let his magazine hand know what his book hand is +doing!) + +"But let us lay forever that dear old question that has haunted our +literary columns for so many years. The answer, of course, is that there +is no novel that reflects English life any more adequately than _The +Turmoil_, or '_The Genius_,' or _The Virginian_, or _Perch of the +Devil_, or _Unleavened Bread_, or _The Rise of Silas Lapham_ reflects +American life. + +"Certainly _Vanity Fair_ doesn't do this. It reflects but a very narrow +section of London life. For the purposes of fictional portrayal England +is just as big and difficult--as impossible in one novel--as the United +States. + +"To know England through fiction one must go to all her artists, past +and present, getting a little from each. Hardy gives us an England that +Thackeray never suspected, and Galsworthy gives us still another, not to +go on to the England of George Moore, Phillpotts, Quiller-Couch, Wells, +Bennett, Walpole, George, or Mackenzie. I hope at the proper time that a +tasteful little tablet will be erected to my memory for having laid this +ancient and highly respectable apparition." + +In his interesting contribution to a symposium of opinions as to what +are the six best novels in the English language, Mr. Wilson had some +things to say about Dickens which were not likely to bring him a vote of +thanks from the Dickens Fellowship. I wished to have his opinion of +Dickens stated more definitely, and so, basing my question on a +statement he had made in the symposium, I asked, "What qualities in the +work of Charles Dickens make him a bad model for novelists to follow?" + +Mr. Wilson replied: "Dickens has been a blight to most writers who were +susceptible to his vices. He was a great humorist, but an inferior +novelist, and countless other inferior novelists have believed that they +could be great humorists by following his childishly easy formula. + +"That is, those who were influenced by him copy his faults. Witness our +school of characterization based on the Dickens method, a school holding +that 'character' is a mere trick of giving your creation exaggerated +mannerisms or physical surfaces--as with Dickens it was rarely anything +else. + +"Dickens created vaudeville 'characters'--unsurpassed for twenty-minute +sketches, deadly beyond that to the mentally mature. His stock in trade +was the grotesque make-up. In stage talk he couldn't create a 'straight' +part. + +"Strip his people of their make-ups, verbal, hirsute, sartorial, +surgical, pathological, what not--and dummies remain. Meet them once and +you know them for the rest of the tale, the Micawbers, Gamps, +Pecksniffs, Nicklebys; each has his stunt and does it over and over at +each new meeting, to the--for me, at least--maddening delay of the +melodrama. I like melodrama as well as any one, badgered heroines, +falsely accused heroes, missing wills, trap-doors, disguised +philanthropists, foul murders, and even slow-dying children who are not +only moralists, but orators; and I like to see the villain get his at +last, and get it good; but I can't read Dickens any more, because the +tale must be held up every five minutes for one of the funny +'characters' to do his stunt. + +"How many years will it take us--writers, I mean--to realize that there +are no characters in Dickens in the sense that Dmitri in _The Brothers +Caramazov_ is a character? How few of our current novelists can +distinguish between the soulless caricaturing of Dickens and the genuine +character-drawing of a Turgenieff or a Dostoievski! + +"How few of us can see how the soul of Dmitri is slowly unfolded to the +reader with never a bit of make-up! To this moment, I don't know if he +wore a beard or not; but I know the man. Dickens would have given him +funny whiskers, astigmatism, a shortened leg, a purple nose, and still +to make sure we wouldn't mistake him a catch phrase for his utterance. + +"Any novelist who has mastered the rudiments of his craft, even though +he hasn't an atom of humor in his make-up, can write a Dickens novel, +and any publisher will print it for the Christmas trade if it's fairly +workman-like, and it will be warmly praised in the reviews. That happens +every season. + +"And that's why Dickens is a bad model. If one must have a model, why +not Hall Caine, infinitely the superior of Dickens as a craftsman? Of +course, having no humor, he can't be read by people who have, but he +knows his trade, where Dickens was a preposterous blunderer." + +Charles Belmont Davis once told me that a novelist should have some +other regular occupation besides writing. I asked Mr. Wilson his opinion +on this subject. + +"Mr. Davis didn't originate this theory," he said. "It's older than he +is. Anyway, I don't believe in it. I know of no business to-day that +would leave a man time to write novels, and a novelist worth his salt +won't have time for any other business. + +"Of course, the ideal novelist would at one time or another have been +anything. The ideal novelist has two passions, people and words, and he +should have had and should continue to have as many points of contact +with life as possible. But if he has reached the point where he can +write to please me, I want him not to waste time doing anything else. + +"Personally, I wish I might have been, for varying intervals, a Russian +Grand Duke, an Eighth Avenue undertaker, the manager of a +five-and-ten-cent store, a head waiter, a burglar, a desk sergeant at +the Thirtieth Street Police Station, and a malefactor of great wealth, +preferably one that gets into the snapshots at Newport, reading from +left to right. But Heaven has denied me practically all of these avenues +to a knowledge of my humankind, and I am too busy keeping up with the +current styles of all millinery fiction to take to any of them at this +late day. + +"Besides, I have a bad example to deter me, having just read _The High +Priestess_, by Robert Grant, who has another business than novel +writing--something connected with the law, I believe, in Boston. I have +no means of knowing how valuable a civic unit he may have been in his +home town, but I do feel that he has cheated the world of a great deal +by keeping to this other business, whatever it may be. + +"From the author of _Unleavened Bread_ we once had a right to expect +much. But _The High Priestess_ chiefly makes me regret that he didn't +have to write novels or starve; by its virtues of construction, which +are many and admirable, and by its utter lack of power to communicate +any emotion whatsoever, which is conspicuous and lamentable. He seems to +have written his novel with an adding-machine, and instinctively I +blame that 'other business' of his, in which he seems to have +forgotten--for he did know it once--that a novelist may or may not think +straight, but he must feel. + +"Perhaps he wasn't a real novelist, after all. I suspect a real novelist +would starve in any other business." + +I told Mr. Wilson that a prominent American humorist writer had classed +Mark Twain with Artemus Ward and Philander Doesticks, and said that +these men were not genuine humorists, but "the Charlie Chaplins of their +time." + +Mr. Wilson smiled. "Isn't this rather high praise for Charlie Chaplin?" +he asked. "How far is this idolatry of the movie actor to go, anyway? +True, Mr. Chaplin is a skilled comedian, pre-eminent in his curious new +profession, but to my thinking he lacks repose at those supreme moments +when he is battering the faces of his fellow-histrions with the wet mop +or the stuffed club, or walking on their stomachs; but I may be +prejudiced. I know I shouldn't have ranked him with Mark Twain, +arch-humanist and satirist and one of the few literary artists who have +attained the world stature--so that we must go back and back to +Cervantes to find his like." + + + + +_THE PASSING OF THE SNOB_ + +EDWARD S. MARTIN + + +If William Makepeace Thackeray were alive to-day he would not write a +_Book of Snobs_. He might write a _Book of Reformers_. + +This is the opinion of that shrewd and kindly satirist, Edward S. +Martin. I found him not in New York, the city whose lights and shadows +are reflected in much of his graceful prose and pungent verse, but out +among the Connecticut hills. In the pleasant study of his quaint +Colonial cottage he talked about the thing he delights to +observe--humanity. + +"Thackeray would not write a _Book of Snobs_ to-day," he said. "The snob +is not now the appealing subject that he was in the early days of the +reign of Queen Victoria. Thackeray could not now find enough snobs and +snobbery to write about, either in England or in America. Snobs are by +way of having punctured tires these days. + +"Don't you think that the snobs were always very much apart from our +civilization and national ideals? They were a symptom of an established +and conservative society. And this established and conservative society +Thackeray in his way helped to break down. + +"To-day, in England and in the United States, that kind of society is in +a precarious condition. If Thackeray were now writing, he would not +satirize snobs. It is more likely that he would satirize the reformers. +I think that all the snobs have hit the sawdust trail." + +"How did this happen?" I asked. "What was it that did away with the +snobs?" + +"It was largely a natural process of change," said Mr. Martin. "The +snobs were put on the defensive. You see, there is a harder push of +democracy now than there was in Thackeray's time. The world of which the +snob was so conspicuous a part seems, especially since the war began, to +have passed away. Of course the literature of that world is not dead, +but for the moment it seems obsolete. + +"To-day the whole attention of civilized mankind is fixed on the great +fundamental problems; there is no time for snobbery. For one thing, +there is the problem of national self-preservation. And there has +recently been before the civilized world, more strongly than ever +before, the great problem of the development of democracy. + +"I suppose that the war will check, to a certain extent, the development +of democracy. In England the great task of the hour is to organize all +the powers of society for defense against attack, against attack by a +power organized for forty years for that attack. + +"I suppose England will get organization out of this war. And if we get +into the war, we'll get organization out of it." + +Mr. Martin is generally thought of as a critic of social rather than +political conditions. But he is keenly interested in politics. Speaking +of American politics and the possibility of America's entering the war, +he said: + +"For the past fifteen years our greatest activity in politics has been +to rip things open. It seemed to most people that the organization was +getting too strong and that it was controlled by too few people. The +fight has been against that condition. + +"But if we became involved in a serious war trouble the energy of our +people would be directed to an attempt to secure increased efficiency. +We would become closely organized again. I don't think we'd lose the +benefit of what has been done in the past years, but we would come to a +turn in the road. + +"I suppose it would bring us all together, if we got into this war, and +I suppose we'd get some good out of it. + +"You see, the people who formerly directed our Government haven't had +much power for several years. Now they are valuable people. And they +will come back into power again, but with greatly modified conditions. + +"I don't think that a new set of people are going to manage the affairs +of the nation. I think that the affairs of the nation will be managed by +the people who managed them before. But these people will be much more +under control than they were before, and they will be subject to new +laws. + +"How much good government by commission is going to do I don't know. We +have not as yet had good enough men to enter into this important work, +and the best of those who have entered have not stayed in this +employment. So the development of experts in government has not come +along as well as people hoped it would." + +The genial philosopher smiled quizzically and rose from his chair. + +"I'm afraid I'm getting too political," he said, pacing slowly up and +down the room. "Let's get back to snobs and snobbery. + +"You asked me a few minutes ago why the snob had become so inconspicuous +a figure in our modern society. Well, I know one reason for this altered +condition of affairs. Woman has abolished the snob. Woman has changed +man." + +"And what changed woman?" I asked. + +"Many things; the development of machinery, for instance," he replied. +"Woman has not changed so much as the conditions of life have changed. + +"The development of machinery has caused changes that impress me deeply. +It has produced immense alterations in the conditions of life and in the +relations between people. + +"War has been changed in a striking manner by this development of +machinery. Never in the history of warfare was machinery so prominent +and important as to-day. In fact, I think I am justified in speaking of +this war as a machine-bore! + +"Machinery really has had a great deal to do with changing the +condition and activities of woman, and has been a powerful influence in +bringing about the modern movement for women's suffrage. Machinery has +changed the employment of women and forced them into kinds of work which +are not domestic. + +"The typewriter and the telephone have revolutionized our methods of +doing business. The typewriter and the telephone have filled our offices +with women. They are doing work which twenty years ago would have been +considered most unfeminine. + +"The war is strengthening this tendency of women to take up work that is +not domestic. I have heard it said that women first got into the +undomestic kinds of business in France during the Napoleonic wars. +Napoleon wanted to have all the men out in the line of battle, so he had +girls instructed in bookkeeping and other kinds of office work. + +"The business activities of Frenchwomen date from that time. And a +similar result seems to be coming out of this war. In France, in +England, in all the countries engaged in the war the women are filling +the positions left vacant by the men." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that this is a good thing for civilization, +this increased activity of women in business?" + +"I don't know," said Mr. Martin, musingly. "I don't know. But I do know +this, that the main employment of woman is to rear a family. Office +work, administrative work--these things are of only secondary +importance. The one vital thing for women to do is to rear families. +They must do this if the human race is to continue." + +"Mr. Martin," I said, "you told me that Thackeray, if he were alive, +would satirize the reformers. Just what sort of reformer is it that has +taken the place of the snob?" + +Mr. Martin did not at once answer. He smiled, as if enjoying some +entertaining memory. Then he started to speak, and mentioned the name of +a prominent reformer. But his New England caution checked him. He said: + +"No, I'd better not say anything about that. I'd rather not. I'd rather +say that the things that the snobs admired and particularly embodied +have lost prestige during the last twenty years. + +"After 1898, after our great rise to prosperity, the captains of +industry and of finance were the great men of the country. But I think +these great men are less stunning now than they were then. And money is +less stunning, too. + +"All the business of money-making has had a great loss of prestige since +1900. People think more of other things. And the people who are thinking +of other things than money-making have more of a 'punch' than they had +before. The wise have more of a punch, and so have the foolish." + +Again came that reminiscent smile. "Reformers can be very trying," he +said. "Very trying, indeed. Did you ever read Brand Whitlock's _Forty +Years of It_? Brand Whitlock had his own trials with the reformers. +Whitlock is a sensible, generous man, and his attitude toward reformers +is a good deal humorous and not at all violent. That would be +Thackeray's attitude toward them, I think, if he were living to-day. +He'd satirize the reformers instead of the snobs." + +Mr. Martin is not inclined to condemn or to accept absolutely any of the +modern reform movements. "All reform movements," he said, "run until +they get a check. Then they stop. But what they have accomplished is not +lost." + +The society women who undertake sociological reform work find in Mr. +Martin no unsympathetic critic. + +"These wealthy women," he said, "take up reform work as a recourse. +Society life is not very filling. They have a sense of emptiness. So +they go in for reform, to fill out their lives more adequately. + +"But I don't know that I'd call that kind of thing reform. I'd call it a +large form of social activity. These women are attending to a great mass +of people who need this attention. But the bulk of this kind of work is +too small for it to be called reform. + +"In New York there are very many young people who need care and +leadership. The neglected and incompetent must be looked after. The +old-fashioned family control has been considerably loosened, and an +attempt must be made to guard those who are therefore less protected +than they would have been a generation ago. Certainly these efforts to +look after young people who don't have enough care taken of them by +their families are directed in the right direction." + +I asked Mr. Martin what he thought of the present condition of American +literature, particularly the work presented to the public on the pages +of magazines. + +"Just now," he said, "the newspapers seem to have almost everything. The +great interest of the last few years has been in the newspapers. They +have had a tremendous story to tell, they have told it every day, and +other things have seemed, in comparison, flat and lifeless. + +"It has been a hard time for every sort of a publication not absolutely +up to the minute all the time. The newspapers have had the field almost +to themselves. + +"And I think that the newspapers have greatly improved. They have had an +immense chance, and it has been very stimulating." + + + + +_COMMERCIALIZING THE SEX INSTINCT_ + +ROBERT HERRICK + + +"Realism," said Robert Herrick, "is not the celebration of sexuality." I +had not recalled to earth that merry divine whose lyric invitation to go +a-Maying still echoes in the heart of every lover of poetry. The Robert +Herrick with whom I was talking is a poet and a discriminating critic of +poetry, but the world knows him chiefly for his novels--_The Common +Lot_, _Together_, _Clark's Field_, and other intimate studies of +American life and character. He is a realist, and not many years ago +there were critics who thought that his manner of dealing with sexual +themes was dangerously frank. Therefore, the statement that he had just +made seemed to me particularly significant. + +"It seems to have become the fashion," he said, "to apply the term +Realist to every writer who is obsessed with sex. I think I know the +reason for this. Our Anglo-Saxon prudery kept all mention of sex +relations out of our fiction for many years. Among comparatively modern +novelists the realists were the first to break the shackles of this +convention, and write frankly of sex. And from this it has come, most +unfortunately, that realism and pornography are often confused by +novelists and critics as well as by the public. + +"This confusion of ideas was apparent in some of the criticisms of my +novel _Together_. In an early chapter of the book there was an incident +which was intended to show that the man and woman who were the chief +figures in the book were spiritually incompatible, that their relations +as husband and wife would be wrong. This was, in fact, the theme of the +book, and this incident in the first chapter was intended to foreshadow +the later events of their married life. Well, the critics who disliked +this chapter said that what they objected to was its 'gross realism.' + +"Now, as a matter of fact, that part of the book was not realistic at +all. I was describing something unusual, abnormal, while realism has to +do with the normal. The critic had, of course, a perfect right to +believe that the subject ought not to be treated at all, but 'gross +realism' was the most inappropriate description possible. + +"Undoubtedly there are many writers who believe that they are realists +because they write about nothing but sex. Undoubtedly, too, there are +many writers who are conscious of the commercial value of sex in +literature. Of course a writer ought to be conscious of the sex impulse +in life, but he ought not to display it constantly. I wish our writers +would pay less attention to the direct manifestations of sex and more to +its indirect influence, to the ways in which it affects all phases of +activity." + +"Who are some of the writers who seem to you to be especially ready to +avail themselves of the commercial value of sex?" I asked. + +Mr. Herrick smiled. "I think you know the writers I mean without my +mentioning their names," he said. "They write for widely circulated +magazines, and make a great deal of money, and their success is due +almost entirely to their industrious celebration of sexual affairs. You +know the sort of magazine for which they write--it always has on the +cover a highly colored picture of a pretty woman, never anything else. +That, too, is an example, and a rather wearying example, of the +commercializing of the sex appeal. + +"I think that Zola, although he was a great artist, was often conscious +of the business value of the sex theme. He knew that that sort of thing +had a tremendous appeal, and, for me, much of his best work is marred by +his deliberate introduction of sex, with the purpose--which, of course, +he realized--of making a sensation and selling large editions of his +books. This sort of commercialism was not found in the great Russian +realists, the true realist--Dostoievski, for example. But it is found in +the work of some of the modern Russian writers who are incorrectly +termed realists." + +"Mr. Herrick," I asked, "just what is a realist?" + +Mr. Herrick's youthful face, which contrasts strangely with his white +hair, took on a thoughtful expression. + +"The distinction between realism and romanticism," he said, "is one of +spirit rather than of method. The realist has before him an aim which is +entirely different from that of the romanticist. + +"The realist writes a novel with one purpose in view. And that purpose +is to render into written words the normal aspect of things. + +"The aim of the romanticist is entirely different. He is concerned only +with things which are exciting, astonishing--in a word, abnormal. + +"I do not like literary labels, and I think that the names 'realist' and +'romanticist' have been so much misused that they are now almost +meaningless. The significance of the term changes from year to year; the +realists of one generation are the romanticists of the next. + +"Bulwer Lytton was considered a realist in his day. But we think of him +only as a sentimental and melodramatic romanticist whose work has no +connection with real life. + +"Charles Dickens was considered a realist by the critics of his own +generation, and it is probable that he considered himself a realist. But +his strongest instinct was toward the melodramatic. He wrote chiefly +about simple people, it is true, and chiefly about his own land and +time. But the fact that a writer used his contemporaries as subjects +does not make him a realist. Dickens's people were unusual; they were +better or worse than most people, and they had extraordinary adventures; +they did not lead the sort of life which most people lead. Therefore, +Dickens cannot accurately be called a realist." + +"You called Dostoievski a realist," I said. "What writers who use the +English language seem to you to deserve best the name of realist?" + +"I think," said Mr. Herrick, "that the most thoroughgoing realist who +ever wrote in England was Anthony Trollope. _Barchester Towers_ and +_Framley Parsonage_ are masterpieces of realism; they give a faithful +and convincing picture of the every-day life of a section of English +society with which their author was thoroughly familiar. Trollope +reflected life as he saw it--normal life. He was a great realist. + +"In the United States there has been only one writer who has as great a +right to the name realist as had Anthony Trollope. That man is William +Dean Howells. Mr. Howells has always been interested in the normal +aspect of things. He has taken for his subject a sort of life which he +knows intimately; he has not sought for extraordinary adventures for his +theme, nor has he depicted characters remote from our experience. His +novels are distinguished by such fidelity to life that he has an +indisputable claim to be called a realist. + +"But, as I said, it is dangerous and unprofitable to attempt to label +literary artists. Thackeray was a realist. Yet _Henry Esmond_ is classed +as a romantic novel. In that book Thackeray used the realistic method; +he spent a long time in studying the manners and customs of the time +about which he was writing; and all the details of the sort of life +which he describes are, I believe, historically accurate. And yet _Henry +Esmond_ is a romance from beginning to end; it is a romantic novel +written by a realist, and written according to what is called the +realistic method. + +"On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott was a romanticist. No one will deny +that. Yet in many of his early books he dealt with what may be called +realistic material; he described with close fidelity to detail a sort of +life and a sort of people with which he was well acquainted. + +"Whether a writer is a realist or a romanticist is, after all, I think, +partly a matter of accident or culture. I happen to be a realist because +I was brought up on the great Russian realists like Gogol and the great +English realists from George Elliot down to Thomas Hardy. If I had been +brought up on romantic writers I suppose that I might now be writing an +entirely different sort of novel from that with which I am associated. + +"There is a sounder distinction," said Mr. Herrick, "than that which +people try to draw between the realistic novel and the romantic novel. +This is the distinction between the novel of character and the novel of +events. Personally, I never have been able to see how the development of +character can be separated from the plot of a novel. A book in which the +characters exhibit exactly the same characteristics, moral and +intellectual, in the last chapter as in the first, seems to me to be +utterly worthless. + +"I will, however, make one exception--that is, the novel of the Jules +Verne type. In this sort of book, and in romances of the Monte Cristo +kind, action is the only thing with which the author and the reader are +concerned, and any attempt to develop character would clog the wheels of +the story. + +"But every other kind of novel depends on character. Even in the best +work of Dumas, in _The Three Musketeers_, for example, the characters of +the principal figures develop as the story progresses. + +"The highest interest of a novel depends upon the development of its +characters. If the characters are static, then the book is feeble. I +have never been able to see how the plot and the development of the +characters can be separated. + +"Of course, the novel of character is full of adventure. The adventures +of Henry James's characters are of absorbing interest, but they are +psychological adventures, internal adventures. If some kind person +wanted to give one of Henry James's novels what is commonly called 'a +bully plot' the novel would fail." + +As to the probable effect on literature of the war, Mr. Herrick has a +theory different from that of any other writer with whom I have +discussed the subject. + +"I think," he said, "that after the war we shall return to fatuous +romanticism and weak sentimentality in literature. The tendency will be +to read novels in order to forget life, instead of reading them to +realize life. There will be a revival of a deeper religious sense, +perhaps, but there will also be a revival of mere empty formalism in +religion. It has been so in the past after great convulsions. Men need +time to recover their spiritual pride, their interest in ideas." + +But Mr. Herrick's own reaction to the war does not seem to justify his +pessimistic prophecy. Certainly the personal experience which he next +narrated to me does not indicate that Mr. Herrick is growing sentimental +and romantic. + +"When I was in Rome recently," he said, "I was much impressed by +D'Annunzio. I was interested in him as a problem, as a picturesque +literary personality, as a decadent raffine type regenerated by the war. +I have not read any of his books for many years. + +"I took some of D'Annunzio's books to read on my voyage home. I read _Il +Piacere_. I realized its charm, I realized the highly æsthetic quality +of its author, a scholarly and exact æstheticism as well as an emotional +æstheticism. But, nevertheless, I had to force myself to read the book. +It was simply a description of a young man's amorous adventures. And I +could not see any reason for the existence of this carefully written +record of passional experiences. + +"It seemed to me that the war had swept this sort of thing aside, or had +swept aside my interest in this sort of thing. The book seemed to me as +dull and trivial and as remote as a second-rate eighteenth-century +novel. And I wondered if we would ever again return to the time when +such a record of a young man's emotional and sensual experiences would +be worth while. + +"I came to the conclusion that D'Annunzio himself would not now write +such a novel. I think that it would seem to him to be too trivial a +report on life. I think that the war has so forced the essential things +of life upon the attention of young men." + + + + +_SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS_ + +ARTHUR GUITERMAN + + +Arthur Guiterman has been called the Owen Seaman of America. Of course +he isn't, any more than Owen Seaman is the Arthur Guiterman of England. +But the verse which brings Arthur Guiterman his daily bread is turned no +less deftly than is that of _Punch's_ famous editor. Arthur Guiterman is +not a humorist who writes verse; he is a poet with an abundant gift of +humor. + +Now, the author of _The Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup_ and +_The Quest of the Riband_, and of those unforgetable rhymed reviews, +differs from most other poets not only in possessing an abnormally +developed sense of humor, but also in being able to make a comfortable +living out of the sale of his verse. But when he talked to me recently +he was by no means inclined to advise all able young poets to expect +their poetry to provide them with board and lodging. + +"Of course it is possible to make a living out of verse," he said. "Walt +Mason does, and so does Berton Braley. And now most of my income comes +from my verse. Formerly I wrote short stories, but I haven't written one +for seven or eight years. + +"Nevertheless, I think it is inadvisable for any one to set out with the +idea of depending on the sale of verse as a means of livelihood. You +see, there are, after all, two forms, and only two forms, of literary +expression--the prose form and the verse form. Some subjects suit the +prose form, others suit the verse form. Any one who makes writing his +profession has ideas severally adapted to both of these forms. And every +writer should be able to express his idea in whichever of these two +forms suits it better. + +"Now, the verse form is older than the prose form. And so I have come to +look upon it as the form peculiarly attractive to youth. Many writers +outgrew the tendency to use the verse form, but some never outgrew it. +Sir Walter Scott was a verse-writer before he was a prose-writer, and so +was Shakespeare. So were many modern writers--Robert W. Chambers, for +example. + +"This theory is true especially in regard to lyric verse. The lyric is +nearly always the work of a young man. As a man grows older he sings +less and preaches more. Certainly this was true of Milton. + +"I never thought that I should write verse for a living. But verse +happens to be the medium that I love. I ran across my first poem the +other day--it was about fireflies, and I was eight years old when I +wrote it. Certainly nearly all writers write verse before they write +prose; perhaps it is atavistic. I don't know that Henry James began with +verse. But I would be willing to bet that he did. + +"One trouble with a great many people who make a living out of writing +verse is that they feel obliged always to be verse-writers, never to +write prose, even when the subject demands that medium. Alfred Noyes +gives us an example of this unfortunate tendency in his _Drake_. I am +not disparaging Alfred Noyes's work; he has written charming lyrics, but +in _Drake_, and perhaps in some of the _Tales from the Mermaid Tavern_, +I feel that he has written verse not because the subject was especially +suited to that medium, but because he felt that he was a verse-writer +and therefore should not write prose." + +Mr. Guiterman is firmly convinced, however, that a verse-writer ought to +be able, in time, to make a living out of his work. + +"If a man calls himself a writer," he said, "he ought to be able to make +a living out of writing. And I think that the writer of verse has a +greater opportunity to-day than ever before. I don't mean to say that +the appreciation of poetry is more intense than ever before, but it is +more general. More people are reading poetry now than in bygone +generations. + +"Compare with the traditions that we have to-day those of the early +nineteenth century, of the time of Byron and Sir Walter Scott. Then +books of verse sold in large quantities, it is true, but to a relatively +small public, to one class of readers. Now not only the poet, but also +the verse-writer has an enormous public. If a really great poet should +arise to-day he would find awaiting him a larger public than that known +by any poet of the past. But it would be necessary for the poet to be +great for him to find this public. Byron would be more generally +appreciated to-day, if he were to live again, than he was in his own +generation. I mention Byron because I think it probable that the next +great poet will have something of Byron's dynamic quality." + +"Who was the last great poet?" I asked. + +"How is one to decide whether or not a poet is great?" asked Mr. +Guiterman in turn. "My own feeling is that the late William Vaughn Moody +was a great poet in the making. Perhaps he never really fulfilled his +early promise; perhaps he went back to the themes of bygone ages too +much in finding themes for his poetry. It may be that the next really +great poet will sing an entirely different strain; it may be that I will +be one of those who will say that his work is all bosh. + +"But at any rate, he won't be an imitation Whitman or anything of that +sort. He won't be any special school, nor will he think that he is +founding a school. But it may be that his admirers will found a school +with him as its leader, and they may force him to take himself +seriously, and thus ruin himself." + +Returning to the subject of the advisability of a writer being able to +express himself in verse as well as in prose, Mr. Guiterman said: + +"Especially in our generation is it true that good verse requires +extreme condensation. In most work to-day brevity is desirable. The +epigram beats the epic. If Milton were living to-day he would not write +epics. I don't think it improbable that we have men with Miltonic minds, +and they are not writing epics. + +"If a man finds that he cannot express his idea in verse more forcefully +than he can in prose, then he ought to write prose. Very often a writer +is interested in some little incident which he would not be justified in +treating in prose, something too slight to be the theme of a short +story. This is the sort of thing which he should put into verse. There +is Leigh Hunt's _Jennie Kissed Me_, for example. Suppose he had made a +short story of it." + +Thinking of this poet's financial success, I asked him just what course +he would advise a young poet to pursue who had no means of livelihood +except writing. + +"Well, the worst thing for him to do," said Mr. Guiterman, "would be to +devote all his attention to writing an epic. He'd starve to death. + +"I suppose the best thing for him to do would be to write on as many +subjects as possible, including those of intense interest to himself. +What interests him intensely is sure to interest others, and the number +of others whom it interests will depend on how close he is by nature to +the mind of his place and time. He should get some sort of regular work +so that he need not depend at first upon the sale of his writings. This +work need not necessarily be literary in character, although it would be +advisable for him to get employment in a magazine or newspaper office, +so that he may get in touch with the conditions governing the sale of +manuscripts. + +"He should write on themes suggested by the day's news. He should write +topical verse; if there is a political campaign on, he should write +verse bearing upon that; if a great catastrophe occurs, he should write +about that, but he must not write on these subjects in a commonplace +manner. + +"He should send his verses to the daily papers, for they are the +publications most interested in topical verse. But also he should +attempt to sell his work to the magazines, which pay better prices than +the newspapers. If it is in him to do so, he should write humorous +verse, for there is always a good market for humorous verse that is +worth printing. He should look up the publishers of holiday cards, and +submit to them Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter verses, for which he +would receive, probably, about five dollars apiece. He should write +advertising verses, and he should, perhaps, make an alliance with some +artist with whom he can work, each supplementing the work of the other." + +"Mr. Guiterman," I said, "is this the advice that you would give to John +Keats if he were to ask you?" + +"Yes, certainly," said Mr. Guiterman. "But you understand that our +hypothetical poet must all the time be doing his own work, writing the +sort of verse which he specially desires to write. If his pot-boiling is +honestly done, it will help him with his other work. + +"He must study the needs and limitations of the various publications. He +must recognize the fact that just because he has certain powers it does +not follow that everything he writes will be desired by the editors. +Marked ability and market ability are different propositions. + +"If he finds that the magazines are not printing sad sonnets, he must +not write sad sonnets. He must adapt himself to the demands of the day. + +"There is high precedent for this course. You asked if I would give +this advice to the young Keats. Why not, when Shakespeare himself +followed the line of action of which I spoke? He began as a lyric poet, +a writer of sonnets. He wrote plays because he saw that the demand was +for plays, and because he wanted to make a living and more than a +living. But because he was Shakespeare his plays are what they are. + +"The poet must be influenced by the demand. There is inspiration in the +demand. Besides the material reward, the poet who is influenced by the +demand has the encouraging, inspiring knowledge that he is writing +something that people want to read." + +I asked Mr. Guiterman to give me a list of negative commandments for the +guidance of aspiring poets. Here it is: + +"Don't think of yourself as a poet, and don't dress the part. + +"Don't classify yourself as a member of any special school or group. + +"Don't call your quarters a garret or a studio. + +"Don't frequent exclusively the company of writers. + +"Don't think of any class of work that you feel moved to do as either +beneath you or above you. + +"Don't complain of lack of appreciation. (In the long run no really good +published work can escape appreciation.) + +"Don't think you are entitled to any special rights, privileges, and +immunities as a literary person, or have any more reason to consider +your possible lack of fame a grievance against the world than has any +shipping-clerk or traveling-salesman. + +"Don't speak of poetic license or believe that there is any such thing. + +"Don't tolerate in your own work any flaws in rhythm, rhyme, melody, or +grammar. + +"Don't use 'e'er' for 'ever,' 'o'er' for 'over,' 'whenas' or 'what time' +for 'when,' or any of the 'poetical' commonplaces of the past. + +"Don't say 'did go' for 'went,' even if you need an extra syllable. + +"Don't omit articles or prepositions for the sake of the rhythm. + +"Don't have your book published at your own expense by any house that +makes a practice of publishing at the author's expense. + +"Don't write poems about unborn babies. + +"Don't--don't write hymns to the great god Pan. He is dead; let him rest +in peace! + +"Don't write what everybody else is writing." + + + + +_MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION_ + +GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON + + +Why is the modern American novel inferior to the modern English novel? +Of course, there are some patriotic critics who believe that it is not +inferior. But most readers of fiction speak of H. G. Wells and Compton +Mackenzie, for example, with a respect and admiration which they do not +extend to living American novelists. + +Why is this? Is it because of snobbishness or literary colonialism on +the part of the American public? George Barr McCutcheon does not think +so. The author of _Beverly of Graustark_ and many another popular +romance believes that there is in America a force definitely harmful to +the novel. And that force is the magazine. + +"The development of the magazine," he said to me, "has affected fiction +in two ways. It has made it cheap and yet expensive, if you know what I +mean. + +"Novels written solely with the view to sensationalism are more than +likely to bring discredit, not upon the magazine, but upon the writer. +He gets his price, however, and the public gets its fiction. + +"In my humble opinion, a writer should develop and complete his novel +without a thought of its value or suitability to serial purposes. He +should complete it to his own satisfaction--if that is possible--before +submitting it to either editor or publisher. They should not be +permitted to see it until it is in its complete form." + +"But you yourself write serial stories, do you not?" I asked. + +"I have never written a serial," answered Mr. McCutcheon. "Some of my +stories have been published serially, but they were not written as +serials. + +"I am quite convinced in my own mind that if we undertake to analyze the +distinction between the first-class English writers of to-day and many +of our Americans, we will find that their superiority resolves itself +quite simply into the fact that they do not write their novels as +serials. In other words, they write a novel and not a series of +chapters, parts, and instalments." + +"Do you think that the American novel will always be inferior to the +English novel?" I asked. "Is it not probable that the American novel +will so develop as to escape the effects of serialization?" + +"There is no reason," Mr. McCutcheon replied, "why Americans should not +produce novels equal to those of the English, provided the same care is +exercised in the handling of their material, and that they make haste as +slowly as possible. Just so long, however, as we are menaced by the +perils of the serial our general output will remain inferior to that of +England. + +"I do not mean to say that we have no writers in this country who are +the equals in every respect of the best of the English novelists. We +have some great men and women here, sincere, earnest workers who will +not be spoiled." + +Mr. McCutcheon has no respect for the type of novel, increasingly +popular of late, in which the author devotes page after page to glowing +accounts of immorality with the avowed intention of teaching a high +moral lesson. He has little faith in the honesty of purpose of the +authors of works of this sort. + +"The so-called sex novel," he said, "is one of our gravest fatalities. I +may be wrong, but I am inclined to think that most novels of that +character are written, not from an æsthetic point of view, but for the +somewhat laudable purpose of keeping the wolf from the door and at the +same time allowing the head of the family to ride in an automobile of +his own. + +"The typical serial writer is animated by the desire, or perhaps it is +an obligation, to make the 'suspended interest' paramount to all else. +This interest must not be allowed to flag between instalments. + +"The keen desire for thrills must be gratified at all costs. It is +commanded by the editor--and I do not say that the editor errs. His +public expects it in a serial. It must not be disappointed." + +I asked Mr. McCutcheon if he believed that a writer could produce +sensational and poorly constructed fiction in order to make a living and +yet keep his talent unimpaired; if a writer was justified in writing +trash in order to gain leisure for serious work. He replied: + +"There are writers to-day who persist in turning out what they +vaingloriously describe as 'stuff to meet the popular demand.' They +invariably or inevitably declare that some day they will 'be in a +position to write the sort of stuff they want to write.' + +"These writers say, in defense of their position, that they are not even +trying to do their best work, that they are merely biding their time, +and that--some day! I very much doubt their sincerity, or, at any rate, +their capacity for self-analysis. I believe that when an author sets +himself down to write a book (I refer to any author of recognized +ability), he puts into that book the best that is in him at the time. + +"It is impossible for a good, conscientious writer to work on a plane +lower than his best. Only hack writers can do such things. + +"There is not one of us who does not do his best when he undertakes to +write his book. We only confess that we have not done our best when a +critic accuses us of pot-boiling, and so forth. Then we rise in our +pride and say, 'Oh, well, I can do better work than this, and they know +it.' + +"It is true that we may not be doing the thing that we really want to +do, but I am convinced that we are unconsciously doing our best, just +the same. It all resolves itself into this statement--a good workman +cannot deliberately do a poor piece of work. + +"I am free to confess that I have done my very best in everything I have +undertaken. It may fall short of excellence as viewed from even my own +viewpoint, but it is the best I know how to do. + +"So you may take it from me that the writer who declares that he is +going to do something really worth while, just as soon as he gets +through doing the thing that the public expects him to do, is deceiving +himself and no one else. An author cannot stand still in his work. He +either progresses or retrogrades, and no man progresses except by means +of steady improvement. He cannot say, 'I will write a poor book this +year and a great book next year.'" + +Mr. McCutcheon is so unashamedly a romanticist that I expected to find +him an enthusiastic partisan of the first and greatest master of the +romantic novel in English. But, to my surprise, he said: + +"I suppose the world has outgrown Sir Walter Scott's novels. It is quite +natural that it should. The world is older and conditions have changed. +The fairest simile I can offer in explanation is that as man himself +grows older he loses, except in a too frequently elastic memory, his +interest in the things that moved him when he was a boy." + +But while Mr. McCutcheon believes (in defiance of the opinion of the +publishers who continue to bring out, year by year, their countless new +editions of the Waverley Novels in all the languages of the civilized +world) that the spell of the Wizard of the North has waned, he +nevertheless believes that the romantic novel has lost none of its +ancient appeal. + +"I do not believe," he said, "that the vogue of the romantic novel, or +tale (which is a better word for describing the sort of fiction covered +by this generic term), will ever die. The present war undoubtedly will +alter the trend of the modern romantic fiction, but it will not in +effect destroy it." + +"How will it alter it?" I asked. + +"Years most certainly will go by," he replied, "before the novelist may +even hope to contend with the realities of this great and most +unromantic conflict. Kings and courtiers are very ordinary, and, in some +cases, ignoble creatures in these days, and none of them appears to be +romantic. + +"We find a good many villains among our erstwhile heroes, and a good +many heroes among our principal villains. People will not care to read +war novels for a good many years to come, but it is inevitable that +future generations will read even the lightest kind of fiction dealing +with this war, horrible though it is. Just so long as the world exists +there will be people who read nothing else but the red-blood, stirring +romantic stories. + +"There exists, of course, a class of readers who will not be tempted by +the romantic, who will not even tolerate it, because they cannot +understand it. That class may increase, but so will its antithesis. + +"I know a man who has read the Bible through five or six times, not +because he is of a religious turn of mind or even mildly devout, but +because there is a lot of good, sound, exciting romance in it! A man who +is without romance in his soul has no right to beget children, for he +cannot love them as they ought to be loved. They represent romance at +its best. He is, therefore, purely selfish in his possession of them." + +Mr. McCutcheon had spoken of the probable effect of the war on the +popular taste for romantic fiction. I reminded him of William Dean +Howells's much-quoted statement, "War stops literature." + +"War stops everything else," said Mr. McCutcheon, "so why not +literature? It stops everything, I amend, except bloodshed, horror, and +heartache. + +"And when the war itself is stopped, you will find that literature will +be revived with farming and other innocent and productive industries. I +venture to say that some of the greatest literature the world has ever +known is being written to-day. Out of the history of this titanic +struggle will come the most profound literary expressions of all time, +and from men who to-day are unknown and unconsidered." + +I asked Mr. McCutcheon if he did not believe that the youthful energy of +the United States was likely to make its citizens impatient of romance, +that quality being generally considered the exclusive property of +nations ancient in civilization. He did not think so. + +"America," he said, "is essentially a romantic country, our great and +profound commercialism to the contrary notwithstanding. America was born +of adventure; its infancy was cradled in romance; it has grown up in +thrills. And while to-day it may not reflect romance as we are prone to +consider it, there still rests in America a wonderful treasure in the +shape of undeveloped possibilities. + +"We are, first of all, an eager, zestful, imaginative people. We are +creatures of romance. We do two things exceedingly well--we dream and +we perform. + +"Our dreams are of adventure, of risk, of chance, of impossibilities, +and of deeds that only the bold may conceive. And we find on waking from +these dreams that we have performed the deeds we dreamed of. + +"The Old World looks upon us as braggarts. Perhaps we are, but we are +kindly, genial, smiling braggarts--and the braggart is, after all, our +truest romanticist. + +"I like to hear a grown man admit that he still believes in fairies. +That sort of man thinks of the things that are beautiful, even though +they are invisible. And--if you stop to think about it--the most +beautiful things in the world are invisible." + + + + +_BUSINESS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ART_ + +FRANK H. SPEARMAN + + +The late J. Pierpont Morgan writing sonnet sequences, Rockefeller +regarding oil as useful only when mixed with pigment and spread upon +canvas by his own deft hand, Carnegie designing libraries instead of +paying for them--these are some of the entertaining visions that occur +to the mind of Frank H. Spearman when he contemplates in fancy a +civilization in which business no longer draws the master minds away +from art. + +I asked the author of _Nan of Music Mountain_ if he thought that the +trend of present-day American life--its commercialism and +materialism--affected the character of our literature. He replied: + +"Let us take commercialism first: By it you mean the pursuit of +business. Success in business brings money, power, and that public +esteem we may loosely term fame--the admiration of our fellow-men and +the sense of power among them. + +"Commercialism, thus defined, affects the character of our literature in +a way that none of our students of the subject seems to have +apprehended. We live in an atmosphere of material striving. Our great +rewards are material successes. The extremely important consequence is +that our business life through its greater temptations--through its +being able to offer the rewards of wealth and mastery and esteem--robs +literature and the kindred arts of our keenest minds. We have, it is +true, eminent doctors and lawyers, but the complaint that commercialism +has invaded these professions only proves that they depend directly on +business prosperity for a substantial portion of their own rewards. + +"I am not forgetting the crust and garret as the traditional setting for +the literary genius; but, when this state of affairs existed, the genius +had no chance to become a business millionaire within ten years--or, for +that matter, within a hundred. And while poverty provides an excellent +foundation for a career, it is not so good as a superstructure--at +least, not outside the ranks of the heroic few who renounce riches for +spiritual things. + +"More than once," continued Mr. Spearman, "in meeting men among our +masters of industry, I have been struck by the thought that these are +the men who should be writing great books, painting great pictures, and +building great cathedrals; their tastes, I have sometimes found, run in +these directions quite as strongly as the tastes of lesser men who give +themselves to literature, painting, or architecture. But the present-day +market for cathedrals is somewhat straitened, and a great ambition may +nowadays easily neglect the prospective rewards of literature for those +of steel-making. + +"Business success--not achieved in literature and the arts--comes first +with us; in consequence, the ranks of those who follow these professions +are robbed of the intellect that should contribute to them. This is the +real way in which commercialism--our pursuit of business--affects our +literature. It depletes, too, in the same way, the quality of men in our +public life. + +"Charles G. Dawes has called my attention more than once to the falling +off in caliber among men from whose ranks our politicians and public men +are drawn. It is not that our present administration is so conspicuously +weak; go to any of the Presidential conventions this year and note the +falling off in quality among the politicians. In one generation the +change has been startling. The sons of the men that loomed large in +public life twenty-five years ago to-day are masters of business. + +"Business takes everything. We have had really magnificent financiers, +such as the elder Morgan, who should be our Michael Angelo. I have known +railroad executives who might have been distinguished novelists, and +bankers who would have been great artists were the American people as +obsessed with the painting of pictures and the making of statues as +those of Europe once were. + +"In Michael Angelo's day public interest in solving problems in +manufacture and transportation did not overshadow that in painting and +sculpture. Leonardo in our day would be building railroads, digging +canals, or inventing the aeroplane--and doing better, perhaps, at these +things than any man living; he came perilously close to doing all of +them in his own day. + +"Before you can bring our steel-founders and business men into +literature you must make success in literature and its kindred arts +esteemed as the greatest reward. As it is, I fear it is likely to be +chiefly those who through lack of capacity, inclination, or robust +health are unequal to the heat and burden of great business that will be +left for the secondary callings, among which we must at present rank +literature. It would be interesting, too, to consider to what extent +this movement of men toward business rewards has been compensated for by +the opportunities afforded to women in the field thus deserted; we +certainly have many clever women cultivating it." + +"But what," I asked, "about materialism--not specifically commercialism, +but materialism? Do you think that its evil effects are evident in +contemporary literature?" + +"Materialism--you mean the philosophy--has quite a different effect on +any literature--a poisonous, a baneful effect, rather than a merely +harmful one," Mr. Spearman answered. "Can you possibly have, at any time +or anywhere, great art without a great faith? Since the era of +Christianity, at any rate, it seems to me that periods of faith, or at +least periods enjoying the reflexes and echoes of faith, have afforded +the really nourishing atmosphere for artistic development. Spirituality +provides that which the imagination may seize upon for the substance of +its creative effort; without spirituality the imagination shrivels, and +the materialist, while losing none of his characteristic confidence, +shrinks continually to punier artistic stature." + +Something in what Mr. Spearman had said reminded me of Henry Holt's +criticisms of the modern magazines. So I asked Mr. Spearman what effect +the development of the American magazine, with its high prices for +serials and series of stories, had had upon our fiction. He answered: + +"Good, I think. Our fiction must compete in its rewards with those of +business. One of the rewards of either--even if you put it, in the first +case, the lowest--is the monetary reward, and the more substantial that +can be made, the more chance fiction will have of holding up its head. + +"I have had occasion to watch pretty closely the development of the +inclinations and ambitions of a number of average American boys--boys +that have had fairly intimate opportunities to consider both literature +and business. I have been startled more than once to find that as each +of them came along and was asked what he wanted to do, the substance of +his answer has been, 'Something to make money.' + +"If you question your own youthful acquaintances, you will receive in +most cases, I dare say, similar answers. I am afraid if Giotto had been +a Wyoming shepherd-boy he would want to be a steel-maker. Anything that +tends to attract the young to the pursuit of literature as a calling +strengthens our fiction, and the magazine should have credit for an +'assist' in this direction. Don't forget, of course, that the magazine +itself derives directly, by way of advertising, from business." + +"Do you think, then," I asked, "that our writers are producing work as +likely to endure as that which is being produced in England?" + +Mr. Spearman smiled whimsically. "Your question suggests to me," he +replied, "rather than any judgment in the case, the reflection that the +average English writer has possessed over our average American writer +the very great advantage of an opportunity to become really educated; to +this extent their equipment is appreciably stronger than ours. If you +will read the ordinary run of English fiction or play-writing and +compare it with similar work of ours, you cannot fail to note the better +finish in their work. And in expressing a conviction that our writers +are somewhat handicapped as to this factor in their equipment, I do not +indict them for wasted opportunities; I indict our own substantial +failure in educational methods. For a generation or more we have +experimented, and from the very first grade in our grammar-schools up to +the university courses there have resulted confusion and ineptitude. I +instance specifically our experimentation with electives and our +widespread contempt for the classics. To attempt to master any of the +arts and not to be intimately familiar with what the Greeks and the +Romans have left us of their achievement--not to speak of those, to us, +uncharted seas of medieval achievement in every direction following the +twelfth century--is to make the effort under a distinct disadvantage. + +"The average English writer has had much more of this intimacy, or at +least a chance at much more of it, than the average American writer. In +the sphere of literary criticism I have heard Mr. Brownell speak of the +better quality of even the anonymous English literary criticism so +frequently to be found in their journals when compared with similar +American work. There is only one explanation for these things, and it +lies in the training. All of this not implying, in indirect answer to +your question, that the English writer is to bear away the prize in the +competition for literary permanence. American Samsons may, despite +everything, burst their bonds; but if they win it will often be without +what their teachers should have supplied. + +"Mr. Brownell, in his definitive essay on Cooper, in comparing the +material at Balzac's hand with that at Cooper's, remarks on the fact +that Cooper's background was essentially nature. 'Nothing, it is true, +is more romantic than nature,' adds Mr. Brownell, 'except nature plus +man. But the exception is prodigious.' Europe measures behind her +writers almost three thousand years of man. + +"We have in this country no atmosphere of Christian tradition such as +that which pervades Europe--English-speaking people parted with historic +Christianity before they came here. But, willingly or unwillingly, the +English and the Continental writers are saturated with this magnificent +background of Christianity--they can't escape it. And what I note as +striking evidence of the value to them of this brooding spirit of twenty +European centuries is the fact that their very pagans choose Christian +material to work with. Goethe himself, fine old pagan that he was, +turned to Christian quarries for his _Faust_. The minor pagans turn in +likewise, though naturally with slighter results. But to all of them, +Christianity, paraphrasing Samson, might well say: 'If ye had not plowed +with my heifer, ye had not read--your own riddle of longed-for +recognition.'" + +"Why is it that the art of fiction is no longer taken as seriously as it +was, for example, in the time of Sir Walter Scott?" + +"I don't know how seriously," countered Mr. Spearman, "you mean your +question to be taken. It suggests that in the day of Walter Scott the +field of novel-writing was still so new that only bolder spirits +ventured into it. It was not a day when the many could attempt the novel +with any assurances of success in marketing their wares. In consequence +we got then the work of only big men and women. Pioneers--though not +necessarily respectable--are a hardy lot. + +"Still--touching on your other question about the great American +novel--if I wished to develop great musicians I should start every one +possible at studying music, and I can't help thinking that the more +there are among us who attempt novels the greater probability there will +be for the production of a masterpiece. A man's mind is a mine. Neither +he nor any one else knows what is in it. Possessing the property in fee +simple, he has, of course, certain valuable proprietary rights. But the +only way I know of to find out to a certainty just what lies within the +property is persistently to tunnel and drift, or, as Mr. Brownell says, +'to get out what is in you.' And I am in complete accord with him in the +belief that temperament is the best possible endowment for a +novelist--and temperament comes, if you are a Christian, from God; if a +pagan, from the gods." + +Mr. Spearman returned to his theme of the effect of materialism on +literature in the course of a discussion of the French novel of the day +as compared to the novel of Zola and his imitators. He said: + +"I think the important thing for Zola was that his day coincided with a +materialistic ascendency in the thought of France. He lived at a time +admirably suited to a man of his type. Zola found a France weak and +contemptible in its government, and in consequence a soil in which +grossness could profitably be cultivated. + +"He was by no means a great artist; he was merely a writer writhing for +recognition when he turned to filth. He took it up to commercialize it, +to turn it into money and reputation. Men such as he are continually, at +different times and in different countries, lifting their heads. But +unless they are sustained by what chances to be a loose public attitude +on questions of decency, they are clubbed into silence. + +"And just why should the exploitation of filth assume to monopolize the +word 'realism'? To define precisely what realism should include and +exclude would call for hard thinking. But it doesn't take much thought +to reach the conclusion that mere annalists of grossness have no proper +monopoly of the term. Grossness is no adequate foundation for a literary +monument; it is not even a satisfactory corner-stone. The few writers +one thinks of that constitute exceptions would have left a better +monument without it. + +"But if you wish to realize how fortunate Zola was in coinciding with a +period when the chief effort of the ruling spirits of France was to war +on all forces that strove to conserve decency, try to imagine what sort +of a reception _L'Assommoir_ would be accorded to-day by the tears of +France stricken through calamity to its knees. + +"France is experiencing now realism of quite another sort from that +propagated by Zola--a realism that is wringing the souls and turning +the thoughts of a great and unhappy people back once more to the eternal +verities; in these grossness never had a place. + +"And if you don't want to think in grossness, don't read in it; if you +don't want to act in grossness, don't think in it. To exploit it is to +exaggerate its proper significance in the affairs of life. + +"Twenty-five years ago an American writer set out as a Zola disciple to +give us something American along Zola's lines. He made a failure of +it--so complete that he was forced to complain that later efforts in +which he returned to paths of decency were refused by editors and +publishers. He had spoiled his name as an asset. If you are curious to +note how far the bars have been let down in his direction in twenty-five +years, contemplate what passes to-day among us with quite a footing of +magazine and book popularity. It means simply that we are falling into +those conditions of public indifference in which moral parasites may +flourish. But if one were forced to-day to choose in France between the +material taken up by Zola after his failure to cultivate successfully +cleaner fields, and that chosen by Réné Bazin and the new and hopeful +French school of spirituality, there could be no question that the +latter would afford the better opportunity. And there can be no real +question but that the exponents of grossness are likewise opportunists, +looking first of all for a market for their names--as most men are +doing. But some men, by reason of inclination or voluntary restraint, +have restricted themselves in their choice of literary materials." + +Mr. Spearman has recently given much of his time to moving-picture work, +with the result that his name is nearly as familiar to the devotees of +the flickering screen as to habitual magazine readers. I asked him how +the development of the moving picture is likely to affect literature. He +replied: + +"What I can say on this point will perhaps be more directly of interest +to writers themselves; the development of the moving picture broadens +their market. It has, if you will let me put it in this way, increased +the number of our theaters in their capacity for absorbing material for +the drama a thousandfold. Inevitably a new industry developing with such +amazing rapidity is still in the experimental stages, and those who know +it best say its possibilities are but just beginning. What I note of +interest to the literary worker is that men advanced and in authority +in the production of pictures have reached this conclusion: Behind every +good picture there must be a good story. The slogan to-day is 'The story +is the thing.' And those close to the 'inside' of the industry say +to-day to the fictionist: 'Hold on to your stories. Within a year or two +they will command from the movies much higher prices than to-day, +because the supply is fast becoming exhausted.'" + +It was in the course of his remarks about the rewards of literature that +Mr. Spearman told an interesting story concerning Henry James and George +du Maurier. He said: + +"The recent death of Henry James is bringing out many anecdotes +concerning him. At the time of George du Maurier's death it was recalled +that he had once given the material for _Trilby_ to Henry James with +permission to use it; and the story ran that, resolving to use it +himself, Mr. James returned the material to Du Maurier, who wrote the +novel from it. + +"But I don't think it has ever appeared that the real reason why Henry +James did not attempt _Trilby_ was that he possessed no musical sense; +Mr. James himself told me this, and without a sense of music the +material was useless to any one. I discussed the incident with him some +ten years ago and he added, in connection with _Trilby_ and Du Maurier, +other interesting facts. + +"_Trilby_ did not at first make a signal success in England. Its first +big hit was made in _Harper's Magazine_. Not realizing the American +possibilities, Mr. du Maurier, when offered by Harper & Brothers a +choice between royalties and five thousand dollars outright for the book +rights, took the lump sum as if it were descended straight from heaven. +When the news of the extraordinary success of the book in this country +reached him, he realized his serious mistake, and in the family circle +there was keen depression over it. But further surprises were in store +for him. To their eternal credit, the house of Harper & +Brothers--honorable then as now--in view of the unfortunate situation in +which their author had placed himself, voluntarily canceled the first +contract and restored Du Maurier to a royalty basis. The fear in the +English home then was that this arrangement would come too late to bring +in anything. Not only, however, did the book continue to sell, but the +play came on, and together the rights afforded George du Maurier a +competency that banished further worry from the home." + + + + +_THE NOVEL MUST GO_ + +WILL N. HARBEN + + +The novel is doomed. If the automobile, the aeroplane, and the moving +picture continue to develop during the next ten years as they have +developed during the last ten, people will cease almost entirely to take +interest in fiction. + +It was not Henry Ford who told me this. Neither was it Mr. Wright, nor +M. Pathé. The man who made this ominous prophecy about the novel is +himself a successful novelist. He is Will N. Harben, author of _Pole +Baker_, _Ann Boyd_, _The Desired Woman_, and many other widely read +tales of life in rural Georgia. + +Although he is so closely associated with the Southern scenes about +which he has written, Mr. Harben spends most of his time in New York +nowadays. He justifies this course interestingly--but before I tell his +views on this subject I will repeat what he had to say about this +possible extinction of the novel. + +"You have read," he said, "of the tremendous vogue of _Pickwick Papers_ +when it was first published. No work of fiction since that time has been +received with such enthusiasm. + +"In London at that time you would find statuettes of Pickwick, Mr. +Winkle, and Sam Weller in the shop windows. There were Pickwick +punch-ladles, Pickwick teaspoons, Pickwick souvenirs of all sorts. + +"Now, when you walk down Broadway, do you find any reminders of the +popular novels of the day? You do not, except of course in the +bookshops. But you do find things that remind you of contemporary taste. +In the windows of stationers and druggists you find statuettes not of +characters in the fiction of the day, but of Charlie Chaplin. + +"Of course the moving picture has not supplanted the novel. But people +all over the country are becoming less and less interested in fiction. +The time which many people formerly gave to the latest novel they now +give to the latest film. + +"And the moving picture is by no means the only thing which is weaning +us away from the novel. The automobile is a powerful influence in this +direction. + +"Take, for instance, the town from which I come--Dalton, Georgia. There +the people who used to read novels spend their time which they used to +give to that entertainment riding around in automobiles. Sometimes they +go on long trips, sometimes they go to visit their friends in near-by +towns. But automobiling is the way in which they nowadays are accustomed +to spend their leisure. + +"Naturally, this has its effect on their attitude toward novels. Years +ago, when Dalton had a population of about three thousand, it had two +well-patronized bookshops. Now it has a population of about seven +thousand and no bookshops at all! + +"I suppose one of the reasons is that people live their adventures by +means of the automobile, and therefore do not care so much about getting +adventures from the printed page. But the chief reason is one of +time--the fact is that people more and more prefer automobiling to +reading. + +"Now, if the aeroplane were to be perfected--as we have every reason to +believe it will be--so that we could travel in it as we now do in the +automobile, what possible interest would we have in reading dry novels? +It seems likely that in a hundred years we will be able to see clearly +the surface of Mars--do you think that people will want to read novels +when this wonderful new world is before their eyes? + +"The authors themselves are beginning to realize this. They are becoming +more and more nervous. They are not the placid creatures that they were +in Sir Walter Scott's day. They feel that people are not as interested +in them and their works as they used to be. I doubt very much if any +publisher to-day would be interested, for example, in an author who +produced a novel as long as _David Copperfield_ and of the same +excellence." + +"But do you think," I asked, "that the fault is entirely that of the +public? Haven't the authors changed, too?" + +"I think that the authors have changed," said Mr. Harben, reflectively. +"The authors do not live as they used to live. + +"The authors no longer live with the people about whom they write. +Instead, they live with other authors. + +"Nowadays, an author achieves success by writing, we will say, about +the people of his home in the Far West. Then he comes to New York. And +instead of living with the sort of people about whom he writes, he lives +with artists. That must have its effect upon his work." + +"But is not that what you yourself did?" I asked. "A New York +apartment-house is certainly the last place in the world in which to +look for the historian of _Pole Baker_!" + +Mr. Harben smiled. "But I don't live with artists," he said. "I try to +live with the kind of people I write about. I resolved a long time ago +to try to avoid living with literary people and to live with all sorts +of human beings--with people who didn't know or care whether or not I +was a writer. + +"So I have for my friends and acquaintances sailors, merchants--people +of all sorts of professions and trade. And people of that sort--people +who make no pretensions to be artists--are the best company for a +writer, for they open their hearts to him. A writer can learn how to +write about humanity by living with humanity, instead of with other +people who are trying to write about humanity." + +"But at any rate you have left the part of the country about which you +write," I said. "And wasn't that one of the things for which you +condemned our hypothetical writer of Western tales?" + +"Not necessarily," said Mr. Harben. "It sometimes happens that an author +can write about the scenes he knows best only after he has gone away +from them. I know that this is true of myself. + +"It's in line with the old saws about 'distance lends enchantment' and +'emotion remembered in tranquillity,' you know. I believe that Du +Maurier was able to write his vivid descriptions of life in the Latin +Quarter of Paris because he went to London to do it. + +"You see, I absorbed life in Georgia for many years. And in New York I +can remember it and get a perspective on it and write about it." + +"Then," I said, "you would go to Georgia, I suppose, if you wanted to +write a story about life in a New York apartment?" + +Mr. Harben thought for a moment. "No," he said, slowly, "I don't think +that I'd go to Georgia to write about New York. I think that a novel +about New York must be written in New York--while a novel about Dalton, +Georgia, must be written away from Dalton, Georgia." + +"How do you account for that?" I asked. + +"Well," said Mr. Harben, "for one thing there is something bracing about +New York's atmosphere that makes it easier to write when one is here. +Once I tried to write a novel in Dalton, and I simply couldn't do it. + +"And the reason why a novel about New York must be written in New York +is because you can't absorb New York as you might absorb Georgia, so to +speak, and then go away and express it. New York is so thoroughly +artificial that there is nothing about it which a writer can absorb. + +"New York hasn't the puzzles and adventures and surprises that Georgia +has. Everybody knows about apartment-houses and skyscrapers and subways +and elevators and dumb-waiters--there's nothing new to say about them. + +"I sometimes think that the reason why the modern novel about New York +City is so uninteresting is because everybody tries to write about New +York City. And their novels are all of one pattern--necessarily, because +life in New York City is all of one pattern. + +"In bygone days this was not true of New York. For instance, Mr. +Howells's novels about New York City were about a community in which +people lived in real houses and had families and friends. In those days +life in New York had its problems and surprises and adventures; it was +not lived mechanically and according to a set pattern. + +"What I have said about the advisability of an author's leaving the +scenes about which he is to write is not universally true. There are +writers who do better work by staying in the place where the scenes of +their stories are laid. For instance, Joel Chandler Harris did better +work by staying in the South than he would have done if he had gone +away." + +"But wasn't that because his negro folk-tales were a sort of 'glorified +reporting' rather than creative work?" I asked. + +"No," said Mr. Harben; "they were creative work. Joel Chandler Harris +remembered just the bare skeleton of the stories as the negro had told +them to him. And he developed them imaginatively. That was creative +work. And he did most of his writing, and the best of his writing, in +the office of _The Constitution_." + +"In view of what you said about the difficulty of absorbing New York +life," I suggested, "I suppose that, in your opinion, the great American +novel will not be written about New York." + +"What do you mean by the great American novel?" asked Mr. Harben. "So +far as I know there is no great English novel or great Russian novel." + +"I suppose that the term means a novel inevitably associated with the +national literature," I said. "You cannot think of English literature +without thinking of _Vanity Fair_, for instance. Certainly there is no +American novel so conspicuously a reflection of our national life as +that novel is of English life." + +"Well," said Mr. Harben, "it is difficult to think of American +literature or of American life without thinking of the novels of William +Dean Howells. But the great American novel, to use that term, would be +less likely to come into being than the great English novel. + +"You see, the United States is not as compact as England. London, it may +be said, is England; it has all the characteristics of England, and in +the season all England may be met there." + +Mr. Harben is not in sympathy with the theories of some of our modern +realists. + +"The trouble with the average realist," he said, "is that he doesn't +believe that the emotions are real. As a matter of fact, the greatest +source of material for the novelist is to be found in the emotional and +spiritual side of human nature. If writers were more receptive to +spiritual and emotional impressions they would make better novels. It is +the soul of man that the greatest novels are written about--there is +Dostoievski's _Crime and Punishment_, for example!" + +In spite of his criticisms of some of the methods of the modern +realists, Mr. Harben believes strongly in the importance of one +realistic dogma, that which has to do with detailed description. + +"Why is it that _Pepys's Diary_ is interesting to us?" he asked. "It is +because of its detail. + +"But if Pepys had been a Howells--if he had been as careful in +describing great things as he was in describing small things--then his +_Diary_ would be ten times more valuable to us than it is. And so +Howells's novels will be valuable to people who read them a thousand +years from now to get an idea of how we live. + +"That is, Howells's novels will be valuable if people read novels in the +years that are to come! Perhaps they will not be reading novels or +anything else. For all we know, thought-transference may become as +common a thing as telephony is now. And if this comes to pass nobody +will read!" + + + + +_LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGES_ + +JOHN ERSKINE + + +Brown of Harvard is no more. The play of that name may still be running, +but of Harvard life it is now about as accurate a picture as _Trelawney +of the Wells_ is of modern English life. At Harvard, and at all the +great American universities, the dashing, picturesque young athlete is +no longer the prevailing type of the undergraduate ideal. + +Of course, undergraduate athletics and undergraduate athletes +persist--it would be a tragedy if they did not--but the type of youth +that has been rather effectively denominated the "rah-rah boy" is +increasingly difficult to find. His place has been taken, not by the +"grind," the plodding, prematurely old student, caring only for his +books and his scholastic record, but by a normal young man, aware that +the campus is not the most important place in the world; aware, in +fact, that the university is not the universe. + +This young man knows about class politics, but also about international +politics; about baseball, but also about contemporary literature. He is +much more a citizen than his predecessor of ten years since, less +provincial, less aristocratic. And he not only enjoys literature, but +actually desires to create it. + +The chief enthusiasm at Harvard seems to be the drama; indeed, the Brown +of Harvard to-day must be represented not as a crimson-sweatered +gladiator but as a cross between Strindberg and George M. Cohan. At +Columbia--I have Prof. John Erskine's word for it--there has lately +developed a genuine interest in--what do you suppose? Poetry! + +I interviewed the bulletin-board outside Hamilton Hall before I +interviewed Professor Erskine, and it, too, surprised me. It was not the +bulletin-board of my not altogether remote undergraduate days. It bore +notices telling of a meeting of the "Forum for Religious Discussion," of +an anti-militaristic mass-meeting, of a rehearsal of an Elizabethan +drama. It was a sign of the times. + +Professor Erskine said that undergraduate ideals had greatly changed +during the last few years. I asked him how this had come to pass. + +"Well," he replied, "I think that college life reflects the ordinary +life of the world more closely than is usually believed. This is a day +of general cultural and spiritual awakening. The college student is +waking, just as everybody else is waking; like everybody else, he is +becoming more interested in the great things of life. There is no reason +why the college walls should shut him in from the hopes, ambitions, and +problems of the rest of humanity. + +"It isn't only the boys that have changed--the parents have changed too. +Time was when the father and mother wanted their son to go to college so +that he could join a group of pleasant, nice-mannered boys of good +family. Now they have a definite idea of the practical value of a +college education, they send their son to college intelligently. + +"Also, the whole theory of teaching has changed. The purely Germanic +system has been superseded by something more humane. The old idea of +scholarship for its own sake is no longer insisted upon. Instead, the +subjects taught are treated in their relation to life, the only way in +which they can be of real interest to the students. + +"You will look in vain in the modern university for the old type of +absent-minded, dry-as-dust professor. He has been superseded by the +professor who is a man as well as a scholar. And naturally he approaches +his subject and his classes in a different spirit from that of his +predecessor. + +"We have a new sort of teacher of English. He is not now (as was once +often the case) a retired clergyman, or a specialist recruited from some +unliterary field. He is, in many cases, a creative artist, a dramatist, +a novelist, or a poet. + +"When I was in college this was not generally true. Then such a +professor as George Edward Woodberry or Brander Matthews was unique. Now +the college wants poets and creative writers." + +These are Professor Erskine's actual words. I asked him to repeat his +last statement and he said, apparently with no sense of the amazement +which his words caused in me, "The college wants the poets!" The stone +which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner. + +But, then, there are poets and poets. There is, for example, Prof. +Curtis Hidden Page. There is also one John Erskine, author of _Actæon +and Other Poems_, and Adjunct Professor of English at Columbia +University. There is also Prof. Alfred Noyes. But there are also some +thousand or so poets in the United States who will be surprised to know +that the college wants them. Academic appreciation of poets has +generally consisted of a cordial welcome given their collected works two +hundred years after their deaths. + +"English as a cultural finish," Professor Erskine continued, "has gone +by the board. English is taught nowadays with as much seriousness as +philosophy or history. Art in all its forms is considered as the history +of the race, and treated seriously by the student as well as by the +professor. To-day the students regard Shakespeare and Tennyson as very +important men. They study them as in a course in philosophy they would +study Bergson. Literature, philosophy, and history have been drawn +together as one subject, as they should be." + +"What," I asked, "are some of the extra-curricular manifestations of +literary interest among the students?" + +"In the first place," he answered, "the extraordinary amount of writing +done by the students. It is not at all unusual now for a Columbia +student to sell his work to the regular magazines. The student who +writes for the magazines and newspapers is no longer a novelty. +Randolph Bourne, who was recently graduated, contributed a number of +essays to the _Atlantic Monthly_ during his junior and senior years. + +"Many of the students write for the newspapers. The better sort of +newspaper humorists have had a strong influence on the undergraduate +mind; they have shown the way to writing things that are funny but have +an intellectual appeal. This has resulted in the production of some +really excellent light verse. Also, Horace's stock has gone up. + +"During the last two years some remarkable plays have been handed into +the Columbia University Dramatic Association. Not only were they +serious, but also they were highly poetic. + +"And this," said Professor Erskine, "marks what I hope is the +distinguishing literary atmosphere at Columbia. The trend of the plays +written by Columbia students is strongly poetic. This is not true, +perhaps, of the plays written by students of other institutions. The +writers of plays want to write poetic plays, and--what is perhaps even +more surprising--the other students do not consider poetic drama +'high-brow stuff.' + +"Philolexian, the oldest of the Columbia literary societies, has been +producing Elizabethan plays. These plays have been enthusiastically +received, and the enthusiasm does not seem to show any signs of dying +down. The students come to the study of these plays with a feeling of +familiarity, for they have seen them acted." + +"Does this enthusiasm for literature show itself in the college +magazine?" I asked. + +"It shows itself," answered Professor Erskine, "by the absence of a +literary magazine. The literary magazine has completely collapsed. In +small colleges, far away from the cities where the regular magazines are +published, the college magazine is the only available outlet for the +work of the students who can write. But here in New York the students +know the condition of the literary market, and the more skilful writers +among them do not care to give their writings to an amateur publication +when they can sell them off the campus. So the _Columbia Monthly_ got +only second-best material. The boys who really could write would not +sacrifice their work by burying it in a college publication, so the +_Columbia Monthly_ died. + +"The history of a literary club we have up here, called Boar's Head, is +significant. It was started as a sort of revival of an older +organization called King's Crown. At first the program consisted of an +address at each meeting by some prominent writer. For a while the +meetings were well attended, but gradually the interest died down. + +"At length I found what the trouble was--the boys wanted to do their own +entertaining. Now work by the members is read at every meeting; there +are no addresses by outsiders. + +"And here again the poetic trend of the undergraduate mind at Columbia +is displayed. The Scribblers' Club, which consisted of short-story +writers, is dead--there were not enough short-story writers to support +it. And at the meetings of Boar's Head there have been read, during the +past two years, only one or two short stories. + +"The boys bring plays and poems to the Boar's Head meetings, but not +short stories. Last year most of the poems which were read were short +lyrics. Toward the end of last year and during the present year longer +poems have been read. They are not poems in the Masefield manner; they +are modeled rather on Keats and Coleridge. This fact has interested me +because the magazines, as a rule, have not been buying long poems. I +was interested to see that William Stanley Braithwaite, in his excellent +_Anthology of Magazine Verse and Year-Book of American Poetry_, calls +attention to the increasing popularity of the longer poem. + +"Last year Boar's Head decided to bring out a little book containing the +best of the poems that were read at its meetings. A number of +subscribers at twenty-five cents each were procured, and _Quad Ripples_ +was published. It contained only short poems. This year Boar's Head has +published _Odes and Episodes_, a collection of light verse by one of its +former members, Archie Austin Coates. It soon will publish a collection +of poems read at its meetings, and all these poems are long. Some of +these poems are so good that it is a real sacrifice for the boys to have +them printed in this book instead of in some magazine. + +"Of course, there were always 'literary men' at Columbia, but they were +considered unusual. Now they no longer even form a class by themselves. +One of our best writers of light verse is the captain of the baseball +team. + +"Speaking of light verse and baseball," continued Professor Erskine, +"there is a certain connection between the _Columbia Monthly_ and +football, besides the obvious parallel which lies in the fact that both +have ceased to exist. Some of the boys express eagerness to revive the +college magazine, just as they express eagerness to revive football. But +it is, I believe, merely a matter of pride with them. They are eager to +have football and to have a college magazine; they are not so eager to +contribute to the support of either institution. + +"One proof of the literary renascence of Columbia is that the essays +written in the regular course of the work in philosophy and in English +are better than ever before." + +"Do you believe," I asked, "that being in the city has had a good effect +on literary activity among Columbia students?" + +He answered: "I do think so, decidedly. It has produced an extreme +individualism and has given the boys enterprising minds. It is true that +it has its disadvantages, it has made the student, so to speak, +centrifugal, and has destroyed collegiate co-operation of the old sort. +But it has produced an original, independent type of student. + +"The older type of college student was interested in football because he +knew that people expected him to be interested in football. The +Columbia student of to-day is interested in poetry, not because it is a +Columbia tradition to be interested in poetry, but because his tastes +are naturally literary." + +Several of the causes of this poetic renascence at Columbia had been +mentioned in the course of our conversation, but Professor Erskine had +ignored one of the most important of them. So I will mention it now. It +is John Erskine. + + + + +_CITY LIFE VERSUS LITERATURE_ + +JOHN BURROUGHS + + +"Well," said John Burroughs, "she doesn't seem to want us out here, so I +guess we'll have to go in." So we left the little summer-house +overlooking the Hudson and went into the bark-walled study. + +Now, "she" was a fat and officious robin, and her nest was in a corner +of the summer-house just over my head, as I sat with the +poet-naturalist. The nest was full of hungry and unprepossessing young +robins, and the mother robin seemed to be annoyed in her visits to it by +our talk. As we walked to the study, leaving to the robin family +undisputed possession of the summer-house, I heard John Burroughs say in +tones of mild indignation, half to himself and half to me: + +"I won't stand this another year! This is the third year she's taken +possession of that summer-house, and next May she simply must build her +nest somewhere else!" + +Nevertheless, I think that this impudent robin will rear her 1917 brood +in John Burroughs's summer-house, if she wants to. + +When I walked up from the station to Riverby--John Burroughs's +twenty-acre home on the west shore of the Hudson--I was surprised by the +agility of my seventy-nine-year-old companion. He walked with the +elastic step of a young man, and his eyes and brain were as alert as in +the days when he showed Emerson and Whitman the wild wonders of the +hills. + +"Living in the city," he said, "is a discordant thing, an unnatural +thing. The city is a place to which one goes to do business; it is a +place where men overreach one another in the fight for money. But it is +not a place in which one can live. + +"Years ago, I think, it was possible to have a home in the city. I used +to think that a home in Boston might possibly be imagined. But no one +can have a home in New York in all that noise and haste. + +"Sometimes I am worried by the thought of the effect that life in the +city will have on coming generations. All this grind and rush and roar +of the Subway and the surface cars must have some effect on the children +of New-Yorkers. And that effect cannot be good. + +"And what effect can it have on our literature? It might produce, I +suppose, in the writer's mind, a sense of the necessity of haste, a +passionate desire to get his effect as quickly as possible. But can it +give him sharpness of intellect and keenness of æsthetic perception! I'd +like to think so, but I can't. I don't see how literature can be +produced in the city. Literature must have repose, and there is no +repose in New York so far as I can see. + +"Of course I have no right to speak for other writers. Some people can +find repose in the city--I can't. I hear that people write on the +trains, on the omnibus, and in the Subway--I don't see how they do it!" + +"Have you noticed," I asked, as we left the lane and walked down a +grassy slope toward the study, "that the city has not as yet set its +mark on our literature?" + +"I think," said John Burroughs, "that much of our modern fiction shows +what I may call a metropolitan quality; it seems made up of showy +streets and electric light. But I don't know. I don't read much +fiction. I turn more to poetry and to meditative essays. Some poets find +beauty in the city, and they must, I suppose, find repose there. Richard +Watson Gilder spent nearly all his life in a city and reflected the life +of the city in his poems. And Edmund Clarence Stedman was thoroughly a +poet of the city. I don't think that any of Emerson's poems smack of the +city. They smack of the country, and of Emerson's study in the country, +his study under the pines, where, as he wrote: + + the sacred pine-tree adds + To the leaves her myriads. + +"Of the younger poets, John James Piatt has written beautifully of the +city. He wrote a very fine poem called 'The Morning Street,' which +appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ some years ago. In it he describes +vividly the hush of early morning in a great city, when the steps of a +solitary traveler echo from the walls of the sleeping houses. I don't +suppose Piatt is known to many readers of this generation. He was a +friend of Howells, and was the co-author with Howells of _Poems by Two +Friends_, published in the early sixties. This was Howells's first +venture." + +We were in the bark-walled study now, seated before the great stone +fireplace, in which some logs were blazing. On the stone shelf I saw, +among the photographs of Carlyle and Emerson and other friends of my +host, a portrait of Whitman. + +"Your friend, Walt Whitman," I said, "got inspiration from the city." + +"Yes," said John Burroughs, "he got inspiration from the city, but you +wouldn't call his poems city poetry. His way of writing wasn't +metropolitan, you know; you might say that he treated the city by a +country method. What he loved about the city was its people--he loved +the throngs of men, he loved human associations. + +"But he was a born lover of cities, Whitman was. He loved the city in +all its phases, mainly because he was such a lover of his kind, of the +'human critter,' as he calls him. Whitman spent most of his life in the +city, and was more at home there than in the country. He came to +Brooklyn when he was a boy, and there he worked in a law-office, and as +a printer and on the _Eagle_. + +"For a while, I remember, he drove a 'bus up and down Broadway when the +driver, who was a friend of his, was sick. That's where he got the +stuff he put in _The Funeral of an Old Omnibus-driver_. He put in it all +the signs and catch-words of the 'bus-drivers." + +John Burroughs pointed his steady old hand at a big framed photograph on +the wall. It is an unusual portrait of Walt Whitman, showing him seated, +with his hands clasped, with a flaring shirt collar, like a sailor's. + +"Whitman," John Burroughs continued, "seems to be appealing more and +more to young men. But in the modern Whitmanesque young poets I don't +see much to suggest Whitman, except in form. They do clever things, but +not elemental things, not things with a cosmic basis. Whitman, with all +his commonness and nearness, reached out into the abysmal depths, as his +imitators fail to do. I think Robert Frost has been influenced by +Whitman. His _North of Boston_ is very good; it is genuine realism; it +is a faithful, convincing picture of New England farm life. When I first +saw the book I didn't think I'd read three pages of it, but I read it +all with keen interest. It's absolutely true. + +"I used to see Whitman often when he and I were working in Washington. +And he came up to see me here. When I was in Washington Whitman used to +like to come up to our house for Sunday morning breakfast. Mrs. +Burroughs makes capital pancakes, and Walt was very fond of them, but he +was always late for breakfast. The coffee would boil over, the griddle +would smoke, car after car would go jingling by, and no Walt. But a car +would stop at last, and Walt would roll off it and saunter up to the +door--cheery, vigorous, serene, putting every one in good humor. And how +he ate! He radiated health and hopefulness. This is what made his work +among the sick soldiers in Washington of such inestimable value. Every +one who came into personal relations with him felt his rare, compelling +charm. + +"Very few young literary men of Whitman's day accepted him. Stedman did, +and the fact is greatly to his credit. Howells and Aldrich were repelled +by his bigness. All the Boston poets except Emerson hesitated. Emerson +didn't hesitate--unlike Lowell and Holmes, he kept open house for big +ideas." + +I asked Mr. Burroughs what, in his opinion, had brought about the change +in the world's attitude toward Whitman. + +"Well," he replied, looking thoughtfully into the radiant depths of the +open fire, "when Whitman first appeared we were all subservient to the +conventional standards of English literature. We understood and +appreciated only the pretty and exact. Whitman came in his working-man's +garb, in his shirt sleeves he sauntered into the parlor of literature. + +"We resented it. But the young men nowadays are more liberal. More and +more Whitman is forcing on them his open-air standards. Science +supplemented by the human heart gives us a bigger and freer world than +our forefathers knew. And then the European acceptance of Whitman had +had its effect. We take our point of view so largely from Europe. And a +force like Whitman's must be felt slowly; it's a cumulative thing." + +"You believe," I said, "that Whitman is our greatest poet?" + +"Oh yes," he replied, "Whitman is the greatest poet America has +produced. He is great with the qualities that make Homer and the classic +poets great. Emerson is more precious, more intellectual. Whitman and +Emerson are our two greatest poets." + +While we strolled over the pleasant turf and watched a wood-thrush +resting in the cool of the evening above her half-built nest among the +cherry blossoms, John Burroughs returned to the subject that we had +discussed on our way from the station--the city's evil effect on +literature. + +"Business life," he said, "is inimical to poetry. To write poetry you +must get into an atmosphere utterly different from that of the city. And +one of the greatest of all enemies of literature is the newspaper. The +style of writing that the newspaper has brought into existence is as far +as possible from art and literature. When you are writing for a daily +paper, you don't try to say a thing in a poetic or artistic way, but in +an efficient way, in a business-like way. There is no appeal to the +imagination, no ideality. A newspaper is a noisy thing that goes out +into the street and shouts its way into the attention of people. + +"If you are going to write poetry you must say to certain phases of the +newspapers, 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' A poet can't be developing his +gossiping faculty and turning everything hot off the griddle. The daily +paper is a new institution, and it has come to stay. But it has bad +manners, and it is the enemy of all meditation, all privacy, all things +that make for great art. + +"It's the same way with nature and writing about nature. From nature we +get not literature, but the raw material for literature. It is very +important for us to remember that the bee does not get honey from the +flowers; it makes honey from what it gets from the flowers. What it gets +from the flowers is nothing but sweet water. The bee gets its sweet +water, retires, thinks it over, and by a private process makes it into +honey. + +"So many nature-writers fail to profit by the example of the bee. They +go into the woods and come out again and write about their +experience--but they don't give us honey. They don't retire and subject +what they find in the woods to a private process. They don't give us +honey; they give us just a little sweet water, pretty thoroughly +diluted. + +"In my own work--if I may mention it in all humbleness--I have tried for +years not to give the world just a bare record, but to flavor it, so to +speak, with my own personality, as the bee turns the sweet water that it +gets into honey by adding its own formic acid. + +"If I lived in the city I couldn't do any writing, unless I succeeded in +obliterating the city from my consciousness. But I shouldn't try to +force my standards on every one. Other men live in the cities and +write--Carlyle did most of his work in London. But he lived a secluded +life even in the city, and he had to have his yearly pilgrimage to +Scotland." + +It is some years since John Burroughs has written poetry, although all +his prose is clearly the work of a poet. And it is safe to say that +better known than any of his intimate prose studies of the out-of-door +world--better known even than _Wake Robin_ and that immortal _A Hunt for +the Nightingale_ and _In Fresh Fields_--is one of his poems, _Waiting_, +the poem that begins: + + Serene, I fold my hands and wait, + Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; + I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, + For lo! my own shall come to me. + +"I wrote _Waiting_," he said, "in 1862, when I was reading medicine in +the office of a country physician. It was a dingy afternoon, and I was +feeling pretty blue. But the thought came to me--I suppose I got it from +Goethe or some of the Orientals, probably by way of Emerson--that what +belonged to me would come to me in time, if I waited--and if I also +hustled. So I waited and I hustled, and my little poem turned out to be +a prophecy. My own has come to me, as I never expected it to come. The +best friends I have were seeking me all the while. There's Henry Ford; +he had read all my books, and he came to me--that great-hearted man, the +friend of all the birds, and my friend. + +"The poem first appeared in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_. That magazine +was edited by a Cockney named Kinneha Cornwallis. It ran long enough to +print one of Cornwallis's novels, and then it died. I remember that the +_Knickerbocker Magazine_ never paid me for _Waiting_, and the poem +didn't attract any attention until Whittier printed it in his _Songs of +Three Centuries_. + +"It has been changed and tampered with and had all sorts of things done +to it. It was found among the manuscripts of a poet down South after his +death, and his literary executor was going to print it in his book. He +wrote to me and asked if I could show a date for it earlier than 1882. I +said, 'Yes, 1862!' and that settled that matter. + +"There was a man in Boston that I wanted to kick! He wrote to me and +asked if he could print _Waiting_ on a card and circulate it among his +friends. I told him he could, and sent him an autographed copy to make +sure he'd get it straight. He sent me a package of the printed cards, +and I found that he had added a stanza to it--a religious stanza, all +about Heaven's gate! He had left out the second stanza, and added this +religious stanza. He was worried because God had been left out of my +poem--poor God, ignored by a little atom like me! + +"When people ask me where I got the idea in it, I generally say that my +parents were old-school Baptists and believed in foreordination, and +that's the way that foreordination cropped out in me--it's a sort of +transcendental version of foreordination. I think the poem is true--like +attracts like; it's the way in which we are constituted, rather than any +conscious factor, that insures success. It's that that makes our +fortunes, it's that that is the 'tide in the affairs of men' that +Shakespeare meant." + +A few rods from John Burroughs's riverside house a brown thrush is +building her nest in a cherry-tree. She is a bird of individual ideas, +and is thoroughly convinced that paper, not twigs and leaves, forms the +proper basis for her work. It is pleasant to think of John Burroughs +seated in his study communing with the memories of Whitman and Emerson, +and his other great dead friends. But it is pleasanter to think of him, +as I saw him, anxious and intent, his great white beard mingled with the +cherry blossoms, as he strolled over to fix the paper base of the +thrush's nest so that the wind could not destroy it. + + + + +_"EVASIVE IDEALISM" IN LITERATURE_ + +ELLEN GLASGOW + + +What is the matter with American literature? There are many answers that +might be made to this often-asked question. "Nothing" might be one +answer. "Commercialism" might be another. But the answer given by Ellen +Glasgow, whose latest successful novel of American manners and morals is +_Life and Gabriella_, is "evasive idealism." + +I found the young woman who has found in our Southern States themes for +sympathetic realism rather than picturesque romance temporarily +resident, inappropriately enough, in a hotel not far from Broadway and +Forty-second Street. And I found her to be a woman of many ideas and +strong convictions. One strongly felt and forcibly expressed conviction +was that the "evasive idealism" which is evident in so much of our +popular fiction is in reality the chief blemish on the American +character, manifesting its baleful influence in our political, social, +and economic life. Miss Glasgow first used the term "evasive idealism" +in an effort to explain why contemporary English novels are better than +contemporary American novels. + +"Certainly," she said, "the novels written by John Galsworthy and the +other English novelists of the new generation are better than anything +that we are producing in the United States at the present time. And I +think that the reason for this is that in America we demand from our +writers, as we demand from our politicians, and in general from those +who theoretically are our men of light and leading, an evasive idealism +instead of a straightforward facing of realities. In England the demand +is for a direct and sincere interpretation of life, and that is what the +novelists of England, especially the younger novelists, are making. But +what the American public seems to desire is the cheapest sort of sham +optimism. And apparently our writers--a great many of them--are ready +and eager to meet this demand. + +"You know the sort of book which takes best in this country. It is the +sort of book in which there is not from beginning to end a single +attempt to portray a genuine human being. Instead there are a number of +picturesque and attractive lay figures, and one of them is made to +develop a whimsical, sentimental, and maudlinly optimistic philosophy of +life. + +"That is what the people want--a sugary philosophy, utterly without any +basis in logic or human experience. They want the cheapest sort of false +optimism, and they want it to be uttered by a picturesque, whimsical +character, in humorous dialect. Books made according to this receipt +sell by the hundreds of thousands. + +"I don't know which is the more tragic, the fact that a desire for this +sort of literary pabulum exists, or the fact that there are so many +writers willing to satisfy that desire. But I do know that the +widespread enthusiasm for this sort of writing is the reason for the +inferiority of our novels to those of England. And, furthermore, I think +that this evasive idealism, this preference for a pretty sham instead of +the truth, is evident not only in literature, but in every phase of +American life. + +"Look at our politics! We tolerate corruption; graft goes on +undisturbed, except for some sporadic attacks of conscience on the part +of various communities. The ugliness of sin is there, but we prefer not +to look at it. Instead of facing the evil and attacking it manfully we +go after any sort of a false god that will detract our attention from +our shame. Just as in literature we want the books which deal not with +life as it is, but with life as it might be imagined to be lived, so in +politics we want to face not hard and unpleasant facts, but agreeable +illusions. + +"Nevertheless," said Miss Glasgow, "I think that in literature there are +signs of a movement away from this evasive idealism. It is much more +evident in England than in America, but I think that in the course of +time it will reach us, too. We shall cease to be 'slaves of words,' as +Sophocles said, and learn that the novelist's duty is to understand and +interpret life. And when our novelists and our readers of novels +appreciate the advisability of this attitude, then will the social and +political life of the United States be more wholesome than it has been +for many a year. The new movement in the novel is away from sentimental +optimism and toward an optimism that is genuine and robust." + +"Then a novel may be at once optimistic and realistic?" I said. "That +is not in accord with the generally received ideas of realism." + +"It is true of the work of the great realists," answered Miss Glasgow. +"True realism is optimistic, without being sentimental." + +"What realists have been optimistic?" I asked. + +"Well," said Miss Glasgow, "Henry Fielding, one of the first and +greatest of English realists, surely was an optimist. And there was +Charles Dickens--often, it is true, he was sentimental, but at his best +he was a robust optimist. + +"But the greatest modern example of the robust optimistic realist, +absolutely free from sentimentality, is George Meredith. Galsworthy, who +surely is a realist, is optimistic in such works as _The Freelands_ and +_The Patricians_. And Meredith is always realistic and always +optimistic. + +"The optimism I mean, the optimism which is a distinguishing +characteristic of George Meredith's works, does not come from an evasion +of facts, but from a recognition of them. The constructive novelist, the +novelist who really interprets life, never ignores any of the facts of +life. Instead, he accepts them and builds upon them. And he perceives +the power of the will to control destiny; he knows that life is not what +you get out of it, but what you put into it. This is what the younger +English novelists know and what our novelists must learn. And it is +their growing recognition of this spirit that makes me feel that the +tendency of modern literature is toward democracy." + +"What is the connection between democracy and the tendency you have +described?" I asked. + +"To me," Miss Glasgow answered, "true democracy consists chiefly in the +general recognition of the truth that will create destiny. Democracy +does not consist in the belief that all men are born free and equal or +in the desire that they shall be born free and equal. It consists in the +knowledge that all people should possess an opportunity to use their +will to control--to create--destiny, and that they should know that they +have this opportunity. They must be educated to the use of the will, and +they must be taught that character can create destiny. + +"Of course, environment inevitably has its effect on the character, and, +therefore, on will, and, therefore, on destiny. You can so oppress and +depress the body that the will has no chance. True democracy provides +for all equal opportunities for the exercise of will. If you hang a +man, you can't ask him to exercise his will. But if you give him a +chance to live--which is the democratic thing to do--then you put before +him an opportunity to exercise his will." + +"But what are the manifestations of this new democratic spirit?" I +asked. "Is not the war, which is surely the greatest event of our time, +an anti-democratic thing?" + +"The war is not anti-democratic," Miss Glasgow replied, "any more than +it is anti-autocratic. Or rather, I may say it is both anti-democratic +and anti-autocratic. It is a conflict of principles, a deadly struggle +between democracy and imperialism. It is a fight for the new spirit of +democracy against the old evil order of things. + +"Of course, I do not mean that the democracy of France and England is +perfect. But with all its imperfections it is nearer true democracy than +is the spirit of Germany. We should not expect the democracy of our +country to be perfect. The time has not come for that. 'Man is not man +as yet,' as Browning said in _Paracelsus_. + +"The war is turning people away from the false standards in art and +letters which they served so long. The highly artificial romantic novel +and drama are impossible in Europe to-day. The war has made that sort +of thing absolutely absurd. And America must be affected by this just as +every other nation in the world is affected. To our novelists and to all +of us must come a sense of the serious importance of actual life, +instead of a sense of the beauty of romantic illusions. There are many +indications of this tendency in our contemporary literature. For +instance, in poetry we have the Spoon River Anthology--surely a sign of +the return of the poet to real life. But the greatest poets, like the +greatest novelists, have always been passionately interested in real +life. Walt Whitman and Robert Browning always were realists and always +were optimistic. Whitman was a most exultant optimist; he was optimistic +even about dying. + +"Among recent books of verse I have been much impressed by Masefield's +_Good Friday_. There is a work which is both august and sympathetic; Mr. +Masefield's treatment of his theme is realistic, yet thoroughly +reverent. There is one line in it which I think I never shall forget. It +is, 'The men who suffer most endure the least.' + +"_Good Friday_ is a sign of literature's strong tendency toward reality. +It seems to me to be a phase of the general breaking down of the +barriers between the nations, the classes, and the sexes. But this +breaking down of barriers is something that most of our novelists have +been ignoring. Mary Watts has recognized it, but she is one of the very +few American novelists to do so." + +"But this sort of consciousness is not generally considered to be a +characteristic of the realistic novelist," I said. And I mentioned to +Miss Glasgow a certain conspicuous American novelist whose books are +very long, very dull, and distinguished only by their author's obsession +with sex. He, I said, was the man of whom most people would think first +when the word realist was spoken. + +"Of course," said Miss Glasgow, "we must distinguish between a realist +and a vulgarian, and I do not see how a writer who is absolutely without +humor can justly be called a realist. Consider the great realists--Jane +Austen, Henry Fielding, Anthony Trollope, George Meredith--they all had +humor. What our novelists need chiefly are more humor and a more serious +attitude toward life. If our novelists are titanic enough, they will +have a serious attitude toward life, and if they stand far enough off +they will have humor. + +"I hope," Miss Glasgow added, "that America will produce better +literature after the war. I hope that a change for the better will be +evident in all branches of literary endeavor. We have to-day many +novelists who start out with the serious purpose of interpreting life. +But they don't interpret it. They find that it is easier to give the +people what they want than to interpret life. Therefore this change in +the character of our novels must come after the people themselves are +awakened to a sense of the importance of real life, instead of life +sentimentally and deceptively portrayed. + +"I think that our novels to-day are better than they were twenty-five +years ago. Of course, we have no Hawthorne to-day, but the general +average of stories is better than it was. We have so many accomplished +writers of short stories. There is Katharine Fullerton Gerould. What an +admirable artist she is! Mary E. Wilkins has written some splendid +interpretations of New England life, and Miss Jewett reflected the mind +and soul of a part of our country." + + + + +_"CHOCOLATE FUDGE" IN THE MAGAZINES_ + +FANNIE HURST + + +Only a few years ago Fannie Hurst's name was unknown to most readers. +But in a surprisingly short time Miss Hurst's short stories, especially +her sympathetic and poignantly realistic studies of the life of the +Jewish citizens of New York, have earned for her popular as well as +critical approval. + +Fannie Hurst's fame has been won almost entirely through the most widely +circulated weekly and monthly magazines. And yet when I talked to this +energetic young woman the other morning in her studio in Carnegie Hall, +I found her attitude toward the magazines anything but friendly. She +accused them of printing what she called "chocolate-fudge" fiction. And +she said it in a way which indicated that chocolate fudge is not her +favorite dish. + +"I do not feel," she said, "that the American magazine is exerting +itself toward influencing our fiction for the better. In most cases it +is content to pander to the untutored public taste instead of attempting +anything constructive. + +"The magazine public is, after all, open to conviction. But phlegm and +commercialism on the part of most of our magazines lead them to give the +public what it wants rather than what is good for it. + +"'If chocolate-fudge fiction will sell the magazine, give 'em chocolate +fudge!' say editors and publishers. Small wonder that American +fiction-readers continue bilious in their demands. Authors, meanwhile, +who like sweet butter on their bread--it is amazing how many +do--continue to postpone that Big Idea, and American fiction pauses by +the wayside." + +"What is the remedy for this condition, Miss Hurst?" I asked. "Would +matters be better if the writers did not have to comply with the demands +of the magazines--if they had some other means of making a living than +writing?" + +Miss Hurst did not answer at once. At length she said, thoughtfully: + +"It would seem that to escape this almost inevitable overlapping of +bread and sweet butter the writer of short stories should not depend +upon the sale of his work for a living, but should endeavor to provide +himself with some other source of income. + +"Theoretically, at least, such a condition would eliminate the +pot-boilers and safeguard the serious worker from the possibility of +'misshaping' his art to meet a commercial condition. + +"I say theoretically because from my own point of view I cannot conceive +of short-story writing as an avocation. The gentle art of short fiction +consumes just about six hours of my day at the rate of from twenty to +twenty-five days on a story of from eight to ten thousand words. And +since I work best from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., I can think of no remunerative +occupation outside those hours except cabaret work or night clerking." + +"What about present-day relationship between American publishers and +authors?" I asked, "Do you think they are all they should be?" + +"American publishers and authors," Miss Hurst replied, "to-day seem to +be working somewhat at cross-purposes, owing partially, I think, to the +great commercial significance that has become attached to the various +rights, such as motion-picture, serial, dramatic, book, etc., and which +are to be reckoned with in the sale of fiction. + +"There is little doubt that authors have suffered at the hands of +publishers on these various scores, oftener than not the publisher and +not the author reaping the benefits accruing from the author's ignorance +of conditions or lack of foresight. + +"The Authors' League has been formed to remedy just that evil--and it +was a crying one. + +"On the other hand, it is certain that fiction-writers are better paid +to-day than ever in the history of literature, and if a man is writing a +seventy-five-dollar story there is a pretty good reason why. + +"I feel a great deal of hesitancy about the present proposed affiliation +of authors with labor. There is so much to be said on both sides! + +"If the publisher represents capital and the author labor, my sympathies +immediately veer me toward labor. But do they? That same question has +recently been thrashed out by the actors, and they have gone over to +labor. Scores of our most prominent American authors are of that same +persuasion. + +"I cannot help but feel that for publisher and author to assume the +relationship of employer and employee is a dangerous step. All forms of +labor do not come under the same head. And I am the last to say that +writing is not hard labor. But Cellini could hardly have allied himself +with an iron-workers' guild. All men are mammals, but not all mammals +are men! + +"It seems doubly unfortunate, with the Authors' League in existence to +direct and safeguard the financial destiny of the author, to take a step +which immediately places the author and publisher on the same basis of +relationship that exists between hod-carrier and contractor. + +"As a matter of fact, I am almost wont to question the traditional lack +of business acumen in authors. On the contrary, almost every successful +author of my acquaintance not only is pretty well able to take care of +himself, but owns a motor-car and a safety-deposit box at the same time. +And I find the not-so-successful authors prodding pretty faithfully to +get their prices up. + +"The Authors' League is a great institution and fills a great need. It +was formed for just the purpose that seems to be prompting authors to +unionize--to instruct authors in their rights and protect them against +infringements. + +"Why unionize? Next, an author will find himself obliged to lay aside +his pen when the whistle blows, and publishers will be finding +themselves obliged to deal in open-shop literature." + +"And what effect are the moving pictures going to have on fiction?" I +asked. "Will it be good or bad?" + +"Up to the present," Miss Hurst replied, "moving pictures have, in my +opinion, been little else than a destructive force where American +fiction is concerned. Picturized fiction is on a cheap and sensational +level. Even classics and standardized fiction are ruthlessly defamed by +tawdry presentation. With the mechanics of the motion picture so +advanced, it is unfortunate that the photoplay itself is not keeping +pace with that advancement. + +"Motion pictures are in the hands of laymen, and they show it. The +scenario-writers, so-called 'staff writers,' have sprung up overnight, +so to speak, and, from what I understand, when authors venture into the +field they are at the mercy of the moving-picture director. + +"Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett could not endure to sit through the +picture presentation of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, so mutilated was it. + +"Of course, scenario-writing is a new art, and this interesting form of +expression has hardly emerged from its infancy. Except perhaps in such +great spectacles as 'The Birth of a Nation,' where, after all, the play +is not the thing." + +I asked Miss Hurst if she agreed with those who believe that Edgar Allan +Poe's short stories have never been surpassed. I found that she did not. + +"I should say," she said, "that since Poe's time we have had masters of +the short story who have equaled him. Poe is, of course, the legitimate +father of the American short story, and, coupled with that fact, was +possessed of that kind of self-consciousness which enabled him to +formulate a law of composition which has not been without its influence +upon our subsequent short fiction. + +"But in American letters there is little doubt that in the last one +hundred years the short story has made more progress than any other +literary type. We are becoming not only proficient, but pre-eminent in +the short story. I can think off-hand of quite a group of writers, each +of whom has contributed short-story classics to our literature. + +"There are Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James (if we may claim him), +Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, O. Henry, Richard +Harding Davis, Jack London, and Booth Tarkington. And I am sure that +there are various others whose names do not occur to me at this moment." + +"You mentioned O. Henry," I said. "Then you do not share Katharine +Fullerton Gerould's belief that O. Henry's influence on modern fiction +is bad?" + +"I decidedly disagree," said Miss Hurst, with considerable firmness, +"with the statement that O. Henry wrote incidents rather than short +stories, and is a pernicious influence in modern letters. That his +structural form is more than anecdotal can be shown by an analysis of +almost any of his plots. + +"But it seems pedantic to criticize O. Henry on the score of structure. +Admitting that the substance of his writings does rest on frail +framework, even sometimes upon the trick, he built with Gothic skill and +with no obvious pillars of support. + +"Corot was none the less a landscape artist because he removed that +particular brown tree from that particular green slope. O. Henry's +facetiousness and, if you will, his frail structures, are no more to be +reckoned with than, for instance, the extravagance of plot and the +morbid formality we find in Poe. + +"The smiting word and the polished phrase he quite frankly subordinated +to the laugh, or the tear with a sniffle. Just as soon call red woolen +underwear pernicious! + +"The Henry James school has put a super-finish upon literature which, it +is true, gives the same satisfying sense of wholeness that we get from a +Greek urn. But, after all, chastity is not the first and last requisite. +O. Henry loved to laugh with life! It was not in him to regard it with a +Mona Lisa smile." + +Miss Hurst has confined her attention so closely to American +metropolitan life that I thought it would be interesting to have her +opinion as to the truth of the remark, attributed to William Dean +Howells, that American literature is merely a phase of English +literature. In reply to my question she said: + +"I agree with Mr. Howells that American literature up to now has been +rather a phase of English literature. His own graceful art is an example +of cousinship. American literature probably will continue to be an +effort until our American melting-pot ceases boiling. + +"_David Copperfield_ and _Vanity Fair_ come from a people whose lineage +goes back by century-plants and not by Mayflowers. Theodore Dreiser and +Ernest Poole, sometimes more or less inarticulately, are preparing us +for the great American novel. When we reach a proper consistency the +boiling is bound to cease, and, just as inevitably, the epic novel must +come." + + + + +_THE NEW SPIRIT IN POETRY_ + +AMY LOWELL + + +Miss Amy Lowell, America's chief advocate and practitioner of the new +poetry, would wear, I supposed, a gown by Bakst, with many Oriental +jewels. And incense would be burning in a golden basin. And Miss Lowell +would say that the art of poetry was discovered in 1916. + +But there is nothing exotic or artificial about Miss Lowell's appearance +and surroundings. Nor did the author of _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed_ +express, when I talked to her the other day, any of the extravagant +opinions which conservative critics attribute to the _vers libristes_. +Miss Lowell talked with the practicality which is of New England and the +serenity which is of Boston; she was positive, but not narrowly +dogmatic; she is keenly appreciative of contemporary poetry, but she has +the fullest sense of the value of the great heritage of poetical +tradition that has come down to us through the ages. + +There is so much careless talk of _imagisme_, _vers libre_, and the new +poetry in general that I thought it advisable to begin our talk by +asking for a definition or a description of the new poetry. In reply to +my question Miss Lowell said: + +"The thing that makes me feel sure that there is a future in the new +poetry is the fact that those who write it follow so many different +lines of thought. The new poetry is so large a subject that it can +scarcely be covered by one definition. It seems to me that there are +four definite sorts of new poetry, which I will attempt to describe. + +"One branch of the new poetry may be called the realistic school. This +branch is descended partly from Whitman and partly from the +prose-writers of France and England. The leading exponents of it are +Robert Frost and Edgar Lee Masters. These two poets are different from +each other, but they both are realists, they march under the same +banner. + +"Another branch of the new poetry consists of the poets whose work shows +a mixture of the highly imaginative and the realistic. Their thought +verges on the purely imaginative, but is corrected by a scientific +attitude of mind. I suppose that this particular movement in English +poetry may be said to have started with Coleridge, but in England the +movement hardly attained its due proportions. Half of literary England +followed Wordsworth, half followed Byron. It is in America that we find +the greatest disciple of Coleridge in the person of Edgar Allan Poe. The +force of the movement then went back to France, where it showed clearly +in Mallarmê and the later symbolists. To-day we see this tendency +somewhat popularized in Vachell Lindsay, although perhaps he does not +know it. And if I may be so bold as to mention myself, I should say that +I in common with most other imagists belong to this branch, that I am at +once a fantasist and a realist. + +"Thirdly, we have the lyrico-imaginative type of poet. Of this branch +the best example that I can call to mind is John Gould Fletcher. The +fourth group of the new poets consists of those who are descended +straight from Matthew Arnold. They show the Wordsworth influence +corrected by experience and education. Browning is in their line of +descent. Characteristics of their work are high seriousness, +astringency, and a certain pruning down of poetry so that redundancy is +absolutely avoided. Of this type the most striking example is Edwin +Arlington Robinson." + +"Miss Lowell," I said, "the opponents of the new poetry generally attack +it chiefly on account of its form--or rather, on account of its +formlessness. And yet what you have said has to do only with the idea +itself. You have said nothing about the way in which the idea is +expressed." + +"There is no special form which is characteristic of the new poetry," +said Miss Lowell, "and of course 'formlessness' is a word which is +applied to it only by the ignorant. The new poetry is in every form. +Edgar Lee Masters has written in _vers libre_ and in regular rhythm. +Robert Frost writes in blank verse. Vachell Lindsay writes in varied +rhyme schemes. I write in both the regular meters and the newer forms, +such as _vers libre_ and 'polyphonic prose.' + +"It is a mistake to suppose, as many conservative critics do, that +modern poetry is a matter of _vers libre_. _Vers libre_ is not new, but +it is valuable to give vividness when vividness is desired. _Vers libre_ +is a difficult thing to write well, and a very easy thing to write +badly. This particular branch of the new poetry movement has been +imitated so extensively that it has brought the whole movement into +disrepute in the eyes of casual observers. But we must remember that no +movement is to be judged by its obscure imitators. A movement must be +judged by the few people at its head who make the trend. There cannot be +many of them. In the history of the world there are only a few supreme +artists, only a small number of great artists, only a limited number of +good artists. And to suppose that we in America at this particular +moment can be possessed of many artists worthy of consideration is +ridiculous. + +"Undoubtedly the fact that a great number of people are engaged to-day +in producing poetry is a great stimulus and helps to create a proper +atmosphere for those men whose work may live. For it is a curious fact +that the artistic names that have come down to us are those of men who +have lived in the so-called great artistic periods, when many other men +were working at the same thing." + +I asked Miss Lowell to tell something of this _vers libre_ which is so +much discussed and so little understood. She said: + +"_Vers libre_ is based upon rhythm. Its definition is 'A verse form +based upon cadence rather than upon exact meter.' It is a little +difficult to define cadence when dealing with poetry. I might call it +the sense of balance. + +"The unit of _vers libre_ is the strophe, not the line or the foot, as +in regular meter. The strophe is a group of words which round themselves +satisfactorily to the ear. In short poems this complete rounding may +take place only at the end, making the poem a unit of a single movement, +the lines serving only to give the slight up-and-down effect necessary +to the voice when the poem is read aloud. + +"In longer poems the strophe may be a group of lines. Poetry being a +spoken and not a written art, those not well versed in the various +poetic forms will find it simpler to read _vers libre_ poems aloud, +rather than to try to get their rhythm from the printed page. For people +who are used only to the exact meters, the printed arrangement of a +_vers libre_ poem is a confusing process. To a certain extent cadence is +dependent upon quantity--long and short syllables being of peculiar +importance. Words hurried over in reading are balanced by words on which +the reader pauses. Remember, also, that _vers libre_ can be either +rhymed or unrhymed." + +"One objection," I said, "that many critics bring up against unrhymed +poetry is that it cannot be remembered." + +"I cannot see that that is of the slightest importance," Miss Lowell +replied. "The music that we whistle when we come out of the theater is +not the greatest music we have heard. + + "Zaccheus he + Did climb a tree + His Lord to see + +is easily remembered. But I refuse to think that it is great poetry. + +"The enemies of _vers libre_," she continued, "say that _vers libre_ is +in no respect different from oratory. Now, there is a difference between +the cadence of _vers libre_ and the cadence of oratory. Lincoln's +Gettysburg address is not _vers libre_, it is rhythmical prose. At the +prose end of cadence is rhythmical prose; at the verse end is _vers +libre_. The difference is in the kind of cadence. + +"Recently a writer in _The Nation_ took some of Meredith's prose and +made it into _vers libre_ poems which any poet would have been glad to +write. Then he took some of my poems and turned them into prose, with a +result which he was kind enough to call beautiful. He then pertinently +asked what was the difference. + +"I might answer that there is no difference. Typography is not relevant +to the discussion. Whether a thing is written as prose or as verse is +immaterial. But if we would see the advantage which Meredith's +imagination enjoyed in the freer forms of expression, we need only +compare these lyrical passages from his prose works with his own +metrical poetry." + +I asked Miss Lowell about the charge that the new poets are lacking in +reverence for the great poets of the past. She believes that the charge +is unfounded. Nevertheless, she believes that the new poets do well to +take the New England group of writers less seriously than conservative +critics would have them take them. + +"America has produced only two great poets, Whitman and Poe," said Miss +Lowell. "The rest of the early American poets were cultivated gentlemen, +but they were more exactly English provincial poets than American poets, +and they were decidedly inferior to the parent stock. The men of the New +England group, with the single exception of Emerson, were cultivated +gentlemen with a taste for literature--they never rose above that level. + +"No one can judge his contemporaries. We cannot say with certainty that +the poets of this generation are better than their predecessors. But +surely we can see that the new poets have more originality, more of the +stuff out of which poetry is made, than their predecessors had, aside +from the two great exceptions that I have mentioned." + +"What is the thing that American poetry chiefly needs?" I asked. + +"Well," said Miss Lowell, "I wish that there were a great many changes +in our attitude toward literature. I wish that no man could expect to +make a living by writing. I wish that the magazines did not pay for +contributions--few of them do in France, you know. And I wish that the +newspapers did not try to review books. But the thing that we chiefly +need is informed and authoritative criticism. + +"We have very few critics, we have practically none who are writing +separate books on contemporary verse. When I was writing my _French +Poets_ I read twenty or thirty books on contemporary French poetry, +serious books, written by critics who make a specialty of the poetry of +their own day. + +"We have nothing like this in America. The men who write critical books +write of the literature of a hundred years ago. No critical mind is +bent toward contemporary verse. There are a few newspaper critics who +pay serious attention to contemporary verse--William Stanley +Braithwaite, O. W. Firkins, and Louis Untermeyer, for example--but there +are only a few of them. + +"What is to be desired is for some one to be as interested in criticism +as the poets are in poetry. It was the regularity of Sainte-Beuve's +'Causeries du Lundi' that gave it its weight. What we want is a critic +like that, who is neither an old man despairing of a better job nor a +young man using his newspaper work as a stepping-stone to something +higher. Of course, brilliant criticisms of poetry appear from time to +time, but what we need is criticism as an institution. + +"After all," said Miss Lowell, in conclusion, "there are only two kinds +of poetry, good poetry and bad poetry. The form of poetry is a matter of +individual idiosyncrasy. It is only the very young and the very old, the +very inexperienced or the numbed, who say, 'This is the only way in +which poetry shall be written!'" + + + + +_A NEW DEFINITION OF POETRY_ + +EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON + + +At no time in the history of literature have the critics been able to +agree upon a definition of poetry. And the recent popularity of _vers +libre_ and _imagisme_ has made the definer's task harder than ever +before. Is rhyme essential to poetry? Is rhythm essential to poetry? Can +a mere reflection of life justly be called poetry, or must imagination +be present? + +I put some of these questions to Edwin Arlington Robinson, who wrote +_Captain Craig_, _The Children of the Night_, _The Town Down the River_, +_The Man Against the Sky_ and _Merlin: A Poem_. And this man, whom +William Stanley Braithwaite and other authoritative critics have called +the foremost of American poets, this student of life, who was revealing +the mysterious poetry of humanity many years before Edgar Lee Masters +discovered to the world the vexed spirits that haunt Spoon River, +rewarded my questioning with a new definition of poetry. He said: + +"Poetry is a language that tells us, through a more or less emotional +reaction, something that cannot be said. + +"All real poetry, great or small, does this," he added. "And it seems to +me that poetry has two characteristics. One is that it is, after all, +undefinable. The other is that it is eventually unmistakable." + +"'Eventually'!" I said. "Then you think that poetry is not always +appreciated in the lifetime of its maker?" + +Mr. Robinson smiled whimsically. "I never use words enough," he said. +"It is not unmistakable as soon as it is published, but sooner or later +it is unmistakable. + +"And in the poet's lifetime there are always some people who will +understand and appreciate his work. I really think that it is impossible +for a real poet permanently to escape appreciation. And I can't imagine +anything sillier for a man to do than to worry about poetry that has +once been decently published. The rest is in the hands of Time, and Time +has more than often a way of making a pretty thorough job of it." + +"But why is it," I asked, "that a great poet so often is without honor +in his own generation, where mediocrity is immediately famous?" + +"It's hard to say," said Mr. Robinson, thoughtfully regarding the +glowing end of his cigar. "Many causes prevent poetry from being +correctly appraised in its own time. Any poetry that is marked by +violence, that is conspicuous in color, that is sensationally odd, makes +an immediate appeal. On the other hand, poetry that is not noticeably +eccentric sometimes fails for years to attract any attention. + +"I think that this is why so many of Kipling's worst poems are greatly +overpraised, while some of his best poems are not appreciated. _Gunga +Din_, which is, of course, a good thing in its way, has been praised far +more than it deserves, because of its oddity. And the poem beginning +'There's a whisper down the field' has never been properly appreciated. +It's one of the very best of Kipling's poems, although it is marred by a +few lapses of taste. One of his greatest poems, by the way, _The +Children of the Zodiac_, happens to be in prose. + +"But I am always revising my opinion of Kipling. I have changed my mind +about him so often that I have no confidence in my critical judgment. +That is one of the reasons why I do not like to criticise my American +contemporaries." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that this tendency to pay attention chiefly to +the more sensational poets is as characteristic of our generation as of +those that came before?" + +"I think it applies particularly to our own time," he replied. "More +than ever before oddity and violence are bringing into prominence poets +who have little besides these two qualities to offer the world, and some +who have much more. It may seem very strange to you, but I think that a +great modern instance of this tendency is the case of Robert Browning. +The eccentricities of Browning's method are the things that first turned +popular attention upon him, but the startling quality in Browning made +more sensation in his own time than it can ever make again. I say this +in spite of the fact that Browning and Wordsworth are taken as the +classic examples of slow recognition. Wordsworth, you know, had no +respect for the judgment of youth. It may have been sour grapes, but I +am inclined to think that there was a great deal of truth in his +opinion. + +"I think it is safe to say that all real poetry is going to give at some +time or other a suggestion of finality. In real poetry you find that +something has been said, and yet you find also about it a sort of nimbus +of what can't be said. + +"This nimbus may be there--I wouldn't say that it isn't there--and yet I +can't find it in much of the self-conscious experimenting that is going +on nowadays in the name of poetry. + +"I can't get over the impression," Mr. Robinson went on, with a +meditative frown, "that these post-impressionists in painting and most +of the _vers libristes_ in poetry are trying to find some sort of short +cut to artistic success. I know that many of the new writers insist that +it is harder to write good _vers libre_ than to write good rhymed +poetry. And judging from some of their results, I am inclined to agree +with them." + +I asked Mr. Robinson if he believed that the evident increase in +interest in poetry, shown by the large sales of the work of Robert Frost +and Edgar Lee Masters and Rupert Brooke, indicated a real renascence of +poetry. + +"I think that it indicates a real renascence of poetry," he replied. "I +am sufficiently child-like and hopeful to find it very encouraging." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that the poetry that is written in America +to-day is better than that written a generation ago?" + +"I should hardly venture to say that," said Mr. Robinson. "For one +thing, we have no Emerson. Emerson is the greatest poet who ever wrote +in America. Passages scattered here and there in his work surely are the +greatest of American poetry. In fact, I think that there are lines and +sentences in Emerson's poetry that are as great as anything anywhere." + +I asked Mr. Robinson whether he thought the modern English poets were +doing better work than their American contemporaries. At first he was +unwilling to express an opinion on this subject, repeating his statement +that he mistrusted his own critical judgment. But he said: + +"Within his limits, I believe that A. E. Housman is the most authentic +poet now writing in England. But, of course, his limits are very sharply +drawn. I don't think that any one who knows anything about poetry will +ever think of questioning the inspiration of _A Shropshire Lad_." + +"Would you make a similar comment on any other poetry of our time?" I +asked. + +"Well," said Mr. Robinson, reflectively, "I think that no one will +question the inspiration of some of Kipling's poems, of parts of John +Masefield's _Dauber_, and some of the long lyrics of Alfred Noyes. But I +do not think that either of these poets gives the impression of finality +which A. E. Housman gives. But the way in which I have shifted my +opinion about some of Rudyard Kipling's poems, and most of Swinburne's, +makes me think that Wordsworth was very largely right in his attitude +toward the judgment of youth. But where my opinions have shifted, I +think now that I always had misgivings. I fancy that youth always has +misgivings in regard to what is later to be modified or repudiated." + +Then I asked Mr. Robinson if he thought that the war had anything to do +with the renascence of poetry. + +"I can't see any connection," he replied. "The only effect on poetry +that the war has had, so far as I know, is to produce those five sonnets +by Rupert Brooke. I can't see that it has caused any poetical event. And +there's no use prophesying what the war will or will not do to poetry, +because no one knows anything about it. The Civil War seems to have had +little effect on poetry except to produce Julia Ward Howe's _Battle +Hymn of the Republic_, Whitman's poems on the death of Lincoln, and +Lowell's 'Ode.'" + +"Mr. Robinson," I said, "there has been much discussion recently about +the rewards of poetry, and Miss Amy Lowell has said that no poet ought +to be expected to make a living by writing. What do you think about it?" + +"Should a poet be able to make a living out of poetry?" said Mr. +Robinson. "Generally speaking, it is not possible for a poet to make a +decent living by his work. In most cases it would be bad for his +creative faculties for a poet to make as much money as a successful +novelist makes. Fortunately, there is no danger of that. Now, assuming +that a poet has enough money to live on, the most important thing for +him to have is an audience. I mean that the best poetry is likely to be +written when poetry is in the air. If a poet with no obligations and +responsibilities except to stay alive can't live on a thousand dollars a +year (I don't undertake to say just how he is going to get it), he'd +better go into some other business." + +"Then you don't think," I said, "that literature has lost through the +poverty of poets?" + +"I certainly do believe that literature has lost through the poverty of +poets," said Mr. Robinson. "I don't believe in poverty. I never did. I +think it is good for a poet to be bumped and knocked around when he is +young, but all the difficulties that are put in his way after he gets to +be twenty-five or thirty are certain to take something out of his work. +I don't see how they can do anything else. + +"Some time ago you asked me," said Mr. Robinson, "how I accounted for +our difficulty in making a correct estimate of the poetry of one's own +time. The question is a difficult one. I don't even say that it has an +answer. But the solution of the thing seems to me to be related to what +I said about the quality of finality that seems to exist in all real +poetry. Finality seems always to have had a way of not obtruding itself +to any great extent." + + + + +_LET POETRY BE FREE_ + +JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY + + +Mrs. Lionel Marks--or Josephine Preston Peabody, to call her by the name +which she has made famous--is a poet whose tendency has always been +toward democracy. From _The Singing Leaves_, her first book of lyrics, +to _The Piper_ (the dramatic poem which received the Stratford-on-Avon +prize in 1910), and _The Wolf of Gubbio_, the poetic representation of +events in St. Francis's life in her latest published book, she has +chosen for her theme not fantastic and rare aspects of nature, nor the +new answers of her own emotions, but things that are common to all +normal mankind--such as love and religion. Also, without seeming to +preach, she is always expressing her love for Liberty, Equality, and +Fraternity, and although she never dwells upon the overworked term, she +is as devoted an adherent of the brotherhood of man as was William +Morris. + +Therefore I was eager to learn whether or not she held the +opinion--often expressed during the past months--that poetry is becoming +more democratic, less an art practised and appreciated by the chosen +few. Also I wanted to know if she saw signs of this democratization of +poetry in the development of free verse, or _vers libre_, as those who +write it prefer to say, in the apparently growing tendency of poets to +give up the use of rhyme and rhythm. + +"Certainly, poetry is steadily growing more democratic," said Mrs. +Marks. "More people are writing poetry to-day than fifty years ago, and +the appreciation of poetry is more general. Most poets of genuine +calling are writing now with the world in mind as an audience, not +merely for the entertainment of a little literary cult. + +"But I do not think that the _vers libre_ fad has any connection with +this tendency, or with the development of poetry at all. Indeed, I do +not think that the cult is growing; we hear more of it in the United +States than we did a year or two ago, but that is chiefly because London +and Paris have outworn its novelty, so the _vers libristes_ concentrate +their energies on Chicago and New York. + +"I love some 'free verse.' Certainly, there may be times when a poet +finds he can express his idea or his emotion better without rhyme and +rhythm than with them. But verse that is ostentatiously free--free verse +that obviously has been made deliberately--that is a highly artificial +sort of writing, bears no more relation to literature than does an +acrostic. Neither the themes nor the methods of those who call +themselves _vers libristes_ are democratic; they are, in the worst sense +of the word, the sense which came into use at the time of the French +Revolution, aristocratic. + +"The canon of the _vers libristes_ is essentially aristocratic. They +contend, absurdly enough, that all traditional forms of rhyme and rhythm +constitute a sort of bondage, and therefore they arbitrarily rule them +out. Not for them are the fetters that bound Shelley's spirit to the +earth! Also they arbitrarily rule out what they call, with their +fondness for labels, the 'sociological note,' 'didacticism,' +'meanings'--any ideas or emotions, in fact, that may be called communal +or democratic. + +"My own canon is that all themes are fit for poetry and that all methods +must justify themselves. If I may be permitted to make a clumsy +wooden-toy apothegm I would say that poetry is rhythmic without and +within. If we turn Carlyle's sometimes cloudy prose inside out we find +that it has a silver lining of poetry. + +"Neither can I understand why the _vers libristes_ believe that their +sort of writing is new. Leopardi wrote what would be called good +_imagisme_, although the _imagistes_ do not seem to be aware of the +fact, and the theory that rhyme is undesirable in poetry has appeared +sporadically time and again in the history of poetry. When Sir Philip +Sidney was alive there were pedants who argued against the use of rhyme, +and some of them confuted their own arguments by writing charming lyrics +in the traditional manner. By dint of reading the fine eye-cracking +print in the Globe Edition of Spenser I found that the author of the +_Faerie Queen_ at one time took seriously Gabriel Harvey's arguments +against rhyme and made an unbelievably frightful experiment in rhymeless +verse--as bad as the parodists of our band-wagon. + +"The other day I asked some one in the Greek department of Harvard how +to read a fragment of Sappho's that I wanted to teach my children to +say. He said that no one nowadays could know how certain of Sappho's +poems really should be read, because the music for them had been lost, +and they were all true lyrics, meant to be sung and sung by Sappho to +music of her own making. So you see that poets who avowedly make verses +that can appeal only to the eye, successions of images, in which the +position of the words on the page is of great importance, believe that +they are the successors of poets whose work was meant not to be read, +but to be sung, whose verses fitted the regular measure of music. + +"As I said before," said Mrs. Marks, smiling, "I have no objection to +free verse when it is a spontaneous expression. But I do object to free +verse when it is organized into a cult that denies other freedoms to +other poets! And I object to the bigotry of some of the people who are +trying to impose free verse upon an uninterested world. + +"And also I object to the unfairness of some of the advocates of free +verse. When they compare free verse, and what I suppose I must call +chained verse, they take the greatest example of unrhymed poetry that +they can find--the King James version of the Book of Job, perhaps--and +say: 'This is better than "Yankee Doodle." Therefore, free verse is +better than traditional verse.' + +"You see," said Mrs. Marks, "the commonest thing there is, I may say the +most democratic thing, is the rhythm of the heart-beat. A true poet +cannot ignore this. At the greatest times in his life, when he is filled +with joy or despair, or when he has a sense of portent, man is aware of +his heart, of its beat, of its recurrent tick, tick; he is aware of the +rhythm of life. When we are dying, perhaps the only sense that remains +with us is the sense of rhythm--the feeling that the grains of sand are +running, running, running out. + +"The pulse-beat is a tremendous thing. It is the basis of all that men +have in common. All life is locked up in its regularly recurrent rhythm. +And it is that rhythm that appears in our love-songs, our war-songs, in +all the poetry of the human cycle from lullabies to funeral chants. In +the great moments of life men feel that they must be sharing, that they +must have something in common with other men, and so their emotions +crystallize into the ritual of rhythm, which is the most democratic +thing that there is. + +"Primitive poetry, poetry that comes straight from the hearts of the +people, sometimes circulating for generations without being committed to +paper, is strongly traditional. The convention of regular rhyme and +rhythm is never absent. What could be more conventional and more +democratic than the old ballad, with its recurrent refrain in which the +audience joined? Centuries ago in the Scotch Highlands the +ballad-makers, like the men who wrote the 'Come-all-ye's' in our +great-grandfather's time, used regular rhyme and rhythm. And if these +poets were not democratic, then there never was such a thing as a +democratic poet." + +"But is it not true," I asked, "that Whitman is considered the most +democratic poet of his day, and that his avoidance of rhyme and regular +rhythm is advanced as proof of his democracy?" + +"Whitman," said Mrs. Marks, "was a democrat in principle, but not in +poetic practice. He loved humanity, but he still waits to reach his +widest audience because his verse lacks strongly stressed, communal +music. The only poems which he wrote that really reached the hearts of +the people quickly are those which are most nearly traditional in +form--_When Lilacs Last in Dooryards Bloomed_ and _Captain, My Captain!_ +in which he used rhyme. + +"You see, nothing else establishes such a bond with memory as rhyme. + +"Did you ever think," said Mrs. Marks, suddenly, "that the truest +exuberance of life always expresses itself rhythmically? Children are +generous with the most intricate rhythms; they do not eat ice-cream in +the disorderly grown-up way; they eat it in a pattern, turning the +saucer around and around; they skit alternate flagstones or every third +step on the stairway. Because they are overflowing with life they +express themselves in rhythm. _Vers libre_ is too grown-up to be the +most vital poetry; one of the ways in which the poet must be like a +little child is in possessing an exuberance of life. His life must +overflow. + +"The poets especially remember that Christ said, 'I am come that ye +might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly.' + +"The rhythm of life," said Mrs. Marks, thoughtfully. "The rhythm of +life. Who is conscious of his heart-beats except at the great moments of +life, and who is unconscious of them then? The music of poetry is the +witness of that intense moment when there is discovered to man or woman, +when there reverberates through his brain and being, the tremendous +rhythm and refrain whereby we live." + +Mrs. Marks has no patience with those who use the term "sociological" in +depreciation of all poetry that is not intensely subjective and +personal. + +"There are some critics," she said, "who would condemn the Lord's Prayer +as 'sociological' because it begins 'Our Father' instead of 'My Father.' + +"The true poet must be a true democrat; he must, if he can, share with +all the world the vision that lights him; he must be in sympathy with +the people. The war has made a great many European poets aware of this +fact. Think how the war changed Rupert Brooke, for instance? He had been +a most aristocratic poet, making poems, some of which could only repel +minds less in love with the fantastic. But he shared the great emotion +of his countrymen, and so he wrote out of his deeply wakened, sudden +simplicity those sonnets which they all can understand and must forever +cherish. + +"The war will help make poetry. It has swept away the fads and cults +from Europe; they find a peaceful haven in the United States, but they +will not live as dogmas. In the democracy that is soon to come may all +'isms' founder and lose themselves! And may all true freedoms come into +their own, with the maker, his mind and his tools." + + + + +_THE HERESY OF SUPERMANISM_ + +CHARLES RANN KENNEDY + + +"But, of course," said Charles Rann Kennedy, violently (he says most +things rather violently), "you understand that the war's most important +effect on literature was clearly evident long before the war began!" + +I did not understand this statement, and said so. Thereupon the author +of _The Servant in the House_ and _The Terrible Meek_ said: + +"We have so often been told that great events cast their shadows before, +that the tremendous truth of the phrase has ceased to impress us. The +war which began in August, 1914, exercised a tremendous influence over +the mind of the world in 1913, 1912, 1911, and 1910. The great wave of +religious thought which swept over Europe and America during those years +was caused by the approach of the war. The tremendous pacifist +movement--not the weak, bloodless pacifism of the poltroon, but the +heroic, flaming pacifism of the soldier-hearted convinced of sin--was a +protest against the menacing injustice of the war; it was the world's +shudder of dread. + +"The literature of the first decade of the twentieth century was more +thoroughly and obviously influenced by the war than will be that of the +decade following. Think of that amazing quickening of the conscience of +the French nation, a quickening which found expression in the novels of +Réné Bazin, the immortal ballads of Francis Jammes, and in the work of +countless other writers! These people were preparing themselves and +their fellow-countrymen for the mighty ordeal which was before them. + +"It is blasphemous to say that the war can only affect things that come +after it; to say that is to attempt to limit the powers of God. There +are, of course, some writers who can only feel the influence of a thing +after it has become evident; after they have carefully studied and +absorbed it. But there are others, the manikoi, the prophetic madmen, +who are swayed by what is to happen rather than by what has happened. +I'm one of them. + +"The war held me in its spell long before the German troops crossed +Belgian soil. I wrote my _The Terrible Meek_ by direct inspiration from +heaven in Holy Week, 1912. + +"I put that in," said Mr. Kennedy (who looks very much like Gilbert K. +Chesterton's _Man-alive_), suddenly breaking off the thread of his +discourse, "not only because I know that it is the absolute truth, but +because of the highly entertaining way in which it is bound to be +misinterpreted. + +"New York's dramatic critics, the Lord Chamberlain of England, the +military authorities of Germany and Great Britain--all these people were +charmingly unanimous in finding _The Terrible Meek_ blasphemous, +villainous, poisonous. Even the New York MacDowell Club, after two +stormy debates, decided to omit all mention of _The Terrible Meek_ from +its bulletin. Perhaps this was not entirely because the play was +'sacrilegious'; the club may possibly have been influenced by the fact +that its author was a loud person with long hair, who told unpleasant +truths in reputable gatherings. And copies of the published book of the +play, which were accompanied by friendly letters from the author, were +refused by every monarch now at war in Europe! + +"But in 1914 and 1915 _The Terrible Meek_ suddenly found, to its own +amazement, that it had become a respectable play! Its connection with +the present war became evident. It has been the subject of countless +leading articles; it has been read, and even acted, in thousands of +churches. On the occasion of the first production of the despised play +in New York City, my wife and I received a small pot of roses from a +girls' school which we sometimes visit. In due time this was planted by +the porch of our summer home in Connecticut. This year--three years only +after its planting--the rose-tree covers three-quarters of the big +porch, and last summer it bore thousands of blooms. Now these things are +a parable! + +"No, the Lord does not have to wait until the beginnings of mighty wars +for them vitally to influence the literature of the world. Upon some of +us He places the burden of the coming horror years before. + +"Although I am and always have been violently opposed to war, I cannot +help observing what this war has already commenced to do for literature. +It is killing Supermanism--and I purposely call it by that name to +distinguish it from the mere actual doctrine that Nietzsche may or may +not have taught. The damnable heresy, as it historically happened among +us, was already beginning to influence very badly most of our young +writers. Clever devilism caught the trick of it too easily. Now, heresy +is sin always and everywhere; and this heresy was a particularly black +and deadly kind of sin. It ate into the very heart of our life. + +"And yet there was a reason, almost an excuse, for the power which the +Superman idea got over the minds of writers after Bernard Shaw's first +brilliant and engaging popularization of it. And the excuse is that +Supermanism, with its emphasis on strength and courage and life, was to +a great extent a healthy and almost inevitable reaction from the maudlin +milk-and-water sort of theology and morals that had been apologetically +handed out to us by weak-kneed religious teachers. + +"We had too much of the 'gentle Jesus' of the Sunday-school. In our maze +of evil Protestantisms, we had lost sight of the real Son of God who is +Jesus Christ. We had lost the terrible and lovely doctrine of the wrath +of the Lamb. + +"And so a great many writers turned to Supermanism with a shout of +relief. They were sick of milk and water, and this seemed to be strong +wine. But Supermanism is heresy, and it rapidly spread over the world, +most perniciously influencing all intellectual life. + +"And there were so many things to help Supermanism! There was the +general acceptance of the doctrine of biological necessity as an +argument for war--Bernhardi actually used that phrase, I believe--the +idea that affairs of the spirit are determined exteriorly. There was the +acceptance of various extraordinary interpretations of Darwin's theory +of evolution! Every little man called himself a scientist, and took his +own little potterings-about very seriously. Everything had to be a +matter of observation, these little fellows said; they would believe +only what they saw. They didn't know that real scientists always begin +_a priori_, that real scientists always know the truth first and then +set about to prove it. + +"Well, all these people helped the heresy of Supermanism along. But the +people who helped it along chiefly were the apologetic Christians, who +should have combated it with fire and sword. It was helped along by the +sort of Christian who calls himself 'liberal' and 'progressive,' the +sort of Christian who says, 'Of course, I'm not orthodox.' When any one +says that to me, I always answer him in the chaste little way which so +endears me to my day and generation: 'Hell, aren't you? I hope I am!' + +"This sort of so-called Christian helps Supermanism in two ways. In the +first place, the 'progressive' Christians are great connoisseurs of +heresy, they simply love any new sort of blasphemous philosophy, whether +it comes from Germany or Upper Tooting. They love to try to assimilate +all the new mad and wicked ideas, and graft them on Christianity. I +suppose it's their idea of making the Lord Jesus Christ up to date and +attractive. They love to try to engrave pretty patterns on the Rock of +Ages. And Supermanism was to them a new and alluring pattern. + +"Of course a Supermanism might be worked out on strictly Christian +lines, the Superman in that case being the Christ. But that is not the +way in which the theory has historically worked out. No! Mr. Superman as +we've actually known him in the world recently is the Beast that was +taken, and with him the false prophets that wrought miracles before him, +with which he had deceived them that had received the mark of the Beast +and them that had worshiped his image. And these, in the terrible +symbolism of St. John, you will remember, got fire and brimstone for +their pains! As now! + +"Then there was your Christian Supermanism that tried to get up a weak +little imitation of the wrath of the Lamb. This was your bastard by +theatricality and popularity out of so-called muscular Christianity. Not +the virile 'muscular Christianity' of Charles Kingsley, mind you--a +power he won almost alone, by blood and tears; but the 'safe' thing of +the after generation, the 'all things to all men'--when success was well +assured. This is your baseball Christianity, the Christianity of the +'punch,' of the piled-up heap of dollars, of the commercially counted +'conversions' and the rest of the blasphemies! Christ deliver us from +it, if needs be, even by fire! + +"Well, Supermanism cast its shadow over all forms of literary +expression. The big and the little mockers all fell under its +spell--they had their fling at Christianity in their novels, their +plays, their poems. In the novel Supermanism was evident not so much in +direct attacks on Christianity as in a brutal and pitiless realism. +Perhaps some of this hard realism was a natural reaction from the +eye-piping sentimentality of some of the Victorian writers. But most of +it was merely Supermanism in fiction--pessimism, egotism, fatalism, +cruelty. + +"One thing to be said for the Christian Scientists, the Mental Healers, +the New Thought people generally, is that they did a real service +through all this bad time by refusing to recognize any such heresy as +biological determination as applied to things spiritual. They really did +teach man's freedom up there in the heavens where he properly belongs. +They refused to be bound by the earth, and all the appearances and the +exterior causes thereof. Their Superman, if they ever used the phrase, +was at least the Healer, the spirit spent for others, not for self. + +"If you were to ask me what were the war's most conspicuous effects on +literature just at present, I would say conviction of sin, repentance +and turning to God. There can be no suggestion of Supermanism in our +literature now. We have rediscovered the Christian Virtues. If a man +writes something about blond-beasting through the world for his own +good, all we have to do is to stick up in front of his eyes a crucifix. +For the world has seen courage and self-abnegation of the kind that +Christ taught--it has seen men throw their lives away. The war has +shown the world that the man who will throw away his life is braver and +stronger and greater than the man who plunges forward to safety over the +lives of others. The world has learned that he who loses his life shall +gain it. + +"The war has thrown a clear light upon Christianity, and now all the +little apologetic 'progressive' Christians see that the world had never +reacted against orthodox Christianity as such, but only against the +bowelless unbelief which masqueraded as Christianity. We have had so +many ministers who talked about Christ as they would have talked about +kippered herrings--even with less enthusiasm. But now any one who speaks +or writes about Christianity after this will have to know that he has to +do with something terribly real. + +"Of course, during the war the only people who can write about it are +those who are in the red-hot period of youth. Young men of genius write +in times of stress. The war forces genius to flower prematurely--that is +how we got the noble sonnets of Rupert Brooke. + +"And after the war will come to the making of literature the man who has +conquered pain and agony. And that is the real Superman, the Christian +Superman, the Superman who has always been the normal ideal of the +world. Carlyle's Superman was nearer the truth than was Nietzsche's, for +Carlyle's Superman idea was grounded in courage and sacrifice and love; +his Superman was some one worth fighting for and dying for. And the war +is showing us that this is the true Superman, if we want to save the +world for nobler ends. + +"And the war, I believe, will do away with the tommy-rotten objection to +'message' in literature. Don't misunderstand me. Of course, we all +object to the stupid 'story with a purpose' in the Sunday-school sense +of that phrase. We don't want literature used as a sugar-coating around +the illuminating lesson that God loves little Willie because he fed the +dicky-birds and didn't say 'damn'! Yet we want literature to awake again +and be as always in the great days--a message. Literature must be a +direct message from the heart of the author to the heart of the world. +The _Prometheus Vinctus_ was such a message. So also the _Antigone_. All +Greek drama was. + +"All the little literary and artistic cults are dead or dying. The idea +of literature as a thing distinct from life is dead. Writers can never +again think of themselves as a race separate from the rest of humanity. +All the artificial Bohemias have been destroyed, and can never again +exist; for now at last the new world is about to dawn. Christ is coming. + +"And yet this war has made evident the importance of literature. It has +made words real again. It has shown that men cannot live forever on a +lie, written or spoken. God has come upon us like a thief in the night, +and He has judged by our words. Some of us He has turned to madness and +the vain babblings of heathendom. I am no wild chauvinist; though a man, +English-born, it gives me no joy to speak of Germans as Huns, and to +heap up hate and indignation against them. Nor in my wildest flights of +romanticism can I dream that an England yet possessing Lord Northcliffe +and the present Government can be all that God might call delightful. +Mr. Superman has invaded England right enough, that I sadly know; and +Prussianism is not all in Potsdam. + +"Yet it is significant, in view of the Superman's birthplace, in view of +the fact that the German people have very largely accepted his doctrine +and ideal, that the men who stand for speech among them, in their public +manifestoes have been delivered over unto confusion and a lie. The +logician has been illogical, the literary artist rendered without form +and void. Their very craft has turned to impotence and self-destruction. +I repeat, this is no happiness to me. Rather, I think of the Germany I +have loved, and I weep for the pity of it all. I am no friend of kings +and kaisers and bankers and grocers and titled newspaper editors, that I +should make their bloodiness mine. But I cannot help but see the sign of +God written across the heavens in words of living fire. + +"As I said in _The Terrible Meek_: 'There is great power in words. All +the things that ever get done in the world, good or bad, are done by +words.' + +"What we'll have to rediscover is that literature, like life, begins +with the utterance of a word. And until people realize once again that a +word is no mere dead thing buried in a dictionary, but the actual, +awful, wonderful Life of God Himself, we shall neither have nor deserve +to have a literature!" + + + + +_THE MASQUE AND DEMOCRACY_ + +PERCY MACKAYE + + +The community masque, _Caliban by the Yellow Sands_, is primarily +intended to honor the memory of Shakespeare on the three-hundredth +anniversary of his death. But its significance goes further than the +purpose of commemoration. Mr. Percy MacKaye, the author, tells me that +he sees his masque as part of a movement which shall bring poetry to the +service of the entire community, which shall make poetry democratic, in +the best sense of the word, and that the result of this movement will be +to create conditions likely to produce out of the soil of America a +great renascence of the drama. + +Mr. MacKaye undoubtedly is the busiest poet in the United States of +America. When he talked to me about the significance of the community +masque, rehearsals of the various groups that are to take part in it +were going on all over the city. Every few minutes he was called away +to confer with some of the directors of the masque, or some of the +actors taking part in it. For a while Mr. John Drew was with us, talking +of his appearance, in the character of Shakespeare, in epilogue. Mr. +Robert Edmund Jones, the designer of the inner scenes, brought over some +new drawings, and there were telephone conversations about music and +costumes and other important details of the monster production. + +"The fact," said Mr. MacKaye, "that the masque is a poem primarily +intended to be heard rather than to be read, is itself a movement toward +the earlier and more democratic uses of poetry. Poetry appeals +essentially to the ear, and is an art of the spoken word, yet, on +account of our conditions of life, the written word is considered +poetry. + +"This was not true in Shakespeare's time. And in the sort of work that I +am doing is shown a return to the old ideal. A masque is a poem that can +be visualized and acted. First of all it must be a poem, otherwise it +cannot be anything but a more or less warped work of art. + +"With much of the new movement in the theater I am heartily in sympathy; +but the movement seems to me one-sided. A large part of it has to do +with visualization. Emphasis is laid on the appeal to the eye rather +than the appeal to the ear, because the men of genius, like Gordon +Craig, who have been leaders in the movement, have been interested in +that phase of dramatic presentation. + +"Now I think that this one-sidedness is regrettable. When Gordon Craig +called his book on dramatic visualization _The Art of the Theater_ he +was wrong. He should have called it 'An Art of the Theater.' + +"These men have neglected part of the human soul. They have forgotten +that the greatest part of the appeal of a drama is to the ear. The ear +brings up the most subtle of all life's associations and connotations. +By means of the ear the motions and ideas are conjured up in the mind of +the audience. + +"Now, while the new movement in the theater is visual in character, the +new movement in poetry is, so to speak, audible. The American poets are +insisting more and more on the importance of the spoken word in poetry, +as distinct from its shadow on the printed page. Whether they write +_vers libre_ or the usual rhymed forms, they appreciate the fact that +they must write poems that will be effective when read aloud. Surely +this is a wholesome movement, likely to tend more and more toward +definite dramatic expression on the part of the poets, whether to +audiences through actors on the stage, or to audiences gathered to hear +the direct utterances of the poets themselves. + +"This being so, the stage tending more toward visualization, and poetry +tending more and more toward the spoken word, where shall we look for +the co-ordinating development? I think that we shall find it in the +community masque. The community masque draws out of the unlabored and +untrammeled resources of our national life its inspiration and its +theme. It requires our young poets to get closely in touch with our +national life, with our history and with contemporary attitudes and +ideals. To do this it is first of all necessary to have the poetic +vision. The great need of the day is of the poet trained in the art of +the theater. + +"The pageant and the masque offer the ideal conditions for the rendering +of poetry. The poet who writes the lyric may or may not ordinarily be +the one to speak it. In the masque the one who speaks the poem is the +one chosen to do so because of his special fitness for the task. I have +chosen my actors for the Shakespeare masque with special reference to +their ability to speak poetry." + +"But what has this to do," I asked, "with making poetry more +democratic?" + +"For one thing," Mr. MacKaye answered, "it gives the poet a larger +audience. People who never read poetry will listen to poetry when it is +presented to them in dramatic form. I have found that the result of the +presentation of a community masque is to interest in poetry a large +number of people who had hitherto been deaf to its appeal. In St. Louis, +when I started a masque, that queer word with a 'q' in it was understood +by a comparatively small number. But after the masque was produced +nearly every high-school boy and girl in the town was writing masques. + +"No one can observe the progress of the community masque without seeing +that it is surely a most democratic art form. I read my St. Louis masque +before assemblies of ministers, in negro high schools, before clubs of +advertising-men, at I. W. W. meetings--before men of all conditions of +life and shades of opinion. It afforded them a sort of spiritual and +intellectual meeting-place, it gave them a common interest. Surely that +is a democratic function. + +"The democracy of the masque was forcefully brought to my attention +again at the recent dinner by Otto Kahn to the Mayor's Honorary +Committee for the New York Shakespeare Celebration. After James M. Beck +had made a speech, Morris Hillquit, also a member of the committee, +arose and addressed the company. He pointed out more clearly than I have +heard it done before that in this cause extremes of opinion met, that +art was producing practical democracy. + +"And yet," said Mr. MacKaye, hastily, "the masque stands for the +democracy of excellence, not the democracy of mediocrity. What is art +but self-government, the harmonizing of the elements of the mind? There +can be no art where there is no discipline, there can be no art where +there is not a high standard of excellence. + +"As I said," he continued, "the original appeal of poetry was to the ear +as well as to the eye. In the days when poetry was a more democratic art +than it has been in our time and that of our fathers, the poet spoke his +poems to a circle of enthralled listeners. The masque is spoken through +many mouths, but it might be spoken or chanted by the bard himself. + +"There has never before been so great an opportunity for the revival of +the poetic drama. Ordinarily when a poetic drama is presented the cast +has been drawn from actors trained in the rendition of prose. Inevitably +the tendency has been for them to give a prose value to the lines of +poetry. In selecting a cast for a masque, special attention is given to +the ability of the actors to speak poetry, so the poem is presented as +the poet intended. + +"It may be that the pageant and masque movement represents the full +flowering of the renascence of poetry which all observers of +intellectual events have recognized. But these movements are perennial; +I do not like to think of a renascence of poetry because I do not think +that poetry has been dead. I feel that it is desirable for the poets to +become aware of the opportunities presented to them by the masque, the +opportunities to combine the art of poetry with the art of the theater, +and thus put poetry at the service of mankind. + +"I have felt that the Poetry Society of America, an organization whose +activities certainly are stimulating and encouraging to every friend of +the art, might serve poetry better if its members were to place more +emphasis on creation and less on criticism. At their meetings now +criticism is the dominant note. Poems written by the members are read +aloud and criticized from the floor. This is excellent, in its place, +but its effect is to lay stress on the critical function of the poet, +which, after all, is not his main function. What the members of the +Poetry Society should do is to seek co-operatively to create something. +And for this the masque offers them a golden opportunity. + +"The flowering of poetry is a thing of infinite variety. There must be +variety in a masque if the masque is to continue to be a worthy and +popular art form. Standardization would be fatal to the masque, and I +have stood out against it with all the power I possess. The masque and +the pageant must not degenerate into traveling shows, done according to +a fixed receipt. There must be the vision in it, and when the people see +the vision they respond marvelously." + +Percy MacKaye is the son of Steele MacKaye, the author of _Hazel Kirke_ +and other popular plays. From the very beginning of his literary career +his chief ambition has seemed to be to bring about a closer +_rapprochement_ between poetry and the drama. + +When Mr. MacKaye was graduated from Harvard, in 1897, there were in that +university no courses, technical or otherwise, in the modern drama. The +official acceptance of his own commencement part _On the Need of +Imagination in the Drama of To-day_ was the first official sanction of +the subject, which was commented upon by the _Boston Transcript_ as +something unprecedented in the annals of university discussion, +especially of Harvard. It was not until seven or eight years had passed +that Prof. George P. Baker began his courses in dramatic technique. + +The development of the pageant and the masque has been for years the +object of Mr. MacKaye's tireless endeavors. He has spoken of the masque +as "the potential drama of democracy." Two years ago in St. Louis he had +his first technical opportunity on a large scale to experiment in +devising this sort of communal entertainment. There, during five +performances, witnessed by half a million people, some seven thousand +citizens of St. Louis took part in his masque, in association with the +pageant by Thomas Wood Stevens. + +"The outgoing cost of the St. Louis production," said Mr. MacKaye, "was +$122,000; the income, $139,000. The balance of $17,000 has been devoted +to a fund for civic art. If these seem large sums, we must look back to +the days of the classic Greek drama and remember that the cost of +producing a single play by Sophocles at Athens was $500,000. + +"The St. Louis production was truly a drama of, for, and by the people, +a true community masque. _Caliban by the Yellow Sands_ is a community +masque, given as the central popular expression of some hundreds of +supplementary Shakespearian celebrations. + +"I call this work a masque, because it is a dramatic work of symbolism, +involving in its structure pageantry, poetry, and the dance. But I have +not thought to relate its structure to a historic form; I have simply +sought by its structure to solve a problem of the art of the theater. +That problem is the new one of creating a focus of dramatic technique +for the growing but groping movement vaguely called 'pageantry,' which +is itself a vital sign of social evolution--the half-desire of the +people not merely to remain receptive to a popular art created by +specialists, but to take part themselves in creating it; the +desire,--that is, of democracy consistently to seek expression through +a drama of and by the people, not merely for the people. + +"Six years ago, after the pageant-masque of the city of Gloucester, +Massachusetts, I wrote, in _Scribner's Magazine_, an article in which I +said that I found in the three American pageant-masques which I had seen +recently, the Gloucester Pageant, the Masque at Aspet, and the +California Redwood Festival, the expression of community spirit focused +by co-operating artists in dramatic form. I said then, what I feel even +more strongly after my work with the St. Louis Pageant and the +Shakespearian Masque, that pageantry is poetry for the masses. + +"The parade of Election Day, the processions of Antics and Horribles on +the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day, the May-Queen rituals of +children--these make an elemental appeal to every one. What is this +elemental appeal? Is it not the appeal of symbolism, the expression of +life's meanings in sensuous form? Crude though it may be, pageantry +satisfies an elemental instinct for art, a popular demand for poetry. +This instinct and this demand, like other human instincts and demands, +may be educated, refined, developed into a mighty agency of +civilization. Refinement of this deep, popular instinct will result +from a rational selection in correlation of the elements of pageantry. +Painting, dancing, music, and sculpture (the last as applied to classic +groupings) are appropriately the special arts for selecting those +elements, and drama is the special art of correlating them. + +"The form of pageantry most popular and impressive in appeal as a fine +art is that of the dramatic pageant, or masque. It is not limited to +historic themes. All vital modern forces and institutions of our nation +might appropriately find symbolic expression in the masque. + +"And in this would be seen the making of art democratic. Thus would the +art of poetry and the art of the drama be put at the service of mankind. +Artistic gifts, which now are individualized and dispersed, would be +organized to express the labors and aspirations of communities, +reviving, for the noblest humanism of our own times, the traditions of +Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Jonson, and Inigo Jones. The development of the +art of public masques, dedicated to civic education, would do more than +any other agency to provide popular symbolic form and tradition for the +stuff of a noble national drama. The present theaters cannot develop a +public art, since they are dedicated to a private speculative business. +The association of artists and civic leaders in the organization of +public masques would tend gradually to establish a civic theater, owned +by the people and conducted by artists, in every city of the nation. + +"I expressed these ideas," said Mr. MacKaye, "some years ago, before the +pageant movement had reached its present pitch of popularity. All my +experiences since that time have given me a firmer conviction that the +masque is the drama of democracy, and I believe that the chief value of +the Shakespearian masque is as a step forward in the progress of the +co-operative dramatic and poetic expression of the people. + +"_Caliban by the Yellow Sands_ will be given at the City College Stadium +May 23d, 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th. After its New York performance it +will be available for production elsewhere on a modified scale of stage +performance. After June 1st it is planned that a professional company, +which will co-operate with the local communities, will take the masque +on tour. + +"The subtitle of _Caliban by the Yellow Sands_ is _A Community Masque of +the Art of the Theater_, _Devised and Written to Commemorate the +Tercentenary of the Death of Shakespeare_. The dramatic-symbolic motive +of the masque I have taken from Scene 2 of Act I of _The Tempest_, where +Prospero says: + + It was mine art + When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape + The pine and let thee out. + +"The art of Prospero I have conceived as the art of Shakespeare in its +universal scope--that many-visioned art of the theater, which age after +age has come to liberate the imprisoned imagination of mankind from the +fetters of brute force and ignorance; that same art which, being usurped +or stifled by groping part-knowledge, prudery, or lust, has been botched +in its ideal aims, and has wrought havoc, hypocrisy, and decadence. +Caliban is in this masque that passionate child-curious part of us all, +groveling close to his origin, yet groping up toward that serener plane +of pity and love, reason, and disciplined will, on which Miranda and +Prospero commune with Ariel and his spirits. + +"The theme of the masque--Caliban seeking to learn the art of +Prospero--is, of course, the slow education of mankind through the +influences of co-operative art--that is, of the art of the theater in +its full social scope. This theme of co-operation is expressed earliest +in the masque through the lyric of Ariel's Spirits taken from _The +Tempest_; it is sounded, with central stress, in the chorus of peace +when the kings clasp hands on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and, with +final emphasis, in the gathering together of the creative forces of +dramatic art in the Epilogue. + +"So I have tried to make the masque bring that message of co-operation +which I think all true art should bring. And the masque is the form +which seems to me destined to bring about this desired co-operation, to +bring back, perhaps, the conditions which existed in the spacious days +of the great Greek drama. The growth in popularity of masques and +pageants is preparing the way for a new race of poet dramatists, of +poets who will use their knowledge of the art of the theater to +interpret the people to themselves. And out of this new artistic +democracy will come, let us hope, our new national poetry and our new +national drama." + +THE END + + * * * * * + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES + + +The duplicate book title and chapter titles have been removed. Also the +following misprints have been corrected: + + TOC: put in "Tippecanoe" without a hyphen (in "Tippecanoe + County, Indiana") + + TOC: "Mackaye" changed to "MacKaye", as in all other instances + ("Percy Mackaye was born in New York City...") + + p. 56: "countinent" changed to "continent" ("Yet in their time + these men set the whole countinent in a roar.") + + p. 75: period is added after the middle initial W (ROBERT W. + CHAMBERS) + + p. 78: period is added the following sentence: The most + imaginative and fantastic romances must have their basis in real + life. + + p. 107: put in "dive-keeper" with a hyphen (no other instance in + the text) + + p. 112: put in "soulless" without a hyphen (no other instances + in the text) + + p. 178: opening double quote changed to single quote ('If ye had + not plowed with my heifer....) + + p. 218: put in "catch-words" with a hyphen (no other instances + in the text) + + p. 243: put in "motion-picture" with a hyphen (no other + instances in the text) + + p. 247: put in "off-hand" with a hyphen ("I can think off-hand + of quite a group of writers....") + + p. 283: put in "Dooryards" without a hyphen ("When Lilacs Last + in Dooryards Bloomed") + + p. 293: put in "everywhere" without a hyphen ("heresy is sin + always and everywhere;") + + p. 294: "Of couse" changed to "Of course" ("Of course, I'm not + orthodox.") + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literature in the Making, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERATURE IN THE MAKING *** + +***** This file should be named 34313-8.txt or 34313-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/3/1/34313/ + +Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Suzanne Shell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Literature in the Making + by some of its makers + +Author: Various + +Editor: Joyce Kilmer + +Release Date: November 13, 2010 [EBook #34313] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERATURE IN THE MAKING *** + + + + +Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Suzanne Shell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 389px;"> +<img src="images/tp.png" width="389" height="600" alt="Title page" title="Title page" /> +</div> + + + +<h1>LITERATURE<br /> +IN THE MAKING</h1> + + + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>SOME OF ITS MAKERS</h2> + + + +<h4>PRESENTED BY</h4> + +<h2>JOYCE KILMER</h2> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 109px;"> +<img src="images/coverill.png" width="109" height="125" alt="One hand passes a staff to another hand" title="One hand passes a staff to another hand" /> +</div> + + + +<h3>HARPER & BROTHERS</h3> + +<h4>NEW YORK AND LONDON</h4> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + + + +<h6>Literature in the Making</h6> + +<p class="center"><small>Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers<br /> +Printed in the United States of America<br /> +Published April, 1917 +</small></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<h5>TO</h5> +<h4>LOUIS BEVIER, PH.D., LITT.D.</h4> +<h5>AND</h5> +<h4>LOUIS BEVIER, JR.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + + + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class="left"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align="left"> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_3">WAR STOPS LITERATURE</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>William Dean Howells, the foremost American novelist +of his generation, was born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, +March 11, 1837. Most of his many novels have been +realistic and sympathetic studies of contemporary American +life. For some years he has written "The Editor's +Easy Chair" in <i>Harper's Magazine</i>. He has received +honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Columbia, +and in 1915 the National Institute of Arts and Letters +awarded him its Gold Medal "For distinguished work +in fiction." <i>The Daughter of the Storage</i> and <i>Years of My +Youth</i> are his latest books.<br /> </td></tr> + + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_19">THE JOYS OF THE POOR</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>KATHLEEN NORRIS</small></td></tr> + + +<tr><td>Kathleen Norris was born in San Francisco, California, +July 16, 1880. She is the wife of Charles Gilman Norris, +himself a writer and the brother of the late Frank Norris. +Among Mrs. Norris's best-known novels are <i>Mother, +The Story of Julia Page</i>, and <i>The Heart of Rachel</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + + + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_35">NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>BOOTH TARKINGTON</small></td></tr> + + + + +<tr><td>Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, +July 29, 1869. A prolific and brilliant writer, he has +scored many successes of different types, being the author +of the romantic drama <i>Monsieur Beaucaire</i>, and of many +novels dealing with contemporary Middle-Western life. +Recently he has, in <i>Seventeen</i> and the "Penrod" stories, +given his attention to the comedies and tragedies of +American youth.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_45">ROMANTICISM AND AMERICAN HUMOR</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>MONTAGUE GLASS</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Montague Glass was born at Manchester, England, July +23, 1877. Coming in his youth to the United States, +he brought into American fiction a new type—that of +the metropolitan Jewish-American business man. His +<i>Potash and Perlmutter</i> and <i>Abe and Mawruss</i> have given +him a European as well as an American reputation.<br /> </td></tr> + + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_63">THE "MOVIES" BENEFIT LITERATURE</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="right"><small>REX BEACH</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Rex Beach was born at Atwood, Michigan, September 1, +1877. His novels deal chiefly with the West and the +North, and his favorite theme is adventurous life in the +open. Among his best-known books are <i>The Spoilers</i>, +<i>The Silver Horde</i>, and <i>Rainbow's End</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_75">WHAT IS GENIUS?</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Robert W. Chambers was born in Brooklyn, New York, +May 26, 1865. One of the most widely read writers of +his time, he has given his attention chiefly to English +and American society, making it the theme of a large +number of novels, among which may be mentioned +<i>The Fighting Chance</i>, <i>Japonette</i>, and <i>Athalie</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_89">DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>JAMES LANE ALLEN</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>James Lane Allen was born near Lexington, Kentucky, +in 1849. In 1886 he gave up his profession of teaching +to devote his attention to literature. Many of his novels +deal with the South. Of them perhaps <i>The Kentucky +Cardinal</i> and <i>The Choir Invisible</i> are best known.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_101">SOME HARMFUL INFLUENCES</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>HARRY LEON WILSON</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Harry Leon Wilson was born in Oregon, Illinois, May +1, 1867. He was co-author with Booth Tarkington of +<i>The Man from Home</i>, and his <i>Bunker Bean</i> and <i>Ruggles +of Red Gap</i> have given him a great reputation for irresistible +and peculiarly American humor.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_119">THE PASSING OF THE SNOB</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>EDWARD S. MARTIN</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Edward Sandford Martin was born in Willowbrook, +Owasco, New York, January 2, 1856. His keen yet +sympathetic observation of modern life finds expression +in essays, many of which have been used editorially in +<i>Life</i>. Several volumes of his essays have been published, +among which may be mentioned <i>The Luxury of +Children, and Some Other Luxuries</i> and <i>Reflections of a +Beginning Husband.</i><br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_131">COMMERCIALIZING THE SEX INSTINCT</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>ROBERT HERRICK</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Robert Herrick was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, +April 26, 1868. He has been until recently a professor +at the University of Chicago. He is a critic and a writer +of realistic novels. <i>The Web of Life</i>, <i>The Common Lot</i>, +<i>Together</i>, and <i>Clark's Field</i> are novels that show Mr. +Herrick's questioning attitude toward some modern +social institutions.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_145">SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>ARTHUR GUITERMAN</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Arthur Guiterman was born of American parents in +Vienna, Austria, November 28, 1871. He is a writer of +deft and humorous light verse, of which a volume was +recently published under the title <i>The Laughing Muse</i>. +He contributes a weekly rhymed review to <i>Life</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_157">MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_157">157</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>George Barr McCutcheon was born on a farm in Tippecanoe +County, Indiana, July 26, 1866. He is a short-story +writer and novelist, devoting himself chiefly to tales of +adventure. <i>Beverley of Graustark</i> and the volumes that +succeeded it have gained him many admirers among +lovers of romance.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_169">BUSINESS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ART</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>FRANK H. SPEARMAN</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Frank H. Spearman was born at Buffalo, New York, +September 6, 1859. He is known both as a short-story +writer and a writer of articles on economic topics. His +novels are founded chiefly on themes dealing with the +great industrial enterprises of the West, especially the +railroads. The best known of these are <i>The Daughter +of a Magnate</i> and <i>The Strategy of Great Railroads</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_187">THE NOVEL MUST GO</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>WILL N. HARBEN</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Will N. Harben, who was born in Dalton, Georgia, July 5, +1858, began his career in business in the South. His +entrance into literature began with the assistant editorship +of the <i>Youth's Companion</i>. He had gained a distinctive +place as an interpreter of phases of Southern life +in the company which includes Cable, Harris, and Johnston. +His novels include <i>Pole Baker</i>, <i>Ann Boyd</i>, <i>Second +Choice</i>, and many others.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_199">LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGES</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>JOHN ERSKINE</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>John Erskine was born in New York City, October 5, +1879. He is Adjunct Professor of English at Columbia +University, the author of many text-books and critical +works, of <i>Actæon and Other Poems</i> and of <i>The Moral +Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_213">CITY LIFE VERSUS LITERATURE</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>JOHN BURROUGHS</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>John Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New York, April +3, 1837. He taught school in his early years, and held for +a time a clerkship in the United States Treasury. Since +1874 he has devoted himself to literature and fruit culture. +Among his well-known "Nature" books may be +noted <i>Wake Robin</i>, <i>Bird and Bough</i>, and <i>Camping and +Tramping with Roosevelt</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_229">"EVASIVE IDEALISM" IN LITERATURE</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>ELLEN GLASGOW</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Ellen Glasgow was born in Richmond, Virginia, April +22, 1874. Her novels, among which may be mentioned +<i>The Voice of the People</i>, <i>The Romance of a Plain Man</i>, and +<i>Life and Gabriella</i>, deal chiefly with social and psychological +problems, and their scenes are for the most part in +the southern part of the United States.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_241">"CHOCOLATE FUDGE" IN THE MAGAZINE</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>FANNIE HURST</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Fannie Hurst was born in St. Louis, October 19, 1889. +She has served as a saleswoman and as a waitress and +crossed the Atlantic in the steerage to get material for +her short stories of the life of the working-woman, selections +of which have been published with the titles <i>Just +Around the Corner</i> and <i>Every Soul Hath Its Song</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_253">THE NEW SPIRIT IN POETRY</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>AMY LOWELL</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, +February 9, 1874. She is prominently identified with +<i>vers libre</i>, <i>imagisme</i>, and other ultra-modern poetic tendencies. +She has published a volume of essays on modern +French poetry and three books of poems, of which <i>Men, +Women, and Ghosts</i> is the most recent.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_265">A NEW DEFINITION OF POETRY</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, +Maine, December 22, 1869. He has written plays, but +is chiefly known for his poems, most of them studies of +character. His most recent volume is <i>Merlin: A Poem</i>.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_277">LET POETRY BE FREE</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_277">277</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Josephine Preston Peabody was born in New York City. +She won the Stratford-on-Avon Prize for her poetic +drama <i>The Piper</i>. She has published many books of +verse, one of which, called <i>Harvest Moon</i>, deals chiefly +with woman's tragic share in the Great War. She is the +wife of Prof. Lionel Simeon Marks of Harvard.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_289">THE HERESY OF SUPERMANISM</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>CHARLES RANN KENNEDY</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Charles Rann Kennedy was born at Derby, England, +February 14, 1871. His plays, dealing with social and +religious questions, include <i>The Servant in the House</i>, +<i>The Terrible Meek</i>, <i>The Idol-Breakers</i>, and <i>The Rib of +the Man</i>, his latest work.<br /> </td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><i><a href="#Page_305">THE MASQUE AND DEMOCRACY</a></i></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="right"><small>PERCY MACKAYE</small></td></tr> + +<tr><td>Percy MacKaye was born in New York City, March 16, +1875. He has written many poems and plays, and has +been especially identified with the production of community +pageants and masques, having written and +directed the St. Louis Civic Masque in 1914, and the +Shakespeare Masque in New York City in 1916. Among +his published works may be mentioned <i>The Scarecrow</i>, +<i>Jeanne d'Arc</i>, <i>Sappho and Phaon</i> and <i>Anti-Matrimony</i> +(plays) and <i>Uriel and Other Poems</i>.<br /> </td></tr> +</table></div> + + + + +<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2> + + +<p>This book is an effort to bridge the gulf +between literary theory and literary practice. +In these days of specialization it is more than +ever true that the man who lectures and writes +about the craft of writing seldom has the time +or the inclination to show, by actual work, that +he can apply his principles. On the other hand, +the successful novelist, poet, or playwright devotes +himself to his craft and seldom attempts to +analyze and display the methods by which he obtains +his effect, or even to state his opinion on +matters intellectual and æsthetic.</p> + +<p>Now, the professor of English and the literary +critic are valuable members of society, and the +development of literature owes much to their +counsel and guardianship. But there is a special +significance in the opinion which the writer holds +concerning his own trade, in the advice which he +bases upon his own experience, in the theory of +life and art which he has formulated for himself.</p> + +<p>Therefore I have spent considerable time in +talking with some of the most widely read authors +of our day, and in obtaining from them frank +and informal statements of their points of view. +I have purposely refrained from confining myself +to writers of any one school or type of mind—the +dean of American letters and the most advanced +of our newest poetical anarchists alike are represented +in these pages. The authors have talked +freely, realizing that this was an opportunity to +set forth their views definitely and comprehensively. +They have not the time to write or lecture +about their art, but they are willing to talk +about it.</p> + +<p>They knew that through me they spoke, in the +first place, to the great army of readers of their +books who have a natural and pleasing curiosity +concerning the personality of the men and women +who devote their lives to providing them with +entertainment, and, in some cases, instruction. +They knew that through me they spoke, in the +second place, to all the literary apprentices of the +country, who look eagerly for precept and example +to those who have won fame by the delightful +labor of writing. They knew that through +me they spoke, in the third place, to critics and +students of literature of our own generation and, +perhaps, of those that shall come after us. How +eagerly would we read, for instance, an interview +with Francis Bacon on the question of the authorship +of Shakespeare's plays, or an interview with +Oliver Goldsmith in which he gave his real opinion +of Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and Boswell! A century +or so from now, some of the writers who in +this book talk to the world may be the objects +of curiosity as great.</p> + +<p>The writers who have talked with me received +me with courtesy, gave me freely of their time +and thought, and showed a sincere desire for the +furtherance of the purpose of this book. To +them, accordingly, I tender my gratitude for +anything in these pages which the reader may +find of interest or of value. Their explanations +of their literary creeds and practices were furnished +in the first instance for the <i>New York +Times</i>, to which I desire to express my acknowledgments.</p> + +<p style="text-align:right"><span class="smcap">Joyce Kilmer.</span></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span></p> + + + +<h1>LITERATURE<br /> +IN THE MAKING</h1> + +<h2><i>WAR STOPS LITERATURE</i></h2> + +<h4>WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS</h4> + + +<p>War stops literature. This is the belief of +a man who for more than a quarter of a +century has been in the front rank of the world's +novelists, who wrote <i>The Rise of Silas Lapham</i> +and <i>A Modern Instance</i> and nearly a hundred +other sympathetic interpretations of American +life.</p> + +<p>Mr. William Dean Howells was the third writer +to whom was put the question, "What effect will +the Great War have on literature?" And he was +the first to give a direct answer.</p> + +<p>A famous French dramatist replied: "I am not +a prophet. I have enough to do to understand the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span> +present and the past; I cannot concern myself +with the future." A famous English short-story +writer said, "The war has already inspired some +splendid poetry; it may also inspire great plays +and novels, but, of course, we cannot tell as yet."</p> + +<p>But Mr. Howells said, quite simply, "War stops +literature." He said it as unemotionally as if he +were stating a familiar axiom.</p> + +<p>He does not consider it an axiom, however, +for he supplied proof.</p> + +<p>"I have never believed," he said, "that great +events produced great literature. They seldom +call forth the great creative powers of man. In +poetry it is not the poems of occasion that endure, +but the poems that have come into being independently, +not as the result of momentous happenings.</p> + +<p>"This war does not furnish the poet, the +novelist, and the dramatist with the material of +literature. For instance, the Germans, as every +one will admit, have shown extraordinary valor. +But we do not think of celebrating that valor in +poetry; it does not thrill the modern writers as +such valor thrilled the writers of bygone centuries. +When we think of the valor of the Germans, +our emotion is not admiration but pity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span></p> + +<p>"And the reason for this is that fighting is no +longer our ideal. Fighting was not a great ideal, +and therefore it is no longer our ideal. All that +old material of literature—the clashing of swords, +the thunder of shot and shell, the great clouds of +smoke, the blood and fury—all this has gone out +from literature. It is an anachronism."</p> + +<p>"But the American Civil War produced literature, +did it not?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"What great literature did it produce?" asked +Mr. Howells in turn. "As I look back over my +life and recall to mind the great number of books +that the Civil War inspired I find that I am +thinking of things that the American people have +forgotten. They did not become literature, these +poems and stories that came in such quantities and +seemed so important in the sixties.</p> + +<p>"There were the novels of J. W. De Forest, for +instance. They were well written, they were interesting, +they described some phases of the +Civil War truthfully and vividly. We read them +when they were written—but you probably have +never heard of them. No one reads them now. +They were literature, but that about which they +were written has ceased to be of literary interest.</p> + +<p>"Of course, the Civil War, because of its peculiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span> +nature, was followed by an expansion, intellectual +as well as social and economic. And this expansion +undoubtedly had its beneficial effect on literature. +But the Civil War itself did not have, +could not have, literary expression.</p> + +<p>"Of all the writings which the Civil War directly +inspired I can think of only one that has endured +to be called literature. That is Lowell's 'Commemoration +Ode.'</p> + +<p>"War stops literature. It is an upheaval of +civilization, a return to barbarism; it means +death to all the arts. Even the preparation for +war stops literature. It stopped it in Germany +years ago. A little anecdote is significant.</p> + +<p>"I was in Florence about 1883, long after the +Franco-Prussian War, and there I met the editor +of a great German literary weekly—I will not tell +you its name or his. He was a man of refinement +and education, and I have not forgotten his great +kindness to my own fiction. One day I asked him +about the German novelists of the day.</p> + +<p>"He said: 'There are no longer any German +novelists worthy of the name. Our new ideal has +stopped all that. Militarism is our new ideal—the +ideal of Duty—and it has killed our imagination. +So the German novel is dead.'"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why is it, then," I asked, "that Russia, a nation +of militaristic ideals, has produced so many +great novels during the past century?"</p> + +<p>"Russia is not Germany," answered the man +who taught Americans to read Turgenieff. "The +people of Russia are not militaristic as the people +of Germany are militaristic. In Germany war +has for a generation been the chief idea of every +one. The nation has had a militaristic obsession. +And this, naturally, has stifled the imagination.</p> + +<p>"But in Russia nothing of the sort has happened. +Whatever the designs of the ruling classes +may be, the people of Russia keep their simplicity, +their large intellectuality and spirituality. And, +therefore, their imagination and other great intellectual +and spiritual gifts find expression in their +great novels and plays.</p> + +<p>"I well remember how the Russian novelists +impressed me when I was a young man. They +opened to me what seemed to be a new world—and +it was only the real world. There is Tcheckoff—have +you read his <i>Orchard</i>? What life, what +color, what beauty of truth are in that book!</p> + +<p>"Then there is Turgenieff—how grateful I am +for his books! It must be thirty years since I first +read him. Thomas Sargent Perry, of Boston, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span> +man of the greatest culture, was almost the first +American to read Turgenieff. Stedman read +Turgenieff in those days, too. Soon all of the +younger writers were reading him.</p> + +<p>"I remember very well a dinner at Whitelaw +Reid's house in Lexington Avenue, when some of +us young men were enthusiastic over the Russian +novel, and the author we mentioned most frequently +was Turgenieff.</p> + +<p>"Dr. J. G. Holland, the poet who edited <i>The +Century</i>, lived across the street from Mr. Reid, +and during the evening he came over and joined +us. He listened to us for a long time in silence, +hardly speaking a word. When he rose to go, he +said: 'I have been listening to the conversation of +these young men for over an hour. They have +been talking about books. And I have never +before heard the names of any of the authors they +have mentioned.'"</p> + +<p>"Were those the days," I asked, "in which you +first read Tolstoy?"</p> + +<p>"That was long before the time," answered Mr. +Howells. "Tolstoy afterward meant everything +to me—his philosophy as well as his art—far more +than Turgenieff. Tolstoy did not love all his +writing. He loved the thing that he wrote about,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span> +the thing that he lived and taught—equality. And +equality is the best thing in the world. It is the +thing for which the Best of Men lived and died.</p> + +<p>"I never met Tolstoy," said Mr. Howells. +"But I once sent him a message of appreciation +after he had sent a message to me. Tolstoy was +great in the way he wrote as well as in what he +wrote. Tolstoy's force is a moral force. His +great art is as simple as nature."</p> + +<p>"Do you think that the Russian novelists have +influenced your work?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"I think," Mr. Howells replied, "that I had +determined what I was to do before I read any +Russian novels. I first thought that it was +necessary to write only about things that I knew +had already been written about. Certain things +had already been in books; therefore, I thought, +they legitimately were literary subjects and I +might write about them.</p> + +<p>"But soon I knew that this idea was wrong, +that I must get my material, not out of books, +but out of life. And I also knew that it was not +necessary for me to look at life through English +spectacles. Most of our writers had been looking +at life through English spectacles; they had been +closely following in the footsteps of English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span> +novelists. I saw that around me were the materials +for my work. I saw around me life—wholesome, +natural, human.</p> + +<p>"I saw a young, free, energetic society. I saw +a society in which love—the greatest and most +beautiful thing in the world—was innocent; a society +in which the relation between man and woman +was simple and pure. Here, I thought, are the +materials for novels. Why should I go back to the +people of bygone ages and of lands not my own?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think," I asked, "that romanticism +has lost its hold on the novelists?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Howells smiled. "When realism," he said, +"is once in a novelist's blood he never can degenerate +into romanticism. Romanticism is no +longer a literary force among English-speaking +authors. Romanticism belongs to the days in +which war was an aim, an ideal, instead of a +tragic accident. It is something foreign to us. +And literature must be native to the soil, affected, +of course, by the culture of other lands and ages, +but essentially of the people of the land and time +in which it is produced. Realism is the material +of democracy. And no great literature or art +can arise outside of the democracy."</p> + +<p>Tolstoy was mentioned again, and Mr. Howells<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span> +was asked if he did not think that the Russian +novelist's custom of devoting a part of every day +to work that was not literary showed that all +writers would be better off if they were obliged to +make a living in some other way than by writing. +Mr. Howells gave his answer with considerable +vigor. His calm, blue eyes lost something of +their kindliness, and his lips were compressed +into a straight, thin line before he said:</p> + +<p>"I certainly do not think so. The artist in +letters or in lines should have leisure in which to +perform his valuable service to society. The history +of literature is full of heartbreaking instances +of writers whose productive careers were retarded +by their inability to earn a living at their chosen +profession. The belief that poverty helps a +writer is stupid and wrong. Necessity is not and +never has been an incentive. Poverty is not and +never has been an incentive. Writers and other +creative artists are hindered, not helped, by lack +of leisure.</p> + +<p>"I remember my own early experiences, and I +know that my writing suffered very much because +I could not devote all my time to it. I had to +spend ten hours in drudgery for every two that +I spent on my real work. The fact that authors<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span> +who have given the world things that it treasures +are forced to live in a state of anxiety over their +finances is lamentable. This anxiety cannot but +have a restrictive influence on literature. It is +not want, but the fear of want, that kills."</p> + +<p>"Still, in spite of their precarious financial condition, +modern authors are doing good work, are +they not?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Certainly they are," answered Mr. Howells, +"the novelists especially. There is Robert Herrick, +for example. His novels are interesting +stories, and they also are faithful reflections of +American life. Will Harben's work is admirable. +It has splendid realism and fine humor. Perhaps +one thing that has kept it, so far, from an appreciation +so general as it will one day receive, is +the fact that it deals, for the most part, with one +special locality, a certain part of Georgia.</p> + +<p>"And in Spain—what excellent novelists they +have there and have had for a long time! The +realistic movement reached Spain long before it +reached England and the United States. In fact, +English-speaking countries were the last to accept it. +I have taken great pleasure in the works +of Armando Valdés. Then there are Pérez Galdós +and Emilia Pardo Bazián, and that priest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> +who wrote a realistic novel about Madrid society. +All these novelists are realists, and realists of +power.</p> + +<p>"Then there are the great Scandinavians. I +hope that I may some time attempt to express a +little of my gratitude for the pleasure that Björnson's +works have given me."</p> + +<p>I asked, "What do you think of contemporary +poetry?"</p> + +<p>"I admired chiefly that of Thomas Hardy," said +Mr. Howells. "His poems have force and actuality +and music and charm. Masefield I like, +with reservations. Three modern poets who give +me great pleasure are Thomas Hardy, William +Watson, and Charles Hanson Towne. The first +one of Mr. Towne's poems that I read was "Manhattan." +I have not forgotten the truth of that +poetic interpretation of New York. His poems +are beautiful and they are full of humanity. In +his latest book there is a poem called 'A Ballad +of Shame and Dread' that moved me deeply. It +is a slight thing, but it is wonderfully powerful. +Like all of Towne's poetry, it is warm with human +sympathy."</p> + +<p>"Do you think," I asked, "that the great +social problems of the day, the feminine unrest,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> +for instance, are finding their expression in literature?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Mr. Howells, "I cannot call to mind +any adequate literary expression of the woman +movement. Perhaps this is because the women +who know most about it and feel it most strongly +are not writers. The best things that have been +said about woman suffrage in our time have been +said by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She has +written the noblest satire since Lowell. What wit +she has, and what courage! Once I heard her +address a meeting of Single-Taxers. Now, the +Single-Taxers are all right so far as they go, but +they don't go far enough. The Single-Taxers +heckled her, but she had a retort ready for every +interruption. She stood there with her brave +smile and talked them all down."</p> + +<p>"Do you think that Ibsen expressed the modern +feminine unrest in <i>The Doll's House</i>?" Mr. +Howells was asked.</p> + +<p>"Ibsen seldom expressed things," was his reply. +"He suggested them, mooted them, but he did +not express them. <i>The Doll's House</i> does not +express the meaning of unrest, it suggests it. +Ibsen told you where you stood, not where to go."</p> + +<p>Mr. Howells had recently presided at a meeting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> +which was addressed by M. Brieux, and he expressed +great admiration for the work of the French +dramatist.</p> + +<p>"He is a great dramatist," he said. "He has +given faithful reports of life, and faithful reports +of life are necessarily criticisms of life. All great +novels are criticisms of life. And I think that the +poets will concern themselves more and more with +the life around them. It is possible that soon +we may have an epic in which the poet deals with +the events of contemporary life."</p> + +<p>Mr. Howells is keenly awake to the effect which +the war is having on conditions in New York. +And in his sympathy for the society which inevitably +must suffer for a war in which it is not +directly concerned, the active interest of the +novelist was evident. "If all this only could be +reflected in a book!" he said. "If some novelist +could interpret it!"</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>THE JOYS OF THE POOR</i></h2> + +<h4>KATHLEEN NORRIS</h4> + + +<p>Any young woman who desires to become a +famous novelist and short-story writer like +Kathleen Norris will do well to take the following +steps: In the first place, come to New York. In +the second place, marry some one like Charles +Gilman Norris.</p> + +<p>Of course, every one who read <i>Mother</i> and +<i>The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne</i> and <i>Saturday's Child</i> knew +that the author was a married woman—and also +a married woman with plenty of personal experience +with babies and stoves and servants and +other important domestic items. But not until +I visited Kathleen Norris at her very genuine +home in Port Washington did I appreciate the +part which that domestic item called a husband +has played in Kathleen Norris's communications +to the world.</p> + +<p>I made this discovery after Charles Gilman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span> +Norris—accompanied by little Frank, who bears +the name of the illustrious novelist who was his +uncle—had motored me through Port Washington's +pleasant avenues to the Norris house. +Before a fire of crackling hickory logs, Kathleen +Norris (clad in something very charming, which +I will not attempt to describe) was talking about +the qualities necessary to a writer's success. And +one of these, she said, was a business sense.</p> + +<p>Now, Mrs. Norris did not look exactly business-like. +Nor is "a business sense" the quality which +most readers would immediately hit upon as the +characteristic which made the author of <i>Gayley the +Troubadour</i> different from the writers of other +stories. I ventured to suggest this to Mrs. Norris.</p> + +<p>"I don't claim to possess a business sense," +she said. "But my husband has a business sense. +He has taken charge of selling my stories to the +magazines and dealing with publishers and all of +that. I do think that literally thousands of +writers are hindered from ever reaching the public +by the lack of business sense. And I know that +my husband has been responsible for getting most +of my work published. My stories have appeared +since my marriage, you know. I don't need to +have a business sense, all I have to do is to write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span> +the stories. My husband does all the rest—I +don't need even to have any of the author's complacency, +or the author's pride!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Norris's fame is only about five years old—about +as old as her son. I asked her about her +life before she was known as a writer, expecting +to hear picturesque tales of literary tribulations +among the hills of California. But her description +of her journey to success was not the conventional +one; her journey was not for years +paved with rejection slips and illumined with +midnight oil.</p> + +<p>"It was New York that did it," she said. +"When we first came to New York from California +the editor of a magazine with which Mr. +Norris was connected gave us a tea. Most of the +people who were present were short-story writers +and novelists. It was pleasant for me to meet +them, and I enjoyed the afternoon. But my chief +sensation was one of shock—it was a real shock +to me to find that writers were people!</p> + +<p>"I felt as if I had met Joan of Arc, Cæsar, +Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, and all the great +figures of history, and found them to be human +beings like myself. 'These writers are not supermen +and superwomen,' I said to myself, 'they are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span> +human beings like me. Why can't I do what +they're doing?'</p> + +<p>"I thought this over after we went home that +evening. And I made a resolve. I resolved that +before the next tea that I attended I would tell +a story. And when I next went to a tea I had +sold a story."</p> + +<p>"To what publication had you sold it?" I +asked.</p> + +<p>"To an evening paper," said Mrs. Norris; +"but I had written and sold a story. That was +something; it meant a great deal to me. My +first stories were all sold to this evening paper, +for twelve dollars each. This paper printed a +story every day, paying twelve dollars for each +of them, and giving a prize of fifty dollars for the +best story published each week. I won one of the +fifty-dollar prizes."</p> + +<p>Any one who to-day could buy a Kathleen +Norris story for fifty dollars would be not an +editor, but a magician. Yet the memory of that +early triumph seemed to give Mrs. Norris real +pleasure.</p> + +<p>"I wrote <i>What Happened to Alanna</i> two years +before the Fire," she said. ("The Fire" means +only one thing when a Californian says it.) "But<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span> +most of my stories have been written since I came +to New York."</p> + +<p>I asked Mrs. Norris for the history of one of +her earliest stories, a story of California life which +appeared in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i>. She said: +"That story went to twenty-six magazines before +it was printed. My husband had an alphabetical +list of magazines. He sent the story first to the +<i>Atlantic Monthly</i> and then to twenty-five other +magazines. They all returned it. Then he started +at the top of the list again, and this time the +<i>Atlantic Monthly</i> accepted it."</p> + +<p>The mention of Mr. Norris's activities in selling +this story brought our conversation back to the +subject of the "business sense."</p> + +<p>"A writer needs the ability to sell a story as +well as the ability to write it," said Mrs. Norris, +"unless there is some one else to do the writing. +Many a woman writes a really good story, sends +it hopefully to an editor, gets it back with a +printed notice of its rejection, and puts it away +in a desk drawer. Then years later she tells her +grandchildren that she once wanted to be an +author, but found that she couldn't do it.</p> + +<p>"Now, that is no way for a writer to gain +success. The writer must be persevering, not only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span> +in writing, but in trying to get his work before the +public. Unless, as I said, there is some one else +to supply the perseverance in getting the work +before the public.</p> + +<p>"I think that the desire to write generally indicates +the possession of the power to write. But +young writers are too easily discouraged. But I +have no right to blame a writer for being discouraged. +I had frightful discouragement—until +I was married."</p> + +<p>It is easy to see that Kathleen Norris does not +hesitate to find in her own home life material for +her industrious pen. Little Frank has undoubtedly +served his mother as a model many times—which +is not meant to indicate that he is that +monstrosity, a model child. Indeed, Mrs. Norris +believes that a novelist should use the material +which lies ready at hand, instead of seeking for +exotic and unusual topics. She sees that people +want to read about the things with which they +are already familiar, that they are not (as many +young writers seem to think) eager for novelties.</p> + +<p>"I cannot understand," she said, "how it is +that writers will clamor for recognition, and abuse +the public for not welcoming them with enthusiasm, +and yet will not give the public what they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span> +know that the public wants. So many people +seem to want just their own sort of art, but to +want money, too. Now, I wouldn't write for a +million dollars some of those things that are called +'best sellers.' But I cannot see why a writer who +is avowedly writing for the public should think +it beneath him to treat the themes in which the +public is interested. The greatest tragedy of +literature is the writer who persists in trying to +give the public what it does not want. Think of +poor Gissing, for instance, dying embittered because +he couldn't sell his work!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Norris's conviction that a writer should +use the material around him is so strong that she +seems actually to be pained by the thought of all +the excellent things for stories that are going to +waste. I asked her if literature ever could come +from apartment-houses. She said:</p> + +<p>"Of course it can! There is no reason why +there shouldn't be good stories and novels of apartment-house +life. One reason why we are not +writing more and better stories of the life around +us is because we are living that life so intensely—too +intensely. We live in this country so close +to our income that the problem of earning money +makes us lose sight of the essentials of life. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span> +would be a fine thing for us, mentally and spiritually, +if we should live on less than we do. If, for +example, a family that found it was in receipt +of a few hundred dollars more a year than before +should decide, therefore, to live under a simpler +scale than before, to do away with some really +worthless luxuries, what a fine thing that would +be!"</p> + +<p>Of course many young writers come to Mrs. +Norris for advice. And some of them excellently +illustrate the tendency which she deprecates, the +tendency to write about the unknown instead of +the familiar.</p> + +<p>"I was talking the other day to a young girl +of my acquaintance who is a costume model," she +said. "She has literary aspirations. Now, her +life itself has been an interesting story—her rise +from a shopgirl to her present position. And +every now and then she will say something to me +that is a most interesting revelation—something +that indicates the rich store of experience that she +might, if she would, draw upon in her stories. +On one occasion she said to me, 'I went home and +put my shoe-drawer in order.'</p> + +<p>"'What do you mean?' I asked. 'What is +your shoe-drawer?'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span></p> + +<p>"'Why, my shoe-drawer!' she answered. 'You +see, we costume models have to have a drawer +full of shoes, because we must change our shoes +to match every costume.'</p> + +<p>"Why is it," asked Mrs. Norris, "that a girl +like that cannot see the value of such an incident +as that? That shoe-drawer is a picturesque and +interesting thing, unknown to most people. And +this girl, who knows all about it, and wants to +write, cannot see its literary value! And yet what +more interesting subject is there for her to write +about than that shoe-drawer? I do not see why +writers will not appreciate the importance of +writing about the things that are around them."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Norris gave a somewhat embarrassed +laugh. "I really shouldn't attempt to lay down +the law in this way," she said. "I can speak only +for myself—I must write of the people and things +that I know best, but I ought not to attempt to +prescribe what other people shall write about."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Norris's chief literary enthusiasm seems +to be Charles Dickens. "When we were all infants +out in the backwoods of California," she +said, "we battened on Dickens. Dickens and a +writer whom I don't suppose anybody reads nowadays—Henry +Kingsley. The boys read Sir<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span> +Walter Scott's novels, and left Dickens to me. I +read Dickens with delight, and I still read him +with delight. I have found passages in Dickens +of which I honestly believe there are no equal in +all English literature except in Shakespeare. I +do not think that there is ever a year in which +I do not read some of Dickens's novels over again. +Of course, any one can find Dickens's faults—but +I do not see how any one can fail to find his excellences."</p> + +<p>"What is it in Dickens that especially attracts +you?" I asked.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Norris was silent for a moment. Then +she said: "I think I like him chiefly because he +saw so clearly the joys of the poor. He did not +give his poor people nothing but disease and oppression +and despair. He gave them roast goose +and plum pudding for their Christmas dinner—he +gave them faith and hope and love. He knew +that often the rich suffer and the poor are happy.</p> + +<p>"Many of the modern realists seem ignorant of +the fact that the poor may be happy. They think +that the cotter's Saturday night must always be +squalid and sordid and dismal, and that the +millionaire's Saturday night must be splendid and +joyful. As a matter of fact, the poor family may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> +be, and often is, healthier and happier in every +way than the rich family. But these extreme +realists are not like Dickens, they have not his +intimate knowledge of the life of the poor. They +have the outsider's viewpoint.</p> + +<p>"Too many writers are telling us about the +sorrows of the poor. We need writers who will +tell us about the joys of the poor. We need +writers who will be aware of the pleasures to be +derived from a good dinner of corned beef and +cabbage and a visit to a moving-picture theater. +Often when I pass a row of mean houses, as they +would be called, I think gratefully of the good +times that I have had in just such places."</p> + +<p>The thought of that little Celtic Californian +reading Dickens among the redwood-trees appealed +to me. So I asked Mrs. Norris to tell +more about her childhood.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "we hear a great deal about +the misery, the bleak and barren lives of the children +who live in the tenements of New York's +lower East Side. But I think that an East Side +tenement child would die of ennui if it should be +brought up as we were brought up. We had none +of the amusing and exciting experiences of the +East Side child—we had no white stockings, no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span> +ice-cream cones, no Coney Island, nothing of the +sort.</p> + +<p>"We never even went to school. We would +study French for a while with some French neighbor +who had sufficient leisure to teach us, and +then we'd study Spanish for a while with some +Spaniard. That was the extent of our schooling.</p> + +<p>"My parents died when I was eighteen years +old. I went to the city and tried my hand at +different sorts of work. For one thing, I tried to +get up children's parties, but in eighteen months +I managed only one. Then I did settlement work, +was a librarian, a companion, and society reporter +on a newspaper. Then I got married—and wrote +stories."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Norris was at one time opposed to woman +suffrage. Now, however, she is a suffragist, but +she refuses to say that she has been "converted" +to suffragism.</p> + +<p>"I can't say that I have been converted to +suffragism," she said, "any more than I can say +that I have been converted to warm baths and +tooth-brushes. And it does not seem to me that +any women should need to defend her right to +vote any more than she should need to defend +her right to love her children. There is a theme<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span> +for a novel—a big suffrage novel will be written +one of these days."</p> + +<p>It may be that the author of <i>Mother</i> will be the +author of this "big suffrage novel." But at present +she disclaims any such intention. But she +admits that there is a purpose in all her portrayals +of normal, wholesome American home life.</p> + +<p>"I don't think that I believe in 'art for art's +sake,' as it is generally interpreted," she said. +"Of course, I don't believe in what is called the +commercial point of view—I have never written +anything just to have it printed. But I do not +believe that there is any one standard of art. I +think that any book which the people ought to +read must have back of it something besides the +mere desire of the writer to create something. I +never could write without a moral intention."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART</i></h2> + +<h4>BOOTH TARKINGTON</h4> + + +<p>Mr. Booth Tarkington never will be +called the George M. Cohan of fiction. His +novel, <i>The Turmoil</i>, is surely an indictment of +modern American urban civilization; of its materialism, +its braggadocio, its contempt for the +things of the soul.</p> + +<p>It was with the purpose of making this indictment +a little clearer than it could be when it is +surrounded by a story, that I asked Mr. Tarkington +a few questions. And his answers are not +likely to increase our national complacencies.</p> + +<p>In the first place, I asked Mr. Tarkington if +the atmosphere of a young and energetic nation +might not reasonably be expected to be favorable +to literary and artistic expression.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it might," said Mr. Tarkington. "There +may be spiritual progress in America as phenomenal +as her material progress.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span></p> + +<p>"There is and has been extraordinary progress +in the arts. But the people as a whole are naturally +preoccupied with their material progress. +They are much more interested in Mr. Rockefeller +than in Mr. Sargent."</p> + +<p>The last two sentences of Mr. Tarkington's +reply made me eager for something a little more +specific on that subject.</p> + +<p>"What are the forces in America to-day," I +asked, "that hinder the development of art and +letters?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington replied: "There are no forces +in America to-day that hinder the development +of individuals in art and letters, save in unimportant +cases here and there. But there is a spirit +that hinders general personal decency, knows and +cares nothing for beauty, and is glad to have its +body dirty for the sake of what it calls 'prosperity.'</p> + +<p>"It 'wouldn't give a nickel' for any kind of art. +But it can't and doesn't hinder artists from producing +works of art, though it makes them swear."</p> + +<p>"But do not these conditions in many instances +seriously hinder individual artists?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Nothing stops an +artist if he is one," he said. "But many things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span> +may prevent a people or a community from knowing +or caring for art.</p> + +<p>"The climate may be unfavorable; we need not +expect the Eskimos to be interested in architecture. +In the United States politicians have +usually controlled the public purchase of works +of art and the erection of public buildings. This +is bad for the public, naturally."</p> + +<p>"I suppose," I said, "that the conditions you +describe are distinctively modern, are they not? +At what time in the history of America have conditions +been most favorable to literary expression?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington's reply was not what I expected. +"At all times," he said. "Literary expression +does not depend on the times, though the +appreciation of it does, somewhat."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Tarkington if he agreed with Mr. +Gouverneur Morris in considering the short story +a modern development. He did not.</p> + +<p>"There are short stories in the Bible," he said, +"and in every mythology; 'folk stories' of all +races and tribes. Probably Mr. Morris's definition +of the short story would exclude these. I +agree with him that short stories are better written +nowadays."</p> + +<p>"But you do not believe," I said, "that American<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span> +literature in general is better than it used to +be, do you? Why is it that there is now no group +of American writers like the New England group +which included Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, +Emerson, and Thoreau?"</p> + +<p>"Why is there," Mr. Tarkington asked in +turn, "no group like Homer (wasn't he a group?) +in Greece? There may be, but if there is just +such a modern group it would tend only to repeat +the work of the Homeric group, which wouldn't +be interesting to the rest of us.</p> + +<p>"The important thing is to find a group unlike +Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau. +That is, if one accepts the idea that it is +important to find a group."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington's criticisms of the modern +American city have been so severe that I expected +him to tell me that all writers should live in the +country. But again he surprised me. In reply +to my question as to which environment was more +favorable to the production of literature, the city +or the country, he said:</p> + +<p>"It depends upon the nerves of the writer. A +writer can be born anywhere, and he can grow +up anywhere."</p> + +<p>There has recently been considerable discussion—Professor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span> +Edward Garnet and Gertrude Atherton +have taken a considerable share in it—on +the relative merits of contemporary English and +American fiction. I asked Mr. Tarkington if in +his opinion the United States had at the present +time novelists equal to those of England.</p> + +<p>"That is unanswerable!" he answered. "Writers +aren't like baseball teams. What's the value of +my opinion that <i>The Undiscovered Country</i> is a +'greater' novel than <i>A Pair of Blue Eyes</i>? These +questions remind me of school debating societies. +Nothing is demonstrated, but everybody has his +own verdict."</p> + +<p>Until I asked Mr. Tarkington about it I had +heard only two opinions as to the probable effect +on literature of the war. One was that which +William Dean Howells tersely expressed by saying: +"War stops literature," and the other was +that the war is purifying and strengthening all +forms of literary expression.</p> + +<p>But Mr. Tarkington had something new to +say about it. "What effect," I asked, "is the +war likely to have on American literature?"</p> + +<p>"None of consequence," he answered. "The +poet will find the subject, war or no war. The +sculptor doesn't depend upon epaulets."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span></p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington is so inveterate a writer of +serials, and his work is so familiar to the readers +of the American magazines, that I desired to get +his expert opinion as to whether or not the American +magazines, with their remarkably high prices, +had harmed or benefited fiction. His reply was +somewhat non-committal.</p> + +<p>"They have induced many people to look upon +the production of fiction as a profitable business," +he said. "But those people would merely not +have 'tried fiction' at all otherwise. Prices have +nothing to do with art."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington had some interesting things +to say about that venerable mirage, the Great +American Novel. I asked him if that longed-for +work would ever be written; if, for example, +there would ever be a work of fiction reflecting +American life as <i>Vanity Fair</i> reflects English +life. He replied:</p> + +<p>"If Thackeray had been an American he would +not have written a novel reflecting American life as +<i>Vanity Fair</i> reflected the English life of its time. +He would have written of New York; his young +men would have come there after Harvard. The +only safe thing to say of the Great American Novel +is that the author will never know he wrote it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span></p> + +<p>Mr. Charles Belmont Davis had told me that +a writer who had some means of making a living +other than writing would do better work than +one who devoted himself exclusively to literature. +I asked Mr. Tarkington what he thought about +this.</p> + +<p>"I think," he said, "that it would be very +well for a writer to have some means of making +a living other than writing. There are likely to +be times in his career when it would give him a +sense of security concerning food. But I doubt +if it would much affect his writing, unless he considered +writing to be a business."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington's answer to my next question +is hereby commended to the attention of all those +feminine revolutionists who believe that they are +engaged in the pleasant task of changing the whole +current of modern thought.</p> + +<p>"How has literature been affected," I asked, +"by the suffrage movement and feminism?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington looked up in some surprise. +"I haven't heard of any change," he said.</p> + +<p>The author of <i>The Turmoil</i> could never be accused +of jingoism. But he is far from agreeing +with those critics who believe that American literature +is merely "a phase of English literature."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span> +I asked him if he believed that there was such a +thing as a distinctively American literature.</p> + +<p>"Certainly," he replied. "Is <i>Huckleberry Finn</i> +a phase? It's a monument; not an English one. +English happens to be the language largely used."</p> + +<p>The allusion in Mr. Tarkington's last reply +suggested—what every reader of <i>Penrod</i> must +know—that this novelist is an enthusiastic admirer +of Mark Twain. So I told him that Mr. +T. A. Daly had classed Mark Twain with Artemus +Ward and Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P.B., and had +said that these men wrote nothing of real merit +and were "the Charlie Chaplins of their time."</p> + +<p>Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Get Mr. T. A. Daly +to talk some more," he said. "We'd like to hear +something about Voltaire and Flo Ziegfeld. Second +thoughts indicate that 'T. A. Daly' is the +pen name of Mr. Charlie Chaplin. Of course! +And that makes it all right and natural. I +thought at first that it was a joke."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>ROMANTICISM AND AMERICAN HUMOR</i></h2> + +<h4>MONTAGUE GLASS</h4> + +<p>Once upon a time William Dean Howells +leveled the keen lance of his satire against +what he called "the monstrous rag baby of romanticism." +In those simple days, literary labels +were easily applied. A man who wrote about +Rome, Italy, was a romanticist; a man who +wrote about Rome, New York, was a Realist.</p> + +<p>Now, however, a writer who finds his themes +in the wholesale business district of New York +City does not disavow the title formerly given +exclusively to makers of drawn-sword-and-prancing-steed +fiction. Montague Glass is a romanticist.</p> + +<p>The laureate of the cloak-and-suit trade and +biographer of Mr. Abe Potash and Mr. Mawruss +Perlmutter does not believe that romance is a +matter of time and place. A realistic novel, he +believes, may be written about the Young Pretender<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span> +or Alexander the Great, and a romance +about—well, about Elkan Lubliner, American.</p> + +<p>Of course, I asked him to defend his claim to +the name of romanticist. He did so, but in general +terms, without special reference to his own +work. For this widely read author has the amazing +virtue of modesty.</p> + +<p>"I do not think," he said, "that the so-called +historical novelists are the only romanticists. +The difference between the two schools of writers +is in method, rather than in subject.</p> + +<p>"A romanticist is a writer who creates an +atmosphere of his own about the things with +which he deals. He is the poet, the constructive +artist. He calls into being that which has not +hitherto existed.</p> + +<p>"A realist, however, is a writer who faithfully +reproduces an atmosphere that already exists. +He reports, records; one of his distinguishing +characteristics must be his attention to detail. +The romanticist is as truthful as the realist, but +he deals with a few large truths rather than with +many small facts."</p> + +<p>"And you," I said, determined to make the +conversation more personal, "prefer the romantic +method?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes," said Mr. Glass, "I do. I prefer to use +the romantic method, and to read the works of +the writers who use it. I believe that there is +more value in suggestion than in detailed description. +For instance, I do not think that my +stories would gain vividness if I should put all the +dialogue—I tell my stories chiefly by means of +dialogues, you know—into dialect. So I do not +put down the dialogue phonetically. I spell the +words correctly, not in accordance with the pronunciation +of my characters.</p> + +<p>"This is not an invariable rule. When, for +instance, Abe or Mawruss has learned a new long +word which he uses frequently to show it off, he +generally mispronounces it. He may say 'quincidence' +for 'coincidence.' Such a mispronunciation +as this I reproduce, for it has its significance +as a revelation of character. But I do not +attempt to put down all mispronunciations; I +let the dialect be imagined.</p> + +<p>"The romanticist, you see, uses his own imagination +and expects imagination in his readers. His +method might be called impressionistic; he outlines +and suggests, instead of describing exhaustively. +The romanticist really is more economical than +the realist, and he has more restraint."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span></p> + +<p>"Who are the leading romanticists of the day?" +I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well," Mr. Glass replied, "my favorite among +contemporary romanticists is Joseph Conrad. +There is a man who is certainly no swashbuckling +novelist of the Wardour Street school. He writes +of modern life, and yet he is a romanticist through +and through.</p> + +<p>"I think that I may justly claim to be one of +the first admirers of Conrad in America. I used +to read him when apparently the only other man +in this part of the world to appreciate him was +William L. Alden, who praised him in the columns +of the <i>New York Times Review of Books</i>.</p> + +<p>"I well remember my discovery of Conrad. I +went to Brooklyn to hear 'Tosca' sung at the +Academy of Music. I had bought my ticket, +and I had about an hour to spend before it would +be time for the curtain to rise. So I went across +the street to the Brooklyn Public Library.</p> + +<p>"While I was idly looking over the novels on +the shelves I came upon Conrad's <i>Typhoon</i>. I +sat down and began to read it.</p> + +<p>"When I arose, I had finished the book. Also, +I had missed the first two acts of the opera—and +I had been eager to hear them. But Conrad<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span> +more than compensated for the loss of those two +acts.</p> + +<p>"Many of the modern English writers are +romanticists. Galsworthy surely is no realist. +And William de Morgan, although he writes at +great length and has abundance of detail, is a +romanticist. He does not use detail for its own +sake, as the realists use it; he uses it only when +it has some definite value in unfolding the plot +or revealing character. He uses it significantly; +he is particularly successful in using it humorously, +as Daudet and Dickens used it. Arnold Bennett +is a realist, and I think that one of the reasons +why he is so widely read in the United States is +because the life which he describes so minutely +is a life much like that of his American readers. +People like to read about the sort of life they +already know. The average reader wants to have +a sense of familiarity with the characters in his +novels."</p> + +<p>Mr. Glass is a contrary person. It is contrary +for the only novelist who knows anything about +New York's cloak-and-suit trade to be of English +birth and to look like a poet. It is contrary of +him to have that distinctively American play, +"Potash and Perlmutter," start its London run<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span> +two years ago and be "still going strong." And it +was contrary of him not to say, as he might reasonably +be expected to say in view of his own success, +that the encounters and adventures of business +must be the theme of the American novelists of +the future.</p> + +<p>"No," he said, in answer to my question, "I +do not see any reason for the novelist to confine +himself to business life. Themes for fiction are +universal. A novelist should write of the life he +knows best, whatever it may be.</p> + +<p>"I do not mean that the novelist should write +about his own business. I mean that he should +write about the psychology that he understands. +A man who spends years in the cloak-and-suit +business is not, therefore, qualified to write novels +about that business, even if he is qualified to +write novels at all.</p> + +<p>"I had no real knowledge of the cloak-and-suit +trade when I began to write about it. I made +many technical blunders. For instance, I had +Potash and Perlmutter buying goods by the +gross instead of by the piece. And I received +many indignant letters pointing out my mistake.</p> + +<p>"I had never been in the cloak-and-suit trade. +But my work as a lawyer had brought me into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span> +contact with many people who were in that business, +and I had intimate knowledge of the psychology +of the Jew, his religion, his humor, his tragedy, +his whole attitude toward life.</p> + +<p>"The trouble with many young writers," said +Mr. Glass, "is that they don't know what they +are writing about. They are attempting to describe +psychological states of which they have +only third-hand knowledge. Their ideas have no +semblance of truth, and therefore their work is +absolutely unconvincing."</p> + +<p>"At any rate," I said, "you will admit that +American writers are more and more inclined to +make the United States the scene of their stories. +Do you think that O. Henry's influence is responsible +for this?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Mr. Glass, "I do not think that +this is due to O. Henry's influence. It was a +natural development. You see, O. Henry's literary +life lasted for only about four years, and +while he has had many imitators, I do not think +that he can be given credit for directing the attention +of American writers to the life of their own +country.</p> + +<p>"Probably William Dean Howells should be +called the founder of the modern school of American<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span> +fiction. He was the first writer to achieve +distinguished success for tales of modern American +life. There were several other authors who began +to write about Americans soon after Mr. Howells +began—Thomas Janvier, H. C. Bunner, and +Brander Matthews were among them.</p> + +<p>"Kipling's popularity gave a great impetus to +the writing of short stories of modern life. It is +interesting to trace the course of the short story +from Kipling to O. Henry.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever notice," asked Mr. Glass, "that +the best stories on New York life are written by +people who have been born and brought up outside +of the city? The writer who has always lived in +New York seems thereby to be disqualified from +writing about it, just as the man in the cloak-and-suit +trade is too close to his subject to reproduce +it in fiction. The writer who comes to New York +after spending his youth elsewhere gets the full +romantic effect of New York; he gets a perspective +on it which the native New-Yorker seldom attains. +The viewpoint of the writer who has always lived +in New York is subjective, whereas one must have +the objective viewpoint to write about the city +successfully.</p> + +<p>"I have been surprised by the caricatures of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span> +American life which come from the pen of writers +American by birth and ancestry. Recently I +read a novel by an American who has—and deserves, +for he is a writer of talent and reputation—a +large following. This was a story of life in a +manufacturing town with which the novelist is +thoroughly familiar. It, however, appears to have +been written to satisfy a grudge and consequently +one could mistake it for the work of an Englishman +who had once made a brief tour of America. +For the big manufacturer who was the principal +character in the story was vulgar enough to +satisfy the prejudice of any reader of the <i>London +Daily Mail</i>. Certainly the descriptions of the +gaudy and offensive furniture in the rich manufacturer's +house and the dialogue of the members +of his family and the servants could provide splendid +ammunition for the <i>Saturday Review</i> or <i>The +Academy</i>. The book appears to be a caricature, +and yet that novelist had lived most of his life +among the sort of people about whom he was +writing!</p> + +<p>"And how absolutely ignorant most New-Yorkers +are of New York. Irvin Cobb comes +here from Louisville, Kentucky, and gets an intimate +knowledge of the city, and puts that knowledge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span> +into his short stories. But a man brought +up here makes the most ridiculous mistakes when +he writes about New York.</p> + +<p>"I read a story of New York life recently that +absolutely disgusted me, its author was so ignorant +of his subject. Yet he was a born New-Yorker. +Let me tell you what he wrote. He +said that a man went into an arm-chair lunch-room +and bought a meal. His check amounted +to sixty-five cents! Now any one who knows +anything about arm-chair lunch-rooms beyond the +mere fact of their existence knows that the cashier +of such an institution would drop dead if a customer +paid him sixty-five cents at one time. +Then, the hero of this story had as a part of his +meal in this arm-chair lunch-room a baked potato, +for which he paid fifteen cents! Imagine a baked +potato in such a place, and a fifteen-cent baked +potato at that!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Glass did not, like most successful humorists, +begin as a writer of tragedy. His first story +to be printed was "Aloysius of the Docks," a +humorous story of an East Side Irish boy, which +appeared in 1900. The lower East Side was for +many years the scene of most of his stories. But +he does resemble most other writers in this respect,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span> +that he wrote verse before he wrote fiction. +I asked him to show me some of his poetry, and +he demurred somewhat violently. But, after all, +a poet is a poet, and at last I succeeded in persuading +him to produce this exhibit. Here it is—a +poem by the author of "Potash and Perlmutter":</p> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">FERRYBOATS<br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There sounds aloft a warning scream,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The jingling bell gives tongue below,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She breasts again the busy stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And cleaves its murky tide to snow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bereft of burnished glittering brass,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ungainly bulging fore and aft,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Slowly from shore to shore they pass—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The matrons of the river craft.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Mr. Glass believes that humorous writing in +America has changed more than any other sort. +But he does not, as I thought he would, attribute +this change to the increased cosmopolitanism of +the country, to the influx of people from other +lands.</p> + +<p>"Certainly our ideas of what is funny have +changed," he said. "Humor is an ephemeral +thing. A generation ago we laughed at what +to-day would merely make us ill. The subjects +and the methods of the humorists are different.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span> +Who nowadays can find a laugh in the pages of +Artemus Ward, Philander Q. Doesticks, or Petroleum +V. Nasby? Yet in their time these men +set the whole continent in a roar.</p> + +<p>"Contrast two humorists typical of their respective +periods—Bill Nye and Abe Martin. I +remember many years ago reading a story by +Bill Nye which every one then considered tremendously +funny. He told how he went downtown +and got a shave and put on a clean collar +and as he said, 'otherwise disguised himself.' +When he got home his little dog refused to recognize +him, and several pages were devoted to his +efforts to persuade the dog of his identity. Then, +failing to convince the dog that he was really the +same Bill Nye in spite of his shave and clean +collar, he impaled it on a pitchfork and buried it, +putting over it the epitaph, 'Not dead, but jerked +hence by request.'</p> + +<p>"Now contrast with that a good example of +modern American humor—a joke by Abe Martin +which I recently saw. There was a picture of two +or three men looking at a tattered tramp, and one +of them was represented as saying: 'You wouldn't +think to look at him that that man played an +elegant game of billiards ten years ago!'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span></p> + +<p>"It is an entirely different form of humor, you +see. Bill Nye and the writers of his school got +their effects by grotesque misspelling, fantastic +ideas, and by the liberal use of shock and surprise. +The modern humor is subtler, more delicate, and +more likely to endure.</p> + +<p>"I do not think that the fact that America has +become more cosmopolitan has anything to do +with this altered sense of humor. The American +humorists do not select cosmopolitan themes; the +best of them are distinctively American in their +subject. Irvin Cobb, George Fitch, Kate Douglas +Wiggin, Edna Ferber Stewart, who wrote <i>The +Fugitive Blacksmith</i>—all these people draw their +inspiration from purely American phases of the +life around them."</p> + +<p>"What is it, then," I asked, "that has changed +American humor?"</p> + +<p>"Leisure," answered Mr. Glass. "Philander +Q. Doesticks and other humorists of his time +wrote to amuse pioneers, people rough and elemental +in their tastes. Their audience consisted +of men who worked hard most of the time, and +therefore had to be hit hard by any joke that was +to entertain them at all. But as Americans grew +more leisurely, and therefore had time to read,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span> +see plays, and look at pictures, they lost their +taste for crude and violent horseplay, and the +new sort of humor came in. Undoubtedly the +same thing occurs in every newly settled country—Australia, +for example. It is unlikely that the +Australian of one hundred years from now will +be amused by the things that amuse Australians +to-day.</p> + +<p>"But the humor that entertains the citizens of +a country of which the civilization is well established +is likely to retain its charm through the +years. Mark Twain's stories do not lose their +flavor. But Mark Twain was not exclusively a +humorist; he was a student of life and he reflected +the tragedy of existence as well as its +comedy. So does Irvin Cobb, who is the nearest +approach to Mark Twain now living.</p> + +<p>"One source of Mark Twain's strength is his +occasional vulgarity. That surely is something +that we should have in greater abundance in +American humor. I do not mean that our humorists +should be pornographic and obscene; I +mean merely that they should be allowed great +freedom in their choice of themes. There is no +humor without vulgarity. Our humorists have +been so limited and restrained that we have no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span> +paper fit to be compared with <i>Simplicissimus</i> or +<i>Le Rire</i>.</p> + +<p>"You see, a vulgar thing is not offensive if it is +funny. Fun for fun's sake is a much more important +maxim than art for art's sake. The +humorists have a greater need for freedom in +choice of themes than the serious writers, especially +the realistic writers, who are always demanding +greater freedom."</p> + +<p>Mr. Glass returned to the subject of the failure +of cosmopolitanism to influence American literature +by calling attention to the fact that very few +American writers find their themes among their +foreign-born fellow-citizens. "Where," he asked, +"are the German-Americans and the Italian-Americans? +No writer knows these foreign-born +citizens well enough to write about them. The +best American stories are about native Americans. +I admit that my stories are not about people peculiar +to New York—you can find counterparts +of 'Potash and Perlmutter' in Berlin, Paris, and +London. But mine are not among the best stories +of American character. The best story of American +character is 'Daisy Miller.'"</p> + +<p>Mr. Glass believes that the technique of the +short story has improved greatly during the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span> +score of years, but he is not so favorable in his +view of the modern novel, especially of the "cross-section +of life" type of work. He believes that +the war will produce a great revival of literary +excellence in Europe, just as the Franco-Prussian +War did; and he called attention to something +which has apparently been neglected by most +people who have discussed the subject—the tremendous +inspiration which Guy de Maupassant +found in the Franco-Prussian War. But he said, +in conclusion:</p> + +<p>"But any man who sits down to judge American +literature in the course of a few minutes' talk is +an ass for his pains. Literary snap judgments are +foolish things. Nothing that I have said to you +has any value at all."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>THE "MOVIES" BENEFIT LITERATURE</i></h2> + +<h4>REX BEACH</h4> + +<p>Even the most prejudiced opponent of the +moving pictures will admit that they are +becoming more intellectually respectable. Crude +farce and melodrama are being replaced by versions +of classic plays and novels; literature is +elevating the motion picture. And Mr. Rex +Beach believes that the motion picture is benefiting +literature.</p> + +<p>This author of widely read novels had been +talking to me about the departments of literature—the +novel, the short story, and the rest—and +among them he named the moving picture. I +asked him if he believed that moving pictures +were dangerous for novelists, leading them to fill +their books with action, with a view to the profits +of cinematographic reproduction. He said:</p> + +<p>"Well, authors are human beings, of course. +They like to make money and to have their work<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span> +reach as large an audience as possible. I suppose +that the great majority of them keep their eyes +on the screen, because they know how profitable +the moving picture is and because they want +their work seen by more people than would read +their novels."</p> + +<p>"Do you think that this harms their work?" I +asked.</p> + +<p>"It might if the novelists overdid it," he answered. +"It would harm their work if they became +nothing but scenario writers. But so far +the result has been good.</p> + +<p>"The tendency of the moving picture has been +to make authors visualize more clearly than ever +before their characters and scenes that they are +writing about. Their work has become more +realistic. I do not mean realistic in the sense in +which this word is used of some French writers; +I do not mean erotic or morbid. I mean actual, +convincing, clearly visualized.</p> + +<p>"Literature has elevated the moving picture, +keeping it out, to a great extent, of melodrama +and slap-stick comedy. And in return, the moving +picture has done a service to fiction, making +the authors give more attention to exact visualization."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span></p> + +<p>"Has American fiction been lacking in visualization?" +I asked.</p> + +<p>"No," said Mr. Beach. "American novelists +visualize more clearly to-day than they did four +or five years ago, before the moving picture had +become so important, but they always were +strong in visualization. This sort of realism is +America's chief contribution to fiction."</p> + +<p>"Then you believe that there is a distinctively +American literature?" I asked. "You do not +agree with the critic who said that American +literature was 'a condition of English literature'?"</p> + +<p>"I do not agree with him," Mr. Beach replied. +"American writers use the English language, so I +suppose that what they write belongs to English +literature. But there is a distinctively American +literature; Americans talk in their own manner, +think in their own manner, and handle business +propositions in their own manner, and naturally +they write in their own manner. American +literature is different from other kinds of literature +just as American business methods are different +from those of Europe.</p> + +<p>"Fiction written in America must necessarily +be tinged with American thought and American +action. I have no patience with people who say<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span> +that America has no literature. They say that +nothing we are writing to-day will live. Well, +what if that is true? It's true not only of literature, +but of everything else.</p> + +<p>"Our roads won't last forever; they're built in +a hurry to be used in a hurry. But they're better +roads to drive and motor over than those old +Roman roads of Europe. Our office-buildings +won't last as long as the Pyramids, but they're +better for business purposes.</p> + +<p>"Personally, I've never been enthusiastic over +things that have no virtues but age and ugliness. +I'd rather have a good, strong, serviceable piece +of Grand Rapids furniture than any ramshackle, +moth-eaten antique."</p> + +<p>"But don't you think," I asked, "that the permanence +of a book's appeal is a proof of its greatness?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see how we can tell anything definite +about the permanence of the appeal of books +written in our time. And I don't mean by literature +writings that necessarily endure through the +ages. I believe that literature is the expression +of the mind, the sentiment, the intellectual attitude +of the people who live at the time it is written. +I admit that our literature is ephemeral—like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span> +everything else about us—but I believe that it +is good."</p> + +<p>Mr. Rex Beach was not pacing his floor nervously; +he was crossing the room with the practical +intention of procuring a cigarette. Nevertheless, +his firm tread lent emphasis to his remarks.</p> + +<p>"There is a sort of literary snobbery," he said, +"noticeable among people who condemn contemporaneous +literature just because it is contemporaneous. +The strongest proof that there is +something good in the literature of the day is +that it reaches a great audience. There must be +something in it or people wouldn't read it.</p> + +<p>"The people are the final judges; it is to them +that authors must appeal. Take any big question +of public importance—after it has been discussed +by politicians and newspapers, it is the +people who at last decide it.</p> + +<p>"A man may have devoted his life to some +tremendous achievement, and have left it as a +monument to his fame. But it is to public opinion +that we must look for the verdict on the value +of his life's work.</p> + +<p>"Take Carnegie, for example; when he dies, +you bet people will have his number! His ideas +are a tremendous menace, and the people who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span> +believe as he does about peace will find themselves +generally execrated one of these days.</p> + +<p>"It may seem to you that this has nothing to +do with literature. But it has a good deal to do +with it. I know that many things have been said +about the effect on literature of the war. But I +want to say that the war will have, I hope, one +admirable effect on American writers—it will make +them stir up the American conscience to a sense +of the necessity for national defensive preparation. +The writers must educate the people in +world politics and show them the necessity for +defensive action. Americans have a sort of mental +inertia in regard to public questions, and the +writers must overcome this inertia.</p> + +<p>"The writers must stir up the politicians and +the people. There's been a whole lot of mush +written about peace. There always will be war. +We can't reform the world.</p> + +<p>"The pacifists say that it is useless to arm because +war cannot be prevented by armaments. +The obvious answer to that is that neither can +the failure to arm prevent war. And the verdict +after the war will be better if we are prepared for +it. The writers must call our attention to the +folly of leaving ourselves open to attack.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span></p> + +<p>"It's hard to reach the conscience of the American +people on any big issue. We are too independent, +too indifferent, too ready to slump back. +That's one of the penalties of democracy, I suppose; +the national sense of patriotism becomes +atrophied. It needs some whaling-big jolt to +wake it up. Every American writer can help +to do this.</p> + +<p>"The trouble is that we have too many men +with feminine minds, too many of these delicate +fellows with handkerchiefs up their sleeves. I +can't imagine any women with ideas more feminine +than those of Bryan—could any woman +evolve anything more feminine than his peace-at-any-price +idea?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Beach smiled. "I suppose I should not be +talking about world politics," he said. "There +are so many men who have specialized in that subject +and are therefore competent to talk about +it. I am only a specialist in writing."</p> + +<p>"Do you think," I asked, "that writers should +be specialists in writing? Some people believe +that the best fiction, for example, is produced by +men who do some other work for a living."</p> + +<p>"I certainly believe that a writer should devote +himself to writing," said Mr. Beach. "This is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span> +an age of specialization, and literature is no exception +to the general rule. Literature is like +everything else—you must specialize in it to be +successful."</p> + +<p>"This has not always been the case, has it?" +I asked. "Has literature been produced by people +who made writing only an avocation?"</p> + +<p>"Surely," said Mr. Beach. "It is only within +the last few years that writers have been able +to write for a living and make enough to keep the +fringe off their cuffs."</p> + +<p>I asked what had caused this change.</p> + +<p>"It has been caused chiefly by the magazines. +The modern magazines have done two important +things for fiction—they have brought it within +every one's reach, and they have increased the +prices paid to the authors, thus enabling them to +make a living by devoting themselves exclusively +to writing."</p> + +<p>"But it has been said," I ventured, "that a +writer, no matter how talented he may be, cannot +make a comfortable living out of writing fiction +unless he is most extraordinarily gifted with ideas, +and that, therefore, a writer takes a tremendous +risk if he throws himself upon literature for support."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span></p> + +<p>"How is a writer going to get ideas for stories," +asked Mr. Beach, in turn, "unless he uses ideas? +The more ideas a man uses, the more ideas will +come to him.</p> + +<p>"The imaginative quality in a man is like any +other quality; the more it is functioned the better +it is functioned. If you fail to use any organ of +your body, nature will in time let that organ go +out of commission.</p> + +<p>"It is just the same with imagination as with +any organ of the body. If a writer waits for ideas +to come to him and ceases to exercise his imagination, +his imagination will become atrophied. But +if he uses his imagination it will grow stronger and +ideas will come to him with increasing frequency."</p> + +<p>Mr. Beach is an enthusiastic advocate of the +moving picture. In the course of his discussion +of it he advanced an interesting theory as to the +next stage of its development.</p> + +<p>"The next use of the moving picture," he said, +"will be the editorial use. We have had the +moving picture used as a comic device, as a device +to spread news, and as an interpreter of fiction. +But as yet no one has endeavored to use +it as a means to mold public opinion in great +vital issues of the day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span></p> + +<p>"Of course, it has been used educationally, +and as part of various propaganda schemes. But +it will be used in connection with great political +problems. It will become the most powerful of +all influences for directing public opinion in politics +and in everything else.</p> + +<p>"It will play a mighty part in the thought of +the country and of the world.</p> + +<p>"I have seen men and women coming from a +great moving-picture show almost hysterical with +emotion. I have heard them shout and stamp +and whistle at what they saw flashed before them +on a white sheet as they never did in any theater.</p> + +<p>"What a strong argument 'The Birth of a +Nation' presents! Now, suppose that same art +and that same equipment were used to present +arguments about some political issue of our own +time, instead of one of our fathers' time. What +a force that would be!"</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>WHAT IS GENIUS?</i></h2> + +<h4>ROBERT W. CHAMBERS</h4> + +<p>Sentimental Tommy's great predecessor +in the relentless pursuit of the "right +word" was, teachers of literature tell us, the unsentimental +Gustave Flaubert. But these academic +gentlemen, who insist that the writer shall +spend hours, even days, if necessary, in perfecting +a single sentence, seldom produce any literature. +I asked Robert W. Chambers, who has written +more "best sellers" than any other living writer, +what he thought of Flaubert's method of work.</p> + +<p>He looked at me rather quizzically. "I think," +he said, with a smile, "that Flaubert was slow. +What else is there to think? Of course he was +a matchless workman. But if he spent half a day +in hunting for one word, he was slow, that's all. +He might have gone on writing and then have +come back later for that inevitable word."</p> + +<p>"But what do you think of Flaubert's method,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span> +as a method?" I asked. "Do you think that a +writer who works with such laborious care is +right?"</p> + +<p>"It's not a question of right or wrong," said +Mr. Chambers, "it's a question of the individual +writer's ability and tendency. If a man can produce +novels like those of Flaubert, by writing +slowly and laboriously, by all means let him write +that way. But it would not be fair to establish +that as the only legitimate method of writing.</p> + +<p>"Some authors always write slowly. With +some of them it's like pulling teeth for them to +get their ideas out on paper. It's the same way +in painting. You may see half a dozen men +drawing from the same model. One will make his +sketch premier coup; another will devote an hour +to his; another will work all day. They may be +artists of equal ability. It is the result that +counts, not the method or the time."</p> + +<p>"And what is it that makes a man an artist, +in pigments or in words?" I asked. "Do you +believe in the old saying that the poet—the +creative artist—is born and not made?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Mr. Chambers, "I do not think that +that is the truth. I think that with regard to +the writer it is true to this extent, that there must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span> +exist, in the first place, the inclination to write, +to express ideas in written words. Then the +writer must have something to express really +worthy of expression, and he must learn how to +express it. These three things make the writer—the +inclination to say something, the possession +of something worth saying, and the knowledge of +how to say it."</p> + +<p>"And where does genius come in?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"What is genius?" asked Mr. Chambers, in turn. +"I don't know. Perhaps genius is the combination +of these three qualities in the highest degree.</p> + +<p>"Of course," he added, with a laugh, "I know +that all this is contrary to the opinion of the public. +People like to believe that writers depend entirely +upon an inspiration. They like to think that +we are a hazy lot, sitting around and posing and +waiting for some sort of divine afflatus. They +think that writers sit around like a Quaker meeting, +waiting for the spirit to move them."</p> + +<p>"But have there not been writers," I asked, +"who seem to prove that there is some truth in +the inspiration theory? There is William de +Morgan, for example, beginning to write novels +in his old age. He spent most of his life in working +in ceramics, not with words."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span></p> + +<p>"On the contrary," said Mr. Chambers, "I +think that William de Morgan proves my theory. +He really spent all his life in learning to write—he +was in training for being a novelist all the while. +The novelist's training may be unconscious. He +must have—as William de Morgan surely always +has had—keen interest in the world. That is +the main thing for the writer to have—a vivid +interest in life. If we are to devote ourselves to +the production of pictures of humanity according +to our own temperaments, we must have this +vivid interest in life; we must have intense +curiosity. The men who have counted in literature +have had this intense, never-satiated curiosity +about life.</p> + +<p>"This is true for the romanticists as well as the +realists. The most imaginative and fantastic romances +must have their basis in real life.</p> + +<p>"I know of no better examples of this truth +than the gargoyles which one sees in Gothic architecture +in Europe. These extraordinary creatures +that thrust their heads from the sides of cathedrals, +misshapen and grotesque, are nevertheless +thoroughly logical. That is, no matter how fantastic +they may be, they have backbones and ribs +and tails, and these backbones and ribs and tails<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span> +are logical—that is, they could do what backbones +and ribs and tails are supposed to do.</p> + +<p>"In real life there are no creatures like the gargoyles, +but the important thing is that the gargoyles +really could exist. This is a good example +of the true method of construction. The base of +the construction must rest on real knowledge. +The medieval sculptors knew the formation of +existing animals; therefore they knew how to +make gargoyles."</p> + +<p>"How does this theory apply to poets?" I +asked.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," answered Mr. Chambers, "but +it seems to me to apply to all creative work. The +artist must know life before he can build even a +travesty on life."</p> + +<p>I called Mr. Chambers's attention to the work +of certain ultra-modern poets who deliberately +exclude life from their work. He was not inclined +to take them seriously.</p> + +<p>"There always have been aberrations," he said, +"and there always will be. They're bound to +exist. And there is bound to be, from time to +time, attitudinizing and straining after effect on +the part of prose writers as well as poets. And +it is all based on one thing—self-consciousness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span> +It is self-consciousness that spoils the work of +some modern writers."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Chambers to be more specific in +his allusions. "I cannot mention names," he said, +"but there are certain writers who are always +conscious of the style in which they are writing. +Sometimes they consciously write in the style of +some other men. They are thinking all the while +of their technique and equipment, and the result +is that their work loses its effect. A writer should +not be convinced all the while that he is a realist +or a romanticist; he should not subject himself +deliberately to some special school of writing, and +certainly he should not be conscious of his own +style. The less a writer thinks of his technique +the sooner he arrives at self-expression.</p> + +<p>"It's just like ordinary conversation. A man +is known by the way in which he talks—that is +his 'style.' But he is not all the while acutely +conscious of his manner of talking—unless he has +an impediment in his speech. So the writer +should be known by his untrammeled and unembarrassed +expression."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Chambers what he thought of the +idea that the popularity of magazines has vitiated +the public taste and lowered the standard of fiction.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span></p> + +<p>"I do not think that this is the case," he said. +"I do not see that the custom of serial publication +has harmed the novel. It is not a modern +innovation, you know. The novels of Dickens, +Thackeray, and George Eliot had serial publication. +But I do believe that the American public +reads less fiction than it did a generation ago, +and that its taste is not so good as it was."</p> + +<p>This was a surprising statement to come from +an author whom the public has received with such +enthusiasm, so I asked Mr. Chambers to explain.</p> + +<p>"In the days of our forefathers," he said, "this +was an Anglo-Saxon country. Then the average +intelligence of the nation was higher and the taste +in literature better. But there came the great +rush of immigration to the United States from +Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the +country was diluted.</p> + +<p>"You see signs of this lowered standard of +taste in fiction and on the stage. The demand is +for primitive and childish stuff, and the reason for +this is that the audience has only a sort of backstairs +intelligence. If we had progressed along the +lines in which we were headed before this wave +of immigration, we would not be satisfied with +the books and magazines that are given us to-day.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span></p> + +<p>"Of course the magazines are mechanically +better to-day than they were a generation ago. +Then we had not the photogravure and the half-tone +and the other processes that make our magazines +beautiful. But we had better taste and also +we had more leisure.</p> + +<p>"I remember when one of the most widely read +of our magazines was a popular science monthly, +which printed articles by great scientists on biological +and other topics. That was in the days +when Darwin was announcing his theory of evolution—the +first great jolt which orthodoxy received. +People would not take time to read a magazine +of that sort now. They are so occupied with +business and dancing and all sorts of occupations +that they have little leisure for reading."</p> + +<p>Mr. Chambers stopped talking suddenly and +laughed. "I'm not a good man for you to bring +these questions to," he said, "because I never +have had any special reverence for books or literature +as such. I reverence the books that I like, +not all books."</p> + +<p>"And have you such a thing as a favorite +author?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Mr. Chambers. "Dumas."</p> + +<p>During the 1870's Mr. Chambers was an art<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> +student in Paris, and he has many interesting +memories of the French and English writers and +painters who have made that period memorable. +He knew Paul Verlaine (whose poetry he greatly +admires), Charles Conder, and Aubrey Beardsley.</p> + +<p>"One day," he said, "I was out on a shooting-trip—I +think it was in Belgium—and I met a +young English poet, a charming fellow, whose +work I was later to know and like. It was the +poet who wrote at least one great poem—'Cynara'—it +was Ernest Dowson.</p> + +<p>"I knew many of the Beaux Arts crowd, because +my brother was a student of architecture at +the Beaux Arts. And they were a decent, clean +crowd—they were not 'decadents.' I do not take +much stock in the pose of 'decadence,' nor in the +artistic temperament. I never saw a real artist +with the artistic temperament. I always associated +that with weakness."</p> + +<p>Mr. Chambers, although he has intimate knowledge +of the Quartier Latin, has little use for +"Bohemia."</p> + +<p>"What is Bohemia?" he asked. "If it is a +place where a number of artists huddle together +for the sake of animal warmth, I have nothing to +say against it. But if it is a place where a number<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span> +of artists come to scorn the world, then it is a +dangerous thing. The artist should not separate +himself from the world.</p> + +<p>"These artistic and literary cults are wrong. +I do not believe in professional clubs and cliques. +If writers form a combination for business reasons, +that is all right, but a writer should not +associate exclusively with other writers; he should +do his work and then go out and see and talk +to people in other professions. We should sweep +the cobwebs from the profession of writing and +not try to fence it in from the public."</p> + +<p>To the somewhat trite question as to the effects +of the war on literature, Mr. Chambers made first +his usual modest answer, "I don't know." But +when I told him of the author who had dogmatically +stated that war always stops literature, and +that the Civil War had produced no writing worthy +of preservation, Mr. Chambers reconsidered.</p> + +<p>"Did he say that the Civil War had produced +no literature worthy of preservation?" he said. +"He must have forgotten that the Civil War +caused one man to make contributions to our +literature as valuable as anything we possess. +He must have forgotten Abraham Lincoln."</p> + +<p>Before I left, I mentioned to Mr. Chambers the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span> +theory that literature is better as a staff than as +a crutch, as an avocation than as a vocation. +This, like the "inevitable word" theory, is greatly +beloved by college professors. Mr. Chambers +said:</p> + +<p>"I disagree utterly with that theory. Do you +remember how Dr. Johnson wrote <i>Rasselas</i>? It +was in order to raise the money to pay for his +mother's funeral. I believe that the best work +is done under pressure. Of course the work must +be enjoyed; a man in choosing a profession should +select that sort of work which he prefers to do +in his leisure moments. Let him do for his lifework +the task which he would select for his leisure—and +let him not take himself too seriously!"</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY</i></h2> + +<h4>JAMES LANE ALLEN</h4> + +<p>That Edgar Allan Poe, in spite of his acknowledged +genius, has had practically no influence +on the development of the short story in America, +and that the current short story written in America +is inferior to that written during the years between +1870 and 1895, these are two remarkable statements +made to me by James Lane Allen, the distinguished +author of <i>The Choir Invisible</i>, <i>The +Mettle of the Pasture</i>, and many another memorable +novel.</p> + +<p>I found Mr. Allen in the pleasant workroom +of his New York residence. Himself a Southerner, +he is an enthusiastic admirer of the poet whose +name is inseparably linked with Southern letters. +But I was soon to find that he does not share the +opinion of those who consider Poe the originator +of the modern short story, nor does he rate Poe's +influence in fiction as very wide.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span></p> + +<p>"There is always much interest in short stories," +he said, "among authors, and in the great body +of readers. You say that Mr. Gouverneur Morris +believes that except Poe almost no writer before +our generation could write short stories.</p> + +<p>"I do not wish to be placed in a position of +publicly criticizing Mr. Gouverneur Morris's opinion +of the short story. But it may not seem antagonistic +to the opinion of any one to call attention +to the fact that, of all American short stories +yet written, the two most widely known in and +outside our country were written independently +of Poe. These are <i>The Man Without a Country</i> +and <i>Rip Van Winkle</i>.</p> + +<p>"As the technique of the American short story +is understood and applied to-day, neither of these +two stories can be regarded as a work of impeccable +art. But flaws have not kept them from fame. +By a common verdict the flawless short stories of +the day are fameless. Certainly, also, Hawthorne +was uninfluenced by Poe in writing short stories +that remain secure among brief American classics.</p> + +<p>"This, of course, is limiting the outlook to our +own literature. Beyond our literature, what of +Balzac? In the splendor of his achievements with +the novel, Balzac has perhaps been slighted as a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span> +master of the short story. Think, for instance, of +such a colossal fragment as <i>The Atheists Mass</i>.</p> + +<p>"And what of Boccaccio? For centuries before +Poe, the <i>Decameron</i> shone before the eyes of the +world as the golden treasury of model forms for +the short story.</p> + +<p>"And centuries before Boccaccio, flashing from +hand to hand all over the world, there was a +greater treasury still, the treasury of <i>The Arabian +Nights</i>.</p> + +<p>"It is no disparagement to Poe to say that his +genius did not originate the genius of the short +story. His true place, his logical place, in the +development of the short story is that of a man +with ancestors—naturally!</p> + +<p>"Since there is a breath of nativity blowing +through his stories, I think it is the breath of far +distant romance from somewhere. Certainly his +stories are as remote from our civilization and from +all things American as are Oriental tales."</p> + +<p>Mr. Allen showed he had given much thought +to Edgar Allan Poe's place among the American +fiction writers, so I thought that he might also +have some interesting things to say about Poe +as a poet. He had. He mentioned a quality of +Poe's verse which for some reason or other seems<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> +heretofore to have escaped the notice of students +of American poetry.</p> + +<p>"It may be worth while calling attention," he +said, "to the fact that nearly all of Poe's poems +belong to the night. Twelve o'clock noon never +strikes to his poetic genius. His best poems are +Poe's Nights, if not <i>Arabian Nights</i>.</p> + +<p>"There is a saying that the German novel long +ago died of the full moon. To Poe the dead +moon was the orb of life. The sun blotted him +out."</p> + +<p>Great as is his admiration for Poe's genius, Mr. +Allen does not believe he has greatly influenced +American prose. He said:</p> + +<p>"As to the influence of Poe's short stories in +our country, this seems to be a tradition mainly +fostered by professors of English in American +universities and by the historians of our literature. +The tradition does not prevail among American +writers. Actually there is no traceable stamp of +the influence of his prose writings on the work +of any American short-story writer known to me, +save one. That one is Ambrose Bierce."</p> + +<p>"Why is it," I asked, "that Poe's influence on +American fiction has been so slight?"</p> + +<p>"The main reason," Mr. Allen answered, "why<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span> +Poe's stories have remained outside American +imitation or emulation is perhaps because they +are projected outside American sympathies. They +lie to-day where they lay when they were written—beyond +the confines of what the German calls +the literature of the soil.</p> + +<p>"Poe and Ambrose Bierce are at least to be +linked in this: that they are the two greatest +and the two coldest of all American short-story +writers. Any living American fictionist will perhaps +bear testimony to the fact that he has never +met any other writer who has been influenced +by the stories of Poe."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Allen," I said, "you believe that the +American short story has not been influenced by +Poe; has the American short story, however, improved +since his time?"</p> + +<p>"The renascence of the American short story," +said Mr. Allen, thoughtfully, "its real efflorescence +as a natural literary art form, took place after the +close of the Civil War. The historians of our +literature have, perhaps, as is customary with +them, held to the strict continuity of tradition as +explaining this renascence. If so, they have +omitted one of the instinctive forces of human +nature, which invariably act in nations that have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span> +literatures and act ungovernably at the termination +of all wars.</p> + +<p>"After any war spontaneity in story-telling is +one of the ungovernable impulses of human nature. +This can be traced from modern literature back +to primitive man returning from his feuds. When +he had no literature, he carved his story on the +walls of his cave or on a bone to tell the glory of +the fight. Before he could even carve a bone he +hung up a row of the heads of the defeated. Perhaps +the original form of the war short story was +a good, thick volume of heads. Within our own +civilization the American Indian told his short +stories in this way—with American heads or tufts +of scalps—a sad way of telling them for our forefathers.</p> + +<p>"At the close of the American Civil War the +atmosphere, both North and South, was charged +with stories. The amazing fact is not that short +stories should have begun at that time, but that +they should have begun with such perfection. +This perfection expressed itself more richly during +the period, say, from 1870 to 1895—twenty-five +years—than it has ever done since.</p> + +<p>"The evidence is at hand that the best of the +American short stories written during that period<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span> +outweigh in value those that have been written +later—with the exception of those of one man. +And this evidence takes this form—that these +stories were collected into volumes, had an enormous +sale, had the highest critical appreciation, +have passed into the histories of literature written +since, have gone into the courses of English literature +now being taught in the universities, and are +still steadily being sold.</p> + +<p>"Is this true of the best short stories being +written now? Are any of the short stories written +since that period being bound into volumes and +extensively sold? Do the professors of English +literature recommend them to their classes? That +is the practical test.</p> + +<p>"The one exception is O. Henry. He alone +stands out in the later period as a world within +himself; as much apart from any one else as are +Hawthorne and Poe."</p> + +<p>Mr. Allen did not express an opinion as to the +probable effects on literature of the war. He said:</p> + +<p>"Now, the North and the South in the renascence +of the short story after the Civil War divide +honors about equally. But it is impossible +to speak of the Southern short story, or indeed of +Southern literature at all, without being brought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span> +to the brink of a subject which lies back of the +whole philosophy of Southern literature."</p> + +<p>Mr. Allen paused for a moment. Then he continued, +speaking with an intensity which reminded +me of his Southern birth and upbringing:</p> + +<p>"Suppose that at the end of the present European +war Germany should be victorious and France +defeated. And suppose that in France there +should not be left a single publishing-house, a +single literary periodical, a single literary editor, +a single critic, and scarcely even a single buyer +of books.</p> + +<p>"And suppose that the defeated French people +wanted to cry out their soul over their defeat and +against their conquerors. And suppose that in +order to do this every French novelist, short-story +writer, or poet, unable to keep silent, should +begin to write and begin to send his novel or his +short story or his poem over into Germany to +be read by a German editor, published by a German +publisher, and sold in a German bookshop +to a German reader. What kind of French literature +of the war do you think would appear in +Germany and be fostered there?</p> + +<p>"But this is exactly what happened after the +war between the North and the South.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span></p> + +<p>"The few voices that began to be sent northward +across the demolished battle-line could only +be the voices that would be listened to and welcomed +on the other side. That is the reason why +that first literature was so mild, so tempered, so +thin, so devitalized, that it seemed not to come +from an enraged people, but from the memories +of their ghosts.</p> + +<p>"As a result of finding war literature inexpressible +in such conditions, the young generation +of Southerners dropped the theme of war altogether +and explored other paths. So that perhaps +the most original and spontaneous fragments +of this new Southern post-bellum literature are +in the regions of the imagination, where no note +of war is heard.</p> + +<p>"It is not beyond the bounds of possibility +that if Joel Chandler Harris, a young Southerner, +had possessed full freedom to wreak his genius +on the war, the world might never have heard of +'Uncle Remus.' The world might never have +known that among the cotton-plantations there +dwelt a brother to Æsop and to La Fontaine."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>SOME HARMFUL INFLUENCES</i></h2> + +<h4>HARRY LEON WILSON</h4> + + +<p>From the Pacific Coast—from what is enthusiastically +termed "the Golden West"—from +that section of the United States which is +large and chivalrous and gladly suffers suffrage—comes +a voice, replying to my question: "What +is the matter with contemporary fiction?"</p> + +<p>And the voice says, "<i>Cherchez la femme!</i>"</p> + +<p>It is the voice of Mr. Harry Leon Wilson, author +of <i>Bunker Bean</i>, <i>Ruggles of Red Gap</i>, and many +another popular novel, and co-author with Mr. +Booth Tarkington of several successful plays. Mr. +Wilson believes that the dullness and insincerity +of our novels are due to the taste of most of their +readers—that is, to the taste of the women.</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Wilson what, in his opinion, was +the influence most harmful to the development of +literature in America.</p> + +<p>"I know little about literature," Mr. Wilson<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span> +replied, "but if you mean the novel, I should say +the intense satisfaction with it as it is, of the +maker, the seller, and the buyer. And to trace +this baneful satisfaction to its source, I should say +it lies in the lack of a cultivated taste in our women +readers of fiction.</p> + +<p>"Publishers are agreed, I believe, that women +buy the great bulk of their output. The current +novel is as deliberately planned to please the +woman buyer as is any other bit of trade goods. +The publisher knows what she wants to read, +the writer finds out from the publisher, and you +can see the result in the advertisements—and the +writer's royalty statements.</p> + +<p>"'We want,' says the publisher, 'a stunning +girl for the cover and a corking good love interest +to catch the women.' (Publishers do talk that +way when they have safely locked themselves in +their low dens.)</p> + +<p>"This love interest is always said to be wholesome +and sweet. I don't know. Certainly it is +sweet enough. In the trade novel it's as if you +took a segment of rich layer cake, the chocolate-and-jelly +kind, poured over it a half-pint of nice +thick molasses, and then, just to make sure, +sprinkled this abundantly with fine sugar.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span></p> + +<p>"Anyway, that's what the publisher has found—and +he has the best means of knowing—that +the American woman will buy year in and year +out. And you can't blame him for printing it. +A publisher with ideals of his own couldn't last +any longer than a grocer with ideals of his own, +or a clergyman.</p> + +<p>"And least of all can you blame the author for +writing this slush, because nine times out of ten +he doesn't know any better. How should he, +with no one to tell him?</p> + +<p>"And that," said Mr. Wilson, "is another evil +almost as great in its influence as the undeveloped +taste of our women readers. I mean our lack of +authoritative criticism. Now we really do get a +good novel once in a blue moon, but one who has +been made wary by the mass of trade novels +would never suspect it from reading our book +reviews. The good novel, it is true, is praised +heartily, but then so are all the bad novels—and +how is one to tell?</p> + +<p>"At least eighty-five per cent. of our book reviews +are mere amiable, perfunctory echoes of the +enthusiastic 'canned' review which the publisher +obligingly prints on the paper jacket of his best +seller. I sometimes suspect this task is allotted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span> +to a member of the staff who is known to be 'fond +of reading.'</p> + +<p>"Another evil influence is often alleged—the +pressure the business office puts on the reviewer +to be tender with novels that are lavishly advertised, +but I have never thought there was more +than a grain of truth in this.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps a publisher wouldn't continue to +patronize a sheet that habitually blurted out the +truth about his best sellers, but I really doubt +that this was ever put to an issue. I don't believe +the average book-reviewer knows any better +than the average novelist the difference between +a good and a bad novel.</p> + +<p>"It isn't so with the other arts. We have +critics for those. Music, sculpture, painting—we +know the best and get the best.</p> + +<p>"But, then, the novel is scarcely considered to +be an art form. Any one can—and does—write +a novel, if he can only find the time. It isn't supposed +to be a thing one must study, like plumbing +or architecture.</p> + +<p>"The novelist who wants to write a best seller +this year studies the best seller of last year, and +wisely, because that is what the publisher wants—something +like his last one that sold big. He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span> +is looking for it night and day and for nothing +else. He wants good carpenters who have followed +the design that women have liked. Fiction +is the one art you don't take seriously, and there +is no one to tell us we should; there are no critics +to inform the writers and the readers and make +the publishers timid.</p> + +<p>"True, we have in this country two or three, +possibly four, critics who can speak with authority, +men who know what the novel has been, +what it is with us, what it ought to be. One of +them is a friend of mine, and I reproached him +lately for not speaking out in meeting oftener.</p> + +<p>"His defense was pathetic. First, that ninety +out of a hundred of our novels are beneath criticism. +Second, as to the remaining ten that would +merit the rapier instead of the bludgeon—'criticism +is harder to sell than post-meridian virtue. +I have tried.'</p> + +<p>"And he has to eat as often as any publisher. +So there you are! People are not going to pay +him for finding fault with something they are +intensely satisfied with. It all comes back to the +women. When their taste is corrected we shall +have better novels. But not before then!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Wilson," I said, "do you believe that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span> +development of the magazine, with its high prices +and serialization, has been harmful or beneficial +to fiction?"</p> + +<p>"In the first place, the magazine hasn't developed," +he answered. "It has merely multiplied—the +cheap ones, I mean. And prices have +not increased except to about a dozen of our +national favorites. Where there is one writer who +can get fifteen hundred dollars for a short story, +or fifteen thousand dollars for the serial rights to +a novel, there are a thousand who can get not +more than a fifteenth of those prices.</p> + +<p>"On the whole, I think that the effect of the +cheap monthlies has been good. They are the +only ones that welcome the new writer. They +try him out. Then, if the public takes to him, +the better magazines find it out after a while and +form an alliance with him—that is, if his characters +are so sweet and wholesome that the magazine +can still be left on the center-table where +Cuthbert or Berryl might see it after school.</p> + +<p>"Nowadays I never expect to find a good short +story in any of the cheap magazines. Of course, +it does happen now and then, but not often enough +to make me impatient for their coming. And, of +course, the cheap monthlies do print, for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span> +most part, what are probably the worst short +stories that will ever be written in the world—the +very furthest from anything real.</p> + +<p>"These writers, too, like the novelists, study +one another instead of life. We will say one of +them writes a short story about a pure young +shopgirl of flower-like beauty who, spending an +evening of innocent recreation in a notorious +Tenderloin dive (one of those places that I, for +one, have never been able to find), is insulted by +the leader of Tammany Hall, who is always hanging +around there for evil purposes. At the last +moment she is saved from his loathsome advances +by a dashing young stranger in a cute-cut blue +serge suit, who carries her off in a taxicab and +marries her at 2 <span class="smcap">A.M.</span> And he, of course, proves +to be the great traction magnate who owns all +the city's surface-car lines.</p> + +<p>"The other writers, and some new ones that +never before thought of writing, read this story, +which is called 'All for Love,' and learn to do the +'type'—the pure young shopgirl, a bit slangy in +spite of her flower-like beauty; the abhorrent politician +(some day he will have a distressing mix-up +with his very own daughter in one of these evil +places—see if he doesn't!), the low-browed dive-keeper,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span> +and the honest young traction magnate. +They will learn with a little practice to do these +as the dupes of the 'Be-a-cartoonist!' schools +learn to draw 'An Irishman,' 'A German,' 'A +Jew,' and the dental façade of Colonel Roosevelt.</p> + +<p>"But we must remember that O. Henry came +to us from the cheap magazines, never did get +into the higher-priced ones, and was, by the way, +wretchedly paid for his stories. True, he received +good prices in his later days, but I doubt if they +raised the average for his output to two hundred +dollars a story. He neglected to come to the feast +in a wedding garment, so the more pretentious +magazines would have none of him.</p> + +<p>"For one O. Henry, then, we can forgive the +lesser monthlies for the bulk of their stuff that +can be read only by born otoliths. The more +magazines, the better our chance of finding the +new man, and only in the cheap ones can he +come to life."</p> + +<p>Many dogmatic statements have been made +concerning the great American novel. I have +been told that it would come from the South, that +it would come from the West, that it would never +be written. But Mr. Wilson has a new and +revolutionary theory.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span></p> + +<p>"Will there," I asked, "ever be the great +American novel? That is, will there ever be a +novel which reflects American life as adequately +as <i>Vanity Fair</i> reflects English life?"</p> + +<p>"There have already been dozens of them!" +was Mr. Wilson's emphatic reply. "To go no +farther back, Booth Tarkington wrote one the +other day, and so did Theodore Dreiser. (Dreiser's +story, 'The "Genius,"' of course couldn't have +appeared in any American magazine. Trust your +canny publisher not to let his magazine hand +know what his book hand is doing!)</p> + +<p>"But let us lay forever that dear old question +that has haunted our literary columns for so many +years. The answer, of course, is that there is no +novel that reflects English life any more adequately +than <i>The Turmoil</i>, or '<i>The Genius</i>,' or <i>The +Virginian</i>, or <i>Perch of the Devil</i>, or <i>Unleavened +Bread</i>, or <i>The Rise of Silas Lapham</i> reflects American +life.</p> + +<p>"Certainly <i>Vanity Fair</i> doesn't do this. It reflects +but a very narrow section of London life. +For the purposes of fictional portrayal England +is just as big and difficult—as impossible in one +novel—as the United States.</p> + +<p>"To know England through fiction one must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span> +go to all her artists, past and present, getting a +little from each. Hardy gives us an England that +Thackeray never suspected, and Galsworthy gives +us still another, not to go on to the England of +George Moore, Phillpotts, Quiller-Couch, Wells, +Bennett, Walpole, George, or Mackenzie. I hope +at the proper time that a tasteful little tablet will +be erected to my memory for having laid this +ancient and highly respectable apparition."</p> + +<p>In his interesting contribution to a symposium +of opinions as to what are the six best novels in +the English language, Mr. Wilson had some things +to say about Dickens which were not likely to +bring him a vote of thanks from the Dickens +Fellowship. I wished to have his opinion of +Dickens stated more definitely, and so, basing +my question on a statement he had made in the +symposium, I asked, "What qualities in the work +of Charles Dickens make him a bad model for +novelists to follow?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson replied: "Dickens has been a blight +to most writers who were susceptible to his vices. +He was a great humorist, but an inferior novelist, +and countless other inferior novelists have believed +that they could be great humorists by following +his childishly easy formula.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span></p> + +<p>"That is, those who were influenced by him +copy his faults. Witness our school of characterization +based on the Dickens method, a school +holding that 'character' is a mere trick of giving +your creation exaggerated mannerisms or physical +surfaces—as with Dickens it was rarely anything +else.</p> + +<p>"Dickens created vaudeville 'characters'—unsurpassed +for twenty-minute sketches, deadly beyond +that to the mentally mature. His stock in +trade was the grotesque make-up. In stage talk +he couldn't create a 'straight' part.</p> + +<p>"Strip his people of their make-ups, verbal, +hirsute, sartorial, surgical, pathological, what +not—and dummies remain. Meet them once and +you know them for the rest of the tale, the Micawbers, +Gamps, Pecksniffs, Nicklebys; each has his +stunt and does it over and over at each new +meeting, to the—for me, at least—maddening delay +of the melodrama. I like melodrama as well +as any one, badgered heroines, falsely accused +heroes, missing wills, trap-doors, disguised philanthropists, +foul murders, and even slow-dying +children who are not only moralists, but orators; +and I like to see the villain get his at last, and get +it good; but I can't read Dickens any more, because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span> +the tale must be held up every five minutes +for one of the funny 'characters' to do his stunt.</p> + +<p>"How many years will it take us—writers, I +mean—to realize that there are no characters in +Dickens in the sense that Dmitri in <i>The Brothers +Caramazov</i> is a character? How few of our current +novelists can distinguish between the soulless +caricaturing of Dickens and the genuine character-drawing +of a Turgenieff or a Dostoievski!</p> + +<p>"How few of us can see how the soul of Dmitri +is slowly unfolded to the reader with never a bit +of make-up! To this moment, I don't know if +he wore a beard or not; but I know the man. +Dickens would have given him funny whiskers, +astigmatism, a shortened leg, a purple nose, and +still to make sure we wouldn't mistake him a +catch phrase for his utterance.</p> + +<p>"Any novelist who has mastered the rudiments +of his craft, even though he hasn't an atom of +humor in his make-up, can write a Dickens novel, +and any publisher will print it for the Christmas +trade if it's fairly workman-like, and it will be +warmly praised in the reviews. That happens +every season.</p> + +<p>"And that's why Dickens is a bad model. If +one must have a model, why not Hall Caine, infinitely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span> +the superior of Dickens as a craftsman? +Of course, having no humor, he can't be read by +people who have, but he knows his trade, where +Dickens was a preposterous blunderer."</p> + +<p>Charles Belmont Davis once told me that a +novelist should have some other regular occupation +besides writing. I asked Mr. Wilson his +opinion on this subject.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Davis didn't originate this theory," he +said. "It's older than he is. Anyway, I don't +believe in it. I know of no business to-day that +would leave a man time to write novels, and a +novelist worth his salt won't have time for any +other business.</p> + +<p>"Of course, the ideal novelist would at one +time or another have been anything. The ideal +novelist has two passions, people and words, and +he should have had and should continue to have +as many points of contact with life as possible. +But if he has reached the point where he can +write to please me, I want him not to waste time +doing anything else.</p> + +<p>"Personally, I wish I might have been, for varying +intervals, a Russian Grand Duke, an Eighth +Avenue undertaker, the manager of a five-and-ten-cent +store, a head waiter, a burglar, a desk sergeant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span> +at the Thirtieth Street Police Station, and +a malefactor of great wealth, preferably one that +gets into the snapshots at Newport, reading from +left to right. But Heaven has denied me practically +all of these avenues to a knowledge of my +humankind, and I am too busy keeping up with +the current styles of all millinery fiction to take +to any of them at this late day.</p> + +<p>"Besides, I have a bad example to deter me, +having just read <i>The High Priestess</i>, by Robert +Grant, who has another business than novel writing—something +connected with the law, I believe, +in Boston. I have no means of knowing how +valuable a civic unit he may have been in his +home town, but I do feel that he has cheated the +world of a great deal by keeping to this other +business, whatever it may be.</p> + +<p>"From the author of <i>Unleavened Bread</i> we once +had a right to expect much. But <i>The High +Priestess</i> chiefly makes me regret that he didn't +have to write novels or starve; by its virtues of +construction, which are many and admirable, and +by its utter lack of power to communicate any +emotion whatsoever, which is conspicuous and +lamentable. He seems to have written his novel +with an adding-machine, and instinctively I blame<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span> +that 'other business' of his, in which he seems to +have forgotten—for he did know it once—that a +novelist may or may not think straight, but he +must feel.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he wasn't a real novelist, after all. +I suspect a real novelist would starve in any +other business."</p> + +<p>I told Mr. Wilson that a prominent American +humorist writer had classed Mark Twain with +Artemus Ward and Philander Doesticks, and said +that these men were not genuine humorists, but +"the Charlie Chaplins of their time."</p> + +<p>Mr. Wilson smiled. "Isn't this rather high +praise for Charlie Chaplin?" he asked. "How far +is this idolatry of the movie actor to go, anyway? +True, Mr. Chaplin is a skilled comedian, pre-eminent +in his curious new profession, but to my +thinking he lacks repose at those supreme moments +when he is battering the faces of his fellow-histrions +with the wet mop or the stuffed club, +or walking on their stomachs; but I may be +prejudiced. I know I shouldn't have ranked him +with Mark Twain, arch-humanist and satirist +and one of the few literary artists who have attained +the world stature—so that we must go back +and back to Cervantes to find his like."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>THE PASSING OF THE SNOB</i></h2> + +<h4>EDWARD S. MARTIN</h4> + +<p>If William Makepeace Thackeray were alive +to-day he would not write a <i>Book of Snobs</i>. +He might write a <i>Book of Reformers</i>.</p> + +<p>This is the opinion of that shrewd and kindly +satirist, Edward S. Martin. I found him not in +New York, the city whose lights and shadows are +reflected in much of his graceful prose and pungent +verse, but out among the Connecticut hills. +In the pleasant study of his quaint Colonial cottage +he talked about the thing he delights to observe—humanity.</p> + +<p>"Thackeray would not write a <i>Book of Snobs</i> +to-day," he said. "The snob is not now the appealing +subject that he was in the early days of +the reign of Queen Victoria. Thackeray could +not now find enough snobs and snobbery to write +about, either in England or in America. Snobs +are by way of having punctured tires these days.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span></p> + +<p>"Don't you think that the snobs were always +very much apart from our civilization and national +ideals? They were a symptom of an established +and conservative society. And this established +and conservative society Thackeray in his way +helped to break down.</p> + +<p>"To-day, in England and in the United States, +that kind of society is in a precarious condition. +If Thackeray were now writing, he would not +satirize snobs. It is more likely that he would +satirize the reformers. I think that all the snobs +have hit the sawdust trail."</p> + +<p>"How did this happen?" I asked. "What was +it that did away with the snobs?"</p> + +<p>"It was largely a natural process of change," +said Mr. Martin. "The snobs were put on the +defensive. You see, there is a harder push of +democracy now than there was in Thackeray's +time. The world of which the snob was so conspicuous +a part seems, especially since the war +began, to have passed away. Of course the literature +of that world is not dead, but for the moment +it seems obsolete.</p> + +<p>"To-day the whole attention of civilized mankind +is fixed on the great fundamental problems; +there is no time for snobbery. For one thing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span> +there is the problem of national self-preservation. +And there has recently been before the civilized +world, more strongly than ever before, the great +problem of the development of democracy.</p> + +<p>"I suppose that the war will check, to a certain +extent, the development of democracy. In +England the great task of the hour is to organize +all the powers of society for defense against attack, +against attack by a power organized for forty +years for that attack.</p> + +<p>"I suppose England will get organization out +of this war. And if we get into the war, we'll get +organization out of it."</p> + +<p>Mr. Martin is generally thought of as a critic +of social rather than political conditions. But he +is keenly interested in politics. Speaking of +American politics and the possibility of America's +entering the war, he said:</p> + +<p>"For the past fifteen years our greatest activity +in politics has been to rip things open. It seemed +to most people that the organization was getting +too strong and that it was controlled by too few +people. The fight has been against that condition.</p> + +<p>"But if we became involved in a serious war +trouble the energy of our people would be directed +to an attempt to secure increased efficiency. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span> +would become closely organized again. I don't +think we'd lose the benefit of what has been done +in the past years, but we would come to a turn +in the road.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it would bring us all together, if +we got into this war, and I suppose we'd get some +good out of it.</p> + +<p>"You see, the people who formerly directed our +Government haven't had much power for several +years. Now they are valuable people. And they +will come back into power again, but with greatly +modified conditions.</p> + +<p>"I don't think that a new set of people are +going to manage the affairs of the nation. I +think that the affairs of the nation will be managed +by the people who managed them before. +But these people will be much more under control +than they were before, and they will be subject +to new laws.</p> + +<p>"How much good government by commission +is going to do I don't know. We have not as +yet had good enough men to enter into this important +work, and the best of those who have +entered have not stayed in this employment. So +the development of experts in government has not +come along as well as people hoped it would."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span></p> + +<p>The genial philosopher smiled quizzically and +rose from his chair.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I'm getting too political," he said, +pacing slowly up and down the room. "Let's +get back to snobs and snobbery.</p> + +<p>"You asked me a few minutes ago why the +snob had become so inconspicuous a figure in our +modern society. Well, I know one reason for +this altered condition of affairs. Woman has +abolished the snob. Woman has changed man."</p> + +<p>"And what changed woman?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Many things; the development of machinery, +for instance," he replied. "Woman has not +changed so much as the conditions of life have +changed.</p> + +<p>"The development of machinery has caused +changes that impress me deeply. It has produced +immense alterations in the conditions of +life and in the relations between people.</p> + +<p>"War has been changed in a striking manner +by this development of machinery. Never in the +history of warfare was machinery so prominent +and important as to-day. In fact, I think I am +justified in speaking of this war as a machine-bore!</p> + +<p>"Machinery really has had a great deal to do<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span> +with changing the condition and activities of +woman, and has been a powerful influence in +bringing about the modern movement for women's +suffrage. Machinery has changed the employment +of women and forced them into kinds of +work which are not domestic.</p> + +<p>"The typewriter and the telephone have revolutionized +our methods of doing business. The +typewriter and the telephone have filled our offices +with women. They are doing work which twenty +years ago would have been considered most +unfeminine.</p> + +<p>"The war is strengthening this tendency of +women to take up work that is not domestic. I +have heard it said that women first got into the +undomestic kinds of business in France during +the Napoleonic wars. Napoleon wanted to have +all the men out in the line of battle, so he had girls +instructed in bookkeeping and other kinds of +office work.</p> + +<p>"The business activities of Frenchwomen date +from that time. And a similar result seems to +be coming out of this war. In France, in England, +in all the countries engaged in the war +the women are filling the positions left vacant +by the men."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span></p> + +<p>"Do you think," I asked, "that this is a good +thing for civilization, this increased activity of +women in business?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Mr. Martin, musingly. +"I don't know. But I do know this, that the +main employment of woman is to rear a family. +Office work, administrative work—these things +are of only secondary importance. The one +vital thing for women to do is to rear families. +They must do this if the human race is to continue."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Martin," I said, "you told me that +Thackeray, if he were alive, would satirize the +reformers. Just what sort of reformer is it that +has taken the place of the snob?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Martin did not at once answer. He smiled, +as if enjoying some entertaining memory. Then +he started to speak, and mentioned the name of +a prominent reformer. But his New England +caution checked him. He said:</p> + +<p>"No, I'd better not say anything about that. +I'd rather not. I'd rather say that the things +that the snobs admired and particularly embodied +have lost prestige during the last twenty years.</p> + +<p>"After 1898, after our great rise to prosperity, +the captains of industry and of finance were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span> +great men of the country. But I think these great +men are less stunning now than they were then. +And money is less stunning, too.</p> + +<p>"All the business of money-making has had a +great loss of prestige since 1900. People think +more of other things. And the people who are +thinking of other things than money-making have +more of a 'punch' than they had before. The +wise have more of a punch, and so have the +foolish."</p> + +<p>Again came that reminiscent smile. "Reformers +can be very trying," he said. "Very trying, +indeed. Did you ever read Brand Whitlock's +<i>Forty Years of It</i>? Brand Whitlock had his own +trials with the reformers. Whitlock is a sensible, +generous man, and his attitude toward reformers +is a good deal humorous and not at all violent. +That would be Thackeray's attitude toward them, +I think, if he were living to-day. He'd satirize +the reformers instead of the snobs."</p> + +<p>Mr. Martin is not inclined to condemn or to +accept absolutely any of the modern reform movements. +"All reform movements," he said, "run +until they get a check. Then they stop. But +what they have accomplished is not lost."</p> + +<p>The society women who undertake sociological<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span> +reform work find in Mr. Martin no unsympathetic +critic.</p> + +<p>"These wealthy women," he said, "take up +reform work as a recourse. Society life is not +very filling. They have a sense of emptiness. +So they go in for reform, to fill out their lives more +adequately.</p> + +<p>"But I don't know that I'd call that kind of +thing reform. I'd call it a large form of social +activity. These women are attending to a great +mass of people who need this attention. But the +bulk of this kind of work is too small for it to be +called reform.</p> + +<p>"In New York there are very many young +people who need care and leadership. The neglected +and incompetent must be looked after. +The old-fashioned family control has been considerably +loosened, and an attempt must be made +to guard those who are therefore less protected +than they would have been a generation ago. +Certainly these efforts to look after young people +who don't have enough care taken of them by +their families are directed in the right direction."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Martin what he thought of the +present condition of American literature, particularly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span> +the work presented to the public on the +pages of magazines.</p> + +<p>"Just now," he said, "the newspapers seem to +have almost everything. The great interest of the +last few years has been in the newspapers. They +have had a tremendous story to tell, they have +told it every day, and other things have seemed, +in comparison, flat and lifeless.</p> + +<p>"It has been a hard time for every sort of a +publication not absolutely up to the minute all +the time. The newspapers have had the field +almost to themselves.</p> + +<p>"And I think that the newspapers have greatly +improved. They have had an immense chance, +and it has been very stimulating."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>COMMERCIALIZING THE SEX INSTINCT</i></h2> + +<h4>ROBERT HERRICK</h4> + +<p>"Realism," said Robert Herrick, "is not +the celebration of sexuality." I had not recalled +to earth that merry divine whose lyric invitation +to go a-Maying still echoes in the heart +of every lover of poetry. The Robert Herrick +with whom I was talking is a poet and a discriminating +critic of poetry, but the world knows +him chiefly for his novels—<i>The Common Lot</i>, +<i>Together</i>, <i>Clark's Field</i>, and other intimate studies +of American life and character. He is a realist, +and not many years ago there were critics who +thought that his manner of dealing with sexual +themes was dangerously frank. Therefore, the +statement that he had just made seemed to me +particularly significant.</p> + +<p>"It seems to have become the fashion," he +said, "to apply the term Realist to every writer +who is obsessed with sex. I think I know the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span> +reason for this. Our Anglo-Saxon prudery kept +all mention of sex relations out of our fiction +for many years. Among comparatively modern +novelists the realists were the first to break the +shackles of this convention, and write frankly of +sex. And from this it has come, most unfortunately, +that realism and pornography are often +confused by novelists and critics as well as by +the public.</p> + +<p>"This confusion of ideas was apparent in some +of the criticisms of my novel <i>Together</i>. In an +early chapter of the book there was an incident +which was intended to show that the man and +woman who were the chief figures in the book +were spiritually incompatible, that their relations +as husband and wife would be wrong. This was, +in fact, the theme of the book, and this incident +in the first chapter was intended to foreshadow the +later events of their married life. Well, the +critics who disliked this chapter said that what +they objected to was its 'gross realism.'</p> + +<p>"Now, as a matter of fact, that part of the +book was not realistic at all. I was describing +something unusual, abnormal, while realism has +to do with the normal. The critic had, of course, +a perfect right to believe that the subject ought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span> +not to be treated at all, but 'gross realism' was +the most inappropriate description possible.</p> + +<p>"Undoubtedly there are many writers who believe +that they are realists because they write +about nothing but sex. Undoubtedly, too, there +are many writers who are conscious of the commercial +value of sex in literature. Of course a +writer ought to be conscious of the sex impulse +in life, but he ought not to display it constantly. +I wish our writers would pay less attention to the +direct manifestations of sex and more to its indirect +influence, to the ways in which it affects all +phases of activity."</p> + +<p>"Who are some of the writers who seem to you +to be especially ready to avail themselves of the +commercial value of sex?" I asked.</p> + +<p>Mr. Herrick smiled. "I think you know the +writers I mean without my mentioning their +names," he said. "They write for widely circulated +magazines, and make a great deal of money, +and their success is due almost entirely to their +industrious celebration of sexual affairs. You +know the sort of magazine for which they write—it +always has on the cover a highly colored +picture of a pretty woman, never anything else. +That, too, is an example, and a rather wearying<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span> +example, of the commercializing of the sex +appeal.</p> + +<p>"I think that Zola, although he was a great +artist, was often conscious of the business value +of the sex theme. He knew that that sort of +thing had a tremendous appeal, and, for me, +much of his best work is marred by his deliberate +introduction of sex, with the purpose—which, of +course, he realized—of making a sensation and +selling large editions of his books. This sort of +commercialism was not found in the great Russian +realists, the true realist—Dostoievski, for example. +But it is found in the work of some of the modern +Russian writers who are incorrectly termed +realists."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Herrick," I asked, "just what is a +realist?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Herrick's youthful face, which contrasts +strangely with his white hair, took on a thoughtful +expression.</p> + +<p>"The distinction between realism and romanticism," +he said, "is one of spirit rather than of +method. The realist has before him an aim +which is entirely different from that of the romanticist.</p> + +<p>"The realist writes a novel with one purpose in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span> +view. And that purpose is to render into written +words the normal aspect of things.</p> + +<p>"The aim of the romanticist is entirely different. +He is concerned only with things which +are exciting, astonishing—in a word, abnormal.</p> + +<p>"I do not like literary labels, and I think that +the names 'realist' and 'romanticist' have been +so much misused that they are now almost meaningless. +The significance of the term changes +from year to year; the realists of one generation +are the romanticists of the next.</p> + +<p>"Bulwer Lytton was considered a realist in his +day. But we think of him only as a sentimental +and melodramatic romanticist whose work has +no connection with real life.</p> + +<p>"Charles Dickens was considered a realist by +the critics of his own generation, and it is probable +that he considered himself a realist. But +his strongest instinct was toward the melodramatic. +He wrote chiefly about simple people, it is +true, and chiefly about his own land and time. +But the fact that a writer used his contemporaries +as subjects does not make him a realist. Dickens's +people were unusual; they were better or worse +than most people, and they had extraordinary +adventures; they did not lead the sort of life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> +which most people lead. Therefore, Dickens +cannot accurately be called a realist."</p> + +<p>"You called Dostoievski a realist," I said. +"What writers who use the English language seem +to you to deserve best the name of realist?"</p> + +<p>"I think," said Mr. Herrick, "that the most +thoroughgoing realist who ever wrote in England +was Anthony Trollope. <i>Barchester Towers</i> and +<i>Framley Parsonage</i> are masterpieces of realism; +they give a faithful and convincing picture of +the every-day life of a section of English society +with which their author was thoroughly familiar. +Trollope reflected life as he saw it—normal life. +He was a great realist.</p> + +<p>"In the United States there has been only one +writer who has as great a right to the name realist +as had Anthony Trollope. That man is William +Dean Howells. Mr. Howells has always been +interested in the normal aspect of things. He +has taken for his subject a sort of life which he +knows intimately; he has not sought for extraordinary +adventures for his theme, nor has he depicted +characters remote from our experience. +His novels are distinguished by such fidelity to +life that he has an indisputable claim to be called +a realist.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span></p> + +<p>"But, as I said, it is dangerous and unprofitable +to attempt to label literary artists. Thackeray +was a realist. Yet <i>Henry Esmond</i> is classed as a +romantic novel. In that book Thackeray used +the realistic method; he spent a long time in +studying the manners and customs of the time +about which he was writing; and all the details +of the sort of life which he describes are, I believe, +historically accurate. And yet <i>Henry Esmond</i> is +a romance from beginning to end; it is a romantic +novel written by a realist, and written according +to what is called the realistic method.</p> + +<p>"On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott was a +romanticist. No one will deny that. Yet in +many of his early books he dealt with what may +be called realistic material; he described with +close fidelity to detail a sort of life and a sort of +people with which he was well acquainted.</p> + +<p>"Whether a writer is a realist or a romanticist +is, after all, I think, partly a matter of accident +or culture. I happen to be a realist because I +was brought up on the great Russian realists +like Gogol and the great English realists from +George Elliot down to Thomas Hardy. If I +had been brought up on romantic writers I +suppose that I might now be writing an entirely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span> +different sort of novel from that with which I am +associated.</p> + +<p>"There is a sounder distinction," said Mr. Herrick, +"than that which people try to draw between +the realistic novel and the romantic novel. This +is the distinction between the novel of character +and the novel of events. Personally, I never +have been able to see how the development of +character can be separated from the plot of a +novel. A book in which the characters exhibit +exactly the same characteristics, moral and intellectual, +in the last chapter as in the first, +seems to me to be utterly worthless.</p> + +<p>"I will, however, make one exception—that is, +the novel of the Jules Verne type. In this sort +of book, and in romances of the Monte Cristo +kind, action is the only thing with which the +author and the reader are concerned, and any +attempt to develop character would clog the +wheels of the story.</p> + +<p>"But every other kind of novel depends on +character. Even in the best work of Dumas, +in <i>The Three Musketeers</i>, for example, the characters +of the principal figures develop as the story +progresses.</p> + +<p>"The highest interest of a novel depends upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span> +the development of its characters. If the characters +are static, then the book is feeble. I have +never been able to see how the plot and the development +of the characters can be separated.</p> + +<p>"Of course, the novel of character is full of +adventure. The adventures of Henry James's +characters are of absorbing interest, but they +are psychological adventures, internal adventures. +If some kind person wanted to give one of Henry +James's novels what is commonly called 'a bully +plot' the novel would fail."</p> + +<p>As to the probable effect on literature of the +war, Mr. Herrick has a theory different from that +of any other writer with whom I have discussed +the subject.</p> + +<p>"I think," he said, "that after the war we shall +return to fatuous romanticism and weak sentimentality +in literature. The tendency will be to +read novels in order to forget life, instead of reading +them to realize life. There will be a revival of +a deeper religious sense, perhaps, but there will +also be a revival of mere empty formalism in religion. +It has been so in the past after great +convulsions. Men need time to recover their +spiritual pride, their interest in ideas."</p> + +<p>But Mr. Herrick's own reaction to the war<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> +does not seem to justify his pessimistic prophecy. +Certainly the personal experience which he next +narrated to me does not indicate that Mr. Herrick +is growing sentimental and romantic.</p> + +<p>"When I was in Rome recently," he said, "I +was much impressed by D'Annunzio. I was interested +in him as a problem, as a picturesque +literary personality, as a decadent raffine type +regenerated by the war. I have not read any of +his books for many years.</p> + +<p>"I took some of D'Annunzio's books to read on +my voyage home. I read <i>Il Piacere</i>. I realized +its charm, I realized the highly æsthetic quality of +its author, a scholarly and exact æstheticism as +well as an emotional æstheticism. But, nevertheless, +I had to force myself to read the book. It +was simply a description of a young man's amorous +adventures. And I could not see any reason +for the existence of this carefully written +record of passional experiences.</p> + +<p>"It seemed to me that the war had swept this +sort of thing aside, or had swept aside my interest +in this sort of thing. The book seemed to me as +dull and trivial and as remote as a second-rate +eighteenth-century novel. And I wondered if we +would ever again return to the time when such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span> +record of a young man's emotional and sensual +experiences would be worth while.</p> + +<p>"I came to the conclusion that D'Annunzio +himself would not now write such a novel. I +think that it would seem to him to be too trivial +a report on life. I think that the war has so +forced the essential things of life upon the attention +of young men."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS</i></h2> + +<h4>ARTHUR GUITERMAN</h4> + + +<p>Arthur Guiterman has been called the +Owen Seaman of America. Of course he +isn't, any more than Owen Seaman is the Arthur +Guiterman of England. But the verse which +brings Arthur Guiterman his daily bread is turned +no less deftly than is that of <i>Punch's</i> famous +editor. Arthur Guiterman is not a humorist who +writes verse; he is a poet with an abundant gift +of humor.</p> + +<p>Now, the author of <i>The Antiseptic Baby and +the Prophylactic Pup</i> and <i>The Quest of the Riband</i>, +and of those unforgetable rhymed reviews, differs +from most other poets not only in possessing an +abnormally developed sense of humor, but also in +being able to make a comfortable living out of the +sale of his verse. But when he talked to me +recently he was by no means inclined to advise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span> +all able young poets to expect their poetry to +provide them with board and lodging.</p> + +<p>"Of course it is possible to make a living out +of verse," he said. "Walt Mason does, and so +does Berton Braley. And now most of my income +comes from my verse. Formerly I wrote +short stories, but I haven't written one for seven +or eight years.</p> + +<p>"Nevertheless, I think it is inadvisable for any +one to set out with the idea of depending on the +sale of verse as a means of livelihood. You see, +there are, after all, two forms, and only two forms, +of literary expression—the prose form and the +verse form. Some subjects suit the prose form, +others suit the verse form. Any one who makes +writing his profession has ideas severally adapted +to both of these forms. And every writer should +be able to express his idea in whichever of these +two forms suits it better.</p> + +<p>"Now, the verse form is older than the prose +form. And so I have come to look upon it as +the form peculiarly attractive to youth. Many +writers outgrew the tendency to use the verse +form, but some never outgrew it. Sir Walter +Scott was a verse-writer before he was a prose-writer, +and so was Shakespeare. So were many<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span> +modern writers—Robert W. Chambers, for example.</p> + +<p>"This theory is true especially in regard to lyric +verse. The lyric is nearly always the work of +a young man. As a man grows older he sings less +and preaches more. Certainly this was true of +Milton.</p> + +<p>"I never thought that I should write verse for +a living. But verse happens to be the medium +that I love. I ran across my first poem the other +day—it was about fireflies, and I was eight years +old when I wrote it. Certainly nearly all writers +write verse before they write prose; perhaps it is +atavistic. I don't know that Henry James began +with verse. But I would be willing to bet that +he did.</p> + +<p>"One trouble with a great many people who +make a living out of writing verse is that they +feel obliged always to be verse-writers, never to +write prose, even when the subject demands that +medium. Alfred Noyes gives us an example of +this unfortunate tendency in his <i>Drake</i>. I am +not disparaging Alfred Noyes's work; he has +written charming lyrics, but in <i>Drake</i>, and perhaps +in some of the <i>Tales from the Mermaid +Tavern</i>, I feel that he has written verse not because<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span> +the subject was especially suited to that +medium, but because he felt that he was a verse-writer +and therefore should not write prose."</p> + +<p>Mr. Guiterman is firmly convinced, however, +that a verse-writer ought to be able, in time, to +make a living out of his work.</p> + +<p>"If a man calls himself a writer," he said, "he +ought to be able to make a living out of writing. +And I think that the writer of verse has a greater +opportunity to-day than ever before. I don't +mean to say that the appreciation of poetry is +more intense than ever before, but it is more +general. More people are reading poetry now +than in bygone generations.</p> + +<p>"Compare with the traditions that we have +to-day those of the early nineteenth century, of +the time of Byron and Sir Walter Scott. Then +books of verse sold in large quantities, it is true, +but to a relatively small public, to one class of +readers. Now not only the poet, but also the verse-writer +has an enormous public. If a really great +poet should arise to-day he would find awaiting +him a larger public than that known by any poet +of the past. But it would be necessary for the +poet to be great for him to find this public. Byron +would be more generally appreciated to-day, if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span> +he were to live again, than he was in his own +generation. I mention Byron because I think it +probable that the next great poet will have something +of Byron's dynamic quality."</p> + +<p>"Who was the last great poet?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"How is one to decide whether or not a poet is +great?" asked Mr. Guiterman in turn. "My own +feeling is that the late William Vaughn Moody +was a great poet in the making. Perhaps he never +really fulfilled his early promise; perhaps he went +back to the themes of bygone ages too much in +finding themes for his poetry. It may be that the +next really great poet will sing an entirely different +strain; it may be that I will be one of those +who will say that his work is all bosh.</p> + +<p>"But at any rate, he won't be an imitation +Whitman or anything of that sort. He won't be +any special school, nor will he think that he is +founding a school. But it may be that his admirers +will found a school with him as its leader, +and they may force him to take himself seriously, +and thus ruin himself."</p> + +<p>Returning to the subject of the advisability of +a writer being able to express himself in verse as +well as in prose, Mr. Guiterman said:</p> + +<p>"Especially in our generation is it true that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span> +good verse requires extreme condensation. In +most work to-day brevity is desirable. The epigram +beats the epic. If Milton were living to-day +he would not write epics. I don't think it +improbable that we have men with Miltonic +minds, and they are not writing epics.</p> + +<p>"If a man finds that he cannot express his idea +in verse more forcefully than he can in prose, then +he ought to write prose. Very often a writer is +interested in some little incident which he would +not be justified in treating in prose, something too +slight to be the theme of a short story. This is +the sort of thing which he should put into verse. +There is Leigh Hunt's <i>Jennie Kissed Me</i>, for example. +Suppose he had made a short story +of it."</p> + +<p>Thinking of this poet's financial success, I +asked him just what course he would advise a +young poet to pursue who had no means of livelihood +except writing.</p> + +<p>"Well, the worst thing for him to do," said +Mr. Guiterman, "would be to devote all his attention +to writing an epic. He'd starve to death.</p> + +<p>"I suppose the best thing for him to do would +be to write on as many subjects as possible, including +those of intense interest to himself. What<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span> +interests him intensely is sure to interest others, +and the number of others whom it interests will +depend on how close he is by nature to the mind +of his place and time. He should get some sort +of regular work so that he need not depend at +first upon the sale of his writings. This work +need not necessarily be literary in character, although +it would be advisable for him to get employment +in a magazine or newspaper office, so +that he may get in touch with the conditions +governing the sale of manuscripts.</p> + +<p>"He should write on themes suggested by the +day's news. He should write topical verse; if +there is a political campaign on, he should write +verse bearing upon that; if a great catastrophe +occurs, he should write about that, but he must +not write on these subjects in a commonplace +manner.</p> + +<p>"He should send his verses to the daily papers, +for they are the publications most interested in +topical verse. But also he should attempt to +sell his work to the magazines, which pay better +prices than the newspapers. If it is in him to do +so, he should write humorous verse, for there is +always a good market for humorous verse that is +worth printing. He should look up the publishers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span> +of holiday cards, and submit to them Christmas, +Thanksgiving, and Easter verses, for which he +would receive, probably, about five dollars apiece. +He should write advertising verses, and he should, +perhaps, make an alliance with some artist with +whom he can work, each supplementing the work +of the other."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Guiterman," I said, "is this the advice +that you would give to John Keats if he were to +ask you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, certainly," said Mr. Guiterman. "But +you understand that our hypothetical poet must +all the time be doing his own work, writing the +sort of verse which he specially desires to write. +If his pot-boiling is honestly done, it will help +him with his other work.</p> + +<p>"He must study the needs and limitations of the +various publications. He must recognize the fact +that just because he has certain powers it does not +follow that everything he writes will be desired +by the editors. Marked ability and market +ability are different propositions.</p> + +<p>"If he finds that the magazines are not printing +sad sonnets, he must not write sad sonnets. He +must adapt himself to the demands of the day.</p> + +<p>"There is high precedent for this course. You<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span> +asked if I would give this advice to the young +Keats. Why not, when Shakespeare himself followed +the line of action of which I spoke? He +began as a lyric poet, a writer of sonnets. He +wrote plays because he saw that the demand was +for plays, and because he wanted to make a +living and more than a living. But because he +was Shakespeare his plays are what they are.</p> + +<p>"The poet must be influenced by the demand. +There is inspiration in the demand. Besides the +material reward, the poet who is influenced by +the demand has the encouraging, inspiring knowledge +that he is writing something that people +want to read."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Guiterman to give me a list of +negative commandments for the guidance of aspiring +poets. Here it is:</p> + +<p>"Don't think of yourself as a poet, and don't +dress the part.</p> + +<p>"Don't classify yourself as a member of any +special school or group.</p> + +<p>"Don't call your quarters a garret or a studio.</p> + +<p>"Don't frequent exclusively the company of +writers.</p> + +<p>"Don't think of any class of work that you feel +moved to do as either beneath you or above you.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span></p> + +<p>"Don't complain of lack of appreciation. (In +the long run no really good published work can +escape appreciation.)</p> + +<p>"Don't think you are entitled to any special +rights, privileges, and immunities as a literary +person, or have any more reason to consider your +possible lack of fame a grievance against the world +than has any shipping-clerk or traveling-salesman.</p> + +<p>"Don't speak of poetic license or believe that +there is any such thing.</p> + +<p>"Don't tolerate in your own work any flaws +in rhythm, rhyme, melody, or grammar.</p> + +<p>"Don't use 'e'er' for 'ever,' 'o'er' for 'over,' +'whenas' or 'what time' for 'when,' or any of the +'poetical' commonplaces of the past.</p> + +<p>"Don't say 'did go' for 'went,' even if you need +an extra syllable.</p> + +<p>"Don't omit articles or prepositions for the +sake of the rhythm.</p> + +<p>"Don't have your book published at your own +expense by any house that makes a practice of +publishing at the author's expense.</p> + +<p>"Don't write poems about unborn babies.</p> + +<p>"Don't—don't write hymns to the great god +Pan. He is dead; let him rest in peace!</p> + +<p>"Don't write what everybody else is writing."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION</i></h2> + +<h4>GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON</h4> + +<p>Why is the modern American novel inferior +to the modern English novel? Of course, +there are some patriotic critics who believe that +it is not inferior. But most readers of fiction +speak of H. G. Wells and Compton Mackenzie, +for example, with a respect and admiration which +they do not extend to living American novelists.</p> + +<p>Why is this? Is it because of snobbishness or +literary colonialism on the part of the American +public? George Barr McCutcheon does not think +so. The author of <i>Beverly of Graustark</i> and many +another popular romance believes that there +is in America a force definitely harmful to the +novel. And that force is the magazine.</p> + +<p>"The development of the magazine," he said +to me, "has affected fiction in two ways. It has +made it cheap and yet expensive, if you know +what I mean.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span></p> + +<p>"Novels written solely with the view to sensationalism +are more than likely to bring discredit, +not upon the magazine, but upon the writer. He +gets his price, however, and the public gets its +fiction.</p> + +<p>"In my humble opinion, a writer should develop +and complete his novel without a thought +of its value or suitability to serial purposes. He +should complete it to his own satisfaction—if that +is possible—before submitting it to either editor +or publisher. They should not be permitted to +see it until it is in its complete form."</p> + +<p>"But you yourself write serial stories, do you +not?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"I have never written a serial," answered Mr. +McCutcheon. "Some of my stories have been +published serially, but they were not written as +serials.</p> + +<p>"I am quite convinced in my own mind that +if we undertake to analyze the distinction between +the first-class English writers of to-day and many +of our Americans, we will find that their superiority +resolves itself quite simply into the fact that they +do not write their novels as serials. In other +words, they write a novel and not a series of +chapters, parts, and instalments."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span></p> + +<p>"Do you think that the American novel will +always be inferior to the English novel?" I asked. +"Is it not probable that the American novel will +so develop as to escape the effects of serialization?"</p> + +<p>"There is no reason," Mr. McCutcheon replied, +"why Americans should not produce novels equal +to those of the English, provided the same care is +exercised in the handling of their material, and +that they make haste as slowly as possible. Just +so long, however, as we are menaced by the perils +of the serial our general output will remain inferior +to that of England.</p> + +<p>"I do not mean to say that we have no writers +in this country who are the equals in every respect +of the best of the English novelists. We have +some great men and women here, sincere, earnest +workers who will not be spoiled."</p> + +<p>Mr. McCutcheon has no respect for the type +of novel, increasingly popular of late, in which the +author devotes page after page to glowing accounts +of immorality with the avowed intention +of teaching a high moral lesson. He has little +faith in the honesty of purpose of the authors of +works of this sort.</p> + +<p>"The so-called sex novel," he said, "is one of +our gravest fatalities. I may be wrong, but I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span> +am inclined to think that most novels of that +character are written, not from an æsthetic point +of view, but for the somewhat laudable purpose +of keeping the wolf from the door and at the +same time allowing the head of the family to ride +in an automobile of his own.</p> + +<p>"The typical serial writer is animated by the +desire, or perhaps it is an obligation, to make the +'suspended interest' paramount to all else. This +interest must not be allowed to flag between +instalments.</p> + +<p>"The keen desire for thrills must be gratified +at all costs. It is commanded by the editor—and +I do not say that the editor errs. His public +expects it in a serial. It must not be disappointed."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. McCutcheon if he believed that a +writer could produce sensational and poorly constructed +fiction in order to make a living and yet +keep his talent unimpaired; if a writer was justified +in writing trash in order to gain leisure for +serious work. He replied:</p> + +<p>"There are writers to-day who persist in turning +out what they vaingloriously describe as 'stuff +to meet the popular demand.' They invariably +or inevitably declare that some day they will 'be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span> +in a position to write the sort of stuff they want +to write.'</p> + +<p>"These writers say, in defense of their position, +that they are not even trying to do their best +work, that they are merely biding their time, and +that—some day! I very much doubt their sincerity, +or, at any rate, their capacity for self-analysis. +I believe that when an author sets himself +down to write a book (I refer to any author +of recognized ability), he puts into that book the +best that is in him at the time.</p> + +<p>"It is impossible for a good, conscientious writer +to work on a plane lower than his best. Only +hack writers can do such things.</p> + +<p>"There is not one of us who does not do his +best when he undertakes to write his book. We +only confess that we have not done our best when +a critic accuses us of pot-boiling, and so forth. +Then we rise in our pride and say, 'Oh, well, I +can do better work than this, and they know it.'</p> + +<p>"It is true that we may not be doing the thing +that we really want to do, but I am convinced +that we are unconsciously doing our best, just the +same. It all resolves itself into this statement—a +good workman cannot deliberately do a poor +piece of work.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span></p> + +<p>"I am free to confess that I have done my very +best in everything I have undertaken. It may fall +short of excellence as viewed from even my own +viewpoint, but it is the best I know how to do.</p> + +<p>"So you may take it from me that the writer +who declares that he is going to do something +really worth while, just as soon as he gets through +doing the thing that the public expects him to +do, is deceiving himself and no one else. An +author cannot stand still in his work. He either +progresses or retrogrades, and no man progresses +except by means of steady improvement. He +cannot say, 'I will write a poor book this year +and a great book next year.'"</p> + +<p>Mr. McCutcheon is so unashamedly a romanticist +that I expected to find him an enthusiastic +partisan of the first and greatest master of the +romantic novel in English. But, to my surprise, +he said:</p> + +<p>"I suppose the world has outgrown Sir Walter +Scott's novels. It is quite natural that it should. +The world is older and conditions have changed. +The fairest simile I can offer in explanation is +that as man himself grows older he loses, except +in a too frequently elastic memory, his interest in +the things that moved him when he was a boy."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span></p> + +<p>But while Mr. McCutcheon believes (in defiance +of the opinion of the publishers who continue +to bring out, year by year, their countless +new editions of the Waverley Novels in all the +languages of the civilized world) that the spell of +the Wizard of the North has waned, he nevertheless +believes that the romantic novel has lost +none of its ancient appeal.</p> + +<p>"I do not believe," he said, "that the vogue +of the romantic novel, or tale (which is a better +word for describing the sort of fiction covered by +this generic term), will ever die. The present +war undoubtedly will alter the trend of the modern +romantic fiction, but it will not in effect +destroy it."</p> + +<p>"How will it alter it?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Years most certainly will go by," he replied, +"before the novelist may even hope to contend +with the realities of this great and most unromantic +conflict. Kings and courtiers are very ordinary, +and, in some cases, ignoble creatures in these +days, and none of them appears to be romantic.</p> + +<p>"We find a good many villains among our erstwhile +heroes, and a good many heroes among our +principal villains. People will not care to read +war novels for a good many years to come, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span> +it is inevitable that future generations will read +even the lightest kind of fiction dealing with this +war, horrible though it is. Just so long as the +world exists there will be people who read nothing +else but the red-blood, stirring romantic stories.</p> + +<p>"There exists, of course, a class of readers who +will not be tempted by the romantic, who will not +even tolerate it, because they cannot understand it. +That class may increase, but so will its antithesis.</p> + +<p>"I know a man who has read the Bible through +five or six times, not because he is of a religious +turn of mind or even mildly devout, but because +there is a lot of good, sound, exciting romance in +it! A man who is without romance in his soul +has no right to beget children, for he cannot love +them as they ought to be loved. They represent +romance at its best. He is, therefore, purely selfish +in his possession of them."</p> + +<p>Mr. McCutcheon had spoken of the probable +effect of the war on the popular taste for romantic +fiction. I reminded him of William Dean +Howells's much-quoted statement, "War stops +literature."</p> + +<p>"War stops everything else," said Mr. McCutcheon, +"so why not literature? It stops everything, +I amend, except bloodshed, horror, and heartache.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span></p> + +<p>"And when the war itself is stopped, you will +find that literature will be revived with farming +and other innocent and productive industries. +I venture to say that some of the greatest literature +the world has ever known is being written +to-day. Out of the history of this titanic struggle +will come the most profound literary expressions +of all time, and from men who to-day are unknown +and unconsidered."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. McCutcheon if he did not believe +that the youthful energy of the United States +was likely to make its citizens impatient of romance, +that quality being generally considered +the exclusive property of nations ancient in civilization. +He did not think so.</p> + +<p>"America," he said, "is essentially a romantic +country, our great and profound commercialism +to the contrary notwithstanding. America was +born of adventure; its infancy was cradled in +romance; it has grown up in thrills. And while +to-day it may not reflect romance as we are prone +to consider it, there still rests in America a wonderful +treasure in the shape of undeveloped +possibilities.</p> + +<p>"We are, first of all, an eager, zestful, imaginative +people. We are creatures of romance. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> +do two things exceedingly well—we dream and +we perform.</p> + +<p>"Our dreams are of adventure, of risk, of +chance, of impossibilities, and of deeds that only +the bold may conceive. And we find on waking +from these dreams that we have performed the +deeds we dreamed of.</p> + +<p>"The Old World looks upon us as braggarts. +Perhaps we are, but we are kindly, genial, smiling +braggarts—and the braggart is, after all, our +truest romanticist.</p> + +<p>"I like to hear a grown man admit that he +still believes in fairies. That sort of man thinks +of the things that are beautiful, even though +they are invisible. And—if you stop to think +about it—the most beautiful things in the world +are invisible."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>BUSINESS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ART</i></h2> + +<h4>FRANK H. SPEARMAN</h4> + +<p>The late J. Pierpont Morgan writing sonnet +sequences, Rockefeller regarding oil as useful +only when mixed with pigment and spread upon +canvas by his own deft hand, Carnegie designing +libraries instead of paying for them—these are +some of the entertaining visions that occur to the +mind of Frank H. Spearman when he contemplates +in fancy a civilization in which business +no longer draws the master minds away from art.</p> + +<p>I asked the author of <i>Nan of Music Mountain</i> +if he thought that the trend of present-day +American life—its commercialism and materialism—affected +the character of our literature. He +replied:</p> + +<p>"Let us take commercialism first: By it you +mean the pursuit of business. Success in business +brings money, power, and that public esteem +we may loosely term fame—the admiration of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span> +our fellow-men and the sense of power among +them.</p> + +<p>"Commercialism, thus defined, affects the character +of our literature in a way that none of our +students of the subject seems to have apprehended. +We live in an atmosphere of material striving. +Our great rewards are material successes. The +extremely important consequence is that our +business life through its greater temptations—through +its being able to offer the rewards of +wealth and mastery and esteem—robs literature +and the kindred arts of our keenest minds. We +have, it is true, eminent doctors and lawyers, but +the complaint that commercialism has invaded +these professions only proves that they depend +directly on business prosperity for a substantial +portion of their own rewards.</p> + +<p>"I am not forgetting the crust and garret as +the traditional setting for the literary genius; +but, when this state of affairs existed, the genius +had no chance to become a business millionaire +within ten years—or, for that matter, within a +hundred. And while poverty provides an excellent +foundation for a career, it is not so good as a +superstructure—at least, not outside the ranks of the +heroic few who renounce riches for spiritual things.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span></p> + +<p>"More than once," continued Mr. Spearman, +"in meeting men among our masters of industry, +I have been struck by the thought that these are +the men who should be writing great books, +painting great pictures, and building great cathedrals; +their tastes, I have sometimes found, run +in these directions quite as strongly as the tastes +of lesser men who give themselves to literature, +painting, or architecture. But the present-day +market for cathedrals is somewhat straitened, and +a great ambition may nowadays easily neglect +the prospective rewards of literature for those of +steel-making.</p> + +<p>"Business success—not achieved in literature +and the arts—comes first with us; in consequence, +the ranks of those who follow these professions +are robbed of the intellect that should contribute +to them. This is the real way in which commercialism—our +pursuit of business—affects our +literature. It depletes, too, in the same way, +the quality of men in our public life.</p> + +<p>"Charles G. Dawes has called my attention +more than once to the falling off in caliber among +men from whose ranks our politicians and public +men are drawn. It is not that our present administration +is so conspicuously weak; go to any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span> +of the Presidential conventions this year and note +the falling off in quality among the politicians. +In one generation the change has been startling. +The sons of the men that loomed large in public +life twenty-five years ago to-day are masters of +business.</p> + +<p>"Business takes everything. We have had +really magnificent financiers, such as the elder +Morgan, who should be our Michael Angelo. I +have known railroad executives who might have +been distinguished novelists, and bankers who +would have been great artists were the American +people as obsessed with the painting of pictures +and the making of statues as those of Europe +once were.</p> + +<p>"In Michael Angelo's day public interest in +solving problems in manufacture and transportation +did not overshadow that in painting and +sculpture. Leonardo in our day would be building +railroads, digging canals, or inventing the aeroplane—and +doing better, perhaps, at these things +than any man living; he came perilously close to +doing all of them in his own day.</p> + +<p>"Before you can bring our steel-founders and +business men into literature you must make success +in literature and its kindred arts esteemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span> +as the greatest reward. As it is, I fear it is likely +to be chiefly those who through lack of capacity, +inclination, or robust health are unequal to the +heat and burden of great business that will be +left for the secondary callings, among which +we must at present rank literature. It would +be interesting, too, to consider to what extent +this movement of men toward business rewards +has been compensated for by the opportunities +afforded to women in the field thus deserted; we +certainly have many clever women cultivating it."</p> + +<p>"But what," I asked, "about materialism—not +specifically commercialism, but materialism? Do +you think that its evil effects are evident in contemporary +literature?"</p> + +<p>"Materialism—you mean the philosophy—has +quite a different effect on any literature—a poisonous, +a baneful effect, rather than a merely harmful +one," Mr. Spearman answered. "Can you +possibly have, at any time or anywhere, great +art without a great faith? Since the era of +Christianity, at any rate, it seems to me that +periods of faith, or at least periods enjoying the +reflexes and echoes of faith, have afforded the +really nourishing atmosphere for artistic development. +Spirituality provides that which the imagination<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span> +may seize upon for the substance of its +creative effort; without spirituality the imagination +shrivels, and the materialist, while losing +none of his characteristic confidence, shrinks continually +to punier artistic stature."</p> + +<p>Something in what Mr. Spearman had said +reminded me of Henry Holt's criticisms of the +modern magazines. So I asked Mr. Spearman +what effect the development of the American +magazine, with its high prices for serials and series +of stories, had had upon our fiction. He answered:</p> + +<p>"Good, I think. Our fiction must compete in +its rewards with those of business. One of the +rewards of either—even if you put it, in the first +case, the lowest—is the monetary reward, and the +more substantial that can be made, the more +chance fiction will have of holding up its head.</p> + +<p>"I have had occasion to watch pretty closely +the development of the inclinations and ambitions +of a number of average American boys—boys +that have had fairly intimate opportunities to +consider both literature and business. I have +been startled more than once to find that as each +of them came along and was asked what he wanted +to do, the substance of his answer has been, +'Something to make money.'<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span></p> + +<p>"If you question your own youthful acquaintances, +you will receive in most cases, I dare say, +similar answers. I am afraid if Giotto had been +a Wyoming shepherd-boy he would want to be +a steel-maker. Anything that tends to attract +the young to the pursuit of literature as a calling +strengthens our fiction, and the magazine should +have credit for an 'assist' in this direction. Don't +forget, of course, that the magazine itself derives +directly, by way of advertising, from business."</p> + +<p>"Do you think, then," I asked, "that our +writers are producing work as likely to endure as +that which is being produced in England?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Spearman smiled whimsically. "Your +question suggests to me," he replied, "rather than +any judgment in the case, the reflection that the +average English writer has possessed over our +average American writer the very great advantage +of an opportunity to become really educated; +to this extent their equipment is appreciably +stronger than ours. If you will read the ordinary +run of English fiction or play-writing and compare +it with similar work of ours, you cannot fail +to note the better finish in their work. And in +expressing a conviction that our writers are somewhat +handicapped as to this factor in their equipment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span> +I do not indict them for wasted opportunities; +I indict our own substantial failure in educational +methods. For a generation or more we +have experimented, and from the very first grade +in our grammar-schools up to the university +courses there have resulted confusion and ineptitude. +I instance specifically our experimentation +with electives and our widespread contempt +for the classics. To attempt to master any of +the arts and not to be intimately familiar with +what the Greeks and the Romans have left us +of their achievement—not to speak of those, to +us, uncharted seas of medieval achievement in +every direction following the twelfth century—is +to make the effort under a distinct disadvantage.</p> + +<p>"The average English writer has had much +more of this intimacy, or at least a chance at +much more of it, than the average American writer. +In the sphere of literary criticism I have heard +Mr. Brownell speak of the better quality of even +the anonymous English literary criticism so frequently +to be found in their journals when compared +with similar American work. There is +only one explanation for these things, and it lies +in the training. All of this not implying, in indirect +answer to your question, that the English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span> +writer is to bear away the prize in the competition +for literary permanence. American Samsons may, +despite everything, burst their bonds; but if they +win it will often be without what their teachers +should have supplied.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Brownell, in his definitive essay on +Cooper, in comparing the material at Balzac's +hand with that at Cooper's, remarks on the fact +that Cooper's background was essentially nature. +'Nothing, it is true, is more romantic than nature,' +adds Mr. Brownell, 'except nature plus man. +But the exception is prodigious.' Europe measures +behind her writers almost three thousand +years of man.</p> + +<p>"We have in this country no atmosphere of +Christian tradition such as that which pervades +Europe—English-speaking people parted with historic +Christianity before they came here. But, +willingly or unwillingly, the English and the Continental +writers are saturated with this magnificent +background of Christianity—they can't +escape it. And what I note as striking evidence +of the value to them of this brooding spirit of +twenty European centuries is the fact that their +very pagans choose Christian material to work +with. Goethe himself, fine old pagan that he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span> +was, turned to Christian quarries for his <i>Faust</i>. +The minor pagans turn in likewise, though naturally +with slighter results. But to all of them, +Christianity, paraphrasing Samson, might well say: +'If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not +read—your own riddle of longed-for recognition.'"</p> + +<p>"Why is it that the art of fiction is no longer +taken as seriously as it was, for example, in the +time of Sir Walter Scott?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know how seriously," countered Mr. +Spearman, "you mean your question to be taken. +It suggests that in the day of Walter Scott the +field of novel-writing was still so new that only +bolder spirits ventured into it. It was not a day +when the many could attempt the novel with any +assurances of success in marketing their wares. +In consequence we got then the work of only big +men and women. Pioneers—though not necessarily +respectable—are a hardy lot.</p> + +<p>"Still—touching on your other question about +the great American novel—if I wished to develop +great musicians I should start every one possible +at studying music, and I can't help thinking that +the more there are among us who attempt novels +the greater probability there will be for the production +of a masterpiece. A man's mind is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span> +mine. Neither he nor any one else knows what +is in it. Possessing the property in fee simple, +he has, of course, certain valuable proprietary +rights. But the only way I know of to find out +to a certainty just what lies within the property +is persistently to tunnel and drift, or, as Mr. +Brownell says, 'to get out what is in you.' And +I am in complete accord with him in the belief +that temperament is the best possible endowment +for a novelist—and temperament comes, if you are +a Christian, from God; if a pagan, from the gods."</p> + +<p>Mr. Spearman returned to his theme of the +effect of materialism on literature in the course of +a discussion of the French novel of the day as +compared to the novel of Zola and his imitators. +He said:</p> + +<p>"I think the important thing for Zola was that +his day coincided with a materialistic ascendency +in the thought of France. He lived at a time admirably +suited to a man of his type. Zola found +a France weak and contemptible in its government, +and in consequence a soil in which grossness +could profitably be cultivated.</p> + +<p>"He was by no means a great artist; he was +merely a writer writhing for recognition when he +turned to filth. He took it up to commercialize<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span> +it, to turn it into money and reputation. Men +such as he are continually, at different times and +in different countries, lifting their heads. But +unless they are sustained by what chances to be +a loose public attitude on questions of decency, +they are clubbed into silence.</p> + +<p>"And just why should the exploitation of filth +assume to monopolize the word 'realism'? To +define precisely what realism should include and +exclude would call for hard thinking. But it +doesn't take much thought to reach the conclusion +that mere annalists of grossness have no +proper monopoly of the term. Grossness is no +adequate foundation for a literary monument; +it is not even a satisfactory corner-stone. The few +writers one thinks of that constitute exceptions +would have left a better monument without it.</p> + +<p>"But if you wish to realize how fortunate Zola +was in coinciding with a period when the chief +effort of the ruling spirits of France was to war +on all forces that strove to conserve decency, try +to imagine what sort of a reception <i>L'Assommoir</i> +would be accorded to-day by the tears of +France stricken through calamity to its knees.</p> + +<p>"France is experiencing now realism of quite +another sort from that propagated by Zola—a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span> +realism that is wringing the souls and turning +the thoughts of a great and unhappy people back +once more to the eternal verities; in these grossness +never had a place.</p> + +<p>"And if you don't want to think in grossness, +don't read in it; if you don't want to act in grossness, +don't think in it. To exploit it is to exaggerate +its proper significance in the affairs of life.</p> + +<p>"Twenty-five years ago an American writer +set out as a Zola disciple to give us something +American along Zola's lines. He made a failure +of it—so complete that he was forced to complain +that later efforts in which he returned to +paths of decency were refused by editors and +publishers. He had spoiled his name as an +asset. If you are curious to note how far the +bars have been let down in his direction in twenty-five +years, contemplate what passes to-day among +us with quite a footing of magazine and book +popularity. It means simply that we are falling +into those conditions of public indifference in +which moral parasites may flourish. But if one +were forced to-day to choose in France between +the material taken up by Zola after his failure to +cultivate successfully cleaner fields, and that +chosen by Réné Bazin and the new and hopeful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> +French school of spirituality, there could be no +question that the latter would afford the better +opportunity. And there can be no real question +but that the exponents of grossness are likewise +opportunists, looking first of all for a market +for their names—as most men are doing. But +some men, by reason of inclination or voluntary +restraint, have restricted themselves in their +choice of literary materials."</p> + +<p>Mr. Spearman has recently given much of his +time to moving-picture work, with the result that +his name is nearly as familiar to the devotees of the +flickering screen as to habitual magazine readers. +I asked him how the development of the moving +picture is likely to affect literature. He replied:</p> + +<p>"What I can say on this point will perhaps be +more directly of interest to writers themselves; +the development of the moving picture broadens +their market. It has, if you will let me put it in +this way, increased the number of our theaters in +their capacity for absorbing material for the drama +a thousandfold. Inevitably a new industry developing +with such amazing rapidity is still in the +experimental stages, and those who know it best +say its possibilities are but just beginning. What +I note of interest to the literary worker is that men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span> +advanced and in authority in the production of +pictures have reached this conclusion: Behind +every good picture there must be a good story. +The slogan to-day is 'The story is the thing.' +And those close to the 'inside' of the industry +say to-day to the fictionist: 'Hold on to your +stories. Within a year or two they will command +from the movies much higher prices than to-day, +because the supply is fast becoming exhausted.'"</p> + +<p>It was in the course of his remarks about the +rewards of literature that Mr. Spearman told an +interesting story concerning Henry James and +George du Maurier. He said:</p> + +<p>"The recent death of Henry James is bringing +out many anecdotes concerning him. At the +time of George du Maurier's death it was recalled +that he had once given the material for <i>Trilby</i> to +Henry James with permission to use it; and the +story ran that, resolving to use it himself, Mr. +James returned the material to Du Maurier, who +wrote the novel from it.</p> + +<p>"But I don't think it has ever appeared that +the real reason why Henry James did not attempt +<i>Trilby</i> was that he possessed no musical +sense; Mr. James himself told me this, and without +a sense of music the material was useless to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span> +any one. I discussed the incident with him some +ten years ago and he added, in connection with +<i>Trilby</i> and Du Maurier, other interesting facts.</p> + +<p>"<i>Trilby</i> did not at first make a signal success +in England. Its first big hit was made in <i>Harper's +Magazine</i>. Not realizing the American possibilities, +Mr. du Maurier, when offered by Harper +& Brothers a choice between royalties and five +thousand dollars outright for the book rights, took +the lump sum as if it were descended straight from +heaven. When the news of the extraordinary +success of the book in this country reached him, +he realized his serious mistake, and in the family +circle there was keen depression over it. But +further surprises were in store for him. To their +eternal credit, the house of Harper & Brothers—honorable +then as now—in view of the unfortunate +situation in which their author had placed +himself, voluntarily canceled the first contract +and restored Du Maurier to a royalty basis. The +fear in the English home then was that this arrangement +would come too late to bring in anything. +Not only, however, did the book continue +to sell, but the play came on, and together the +rights afforded George du Maurier a competency +that banished further worry from the home."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>THE NOVEL MUST GO</i></h2> + +<h4>WILL N. HARBEN</h4> + +<p>The novel is doomed. If the automobile, the +aeroplane, and the moving picture continue +to develop during the next ten years as they have +developed during the last ten, people will cease +almost entirely to take interest in fiction.</p> + +<p>It was not Henry Ford who told me this. +Neither was it Mr. Wright, nor M. Pathé. The +man who made this ominous prophecy about the +novel is himself a successful novelist. He is Will +N. Harben, author of <i>Pole Baker</i>, <i>Ann Boyd</i>, <i>The +Desired Woman</i>, and many other widely read tales +of life in rural Georgia.</p> + +<p>Although he is so closely associated with the +Southern scenes about which he has written, Mr. +Harben spends most of his time in New York +nowadays. He justifies this course interestingly—but +before I tell his views on this subject I will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span> +repeat what he had to say about this possible +extinction of the novel.</p> + +<p>"You have read," he said, "of the tremendous +vogue of <i>Pickwick Papers</i> when it was first published. +No work of fiction since that time has +been received with such enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>"In London at that time you would find +statuettes of Pickwick, Mr. Winkle, and Sam +Weller in the shop windows. There were Pickwick +punch-ladles, Pickwick teaspoons, Pickwick +souvenirs of all sorts.</p> + +<p>"Now, when you walk down Broadway, do +you find any reminders of the popular novels of +the day? You do not, except of course in the +bookshops. But you do find things that remind +you of contemporary taste. In the windows of +stationers and druggists you find statuettes not +of characters in the fiction of the day, but of +Charlie Chaplin.</p> + +<p>"Of course the moving picture has not supplanted +the novel. But people all over the country +are becoming less and less interested in fiction. +The time which many people formerly gave to +the latest novel they now give to the latest film.</p> + +<p>"And the moving picture is by no means the +only thing which is weaning us away from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span> +novel. The automobile is a powerful influence +in this direction.</p> + +<p>"Take, for instance, the town from which I +come—Dalton, Georgia. There the people who +used to read novels spend their time which they +used to give to that entertainment riding around +in automobiles. Sometimes they go on long trips, +sometimes they go to visit their friends in near-by +towns. But automobiling is the way in which +they nowadays are accustomed to spend their +leisure.</p> + +<p>"Naturally, this has its effect on their attitude +toward novels. Years ago, when Dalton had a +population of about three thousand, it had two +well-patronized bookshops. Now it has a population +of about seven thousand and no bookshops +at all!</p> + +<p>"I suppose one of the reasons is that people +live their adventures by means of the automobile, +and therefore do not care so much about getting +adventures from the printed page. But the chief +reason is one of time—the fact is that people more +and more prefer automobiling to reading.</p> + +<p>"Now, if the aeroplane were to be perfected—as +we have every reason to believe it will be—so +that we could travel in it as we now do in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span> +automobile, what possible interest would we have +in reading dry novels? It seems likely that in a +hundred years we will be able to see clearly the +surface of Mars—do you think that people will +want to read novels when this wonderful new +world is before their eyes?</p> + +<p>"The authors themselves are beginning to +realize this. They are becoming more and more +nervous. They are not the placid creatures that +they were in Sir Walter Scott's day. They feel +that people are not as interested in them and +their works as they used to be. I doubt very +much if any publisher to-day would be interested, +for example, in an author who produced a novel +as long as <i>David Copperfield</i> and of the same +excellence."</p> + +<p>"But do you think," I asked, "that the fault +is entirely that of the public? Haven't the authors +changed, too?"</p> + +<p>"I think that the authors have changed," said +Mr. Harben, reflectively. "The authors do not +live as they used to live.</p> + +<p>"The authors no longer live with the people +about whom they write. Instead, they live with +other authors.</p> + +<p>"Nowadays, an author achieves success by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span> +writing, we will say, about the people of his home +in the Far West. Then he comes to New York. +And instead of living with the sort of people about +whom he writes, he lives with artists. That must +have its effect upon his work."</p> + +<p>"But is not that what you yourself did?" I +asked. "A New York apartment-house is certainly +the last place in the world in which to look +for the historian of <i>Pole Baker</i>!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Harben smiled. "But I don't live with +artists," he said. "I try to live with the kind +of people I write about. I resolved a long time +ago to try to avoid living with literary people +and to live with all sorts of human beings—with +people who didn't know or care whether or not +I was a writer.</p> + +<p>"So I have for my friends and acquaintances +sailors, merchants—people of all sorts of professions +and trade. And people of that sort—people +who make no pretensions to be artists—are +the best company for a writer, for they open +their hearts to him. A writer can learn how to +write about humanity by living with humanity, +instead of with other people who are trying to +write about humanity."</p> + +<p>"But at any rate you have left the part of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span> +country about which you write," I said. "And +wasn't that one of the things for which you condemned +our hypothetical writer of Western tales?"</p> + +<p>"Not necessarily," said Mr. Harben. "It sometimes +happens that an author can write about the +scenes he knows best only after he has gone away +from them. I know that this is true of myself.</p> + +<p>"It's in line with the old saws about 'distance +lends enchantment' and 'emotion remembered in +tranquillity,' you know. I believe that Du Maurier +was able to write his vivid descriptions of life in +the Latin Quarter of Paris because he went to +London to do it.</p> + +<p>"You see, I absorbed life in Georgia for many +years. And in New York I can remember it and +get a perspective on it and write about it."</p> + +<p>"Then," I said, "you would go to Georgia, I +suppose, if you wanted to write a story about life +in a New York apartment?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Harben thought for a moment. "No," he +said, slowly, "I don't think that I'd go to Georgia +to write about New York. I think that a novel +about New York must be written in New York—while +a novel about Dalton, Georgia, must be +written away from Dalton, Georgia."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span></p> + +<p>"How do you account for that?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Harben, "for one thing there +is something bracing about New York's atmosphere +that makes it easier to write when one is +here. Once I tried to write a novel in Dalton, +and I simply couldn't do it.</p> + +<p>"And the reason why a novel about New York +must be written in New York is because you can't +absorb New York as you might absorb Georgia, +so to speak, and then go away and express it. +New York is so thoroughly artificial that there is +nothing about it which a writer can absorb.</p> + +<p>"New York hasn't the puzzles and adventures +and surprises that Georgia has. Everybody +knows about apartment-houses and skyscrapers +and subways and elevators and dumb-waiters—there's +nothing new to say about them.</p> + +<p>"I sometimes think that the reason why the +modern novel about New York City is so uninteresting +is because everybody tries to write +about New York City. And their novels are all +of one pattern—necessarily, because life in New +York City is all of one pattern.</p> + +<p>"In bygone days this was not true of New +York. For instance, Mr. Howells's novels about +New York City were about a community in which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span> +people lived in real houses and had families and +friends. In those days life in New York had its +problems and surprises and adventures; it was not +lived mechanically and according to a set pattern.</p> + +<p>"What I have said about the advisability of an +author's leaving the scenes about which he is to +write is not universally true. There are writers +who do better work by staying in the place where +the scenes of their stories are laid. For instance, +Joel Chandler Harris did better work by staying +in the South than he would have done if he had +gone away."</p> + +<p>"But wasn't that because his negro folk-tales +were a sort of 'glorified reporting' rather than +creative work?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"No," said Mr. Harben; "they were creative +work. Joel Chandler Harris remembered just the +bare skeleton of the stories as the negro had told +them to him. And he developed them imaginatively. +That was creative work. And he did +most of his writing, and the best of his writing, +in the office of <i>The Constitution</i>."</p> + +<p>"In view of what you said about the difficulty +of absorbing New York life," I suggested, "I suppose +that, in your opinion, the great American +novel will not be written about New York."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span></p> + +<p>"What do you mean by the great American +novel?" asked Mr. Harben. "So far as I know +there is no great English novel or great Russian +novel."</p> + +<p>"I suppose that the term means a novel inevitably +associated with the national literature," +I said. "You cannot think of English literature +without thinking of <i>Vanity Fair</i>, for instance. +Certainly there is no American novel so conspicuously +a reflection of our national life as that +novel is of English life."</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Harben, "it is difficult to +think of American literature or of American life +without thinking of the novels of William Dean +Howells. But the great American novel, to use +that term, would be less likely to come into being +than the great English novel.</p> + +<p>"You see, the United States is not as compact +as England. London, it may be said, is England; +it has all the characteristics of England, and in +the season all England may be met there."</p> + +<p>Mr. Harben is not in sympathy with the theories +of some of our modern realists.</p> + +<p>"The trouble with the average realist," he +said, "is that he doesn't believe that the emotions +are real. As a matter of fact, the greatest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span> +source of material for the novelist is to be found +in the emotional and spiritual side of human +nature. If writers were more receptive to spiritual +and emotional impressions they would make +better novels. It is the soul of man that the +greatest novels are written about—there is Dostoievski's +<i>Crime and Punishment</i>, for example!"</p> + +<p>In spite of his criticisms of some of the methods +of the modern realists, Mr. Harben believes +strongly in the importance of one realistic dogma, +that which has to do with detailed description.</p> + +<p>"Why is it that <i>Pepys's Diary</i> is interesting to +us?" he asked. "It is because of its detail.</p> + +<p>"But if Pepys had been a Howells—if he had +been as careful in describing great things as he +was in describing small things—then his <i>Diary</i> +would be ten times more valuable to us than it +is. And so Howells's novels will be valuable to +people who read them a thousand years from now +to get an idea of how we live.</p> + +<p>"That is, Howells's novels will be valuable if +people read novels in the years that are to come! +Perhaps they will not be reading novels or anything +else. For all we know, thought-transference +may become as common a thing as telephony is +now. And if this comes to pass nobody will read!"</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGES</i></h2> + +<h4>JOHN ERSKINE</h4> + +<p>Brown of Harvard is no more. The play +of that name may still be running, but of +Harvard life it is now about as accurate a picture +as <i>Trelawney of the Wells</i> is of modern English +life. At Harvard, and at all the great American +universities, the dashing, picturesque young athlete +is no longer the prevailing type of the undergraduate +ideal.</p> + +<p>Of course, undergraduate athletics and undergraduate +athletes persist—it would be a tragedy +if they did not—but the type of youth that has +been rather effectively denominated the "rah-rah +boy" is increasingly difficult to find. His place +has been taken, not by the "grind," the plodding, +prematurely old student, caring only for his +books and his scholastic record, but by a normal +young man, aware that the campus is not the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span> +most important place in the world; aware, in +fact, that the university is not the universe.</p> + +<p>This young man knows about class politics, but +also about international politics; about baseball, +but also about contemporary literature. He is +much more a citizen than his predecessor of ten +years since, less provincial, less aristocratic. And +he not only enjoys literature, but actually desires +to create it.</p> + +<p>The chief enthusiasm at Harvard seems to be +the drama; indeed, the Brown of Harvard to-day +must be represented not as a crimson-sweatered +gladiator but as a cross between Strindberg and +George M. Cohan. At Columbia—I have Prof. +John Erskine's word for it—there has lately +developed a genuine interest in—what do you +suppose? Poetry!</p> + +<p>I interviewed the bulletin-board outside Hamilton +Hall before I interviewed Professor Erskine, +and it, too, surprised me. It was not the bulletin-board +of my not altogether remote undergraduate +days. It bore notices telling of a meeting of the +"Forum for Religious Discussion," of an anti-militaristic +mass-meeting, of a rehearsal of an +Elizabethan drama. It was a sign of the times.</p> + +<p>Professor Erskine said that undergraduate ideals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span> +had greatly changed during the last few years. +I asked him how this had come to pass.</p> + +<p>"Well," he replied, "I think that college life +reflects the ordinary life of the world more closely +than is usually believed. This is a day of general +cultural and spiritual awakening. The college +student is waking, just as everybody else is waking; +like everybody else, he is becoming more +interested in the great things of life. There is +no reason why the college walls should shut him +in from the hopes, ambitions, and problems of +the rest of humanity.</p> + +<p>"It isn't only the boys that have changed—the +parents have changed too. Time was when the +father and mother wanted their son to go to college +so that he could join a group of pleasant, nice-mannered +boys of good family. Now they have a +definite idea of the practical value of a college education, +they send their son to college intelligently.</p> + +<p>"Also, the whole theory of teaching has changed. +The purely Germanic system has been superseded +by something more humane. The old idea of +scholarship for its own sake is no longer insisted +upon. Instead, the subjects taught are treated +in their relation to life, the only way in which +they can be of real interest to the students.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span></p> + +<p>"You will look in vain in the modern university +for the old type of absent-minded, dry-as-dust +professor. He has been superseded by the professor +who is a man as well as a scholar. And +naturally he approaches his subject and his classes +in a different spirit from that of his predecessor.</p> + +<p>"We have a new sort of teacher of English. +He is not now (as was once often the case) a retired +clergyman, or a specialist recruited from +some unliterary field. He is, in many cases, a +creative artist, a dramatist, a novelist, or a poet.</p> + +<p>"When I was in college this was not generally +true. Then such a professor as George Edward +Woodberry or Brander Matthews was unique. +Now the college wants poets and creative writers."</p> + +<p>These are Professor Erskine's actual words. +I asked him to repeat his last statement and he +said, apparently with no sense of the amazement +which his words caused in me, "The college wants +the poets!" The stone which the builders rejected +is become the head of the corner.</p> + +<p>But, then, there are poets and poets. There +is, for example, Prof. Curtis Hidden Page. There +is also one John Erskine, author of <i>Actæon and +Other Poems</i>, and Adjunct Professor of English +at Columbia University. There is also Prof.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span> +Alfred Noyes. But there are also some thousand +or so poets in the United States who will be surprised +to know that the college wants them. +Academic appreciation of poets has generally +consisted of a cordial welcome given their collected +works two hundred years after their deaths.</p> + +<p>"English as a cultural finish," Professor Erskine +continued, "has gone by the board. English +is taught nowadays with as much seriousness as +philosophy or history. Art in all its forms is considered +as the history of the race, and treated +seriously by the student as well as by the professor. +To-day the students regard Shakespeare +and Tennyson as very important men. They +study them as in a course in philosophy they +would study Bergson. Literature, philosophy, +and history have been drawn together as one subject, +as they should be."</p> + +<p>"What," I asked, "are some of the extra-curricular +manifestations of literary interest among +the students?"</p> + +<p>"In the first place," he answered, "the extraordinary +amount of writing done by the students. +It is not at all unusual now for a Columbia student +to sell his work to the regular magazines. +The student who writes for the magazines and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span> +newspapers is no longer a novelty. Randolph +Bourne, who was recently graduated, contributed +a number of essays to the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> during +his junior and senior years.</p> + +<p>"Many of the students write for the newspapers. +The better sort of newspaper humorists +have had a strong influence on the undergraduate +mind; they have shown the way to writing things +that are funny but have an intellectual appeal. +This has resulted in the production of some +really excellent light verse. Also, Horace's stock +has gone up.</p> + +<p>"During the last two years some remarkable +plays have been handed into the Columbia University +Dramatic Association. Not only were they +serious, but also they were highly poetic.</p> + +<p>"And this," said Professor Erskine, "marks +what I hope is the distinguishing literary atmosphere +at Columbia. The trend of the plays +written by Columbia students is strongly poetic. +This is not true, perhaps, of the plays written by +students of other institutions. The writers of +plays want to write poetic plays, and—what is +perhaps even more surprising—the other students +do not consider poetic drama 'high-brow stuff.'</p> + +<p>"Philolexian, the oldest of the Columbia literary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span> +societies, has been producing Elizabethan +plays. These plays have been enthusiastically received, +and the enthusiasm does not seem to show +any signs of dying down. The students come to +the study of these plays with a feeling of familiarity, +for they have seen them acted."</p> + +<p>"Does this enthusiasm for literature show itself +in the college magazine?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"It shows itself," answered Professor Erskine, +"by the absence of a literary magazine. +The literary magazine has completely collapsed. +In small colleges, far away from the cities where +the regular magazines are published, the college +magazine is the only available outlet for the work +of the students who can write. But here in New +York the students know the condition of the +literary market, and the more skilful writers +among them do not care to give their writings to +an amateur publication when they can sell them +off the campus. So the <i>Columbia Monthly</i> got +only second-best material. The boys who really +could write would not sacrifice their work by +burying it in a college publication, so the <i>Columbia +Monthly</i> died.</p> + +<p>"The history of a literary club we have up +here, called Boar's Head, is significant. It was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> +started as a sort of revival of an older organization +called King's Crown. At first the program +consisted of an address at each meeting by some +prominent writer. For a while the meetings were +well attended, but gradually the interest died +down.</p> + +<p>"At length I found what the trouble was—the +boys wanted to do their own entertaining. Now +work by the members is read at every meeting; +there are no addresses by outsiders.</p> + +<p>"And here again the poetic trend of the undergraduate +mind at Columbia is displayed. The +Scribblers' Club, which consisted of short-story +writers, is dead—there were not enough short-story +writers to support it. And at the meetings +of Boar's Head there have been read, during the +past two years, only one or two short stories.</p> + +<p>"The boys bring plays and poems to the Boar's +Head meetings, but not short stories. Last year +most of the poems which were read were short +lyrics. Toward the end of last year and during +the present year longer poems have been read. +They are not poems in the Masefield manner; +they are modeled rather on Keats and Coleridge. +This fact has interested me because the magazines, +as a rule, have not been buying long poems.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span> +I was interested to see that William Stanley +Braithwaite, in his excellent <i>Anthology of Magazine +Verse and Year-Book of American Poetry</i>, +calls attention to the increasing popularity of the +longer poem.</p> + +<p>"Last year Boar's Head decided to bring out +a little book containing the best of the poems +that were read at its meetings. A number of +subscribers at twenty-five cents each were procured, +and <i>Quad Ripples</i> was published. It contained +only short poems. This year Boar's Head +has published <i>Odes and Episodes</i>, a collection of +light verse by one of its former members, Archie +Austin Coates. It soon will publish a collection +of poems read at its meetings, and all these poems +are long. Some of these poems are so good that +it is a real sacrifice for the boys to have them +printed in this book instead of in some magazine.</p> + +<p>"Of course, there were always 'literary men' +at Columbia, but they were considered unusual. +Now they no longer even form a class by themselves. +One of our best writers of light verse is +the captain of the baseball team.</p> + +<p>"Speaking of light verse and baseball," continued +Professor Erskine, "there is a certain connection +between the <i>Columbia Monthly</i> and football,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span> +besides the obvious parallel which lies in +the fact that both have ceased to exist. Some of +the boys express eagerness to revive the college +magazine, just as they express eagerness to revive +football. But it is, I believe, merely a matter of +pride with them. They are eager to have football +and to have a college magazine; they are +not so eager to contribute to the support of either +institution.</p> + +<p>"One proof of the literary renascence of Columbia +is that the essays written in the regular course +of the work in philosophy and in English are +better than ever before."</p> + +<p>"Do you believe," I asked, "that being in the +city has had a good effect on literary activity +among Columbia students?"</p> + +<p>He answered: "I do think so, decidedly. It +has produced an extreme individualism and has +given the boys enterprising minds. It is true +that it has its disadvantages, it has made the +student, so to speak, centrifugal, and has destroyed +collegiate co-operation of the old sort. +But it has produced an original, independent type +of student.</p> + +<p>"The older type of college student was interested +in football because he knew that people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span> +expected him to be interested in football. The +Columbia student of to-day is interested in poetry, +not because it is a Columbia tradition to be +interested in poetry, but because his tastes are +naturally literary."</p> + +<p>Several of the causes of this poetic renascence +at Columbia had been mentioned in the course of +our conversation, but Professor Erskine had ignored +one of the most important of them. So I +will mention it now. It is John Erskine.</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>CITY LIFE VERSUS LITERATURE</i></h2> + +<h4>JOHN BURROUGHS</h4> + + +<p>"Well," said John Burroughs, "she doesn't +seem to want us out here, so I guess we'll +have to go in." So we left the little summer-house +overlooking the Hudson and went into the bark-walled +study.</p> + +<p>Now, "she" was a fat and officious robin, and +her nest was in a corner of the summer-house just +over my head, as I sat with the poet-naturalist. +The nest was full of hungry and unprepossessing +young robins, and the mother robin seemed to +be annoyed in her visits to it by our talk. As +we walked to the study, leaving to the robin +family undisputed possession of the summer-house, +I heard John Burroughs say in tones of +mild indignation, half to himself and half to me:</p> + +<p>"I won't stand this another year! This is the +third year she's taken possession of that summer-house,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span> +and next May she simply must build her +nest somewhere else!"</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, I think that this impudent robin +will rear her 1917 brood in John Burroughs's +summer-house, if she wants to.</p> + +<p>When I walked up from the station to Riverby—John +Burroughs's twenty-acre home on the west +shore of the Hudson—I was surprised by the +agility of my seventy-nine-year-old companion. +He walked with the elastic step of a young man, +and his eyes and brain were as alert as in the +days when he showed Emerson and Whitman the +wild wonders of the hills.</p> + +<p>"Living in the city," he said, "is a discordant +thing, an unnatural thing. The city is a place +to which one goes to do business; it is a place +where men overreach one another in the fight for +money. But it is not a place in which one can +live.</p> + +<p>"Years ago, I think, it was possible to have a +home in the city. I used to think that a home +in Boston might possibly be imagined. But no +one can have a home in New York in all that +noise and haste.</p> + +<p>"Sometimes I am worried by the thought of +the effect that life in the city will have on coming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span> +generations. All this grind and rush and roar of +the Subway and the surface cars must have some +effect on the children of New-Yorkers. And that +effect cannot be good.</p> + +<p>"And what effect can it have on our literature? +It might produce, I suppose, in the writer's mind, +a sense of the necessity of haste, a passionate +desire to get his effect as quickly as possible. But +can it give him sharpness of intellect and keenness +of æsthetic perception! I'd like to think so, but I +can't. I don't see how literature can be produced +in the city. Literature must have repose, and there +is no repose in New York so far as I can see.</p> + +<p>"Of course I have no right to speak for other +writers. Some people can find repose in the city—I +can't. I hear that people write on the trains, +on the omnibus, and in the Subway—I don't see +how they do it!"</p> + +<p>"Have you noticed," I asked, as we left the +lane and walked down a grassy slope toward the +study, "that the city has not as yet set its mark +on our literature?"</p> + +<p>"I think," said John Burroughs, "that much of +our modern fiction shows what I may call a +metropolitan quality; it seems made up of showy +streets and electric light. But I don't know. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span> +don't read much fiction. I turn more to poetry +and to meditative essays. Some poets find beauty +in the city, and they must, I suppose, find repose +there. Richard Watson Gilder spent nearly all +his life in a city and reflected the life of the city +in his poems. And Edmund Clarence Stedman +was thoroughly a poet of the city. I don't think +that any of Emerson's poems smack of the city. +They smack of the country, and of Emerson's +study in the country, his study under the pines, +where, as he wrote:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">the sacred pine-tree adds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the leaves her myriads.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Of the younger poets, John James Piatt has +written beautifully of the city. He wrote a very +fine poem called 'The Morning Street,' which +appeared in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> some years ago. +In it he describes vividly the hush of early morning +in a great city, when the steps of a solitary +traveler echo from the walls of the sleeping houses. +I don't suppose Piatt is known to many readers +of this generation. He was a friend of Howells, +and was the co-author with Howells of <i>Poems by +Two Friends</i>, published in the early sixties. This +was Howells's first venture."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span></p> + +<p>We were in the bark-walled study now, seated +before the great stone fireplace, in which some +logs were blazing. On the stone shelf I saw, +among the photographs of Carlyle and Emerson +and other friends of my host, a portrait of Whitman.</p> + +<p>"Your friend, Walt Whitman," I said, "got +inspiration from the city."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said John Burroughs, "he got inspiration +from the city, but you wouldn't call his poems +city poetry. His way of writing wasn't metropolitan, +you know; you might say that he treated +the city by a country method. What he loved +about the city was its people—he loved the throngs +of men, he loved human associations.</p> + +<p>"But he was a born lover of cities, Whitman +was. He loved the city in all its phases, mainly +because he was such a lover of his kind, of the +'human critter,' as he calls him. Whitman spent +most of his life in the city, and was more at home +there than in the country. He came to Brooklyn +when he was a boy, and there he worked in a law-office, +and as a printer and on the <i>Eagle</i>.</p> + +<p>"For a while, I remember, he drove a 'bus up +and down Broadway when the driver, who was +a friend of his, was sick. That's where he got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span> +the stuff he put in <i>The Funeral of an Old Omnibus-driver</i>. +He put in it all the signs and catch-words +of the 'bus-drivers."</p> + +<p>John Burroughs pointed his steady old hand at +a big framed photograph on the wall. It is an +unusual portrait of Walt Whitman, showing him +seated, with his hands clasped, with a flaring shirt +collar, like a sailor's.</p> + +<p>"Whitman," John Burroughs continued, "seems +to be appealing more and more to young men. +But in the modern Whitmanesque young poets +I don't see much to suggest Whitman, except in +form. They do clever things, but not elemental +things, not things with a cosmic basis. Whitman, +with all his commonness and nearness, reached +out into the abysmal depths, as his imitators fail +to do. I think Robert Frost has been influenced +by Whitman. His <i>North of Boston</i> is very +good; it is genuine realism; it is a faithful, convincing +picture of New England farm life. When +I first saw the book I didn't think I'd read three +pages of it, but I read it all with keen interest. +It's absolutely true.</p> + +<p>"I used to see Whitman often when he and I +were working in Washington. And he came up +to see me here. When I was in Washington<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span> +Whitman used to like to come up to our house +for Sunday morning breakfast. Mrs. Burroughs +makes capital pancakes, and Walt was very fond +of them, but he was always late for breakfast. +The coffee would boil over, the griddle would +smoke, car after car would go jingling by, and +no Walt. But a car would stop at last, and Walt +would roll off it and saunter up to the door—cheery, +vigorous, serene, putting every one in +good humor. And how he ate! He radiated +health and hopefulness. This is what made his +work among the sick soldiers in Washington of +such inestimable value. Every one who came +into personal relations with him felt his rare, compelling +charm.</p> + +<p>"Very few young literary men of Whitman's +day accepted him. Stedman did, and the fact +is greatly to his credit. Howells and Aldrich +were repelled by his bigness. All the Boston poets +except Emerson hesitated. Emerson didn't hesitate—unlike +Lowell and Holmes, he kept open +house for big ideas."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Burroughs what, in his opinion, +had brought about the change in the world's +attitude toward Whitman.</p> + +<p>"Well," he replied, looking thoughtfully into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span> +the radiant depths of the open fire, "when Whitman +first appeared we were all subservient to the +conventional standards of English literature. We +understood and appreciated only the pretty and +exact. Whitman came in his working-man's garb, +in his shirt sleeves he sauntered into the parlor of +literature.</p> + +<p>"We resented it. But the young men nowadays +are more liberal. More and more Whitman +is forcing on them his open-air standards. +Science supplemented by the human heart gives +us a bigger and freer world than our forefathers +knew. And then the European acceptance of +Whitman had had its effect. We take our point +of view so largely from Europe. And a force like +Whitman's must be felt slowly; it's a cumulative +thing."</p> + +<p>"You believe," I said, "that Whitman is our +greatest poet?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," he replied, "Whitman is the greatest +poet America has produced. He is great with the +qualities that make Homer and the classic poets +great. Emerson is more precious, more intellectual. +Whitman and Emerson are our two greatest +poets."</p> + +<p>While we strolled over the pleasant turf and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span> +watched a wood-thrush resting in the cool of the +evening above her half-built nest among the +cherry blossoms, John Burroughs returned to the +subject that we had discussed on our way from +the station—the city's evil effect on literature.</p> + +<p>"Business life," he said, "is inimical to poetry. +To write poetry you must get into an atmosphere +utterly different from that of the city. And one +of the greatest of all enemies of literature is the +newspaper. The style of writing that the newspaper +has brought into existence is as far as +possible from art and literature. When you are +writing for a daily paper, you don't try to say a +thing in a poetic or artistic way, but in an efficient +way, in a business-like way. There is no appeal to +the imagination, no ideality. A newspaper is a +noisy thing that goes out into the street and shouts +its way into the attention of people.</p> + +<p>"If you are going to write poetry you must +say to certain phases of the newspapers, 'Get thee +behind me, Satan!' A poet can't be developing +his gossiping faculty and turning everything hot +off the griddle. The daily paper is a new institution, +and it has come to stay. But it has bad manners, +and it is the enemy of all meditation, all +privacy, all things that make for great art.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span></p> + +<p>"It's the same way with nature and writing +about nature. From nature we get not literature, +but the raw material for literature. It is very +important for us to remember that the bee does +not get honey from the flowers; it makes honey +from what it gets from the flowers. What it gets +from the flowers is nothing but sweet water. The +bee gets its sweet water, retires, thinks it over, and +by a private process makes it into honey.</p> + +<p>"So many nature-writers fail to profit by the +example of the bee. They go into the woods and +come out again and write about their experience—but +they don't give us honey. They don't retire +and subject what they find in the woods to +a private process. They don't give us honey; +they give us just a little sweet water, pretty +thoroughly diluted.</p> + +<p>"In my own work—if I may mention it in all +humbleness—I have tried for years not to give +the world just a bare record, but to flavor it, +so to speak, with my own personality, as the bee +turns the sweet water that it gets into honey by +adding its own formic acid.</p> + +<p>"If I lived in the city I couldn't do any writing, +unless I succeeded in obliterating the city from +my consciousness. But I shouldn't try to force<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span> +my standards on every one. Other men live in +the cities and write—Carlyle did most of his work +in London. But he lived a secluded life even in +the city, and he had to have his yearly pilgrimage +to Scotland."</p> + +<p>It is some years since John Burroughs has +written poetry, although all his prose is clearly +the work of a poet. And it is safe to say that +better known than any of his intimate prose +studies of the out-of-door world—better known +even than <i>Wake Robin</i> and that immortal <i>A Hunt +for the Nightingale</i> and <i>In Fresh Fields</i>—is one of +his poems, <i>Waiting</i>, the poem that begins:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Serene, I fold my hands and wait,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For lo! my own shall come to me.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"I wrote <i>Waiting</i>," he said, "in 1862, when +I was reading medicine in the office of a country +physician. It was a dingy afternoon, and I was +feeling pretty blue. But the thought came to +me—I suppose I got it from Goethe or some of the +Orientals, probably by way of Emerson—that +what belonged to me would come to me in time, +if I waited—and if I also hustled. So I waited +and I hustled, and my little poem turned out to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span> +be a prophecy. My own has come to me, as I +never expected it to come. The best friends I +have were seeking me all the while. There's +Henry Ford; he had read all my books, and he +came to me—that great-hearted man, the friend +of all the birds, and my friend.</p> + +<p>"The poem first appeared in the <i>Knickerbocker +Magazine</i>. That magazine was edited by a Cockney +named Kinneha Cornwallis. It ran long +enough to print one of Cornwallis's novels, and +then it died. I remember that the <i>Knickerbocker +Magazine</i> never paid me for <i>Waiting</i>, and the +poem didn't attract any attention until Whittier +printed it in his <i>Songs of Three Centuries</i>.</p> + +<p>"It has been changed and tampered with and +had all sorts of things done to it. It was found +among the manuscripts of a poet down South +after his death, and his literary executor was +going to print it in his book. He wrote to me +and asked if I could show a date for it earlier +than 1882. I said, 'Yes, 1862!' and that settled +that matter.</p> + +<p>"There was a man in Boston that I wanted +to kick! He wrote to me and asked if he could +print <i>Waiting</i> on a card and circulate it among +his friends. I told him he could, and sent him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span> +an autographed copy to make sure he'd get it +straight. He sent me a package of the printed +cards, and I found that he had added a stanza +to it—a religious stanza, all about Heaven's +gate! He had left out the second stanza, and +added this religious stanza. He was worried +because God had been left out of my poem—poor +God, ignored by a little atom like me!</p> + +<p>"When people ask me where I got the idea in +it, I generally say that my parents were old-school +Baptists and believed in foreordination, and +that's the way that foreordination cropped out +in me—it's a sort of transcendental version of +foreordination. I think the poem is true—like +attracts like; it's the way in which we are constituted, +rather than any conscious factor, that +insures success. It's that that makes our fortunes, +it's that that is the 'tide in the affairs of +men' that Shakespeare meant."</p> + +<p>A few rods from John Burroughs's riverside +house a brown thrush is building her nest in a +cherry-tree. She is a bird of individual ideas, +and is thoroughly convinced that paper, not +twigs and leaves, forms the proper basis for her +work. It is pleasant to think of John Burroughs +seated in his study communing with the memories<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span> +of Whitman and Emerson, and his other +great dead friends. But it is pleasanter to think +of him, as I saw him, anxious and intent, his +great white beard mingled with the cherry blossoms, +as he strolled over to fix the paper base +of the thrush's nest so that the wind could not +destroy it.</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>"EVASIVE IDEALISM" IN LITERATURE</i></h2> + +<h4>ELLEN GLASGOW</h4> + +<p>What is the matter with American literature? +There are many answers that +might be made to this often-asked question. +"Nothing" might be one answer. "Commercialism" +might be another. But the answer +given by Ellen Glasgow, whose latest successful +novel of American manners and morals is <i>Life +and Gabriella</i>, is "evasive idealism."</p> + +<p>I found the young woman who has found in our +Southern States themes for sympathetic realism +rather than picturesque romance temporarily resident, +inappropriately enough, in a hotel not far +from Broadway and Forty-second Street. And +I found her to be a woman of many ideas +and strong convictions. One strongly felt and +forcibly expressed conviction was that the "evasive +idealism" which is evident in so much of our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span> +popular fiction is in reality the chief blemish on +the American character, manifesting its baleful +influence in our political, social, and economic life. +Miss Glasgow first used the term "evasive idealism" +in an effort to explain why contemporary +English novels are better than contemporary +American novels.</p> + +<p>"Certainly," she said, "the novels written by +John Galsworthy and the other English novelists +of the new generation are better than anything +that we are producing in the United States at +the present time. And I think that the reason +for this is that in America we demand from our +writers, as we demand from our politicians, and +in general from those who theoretically are our +men of light and leading, an evasive idealism instead +of a straightforward facing of realities. In +England the demand is for a direct and sincere +interpretation of life, and that is what the novelists +of England, especially the younger novelists, are +making. But what the American public seems +to desire is the cheapest sort of sham optimism. +And apparently our writers—a great many of +them—are ready and eager to meet this demand.</p> + +<p>"You know the sort of book which takes best +in this country. It is the sort of book in which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span> +there is not from beginning to end a single attempt +to portray a genuine human being. Instead +there are a number of picturesque and attractive +lay figures, and one of them is made to develop +a whimsical, sentimental, and maudlinly optimistic +philosophy of life.</p> + +<p>"That is what the people want—a sugary +philosophy, utterly without any basis in logic or +human experience. They want the cheapest +sort of false optimism, and they want it to be +uttered by a picturesque, whimsical character, +in humorous dialect. Books made according to +this receipt sell by the hundreds of thousands.</p> + +<p>"I don't know which is the more tragic, the +fact that a desire for this sort of literary pabulum +exists, or the fact that there are so many writers +willing to satisfy that desire. But I do know +that the widespread enthusiasm for this sort of +writing is the reason for the inferiority of our +novels to those of England. And, furthermore, +I think that this evasive idealism, this preference +for a pretty sham instead of the truth, is evident +not only in literature, but in every phase of +American life.</p> + +<p>"Look at our politics! We tolerate corruption; +graft goes on undisturbed, except for some sporadic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span> +attacks of conscience on the part of various +communities. The ugliness of sin is there, but +we prefer not to look at it. Instead of facing the +evil and attacking it manfully we go after any +sort of a false god that will detract our attention +from our shame. Just as in literature we want +the books which deal not with life as it is, but +with life as it might be imagined to be lived, so +in politics we want to face not hard and unpleasant +facts, but agreeable illusions.</p> + +<p>"Nevertheless," said Miss Glasgow, "I think +that in literature there are signs of a movement +away from this evasive idealism. It is much more +evident in England than in America, but I think +that in the course of time it will reach us, too. +We shall cease to be 'slaves of words,' as Sophocles +said, and learn that the novelist's duty is to +understand and interpret life. And when our +novelists and our readers of novels appreciate the +advisability of this attitude, then will the social +and political life of the United States be more +wholesome than it has been for many a year. +The new movement in the novel is away from +sentimental optimism and toward an optimism +that is genuine and robust."</p> + +<p>"Then a novel may be at once optimistic and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span> +realistic?" I said. "That is not in accord with +the generally received ideas of realism."</p> + +<p>"It is true of the work of the great realists," +answered Miss Glasgow. "True realism is optimistic, +without being sentimental."</p> + +<p>"What realists have been optimistic?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Miss Glasgow, "Henry Fielding, +one of the first and greatest of English realists, +surely was an optimist. And there was Charles +Dickens—often, it is true, he was sentimental, +but at his best he was a robust optimist.</p> + +<p>"But the greatest modern example of the robust +optimistic realist, absolutely free from sentimentality, +is George Meredith. Galsworthy, who +surely is a realist, is optimistic in such works as +<i>The Freelands</i> and <i>The Patricians</i>. And Meredith +is always realistic and always optimistic.</p> + +<p>"The optimism I mean, the optimism which is +a distinguishing characteristic of George Meredith's +works, does not come from an evasion of +facts, but from a recognition of them. The constructive +novelist, the novelist who really interprets +life, never ignores any of the facts of life. +Instead, he accepts them and builds upon them. +And he perceives the power of the will to control +destiny; he knows that life is not what you get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span> +out of it, but what you put into it. This is what +the younger English novelists know and what +our novelists must learn. And it is their growing +recognition of this spirit that makes me feel that +the tendency of modern literature is toward democracy."</p> + +<p>"What is the connection between democracy +and the tendency you have described?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"To me," Miss Glasgow answered, "true +democracy consists chiefly in the general recognition +of the truth that will create destiny. Democracy +does not consist in the belief that all men +are born free and equal or in the desire that they +shall be born free and equal. It consists in the +knowledge that all people should possess an opportunity +to use their will to control—to create—destiny, +and that they should know that they have +this opportunity. They must be educated to the +use of the will, and they must be taught that +character can create destiny.</p> + +<p>"Of course, environment inevitably has its +effect on the character, and, therefore, on will, +and, therefore, on destiny. You can so oppress +and depress the body that the will has no chance. +True democracy provides for all equal opportunities +for the exercise of will. If you hang a man,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span> +you can't ask him to exercise his will. But if +you give him a chance to live—which is the democratic +thing to do—then you put before him an +opportunity to exercise his will."</p> + +<p>"But what are the manifestations of this new +democratic spirit?" I asked. "Is not the war, +which is surely the greatest event of our time, an +anti-democratic thing?"</p> + +<p>"The war is not anti-democratic," Miss Glasgow +replied, "any more than it is anti-autocratic. +Or rather, I may say it is both anti-democratic +and anti-autocratic. It is a conflict of principles, +a deadly struggle between democracy and imperialism. +It is a fight for the new spirit of +democracy against the old evil order of things.</p> + +<p>"Of course, I do not mean that the democracy +of France and England is perfect. But with all its +imperfections it is nearer true democracy than is +the spirit of Germany. We should not expect the +democracy of our country to be perfect. The +time has not come for that. 'Man is not man +as yet,' as Browning said in <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p> + +<p>"The war is turning people away from the +false standards in art and letters which they +served so long. The highly artificial romantic +novel and drama are impossible in Europe to-day.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span> +The war has made that sort of thing absolutely +absurd. And America must be affected by this +just as every other nation in the world is affected. +To our novelists and to all of us must come a sense +of the serious importance of actual life, instead of +a sense of the beauty of romantic illusions. There +are many indications of this tendency in our contemporary +literature. For instance, in poetry we +have the Spoon River Anthology—surely a sign +of the return of the poet to real life. But the +greatest poets, like the greatest novelists, have always +been passionately interested in real life. +Walt Whitman and Robert Browning always were +realists and always were optimistic. Whitman +was a most exultant optimist; he was optimistic +even about dying.</p> + +<p>"Among recent books of verse I have been +much impressed by Masefield's <i>Good Friday</i>. +There is a work which is both august and sympathetic; +Mr. Masefield's treatment of his theme +is realistic, yet thoroughly reverent. There is one +line in it which I think I never shall forget. It +is, 'The men who suffer most endure the least.'</p> + +<p>"<i>Good Friday</i> is a sign of literature's strong +tendency toward reality. It seems to me to be +a phase of the general breaking down of the barriers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span> +between the nations, the classes, and the +sexes. But this breaking down of barriers is something +that most of our novelists have been ignoring. +Mary Watts has recognized it, but she is +one of the very few American novelists to do so."</p> + +<p>"But this sort of consciousness is not generally +considered to be a characteristic of the realistic +novelist," I said. And I mentioned to Miss Glasgow +a certain conspicuous American novelist whose +books are very long, very dull, and distinguished +only by their author's obsession with sex. He, I +said, was the man of whom most people would +think first when the word realist was spoken.</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Miss Glasgow, "we must distinguish +between a realist and a vulgarian, and I +do not see how a writer who is absolutely without +humor can justly be called a realist. Consider +the great realists—Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, +Anthony Trollope, George Meredith—they all +had humor. What our novelists need chiefly are +more humor and a more serious attitude toward +life. If our novelists are titanic enough, they +will have a serious attitude toward life, and if +they stand far enough off they will have humor.</p> + +<p>"I hope," Miss Glasgow added, "that America +will produce better literature after the war. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> +hope that a change for the better will be evident +in all branches of literary endeavor. We have +to-day many novelists who start out with the serious +purpose of interpreting life. But they don't +interpret it. They find that it is easier to give the +people what they want than to interpret life. +Therefore this change in the character of our +novels must come after the people themselves are +awakened to a sense of the importance of real +life, instead of life sentimentally and deceptively +portrayed.</p> + +<p>"I think that our novels to-day are better than +they were twenty-five years ago. Of course, we +have no Hawthorne to-day, but the general average +of stories is better than it was. We have so +many accomplished writers of short stories. There +is Katharine Fullerton Gerould. What an admirable +artist she is! Mary E. Wilkins has written +some splendid interpretations of New England +life, and Miss Jewett reflected the mind and soul +of a part of our country."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>"CHOCOLATE FUDGE" IN THE +MAGAZINES</i></h2> + +<h4>FANNIE HURST</h4> + + +<p>Only a few years ago Fannie Hurst's name +was unknown to most readers. But in a +surprisingly short time Miss Hurst's short stories, +especially her sympathetic and poignantly realistic +studies of the life of the Jewish citizens of +New York, have earned for her popular as well +as critical approval.</p> + +<p>Fannie Hurst's fame has been won almost entirely +through the most widely circulated weekly +and monthly magazines. And yet when I talked +to this energetic young woman the other morning +in her studio in Carnegie Hall, I found her +attitude toward the magazines anything but +friendly. She accused them of printing what she +called "chocolate-fudge" fiction. And she said +it in a way which indicated that chocolate fudge +is not her favorite dish.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span></p> + +<p>"I do not feel," she said, "that the American +magazine is exerting itself toward influencing our +fiction for the better. In most cases it is content +to pander to the untutored public taste instead of +attempting anything constructive.</p> + +<p>"The magazine public is, after all, open to conviction. +But phlegm and commercialism on the +part of most of our magazines lead them to give +the public what it wants rather than what is good +for it.</p> + +<p>"'If chocolate-fudge fiction will sell the magazine, +give 'em chocolate fudge!' say editors and +publishers. Small wonder that American fiction-readers +continue bilious in their demands. Authors, +meanwhile, who like sweet butter on their +bread—it is amazing how many do—continue to +postpone that Big Idea, and American fiction +pauses by the wayside."</p> + +<p>"What is the remedy for this condition, Miss +Hurst?" I asked. "Would matters be better if +the writers did not have to comply with the demands +of the magazines—if they had some other +means of making a living than writing?"</p> + +<p>Miss Hurst did not answer at once. At length +she said, thoughtfully:</p> + +<p>"It would seem that to escape this almost inevitable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span> +overlapping of bread and sweet butter +the writer of short stories should not depend upon +the sale of his work for a living, but should endeavor +to provide himself with some other source +of income.</p> + +<p>"Theoretically, at least, such a condition would +eliminate the pot-boilers and safeguard the serious +worker from the possibility of 'misshaping' his +art to meet a commercial condition.</p> + +<p>"I say theoretically because from my own +point of view I cannot conceive of short-story +writing as an avocation. The gentle art of short +fiction consumes just about six hours of my day +at the rate of from twenty to twenty-five days on +a story of from eight to ten thousand words. +And since I work best from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., I +can think of no remunerative occupation outside +those hours except cabaret work or night clerking."</p> + +<p>"What about present-day relationship between +American publishers and authors?" I asked, +"Do you think they are all they should be?"</p> + +<p>"American publishers and authors," Miss Hurst +replied, "to-day seem to be working somewhat at +cross-purposes, owing partially, I think, to the +great commercial significance that has become +attached to the various rights, such as motion-picture,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> +serial, dramatic, book, etc., and which +are to be reckoned with in the sale of fiction.</p> + +<p>"There is little doubt that authors have suffered +at the hands of publishers on these various +scores, oftener than not the publisher and not +the author reaping the benefits accruing from +the author's ignorance of conditions or lack of +foresight.</p> + +<p>"The Authors' League has been formed to +remedy just that evil—and it was a crying one.</p> + +<p>"On the other hand, it is certain that fiction-writers +are better paid to-day than ever in the +history of literature, and if a man is writing a +seventy-five-dollar story there is a pretty good +reason why.</p> + +<p>"I feel a great deal of hesitancy about the +present proposed affiliation of authors with labor. +There is so much to be said on both sides!</p> + +<p>"If the publisher represents capital and the +author labor, my sympathies immediately veer +me toward labor. But do they? That same question +has recently been thrashed out by the actors, +and they have gone over to labor. Scores of our +most prominent American authors are of that +same persuasion.</p> + +<p>"I cannot help but feel that for publisher and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span> +author to assume the relationship of employer and +employee is a dangerous step. All forms of labor +do not come under the same head. And I am +the last to say that writing is not hard labor. +But Cellini could hardly have allied himself with +an iron-workers' guild. All men are mammals, +but not all mammals are men!</p> + +<p>"It seems doubly unfortunate, with the Authors' +League in existence to direct and safeguard the +financial destiny of the author, to take a step +which immediately places the author and publisher +on the same basis of relationship that exists +between hod-carrier and contractor.</p> + +<p>"As a matter of fact, I am almost wont to +question the traditional lack of business acumen +in authors. On the contrary, almost every successful +author of my acquaintance not only is +pretty well able to take care of himself, but owns +a motor-car and a safety-deposit box at the same +time. And I find the not-so-successful authors +prodding pretty faithfully to get their prices up.</p> + +<p>"The Authors' League is a great institution and +fills a great need. It was formed for just the purpose +that seems to be prompting authors to unionize—to +instruct authors in their rights and protect +them against infringements.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span></p> + +<p>"Why unionize? Next, an author will find +himself obliged to lay aside his pen when the +whistle blows, and publishers will be finding themselves +obliged to deal in open-shop literature."</p> + +<p>"And what effect are the moving pictures going +to have on fiction?" I asked. "Will it be good or +bad?"</p> + +<p>"Up to the present," Miss Hurst replied, +"moving pictures have, in my opinion, been little +else than a destructive force where American +fiction is concerned. Picturized fiction is on a +cheap and sensational level. Even classics and +standardized fiction are ruthlessly defamed by +tawdry presentation. With the mechanics of the +motion picture so advanced, it is unfortunate that +the photoplay itself is not keeping pace with +that advancement.</p> + +<p>"Motion pictures are in the hands of laymen, +and they show it. The scenario-writers, so-called +'staff writers,' have sprung up overnight, so to +speak, and, from what I understand, when authors +venture into the field they are at the mercy +of the moving-picture director.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett could not endure +to sit through the picture presentation of +<i>Little Lord Fauntleroy</i>, so mutilated was it.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span></p> + +<p>"Of course, scenario-writing is a new art, and +this interesting form of expression has hardly +emerged from its infancy. Except perhaps in +such great spectacles as 'The Birth of a Nation,' +where, after all, the play is not the thing."</p> + +<p>I asked Miss Hurst if she agreed with those who +believe that Edgar Allan Poe's short stories have +never been surpassed. I found that she did not.</p> + +<p>"I should say," she said, "that since Poe's +time we have had masters of the short story who +have equaled him. Poe is, of course, the legitimate +father of the American short story, and, +coupled with that fact, was possessed of that kind +of self-consciousness which enabled him to formulate +a law of composition which has not been +without its influence upon our subsequent short +fiction.</p> + +<p>"But in American letters there is little doubt +that in the last one hundred years the short story +has made more progress than any other literary +type. We are becoming not only proficient, but +pre-eminent in the short story. I can think off-hand +of quite a group of writers, each of whom +has contributed short-story classics to our literature.</p> + +<p>"There are Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span> +James (if we may claim him), Bret Harte, Mark +Twain, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, O. Henry, +Richard Harding Davis, Jack London, and Booth +Tarkington. And I am sure that there are various +others whose names do not occur to me at +this moment."</p> + +<p>"You mentioned O. Henry," I said. "Then +you do not share Katharine Fullerton Gerould's +belief that O. Henry's influence on modern fiction +is bad?"</p> + +<p>"I decidedly disagree," said Miss Hurst, with +considerable firmness, "with the statement that +O. Henry wrote incidents rather than short +stories, and is a pernicious influence in modern +letters. That his structural form is more than +anecdotal can be shown by an analysis of almost +any of his plots.</p> + +<p>"But it seems pedantic to criticize O. Henry on +the score of structure. Admitting that the substance +of his writings does rest on frail framework, +even sometimes upon the trick, he built with +Gothic skill and with no obvious pillars of support.</p> + +<p>"Corot was none the less a landscape artist +because he removed that particular brown tree +from that particular green slope. O. Henry's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span> +facetiousness and, if you will, his frail structures, +are no more to be reckoned with than, for instance, +the extravagance of plot and the morbid +formality we find in Poe.</p> + +<p>"The smiting word and the polished phrase he +quite frankly subordinated to the laugh, or the +tear with a sniffle. Just as soon call red woolen +underwear pernicious!</p> + +<p>"The Henry James school has put a super-finish +upon literature which, it is true, gives the +same satisfying sense of wholeness that we get +from a Greek urn. But, after all, chastity is not +the first and last requisite. O. Henry loved to +laugh with life! It was not in him to regard it +with a Mona Lisa smile."</p> + +<p>Miss Hurst has confined her attention so closely +to American metropolitan life that I thought it +would be interesting to have her opinion as to +the truth of the remark, attributed to William +Dean Howells, that American literature is merely +a phase of English literature. In reply to my +question she said:</p> + +<p>"I agree with Mr. Howells that American +literature up to now has been rather a phase of +English literature. His own graceful art is an +example of cousinship. American literature probably<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span> +will continue to be an effort until our American +melting-pot ceases boiling.</p> + +<p>"<i>David Copperfield</i> and <i>Vanity Fair</i> come from +a people whose lineage goes back by century-plants +and not by Mayflowers. Theodore Dreiser +and Ernest Poole, sometimes more or less inarticulately, +are preparing us for the great American +novel. When we reach a proper consistency +the boiling is bound to cease, and, just as inevitably, +the epic novel must come."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>THE NEW SPIRIT IN POETRY</i></h2> + +<h4>AMY LOWELL</h4> + + +<p>Miss Amy Lowell, America's chief advocate +and practitioner of the new poetry, +would wear, I supposed, a gown by Bakst, with +many Oriental jewels. And incense would be +burning in a golden basin. And Miss Lowell +would say that the art of poetry was discovered +in 1916.</p> + +<p>But there is nothing exotic or artificial about +Miss Lowell's appearance and surroundings. Nor +did the author of <i>Sword Blades and Poppy Seed</i> +express, when I talked to her the other day, any +of the extravagant opinions which conservative +critics attribute to the <i>vers libristes</i>. Miss Lowell +talked with the practicality which is of New +England and the serenity which is of Boston; +she was positive, but not narrowly dogmatic; +she is keenly appreciative of contemporary poetry, +but she has the fullest sense of the value of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> +the great heritage of poetical tradition that has +come down to us through the ages.</p> + +<p>There is so much careless talk of <i>imagisme</i>, +<i>vers libre</i>, and the new poetry in general that I +thought it advisable to begin our talk by asking +for a definition or a description of the new poetry. +In reply to my question Miss Lowell said:</p> + +<p>"The thing that makes me feel sure that there +is a future in the new poetry is the fact that those +who write it follow so many different lines of +thought. The new poetry is so large a subject +that it can scarcely be covered by one definition. +It seems to me that there are four definite sorts +of new poetry, which I will attempt to describe.</p> + +<p>"One branch of the new poetry may be called +the realistic school. This branch is descended +partly from Whitman and partly from the prose-writers +of France and England. The leading exponents +of it are Robert Frost and Edgar Lee +Masters. These two poets are different from +each other, but they both are realists, they +march under the same banner.</p> + +<p>"Another branch of the new poetry consists of +the poets whose work shows a mixture of the +highly imaginative and the realistic. Their +thought verges on the purely imaginative, but is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span> +corrected by a scientific attitude of mind. I +suppose that this particular movement in English +poetry may be said to have started with Coleridge, +but in England the movement hardly attained its +due proportions. Half of literary England followed +Wordsworth, half followed Byron. It is in +America that we find the greatest disciple of +Coleridge in the person of Edgar Allan Poe. The +force of the movement then went back to France, +where it showed clearly in Mallarmê and the later +symbolists. To-day we see this tendency somewhat +popularized in Vachell Lindsay, although perhaps +he does not know it. And if I may be so bold +as to mention myself, I should say that I in common +with most other imagists belong to this +branch, that I am at once a fantasist and a realist.</p> + +<p>"Thirdly, we have the lyrico-imaginative type +of poet. Of this branch the best example that +I can call to mind is John Gould Fletcher. The +fourth group of the new poets consists of those +who are descended straight from Matthew Arnold. +They show the Wordsworth influence corrected +by experience and education. Browning is in +their line of descent. Characteristics of their work +are high seriousness, astringency, and a certain +pruning down of poetry so that redundancy is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span> +absolutely avoided. Of this type the most striking +example is Edwin Arlington Robinson."</p> + +<p>"Miss Lowell," I said, "the opponents of the +new poetry generally attack it chiefly on account +of its form—or rather, on account of its formlessness. +And yet what you have said has to do only +with the idea itself. You have said nothing about +the way in which the idea is expressed."</p> + +<p>"There is no special form which is characteristic +of the new poetry," said Miss Lowell, "and of course +'formlessness' is a word which is applied to it only +by the ignorant. The new poetry is in every form. +Edgar Lee Masters has written in <i>vers libre</i> and in +regular rhythm. Robert Frost writes in blank verse. +Vachell Lindsay writes in varied rhyme schemes. I +write in both the regular meters and the newer +forms, such as <i>vers libre</i> and 'polyphonic prose.'</p> + +<p>"It is a mistake to suppose, as many conservative +critics do, that modern poetry is a matter of +<i>vers libre</i>. <i>Vers libre</i> is not new, but it is valuable +to give vividness when vividness is desired. <i>Vers +libre</i> is a difficult thing to write well, and a very +easy thing to write badly. This particular branch +of the new poetry movement has been imitated so +extensively that it has brought the whole movement +into disrepute in the eyes of casual observers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span> +But we must remember that no movement is to +be judged by its obscure imitators. A movement +must be judged by the few people at its head who +make the trend. There cannot be many of them. +In the history of the world there are only a few +supreme artists, only a small number of great +artists, only a limited number of good artists. +And to suppose that we in America at this particular +moment can be possessed of many artists +worthy of consideration is ridiculous.</p> + +<p>"Undoubtedly the fact that a great number of +people are engaged to-day in producing poetry is +a great stimulus and helps to create a proper +atmosphere for those men whose work may live. +For it is a curious fact that the artistic names that +have come down to us are those of men who have +lived in the so-called great artistic periods, when +many other men were working at the same thing."</p> + +<p>I asked Miss Lowell to tell something of this +<i>vers libre</i> which is so much discussed and so little +understood. She said:</p> + +<p>"<i>Vers libre</i> is based upon rhythm. Its definition +is 'A verse form based upon cadence rather +than upon exact meter.' It is a little difficult to +define cadence when dealing with poetry. I might +call it the sense of balance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span></p> + +<p>"The unit of <i>vers libre</i> is the strophe, not the +line or the foot, as in regular meter. The strophe +is a group of words which round themselves satisfactorily +to the ear. In short poems this complete +rounding may take place only at the end, +making the poem a unit of a single movement, +the lines serving only to give the slight up-and-down +effect necessary to the voice when the poem +is read aloud.</p> + +<p>"In longer poems the strophe may be a group +of lines. Poetry being a spoken and not a written +art, those not well versed in the various poetic +forms will find it simpler to read <i>vers libre</i> poems +aloud, rather than to try to get their rhythm from +the printed page. For people who are used only +to the exact meters, the printed arrangement of a +<i>vers libre</i> poem is a confusing process. To a certain +extent cadence is dependent upon quantity—long +and short syllables being of peculiar importance. +Words hurried over in reading are balanced +by words on which the reader pauses. +Remember, also, that <i>vers libre</i> can be either +rhymed or unrhymed."</p> + +<p>"One objection," I said, "that many critics +bring up against unrhymed poetry is that it cannot +be remembered."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span></p> + +<p>"I cannot see that that is of the slightest importance," +Miss Lowell replied. "The music that +we whistle when we come out of the theater is not +the greatest music we have heard.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Zaccheus he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Did climb a tree<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His Lord to see<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is easily remembered. But I refuse to think that +it is great poetry.</p> + +<p>"The enemies of <i>vers libre</i>," she continued, "say +that <i>vers libre</i> is in no respect different from +oratory. Now, there is a difference between the +cadence of <i>vers libre</i> and the cadence of oratory. +Lincoln's Gettysburg address is not <i>vers libre</i>, it +is rhythmical prose. At the prose end of cadence +is rhythmical prose; at the verse end is <i>vers libre</i>. +The difference is in the kind of cadence.</p> + +<p>"Recently a writer in <i>The Nation</i> took some of +Meredith's prose and made it into <i>vers libre</i> poems +which any poet would have been glad to write. +Then he took some of my poems and turned them +into prose, with a result which he was kind +enough to call beautiful. He then pertinently +asked what was the difference.</p> + +<p>"I might answer that there is no difference.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span> +Typography is not relevant to the discussion. +Whether a thing is written as prose or as verse is +immaterial. But if we would see the advantage +which Meredith's imagination enjoyed in the +freer forms of expression, we need only compare +these lyrical passages from his prose works with +his own metrical poetry."</p> + +<p>I asked Miss Lowell about the charge that the +new poets are lacking in reverence for the great +poets of the past. She believes that the charge +is unfounded. Nevertheless, she believes that +the new poets do well to take the New England +group of writers less seriously than conservative +critics would have them take them.</p> + +<p>"America has produced only two great poets, +Whitman and Poe," said Miss Lowell. "The +rest of the early American poets were cultivated +gentlemen, but they were more exactly English +provincial poets than American poets, and they +were decidedly inferior to the parent stock. The +men of the New England group, with the single +exception of Emerson, were cultivated gentlemen +with a taste for literature—they never rose above +that level.</p> + +<p>"No one can judge his contemporaries. We +cannot say with certainty that the poets of this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span> +generation are better than their predecessors. +But surely we can see that the new poets have +more originality, more of the stuff out of which +poetry is made, than their predecessors had, +aside from the two great exceptions that I have +mentioned."</p> + +<p>"What is the thing that American poetry chiefly +needs?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Miss Lowell, "I wish that there +were a great many changes in our attitude toward +literature. I wish that no man could expect to +make a living by writing. I wish that the magazines +did not pay for contributions—few of them +do in France, you know. And I wish that the +newspapers did not try to review books. But the +thing that we chiefly need is informed and authoritative +criticism.</p> + +<p>"We have very few critics, we have practically +none who are writing separate books on contemporary +verse. When I was writing my <i>French +Poets</i> I read twenty or thirty books on contemporary +French poetry, serious books, written by +critics who make a specialty of the poetry of their +own day.</p> + +<p>"We have nothing like this in America. The +men who write critical books write of the literature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span> +of a hundred years ago. No critical mind is +bent toward contemporary verse. There are a +few newspaper critics who pay serious attention +to contemporary verse—William Stanley Braithwaite, +O. W. Firkins, and Louis Untermeyer, for +example—but there are only a few of them.</p> + +<p>"What is to be desired is for some one to be +as interested in criticism as the poets are in poetry. +It was the regularity of Sainte-Beuve's 'Causeries +du Lundi' that gave it its weight. What we want +is a critic like that, who is neither an old man despairing +of a better job nor a young man using +his newspaper work as a stepping-stone to something +higher. Of course, brilliant criticisms of +poetry appear from time to time, but what we +need is criticism as an institution.</p> + +<p>"After all," said Miss Lowell, in conclusion, +"there are only two kinds of poetry, good poetry +and bad poetry. The form of poetry is a matter +of individual idiosyncrasy. It is only the very +young and the very old, the very inexperienced +or the numbed, who say, 'This is the only way in +which poetry shall be written!'"</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>A NEW DEFINITION OF POETRY</i></h2> + +<h4>EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON</h4> + + +<p>At no time in the history of literature have +the critics been able to agree upon a definition +of poetry. And the recent popularity of <i>vers +libre</i> and <i>imagisme</i> has made the definer's task +harder than ever before. Is rhyme essential to +poetry? Is rhythm essential to poetry? Can a +mere reflection of life justly be called poetry, or +must imagination be present?</p> + +<p>I put some of these questions to Edwin Arlington +Robinson, who wrote <i>Captain Craig</i>, <i>The Children +of the Night</i>, <i>The Town Down the River</i>, <i>The +Man Against the Sky</i> and <i>Merlin: A Poem</i>. And +this man, whom William Stanley Braithwaite and +other authoritative critics have called the foremost +of American poets, this student of life, who was revealing +the mysterious poetry of humanity many +years before Edgar Lee Masters discovered to the +world the vexed spirits that haunt Spoon River,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span> +rewarded my questioning with a new definition of +poetry. He said:</p> + +<p>"Poetry is a language that tells us, through a +more or less emotional reaction, something that +cannot be said.</p> + +<p>"All real poetry, great or small, does this," he +added. "And it seems to me that poetry has +two characteristics. One is that it is, after all, +undefinable. The other is that it is eventually +unmistakable."</p> + +<p>"'Eventually'!" I said. "Then you think that +poetry is not always appreciated in the lifetime +of its maker?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Robinson smiled whimsically. "I never +use words enough," he said. "It is not unmistakable +as soon as it is published, but sooner or +later it is unmistakable.</p> + +<p>"And in the poet's lifetime there are always +some people who will understand and appreciate +his work. I really think that it is impossible for +a real poet permanently to escape appreciation. +And I can't imagine anything sillier for a man to +do than to worry about poetry that has once +been decently published. The rest is in the hands +of Time, and Time has more than often a way of +making a pretty thorough job of it."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span></p> + +<p>"But why is it," I asked, "that a great poet so +often is without honor in his own generation, +where mediocrity is immediately famous?"</p> + +<p>"It's hard to say," said Mr. Robinson, thoughtfully +regarding the glowing end of his cigar. +"Many causes prevent poetry from being correctly +appraised in its own time. Any poetry +that is marked by violence, that is conspicuous +in color, that is sensationally odd, makes an immediate +appeal. On the other hand, poetry that +is not noticeably eccentric sometimes fails for +years to attract any attention.</p> + +<p>"I think that this is why so many of Kipling's +worst poems are greatly overpraised, while some +of his best poems are not appreciated. <i>Gunga +Din</i>, which is, of course, a good thing in its way, +has been praised far more than it deserves, because +of its oddity. And the poem beginning 'There's +a whisper down the field' has never been properly +appreciated. It's one of the very best of Kipling's +poems, although it is marred by a few lapses +of taste. One of his greatest poems, by the way, +<i>The Children of the Zodiac</i>, happens to be in +prose.</p> + +<p>"But I am always revising my opinion of Kipling. +I have changed my mind about him so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span> +often that I have no confidence in my critical +judgment. That is one of the reasons why I +do not like to criticise my American contemporaries."</p> + +<p>"Do you think," I asked, "that this tendency +to pay attention chiefly to the more sensational +poets is as characteristic of our generation as of +those that came before?"</p> + +<p>"I think it applies particularly to our own time," +he replied. "More than ever before oddity and +violence are bringing into prominence poets who +have little besides these two qualities to offer the +world, and some who have much more. It may +seem very strange to you, but I think that a great +modern instance of this tendency is the case of +Robert Browning. The eccentricities of Browning's +method are the things that first turned popular +attention upon him, but the startling quality +in Browning made more sensation in his own time +than it can ever make again. I say this in spite +of the fact that Browning and Wordsworth are +taken as the classic examples of slow recognition. +Wordsworth, you know, had no respect for the +judgment of youth. It may have been sour +grapes, but I am inclined to think that there was +a great deal of truth in his opinion.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span></p> + +<p>"I think it is safe to say that all real poetry is +going to give at some time or other a suggestion +of finality. In real poetry you find that something +has been said, and yet you find also about it a +sort of nimbus of what can't be said.</p> + +<p>"This nimbus may be there—I wouldn't say +that it isn't there—and yet I can't find it in much +of the self-conscious experimenting that is going +on nowadays in the name of poetry.</p> + +<p>"I can't get over the impression," Mr. Robinson +went on, with a meditative frown, "that these +post-impressionists in painting and most of the +<i>vers libristes</i> in poetry are trying to find some sort +of short cut to artistic success. I know that +many of the new writers insist that it is harder +to write good <i>vers libre</i> than to write good rhymed +poetry. And judging from some of their results, +I am inclined to agree with them."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Robinson if he believed that the +evident increase in interest in poetry, shown by +the large sales of the work of Robert Frost and +Edgar Lee Masters and Rupert Brooke, indicated +a real renascence of poetry.</p> + +<p>"I think that it indicates a real renascence of +poetry," he replied. "I am sufficiently child-like +and hopeful to find it very encouraging."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span></p> + +<p>"Do you think," I asked, "that the poetry that +is written in America to-day is better than that +written a generation ago?"</p> + +<p>"I should hardly venture to say that," said +Mr. Robinson. "For one thing, we have no Emerson. +Emerson is the greatest poet who ever wrote +in America. Passages scattered here and there +in his work surely are the greatest of American +poetry. In fact, I think that there are lines and +sentences in Emerson's poetry that are as great +as anything anywhere."</p> + +<p>I asked Mr. Robinson whether he thought the +modern English poets were doing better work +than their American contemporaries. At first he +was unwilling to express an opinion on this subject, +repeating his statement that he mistrusted +his own critical judgment. But he said:</p> + +<p>"Within his limits, I believe that A. E. Housman +is the most authentic poet now writing in England. +But, of course, his limits are very sharply drawn. +I don't think that any one who knows anything +about poetry will ever think of questioning the +inspiration of <i>A Shropshire Lad</i>."</p> + +<p>"Would you make a similar comment on any +other poetry of our time?" I asked.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Mr. Robinson, reflectively, "I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span> +think that no one will question the inspiration of +some of Kipling's poems, of parts of John Masefield's +<i>Dauber</i>, and some of the long lyrics of +Alfred Noyes. But I do not think that either +of these poets gives the impression of finality +which A. E. Housman gives. But the way in which +I have shifted my opinion about some of Rudyard +Kipling's poems, and most of Swinburne's, +makes me think that Wordsworth was very largely +right in his attitude toward the judgment of +youth. But where my opinions have shifted, I +think now that I always had misgivings. I fancy +that youth always has misgivings in regard to +what is later to be modified or repudiated."</p> + +<p>Then I asked Mr. Robinson if he thought that +the war had anything to do with the renascence +of poetry.</p> + +<p>"I can't see any connection," he replied. "The +only effect on poetry that the war has had, so far +as I know, is to produce those five sonnets by +Rupert Brooke. I can't see that it has caused +any poetical event. And there's no use prophesying +what the war will or will not do to poetry, +because no one knows anything about it. The +Civil War seems to have had little effect on poetry +except to produce Julia Ward Howe's <i>Battle Hymn</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span> +<i>of the Republic</i>, Whitman's poems on the death of +Lincoln, and Lowell's 'Ode.'"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Robinson," I said, "there has been much +discussion recently about the rewards of poetry, +and Miss Amy Lowell has said that no poet ought +to be expected to make a living by writing. What +do you think about it?"</p> + +<p>"Should a poet be able to make a living out of +poetry?" said Mr. Robinson. "Generally speaking, +it is not possible for a poet to make a decent +living by his work. In most cases it would be +bad for his creative faculties for a poet to make as +much money as a successful novelist makes. Fortunately, +there is no danger of that. Now, assuming +that a poet has enough money to live on, the +most important thing for him to have is an audience. +I mean that the best poetry is likely to +be written when poetry is in the air. If a poet +with no obligations and responsibilities except to +stay alive can't live on a thousand dollars a year +(I don't undertake to say just how he is going +to get it), he'd better go into some other business."</p> + +<p>"Then you don't think," I said, "that literature +has lost through the poverty of poets?"</p> + +<p>"I certainly do believe that literature has lost +through the poverty of poets," said Mr. Robinson.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span> +"I don't believe in poverty. I never did. +I think it is good for a poet to be bumped and +knocked around when he is young, but all the +difficulties that are put in his way after he gets +to be twenty-five or thirty are certain to take +something out of his work. I don't see how they +can do anything else.</p> + +<p>"Some time ago you asked me," said Mr. +Robinson, "how I accounted for our difficulty in +making a correct estimate of the poetry of one's +own time. The question is a difficult one. I +don't even say that it has an answer. But the +solution of the thing seems to me to be related +to what I said about the quality of finality that +seems to exist in all real poetry. Finality seems +always to have had a way of not obtruding itself +to any great extent."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>LET POETRY BE FREE</i></h2> + +<h4>JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY</h4> + +<p>Mrs. Lionel Marks—or Josephine Preston +Peabody, to call her by the name which +she has made famous—is a poet whose tendency has +always been toward democracy. From <i>The Singing +Leaves</i>, her first book of lyrics, to <i>The Piper</i> +(the dramatic poem which received the Stratford-on-Avon +prize in 1910), and <i>The Wolf of Gubbio</i>, +the poetic representation of events in St. +Francis's life in her latest published book, she +has chosen for her theme not fantastic and rare +aspects of nature, nor the new answers of her +own emotions, but things that are common to +all normal mankind—such as love and religion. +Also, without seeming to preach, she is always +expressing her love for Liberty, Equality, and +Fraternity, and although she never dwells upon +the overworked term, she is as devoted an adherent +of the brotherhood of man as was William Morris.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span></p> + +<p>Therefore I was eager to learn whether or not +she held the opinion—often expressed during the +past months—that poetry is becoming more +democratic, less an art practised and appreciated +by the chosen few. Also I wanted to know if she +saw signs of this democratization of poetry in the +development of free verse, or <i>vers libre</i>, as those +who write it prefer to say, in the apparently growing +tendency of poets to give up the use of rhyme +and rhythm.</p> + +<p>"Certainly, poetry is steadily growing more +democratic," said Mrs. Marks. "More people +are writing poetry to-day than fifty years ago, +and the appreciation of poetry is more general. +Most poets of genuine calling are writing now with +the world in mind as an audience, not merely for +the entertainment of a little literary cult.</p> + +<p>"But I do not think that the <i>vers libre</i> fad has +any connection with this tendency, or with the +development of poetry at all. Indeed, I do not +think that the cult is growing; we hear more of +it in the United States than we did a year or two +ago, but that is chiefly because London and Paris +have outworn its novelty, so the <i>vers libristes</i> concentrate +their energies on Chicago and New York.</p> + +<p>"I love some 'free verse.' Certainly, there may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span> +be times when a poet finds he can express his idea +or his emotion better without rhyme and rhythm +than with them. But verse that is ostentatiously +free—free verse that obviously has been made deliberately—that +is a highly artificial sort of writing, +bears no more relation to literature than does an +acrostic. Neither the themes nor the methods +of those who call themselves <i>vers libristes</i> are +democratic; they are, in the worst sense of the +word, the sense which came into use at the time +of the French Revolution, aristocratic.</p> + +<p>"The canon of the <i>vers libristes</i> is essentially +aristocratic. They contend, absurdly enough, that +all traditional forms of rhyme and rhythm constitute +a sort of bondage, and therefore they arbitrarily +rule them out. Not for them are the +fetters that bound Shelley's spirit to the earth! +Also they arbitrarily rule out what they call, +with their fondness for labels, the 'sociological +note,' 'didacticism,' 'meanings'—any ideas or +emotions, in fact, that may be called communal +or democratic.</p> + +<p>"My own canon is that all themes are fit for +poetry and that all methods must justify themselves. +If I may be permitted to make a clumsy +wooden-toy apothegm I would say that poetry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span> +is rhythmic without and within. If we turn +Carlyle's sometimes cloudy prose inside out we +find that it has a silver lining of poetry.</p> + +<p>"Neither can I understand why the <i>vers libristes</i> +believe that their sort of writing is new. Leopardi +wrote what would be called good <i>imagisme</i>, although +the <i>imagistes</i> do not seem to be aware of +the fact, and the theory that rhyme is undesirable +in poetry has appeared sporadically time and again +in the history of poetry. When Sir Philip Sidney +was alive there were pedants who argued against +the use of rhyme, and some of them confuted their +own arguments by writing charming lyrics in the +traditional manner. By dint of reading the fine +eye-cracking print in the Globe Edition of Spenser +I found that the author of the <i>Faerie Queen</i> at +one time took seriously Gabriel Harvey's arguments +against rhyme and made an unbelievably +frightful experiment in rhymeless verse—as bad +as the parodists of our band-wagon.</p> + +<p>"The other day I asked some one in the Greek +department of Harvard how to read a fragment +of Sappho's that I wanted to teach my children +to say. He said that no one nowadays could +know how certain of Sappho's poems really should +be read, because the music for them had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span> +lost, and they were all true lyrics, meant to be +sung and sung by Sappho to music of her own +making. So you see that poets who avowedly +make verses that can appeal only to the eye, successions +of images, in which the position of the +words on the page is of great importance, believe +that they are the successors of poets whose work +was meant not to be read, but to be sung, whose +verses fitted the regular measure of music.</p> + +<p>"As I said before," said Mrs. Marks, smiling, +"I have no objection to free verse when it is a +spontaneous expression. But I do object to free +verse when it is organized into a cult that denies +other freedoms to other poets! And I object to +the bigotry of some of the people who are trying +to impose free verse upon an uninterested world.</p> + +<p>"And also I object to the unfairness of some of +the advocates of free verse. When they compare +free verse, and what I suppose I must call chained +verse, they take the greatest example of unrhymed +poetry that they can find—the King James version +of the Book of Job, perhaps—and say: 'This +is better than "Yankee Doodle." Therefore, free +verse is better than traditional verse.'</p> + +<p>"You see," said Mrs. Marks, "the commonest +thing there is, I may say the most democratic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span> +thing, is the rhythm of the heart-beat. A true +poet cannot ignore this. At the greatest times +in his life, when he is filled with joy or despair, +or when he has a sense of portent, man is aware +of his heart, of its beat, of its recurrent tick, tick; +he is aware of the rhythm of life. When we are +dying, perhaps the only sense that remains with +us is the sense of rhythm—the feeling that the +grains of sand are running, running, running out.</p> + +<p>"The pulse-beat is a tremendous thing. It is +the basis of all that men have in common. All life +is locked up in its regularly recurrent rhythm. +And it is that rhythm that appears in our love-songs, +our war-songs, in all the poetry of the +human cycle from lullabies to funeral chants. In +the great moments of life men feel that they +must be sharing, that they must have something +in common with other men, and so their emotions +crystallize into the ritual of rhythm, which is the +most democratic thing that there is.</p> + +<p>"Primitive poetry, poetry that comes straight +from the hearts of the people, sometimes circulating +for generations without being committed to +paper, is strongly traditional. The convention of +regular rhyme and rhythm is never absent. What +could be more conventional and more democratic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span> +than the old ballad, with its recurrent refrain in +which the audience joined? Centuries ago in the +Scotch Highlands the ballad-makers, like the men +who wrote the 'Come-all-ye's' in our great-grandfather's +time, used regular rhyme and +rhythm. And if these poets were not democratic, +then there never was such a thing as a democratic +poet."</p> + +<p>"But is it not true," I asked, "that Whitman +is considered the most democratic poet of his day, +and that his avoidance of rhyme and regular +rhythm is advanced as proof of his democracy?"</p> + +<p>"Whitman," said Mrs. Marks, "was a democrat +in principle, but not in poetic practice. He +loved humanity, but he still waits to reach his +widest audience because his verse lacks strongly +stressed, communal music. The only poems which +he wrote that really reached the hearts of the +people quickly are those which are most nearly +traditional in form—<i>When Lilacs Last in Dooryards +Bloomed</i> and <i>Captain, My Captain!</i> in which +he used rhyme.</p> + +<p>"You see, nothing else establishes such a bond +with memory as rhyme.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever think," said Mrs. Marks, suddenly, +"that the truest exuberance of life always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span> +expresses itself rhythmically? Children are generous +with the most intricate rhythms; they do +not eat ice-cream in the disorderly grown-up way; +they eat it in a pattern, turning the saucer around +and around; they skit alternate flagstones or +every third step on the stairway. Because they +are overflowing with life they express themselves +in rhythm. <i>Vers libre</i> is too grown-up to be the +most vital poetry; one of the ways in which the +poet must be like a little child is in possessing +an exuberance of life. His life must overflow.</p> + +<p>"The poets especially remember that Christ +said, 'I am come that ye might have life and +that ye might have it more abundantly.'</p> + +<p>"The rhythm of life," said Mrs. Marks, thoughtfully. +"The rhythm of life. Who is conscious +of his heart-beats except at the great moments of +life, and who is unconscious of them then? The +music of poetry is the witness of that intense moment +when there is discovered to man or woman, +when there reverberates through his brain and +being, the tremendous rhythm and refrain whereby +we live."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Marks has no patience with those who use +the term "sociological" in depreciation of all poetry +that is not intensely subjective and personal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span></p> + +<p>"There are some critics," she said, "who would +condemn the Lord's Prayer as 'sociological' because +it begins 'Our Father' instead of 'My +Father.'</p> + +<p>"The true poet must be a true democrat; he +must, if he can, share with all the world the +vision that lights him; he must be in sympathy +with the people. The war has made a great many +European poets aware of this fact. Think how +the war changed Rupert Brooke, for instance? +He had been a most aristocratic poet, making +poems, some of which could only repel minds less +in love with the fantastic. But he shared the +great emotion of his countrymen, and so he wrote +out of his deeply wakened, sudden simplicity +those sonnets which they all can understand and +must forever cherish.</p> + +<p>"The war will help make poetry. It has swept +away the fads and cults from Europe; they find +a peaceful haven in the United States, but they +will not live as dogmas. In the democracy that +is soon to come may all 'isms' founder and lose +themselves! And may all true freedoms come +into their own, with the maker, his mind and his +tools."</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>THE HERESY OF SUPERMANISM</i></h2> + +<h4>CHARLES RANN KENNEDY</h4> + + +<p>"But, of course," said Charles Rann Kennedy, +violently (he says most things rather violently), +"you understand that the war's most +important effect on literature was clearly evident +long before the war began!"</p> + +<p>I did not understand this statement, and said +so. Thereupon the author of <i>The Servant in the +House</i> and <i>The Terrible Meek</i> said:</p> + +<p>"We have so often been told that great events +cast their shadows before, that the tremendous +truth of the phrase has ceased to impress us. +The war which began in August, 1914, exercised +a tremendous influence over the mind of the +world in 1913, 1912, 1911, and 1910. The great +wave of religious thought which swept over +Europe and America during those years was +caused by the approach of the war. The tremendous +pacifist movement—not the weak, bloodless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span> +pacifism of the poltroon, but the heroic, flaming +pacifism of the soldier-hearted convinced of sin—was +a protest against the menacing injustice of +the war; it was the world's shudder of dread.</p> + +<p>"The literature of the first decade of the +twentieth century was more thoroughly and obviously +influenced by the war than will be that +of the decade following. Think of that amazing +quickening of the conscience of the French nation, +a quickening which found expression in the novels +of Réné Bazin, the immortal ballads of Francis +Jammes, and in the work of countless other +writers! These people were preparing themselves +and their fellow-countrymen for the mighty ordeal +which was before them.</p> + +<p>"It is blasphemous to say that the war can +only affect things that come after it; to say that +is to attempt to limit the powers of God. There +are, of course, some writers who can only feel the +influence of a thing after it has become evident; +after they have carefully studied and absorbed it. +But there are others, the manikoi, the prophetic +madmen, who are swayed by what is to happen +rather than by what has happened. I'm one of +them.</p> + +<p>"The war held me in its spell long before the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span> +German troops crossed Belgian soil. I wrote my +<i>The Terrible Meek</i> by direct inspiration from +heaven in Holy Week, 1912.</p> + +<p>"I put that in," said Mr. Kennedy (who looks +very much like Gilbert K. Chesterton's <i>Man-alive</i>), +suddenly breaking off the thread of his +discourse, "not only because I know that it is the +absolute truth, but because of the highly entertaining +way in which it is bound to be misinterpreted.</p> + +<p>"New York's dramatic critics, the Lord Chamberlain +of England, the military authorities of +Germany and Great Britain—all these people were +charmingly unanimous in finding <i>The Terrible +Meek</i> blasphemous, villainous, poisonous. Even +the New York MacDowell Club, after two stormy +debates, decided to omit all mention of <i>The Terrible +Meek</i> from its bulletin. Perhaps this was +not entirely because the play was 'sacrilegious'; +the club may possibly have been influenced by the +fact that its author was a loud person with long +hair, who told unpleasant truths in reputable +gatherings. And copies of the published book of +the play, which were accompanied by friendly letters +from the author, were refused by every monarch +now at war in Europe!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span></p> + +<p>"But in 1914 and 1915 <i>The Terrible Meek</i> suddenly +found, to its own amazement, that it had +become a respectable play! Its connection with +the present war became evident. It has been the +subject of countless leading articles; it has been +read, and even acted, in thousands of churches. +On the occasion of the first production of the +despised play in New York City, my wife and I +received a small pot of roses from a girls' school +which we sometimes visit. In due time this was +planted by the porch of our summer home in +Connecticut. This year—three years only after +its planting—the rose-tree covers three-quarters +of the big porch, and last summer it bore thousands +of blooms. Now these things are a parable!</p> + +<p>"No, the Lord does not have to wait until the +beginnings of mighty wars for them vitally to influence +the literature of the world. Upon some +of us He places the burden of the coming horror +years before.</p> + +<p>"Although I am and always have been violently +opposed to war, I cannot help observing what this +war has already commenced to do for literature. +It is killing Supermanism—and I purposely call +it by that name to distinguish it from the mere +actual doctrine that Nietzsche may or may not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span> +have taught. The damnable heresy, as it historically +happened among us, was already beginning +to influence very badly most of our young +writers. Clever devilism caught the trick of it +too easily. Now, heresy is sin always and everywhere; +and this heresy was a particularly black +and deadly kind of sin. It ate into the very heart +of our life.</p> + +<p>"And yet there was a reason, almost an excuse, +for the power which the Superman idea got over +the minds of writers after Bernard Shaw's first +brilliant and engaging popularization of it. And +the excuse is that Supermanism, with its emphasis +on strength and courage and life, was to a great +extent a healthy and almost inevitable reaction +from the maudlin milk-and-water sort of theology +and morals that had been apologetically +handed out to us by weak-kneed religious teachers.</p> + +<p>"We had too much of the 'gentle Jesus' of the +Sunday-school. In our maze of evil Protestantisms, +we had lost sight of the real Son of God +who is Jesus Christ. We had lost the terrible and +lovely doctrine of the wrath of the Lamb.</p> + +<p>"And so a great many writers turned to Supermanism +with a shout of relief. They were sick +of milk and water, and this seemed to be strong<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span> +wine. But Supermanism is heresy, and it rapidly +spread over the world, most perniciously influencing +all intellectual life.</p> + +<p>"And there were so many things to help Supermanism! +There was the general acceptance of +the doctrine of biological necessity as an argument +for war—Bernhardi actually used that +phrase, I believe—the idea that affairs of the +spirit are determined exteriorly. There was the +acceptance of various extraordinary interpretations +of Darwin's theory of evolution! Every little +man called himself a scientist, and took his own +little potterings-about very seriously. Everything +had to be a matter of observation, these little +fellows said; they would believe only what they +saw. They didn't know that real scientists always +begin <i>a priori</i>, that real scientists always +know the truth first and then set about to prove it.</p> + +<p>"Well, all these people helped the heresy of +Supermanism along. But the people who helped +it along chiefly were the apologetic Christians, +who should have combated it with fire and sword. +It was helped along by the sort of Christian who +calls himself 'liberal' and 'progressive,' the sort +of Christian who says, 'Of course, I'm not orthodox.' +When any one says that to me, I always answer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span> +him in the chaste little way which so endears me +to my day and generation: 'Hell, aren't you? I +hope I am!'</p> + +<p>"This sort of so-called Christian helps Supermanism +in two ways. In the first place, the +'progressive' Christians are great connoisseurs of +heresy, they simply love any new sort of blasphemous +philosophy, whether it comes from Germany +or Upper Tooting. They love to try to +assimilate all the new mad and wicked ideas, and +graft them on Christianity. I suppose it's their +idea of making the Lord Jesus Christ up to date +and attractive. They love to try to engrave +pretty patterns on the Rock of Ages. And +Supermanism was to them a new and alluring +pattern.</p> + +<p>"Of course a Supermanism might be worked +out on strictly Christian lines, the Superman in +that case being the Christ. But that is not the +way in which the theory has historically worked +out. No! Mr. Superman as we've actually +known him in the world recently is the Beast that +was taken, and with him the false prophets that +wrought miracles before him, with which he had +deceived them that had received the mark of the +Beast and them that had worshiped his image.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span> +And these, in the terrible symbolism of St. John, +you will remember, got fire and brimstone for +their pains! As now!</p> + +<p>"Then there was your Christian Supermanism +that tried to get up a weak little imitation of the +wrath of the Lamb. This was your bastard by +theatricality and popularity out of so-called muscular +Christianity. Not the virile 'muscular +Christianity' of Charles Kingsley, mind you—a +power he won almost alone, by blood and tears; +but the 'safe' thing of the after generation, the +'all things to all men'—when success was well assured. +This is your baseball Christianity, the +Christianity of the 'punch,' of the piled-up heap +of dollars, of the commercially counted 'conversions' +and the rest of the blasphemies! Christ +deliver us from it, if needs be, even by fire!</p> + +<p>"Well, Supermanism cast its shadow over all +forms of literary expression. The big and the little +mockers all fell under its spell—they had their +fling at Christianity in their novels, their plays, +their poems. In the novel Supermanism was evident +not so much in direct attacks on Christianity +as in a brutal and pitiless realism. Perhaps some +of this hard realism was a natural reaction from +the eye-piping sentimentality of some of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span> +Victorian writers. But most of it was merely +Supermanism in fiction—pessimism, egotism, fatalism, +cruelty.</p> + +<p>"One thing to be said for the Christian Scientists, +the Mental Healers, the New Thought people +generally, is that they did a real service through +all this bad time by refusing to recognize any +such heresy as biological determination as applied +to things spiritual. They really did teach man's +freedom up there in the heavens where he properly +belongs. They refused to be bound by the earth, +and all the appearances and the exterior causes +thereof. Their Superman, if they ever used the +phrase, was at least the Healer, the spirit spent +for others, not for self.</p> + +<p>"If you were to ask me what were the war's +most conspicuous effects on literature just at +present, I would say conviction of sin, repentance +and turning to God. There can be no suggestion +of Supermanism in our literature now. We have +rediscovered the Christian Virtues. If a man +writes something about blond-beasting through +the world for his own good, all we have to do is +to stick up in front of his eyes a crucifix. For +the world has seen courage and self-abnegation +of the kind that Christ taught—it has seen men<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span> +throw their lives away. The war has shown the +world that the man who will throw away his life +is braver and stronger and greater than the man +who plunges forward to safety over the lives of +others. The world has learned that he who loses +his life shall gain it.</p> + +<p>"The war has thrown a clear light upon Christianity, +and now all the little apologetic 'progressive' +Christians see that the world had never +reacted against orthodox Christianity as such, but +only against the bowelless unbelief which masqueraded +as Christianity. We have had so many +ministers who talked about Christ as they would +have talked about kippered herrings—even with +less enthusiasm. But now any one who speaks +or writes about Christianity after this will have +to know that he has to do with something terribly +real.</p> + +<p>"Of course, during the war the only people who +can write about it are those who are in the red-hot +period of youth. Young men of genius write +in times of stress. The war forces genius to +flower prematurely—that is how we got the noble +sonnets of Rupert Brooke.</p> + +<p>"And after the war will come to the making of +literature the man who has conquered pain and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span> +agony. And that is the real Superman, the +Christian Superman, the Superman who has always +been the normal ideal of the world. Carlyle's +Superman was nearer the truth than was Nietzsche's, +for Carlyle's Superman idea was grounded +in courage and sacrifice and love; his Superman +was some one worth fighting for and dying for. +And the war is showing us that this is the true +Superman, if we want to save the world for +nobler ends.</p> + +<p>"And the war, I believe, will do away with the +tommy-rotten objection to 'message' in literature. +Don't misunderstand me. Of course, we all object +to the stupid 'story with a purpose' in the +Sunday-school sense of that phrase. We don't +want literature used as a sugar-coating around the +illuminating lesson that God loves little Willie +because he fed the dicky-birds and didn't say +'damn'! Yet we want literature to awake again +and be as always in the great days—a message. +Literature must be a direct message from the heart +of the author to the heart of the world. The +<i>Prometheus Vinctus</i> was such a message. So also +the <i>Antigone</i>. All Greek drama was.</p> + +<p>"All the little literary and artistic cults are +dead or dying. The idea of literature as a thing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span> +distinct from life is dead. Writers can never again +think of themselves as a race separate from the +rest of humanity. All the artificial Bohemias +have been destroyed, and can never again exist; +for now at last the new world is about to dawn. +Christ is coming.</p> + +<p>"And yet this war has made evident the importance +of literature. It has made words real +again. It has shown that men cannot live forever +on a lie, written or spoken. God has come +upon us like a thief in the night, and He has +judged by our words. Some of us He has turned +to madness and the vain babblings of heathendom. +I am no wild chauvinist; though a man, +English-born, it gives me no joy to speak of Germans +as Huns, and to heap up hate and indignation +against them. Nor in my wildest flights of +romanticism can I dream that an England yet +possessing Lord Northcliffe and the present +Government can be all that God might call delightful. +Mr. Superman has invaded England +right enough, that I sadly know; and Prussianism +is not all in Potsdam.</p> + +<p>"Yet it is significant, in view of the Superman's +birthplace, in view of the fact that the German +people have very largely accepted his doctrine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span> +and ideal, that the men who stand for speech +among them, in their public manifestoes have been +delivered over unto confusion and a lie. The +logician has been illogical, the literary artist rendered +without form and void. Their very craft +has turned to impotence and self-destruction. I +repeat, this is no happiness to me. Rather, I +think of the Germany I have loved, and I weep +for the pity of it all. I am no friend of kings and +kaisers and bankers and grocers and titled newspaper +editors, that I should make their bloodiness +mine. But I cannot help but see the sign of God +written across the heavens in words of living fire.</p> + +<p>"As I said in <i>The Terrible Meek</i>: 'There is +great power in words. All the things that ever +get done in the world, good or bad, are done by +words.'</p> + +<p>"What we'll have to rediscover is that literature, +like life, begins with the utterance of a +word. And until people realize once again that +a word is no mere dead thing buried in a dictionary, +but the actual, awful, wonderful Life of God +Himself, we shall neither have nor deserve to +have a literature!"</p> + + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>THE MASQUE AND DEMOCRACY</i></h2> + +<h4>PERCY MACKAYE</h4> + +<p>The community masque, <i>Caliban by the Yellow +Sands</i>, is primarily intended to honor +the memory of Shakespeare on the three-hundredth +anniversary of his death. But its significance +goes further than the purpose of commemoration. +Mr. Percy MacKaye, the author, +tells me that he sees his masque as part of a +movement which shall bring poetry to the service +of the entire community, which shall make poetry +democratic, in the best sense of the word, and +that the result of this movement will be to create +conditions likely to produce out of the soil of +America a great renascence of the drama.</p> + +<p>Mr. MacKaye undoubtedly is the busiest poet +in the United States of America. When he +talked to me about the significance of the community +masque, rehearsals of the various groups +that are to take part in it were going on all over<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span> +the city. Every few minutes he was called away +to confer with some of the directors of the masque, +or some of the actors taking part in it. For a +while Mr. John Drew was with us, talking of his +appearance, in the character of Shakespeare, in +epilogue. Mr. Robert Edmund Jones, the designer +of the inner scenes, brought over some new +drawings, and there were telephone conversations +about music and costumes and other important +details of the monster production.</p> + +<p>"The fact," said Mr. MacKaye, "that the +masque is a poem primarily intended to be heard +rather than to be read, is itself a movement toward +the earlier and more democratic uses of poetry. +Poetry appeals essentially to the ear, and +is an art of the spoken word, yet, on account of +our conditions of life, the written word is considered +poetry.</p> + +<p>"This was not true in Shakespeare's time. And +in the sort of work that I am doing is shown a +return to the old ideal. A masque is a poem that +can be visualized and acted. First of all it must +be a poem, otherwise it cannot be anything but +a more or less warped work of art.</p> + +<p>"With much of the new movement in the theater +I am heartily in sympathy; but the movement<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span> +seems to me one-sided. A large part of it has to +do with visualization. Emphasis is laid on the +appeal to the eye rather than the appeal to the +ear, because the men of genius, like Gordon Craig, +who have been leaders in the movement, have been +interested in that phase of dramatic presentation.</p> + +<p>"Now I think that this one-sidedness is regrettable. +When Gordon Craig called his book +on dramatic visualization <i>The Art of the Theater</i> +he was wrong. He should have called it 'An Art +of the Theater.'</p> + +<p>"These men have neglected part of the human +soul. They have forgotten that the greatest part +of the appeal of a drama is to the ear. The ear +brings up the most subtle of all life's associations +and connotations. By means of the ear the motions +and ideas are conjured up in the mind of +the audience.</p> + +<p>"Now, while the new movement in the theater +is visual in character, the new movement in poetry +is, so to speak, audible. The American poets are +insisting more and more on the importance of the +spoken word in poetry, as distinct from its shadow +on the printed page. Whether they write <i>vers +libre</i> or the usual rhymed forms, they appreciate +the fact that they must write poems that will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span> +be effective when read aloud. Surely this is a +wholesome movement, likely to tend more and +more toward definite dramatic expression on the +part of the poets, whether to audiences through +actors on the stage, or to audiences gathered to +hear the direct utterances of the poets themselves.</p> + +<p>"This being so, the stage tending more toward +visualization, and poetry tending more and +more toward the spoken word, where shall we +look for the co-ordinating development? I think +that we shall find it in the community masque. +The community masque draws out of the unlabored +and untrammeled resources of our national +life its inspiration and its theme. It requires our +young poets to get closely in touch with our +national life, with our history and with contemporary +attitudes and ideals. To do this it is first +of all necessary to have the poetic vision. The +great need of the day is of the poet trained in the +art of the theater.</p> + +<p>"The pageant and the masque offer the ideal +conditions for the rendering of poetry. The poet +who writes the lyric may or may not ordinarily +be the one to speak it. In the masque the one +who speaks the poem is the one chosen to do so +because of his special fitness for the task. I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span> +chosen my actors for the Shakespeare masque with +special reference to their ability to speak poetry."</p> + +<p>"But what has this to do," I asked, "with +making poetry more democratic?"</p> + +<p>"For one thing," Mr. MacKaye answered, "it +gives the poet a larger audience. People who +never read poetry will listen to poetry when it is +presented to them in dramatic form. I have +found that the result of the presentation of a +community masque is to interest in poetry a large +number of people who had hitherto been deaf to +its appeal. In St. Louis, when I started a masque, +that queer word with a 'q' in it was understood by +a comparatively small number. But after the +masque was produced nearly every high-school +boy and girl in the town was writing masques.</p> + +<p>"No one can observe the progress of the community +masque without seeing that it is surely +a most democratic art form. I read my St. Louis +masque before assemblies of ministers, in negro +high schools, before clubs of advertising-men, at +I. W. W. meetings—before men of all conditions +of life and shades of opinion. It afforded them +a sort of spiritual and intellectual meeting-place, it +gave them a common interest. Surely that is a +democratic function.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span></p> + +<p>"The democracy of the masque was forcefully +brought to my attention again at the recent dinner +by Otto Kahn to the Mayor's Honorary Committee +for the New York Shakespeare Celebration. +After James M. Beck had made a speech, +Morris Hillquit, also a member of the committee, +arose and addressed the company. He pointed +out more clearly than I have heard it done before +that in this cause extremes of opinion met, that +art was producing practical democracy.</p> + +<p>"And yet," said Mr. MacKaye, hastily, "the +masque stands for the democracy of excellence, +not the democracy of mediocrity. What is art +but self-government, the harmonizing of the elements +of the mind? There can be no art where +there is no discipline, there can be no art where +there is not a high standard of excellence.</p> + +<p>"As I said," he continued, "the original appeal +of poetry was to the ear as well as to the eye. In +the days when poetry was a more democratic art +than it has been in our time and that of our +fathers, the poet spoke his poems to a circle of +enthralled listeners. The masque is spoken +through many mouths, but it might be spoken or +chanted by the bard himself.</p> + +<p>"There has never before been so great an opportunity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span> +for the revival of the poetic drama. +Ordinarily when a poetic drama is presented the +cast has been drawn from actors trained in the +rendition of prose. Inevitably the tendency has +been for them to give a prose value to the lines +of poetry. In selecting a cast for a masque, +special attention is given to the ability of the +actors to speak poetry, so the poem is presented +as the poet intended.</p> + +<p>"It may be that the pageant and masque movement +represents the full flowering of the renascence +of poetry which all observers of intellectual +events have recognized. But these movements +are perennial; I do not like to think of a renascence +of poetry because I do not think that poetry +has been dead. I feel that it is desirable for the +poets to become aware of the opportunities presented +to them by the masque, the opportunities +to combine the art of poetry with the art of the +theater, and thus put poetry at the service of +mankind.</p> + +<p>"I have felt that the Poetry Society of America, +an organization whose activities certainly are +stimulating and encouraging to every friend of +the art, might serve poetry better if its members +were to place more emphasis on creation and less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span> +on criticism. At their meetings now criticism is +the dominant note. Poems written by the members +are read aloud and criticized from the floor. +This is excellent, in its place, but its effect is to +lay stress on the critical function of the poet, +which, after all, is not his main function. What +the members of the Poetry Society should do is +to seek co-operatively to create something. And +for this the masque offers them a golden opportunity.</p> + +<p>"The flowering of poetry is a thing of infinite +variety. There must be variety in a masque if +the masque is to continue to be a worthy and +popular art form. Standardization would be +fatal to the masque, and I have stood out against +it with all the power I possess. The masque and +the pageant must not degenerate into traveling +shows, done according to a fixed receipt. There +must be the vision in it, and when the people see +the vision they respond marvelously."</p> + +<p>Percy MacKaye is the son of Steele MacKaye, +the author of <i>Hazel Kirke</i> and other popular +plays. From the very beginning of his literary +career his chief ambition has seemed to be to +bring about a closer <i>rapprochement</i> between +poetry and the drama.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span></p> + +<p>When Mr. MacKaye was graduated from Harvard, +in 1897, there were in that university no +courses, technical or otherwise, in the modern +drama. The official acceptance of his own commencement +part <i>On the Need of Imagination in +the Drama of To-day</i> was the first official sanction +of the subject, which was commented upon +by the <i>Boston Transcript</i> as something unprecedented +in the annals of university discussion, especially +of Harvard. It was not until seven or +eight years had passed that Prof. George P. Baker +began his courses in dramatic technique.</p> + +<p>The development of the pageant and the masque +has been for years the object of Mr. MacKaye's +tireless endeavors. He has spoken of the masque +as "the potential drama of democracy." Two +years ago in St. Louis he had his first technical +opportunity on a large scale to experiment in devising +this sort of communal entertainment. +There, during five performances, witnessed by +half a million people, some seven thousand citizens +of St. Louis took part in his masque, in association +with the pageant by Thomas Wood +Stevens.</p> + +<p>"The outgoing cost of the St. Louis production," +said Mr. MacKaye, "was $122,000; the income,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span> +$139,000. The balance of $17,000 has been +devoted to a fund for civic art. If these seem +large sums, we must look back to the days of the +classic Greek drama and remember that the cost +of producing a single play by Sophocles at Athens +was $500,000.</p> + +<p>"The St. Louis production was truly a drama +of, for, and by the people, a true community +masque. <i>Caliban by the Yellow Sands</i> is a community +masque, given as the central popular +expression of some hundreds of supplementary +Shakespearian celebrations.</p> + +<p>"I call this work a masque, because it is a +dramatic work of symbolism, involving in its +structure pageantry, poetry, and the dance. But +I have not thought to relate its structure to a +historic form; I have simply sought by its structure +to solve a problem of the art of the theater. +That problem is the new one of creating a focus of +dramatic technique for the growing but groping +movement vaguely called 'pageantry,' which is +itself a vital sign of social evolution—the half-desire +of the people not merely to remain receptive +to a popular art created by specialists, but +to take part themselves in creating it; the desire,—that +is, of democracy consistently to seek expression<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span> +through a drama of and by the people, +not merely for the people.</p> + +<p>"Six years ago, after the pageant-masque of +the city of Gloucester, Massachusetts, I wrote, in +<i>Scribner's Magazine</i>, an article in which I said that +I found in the three American pageant-masques +which I had seen recently, the Gloucester Pageant, +the Masque at Aspet, and the California Redwood +Festival, the expression of community spirit +focused by co-operating artists in dramatic form. +I said then, what I feel even more strongly after +my work with the St. Louis Pageant and the +Shakespearian Masque, that pageantry is poetry +for the masses.</p> + +<p>"The parade of Election Day, the processions +of Antics and Horribles on the Fourth of July +and Thanksgiving Day, the May-Queen rituals of +children—these make an elemental appeal to +every one. What is this elemental appeal? Is it +not the appeal of symbolism, the expression of +life's meanings in sensuous form? Crude though +it may be, pageantry satisfies an elemental instinct +for art, a popular demand for poetry. This +instinct and this demand, like other human instincts +and demands, may be educated, refined, +developed into a mighty agency of civilization.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span> +Refinement of this deep, popular instinct will result +from a rational selection in correlation of the +elements of pageantry. Painting, dancing, music, +and sculpture (the last as applied to classic +groupings) are appropriately the special arts for +selecting those elements, and drama is the special +art of correlating them.</p> + +<p>"The form of pageantry most popular and impressive +in appeal as a fine art is that of the +dramatic pageant, or masque. It is not limited +to historic themes. All vital modern forces and +institutions of our nation might appropriately find +symbolic expression in the masque.</p> + +<p>"And in this would be seen the making of art +democratic. Thus would the art of poetry and +the art of the drama be put at the service of mankind. +Artistic gifts, which now are individualized +and dispersed, would be organized to express the +labors and aspirations of communities, reviving, +for the noblest humanism of our own times, the +traditions of Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Jonson, and +Inigo Jones. The development of the art of +public masques, dedicated to civic education, +would do more than any other agency to provide +popular symbolic form and tradition for the stuff +of a noble national drama. The present theaters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span> +cannot develop a public art, since they are dedicated +to a private speculative business. The association +of artists and civic leaders in the organization +of public masques would tend gradually +to establish a civic theater, owned by the people +and conducted by artists, in every city of the +nation.</p> + +<p>"I expressed these ideas," said Mr. MacKaye, +"some years ago, before the pageant movement +had reached its present pitch of popularity. All +my experiences since that time have given me a +firmer conviction that the masque is the drama +of democracy, and I believe that the chief value +of the Shakespearian masque is as a step forward +in the progress of the co-operative dramatic and +poetic expression of the people.</p> + +<p>"<i>Caliban by the Yellow Sands</i> will be given at +the City College Stadium May 23d, 24th, 25th, +26th, and 27th. After its New York performance +it will be available for production elsewhere on a +modified scale of stage performance. After June +1st it is planned that a professional company, +which will co-operate with the local communities, +will take the masque on tour.</p> + +<p>"The subtitle of <i>Caliban by the Yellow Sands</i> is +<i>A Community Masque of the Art of the Theater</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span> +<i>Devised and Written to Commemorate the Tercentenary +of the Death of Shakespeare</i>. The dramatic-symbolic +motive of the masque I have taken from +Scene 2 of Act I of <i>The Tempest</i>, where Prospero +says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">It was mine art<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The pine and let thee out.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"The art of Prospero I have conceived as the +art of Shakespeare in its universal scope—that +many-visioned art of the theater, which age after +age has come to liberate the imprisoned imagination +of mankind from the fetters of brute force and +ignorance; that same art which, being usurped +or stifled by groping part-knowledge, prudery, or +lust, has been botched in its ideal aims, and has +wrought havoc, hypocrisy, and decadence. Caliban +is in this masque that passionate child-curious +part of us all, groveling close to his origin, yet +groping up toward that serener plane of pity and +love, reason, and disciplined will, on which +Miranda and Prospero commune with Ariel and +his spirits.</p> + +<p>"The theme of the masque—Caliban seeking to +learn the art of Prospero—is, of course, the slow +education of mankind through the influences of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span> +co-operative art—that is, of the art of the theater +in its full social scope. This theme of co-operation +is expressed earliest in the masque through +the lyric of Ariel's Spirits taken from <i>The Tempest</i>; +it is sounded, with central stress, in the +chorus of peace when the kings clasp hands on +the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and, with final +emphasis, in the gathering together of the creative +forces of dramatic art in the Epilogue.</p> + +<p>"So I have tried to make the masque bring +that message of co-operation which I think all +true art should bring. And the masque is the +form which seems to me destined to bring about +this desired co-operation, to bring back, perhaps, +the conditions which existed in the spacious days +of the great Greek drama. The growth in popularity +of masques and pageants is preparing the +way for a new race of poet dramatists, of poets +who will use their knowledge of the art of the +theater to interpret the people to themselves. +And out of this new artistic democracy will come, +let us hope, our new national poetry and our new +national drama."</p> + + + +<p class="center">THE END +</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> +<h2>Transcriber's Notes</h2> + +<p>The duplicate book title and chapter titles have been removed. Also the +following misprints have been corrected:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p>TOC: put in "Tippecanoe" without a hyphen (in "Tippecanoe County, +Indiana")</p> + +<p>TOC: "Mackaye" changed to "MacKaye", as in all other instances ("Percy +Mackaye was born in New York City...")</p> + +<p>p. 56: "countinent" changed to "continent" ("Yet in their time these men +set the whole countinent in a roar.")</p> + +<p>p. 75: period is added after the middle initial W (ROBERT W. CHAMBERS)</p> + +<p>p. 78: period is added the following sentence: The most imaginative and +fantastic romances must have their basis in real life.</p> + +<p>p. 107: put in "dive-keeper" with a hyphen (no other instance in the +text)</p> + +<p>p. 112: put in "soulless" without a hyphen (no other instances in the +text)</p> + +<p>p. 178: opening double quote changed to single quote ('If ye had not +plowed with my heifer....)</p> + +<p>p. 218: put in "catch-words" with a hyphen (no other instances in the +text)</p> + +<p>p. 243: put in "motion-picture" with a hyphen (no other instances in the +text)</p> + +<p>p. 247: put in "off-hand" with a hyphen ("I can think off-hand of quite +a group of writers....")</p> + +<p>p. 283: put in "Dooryards" without a hyphen ("When Lilacs Last in +Dooryards Bloomed")</p> + +<p>p. 293: put in "everywhere" without a hyphen ("heresy is sin always and +everywhere;")</p> + +<p>p. 294: "Of couse" changed to "Of course" ("Of course, I'm not +orthodox.")</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literature in the Making, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERATURE IN THE MAKING *** + +***** This file should be named 34313-h.htm or 34313-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/3/1/34313/ + +Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Suzanne Shell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Literature in the Making + by some of its makers + +Author: Various + +Editor: Joyce Kilmer + +Release Date: November 13, 2010 [EBook #34313] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERATURE IN THE MAKING *** + + + + +Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Suzanne Shell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + + + + + + + + + LITERATURE IN THE MAKING + BY + SOME OF ITS MAKERS + + PRESENTED BY + JOYCE KILMER + + [Illustration] + + HARPER & BROTHERS + NEW YORK AND LONDON + + + + + Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers + Printed in the United States of America + Published April, 1917 + + + + + TO + LOUIS BEVIER, PH.D., LITT.D. + AND + LOUIS BEVIER, JR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +_WAR STOPS LITERATURE_ 3 + + WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS + + William Dean Howells, the foremost American novelist of + his generation, was born at Martin's Ferry, Ohio, March + 11, 1837. Most of his many novels have been realistic + and sympathetic studies of contemporary American life. + For some years he has written "The Editor's Easy Chair" + in _Harper's Magazine_. He has received honorary + degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford, and Columbia, and + in 1915 the National Institute of Arts and Letters + awarded him its Gold Medal "For distinguished work in + fiction." _The Daughter of the Storage_ and _Years of + My Youth_ are his latest books. + + +_THE JOYS OF THE POOR_ 19 + + KATHLEEN NORRIS + + Kathleen Norris was born in San Francisco, California, + July 16, 1880. She is the wife of Charles Gilman + Norris, himself a writer and the brother of the late + Frank Norris. Among Mrs. Norris's best-known novels are + _Mother_, _The Story of Julia Page_, and _The Heart of + Rachel_. + + +_NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART_ 35 + + BOOTH TARKINGTON + + Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, + July 29, 1869. A prolific and brilliant writer, he has + scored many successes of different types, being the + author of the romantic drama _Monsieur Beaucaire_, and + of many novels dealing with contemporary Middle-Western + life. Recently he has, in _Seventeen_ and the "Penrod" + stories, given his attention to the comedies and + tragedies of American youth. + + +_ROMANTICISM AND AMERICAN HUMOR_ 45 + + MONTAGUE GLASS + + Montague Glass was born at Manchester, England, July + 23, 1877. Coming in his youth to the United States, he + brought into American fiction a new type--that of the + metropolitan Jewish-American business man. His _Potash + and Perlmutter_ and _Abe and Mawruss_ have given him a + European as well as an American reputation. + + +_THE "MOVIES" BENEFIT LITERATURE_ 63 + + REX BEACH + + Rex Beach was born at Atwood, Michigan, September 1, + 1877. His novels deal chiefly with the West and the + North, and his favorite theme is adventurous life in + the open. Among his best-known books are _The + Spoilers_, _The Silver Horde_, and _Rainbow's End_. + + +_WHAT IS GENIUS?_ 75 + + ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + Robert W. Chambers was born in Brooklyn, New York, May + 26, 1865. One of the most widely read writers of his + time, he has given his attention chiefly to English and + American society, making it the theme of a large number + of novels, among which may be mentioned _The Fighting + Chance_, _Japonette_, and _Athalie_. + + +_DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY_ 89 + + JAMES LANE ALLEN + + James Lane Allen was born near Lexington, Kentucky, in + 1849. In 1886 he gave up his profession of teaching to + devote his attention to literature. Many of his novels + deal with the South. Of them perhaps _The Kentucky + Cardinal_ and _The Choir Invisible_ are best known. + + +_SOME HARMFUL INFLUENCES_ 101 + + HARRY LEON WILSON + + Harry Leon Wilson was born in Oregon, Illinois, May 1, + 1867. He was co-author with Booth Tarkington of _The + Man from Home_, and his _Bunker Bean_ and _Ruggles of + Red Gap_ have given him a great reputation for + irresistible and peculiarly American humor. + + +_THE PASSING OF THE SNOB_ 119 + + EDWARD S. MARTIN + + Edward Sandford Martin was born in Willowbrook, Owasco, + New York, January 2, 1856. His keen yet sympathetic + observation of modern life finds expression in essays, + many of which have been used editorially in Life. + Several volumes of his essays have been published, + among which may be mentioned _The Luxury of Children, + and Some Other Luxuries_ and _Reflections of a + Beginning Husband_. + + +_COMMERCIALIZING THE SEX INSTINCT_ 131 + + ROBERT HERRICK + + Robert Herrick was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, + April 26, 1868. He has been until recently a professor + at the University of Chicago. He is a critic and a + writer of realistic novels. _The Web of Life_, _The + Common Lot_, _Together_, and _Clark's Field_ are novels + that show Mr. Herrick's questioning attitude toward + some modern social institutions. + + +_SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS_ 145 + + ARTHUR GUITERMAN + + Arthur Guiterman was born of American parents in + Vienna, Austria, November 28, 1871. He is a writer of + deft and humorous light verse, of which a volume was + recently published under the title _The Laughing Muse_. + He contributes a weekly rhymed review to _Life_. + + +_MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION_ 157 + + GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON + + George Barr McCutcheon was born on a farm in Tippecanoe + County, Indiana, July 26, 1866. He is a short-story + writer and novelist, devoting himself chiefly to tales + of adventure. _Beverley of Graustark_ and the volumes + that succeeded it have gained him many admirers among + lovers of romance. + + +_BUSINESS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ART_ 169 + + FRANK H. SPEARMAN + + Frank H. Spearman was born at Buffalo, New York, + September 6, 1859. He is known both as a short-story + writer and a writer of articles on economic topics. His + novels are founded chiefly on themes dealing with the + great industrial enterprises of the West, especially + the railroads. The best known of these are _The + Daughter of a Magnate_ and _The Strategy of Great + Railroads_. + + +_THE NOVEL MUST GO_ 187 + + WILL N. HARBEN + + Will N. Harben, who was born in Dalton, Georgia, July + 5, 1858, began his career in business in the South. His + entrance into literature began with the assistant + editorship of the _Youth's Companion_. He had gained a + distinctive place as an interpreter of phases of + Southern life in the company which includes Cable, + Harris, and Johnston. His novels include _Pole Baker_, + _Ann Boyd_, _Second Choice_, and many others. + + +_LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGES_ 199 + + JOHN ERSKINE + + John Erskine was born in New York City, October 5, + 1879. He is Adjunct Professor of English at Columbia + University, the author of many text-books and critical + works, of _Actaeon and Other Poems_ and of _The Moral + Obligation to be Intelligent and Other Essays_. + + +_CITY LIFE VERSUS LITERATURE_ 213 + + JOHN BURROUGHS + + John Burroughs was born in Roxbury, New York, April 3, + 1837. He taught school in his early years, and held for + a time a clerkship in the United States Treasury. Since + 1874 he has devoted himself to literature and fruit + culture. Among his well-known "Nature" books may be + noted _Wake Robin_, _Bird and Bough_, and _Camping and + Tramping with Roosevelt_. + + +_"EVASIVE IDEALISM" IN LITERATURE_ 229 + + ELLEN GLASGOW + + Ellen Glasgow was born in Richmond, Virginia, April 22, + 1874. Her novels, among which may be mentioned _The + Voice of the People_, _The Romance of a Plain Man_, and + _Life and Gabriella_, deal chiefly with social and + psychological problems, and their scenes are for the + most part in the southern part of the United States. + + +_"CHOCOLATE FUDGE" IN THE MAGAZINE_ 241 + + FANNIE HURST + + Fannie Hurst was born in St. Louis, October 19, 1889. + She has served as a saleswoman and as a waitress and + crossed the Atlantic in the steerage to get material + for her short stories of the life of the working-woman, + selections of which have been published with the titles + _Just Around the Corner_ and _Every Soul Hath Its + Song_. + + +_THE NEW SPIRIT IN POETRY_ 253 + + AMY LOWELL + + Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, + February 9, 1874. She is prominently identified with + _vers libre_, _imagisme_, and other ultra-modern poetic + tendencies. She has published a volume of essays on + modern French poetry and three books of poems, of + which _Men, Women, and Ghosts_ is the most recent. + + +_A NEW DEFINITION OF POETRY_ 265 + + EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON + + Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine, + December 22, 1869. He has written plays, but is chiefly + known for his poems, most of them studies of character. + His most recent volume is _Merlin: A Poem_. + + +_LET POETRY BE FREE_ 277 + + JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY + + Josephine Preston Peabody was born in New York City. + She won the Stratford-on-Avon Prize for her poetic + drama _The Piper_. She has published many books of + verse, one of which, called _Harvest Moon_, deals + chiefly with woman's tragic share in the Great War. She + is the wife of Prof. Lionel Simeon Marks of Harvard. + + +_THE HERESY OF SUPERMANISM_ 289 + + CHARLES RANN KENNEDY + + Charles Rann Kennedy was born at Derby, England, + February 14, 1871. His plays, dealing with social and + religious questions, include _The Servant in the + House_, _The Terrible Meek_, _The Idol-Breakers_, and + _The Rib of the Man_, his latest work. + + +_THE MASQUE AND DEMOCRACY_ 305 + + PERCY MACKAYE + + Percy MacKaye was born in New York City, March 16, + 1875. He has written many poems and plays, and has been + especially identified with the production of community + pageants and masques, having written and directed the + St. Louis Civic Masque in 1914, and the Shakespeare + Masque in New York City in 1916. Among his published + works may be mentioned _The Scarecrow_, _Jeanne d'Arc_, + _Sappho and Phaon_ and _Anti-Matrimony_ (plays) and + _Uriel and Other Poems_. + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +This book is an effort to bridge the gulf between literary theory and +literary practice. In these days of specialization it is more than ever +true that the man who lectures and writes about the craft of writing +seldom has the time or the inclination to show, by actual work, that he +can apply his principles. On the other hand, the successful novelist, +poet, or playwright devotes himself to his craft and seldom attempts to +analyze and display the methods by which he obtains his effect, or even +to state his opinion on matters intellectual and aesthetic. + +Now, the professor of English and the literary critic are valuable +members of society, and the development of literature owes much to their +counsel and guardianship. But there is a special significance in the +opinion which the writer holds concerning his own trade, in the advice +which he bases upon his own experience, in the theory of life and art +which he has formulated for himself. + +Therefore I have spent considerable time in talking with some of the +most widely read authors of our day, and in obtaining from them frank +and informal statements of their points of view. I have purposely +refrained from confining myself to writers of any one school or type of +mind--the dean of American letters and the most advanced of our newest +poetical anarchists alike are represented in these pages. The authors +have talked freely, realizing that this was an opportunity to set forth +their views definitely and comprehensively. They have not the time to +write or lecture about their art, but they are willing to talk about it. + +They knew that through me they spoke, in the first place, to the great +army of readers of their books who have a natural and pleasing curiosity +concerning the personality of the men and women who devote their lives +to providing them with entertainment, and, in some cases, instruction. +They knew that through me they spoke, in the second place, to all the +literary apprentices of the country, who look eagerly for precept and +example to those who have won fame by the delightful labor of writing. +They knew that through me they spoke, in the third place, to critics and +students of literature of our own generation and, perhaps, of those that +shall come after us. How eagerly would we read, for instance, an +interview with Francis Bacon on the question of the authorship of +Shakespeare's plays, or an interview with Oliver Goldsmith in which he +gave his real opinion of Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and Boswell! A century or +so from now, some of the writers who in this book talk to the world may +be the objects of curiosity as great. + +The writers who have talked with me received me with courtesy, gave me +freely of their time and thought, and showed a sincere desire for the +furtherance of the purpose of this book. To them, accordingly, I tender +my gratitude for anything in these pages which the reader may find of +interest or of value. Their explanations of their literary creeds and +practices were furnished in the first instance for the _New York Times_, +to which I desire to express my acknowledgments. + + JOYCE KILMER. + + + + +LITERATURE IN THE MAKING + + + + +_WAR STOPS LITERATURE_ + +WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS + + +War stops literature. This is the belief of a man who for more than a +quarter of a century has been in the front rank of the world's +novelists, who wrote _The Rise of Silas Lapham_ and _A Modern Instance_ +and nearly a hundred other sympathetic interpretations of American life. + +Mr. William Dean Howells was the third writer to whom was put the +question, "What effect will the Great War have on literature?" And he +was the first to give a direct answer. + +A famous French dramatist replied: "I am not a prophet. I have enough to +do to understand the present and the past; I cannot concern myself with +the future." A famous English short-story writer said, "The war has +already inspired some splendid poetry; it may also inspire great plays +and novels, but, of course, we cannot tell as yet." + +But Mr. Howells said, quite simply, "War stops literature." He said it +as unemotionally as if he were stating a familiar axiom. + +He does not consider it an axiom, however, for he supplied proof. + +"I have never believed," he said, "that great events produced great +literature. They seldom call forth the great creative powers of man. In +poetry it is not the poems of occasion that endure, but the poems that +have come into being independently, not as the result of momentous +happenings. + +"This war does not furnish the poet, the novelist, and the dramatist +with the material of literature. For instance, the Germans, as every one +will admit, have shown extraordinary valor. But we do not think of +celebrating that valor in poetry; it does not thrill the modern writers +as such valor thrilled the writers of bygone centuries. When we think of +the valor of the Germans, our emotion is not admiration but pity. + +"And the reason for this is that fighting is no longer our ideal. +Fighting was not a great ideal, and therefore it is no longer our ideal. +All that old material of literature--the clashing of swords, the thunder +of shot and shell, the great clouds of smoke, the blood and fury--all +this has gone out from literature. It is an anachronism." + +"But the American Civil War produced literature, did it not?" I asked. + +"What great literature did it produce?" asked Mr. Howells in turn. "As I +look back over my life and recall to mind the great number of books that +the Civil War inspired I find that I am thinking of things that the +American people have forgotten. They did not become literature, these +poems and stories that came in such quantities and seemed so important +in the sixties. + +"There were the novels of J. W. De Forest, for instance. They were well +written, they were interesting, they described some phases of the Civil +War truthfully and vividly. We read them when they were written--but you +probably have never heard of them. No one reads them now. They were +literature, but that about which they were written has ceased to be of +literary interest. + +"Of course, the Civil War, because of its peculiar nature, was followed +by an expansion, intellectual as well as social and economic. And this +expansion undoubtedly had its beneficial effect on literature. But the +Civil War itself did not have, could not have, literary expression. + +"Of all the writings which the Civil War directly inspired I can think +of only one that has endured to be called literature. That is Lowell's +'Commemoration Ode.' + +"War stops literature. It is an upheaval of civilization, a return to +barbarism; it means death to all the arts. Even the preparation for war +stops literature. It stopped it in Germany years ago. A little anecdote +is significant. + +"I was in Florence about 1883, long after the Franco-Prussian War, and +there I met the editor of a great German literary weekly--I will not +tell you its name or his. He was a man of refinement and education, and +I have not forgotten his great kindness to my own fiction. One day I +asked him about the German novelists of the day. + +"He said: 'There are no longer any German novelists worthy of the name. +Our new ideal has stopped all that. Militarism is our new ideal--the +ideal of Duty--and it has killed our imagination. So the German novel is +dead.'" + +"Why is it, then," I asked, "that Russia, a nation of militaristic +ideals, has produced so many great novels during the past century?" + +"Russia is not Germany," answered the man who taught Americans to read +Turgenieff. "The people of Russia are not militaristic as the people of +Germany are militaristic. In Germany war has for a generation been the +chief idea of every one. The nation has had a militaristic obsession. +And this, naturally, has stifled the imagination. + +"But in Russia nothing of the sort has happened. Whatever the designs of +the ruling classes may be, the people of Russia keep their simplicity, +their large intellectuality and spirituality. And, therefore, their +imagination and other great intellectual and spiritual gifts find +expression in their great novels and plays. + +"I well remember how the Russian novelists impressed me when I was a +young man. They opened to me what seemed to be a new world--and it was +only the real world. There is Tcheckoff--have you read his _Orchard_? +What life, what color, what beauty of truth are in that book! + +"Then there is Turgenieff--how grateful I am for his books! It must be +thirty years since I first read him. Thomas Sargent Perry, of Boston, a +man of the greatest culture, was almost the first American to read +Turgenieff. Stedman read Turgenieff in those days, too. Soon all of the +younger writers were reading him. + +"I remember very well a dinner at Whitelaw Reid's house in Lexington +Avenue, when some of us young men were enthusiastic over the Russian +novel, and the author we mentioned most frequently was Turgenieff. + +"Dr. J. G. Holland, the poet who edited _The Century_, lived across the +street from Mr. Reid, and during the evening he came over and joined us. +He listened to us for a long time in silence, hardly speaking a word. +When he rose to go, he said: 'I have been listening to the conversation +of these young men for over an hour. They have been talking about books. +And I have never before heard the names of any of the authors they have +mentioned.'" + +"Were those the days," I asked, "in which you first read Tolstoy?" + +"That was long before the time," answered Mr. Howells. "Tolstoy +afterward meant everything to me--his philosophy as well as his +art--far more than Turgenieff. Tolstoy did not love all his writing. +He loved the thing that he wrote about, the thing that he lived and +taught--equality. And equality is the best thing in the world. It +is the thing for which the Best of Men lived and died. + +"I never met Tolstoy," said Mr. Howells. "But I once sent him a message +of appreciation after he had sent a message to me. Tolstoy was great in +the way he wrote as well as in what he wrote. Tolstoy's force is a moral +force. His great art is as simple as nature." + +"Do you think that the Russian novelists have influenced your work?" I +asked. + +"I think," Mr. Howells replied, "that I had determined what I was to do +before I read any Russian novels. I first thought that it was necessary +to write only about things that I knew had already been written about. +Certain things had already been in books; therefore, I thought, they +legitimately were literary subjects and I might write about them. + +"But soon I knew that this idea was wrong, that I must get my material, +not out of books, but out of life. And I also knew that it was not +necessary for me to look at life through English spectacles. Most of our +writers had been looking at life through English spectacles; they had +been closely following in the footsteps of English novelists. I saw +that around me were the materials for my work. I saw around me +life--wholesome, natural, human. + +"I saw a young, free, energetic society. I saw a society in which +love--the greatest and most beautiful thing in the world--was innocent; +a society in which the relation between man and woman was simple and +pure. Here, I thought, are the materials for novels. Why should I go +back to the people of bygone ages and of lands not my own?" + +"Do you think," I asked, "that romanticism has lost its hold on the +novelists?" + +Mr. Howells smiled. "When realism," he said, "is once in a novelist's +blood he never can degenerate into romanticism. Romanticism is no longer +a literary force among English-speaking authors. Romanticism belongs to +the days in which war was an aim, an ideal, instead of a tragic +accident. It is something foreign to us. And literature must be native +to the soil, affected, of course, by the culture of other lands and +ages, but essentially of the people of the land and time in which it is +produced. Realism is the material of democracy. And no great literature +or art can arise outside of the democracy." + +Tolstoy was mentioned again, and Mr. Howells was asked if he did not +think that the Russian novelist's custom of devoting a part of every day +to work that was not literary showed that all writers would be better +off if they were obliged to make a living in some other way than by +writing. Mr. Howells gave his answer with considerable vigor. His calm, +blue eyes lost something of their kindliness, and his lips were +compressed into a straight, thin line before he said: + +"I certainly do not think so. The artist in letters or in lines should +have leisure in which to perform his valuable service to society. The +history of literature is full of heartbreaking instances of writers +whose productive careers were retarded by their inability to earn a +living at their chosen profession. The belief that poverty helps a +writer is stupid and wrong. Necessity is not and never has been an +incentive. Poverty is not and never has been an incentive. Writers and +other creative artists are hindered, not helped, by lack of leisure. + +"I remember my own early experiences, and I know that my writing +suffered very much because I could not devote all my time to it. I had +to spend ten hours in drudgery for every two that I spent on my real +work. The fact that authors who have given the world things that it +treasures are forced to live in a state of anxiety over their finances +is lamentable. This anxiety cannot but have a restrictive influence on +literature. It is not want, but the fear of want, that kills." + +"Still, in spite of their precarious financial condition, modern authors +are doing good work, are they not?" I asked. + +"Certainly they are," answered Mr. Howells, "the novelists especially. +There is Robert Herrick, for example. His novels are interesting +stories, and they also are faithful reflections of American life. Will +Harben's work is admirable. It has splendid realism and fine humor. +Perhaps one thing that has kept it, so far, from an appreciation so +general as it will one day receive, is the fact that it deals, for the +most part, with one special locality, a certain part of Georgia. + +"And in Spain--what excellent novelists they have there and have had for +a long time! The realistic movement reached Spain long before it reached +England and the United States. In fact, English-speaking countries were +the last to accept it. I have taken great pleasure in the works of +Armando Valdes. Then there are Perez Galdos and Emilia Pardo Bazian, and +that priest who wrote a realistic novel about Madrid society. All these +novelists are realists, and realists of power. + +"Then there are the great Scandinavians. I hope that I may some time +attempt to express a little of my gratitude for the pleasure that +Bjoernson's works have given me." + +I asked, "What do you think of contemporary poetry?" + +"I admired chiefly that of Thomas Hardy," said Mr. Howells. "His poems +have force and actuality and music and charm. Masefield I like, with +reservations. Three modern poets who give me great pleasure are Thomas +Hardy, William Watson, and Charles Hanson Towne. The first one of Mr. +Towne's poems that I read was "Manhattan." I have not forgotten the +truth of that poetic interpretation of New York. His poems are beautiful +and they are full of humanity. In his latest book there is a poem called +'A Ballad of Shame and Dread' that moved me deeply. It is a slight +thing, but it is wonderfully powerful. Like all of Towne's poetry, it is +warm with human sympathy." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that the great social problems of the day, the +feminine unrest, for instance, are finding their expression in +literature?" + +"No," said Mr. Howells, "I cannot call to mind any adequate literary +expression of the woman movement. Perhaps this is because the women who +know most about it and feel it most strongly are not writers. The best +things that have been said about woman suffrage in our time have been +said by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She has written the noblest satire +since Lowell. What wit she has, and what courage! Once I heard her +address a meeting of Single-Taxers. Now, the Single-Taxers are all right +so far as they go, but they don't go far enough. The Single-Taxers +heckled her, but she had a retort ready for every interruption. She +stood there with her brave smile and talked them all down." + +"Do you think that Ibsen expressed the modern feminine unrest in _The +Doll's House_?" Mr. Howells was asked. + +"Ibsen seldom expressed things," was his reply. "He suggested them, +mooted them, but he did not express them. _The Doll's House_ does not +express the meaning of unrest, it suggests it. Ibsen told you where you +stood, not where to go." + +Mr. Howells had recently presided at a meeting which was addressed by +M. Brieux, and he expressed great admiration for the work of the French +dramatist. + +"He is a great dramatist," he said. "He has given faithful reports of +life, and faithful reports of life are necessarily criticisms of life. +All great novels are criticisms of life. And I think that the poets will +concern themselves more and more with the life around them. It is +possible that soon we may have an epic in which the poet deals with the +events of contemporary life." + +Mr. Howells is keenly awake to the effect which the war is having on +conditions in New York. And in his sympathy for the society which +inevitably must suffer for a war in which it is not directly concerned, +the active interest of the novelist was evident. "If all this only could +be reflected in a book!" he said. "If some novelist could interpret +it!" + + + + +_THE JOYS OF THE POOR_ + +KATHLEEN NORRIS + + +Any young woman who desires to become a famous novelist and short-story +writer like Kathleen Norris will do well to take the following steps: In +the first place, come to New York. In the second place, marry some one +like Charles Gilman Norris. + +Of course, every one who read _Mother_ and _The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne_ and +_Saturday's Child_ knew that the author was a married woman--and also a +married woman with plenty of personal experience with babies and stoves +and servants and other important domestic items. But not until I visited +Kathleen Norris at her very genuine home in Port Washington did I +appreciate the part which that domestic item called a husband has played +in Kathleen Norris's communications to the world. + +I made this discovery after Charles Gilman Norris--accompanied by +little Frank, who bears the name of the illustrious novelist who was his +uncle--had motored me through Port Washington's pleasant avenues to the +Norris house. Before a fire of crackling hickory logs, Kathleen Norris +(clad in something very charming, which I will not attempt to describe) +was talking about the qualities necessary to a writer's success. And one +of these, she said, was a business sense. + +Now, Mrs. Norris did not look exactly business-like. Nor is "a business +sense" the quality which most readers would immediately hit upon as the +characteristic which made the author of _Gayley the Troubadour_ +different from the writers of other stories. I ventured to suggest this +to Mrs. Norris. + +"I don't claim to possess a business sense," she said. "But my husband +has a business sense. He has taken charge of selling my stories to the +magazines and dealing with publishers and all of that. I do think that +literally thousands of writers are hindered from ever reaching the +public by the lack of business sense. And I know that my husband has +been responsible for getting most of my work published. My stories have +appeared since my marriage, you know. I don't need to have a business +sense, all I have to do is to write the stories. My husband does all +the rest--I don't need even to have any of the author's complacency, or +the author's pride!" + +Mrs. Norris's fame is only about five years old--about as old as her +son. I asked her about her life before she was known as a writer, +expecting to hear picturesque tales of literary tribulations among the +hills of California. But her description of her journey to success was +not the conventional one; her journey was not for years paved with +rejection slips and illumined with midnight oil. + +"It was New York that did it," she said. "When we first came to New York +from California the editor of a magazine with which Mr. Norris was +connected gave us a tea. Most of the people who were present were +short-story writers and novelists. It was pleasant for me to meet them, +and I enjoyed the afternoon. But my chief sensation was one of shock--it +was a real shock to me to find that writers were people! + +"I felt as if I had met Joan of Arc, Caesar, Cleopatra, Alexander the +Great, and all the great figures of history, and found them to be human +beings like myself. 'These writers are not supermen and superwomen,' I +said to myself, 'they are human beings like me. Why can't I do what +they're doing?' + +"I thought this over after we went home that evening. And I made a +resolve. I resolved that before the next tea that I attended I would +tell a story. And when I next went to a tea I had sold a story." + +"To what publication had you sold it?" I asked. + +"To an evening paper," said Mrs. Norris; "but I had written and sold a +story. That was something; it meant a great deal to me. My first stories +were all sold to this evening paper, for twelve dollars each. This paper +printed a story every day, paying twelve dollars for each of them, and +giving a prize of fifty dollars for the best story published each week. +I won one of the fifty-dollar prizes." + +Any one who to-day could buy a Kathleen Norris story for fifty dollars +would be not an editor, but a magician. Yet the memory of that early +triumph seemed to give Mrs. Norris real pleasure. + +"I wrote _What Happened to Alanna_ two years before the Fire," she said. +("The Fire" means only one thing when a Californian says it.) "But most +of my stories have been written since I came to New York." + +I asked Mrs. Norris for the history of one of her earliest stories, a +story of California life which appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_. She +said: "That story went to twenty-six magazines before it was printed. My +husband had an alphabetical list of magazines. He sent the story first +to the _Atlantic Monthly_ and then to twenty-five other magazines. They +all returned it. Then he started at the top of the list again, and this +time the _Atlantic Monthly_ accepted it." + +The mention of Mr. Norris's activities in selling this story brought our +conversation back to the subject of the "business sense." + +"A writer needs the ability to sell a story as well as the ability to +write it," said Mrs. Norris, "unless there is some one else to do the +writing. Many a woman writes a really good story, sends it hopefully to +an editor, gets it back with a printed notice of its rejection, and puts +it away in a desk drawer. Then years later she tells her grandchildren +that she once wanted to be an author, but found that she couldn't do it. + +"Now, that is no way for a writer to gain success. The writer must be +persevering, not only in writing, but in trying to get his work before +the public. Unless, as I said, there is some one else to supply the +perseverance in getting the work before the public. + +"I think that the desire to write generally indicates the possession of +the power to write. But young writers are too easily discouraged. But I +have no right to blame a writer for being discouraged. I had frightful +discouragement--until I was married." + +It is easy to see that Kathleen Norris does not hesitate to find in her +own home life material for her industrious pen. Little Frank has +undoubtedly served his mother as a model many times--which is not meant +to indicate that he is that monstrosity, a model child. Indeed, Mrs. +Norris believes that a novelist should use the material which lies ready +at hand, instead of seeking for exotic and unusual topics. She sees that +people want to read about the things with which they are already +familiar, that they are not (as many young writers seem to think) eager +for novelties. + +"I cannot understand," she said, "how it is that writers will clamor for +recognition, and abuse the public for not welcoming them with +enthusiasm, and yet will not give the public what they know that the +public wants. So many people seem to want just their own sort of art, +but to want money, too. Now, I wouldn't write for a million dollars some +of those things that are called 'best sellers.' But I cannot see why a +writer who is avowedly writing for the public should think it beneath +him to treat the themes in which the public is interested. The greatest +tragedy of literature is the writer who persists in trying to give the +public what it does not want. Think of poor Gissing, for instance, dying +embittered because he couldn't sell his work!" + +Mrs. Norris's conviction that a writer should use the material around +him is so strong that she seems actually to be pained by the thought of +all the excellent things for stories that are going to waste. I asked +her if literature ever could come from apartment-houses. She said: + +"Of course it can! There is no reason why there shouldn't be good +stories and novels of apartment-house life. One reason why we are not +writing more and better stories of the life around us is because we are +living that life so intensely--too intensely. We live in this country so +close to our income that the problem of earning money makes us lose +sight of the essentials of life. It would be a fine thing for us, +mentally and spiritually, if we should live on less than we do. If, for +example, a family that found it was in receipt of a few hundred dollars +more a year than before should decide, therefore, to live under a +simpler scale than before, to do away with some really worthless +luxuries, what a fine thing that would be!" + +Of course many young writers come to Mrs. Norris for advice. And some of +them excellently illustrate the tendency which she deprecates, the +tendency to write about the unknown instead of the familiar. + +"I was talking the other day to a young girl of my acquaintance who is a +costume model," she said. "She has literary aspirations. Now, her life +itself has been an interesting story--her rise from a shopgirl to her +present position. And every now and then she will say something to me +that is a most interesting revelation--something that indicates the rich +store of experience that she might, if she would, draw upon in her +stories. On one occasion she said to me, 'I went home and put my +shoe-drawer in order.' + +"'What do you mean?' I asked. 'What is your shoe-drawer?' + +"'Why, my shoe-drawer!' she answered. 'You see, we costume models have +to have a drawer full of shoes, because we must change our shoes to +match every costume.' + +"Why is it," asked Mrs. Norris, "that a girl like that cannot see the +value of such an incident as that? That shoe-drawer is a picturesque and +interesting thing, unknown to most people. And this girl, who knows all +about it, and wants to write, cannot see its literary value! And yet +what more interesting subject is there for her to write about than that +shoe-drawer? I do not see why writers will not appreciate the importance +of writing about the things that are around them." + +Mrs. Norris gave a somewhat embarrassed laugh. "I really shouldn't +attempt to lay down the law in this way," she said. "I can speak only +for myself--I must write of the people and things that I know best, but +I ought not to attempt to prescribe what other people shall write +about." + +Mrs. Norris's chief literary enthusiasm seems to be Charles Dickens. +"When we were all infants out in the backwoods of California," she said, +"we battened on Dickens. Dickens and a writer whom I don't suppose +anybody reads nowadays--Henry Kingsley. The boys read Sir Walter +Scott's novels, and left Dickens to me. I read Dickens with delight, and +I still read him with delight. I have found passages in Dickens of which +I honestly believe there are no equal in all English literature except +in Shakespeare. I do not think that there is ever a year in which I do +not read some of Dickens's novels over again. Of course, any one can +find Dickens's faults--but I do not see how any one can fail to find his +excellences." + +"What is it in Dickens that especially attracts you?" I asked. + +Mrs. Norris was silent for a moment. Then she said: "I think I like him +chiefly because he saw so clearly the joys of the poor. He did not give +his poor people nothing but disease and oppression and despair. He gave +them roast goose and plum pudding for their Christmas dinner--he gave +them faith and hope and love. He knew that often the rich suffer and the +poor are happy. + +"Many of the modern realists seem ignorant of the fact that the poor may +be happy. They think that the cotter's Saturday night must always be +squalid and sordid and dismal, and that the millionaire's Saturday night +must be splendid and joyful. As a matter of fact, the poor family may +be, and often is, healthier and happier in every way than the rich +family. But these extreme realists are not like Dickens, they have not +his intimate knowledge of the life of the poor. They have the outsider's +viewpoint. + +"Too many writers are telling us about the sorrows of the poor. We need +writers who will tell us about the joys of the poor. We need writers who +will be aware of the pleasures to be derived from a good dinner of +corned beef and cabbage and a visit to a moving-picture theater. Often +when I pass a row of mean houses, as they would be called, I think +gratefully of the good times that I have had in just such places." + +The thought of that little Celtic Californian reading Dickens among the +redwood-trees appealed to me. So I asked Mrs. Norris to tell more about +her childhood. + +"Well," she said, "we hear a great deal about the misery, the bleak and +barren lives of the children who live in the tenements of New York's +lower East Side. But I think that an East Side tenement child would die +of ennui if it should be brought up as we were brought up. We had none +of the amusing and exciting experiences of the East Side child--we had +no white stockings, no ice-cream cones, no Coney Island, nothing of the +sort. + +"We never even went to school. We would study French for a while with +some French neighbor who had sufficient leisure to teach us, and then +we'd study Spanish for a while with some Spaniard. That was the extent +of our schooling. + +"My parents died when I was eighteen years old. I went to the city and +tried my hand at different sorts of work. For one thing, I tried to get +up children's parties, but in eighteen months I managed only one. Then I +did settlement work, was a librarian, a companion, and society reporter +on a newspaper. Then I got married--and wrote stories." + +Mrs. Norris was at one time opposed to woman suffrage. Now, however, she +is a suffragist, but she refuses to say that she has been "converted" to +suffragism. + +"I can't say that I have been converted to suffragism," she said, "any +more than I can say that I have been converted to warm baths and +tooth-brushes. And it does not seem to me that any women should need to +defend her right to vote any more than she should need to defend her +right to love her children. There is a theme for a novel--a big +suffrage novel will be written one of these days." + +It may be that the author of _Mother_ will be the author of this "big +suffrage novel." But at present she disclaims any such intention. But +she admits that there is a purpose in all her portrayals of normal, +wholesome American home life. + +"I don't think that I believe in 'art for art's sake,' as it is +generally interpreted," she said. "Of course, I don't believe in what is +called the commercial point of view--I have never written anything just +to have it printed. But I do not believe that there is any one standard +of art. I think that any book which the people ought to read must have +back of it something besides the mere desire of the writer to create +something. I never could write without a moral intention." + + + + +_NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART_ + +BOOTH TARKINGTON + + +Mr. Booth Tarkington never will be called the George M. Cohan of +fiction. His novel, _The Turmoil_, is surely an indictment of modern +American urban civilization; of its materialism, its braggadocio, its +contempt for the things of the soul. + +It was with the purpose of making this indictment a little clearer than +it could be when it is surrounded by a story, that I asked Mr. +Tarkington a few questions. And his answers are not likely to increase +our national complacencies. + +In the first place, I asked Mr. Tarkington if the atmosphere of a young +and energetic nation might not reasonably be expected to be favorable to +literary and artistic expression. + +"Yes, it might," said Mr. Tarkington. "There may be spiritual progress +in America as phenomenal as her material progress. + +"There is and has been extraordinary progress in the arts. But the +people as a whole are naturally preoccupied with their material +progress. They are much more interested in Mr. Rockefeller than in Mr. +Sargent." + +The last two sentences of Mr. Tarkington's reply made me eager for +something a little more specific on that subject. + +"What are the forces in America to-day," I asked, "that hinder the +development of art and letters?" + +Mr. Tarkington replied: "There are no forces in America to-day that +hinder the development of individuals in art and letters, save in +unimportant cases here and there. But there is a spirit that hinders +general personal decency, knows and cares nothing for beauty, and is +glad to have its body dirty for the sake of what it calls 'prosperity.' + +"It 'wouldn't give a nickel' for any kind of art. But it can't and +doesn't hinder artists from producing works of art, though it makes them +swear." + +"But do not these conditions in many instances seriously hinder +individual artists?" + +Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Nothing stops an artist if he is one," he said. +"But many things may prevent a people or a community from knowing or +caring for art. + +"The climate may be unfavorable; we need not expect the Eskimos to be +interested in architecture. In the United States politicians have +usually controlled the public purchase of works of art and the erection +of public buildings. This is bad for the public, naturally." + +"I suppose," I said, "that the conditions you describe are distinctively +modern, are they not? At what time in the history of America have +conditions been most favorable to literary expression?" + +Mr. Tarkington's reply was not what I expected. "At all times," he said. +"Literary expression does not depend on the times, though the +appreciation of it does, somewhat." + +I asked Mr. Tarkington if he agreed with Mr. Gouverneur Morris in +considering the short story a modern development. He did not. + +"There are short stories in the Bible," he said, "and in every +mythology; 'folk stories' of all races and tribes. Probably Mr. Morris's +definition of the short story would exclude these. I agree with him that +short stories are better written nowadays." + +"But you do not believe," I said, "that American literature in general +is better than it used to be, do you? Why is it that there is now no +group of American writers like the New England group which included +Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau?" + +"Why is there," Mr. Tarkington asked in turn, "no group like Homer +(wasn't he a group?) in Greece? There may be, but if there is just such +a modern group it would tend only to repeat the work of the Homeric +group, which wouldn't be interesting to the rest of us. + +"The important thing is to find a group unlike Longfellow, Whittier, +Lowell, Emerson, and Thoreau. That is, if one accepts the idea that it +is important to find a group." + +Mr. Tarkington's criticisms of the modern American city have been so +severe that I expected him to tell me that all writers should live in +the country. But again he surprised me. In reply to my question as to +which environment was more favorable to the production of literature, +the city or the country, he said: + +"It depends upon the nerves of the writer. A writer can be born +anywhere, and he can grow up anywhere." + +There has recently been considerable discussion--Professor Edward +Garnet and Gertrude Atherton have taken a considerable share in it--on +the relative merits of contemporary English and American fiction. I +asked Mr. Tarkington if in his opinion the United States had at the +present time novelists equal to those of England. + +"That is unanswerable!" he answered. "Writers aren't like baseball +teams. What's the value of my opinion that _The Undiscovered Country_ is +a 'greater' novel than _A Pair of Blue Eyes_? These questions remind me +of school debating societies. Nothing is demonstrated, but everybody has +his own verdict." + +Until I asked Mr. Tarkington about it I had heard only two opinions as +to the probable effect on literature of the war. One was that which +William Dean Howells tersely expressed by saying: "War stops +literature," and the other was that the war is purifying and +strengthening all forms of literary expression. + +But Mr. Tarkington had something new to say about it. "What effect," I +asked, "is the war likely to have on American literature?" + +"None of consequence," he answered. "The poet will find the subject, war +or no war. The sculptor doesn't depend upon epaulets." + +Mr. Tarkington is so inveterate a writer of serials, and his work is so +familiar to the readers of the American magazines, that I desired to get +his expert opinion as to whether or not the American magazines, with +their remarkably high prices, had harmed or benefited fiction. His reply +was somewhat non-committal. + +"They have induced many people to look upon the production of fiction as +a profitable business," he said. "But those people would merely not have +'tried fiction' at all otherwise. Prices have nothing to do with art." + +Mr. Tarkington had some interesting things to say about that venerable +mirage, the Great American Novel. I asked him if that longed-for work +would ever be written; if, for example, there would ever be a work of +fiction reflecting American life as _Vanity Fair_ reflects English life. +He replied: + +"If Thackeray had been an American he would not have written a novel +reflecting American life as _Vanity Fair_ reflected the English life of +its time. He would have written of New York; his young men would have +come there after Harvard. The only safe thing to say of the Great +American Novel is that the author will never know he wrote it." + +Mr. Charles Belmont Davis had told me that a writer who had some means +of making a living other than writing would do better work than one who +devoted himself exclusively to literature. I asked Mr. Tarkington what +he thought about this. + +"I think," he said, "that it would be very well for a writer to have +some means of making a living other than writing. There are likely to be +times in his career when it would give him a sense of security +concerning food. But I doubt if it would much affect his writing, unless +he considered writing to be a business." + +Mr. Tarkington's answer to my next question is hereby commended to the +attention of all those feminine revolutionists who believe that they are +engaged in the pleasant task of changing the whole current of modern +thought. + +"How has literature been affected," I asked, "by the suffrage movement +and feminism?" + +Mr. Tarkington looked up in some surprise. "I haven't heard of any +change," he said. + +The author of _The Turmoil_ could never be accused of jingoism. But he +is far from agreeing with those critics who believe that American +literature is merely "a phase of English literature." I asked him if he +believed that there was such a thing as a distinctively American +literature. + +"Certainly," he replied. "Is _Huckleberry Finn_ a phase? It's a +monument; not an English one. English happens to be the language largely +used." + +The allusion in Mr. Tarkington's last reply suggested--what every reader +of _Penrod_ must know--that this novelist is an enthusiastic admirer of +Mark Twain. So I told him that Mr. T. A. Daly had classed Mark Twain +with Artemus Ward and Q. K. Philander Doesticks, P.B., and had said that +these men wrote nothing of real merit and were "the Charlie Chaplins of +their time." + +Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Get Mr. T. A. Daly to talk some more," he said. +"We'd like to hear something about Voltaire and Flo Ziegfeld. Second +thoughts indicate that 'T. A. Daly' is the pen name of Mr. Charlie +Chaplin. Of course! And that makes it all right and natural. I thought +at first that it was a joke." + + + + +_ROMANTICISM AND AMERICAN HUMOR_ + +MONTAGUE GLASS + + +Once upon a time William Dean Howells leveled the keen lance of his +satire against what he called "the monstrous rag baby of romanticism." +In those simple days, literary labels were easily applied. A man who +wrote about Rome, Italy, was a romanticist; a man who wrote about Rome, +New York, was a Realist. + +Now, however, a writer who finds his themes in the wholesale business +district of New York City does not disavow the title formerly given +exclusively to makers of drawn-sword-and-prancing-steed fiction. +Montague Glass is a romanticist. + +The laureate of the cloak-and-suit trade and biographer of Mr. Abe +Potash and Mr. Mawruss Perlmutter does not believe that romance is a +matter of time and place. A realistic novel, he believes, may be written +about the Young Pretender or Alexander the Great, and a romance +about--well, about Elkan Lubliner, American. + +Of course, I asked him to defend his claim to the name of romanticist. +He did so, but in general terms, without special reference to his own +work. For this widely read author has the amazing virtue of modesty. + +"I do not think," he said, "that the so-called historical novelists are +the only romanticists. The difference between the two schools of writers +is in method, rather than in subject. + +"A romanticist is a writer who creates an atmosphere of his own about +the things with which he deals. He is the poet, the constructive artist. +He calls into being that which has not hitherto existed. + +"A realist, however, is a writer who faithfully reproduces an atmosphere +that already exists. He reports, records; one of his distinguishing +characteristics must be his attention to detail. The romanticist is as +truthful as the realist, but he deals with a few large truths rather +than with many small facts." + +"And you," I said, determined to make the conversation more personal, +"prefer the romantic method?" + +"Yes," said Mr. Glass, "I do. I prefer to use the romantic method, and +to read the works of the writers who use it. I believe that there is +more value in suggestion than in detailed description. For instance, I +do not think that my stories would gain vividness if I should put all +the dialogue--I tell my stories chiefly by means of dialogues, you +know--into dialect. So I do not put down the dialogue phonetically. I +spell the words correctly, not in accordance with the pronunciation of +my characters. + +"This is not an invariable rule. When, for instance, Abe or Mawruss has +learned a new long word which he uses frequently to show it off, he +generally mispronounces it. He may say 'quincidence' for 'coincidence.' +Such a mispronunciation as this I reproduce, for it has its significance +as a revelation of character. But I do not attempt to put down all +mispronunciations; I let the dialect be imagined. + +"The romanticist, you see, uses his own imagination and expects +imagination in his readers. His method might be called impressionistic; +he outlines and suggests, instead of describing exhaustively. The +romanticist really is more economical than the realist, and he has more +restraint." + +"Who are the leading romanticists of the day?" I asked. + +"Well," Mr. Glass replied, "my favorite among contemporary romanticists +is Joseph Conrad. There is a man who is certainly no swashbuckling +novelist of the Wardour Street school. He writes of modern life, and yet +he is a romanticist through and through. + +"I think that I may justly claim to be one of the first admirers of +Conrad in America. I used to read him when apparently the only other man +in this part of the world to appreciate him was William L. Alden, who +praised him in the columns of the _New York Times Review of Books_. + +"I well remember my discovery of Conrad. I went to Brooklyn to hear +'Tosca' sung at the Academy of Music. I had bought my ticket, and I had +about an hour to spend before it would be time for the curtain to rise. +So I went across the street to the Brooklyn Public Library. + +"While I was idly looking over the novels on the shelves I came upon +Conrad's _Typhoon_. I sat down and began to read it. + +"When I arose, I had finished the book. Also, I had missed the first two +acts of the opera--and I had been eager to hear them. But Conrad more +than compensated for the loss of those two acts. + +"Many of the modern English writers are romanticists. Galsworthy surely +is no realist. And William de Morgan, although he writes at great length +and has abundance of detail, is a romanticist. He does not use detail +for its own sake, as the realists use it; he uses it only when it has +some definite value in unfolding the plot or revealing character. He +uses it significantly; he is particularly successful in using it +humorously, as Daudet and Dickens used it. Arnold Bennett is a realist, +and I think that one of the reasons why he is so widely read in the +United States is because the life which he describes so minutely is a +life much like that of his American readers. People like to read about +the sort of life they already know. The average reader wants to have a +sense of familiarity with the characters in his novels." + +Mr. Glass is a contrary person. It is contrary for the only novelist who +knows anything about New York's cloak-and-suit trade to be of English +birth and to look like a poet. It is contrary of him to have that +distinctively American play, "Potash and Perlmutter," start its London +run two years ago and be "still going strong." And it was contrary of +him not to say, as he might reasonably be expected to say in view of his +own success, that the encounters and adventures of business must be the +theme of the American novelists of the future. + +"No," he said, in answer to my question, "I do not see any reason for +the novelist to confine himself to business life. Themes for fiction are +universal. A novelist should write of the life he knows best, whatever +it may be. + +"I do not mean that the novelist should write about his own business. I +mean that he should write about the psychology that he understands. A +man who spends years in the cloak-and-suit business is not, therefore, +qualified to write novels about that business, even if he is qualified +to write novels at all. + +"I had no real knowledge of the cloak-and-suit trade when I began to +write about it. I made many technical blunders. For instance, I had +Potash and Perlmutter buying goods by the gross instead of by the piece. +And I received many indignant letters pointing out my mistake. + +"I had never been in the cloak-and-suit trade. But my work as a lawyer +had brought me into contact with many people who were in that business, +and I had intimate knowledge of the psychology of the Jew, his religion, +his humor, his tragedy, his whole attitude toward life. + +"The trouble with many young writers," said Mr. Glass, "is that they +don't know what they are writing about. They are attempting to describe +psychological states of which they have only third-hand knowledge. Their +ideas have no semblance of truth, and therefore their work is absolutely +unconvincing." + +"At any rate," I said, "you will admit that American writers are more +and more inclined to make the United States the scene of their stories. +Do you think that O. Henry's influence is responsible for this?" + +"No," said Mr. Glass, "I do not think that this is due to O. Henry's +influence. It was a natural development. You see, O. Henry's literary +life lasted for only about four years, and while he has had many +imitators, I do not think that he can be given credit for directing the +attention of American writers to the life of their own country. + +"Probably William Dean Howells should be called the founder of the +modern school of American fiction. He was the first writer to achieve +distinguished success for tales of modern American life. There were +several other authors who began to write about Americans soon after Mr. +Howells began--Thomas Janvier, H. C. Bunner, and Brander Matthews were +among them. + +"Kipling's popularity gave a great impetus to the writing of short +stories of modern life. It is interesting to trace the course of the +short story from Kipling to O. Henry. + +"Did you ever notice," asked Mr. Glass, "that the best stories on New +York life are written by people who have been born and brought up +outside of the city? The writer who has always lived in New York seems +thereby to be disqualified from writing about it, just as the man in the +cloak-and-suit trade is too close to his subject to reproduce it in +fiction. The writer who comes to New York after spending his youth +elsewhere gets the full romantic effect of New York; he gets a +perspective on it which the native New-Yorker seldom attains. The +viewpoint of the writer who has always lived in New York is subjective, +whereas one must have the objective viewpoint to write about the city +successfully. + +"I have been surprised by the caricatures of American life which come +from the pen of writers American by birth and ancestry. Recently I read +a novel by an American who has--and deserves, for he is a writer of +talent and reputation--a large following. This was a story of life in a +manufacturing town with which the novelist is thoroughly familiar. It, +however, appears to have been written to satisfy a grudge and +consequently one could mistake it for the work of an Englishman who had +once made a brief tour of America. For the big manufacturer who was the +principal character in the story was vulgar enough to satisfy the +prejudice of any reader of the _London Daily Mail_. Certainly the +descriptions of the gaudy and offensive furniture in the rich +manufacturer's house and the dialogue of the members of his family and +the servants could provide splendid ammunition for the _Saturday Review_ +or _The Academy_. The book appears to be a caricature, and yet that +novelist had lived most of his life among the sort of people about whom +he was writing! + +"And how absolutely ignorant most New-Yorkers are of New York. Irvin +Cobb comes here from Louisville, Kentucky, and gets an intimate +knowledge of the city, and puts that knowledge into his short stories. +But a man brought up here makes the most ridiculous mistakes when he +writes about New York. + +"I read a story of New York life recently that absolutely disgusted me, +its author was so ignorant of his subject. Yet he was a born New-Yorker. +Let me tell you what he wrote. He said that a man went into an arm-chair +lunch-room and bought a meal. His check amounted to sixty-five cents! +Now any one who knows anything about arm-chair lunch-rooms beyond the +mere fact of their existence knows that the cashier of such an +institution would drop dead if a customer paid him sixty-five cents at +one time. Then, the hero of this story had as a part of his meal in this +arm-chair lunch-room a baked potato, for which he paid fifteen cents! +Imagine a baked potato in such a place, and a fifteen-cent baked potato +at that!" + +Mr. Glass did not, like most successful humorists, begin as a writer of +tragedy. His first story to be printed was "Aloysius of the Docks," a +humorous story of an East Side Irish boy, which appeared in 1900. The +lower East Side was for many years the scene of most of his stories. But +he does resemble most other writers in this respect, that he wrote +verse before he wrote fiction. I asked him to show me some of his +poetry, and he demurred somewhat violently. But, after all, a poet is a +poet, and at last I succeeded in persuading him to produce this exhibit. +Here it is--a poem by the author of "Potash and Perlmutter": + + FERRYBOATS + + There sounds aloft a warning scream, + The jingling bell gives tongue below, + She breasts again the busy stream, + And cleaves its murky tide to snow. + Bereft of burnished glittering brass, + Ungainly bulging fore and aft, + Slowly from shore to shore they pass-- + The matrons of the river craft. + +Mr. Glass believes that humorous writing in America has changed more +than any other sort. But he does not, as I thought he would, attribute +this change to the increased cosmopolitanism of the country, to the +influx of people from other lands. + +"Certainly our ideas of what is funny have changed," he said. "Humor is +an ephemeral thing. A generation ago we laughed at what to-day would +merely make us ill. The subjects and the methods of the humorists are +different. Who nowadays can find a laugh in the pages of Artemus Ward, +Philander Q. Doesticks, or Petroleum V. Nasby? Yet in their time these +men set the whole continent in a roar. + +"Contrast two humorists typical of their respective periods--Bill Nye +and Abe Martin. I remember many years ago reading a story by Bill Nye +which every one then considered tremendously funny. He told how he went +downtown and got a shave and put on a clean collar and as he said, +'otherwise disguised himself.' When he got home his little dog refused +to recognize him, and several pages were devoted to his efforts to +persuade the dog of his identity. Then, failing to convince the dog that +he was really the same Bill Nye in spite of his shave and clean collar, +he impaled it on a pitchfork and buried it, putting over it the epitaph, +'Not dead, but jerked hence by request.' + +"Now contrast with that a good example of modern American humor--a joke +by Abe Martin which I recently saw. There was a picture of two or three +men looking at a tattered tramp, and one of them was represented as +saying: 'You wouldn't think to look at him that that man played an +elegant game of billiards ten years ago!' + +"It is an entirely different form of humor, you see. Bill Nye and the +writers of his school got their effects by grotesque misspelling, +fantastic ideas, and by the liberal use of shock and surprise. The +modern humor is subtler, more delicate, and more likely to endure. + +"I do not think that the fact that America has become more cosmopolitan +has anything to do with this altered sense of humor. The American +humorists do not select cosmopolitan themes; the best of them are +distinctively American in their subject. Irvin Cobb, George Fitch, Kate +Douglas Wiggin, Edna Ferber Stewart, who wrote _The Fugitive +Blacksmith_--all these people draw their inspiration from purely +American phases of the life around them." + +"What is it, then," I asked, "that has changed American humor?" + +"Leisure," answered Mr. Glass. "Philander Q. Doesticks and other +humorists of his time wrote to amuse pioneers, people rough and +elemental in their tastes. Their audience consisted of men who worked +hard most of the time, and therefore had to be hit hard by any joke that +was to entertain them at all. But as Americans grew more leisurely, and +therefore had time to read, see plays, and look at pictures, they lost +their taste for crude and violent horseplay, and the new sort of humor +came in. Undoubtedly the same thing occurs in every newly settled +country--Australia, for example. It is unlikely that the Australian of +one hundred years from now will be amused by the things that amuse +Australians to-day. + +"But the humor that entertains the citizens of a country of which the +civilization is well established is likely to retain its charm through +the years. Mark Twain's stories do not lose their flavor. But Mark Twain +was not exclusively a humorist; he was a student of life and he +reflected the tragedy of existence as well as its comedy. So does Irvin +Cobb, who is the nearest approach to Mark Twain now living. + +"One source of Mark Twain's strength is his occasional vulgarity. That +surely is something that we should have in greater abundance in American +humor. I do not mean that our humorists should be pornographic and +obscene; I mean merely that they should be allowed great freedom in +their choice of themes. There is no humor without vulgarity. Our +humorists have been so limited and restrained that we have no paper fit +to be compared with _Simplicissimus_ or _Le Rire_. + +"You see, a vulgar thing is not offensive if it is funny. Fun for fun's +sake is a much more important maxim than art for art's sake. The +humorists have a greater need for freedom in choice of themes than the +serious writers, especially the realistic writers, who are always +demanding greater freedom." + +Mr. Glass returned to the subject of the failure of cosmopolitanism to +influence American literature by calling attention to the fact that very +few American writers find their themes among their foreign-born +fellow-citizens. "Where," he asked, "are the German-Americans and the +Italian-Americans? No writer knows these foreign-born citizens well +enough to write about them. The best American stories are about native +Americans. I admit that my stories are not about people peculiar to New +York--you can find counterparts of 'Potash and Perlmutter' in Berlin, +Paris, and London. But mine are not among the best stories of American +character. The best story of American character is 'Daisy Miller.'" + +Mr. Glass believes that the technique of the short story has improved +greatly during the last score of years, but he is not so favorable in +his view of the modern novel, especially of the "cross-section of life" +type of work. He believes that the war will produce a great revival of +literary excellence in Europe, just as the Franco-Prussian War did; and +he called attention to something which has apparently been neglected by +most people who have discussed the subject--the tremendous inspiration +which Guy de Maupassant found in the Franco-Prussian War. But he said, +in conclusion: + +"But any man who sits down to judge American literature in the course of +a few minutes' talk is an ass for his pains. Literary snap judgments are +foolish things. Nothing that I have said to you has any value at all." + + + + +_THE "MOVIES" BENEFIT LITERATURE_ + +REX BEACH + + +Even the most prejudiced opponent of the moving pictures will admit that +they are becoming more intellectually respectable. Crude farce and +melodrama are being replaced by versions of classic plays and novels; +literature is elevating the motion picture. And Mr. Rex Beach believes +that the motion picture is benefiting literature. + +This author of widely read novels had been talking to me about the +departments of literature--the novel, the short story, and the rest--and +among them he named the moving picture. I asked him if he believed that +moving pictures were dangerous for novelists, leading them to fill their +books with action, with a view to the profits of cinematographic +reproduction. He said: + +"Well, authors are human beings, of course. They like to make money and +to have their work reach as large an audience as possible. I suppose +that the great majority of them keep their eyes on the screen, because +they know how profitable the moving picture is and because they want +their work seen by more people than would read their novels." + +"Do you think that this harms their work?" I asked. + +"It might if the novelists overdid it," he answered. "It would harm +their work if they became nothing but scenario writers. But so far the +result has been good. + +"The tendency of the moving picture has been to make authors visualize +more clearly than ever before their characters and scenes that they are +writing about. Their work has become more realistic. I do not mean +realistic in the sense in which this word is used of some French +writers; I do not mean erotic or morbid. I mean actual, convincing, +clearly visualized. + +"Literature has elevated the moving picture, keeping it out, to a great +extent, of melodrama and slap-stick comedy. And in return, the moving +picture has done a service to fiction, making the authors give more +attention to exact visualization." + +"Has American fiction been lacking in visualization?" I asked. + +"No," said Mr. Beach. "American novelists visualize more clearly to-day +than they did four or five years ago, before the moving picture had +become so important, but they always were strong in visualization. This +sort of realism is America's chief contribution to fiction." + +"Then you believe that there is a distinctively American literature?" I +asked. "You do not agree with the critic who said that American +literature was 'a condition of English literature'?" + +"I do not agree with him," Mr. Beach replied. "American writers use the +English language, so I suppose that what they write belongs to English +literature. But there is a distinctively American literature; Americans +talk in their own manner, think in their own manner, and handle business +propositions in their own manner, and naturally they write in their own +manner. American literature is different from other kinds of literature +just as American business methods are different from those of Europe. + +"Fiction written in America must necessarily be tinged with American +thought and American action. I have no patience with people who say +that America has no literature. They say that nothing we are writing +to-day will live. Well, what if that is true? It's true not only of +literature, but of everything else. + +"Our roads won't last forever; they're built in a hurry to be used in a +hurry. But they're better roads to drive and motor over than those old +Roman roads of Europe. Our office-buildings won't last as long as the +Pyramids, but they're better for business purposes. + +"Personally, I've never been enthusiastic over things that have no +virtues but age and ugliness. I'd rather have a good, strong, +serviceable piece of Grand Rapids furniture than any ramshackle, +moth-eaten antique." + +"But don't you think," I asked, "that the permanence of a book's appeal +is a proof of its greatness?" + +"I don't see how we can tell anything definite about the permanence of +the appeal of books written in our time. And I don't mean by literature +writings that necessarily endure through the ages. I believe that +literature is the expression of the mind, the sentiment, the +intellectual attitude of the people who live at the time it is written. +I admit that our literature is ephemeral--like everything else about +us--but I believe that it is good." + +Mr. Rex Beach was not pacing his floor nervously; he was crossing the +room with the practical intention of procuring a cigarette. +Nevertheless, his firm tread lent emphasis to his remarks. + +"There is a sort of literary snobbery," he said, "noticeable among +people who condemn contemporaneous literature just because it is +contemporaneous. The strongest proof that there is something good in the +literature of the day is that it reaches a great audience. There must be +something in it or people wouldn't read it. + +"The people are the final judges; it is to them that authors must +appeal. Take any big question of public importance--after it has been +discussed by politicians and newspapers, it is the people who at last +decide it. + +"A man may have devoted his life to some tremendous achievement, and +have left it as a monument to his fame. But it is to public opinion that +we must look for the verdict on the value of his life's work. + +"Take Carnegie, for example; when he dies, you bet people will have his +number! His ideas are a tremendous menace, and the people who believe +as he does about peace will find themselves generally execrated one of +these days. + +"It may seem to you that this has nothing to do with literature. But it +has a good deal to do with it. I know that many things have been said +about the effect on literature of the war. But I want to say that the +war will have, I hope, one admirable effect on American writers--it will +make them stir up the American conscience to a sense of the necessity +for national defensive preparation. The writers must educate the people +in world politics and show them the necessity for defensive action. +Americans have a sort of mental inertia in regard to public questions, +and the writers must overcome this inertia. + +"The writers must stir up the politicians and the people. There's been a +whole lot of mush written about peace. There always will be war. We +can't reform the world. + +"The pacifists say that it is useless to arm because war cannot be +prevented by armaments. The obvious answer to that is that neither can +the failure to arm prevent war. And the verdict after the war will be +better if we are prepared for it. The writers must call our attention to +the folly of leaving ourselves open to attack. + +"It's hard to reach the conscience of the American people on any big +issue. We are too independent, too indifferent, too ready to slump back. +That's one of the penalties of democracy, I suppose; the national sense +of patriotism becomes atrophied. It needs some whaling-big jolt to wake +it up. Every American writer can help to do this. + +"The trouble is that we have too many men with feminine minds, too many +of these delicate fellows with handkerchiefs up their sleeves. I can't +imagine any women with ideas more feminine than those of Bryan--could +any woman evolve anything more feminine than his peace-at-any-price +idea?" + +Mr. Beach smiled. "I suppose I should not be talking about world +politics," he said. "There are so many men who have specialized in that +subject and are therefore competent to talk about it. I am only a +specialist in writing." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that writers should be specialists in writing? +Some people believe that the best fiction, for example, is produced by +men who do some other work for a living." + +"I certainly believe that a writer should devote himself to writing," +said Mr. Beach. "This is an age of specialization, and literature is no +exception to the general rule. Literature is like everything else--you +must specialize in it to be successful." + +"This has not always been the case, has it?" I asked. "Has literature +been produced by people who made writing only an avocation?" + +"Surely," said Mr. Beach. "It is only within the last few years that +writers have been able to write for a living and make enough to keep the +fringe off their cuffs." + +I asked what had caused this change. + +"It has been caused chiefly by the magazines. The modern magazines have +done two important things for fiction--they have brought it within every +one's reach, and they have increased the prices paid to the authors, +thus enabling them to make a living by devoting themselves exclusively +to writing." + +"But it has been said," I ventured, "that a writer, no matter how +talented he may be, cannot make a comfortable living out of writing +fiction unless he is most extraordinarily gifted with ideas, and that, +therefore, a writer takes a tremendous risk if he throws himself upon +literature for support." + +"How is a writer going to get ideas for stories," asked Mr. Beach, in +turn, "unless he uses ideas? The more ideas a man uses, the more ideas +will come to him. + +"The imaginative quality in a man is like any other quality; the more it +is functioned the better it is functioned. If you fail to use any organ +of your body, nature will in time let that organ go out of commission. + +"It is just the same with imagination as with any organ of the body. If +a writer waits for ideas to come to him and ceases to exercise his +imagination, his imagination will become atrophied. But if he uses his +imagination it will grow stronger and ideas will come to him with +increasing frequency." + +Mr. Beach is an enthusiastic advocate of the moving picture. In the +course of his discussion of it he advanced an interesting theory as to +the next stage of its development. + +"The next use of the moving picture," he said, "will be the editorial +use. We have had the moving picture used as a comic device, as a device +to spread news, and as an interpreter of fiction. But as yet no one has +endeavored to use it as a means to mold public opinion in great vital +issues of the day. + +"Of course, it has been used educationally, and as part of various +propaganda schemes. But it will be used in connection with great +political problems. It will become the most powerful of all influences +for directing public opinion in politics and in everything else. + +"It will play a mighty part in the thought of the country and of the +world. + +"I have seen men and women coming from a great moving-picture show +almost hysterical with emotion. I have heard them shout and stamp and +whistle at what they saw flashed before them on a white sheet as they +never did in any theater. + +"What a strong argument 'The Birth of a Nation' presents! Now, suppose +that same art and that same equipment were used to present arguments +about some political issue of our own time, instead of one of our +fathers' time. What a force that would be!" + + + + +_WHAT IS GENIUS?_ + +ROBERT W. CHAMBERS + + +Sentimental Tommy's great predecessor in the relentless pursuit of the +"right word" was, teachers of literature tell us, the unsentimental +Gustave Flaubert. But these academic gentlemen, who insist that the +writer shall spend hours, even days, if necessary, in perfecting a +single sentence, seldom produce any literature. I asked Robert W. +Chambers, who has written more "best sellers" than any other living +writer, what he thought of Flaubert's method of work. + +He looked at me rather quizzically. "I think," he said, with a smile, +"that Flaubert was slow. What else is there to think? Of course he was a +matchless workman. But if he spent half a day in hunting for one word, +he was slow, that's all. He might have gone on writing and then have +come back later for that inevitable word." + +"But what do you think of Flaubert's method, as a method?" I asked. "Do +you think that a writer who works with such laborious care is right?" + +"It's not a question of right or wrong," said Mr. Chambers, "it's a +question of the individual writer's ability and tendency. If a man can +produce novels like those of Flaubert, by writing slowly and +laboriously, by all means let him write that way. But it would not be +fair to establish that as the only legitimate method of writing. + +"Some authors always write slowly. With some of them it's like pulling +teeth for them to get their ideas out on paper. It's the same way in +painting. You may see half a dozen men drawing from the same model. One +will make his sketch premier coup; another will devote an hour to his; +another will work all day. They may be artists of equal ability. It is +the result that counts, not the method or the time." + +"And what is it that makes a man an artist, in pigments or in words?" I +asked. "Do you believe in the old saying that the poet--the creative +artist--is born and not made?" + +"No," said Mr. Chambers, "I do not think that that is the truth. I think +that with regard to the writer it is true to this extent, that there +must exist, in the first place, the inclination to write, to express +ideas in written words. Then the writer must have something to express +really worthy of expression, and he must learn how to express it. These +three things make the writer--the inclination to say something, the +possession of something worth saying, and the knowledge of how to say +it." + +"And where does genius come in?" I asked. + +"What is genius?" asked Mr. Chambers, in turn. "I don't know. Perhaps +genius is the combination of these three qualities in the highest +degree. + +"Of course," he added, with a laugh, "I know that all this is contrary +to the opinion of the public. People like to believe that writers depend +entirely upon an inspiration. They like to think that we are a hazy lot, +sitting around and posing and waiting for some sort of divine afflatus. +They think that writers sit around like a Quaker meeting, waiting for +the spirit to move them." + +"But have there not been writers," I asked, "who seem to prove that +there is some truth in the inspiration theory? There is William de +Morgan, for example, beginning to write novels in his old age. He spent +most of his life in working in ceramics, not with words." + +"On the contrary," said Mr. Chambers, "I think that William de Morgan +proves my theory. He really spent all his life in learning to write--he +was in training for being a novelist all the while. The novelist's +training may be unconscious. He must have--as William de Morgan surely +always has had--keen interest in the world. That is the main thing for +the writer to have--a vivid interest in life. If we are to devote +ourselves to the production of pictures of humanity according to our own +temperaments, we must have this vivid interest in life; we must have +intense curiosity. The men who have counted in literature have had this +intense, never-satiated curiosity about life. + +"This is true for the romanticists as well as the realists. The most +imaginative and fantastic romances must have their basis in real life. + +"I know of no better examples of this truth than the gargoyles which one +sees in Gothic architecture in Europe. These extraordinary creatures +that thrust their heads from the sides of cathedrals, misshapen and +grotesque, are nevertheless thoroughly logical. That is, no matter how +fantastic they may be, they have backbones and ribs and tails, and these +backbones and ribs and tails are logical--that is, they could do what +backbones and ribs and tails are supposed to do. + +"In real life there are no creatures like the gargoyles, but the +important thing is that the gargoyles really could exist. This is a good +example of the true method of construction. The base of the construction +must rest on real knowledge. The medieval sculptors knew the formation +of existing animals; therefore they knew how to make gargoyles." + +"How does this theory apply to poets?" I asked. + +"I don't know," answered Mr. Chambers, "but it seems to me to apply to +all creative work. The artist must know life before he can build even a +travesty on life." + +I called Mr. Chambers's attention to the work of certain ultra-modern +poets who deliberately exclude life from their work. He was not inclined +to take them seriously. + +"There always have been aberrations," he said, "and there always will +be. They're bound to exist. And there is bound to be, from time to time, +attitudinizing and straining after effect on the part of prose writers +as well as poets. And it is all based on one thing--self-consciousness. +It is self-consciousness that spoils the work of some modern writers." + +I asked Mr. Chambers to be more specific in his allusions. "I cannot +mention names," he said, "but there are certain writers who are always +conscious of the style in which they are writing. Sometimes they +consciously write in the style of some other men. They are thinking all +the while of their technique and equipment, and the result is that their +work loses its effect. A writer should not be convinced all the while +that he is a realist or a romanticist; he should not subject himself +deliberately to some special school of writing, and certainly he should +not be conscious of his own style. The less a writer thinks of his +technique the sooner he arrives at self-expression. + +"It's just like ordinary conversation. A man is known by the way in +which he talks--that is his 'style.' But he is not all the while acutely +conscious of his manner of talking--unless he has an impediment in his +speech. So the writer should be known by his untrammeled and +unembarrassed expression." + +I asked Mr. Chambers what he thought of the idea that the popularity of +magazines has vitiated the public taste and lowered the standard of +fiction. + +"I do not think that this is the case," he said. "I do not see that the +custom of serial publication has harmed the novel. It is not a modern +innovation, you know. The novels of Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot +had serial publication. But I do believe that the American public reads +less fiction than it did a generation ago, and that its taste is not so +good as it was." + +This was a surprising statement to come from an author whom the public +has received with such enthusiasm, so I asked Mr. Chambers to explain. + +"In the days of our forefathers," he said, "this was an Anglo-Saxon +country. Then the average intelligence of the nation was higher and the +taste in literature better. But there came the great rush of immigration +to the United States from Europe, and the Anglo-Saxon culture of the +country was diluted. + +"You see signs of this lowered standard of taste in fiction and on +the stage. The demand is for primitive and childish stuff, and the +reason for this is that the audience has only a sort of backstairs +intelligence. If we had progressed along the lines in which we were +headed before this wave of immigration, we would not be satisfied with +the books and magazines that are given us to-day. + +"Of course the magazines are mechanically better to-day than they were a +generation ago. Then we had not the photogravure and the half-tone and +the other processes that make our magazines beautiful. But we had better +taste and also we had more leisure. + +"I remember when one of the most widely read of our magazines was a +popular science monthly, which printed articles by great scientists on +biological and other topics. That was in the days when Darwin was +announcing his theory of evolution--the first great jolt which orthodoxy +received. People would not take time to read a magazine of that sort +now. They are so occupied with business and dancing and all sorts of +occupations that they have little leisure for reading." + +Mr. Chambers stopped talking suddenly and laughed. "I'm not a good man +for you to bring these questions to," he said, "because I never have had +any special reverence for books or literature as such. I reverence the +books that I like, not all books." + +"And have you such a thing as a favorite author?" I asked. + +"Yes," said Mr. Chambers. "Dumas." + +During the 1870's Mr. Chambers was an art student in Paris, and he has +many interesting memories of the French and English writers and painters +who have made that period memorable. He knew Paul Verlaine (whose poetry +he greatly admires), Charles Conder, and Aubrey Beardsley. + +"One day," he said, "I was out on a shooting-trip--I think it was in +Belgium--and I met a young English poet, a charming fellow, whose work I +was later to know and like. It was the poet who wrote at least one great +poem--'Cynara'--it was Ernest Dowson. + +"I knew many of the Beaux Arts crowd, because my brother was a student +of architecture at the Beaux Arts. And they were a decent, clean +crowd--they were not 'decadents.' I do not take much stock in the pose +of 'decadence,' nor in the artistic temperament. I never saw a real +artist with the artistic temperament. I always associated that with +weakness." + +Mr. Chambers, although he has intimate knowledge of the Quartier Latin, +has little use for "Bohemia." + +"What is Bohemia?" he asked. "If it is a place where a number of artists +huddle together for the sake of animal warmth, I have nothing to say +against it. But if it is a place where a number of artists come to +scorn the world, then it is a dangerous thing. The artist should not +separate himself from the world. + +"These artistic and literary cults are wrong. I do not believe in +professional clubs and cliques. If writers form a combination for +business reasons, that is all right, but a writer should not associate +exclusively with other writers; he should do his work and then go out +and see and talk to people in other professions. We should sweep the +cobwebs from the profession of writing and not try to fence it in from +the public." + +To the somewhat trite question as to the effects of the war on +literature, Mr. Chambers made first his usual modest answer, "I don't +know." But when I told him of the author who had dogmatically stated +that war always stops literature, and that the Civil War had produced no +writing worthy of preservation, Mr. Chambers reconsidered. + +"Did he say that the Civil War had produced no literature worthy of +preservation?" he said. "He must have forgotten that the Civil War +caused one man to make contributions to our literature as valuable as +anything we possess. He must have forgotten Abraham Lincoln." + +Before I left, I mentioned to Mr. Chambers the theory that literature +is better as a staff than as a crutch, as an avocation than as a +vocation. This, like the "inevitable word" theory, is greatly beloved by +college professors. Mr. Chambers said: + +"I disagree utterly with that theory. Do you remember how Dr. Johnson +wrote _Rasselas_? It was in order to raise the money to pay for his +mother's funeral. I believe that the best work is done under pressure. +Of course the work must be enjoyed; a man in choosing a profession +should select that sort of work which he prefers to do in his leisure +moments. Let him do for his lifework the task which he would select for +his leisure--and let him not take himself too seriously!" + + + + +_DETERIORATION OF THE SHORT STORY_ + +JAMES LANE ALLEN + + +That Edgar Allan Poe, in spite of his acknowledged genius, has had +practically no influence on the development of the short story in +America, and that the current short story written in America is inferior +to that written during the years between 1870 and 1895, these are two +remarkable statements made to me by James Lane Allen, the distinguished +author of _The Choir Invisible_, _The Mettle of the Pasture_, and many +another memorable novel. + +I found Mr. Allen in the pleasant workroom of his New York residence. +Himself a Southerner, he is an enthusiastic admirer of the poet whose +name is inseparably linked with Southern letters. But I was soon to find +that he does not share the opinion of those who consider Poe the +originator of the modern short story, nor does he rate Poe's influence +in fiction as very wide. + +"There is always much interest in short stories," he said, "among +authors, and in the great body of readers. You say that Mr. Gouverneur +Morris believes that except Poe almost no writer before our generation +could write short stories. + +"I do not wish to be placed in a position of publicly criticizing Mr. +Gouverneur Morris's opinion of the short story. But it may not seem +antagonistic to the opinion of any one to call attention to the fact +that, of all American short stories yet written, the two most widely +known in and outside our country were written independently of Poe. +These are _The Man Without a Country_ and _Rip Van Winkle_. + +"As the technique of the American short story is understood and applied +to-day, neither of these two stories can be regarded as a work of +impeccable art. But flaws have not kept them from fame. By a common +verdict the flawless short stories of the day are fameless. Certainly, +also, Hawthorne was uninfluenced by Poe in writing short stories that +remain secure among brief American classics. + +"This, of course, is limiting the outlook to our own literature. Beyond +our literature, what of Balzac? In the splendor of his achievements with +the novel, Balzac has perhaps been slighted as a master of the short +story. Think, for instance, of such a colossal fragment as _The Atheists +Mass_. + +"And what of Boccaccio? For centuries before Poe, the _Decameron_ shone +before the eyes of the world as the golden treasury of model forms for +the short story. + +"And centuries before Boccaccio, flashing from hand to hand all over the +world, there was a greater treasury still, the treasury of _The Arabian +Nights_. + +"It is no disparagement to Poe to say that his genius did not +originate the genius of the short story. His true place, his logical +place, in the development of the short story is that of a man with +ancestors--naturally! + +"Since there is a breath of nativity blowing through his stories, I +think it is the breath of far distant romance from somewhere. Certainly +his stories are as remote from our civilization and from all things +American as are Oriental tales." + +Mr. Allen showed he had given much thought to Edgar Allan Poe's place +among the American fiction writers, so I thought that he might also have +some interesting things to say about Poe as a poet. He had. He mentioned +a quality of Poe's verse which for some reason or other seems +heretofore to have escaped the notice of students of American poetry. + +"It may be worth while calling attention," he said, "to the fact that +nearly all of Poe's poems belong to the night. Twelve o'clock noon never +strikes to his poetic genius. His best poems are Poe's Nights, if not +_Arabian Nights_. + +"There is a saying that the German novel long ago died of the full moon. +To Poe the dead moon was the orb of life. The sun blotted him out." + +Great as is his admiration for Poe's genius, Mr. Allen does not believe +he has greatly influenced American prose. He said: + +"As to the influence of Poe's short stories in our country, this seems +to be a tradition mainly fostered by professors of English in American +universities and by the historians of our literature. The tradition does +not prevail among American writers. Actually there is no traceable stamp +of the influence of his prose writings on the work of any American +short-story writer known to me, save one. That one is Ambrose Bierce." + +"Why is it," I asked, "that Poe's influence on American fiction has been +so slight?" + +"The main reason," Mr. Allen answered, "why Poe's stories have remained +outside American imitation or emulation is perhaps because they are +projected outside American sympathies. They lie to-day where they lay +when they were written--beyond the confines of what the German calls the +literature of the soil. + +"Poe and Ambrose Bierce are at least to be linked in this: that they are +the two greatest and the two coldest of all American short-story +writers. Any living American fictionist will perhaps bear testimony to +the fact that he has never met any other writer who has been influenced +by the stories of Poe." + +"Mr. Allen," I said, "you believe that the American short story has not +been influenced by Poe; has the American short story, however, improved +since his time?" + +"The renascence of the American short story," said Mr. Allen, +thoughtfully, "its real efflorescence as a natural literary art form, +took place after the close of the Civil War. The historians of our +literature have, perhaps, as is customary with them, held to the strict +continuity of tradition as explaining this renascence. If so, they have +omitted one of the instinctive forces of human nature, which invariably +act in nations that have literatures and act ungovernably at the +termination of all wars. + +"After any war spontaneity in story-telling is one of the ungovernable +impulses of human nature. This can be traced from modern literature back +to primitive man returning from his feuds. When he had no literature, he +carved his story on the walls of his cave or on a bone to tell the glory +of the fight. Before he could even carve a bone he hung up a row of the +heads of the defeated. Perhaps the original form of the war short story +was a good, thick volume of heads. Within our own civilization the +American Indian told his short stories in this way--with American heads +or tufts of scalps--a sad way of telling them for our forefathers. + +"At the close of the American Civil War the atmosphere, both North and +South, was charged with stories. The amazing fact is not that short +stories should have begun at that time, but that they should have begun +with such perfection. This perfection expressed itself more richly +during the period, say, from 1870 to 1895--twenty-five years--than it +has ever done since. + +"The evidence is at hand that the best of the American short stories +written during that period outweigh in value those that have been +written later--with the exception of those of one man. And this evidence +takes this form--that these stories were collected into volumes, had an +enormous sale, had the highest critical appreciation, have passed into +the histories of literature written since, have gone into the courses of +English literature now being taught in the universities, and are still +steadily being sold. + +"Is this true of the best short stories being written now? Are any of +the short stories written since that period being bound into volumes and +extensively sold? Do the professors of English literature recommend them +to their classes? That is the practical test. + +"The one exception is O. Henry. He alone stands out in the later period +as a world within himself; as much apart from any one else as are +Hawthorne and Poe." + +Mr. Allen did not express an opinion as to the probable effects on +literature of the war. He said: + +"Now, the North and the South in the renascence of the short story after +the Civil War divide honors about equally. But it is impossible to speak +of the Southern short story, or indeed of Southern literature at all, +without being brought to the brink of a subject which lies back of the +whole philosophy of Southern literature." + +Mr. Allen paused for a moment. Then he continued, speaking with an +intensity which reminded me of his Southern birth and upbringing: + +"Suppose that at the end of the present European war Germany should be +victorious and France defeated. And suppose that in France there should +not be left a single publishing-house, a single literary periodical, a +single literary editor, a single critic, and scarcely even a single +buyer of books. + +"And suppose that the defeated French people wanted to cry out their +soul over their defeat and against their conquerors. And suppose that in +order to do this every French novelist, short-story writer, or poet, +unable to keep silent, should begin to write and begin to send his novel +or his short story or his poem over into Germany to be read by a German +editor, published by a German publisher, and sold in a German bookshop +to a German reader. What kind of French literature of the war do you +think would appear in Germany and be fostered there? + +"But this is exactly what happened after the war between the North and +the South. + +"The few voices that began to be sent northward across the demolished +battle-line could only be the voices that would be listened to and +welcomed on the other side. That is the reason why that first literature +was so mild, so tempered, so thin, so devitalized, that it seemed not to +come from an enraged people, but from the memories of their ghosts. + +"As a result of finding war literature inexpressible in such conditions, +the young generation of Southerners dropped the theme of war altogether +and explored other paths. So that perhaps the most original and +spontaneous fragments of this new Southern post-bellum literature are in +the regions of the imagination, where no note of war is heard. + +"It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that if Joel Chandler +Harris, a young Southerner, had possessed full freedom to wreak his +genius on the war, the world might never have heard of 'Uncle Remus.' +The world might never have known that among the cotton-plantations there +dwelt a brother to AEsop and to La Fontaine." + + + + +_SOME HARMFUL INFLUENCES_ + +HARRY LEON WILSON + + +From the Pacific Coast--from what is enthusiastically termed "the Golden +West"--from that section of the United States which is large and +chivalrous and gladly suffers suffrage--comes a voice, replying to my +question: "What is the matter with contemporary fiction?" + +And the voice says, "_Cherchez la femme!_" + +It is the voice of Mr. Harry Leon Wilson, author of _Bunker Bean_, +_Ruggles of Red Gap_, and many another popular novel, and co-author with +Mr. Booth Tarkington of several successful plays. Mr. Wilson believes +that the dullness and insincerity of our novels are due to the taste of +most of their readers--that is, to the taste of the women. + +I asked Mr. Wilson what, in his opinion, was the influence most harmful +to the development of literature in America. + +"I know little about literature," Mr. Wilson replied, "but if you mean +the novel, I should say the intense satisfaction with it as it is, of +the maker, the seller, and the buyer. And to trace this baneful +satisfaction to its source, I should say it lies in the lack of a +cultivated taste in our women readers of fiction. + +"Publishers are agreed, I believe, that women buy the great bulk of +their output. The current novel is as deliberately planned to please the +woman buyer as is any other bit of trade goods. The publisher knows what +she wants to read, the writer finds out from the publisher, and you can +see the result in the advertisements--and the writer's royalty +statements. + +"'We want,' says the publisher, 'a stunning girl for the cover and a +corking good love interest to catch the women.' (Publishers do talk that +way when they have safely locked themselves in their low dens.) + +"This love interest is always said to be wholesome and sweet. I don't +know. Certainly it is sweet enough. In the trade novel it's as if you +took a segment of rich layer cake, the chocolate-and-jelly kind, poured +over it a half-pint of nice thick molasses, and then, just to make sure, +sprinkled this abundantly with fine sugar. + +"Anyway, that's what the publisher has found--and he has the best means +of knowing--that the American woman will buy year in and year out. And +you can't blame him for printing it. A publisher with ideals of his own +couldn't last any longer than a grocer with ideals of his own, or a +clergyman. + +"And least of all can you blame the author for writing this slush, +because nine times out of ten he doesn't know any better. How should he, +with no one to tell him? + +"And that," said Mr. Wilson, "is another evil almost as great in its +influence as the undeveloped taste of our women readers. I mean our lack +of authoritative criticism. Now we really do get a good novel once in a +blue moon, but one who has been made wary by the mass of trade novels +would never suspect it from reading our book reviews. The good novel, it +is true, is praised heartily, but then so are all the bad novels--and +how is one to tell? + +"At least eighty-five per cent. of our book reviews are mere amiable, +perfunctory echoes of the enthusiastic 'canned' review which the +publisher obligingly prints on the paper jacket of his best seller. I +sometimes suspect this task is allotted to a member of the staff who is +known to be 'fond of reading.' + +"Another evil influence is often alleged--the pressure the business +office puts on the reviewer to be tender with novels that are lavishly +advertised, but I have never thought there was more than a grain of +truth in this. + +"Perhaps a publisher wouldn't continue to patronize a sheet that +habitually blurted out the truth about his best sellers, but I really +doubt that this was ever put to an issue. I don't believe the average +book-reviewer knows any better than the average novelist the difference +between a good and a bad novel. + +"It isn't so with the other arts. We have critics for those. Music, +sculpture, painting--we know the best and get the best. + +"But, then, the novel is scarcely considered to be an art form. Any one +can--and does--write a novel, if he can only find the time. It isn't +supposed to be a thing one must study, like plumbing or architecture. + +"The novelist who wants to write a best seller this year studies the +best seller of last year, and wisely, because that is what the publisher +wants--something like his last one that sold big. He is looking for it +night and day and for nothing else. He wants good carpenters who have +followed the design that women have liked. Fiction is the one art you +don't take seriously, and there is no one to tell us we should; there +are no critics to inform the writers and the readers and make the +publishers timid. + +"True, we have in this country two or three, possibly four, critics who +can speak with authority, men who know what the novel has been, what it +is with us, what it ought to be. One of them is a friend of mine, and I +reproached him lately for not speaking out in meeting oftener. + +"His defense was pathetic. First, that ninety out of a hundred of our +novels are beneath criticism. Second, as to the remaining ten that would +merit the rapier instead of the bludgeon--'criticism is harder to sell +than post-meridian virtue. I have tried.' + +"And he has to eat as often as any publisher. So there you are! People +are not going to pay him for finding fault with something they are +intensely satisfied with. It all comes back to the women. When their +taste is corrected we shall have better novels. But not before then!" + +"Mr. Wilson," I said, "do you believe that the development of the +magazine, with its high prices and serialization, has been harmful or +beneficial to fiction?" + +"In the first place, the magazine hasn't developed," he answered. "It +has merely multiplied--the cheap ones, I mean. And prices have not +increased except to about a dozen of our national favorites. Where there +is one writer who can get fifteen hundred dollars for a short story, or +fifteen thousand dollars for the serial rights to a novel, there are a +thousand who can get not more than a fifteenth of those prices. + +"On the whole, I think that the effect of the cheap monthlies has been +good. They are the only ones that welcome the new writer. They try him +out. Then, if the public takes to him, the better magazines find it out +after a while and form an alliance with him--that is, if his characters +are so sweet and wholesome that the magazine can still be left on the +center-table where Cuthbert or Berryl might see it after school. + +"Nowadays I never expect to find a good short story in any of the cheap +magazines. Of course, it does happen now and then, but not often enough +to make me impatient for their coming. And, of course, the cheap +monthlies do print, for the most part, what are probably the worst +short stories that will ever be written in the world--the very furthest +from anything real. + +"These writers, too, like the novelists, study one another instead of +life. We will say one of them writes a short story about a pure young +shopgirl of flower-like beauty who, spending an evening of innocent +recreation in a notorious Tenderloin dive (one of those places that I, +for one, have never been able to find), is insulted by the leader of +Tammany Hall, who is always hanging around there for evil purposes. At +the last moment she is saved from his loathsome advances by a dashing +young stranger in a cute-cut blue serge suit, who carries her off in a +taxicab and marries her at 2 A.M. And he, of course, proves to be the +great traction magnate who owns all the city's surface-car lines. + +"The other writers, and some new ones that never before thought of +writing, read this story, which is called 'All for Love,' and learn to +do the 'type'--the pure young shopgirl, a bit slangy in spite of her +flower-like beauty; the abhorrent politician (some day he will have a +distressing mix-up with his very own daughter in one of these evil +places--see if he doesn't!), the low-browed dive-keeper, and the honest +young traction magnate. They will learn with a little practice to do +these as the dupes of the 'Be-a-cartoonist!' schools learn to draw 'An +Irishman,' 'A German,' 'A Jew,' and the dental facade of Colonel +Roosevelt. + +"But we must remember that O. Henry came to us from the cheap magazines, +never did get into the higher-priced ones, and was, by the way, +wretchedly paid for his stories. True, he received good prices in his +later days, but I doubt if they raised the average for his output to two +hundred dollars a story. He neglected to come to the feast in a wedding +garment, so the more pretentious magazines would have none of him. + +"For one O. Henry, then, we can forgive the lesser monthlies for the +bulk of their stuff that can be read only by born otoliths. The more +magazines, the better our chance of finding the new man, and only in the +cheap ones can he come to life." + +Many dogmatic statements have been made concerning the great American +novel. I have been told that it would come from the South, that it would +come from the West, that it would never be written. But Mr. Wilson has a +new and revolutionary theory. + +"Will there," I asked, "ever be the great American novel? That is, will +there ever be a novel which reflects American life as adequately as +_Vanity Fair_ reflects English life?" + +"There have already been dozens of them!" was Mr. Wilson's emphatic +reply. "To go no farther back, Booth Tarkington wrote one the other day, +and so did Theodore Dreiser. (Dreiser's story, 'The "Genius,"' of course +couldn't have appeared in any American magazine. Trust your canny +publisher not to let his magazine hand know what his book hand is +doing!) + +"But let us lay forever that dear old question that has haunted our +literary columns for so many years. The answer, of course, is that there +is no novel that reflects English life any more adequately than _The +Turmoil_, or '_The Genius_,' or _The Virginian_, or _Perch of the +Devil_, or _Unleavened Bread_, or _The Rise of Silas Lapham_ reflects +American life. + +"Certainly _Vanity Fair_ doesn't do this. It reflects but a very narrow +section of London life. For the purposes of fictional portrayal England +is just as big and difficult--as impossible in one novel--as the United +States. + +"To know England through fiction one must go to all her artists, past +and present, getting a little from each. Hardy gives us an England that +Thackeray never suspected, and Galsworthy gives us still another, not to +go on to the England of George Moore, Phillpotts, Quiller-Couch, Wells, +Bennett, Walpole, George, or Mackenzie. I hope at the proper time that a +tasteful little tablet will be erected to my memory for having laid this +ancient and highly respectable apparition." + +In his interesting contribution to a symposium of opinions as to what +are the six best novels in the English language, Mr. Wilson had some +things to say about Dickens which were not likely to bring him a vote of +thanks from the Dickens Fellowship. I wished to have his opinion of +Dickens stated more definitely, and so, basing my question on a +statement he had made in the symposium, I asked, "What qualities in the +work of Charles Dickens make him a bad model for novelists to follow?" + +Mr. Wilson replied: "Dickens has been a blight to most writers who were +susceptible to his vices. He was a great humorist, but an inferior +novelist, and countless other inferior novelists have believed that they +could be great humorists by following his childishly easy formula. + +"That is, those who were influenced by him copy his faults. Witness our +school of characterization based on the Dickens method, a school holding +that 'character' is a mere trick of giving your creation exaggerated +mannerisms or physical surfaces--as with Dickens it was rarely anything +else. + +"Dickens created vaudeville 'characters'--unsurpassed for twenty-minute +sketches, deadly beyond that to the mentally mature. His stock in trade +was the grotesque make-up. In stage talk he couldn't create a 'straight' +part. + +"Strip his people of their make-ups, verbal, hirsute, sartorial, +surgical, pathological, what not--and dummies remain. Meet them once and +you know them for the rest of the tale, the Micawbers, Gamps, +Pecksniffs, Nicklebys; each has his stunt and does it over and over at +each new meeting, to the--for me, at least--maddening delay of the +melodrama. I like melodrama as well as any one, badgered heroines, +falsely accused heroes, missing wills, trap-doors, disguised +philanthropists, foul murders, and even slow-dying children who are not +only moralists, but orators; and I like to see the villain get his at +last, and get it good; but I can't read Dickens any more, because the +tale must be held up every five minutes for one of the funny +'characters' to do his stunt. + +"How many years will it take us--writers, I mean--to realize that there +are no characters in Dickens in the sense that Dmitri in _The Brothers +Caramazov_ is a character? How few of our current novelists can +distinguish between the soulless caricaturing of Dickens and the genuine +character-drawing of a Turgenieff or a Dostoievski! + +"How few of us can see how the soul of Dmitri is slowly unfolded to the +reader with never a bit of make-up! To this moment, I don't know if he +wore a beard or not; but I know the man. Dickens would have given him +funny whiskers, astigmatism, a shortened leg, a purple nose, and still +to make sure we wouldn't mistake him a catch phrase for his utterance. + +"Any novelist who has mastered the rudiments of his craft, even though +he hasn't an atom of humor in his make-up, can write a Dickens novel, +and any publisher will print it for the Christmas trade if it's fairly +workman-like, and it will be warmly praised in the reviews. That happens +every season. + +"And that's why Dickens is a bad model. If one must have a model, why +not Hall Caine, infinitely the superior of Dickens as a craftsman? Of +course, having no humor, he can't be read by people who have, but he +knows his trade, where Dickens was a preposterous blunderer." + +Charles Belmont Davis once told me that a novelist should have some +other regular occupation besides writing. I asked Mr. Wilson his opinion +on this subject. + +"Mr. Davis didn't originate this theory," he said. "It's older than he +is. Anyway, I don't believe in it. I know of no business to-day that +would leave a man time to write novels, and a novelist worth his salt +won't have time for any other business. + +"Of course, the ideal novelist would at one time or another have been +anything. The ideal novelist has two passions, people and words, and he +should have had and should continue to have as many points of contact +with life as possible. But if he has reached the point where he can +write to please me, I want him not to waste time doing anything else. + +"Personally, I wish I might have been, for varying intervals, a Russian +Grand Duke, an Eighth Avenue undertaker, the manager of a +five-and-ten-cent store, a head waiter, a burglar, a desk sergeant at +the Thirtieth Street Police Station, and a malefactor of great wealth, +preferably one that gets into the snapshots at Newport, reading from +left to right. But Heaven has denied me practically all of these avenues +to a knowledge of my humankind, and I am too busy keeping up with the +current styles of all millinery fiction to take to any of them at this +late day. + +"Besides, I have a bad example to deter me, having just read _The High +Priestess_, by Robert Grant, who has another business than novel +writing--something connected with the law, I believe, in Boston. I have +no means of knowing how valuable a civic unit he may have been in his +home town, but I do feel that he has cheated the world of a great deal +by keeping to this other business, whatever it may be. + +"From the author of _Unleavened Bread_ we once had a right to expect +much. But _The High Priestess_ chiefly makes me regret that he didn't +have to write novels or starve; by its virtues of construction, which +are many and admirable, and by its utter lack of power to communicate +any emotion whatsoever, which is conspicuous and lamentable. He seems to +have written his novel with an adding-machine, and instinctively I +blame that 'other business' of his, in which he seems to have +forgotten--for he did know it once--that a novelist may or may not think +straight, but he must feel. + +"Perhaps he wasn't a real novelist, after all. I suspect a real novelist +would starve in any other business." + +I told Mr. Wilson that a prominent American humorist writer had classed +Mark Twain with Artemus Ward and Philander Doesticks, and said that +these men were not genuine humorists, but "the Charlie Chaplins of their +time." + +Mr. Wilson smiled. "Isn't this rather high praise for Charlie Chaplin?" +he asked. "How far is this idolatry of the movie actor to go, anyway? +True, Mr. Chaplin is a skilled comedian, pre-eminent in his curious new +profession, but to my thinking he lacks repose at those supreme moments +when he is battering the faces of his fellow-histrions with the wet mop +or the stuffed club, or walking on their stomachs; but I may be +prejudiced. I know I shouldn't have ranked him with Mark Twain, +arch-humanist and satirist and one of the few literary artists who have +attained the world stature--so that we must go back and back to +Cervantes to find his like." + + + + +_THE PASSING OF THE SNOB_ + +EDWARD S. MARTIN + + +If William Makepeace Thackeray were alive to-day he would not write a +_Book of Snobs_. He might write a _Book of Reformers_. + +This is the opinion of that shrewd and kindly satirist, Edward S. +Martin. I found him not in New York, the city whose lights and shadows +are reflected in much of his graceful prose and pungent verse, but out +among the Connecticut hills. In the pleasant study of his quaint +Colonial cottage he talked about the thing he delights to +observe--humanity. + +"Thackeray would not write a _Book of Snobs_ to-day," he said. "The snob +is not now the appealing subject that he was in the early days of the +reign of Queen Victoria. Thackeray could not now find enough snobs and +snobbery to write about, either in England or in America. Snobs are by +way of having punctured tires these days. + +"Don't you think that the snobs were always very much apart from our +civilization and national ideals? They were a symptom of an established +and conservative society. And this established and conservative society +Thackeray in his way helped to break down. + +"To-day, in England and in the United States, that kind of society is in +a precarious condition. If Thackeray were now writing, he would not +satirize snobs. It is more likely that he would satirize the reformers. +I think that all the snobs have hit the sawdust trail." + +"How did this happen?" I asked. "What was it that did away with the +snobs?" + +"It was largely a natural process of change," said Mr. Martin. "The +snobs were put on the defensive. You see, there is a harder push of +democracy now than there was in Thackeray's time. The world of which the +snob was so conspicuous a part seems, especially since the war began, to +have passed away. Of course the literature of that world is not dead, +but for the moment it seems obsolete. + +"To-day the whole attention of civilized mankind is fixed on the great +fundamental problems; there is no time for snobbery. For one thing, +there is the problem of national self-preservation. And there has +recently been before the civilized world, more strongly than ever +before, the great problem of the development of democracy. + +"I suppose that the war will check, to a certain extent, the development +of democracy. In England the great task of the hour is to organize all +the powers of society for defense against attack, against attack by a +power organized for forty years for that attack. + +"I suppose England will get organization out of this war. And if we get +into the war, we'll get organization out of it." + +Mr. Martin is generally thought of as a critic of social rather than +political conditions. But he is keenly interested in politics. Speaking +of American politics and the possibility of America's entering the war, +he said: + +"For the past fifteen years our greatest activity in politics has been +to rip things open. It seemed to most people that the organization was +getting too strong and that it was controlled by too few people. The +fight has been against that condition. + +"But if we became involved in a serious war trouble the energy of our +people would be directed to an attempt to secure increased efficiency. +We would become closely organized again. I don't think we'd lose the +benefit of what has been done in the past years, but we would come to a +turn in the road. + +"I suppose it would bring us all together, if we got into this war, and +I suppose we'd get some good out of it. + +"You see, the people who formerly directed our Government haven't had +much power for several years. Now they are valuable people. And they +will come back into power again, but with greatly modified conditions. + +"I don't think that a new set of people are going to manage the affairs +of the nation. I think that the affairs of the nation will be managed by +the people who managed them before. But these people will be much more +under control than they were before, and they will be subject to new +laws. + +"How much good government by commission is going to do I don't know. We +have not as yet had good enough men to enter into this important work, +and the best of those who have entered have not stayed in this +employment. So the development of experts in government has not come +along as well as people hoped it would." + +The genial philosopher smiled quizzically and rose from his chair. + +"I'm afraid I'm getting too political," he said, pacing slowly up and +down the room. "Let's get back to snobs and snobbery. + +"You asked me a few minutes ago why the snob had become so inconspicuous +a figure in our modern society. Well, I know one reason for this altered +condition of affairs. Woman has abolished the snob. Woman has changed +man." + +"And what changed woman?" I asked. + +"Many things; the development of machinery, for instance," he replied. +"Woman has not changed so much as the conditions of life have changed. + +"The development of machinery has caused changes that impress me deeply. +It has produced immense alterations in the conditions of life and in the +relations between people. + +"War has been changed in a striking manner by this development of +machinery. Never in the history of warfare was machinery so prominent +and important as to-day. In fact, I think I am justified in speaking of +this war as a machine-bore! + +"Machinery really has had a great deal to do with changing the +condition and activities of woman, and has been a powerful influence in +bringing about the modern movement for women's suffrage. Machinery has +changed the employment of women and forced them into kinds of work which +are not domestic. + +"The typewriter and the telephone have revolutionized our methods of +doing business. The typewriter and the telephone have filled our offices +with women. They are doing work which twenty years ago would have been +considered most unfeminine. + +"The war is strengthening this tendency of women to take up work that is +not domestic. I have heard it said that women first got into the +undomestic kinds of business in France during the Napoleonic wars. +Napoleon wanted to have all the men out in the line of battle, so he had +girls instructed in bookkeeping and other kinds of office work. + +"The business activities of Frenchwomen date from that time. And a +similar result seems to be coming out of this war. In France, in +England, in all the countries engaged in the war the women are filling +the positions left vacant by the men." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that this is a good thing for civilization, +this increased activity of women in business?" + +"I don't know," said Mr. Martin, musingly. "I don't know. But I do know +this, that the main employment of woman is to rear a family. Office +work, administrative work--these things are of only secondary +importance. The one vital thing for women to do is to rear families. +They must do this if the human race is to continue." + +"Mr. Martin," I said, "you told me that Thackeray, if he were alive, +would satirize the reformers. Just what sort of reformer is it that has +taken the place of the snob?" + +Mr. Martin did not at once answer. He smiled, as if enjoying some +entertaining memory. Then he started to speak, and mentioned the name of +a prominent reformer. But his New England caution checked him. He said: + +"No, I'd better not say anything about that. I'd rather not. I'd rather +say that the things that the snobs admired and particularly embodied +have lost prestige during the last twenty years. + +"After 1898, after our great rise to prosperity, the captains of +industry and of finance were the great men of the country. But I think +these great men are less stunning now than they were then. And money is +less stunning, too. + +"All the business of money-making has had a great loss of prestige since +1900. People think more of other things. And the people who are thinking +of other things than money-making have more of a 'punch' than they had +before. The wise have more of a punch, and so have the foolish." + +Again came that reminiscent smile. "Reformers can be very trying," he +said. "Very trying, indeed. Did you ever read Brand Whitlock's _Forty +Years of It_? Brand Whitlock had his own trials with the reformers. +Whitlock is a sensible, generous man, and his attitude toward reformers +is a good deal humorous and not at all violent. That would be +Thackeray's attitude toward them, I think, if he were living to-day. +He'd satirize the reformers instead of the snobs." + +Mr. Martin is not inclined to condemn or to accept absolutely any of the +modern reform movements. "All reform movements," he said, "run until +they get a check. Then they stop. But what they have accomplished is not +lost." + +The society women who undertake sociological reform work find in Mr. +Martin no unsympathetic critic. + +"These wealthy women," he said, "take up reform work as a recourse. +Society life is not very filling. They have a sense of emptiness. So +they go in for reform, to fill out their lives more adequately. + +"But I don't know that I'd call that kind of thing reform. I'd call it a +large form of social activity. These women are attending to a great mass +of people who need this attention. But the bulk of this kind of work is +too small for it to be called reform. + +"In New York there are very many young people who need care and +leadership. The neglected and incompetent must be looked after. The +old-fashioned family control has been considerably loosened, and an +attempt must be made to guard those who are therefore less protected +than they would have been a generation ago. Certainly these efforts to +look after young people who don't have enough care taken of them by +their families are directed in the right direction." + +I asked Mr. Martin what he thought of the present condition of American +literature, particularly the work presented to the public on the pages +of magazines. + +"Just now," he said, "the newspapers seem to have almost everything. The +great interest of the last few years has been in the newspapers. They +have had a tremendous story to tell, they have told it every day, and +other things have seemed, in comparison, flat and lifeless. + +"It has been a hard time for every sort of a publication not absolutely +up to the minute all the time. The newspapers have had the field almost +to themselves. + +"And I think that the newspapers have greatly improved. They have had an +immense chance, and it has been very stimulating." + + + + +_COMMERCIALIZING THE SEX INSTINCT_ + +ROBERT HERRICK + + +"Realism," said Robert Herrick, "is not the celebration of sexuality." I +had not recalled to earth that merry divine whose lyric invitation to go +a-Maying still echoes in the heart of every lover of poetry. The Robert +Herrick with whom I was talking is a poet and a discriminating critic of +poetry, but the world knows him chiefly for his novels--_The Common +Lot_, _Together_, _Clark's Field_, and other intimate studies of +American life and character. He is a realist, and not many years ago +there were critics who thought that his manner of dealing with sexual +themes was dangerously frank. Therefore, the statement that he had just +made seemed to me particularly significant. + +"It seems to have become the fashion," he said, "to apply the term +Realist to every writer who is obsessed with sex. I think I know the +reason for this. Our Anglo-Saxon prudery kept all mention of sex +relations out of our fiction for many years. Among comparatively modern +novelists the realists were the first to break the shackles of this +convention, and write frankly of sex. And from this it has come, most +unfortunately, that realism and pornography are often confused by +novelists and critics as well as by the public. + +"This confusion of ideas was apparent in some of the criticisms of my +novel _Together_. In an early chapter of the book there was an incident +which was intended to show that the man and woman who were the chief +figures in the book were spiritually incompatible, that their relations +as husband and wife would be wrong. This was, in fact, the theme of the +book, and this incident in the first chapter was intended to foreshadow +the later events of their married life. Well, the critics who disliked +this chapter said that what they objected to was its 'gross realism.' + +"Now, as a matter of fact, that part of the book was not realistic at +all. I was describing something unusual, abnormal, while realism has to +do with the normal. The critic had, of course, a perfect right to +believe that the subject ought not to be treated at all, but 'gross +realism' was the most inappropriate description possible. + +"Undoubtedly there are many writers who believe that they are realists +because they write about nothing but sex. Undoubtedly, too, there are +many writers who are conscious of the commercial value of sex in +literature. Of course a writer ought to be conscious of the sex impulse +in life, but he ought not to display it constantly. I wish our writers +would pay less attention to the direct manifestations of sex and more to +its indirect influence, to the ways in which it affects all phases of +activity." + +"Who are some of the writers who seem to you to be especially ready to +avail themselves of the commercial value of sex?" I asked. + +Mr. Herrick smiled. "I think you know the writers I mean without my +mentioning their names," he said. "They write for widely circulated +magazines, and make a great deal of money, and their success is due +almost entirely to their industrious celebration of sexual affairs. You +know the sort of magazine for which they write--it always has on the +cover a highly colored picture of a pretty woman, never anything else. +That, too, is an example, and a rather wearying example, of the +commercializing of the sex appeal. + +"I think that Zola, although he was a great artist, was often conscious +of the business value of the sex theme. He knew that that sort of thing +had a tremendous appeal, and, for me, much of his best work is marred by +his deliberate introduction of sex, with the purpose--which, of course, +he realized--of making a sensation and selling large editions of his +books. This sort of commercialism was not found in the great Russian +realists, the true realist--Dostoievski, for example. But it is found in +the work of some of the modern Russian writers who are incorrectly +termed realists." + +"Mr. Herrick," I asked, "just what is a realist?" + +Mr. Herrick's youthful face, which contrasts strangely with his white +hair, took on a thoughtful expression. + +"The distinction between realism and romanticism," he said, "is one of +spirit rather than of method. The realist has before him an aim which is +entirely different from that of the romanticist. + +"The realist writes a novel with one purpose in view. And that purpose +is to render into written words the normal aspect of things. + +"The aim of the romanticist is entirely different. He is concerned only +with things which are exciting, astonishing--in a word, abnormal. + +"I do not like literary labels, and I think that the names 'realist' and +'romanticist' have been so much misused that they are now almost +meaningless. The significance of the term changes from year to year; the +realists of one generation are the romanticists of the next. + +"Bulwer Lytton was considered a realist in his day. But we think of him +only as a sentimental and melodramatic romanticist whose work has no +connection with real life. + +"Charles Dickens was considered a realist by the critics of his own +generation, and it is probable that he considered himself a realist. But +his strongest instinct was toward the melodramatic. He wrote chiefly +about simple people, it is true, and chiefly about his own land and +time. But the fact that a writer used his contemporaries as subjects +does not make him a realist. Dickens's people were unusual; they were +better or worse than most people, and they had extraordinary adventures; +they did not lead the sort of life which most people lead. Therefore, +Dickens cannot accurately be called a realist." + +"You called Dostoievski a realist," I said. "What writers who use the +English language seem to you to deserve best the name of realist?" + +"I think," said Mr. Herrick, "that the most thoroughgoing realist who +ever wrote in England was Anthony Trollope. _Barchester Towers_ and +_Framley Parsonage_ are masterpieces of realism; they give a faithful +and convincing picture of the every-day life of a section of English +society with which their author was thoroughly familiar. Trollope +reflected life as he saw it--normal life. He was a great realist. + +"In the United States there has been only one writer who has as great a +right to the name realist as had Anthony Trollope. That man is William +Dean Howells. Mr. Howells has always been interested in the normal +aspect of things. He has taken for his subject a sort of life which he +knows intimately; he has not sought for extraordinary adventures for his +theme, nor has he depicted characters remote from our experience. His +novels are distinguished by such fidelity to life that he has an +indisputable claim to be called a realist. + +"But, as I said, it is dangerous and unprofitable to attempt to label +literary artists. Thackeray was a realist. Yet _Henry Esmond_ is classed +as a romantic novel. In that book Thackeray used the realistic method; +he spent a long time in studying the manners and customs of the time +about which he was writing; and all the details of the sort of life +which he describes are, I believe, historically accurate. And yet _Henry +Esmond_ is a romance from beginning to end; it is a romantic novel +written by a realist, and written according to what is called the +realistic method. + +"On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott was a romanticist. No one will deny +that. Yet in many of his early books he dealt with what may be called +realistic material; he described with close fidelity to detail a sort of +life and a sort of people with which he was well acquainted. + +"Whether a writer is a realist or a romanticist is, after all, I think, +partly a matter of accident or culture. I happen to be a realist because +I was brought up on the great Russian realists like Gogol and the great +English realists from George Elliot down to Thomas Hardy. If I had been +brought up on romantic writers I suppose that I might now be writing an +entirely different sort of novel from that with which I am associated. + +"There is a sounder distinction," said Mr. Herrick, "than that which +people try to draw between the realistic novel and the romantic novel. +This is the distinction between the novel of character and the novel of +events. Personally, I never have been able to see how the development of +character can be separated from the plot of a novel. A book in which the +characters exhibit exactly the same characteristics, moral and +intellectual, in the last chapter as in the first, seems to me to be +utterly worthless. + +"I will, however, make one exception--that is, the novel of the Jules +Verne type. In this sort of book, and in romances of the Monte Cristo +kind, action is the only thing with which the author and the reader are +concerned, and any attempt to develop character would clog the wheels of +the story. + +"But every other kind of novel depends on character. Even in the best +work of Dumas, in _The Three Musketeers_, for example, the characters of +the principal figures develop as the story progresses. + +"The highest interest of a novel depends upon the development of its +characters. If the characters are static, then the book is feeble. I +have never been able to see how the plot and the development of the +characters can be separated. + +"Of course, the novel of character is full of adventure. The adventures +of Henry James's characters are of absorbing interest, but they are +psychological adventures, internal adventures. If some kind person +wanted to give one of Henry James's novels what is commonly called 'a +bully plot' the novel would fail." + +As to the probable effect on literature of the war, Mr. Herrick has a +theory different from that of any other writer with whom I have +discussed the subject. + +"I think," he said, "that after the war we shall return to fatuous +romanticism and weak sentimentality in literature. The tendency will be +to read novels in order to forget life, instead of reading them to +realize life. There will be a revival of a deeper religious sense, +perhaps, but there will also be a revival of mere empty formalism in +religion. It has been so in the past after great convulsions. Men need +time to recover their spiritual pride, their interest in ideas." + +But Mr. Herrick's own reaction to the war does not seem to justify his +pessimistic prophecy. Certainly the personal experience which he next +narrated to me does not indicate that Mr. Herrick is growing sentimental +and romantic. + +"When I was in Rome recently," he said, "I was much impressed by +D'Annunzio. I was interested in him as a problem, as a picturesque +literary personality, as a decadent raffine type regenerated by the war. +I have not read any of his books for many years. + +"I took some of D'Annunzio's books to read on my voyage home. I read _Il +Piacere_. I realized its charm, I realized the highly aesthetic quality +of its author, a scholarly and exact aestheticism as well as an emotional +aestheticism. But, nevertheless, I had to force myself to read the book. +It was simply a description of a young man's amorous adventures. And I +could not see any reason for the existence of this carefully written +record of passional experiences. + +"It seemed to me that the war had swept this sort of thing aside, or had +swept aside my interest in this sort of thing. The book seemed to me as +dull and trivial and as remote as a second-rate eighteenth-century +novel. And I wondered if we would ever again return to the time when +such a record of a young man's emotional and sensual experiences would +be worth while. + +"I came to the conclusion that D'Annunzio himself would not now write +such a novel. I think that it would seem to him to be too trivial a +report on life. I think that the war has so forced the essential things +of life upon the attention of young men." + + + + +_SIXTEEN DON'TS FOR POETS_ + +ARTHUR GUITERMAN + + +Arthur Guiterman has been called the Owen Seaman of America. Of course +he isn't, any more than Owen Seaman is the Arthur Guiterman of England. +But the verse which brings Arthur Guiterman his daily bread is turned no +less deftly than is that of _Punch's_ famous editor. Arthur Guiterman is +not a humorist who writes verse; he is a poet with an abundant gift of +humor. + +Now, the author of _The Antiseptic Baby and the Prophylactic Pup_ and +_The Quest of the Riband_, and of those unforgetable rhymed reviews, +differs from most other poets not only in possessing an abnormally +developed sense of humor, but also in being able to make a comfortable +living out of the sale of his verse. But when he talked to me recently +he was by no means inclined to advise all able young poets to expect +their poetry to provide them with board and lodging. + +"Of course it is possible to make a living out of verse," he said. "Walt +Mason does, and so does Berton Braley. And now most of my income comes +from my verse. Formerly I wrote short stories, but I haven't written one +for seven or eight years. + +"Nevertheless, I think it is inadvisable for any one to set out with the +idea of depending on the sale of verse as a means of livelihood. You +see, there are, after all, two forms, and only two forms, of literary +expression--the prose form and the verse form. Some subjects suit the +prose form, others suit the verse form. Any one who makes writing his +profession has ideas severally adapted to both of these forms. And every +writer should be able to express his idea in whichever of these two +forms suits it better. + +"Now, the verse form is older than the prose form. And so I have come to +look upon it as the form peculiarly attractive to youth. Many writers +outgrew the tendency to use the verse form, but some never outgrew it. +Sir Walter Scott was a verse-writer before he was a prose-writer, and so +was Shakespeare. So were many modern writers--Robert W. Chambers, for +example. + +"This theory is true especially in regard to lyric verse. The lyric is +nearly always the work of a young man. As a man grows older he sings +less and preaches more. Certainly this was true of Milton. + +"I never thought that I should write verse for a living. But verse +happens to be the medium that I love. I ran across my first poem the +other day--it was about fireflies, and I was eight years old when I +wrote it. Certainly nearly all writers write verse before they write +prose; perhaps it is atavistic. I don't know that Henry James began with +verse. But I would be willing to bet that he did. + +"One trouble with a great many people who make a living out of writing +verse is that they feel obliged always to be verse-writers, never to +write prose, even when the subject demands that medium. Alfred Noyes +gives us an example of this unfortunate tendency in his _Drake_. I am +not disparaging Alfred Noyes's work; he has written charming lyrics, but +in _Drake_, and perhaps in some of the _Tales from the Mermaid Tavern_, +I feel that he has written verse not because the subject was especially +suited to that medium, but because he felt that he was a verse-writer +and therefore should not write prose." + +Mr. Guiterman is firmly convinced, however, that a verse-writer ought to +be able, in time, to make a living out of his work. + +"If a man calls himself a writer," he said, "he ought to be able to make +a living out of writing. And I think that the writer of verse has a +greater opportunity to-day than ever before. I don't mean to say that +the appreciation of poetry is more intense than ever before, but it is +more general. More people are reading poetry now than in bygone +generations. + +"Compare with the traditions that we have to-day those of the early +nineteenth century, of the time of Byron and Sir Walter Scott. Then +books of verse sold in large quantities, it is true, but to a relatively +small public, to one class of readers. Now not only the poet, but also +the verse-writer has an enormous public. If a really great poet should +arise to-day he would find awaiting him a larger public than that known +by any poet of the past. But it would be necessary for the poet to be +great for him to find this public. Byron would be more generally +appreciated to-day, if he were to live again, than he was in his own +generation. I mention Byron because I think it probable that the next +great poet will have something of Byron's dynamic quality." + +"Who was the last great poet?" I asked. + +"How is one to decide whether or not a poet is great?" asked Mr. +Guiterman in turn. "My own feeling is that the late William Vaughn Moody +was a great poet in the making. Perhaps he never really fulfilled his +early promise; perhaps he went back to the themes of bygone ages too +much in finding themes for his poetry. It may be that the next really +great poet will sing an entirely different strain; it may be that I will +be one of those who will say that his work is all bosh. + +"But at any rate, he won't be an imitation Whitman or anything of that +sort. He won't be any special school, nor will he think that he is +founding a school. But it may be that his admirers will found a school +with him as its leader, and they may force him to take himself +seriously, and thus ruin himself." + +Returning to the subject of the advisability of a writer being able to +express himself in verse as well as in prose, Mr. Guiterman said: + +"Especially in our generation is it true that good verse requires +extreme condensation. In most work to-day brevity is desirable. The +epigram beats the epic. If Milton were living to-day he would not write +epics. I don't think it improbable that we have men with Miltonic minds, +and they are not writing epics. + +"If a man finds that he cannot express his idea in verse more forcefully +than he can in prose, then he ought to write prose. Very often a writer +is interested in some little incident which he would not be justified in +treating in prose, something too slight to be the theme of a short +story. This is the sort of thing which he should put into verse. There +is Leigh Hunt's _Jennie Kissed Me_, for example. Suppose he had made a +short story of it." + +Thinking of this poet's financial success, I asked him just what course +he would advise a young poet to pursue who had no means of livelihood +except writing. + +"Well, the worst thing for him to do," said Mr. Guiterman, "would be to +devote all his attention to writing an epic. He'd starve to death. + +"I suppose the best thing for him to do would be to write on as many +subjects as possible, including those of intense interest to himself. +What interests him intensely is sure to interest others, and the number +of others whom it interests will depend on how close he is by nature to +the mind of his place and time. He should get some sort of regular work +so that he need not depend at first upon the sale of his writings. This +work need not necessarily be literary in character, although it would be +advisable for him to get employment in a magazine or newspaper office, +so that he may get in touch with the conditions governing the sale of +manuscripts. + +"He should write on themes suggested by the day's news. He should write +topical verse; if there is a political campaign on, he should write +verse bearing upon that; if a great catastrophe occurs, he should write +about that, but he must not write on these subjects in a commonplace +manner. + +"He should send his verses to the daily papers, for they are the +publications most interested in topical verse. But also he should +attempt to sell his work to the magazines, which pay better prices than +the newspapers. If it is in him to do so, he should write humorous +verse, for there is always a good market for humorous verse that is +worth printing. He should look up the publishers of holiday cards, and +submit to them Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter verses, for which he +would receive, probably, about five dollars apiece. He should write +advertising verses, and he should, perhaps, make an alliance with some +artist with whom he can work, each supplementing the work of the other." + +"Mr. Guiterman," I said, "is this the advice that you would give to John +Keats if he were to ask you?" + +"Yes, certainly," said Mr. Guiterman. "But you understand that our +hypothetical poet must all the time be doing his own work, writing the +sort of verse which he specially desires to write. If his pot-boiling is +honestly done, it will help him with his other work. + +"He must study the needs and limitations of the various publications. He +must recognize the fact that just because he has certain powers it does +not follow that everything he writes will be desired by the editors. +Marked ability and market ability are different propositions. + +"If he finds that the magazines are not printing sad sonnets, he must +not write sad sonnets. He must adapt himself to the demands of the day. + +"There is high precedent for this course. You asked if I would give +this advice to the young Keats. Why not, when Shakespeare himself +followed the line of action of which I spoke? He began as a lyric poet, +a writer of sonnets. He wrote plays because he saw that the demand was +for plays, and because he wanted to make a living and more than a +living. But because he was Shakespeare his plays are what they are. + +"The poet must be influenced by the demand. There is inspiration in the +demand. Besides the material reward, the poet who is influenced by the +demand has the encouraging, inspiring knowledge that he is writing +something that people want to read." + +I asked Mr. Guiterman to give me a list of negative commandments for the +guidance of aspiring poets. Here it is: + +"Don't think of yourself as a poet, and don't dress the part. + +"Don't classify yourself as a member of any special school or group. + +"Don't call your quarters a garret or a studio. + +"Don't frequent exclusively the company of writers. + +"Don't think of any class of work that you feel moved to do as either +beneath you or above you. + +"Don't complain of lack of appreciation. (In the long run no really good +published work can escape appreciation.) + +"Don't think you are entitled to any special rights, privileges, and +immunities as a literary person, or have any more reason to consider +your possible lack of fame a grievance against the world than has any +shipping-clerk or traveling-salesman. + +"Don't speak of poetic license or believe that there is any such thing. + +"Don't tolerate in your own work any flaws in rhythm, rhyme, melody, or +grammar. + +"Don't use 'e'er' for 'ever,' 'o'er' for 'over,' 'whenas' or 'what time' +for 'when,' or any of the 'poetical' commonplaces of the past. + +"Don't say 'did go' for 'went,' even if you need an extra syllable. + +"Don't omit articles or prepositions for the sake of the rhythm. + +"Don't have your book published at your own expense by any house that +makes a practice of publishing at the author's expense. + +"Don't write poems about unborn babies. + +"Don't--don't write hymns to the great god Pan. He is dead; let him rest +in peace! + +"Don't write what everybody else is writing." + + + + +_MAGAZINES CHEAPEN FICTION_ + +GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON + + +Why is the modern American novel inferior to the modern English novel? +Of course, there are some patriotic critics who believe that it is not +inferior. But most readers of fiction speak of H. G. Wells and Compton +Mackenzie, for example, with a respect and admiration which they do not +extend to living American novelists. + +Why is this? Is it because of snobbishness or literary colonialism on +the part of the American public? George Barr McCutcheon does not think +so. The author of _Beverly of Graustark_ and many another popular +romance believes that there is in America a force definitely harmful to +the novel. And that force is the magazine. + +"The development of the magazine," he said to me, "has affected fiction +in two ways. It has made it cheap and yet expensive, if you know what I +mean. + +"Novels written solely with the view to sensationalism are more than +likely to bring discredit, not upon the magazine, but upon the writer. +He gets his price, however, and the public gets its fiction. + +"In my humble opinion, a writer should develop and complete his novel +without a thought of its value or suitability to serial purposes. He +should complete it to his own satisfaction--if that is possible--before +submitting it to either editor or publisher. They should not be +permitted to see it until it is in its complete form." + +"But you yourself write serial stories, do you not?" I asked. + +"I have never written a serial," answered Mr. McCutcheon. "Some of my +stories have been published serially, but they were not written as +serials. + +"I am quite convinced in my own mind that if we undertake to analyze the +distinction between the first-class English writers of to-day and many +of our Americans, we will find that their superiority resolves itself +quite simply into the fact that they do not write their novels as +serials. In other words, they write a novel and not a series of +chapters, parts, and instalments." + +"Do you think that the American novel will always be inferior to the +English novel?" I asked. "Is it not probable that the American novel +will so develop as to escape the effects of serialization?" + +"There is no reason," Mr. McCutcheon replied, "why Americans should not +produce novels equal to those of the English, provided the same care is +exercised in the handling of their material, and that they make haste as +slowly as possible. Just so long, however, as we are menaced by the +perils of the serial our general output will remain inferior to that of +England. + +"I do not mean to say that we have no writers in this country who are +the equals in every respect of the best of the English novelists. We +have some great men and women here, sincere, earnest workers who will +not be spoiled." + +Mr. McCutcheon has no respect for the type of novel, increasingly +popular of late, in which the author devotes page after page to glowing +accounts of immorality with the avowed intention of teaching a high +moral lesson. He has little faith in the honesty of purpose of the +authors of works of this sort. + +"The so-called sex novel," he said, "is one of our gravest fatalities. I +may be wrong, but I am inclined to think that most novels of that +character are written, not from an aesthetic point of view, but for the +somewhat laudable purpose of keeping the wolf from the door and at the +same time allowing the head of the family to ride in an automobile of +his own. + +"The typical serial writer is animated by the desire, or perhaps it is +an obligation, to make the 'suspended interest' paramount to all else. +This interest must not be allowed to flag between instalments. + +"The keen desire for thrills must be gratified at all costs. It is +commanded by the editor--and I do not say that the editor errs. His +public expects it in a serial. It must not be disappointed." + +I asked Mr. McCutcheon if he believed that a writer could produce +sensational and poorly constructed fiction in order to make a living and +yet keep his talent unimpaired; if a writer was justified in writing +trash in order to gain leisure for serious work. He replied: + +"There are writers to-day who persist in turning out what they +vaingloriously describe as 'stuff to meet the popular demand.' They +invariably or inevitably declare that some day they will 'be in a +position to write the sort of stuff they want to write.' + +"These writers say, in defense of their position, that they are not even +trying to do their best work, that they are merely biding their time, +and that--some day! I very much doubt their sincerity, or, at any rate, +their capacity for self-analysis. I believe that when an author sets +himself down to write a book (I refer to any author of recognized +ability), he puts into that book the best that is in him at the time. + +"It is impossible for a good, conscientious writer to work on a plane +lower than his best. Only hack writers can do such things. + +"There is not one of us who does not do his best when he undertakes to +write his book. We only confess that we have not done our best when a +critic accuses us of pot-boiling, and so forth. Then we rise in our +pride and say, 'Oh, well, I can do better work than this, and they know +it.' + +"It is true that we may not be doing the thing that we really want to +do, but I am convinced that we are unconsciously doing our best, just +the same. It all resolves itself into this statement--a good workman +cannot deliberately do a poor piece of work. + +"I am free to confess that I have done my very best in everything I have +undertaken. It may fall short of excellence as viewed from even my own +viewpoint, but it is the best I know how to do. + +"So you may take it from me that the writer who declares that he is +going to do something really worth while, just as soon as he gets +through doing the thing that the public expects him to do, is deceiving +himself and no one else. An author cannot stand still in his work. He +either progresses or retrogrades, and no man progresses except by means +of steady improvement. He cannot say, 'I will write a poor book this +year and a great book next year.'" + +Mr. McCutcheon is so unashamedly a romanticist that I expected to find +him an enthusiastic partisan of the first and greatest master of the +romantic novel in English. But, to my surprise, he said: + +"I suppose the world has outgrown Sir Walter Scott's novels. It is quite +natural that it should. The world is older and conditions have changed. +The fairest simile I can offer in explanation is that as man himself +grows older he loses, except in a too frequently elastic memory, his +interest in the things that moved him when he was a boy." + +But while Mr. McCutcheon believes (in defiance of the opinion of the +publishers who continue to bring out, year by year, their countless new +editions of the Waverley Novels in all the languages of the civilized +world) that the spell of the Wizard of the North has waned, he +nevertheless believes that the romantic novel has lost none of its +ancient appeal. + +"I do not believe," he said, "that the vogue of the romantic novel, or +tale (which is a better word for describing the sort of fiction covered +by this generic term), will ever die. The present war undoubtedly will +alter the trend of the modern romantic fiction, but it will not in +effect destroy it." + +"How will it alter it?" I asked. + +"Years most certainly will go by," he replied, "before the novelist may +even hope to contend with the realities of this great and most +unromantic conflict. Kings and courtiers are very ordinary, and, in some +cases, ignoble creatures in these days, and none of them appears to be +romantic. + +"We find a good many villains among our erstwhile heroes, and a good +many heroes among our principal villains. People will not care to read +war novels for a good many years to come, but it is inevitable that +future generations will read even the lightest kind of fiction dealing +with this war, horrible though it is. Just so long as the world exists +there will be people who read nothing else but the red-blood, stirring +romantic stories. + +"There exists, of course, a class of readers who will not be tempted by +the romantic, who will not even tolerate it, because they cannot +understand it. That class may increase, but so will its antithesis. + +"I know a man who has read the Bible through five or six times, not +because he is of a religious turn of mind or even mildly devout, but +because there is a lot of good, sound, exciting romance in it! A man who +is without romance in his soul has no right to beget children, for he +cannot love them as they ought to be loved. They represent romance at +its best. He is, therefore, purely selfish in his possession of them." + +Mr. McCutcheon had spoken of the probable effect of the war on the +popular taste for romantic fiction. I reminded him of William Dean +Howells's much-quoted statement, "War stops literature." + +"War stops everything else," said Mr. McCutcheon, "so why not +literature? It stops everything, I amend, except bloodshed, horror, and +heartache. + +"And when the war itself is stopped, you will find that literature will +be revived with farming and other innocent and productive industries. I +venture to say that some of the greatest literature the world has ever +known is being written to-day. Out of the history of this titanic +struggle will come the most profound literary expressions of all time, +and from men who to-day are unknown and unconsidered." + +I asked Mr. McCutcheon if he did not believe that the youthful energy of +the United States was likely to make its citizens impatient of romance, +that quality being generally considered the exclusive property of +nations ancient in civilization. He did not think so. + +"America," he said, "is essentially a romantic country, our great and +profound commercialism to the contrary notwithstanding. America was born +of adventure; its infancy was cradled in romance; it has grown up in +thrills. And while to-day it may not reflect romance as we are prone to +consider it, there still rests in America a wonderful treasure in the +shape of undeveloped possibilities. + +"We are, first of all, an eager, zestful, imaginative people. We are +creatures of romance. We do two things exceedingly well--we dream and +we perform. + +"Our dreams are of adventure, of risk, of chance, of impossibilities, +and of deeds that only the bold may conceive. And we find on waking from +these dreams that we have performed the deeds we dreamed of. + +"The Old World looks upon us as braggarts. Perhaps we are, but we are +kindly, genial, smiling braggarts--and the braggart is, after all, our +truest romanticist. + +"I like to hear a grown man admit that he still believes in fairies. +That sort of man thinks of the things that are beautiful, even though +they are invisible. And--if you stop to think about it--the most +beautiful things in the world are invisible." + + + + +_BUSINESS INCOMPATIBLE WITH ART_ + +FRANK H. SPEARMAN + + +The late J. Pierpont Morgan writing sonnet sequences, Rockefeller +regarding oil as useful only when mixed with pigment and spread upon +canvas by his own deft hand, Carnegie designing libraries instead of +paying for them--these are some of the entertaining visions that occur +to the mind of Frank H. Spearman when he contemplates in fancy a +civilization in which business no longer draws the master minds away +from art. + +I asked the author of _Nan of Music Mountain_ if he thought that the +trend of present-day American life--its commercialism and +materialism--affected the character of our literature. He replied: + +"Let us take commercialism first: By it you mean the pursuit of +business. Success in business brings money, power, and that public +esteem we may loosely term fame--the admiration of our fellow-men and +the sense of power among them. + +"Commercialism, thus defined, affects the character of our literature in +a way that none of our students of the subject seems to have +apprehended. We live in an atmosphere of material striving. Our great +rewards are material successes. The extremely important consequence is +that our business life through its greater temptations--through its +being able to offer the rewards of wealth and mastery and esteem--robs +literature and the kindred arts of our keenest minds. We have, it is +true, eminent doctors and lawyers, but the complaint that commercialism +has invaded these professions only proves that they depend directly on +business prosperity for a substantial portion of their own rewards. + +"I am not forgetting the crust and garret as the traditional setting for +the literary genius; but, when this state of affairs existed, the genius +had no chance to become a business millionaire within ten years--or, for +that matter, within a hundred. And while poverty provides an excellent +foundation for a career, it is not so good as a superstructure--at +least, not outside the ranks of the heroic few who renounce riches for +spiritual things. + +"More than once," continued Mr. Spearman, "in meeting men among our +masters of industry, I have been struck by the thought that these are +the men who should be writing great books, painting great pictures, and +building great cathedrals; their tastes, I have sometimes found, run in +these directions quite as strongly as the tastes of lesser men who give +themselves to literature, painting, or architecture. But the present-day +market for cathedrals is somewhat straitened, and a great ambition may +nowadays easily neglect the prospective rewards of literature for those +of steel-making. + +"Business success--not achieved in literature and the arts--comes first +with us; in consequence, the ranks of those who follow these professions +are robbed of the intellect that should contribute to them. This is the +real way in which commercialism--our pursuit of business--affects our +literature. It depletes, too, in the same way, the quality of men in our +public life. + +"Charles G. Dawes has called my attention more than once to the falling +off in caliber among men from whose ranks our politicians and public men +are drawn. It is not that our present administration is so conspicuously +weak; go to any of the Presidential conventions this year and note the +falling off in quality among the politicians. In one generation the +change has been startling. The sons of the men that loomed large in +public life twenty-five years ago to-day are masters of business. + +"Business takes everything. We have had really magnificent financiers, +such as the elder Morgan, who should be our Michael Angelo. I have known +railroad executives who might have been distinguished novelists, and +bankers who would have been great artists were the American people as +obsessed with the painting of pictures and the making of statues as +those of Europe once were. + +"In Michael Angelo's day public interest in solving problems in +manufacture and transportation did not overshadow that in painting and +sculpture. Leonardo in our day would be building railroads, digging +canals, or inventing the aeroplane--and doing better, perhaps, at these +things than any man living; he came perilously close to doing all of +them in his own day. + +"Before you can bring our steel-founders and business men into +literature you must make success in literature and its kindred arts +esteemed as the greatest reward. As it is, I fear it is likely to be +chiefly those who through lack of capacity, inclination, or robust +health are unequal to the heat and burden of great business that will be +left for the secondary callings, among which we must at present rank +literature. It would be interesting, too, to consider to what extent +this movement of men toward business rewards has been compensated for by +the opportunities afforded to women in the field thus deserted; we +certainly have many clever women cultivating it." + +"But what," I asked, "about materialism--not specifically commercialism, +but materialism? Do you think that its evil effects are evident in +contemporary literature?" + +"Materialism--you mean the philosophy--has quite a different effect on +any literature--a poisonous, a baneful effect, rather than a merely +harmful one," Mr. Spearman answered. "Can you possibly have, at any time +or anywhere, great art without a great faith? Since the era of +Christianity, at any rate, it seems to me that periods of faith, or at +least periods enjoying the reflexes and echoes of faith, have afforded +the really nourishing atmosphere for artistic development. Spirituality +provides that which the imagination may seize upon for the substance of +its creative effort; without spirituality the imagination shrivels, and +the materialist, while losing none of his characteristic confidence, +shrinks continually to punier artistic stature." + +Something in what Mr. Spearman had said reminded me of Henry Holt's +criticisms of the modern magazines. So I asked Mr. Spearman what effect +the development of the American magazine, with its high prices for +serials and series of stories, had had upon our fiction. He answered: + +"Good, I think. Our fiction must compete in its rewards with those of +business. One of the rewards of either--even if you put it, in the first +case, the lowest--is the monetary reward, and the more substantial that +can be made, the more chance fiction will have of holding up its head. + +"I have had occasion to watch pretty closely the development of the +inclinations and ambitions of a number of average American boys--boys +that have had fairly intimate opportunities to consider both literature +and business. I have been startled more than once to find that as each +of them came along and was asked what he wanted to do, the substance of +his answer has been, 'Something to make money.' + +"If you question your own youthful acquaintances, you will receive in +most cases, I dare say, similar answers. I am afraid if Giotto had been +a Wyoming shepherd-boy he would want to be a steel-maker. Anything that +tends to attract the young to the pursuit of literature as a calling +strengthens our fiction, and the magazine should have credit for an +'assist' in this direction. Don't forget, of course, that the magazine +itself derives directly, by way of advertising, from business." + +"Do you think, then," I asked, "that our writers are producing work as +likely to endure as that which is being produced in England?" + +Mr. Spearman smiled whimsically. "Your question suggests to me," he +replied, "rather than any judgment in the case, the reflection that the +average English writer has possessed over our average American writer +the very great advantage of an opportunity to become really educated; to +this extent their equipment is appreciably stronger than ours. If you +will read the ordinary run of English fiction or play-writing and +compare it with similar work of ours, you cannot fail to note the better +finish in their work. And in expressing a conviction that our writers +are somewhat handicapped as to this factor in their equipment, I do not +indict them for wasted opportunities; I indict our own substantial +failure in educational methods. For a generation or more we have +experimented, and from the very first grade in our grammar-schools up to +the university courses there have resulted confusion and ineptitude. I +instance specifically our experimentation with electives and our +widespread contempt for the classics. To attempt to master any of the +arts and not to be intimately familiar with what the Greeks and the +Romans have left us of their achievement--not to speak of those, to us, +uncharted seas of medieval achievement in every direction following the +twelfth century--is to make the effort under a distinct disadvantage. + +"The average English writer has had much more of this intimacy, or at +least a chance at much more of it, than the average American writer. In +the sphere of literary criticism I have heard Mr. Brownell speak of the +better quality of even the anonymous English literary criticism so +frequently to be found in their journals when compared with similar +American work. There is only one explanation for these things, and it +lies in the training. All of this not implying, in indirect answer to +your question, that the English writer is to bear away the prize in the +competition for literary permanence. American Samsons may, despite +everything, burst their bonds; but if they win it will often be without +what their teachers should have supplied. + +"Mr. Brownell, in his definitive essay on Cooper, in comparing the +material at Balzac's hand with that at Cooper's, remarks on the fact +that Cooper's background was essentially nature. 'Nothing, it is true, +is more romantic than nature,' adds Mr. Brownell, 'except nature plus +man. But the exception is prodigious.' Europe measures behind her +writers almost three thousand years of man. + +"We have in this country no atmosphere of Christian tradition such as +that which pervades Europe--English-speaking people parted with historic +Christianity before they came here. But, willingly or unwillingly, the +English and the Continental writers are saturated with this magnificent +background of Christianity--they can't escape it. And what I note as +striking evidence of the value to them of this brooding spirit of twenty +European centuries is the fact that their very pagans choose Christian +material to work with. Goethe himself, fine old pagan that he was, +turned to Christian quarries for his _Faust_. The minor pagans turn in +likewise, though naturally with slighter results. But to all of them, +Christianity, paraphrasing Samson, might well say: 'If ye had not plowed +with my heifer, ye had not read--your own riddle of longed-for +recognition.'" + +"Why is it that the art of fiction is no longer taken as seriously as it +was, for example, in the time of Sir Walter Scott?" + +"I don't know how seriously," countered Mr. Spearman, "you mean your +question to be taken. It suggests that in the day of Walter Scott the +field of novel-writing was still so new that only bolder spirits +ventured into it. It was not a day when the many could attempt the novel +with any assurances of success in marketing their wares. In consequence +we got then the work of only big men and women. Pioneers--though not +necessarily respectable--are a hardy lot. + +"Still--touching on your other question about the great American +novel--if I wished to develop great musicians I should start every one +possible at studying music, and I can't help thinking that the more +there are among us who attempt novels the greater probability there will +be for the production of a masterpiece. A man's mind is a mine. Neither +he nor any one else knows what is in it. Possessing the property in fee +simple, he has, of course, certain valuable proprietary rights. But the +only way I know of to find out to a certainty just what lies within the +property is persistently to tunnel and drift, or, as Mr. Brownell says, +'to get out what is in you.' And I am in complete accord with him in the +belief that temperament is the best possible endowment for a +novelist--and temperament comes, if you are a Christian, from God; if a +pagan, from the gods." + +Mr. Spearman returned to his theme of the effect of materialism on +literature in the course of a discussion of the French novel of the day +as compared to the novel of Zola and his imitators. He said: + +"I think the important thing for Zola was that his day coincided with a +materialistic ascendency in the thought of France. He lived at a time +admirably suited to a man of his type. Zola found a France weak and +contemptible in its government, and in consequence a soil in which +grossness could profitably be cultivated. + +"He was by no means a great artist; he was merely a writer writhing for +recognition when he turned to filth. He took it up to commercialize it, +to turn it into money and reputation. Men such as he are continually, at +different times and in different countries, lifting their heads. But +unless they are sustained by what chances to be a loose public attitude +on questions of decency, they are clubbed into silence. + +"And just why should the exploitation of filth assume to monopolize the +word 'realism'? To define precisely what realism should include and +exclude would call for hard thinking. But it doesn't take much thought +to reach the conclusion that mere annalists of grossness have no proper +monopoly of the term. Grossness is no adequate foundation for a literary +monument; it is not even a satisfactory corner-stone. The few writers +one thinks of that constitute exceptions would have left a better +monument without it. + +"But if you wish to realize how fortunate Zola was in coinciding with a +period when the chief effort of the ruling spirits of France was to war +on all forces that strove to conserve decency, try to imagine what sort +of a reception _L'Assommoir_ would be accorded to-day by the tears of +France stricken through calamity to its knees. + +"France is experiencing now realism of quite another sort from that +propagated by Zola--a realism that is wringing the souls and turning +the thoughts of a great and unhappy people back once more to the eternal +verities; in these grossness never had a place. + +"And if you don't want to think in grossness, don't read in it; if you +don't want to act in grossness, don't think in it. To exploit it is to +exaggerate its proper significance in the affairs of life. + +"Twenty-five years ago an American writer set out as a Zola disciple to +give us something American along Zola's lines. He made a failure of +it--so complete that he was forced to complain that later efforts in +which he returned to paths of decency were refused by editors and +publishers. He had spoiled his name as an asset. If you are curious to +note how far the bars have been let down in his direction in twenty-five +years, contemplate what passes to-day among us with quite a footing of +magazine and book popularity. It means simply that we are falling into +those conditions of public indifference in which moral parasites may +flourish. But if one were forced to-day to choose in France between the +material taken up by Zola after his failure to cultivate successfully +cleaner fields, and that chosen by Rene Bazin and the new and hopeful +French school of spirituality, there could be no question that the +latter would afford the better opportunity. And there can be no real +question but that the exponents of grossness are likewise opportunists, +looking first of all for a market for their names--as most men are +doing. But some men, by reason of inclination or voluntary restraint, +have restricted themselves in their choice of literary materials." + +Mr. Spearman has recently given much of his time to moving-picture work, +with the result that his name is nearly as familiar to the devotees of +the flickering screen as to habitual magazine readers. I asked him how +the development of the moving picture is likely to affect literature. He +replied: + +"What I can say on this point will perhaps be more directly of interest +to writers themselves; the development of the moving picture broadens +their market. It has, if you will let me put it in this way, increased +the number of our theaters in their capacity for absorbing material for +the drama a thousandfold. Inevitably a new industry developing with such +amazing rapidity is still in the experimental stages, and those who know +it best say its possibilities are but just beginning. What I note of +interest to the literary worker is that men advanced and in authority +in the production of pictures have reached this conclusion: Behind every +good picture there must be a good story. The slogan to-day is 'The story +is the thing.' And those close to the 'inside' of the industry say +to-day to the fictionist: 'Hold on to your stories. Within a year or two +they will command from the movies much higher prices than to-day, +because the supply is fast becoming exhausted.'" + +It was in the course of his remarks about the rewards of literature that +Mr. Spearman told an interesting story concerning Henry James and George +du Maurier. He said: + +"The recent death of Henry James is bringing out many anecdotes +concerning him. At the time of George du Maurier's death it was recalled +that he had once given the material for _Trilby_ to Henry James with +permission to use it; and the story ran that, resolving to use it +himself, Mr. James returned the material to Du Maurier, who wrote the +novel from it. + +"But I don't think it has ever appeared that the real reason why Henry +James did not attempt _Trilby_ was that he possessed no musical sense; +Mr. James himself told me this, and without a sense of music the +material was useless to any one. I discussed the incident with him some +ten years ago and he added, in connection with _Trilby_ and Du Maurier, +other interesting facts. + +"_Trilby_ did not at first make a signal success in England. Its first +big hit was made in _Harper's Magazine_. Not realizing the American +possibilities, Mr. du Maurier, when offered by Harper & Brothers a +choice between royalties and five thousand dollars outright for the book +rights, took the lump sum as if it were descended straight from heaven. +When the news of the extraordinary success of the book in this country +reached him, he realized his serious mistake, and in the family circle +there was keen depression over it. But further surprises were in store +for him. To their eternal credit, the house of Harper & +Brothers--honorable then as now--in view of the unfortunate situation in +which their author had placed himself, voluntarily canceled the first +contract and restored Du Maurier to a royalty basis. The fear in the +English home then was that this arrangement would come too late to bring +in anything. Not only, however, did the book continue to sell, but the +play came on, and together the rights afforded George du Maurier a +competency that banished further worry from the home." + + + + +_THE NOVEL MUST GO_ + +WILL N. HARBEN + + +The novel is doomed. If the automobile, the aeroplane, and the moving +picture continue to develop during the next ten years as they have +developed during the last ten, people will cease almost entirely to take +interest in fiction. + +It was not Henry Ford who told me this. Neither was it Mr. Wright, nor +M. Pathe. The man who made this ominous prophecy about the novel is +himself a successful novelist. He is Will N. Harben, author of _Pole +Baker_, _Ann Boyd_, _The Desired Woman_, and many other widely read +tales of life in rural Georgia. + +Although he is so closely associated with the Southern scenes about +which he has written, Mr. Harben spends most of his time in New York +nowadays. He justifies this course interestingly--but before I tell his +views on this subject I will repeat what he had to say about this +possible extinction of the novel. + +"You have read," he said, "of the tremendous vogue of _Pickwick Papers_ +when it was first published. No work of fiction since that time has been +received with such enthusiasm. + +"In London at that time you would find statuettes of Pickwick, Mr. +Winkle, and Sam Weller in the shop windows. There were Pickwick +punch-ladles, Pickwick teaspoons, Pickwick souvenirs of all sorts. + +"Now, when you walk down Broadway, do you find any reminders of the +popular novels of the day? You do not, except of course in the +bookshops. But you do find things that remind you of contemporary taste. +In the windows of stationers and druggists you find statuettes not of +characters in the fiction of the day, but of Charlie Chaplin. + +"Of course the moving picture has not supplanted the novel. But people +all over the country are becoming less and less interested in fiction. +The time which many people formerly gave to the latest novel they now +give to the latest film. + +"And the moving picture is by no means the only thing which is weaning +us away from the novel. The automobile is a powerful influence in this +direction. + +"Take, for instance, the town from which I come--Dalton, Georgia. There +the people who used to read novels spend their time which they used to +give to that entertainment riding around in automobiles. Sometimes they +go on long trips, sometimes they go to visit their friends in near-by +towns. But automobiling is the way in which they nowadays are accustomed +to spend their leisure. + +"Naturally, this has its effect on their attitude toward novels. Years +ago, when Dalton had a population of about three thousand, it had two +well-patronized bookshops. Now it has a population of about seven +thousand and no bookshops at all! + +"I suppose one of the reasons is that people live their adventures by +means of the automobile, and therefore do not care so much about getting +adventures from the printed page. But the chief reason is one of +time--the fact is that people more and more prefer automobiling to +reading. + +"Now, if the aeroplane were to be perfected--as we have every reason to +believe it will be--so that we could travel in it as we now do in the +automobile, what possible interest would we have in reading dry novels? +It seems likely that in a hundred years we will be able to see clearly +the surface of Mars--do you think that people will want to read novels +when this wonderful new world is before their eyes? + +"The authors themselves are beginning to realize this. They are becoming +more and more nervous. They are not the placid creatures that they were +in Sir Walter Scott's day. They feel that people are not as interested +in them and their works as they used to be. I doubt very much if any +publisher to-day would be interested, for example, in an author who +produced a novel as long as _David Copperfield_ and of the same +excellence." + +"But do you think," I asked, "that the fault is entirely that of the +public? Haven't the authors changed, too?" + +"I think that the authors have changed," said Mr. Harben, reflectively. +"The authors do not live as they used to live. + +"The authors no longer live with the people about whom they write. +Instead, they live with other authors. + +"Nowadays, an author achieves success by writing, we will say, about +the people of his home in the Far West. Then he comes to New York. And +instead of living with the sort of people about whom he writes, he lives +with artists. That must have its effect upon his work." + +"But is not that what you yourself did?" I asked. "A New York +apartment-house is certainly the last place in the world in which to +look for the historian of _Pole Baker_!" + +Mr. Harben smiled. "But I don't live with artists," he said. "I try to +live with the kind of people I write about. I resolved a long time ago +to try to avoid living with literary people and to live with all sorts +of human beings--with people who didn't know or care whether or not I +was a writer. + +"So I have for my friends and acquaintances sailors, merchants--people +of all sorts of professions and trade. And people of that sort--people +who make no pretensions to be artists--are the best company for a +writer, for they open their hearts to him. A writer can learn how to +write about humanity by living with humanity, instead of with other +people who are trying to write about humanity." + +"But at any rate you have left the part of the country about which you +write," I said. "And wasn't that one of the things for which you +condemned our hypothetical writer of Western tales?" + +"Not necessarily," said Mr. Harben. "It sometimes happens that an author +can write about the scenes he knows best only after he has gone away +from them. I know that this is true of myself. + +"It's in line with the old saws about 'distance lends enchantment' and +'emotion remembered in tranquillity,' you know. I believe that Du +Maurier was able to write his vivid descriptions of life in the Latin +Quarter of Paris because he went to London to do it. + +"You see, I absorbed life in Georgia for many years. And in New York I +can remember it and get a perspective on it and write about it." + +"Then," I said, "you would go to Georgia, I suppose, if you wanted to +write a story about life in a New York apartment?" + +Mr. Harben thought for a moment. "No," he said, slowly, "I don't think +that I'd go to Georgia to write about New York. I think that a novel +about New York must be written in New York--while a novel about Dalton, +Georgia, must be written away from Dalton, Georgia." + +"How do you account for that?" I asked. + +"Well," said Mr. Harben, "for one thing there is something bracing about +New York's atmosphere that makes it easier to write when one is here. +Once I tried to write a novel in Dalton, and I simply couldn't do it. + +"And the reason why a novel about New York must be written in New York +is because you can't absorb New York as you might absorb Georgia, so to +speak, and then go away and express it. New York is so thoroughly +artificial that there is nothing about it which a writer can absorb. + +"New York hasn't the puzzles and adventures and surprises that Georgia +has. Everybody knows about apartment-houses and skyscrapers and subways +and elevators and dumb-waiters--there's nothing new to say about them. + +"I sometimes think that the reason why the modern novel about New York +City is so uninteresting is because everybody tries to write about New +York City. And their novels are all of one pattern--necessarily, because +life in New York City is all of one pattern. + +"In bygone days this was not true of New York. For instance, Mr. +Howells's novels about New York City were about a community in which +people lived in real houses and had families and friends. In those days +life in New York had its problems and surprises and adventures; it was +not lived mechanically and according to a set pattern. + +"What I have said about the advisability of an author's leaving the +scenes about which he is to write is not universally true. There are +writers who do better work by staying in the place where the scenes of +their stories are laid. For instance, Joel Chandler Harris did better +work by staying in the South than he would have done if he had gone +away." + +"But wasn't that because his negro folk-tales were a sort of 'glorified +reporting' rather than creative work?" I asked. + +"No," said Mr. Harben; "they were creative work. Joel Chandler Harris +remembered just the bare skeleton of the stories as the negro had told +them to him. And he developed them imaginatively. That was creative +work. And he did most of his writing, and the best of his writing, in +the office of _The Constitution_." + +"In view of what you said about the difficulty of absorbing New York +life," I suggested, "I suppose that, in your opinion, the great American +novel will not be written about New York." + +"What do you mean by the great American novel?" asked Mr. Harben. "So +far as I know there is no great English novel or great Russian novel." + +"I suppose that the term means a novel inevitably associated with the +national literature," I said. "You cannot think of English literature +without thinking of _Vanity Fair_, for instance. Certainly there is no +American novel so conspicuously a reflection of our national life as +that novel is of English life." + +"Well," said Mr. Harben, "it is difficult to think of American +literature or of American life without thinking of the novels of William +Dean Howells. But the great American novel, to use that term, would be +less likely to come into being than the great English novel. + +"You see, the United States is not as compact as England. London, it may +be said, is England; it has all the characteristics of England, and in +the season all England may be met there." + +Mr. Harben is not in sympathy with the theories of some of our modern +realists. + +"The trouble with the average realist," he said, "is that he doesn't +believe that the emotions are real. As a matter of fact, the greatest +source of material for the novelist is to be found in the emotional and +spiritual side of human nature. If writers were more receptive to +spiritual and emotional impressions they would make better novels. It is +the soul of man that the greatest novels are written about--there is +Dostoievski's _Crime and Punishment_, for example!" + +In spite of his criticisms of some of the methods of the modern +realists, Mr. Harben believes strongly in the importance of one +realistic dogma, that which has to do with detailed description. + +"Why is it that _Pepys's Diary_ is interesting to us?" he asked. "It is +because of its detail. + +"But if Pepys had been a Howells--if he had been as careful in +describing great things as he was in describing small things--then his +_Diary_ would be ten times more valuable to us than it is. And so +Howells's novels will be valuable to people who read them a thousand +years from now to get an idea of how we live. + +"That is, Howells's novels will be valuable if people read novels in the +years that are to come! Perhaps they will not be reading novels or +anything else. For all we know, thought-transference may become as +common a thing as telephony is now. And if this comes to pass nobody +will read!" + + + + +_LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGES_ + +JOHN ERSKINE + + +Brown of Harvard is no more. The play of that name may still be running, +but of Harvard life it is now about as accurate a picture as _Trelawney +of the Wells_ is of modern English life. At Harvard, and at all the +great American universities, the dashing, picturesque young athlete is +no longer the prevailing type of the undergraduate ideal. + +Of course, undergraduate athletics and undergraduate athletes +persist--it would be a tragedy if they did not--but the type of youth +that has been rather effectively denominated the "rah-rah boy" is +increasingly difficult to find. His place has been taken, not by the +"grind," the plodding, prematurely old student, caring only for his +books and his scholastic record, but by a normal young man, aware that +the campus is not the most important place in the world; aware, in +fact, that the university is not the universe. + +This young man knows about class politics, but also about international +politics; about baseball, but also about contemporary literature. He is +much more a citizen than his predecessor of ten years since, less +provincial, less aristocratic. And he not only enjoys literature, but +actually desires to create it. + +The chief enthusiasm at Harvard seems to be the drama; indeed, the Brown +of Harvard to-day must be represented not as a crimson-sweatered +gladiator but as a cross between Strindberg and George M. Cohan. At +Columbia--I have Prof. John Erskine's word for it--there has lately +developed a genuine interest in--what do you suppose? Poetry! + +I interviewed the bulletin-board outside Hamilton Hall before I +interviewed Professor Erskine, and it, too, surprised me. It was not the +bulletin-board of my not altogether remote undergraduate days. It bore +notices telling of a meeting of the "Forum for Religious Discussion," of +an anti-militaristic mass-meeting, of a rehearsal of an Elizabethan +drama. It was a sign of the times. + +Professor Erskine said that undergraduate ideals had greatly changed +during the last few years. I asked him how this had come to pass. + +"Well," he replied, "I think that college life reflects the ordinary +life of the world more closely than is usually believed. This is a day +of general cultural and spiritual awakening. The college student is +waking, just as everybody else is waking; like everybody else, he is +becoming more interested in the great things of life. There is no reason +why the college walls should shut him in from the hopes, ambitions, and +problems of the rest of humanity. + +"It isn't only the boys that have changed--the parents have changed too. +Time was when the father and mother wanted their son to go to college so +that he could join a group of pleasant, nice-mannered boys of good +family. Now they have a definite idea of the practical value of a +college education, they send their son to college intelligently. + +"Also, the whole theory of teaching has changed. The purely Germanic +system has been superseded by something more humane. The old idea of +scholarship for its own sake is no longer insisted upon. Instead, the +subjects taught are treated in their relation to life, the only way in +which they can be of real interest to the students. + +"You will look in vain in the modern university for the old type of +absent-minded, dry-as-dust professor. He has been superseded by the +professor who is a man as well as a scholar. And naturally he approaches +his subject and his classes in a different spirit from that of his +predecessor. + +"We have a new sort of teacher of English. He is not now (as was once +often the case) a retired clergyman, or a specialist recruited from some +unliterary field. He is, in many cases, a creative artist, a dramatist, +a novelist, or a poet. + +"When I was in college this was not generally true. Then such a +professor as George Edward Woodberry or Brander Matthews was unique. Now +the college wants poets and creative writers." + +These are Professor Erskine's actual words. I asked him to repeat his +last statement and he said, apparently with no sense of the amazement +which his words caused in me, "The college wants the poets!" The stone +which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner. + +But, then, there are poets and poets. There is, for example, Prof. +Curtis Hidden Page. There is also one John Erskine, author of _Actaeon +and Other Poems_, and Adjunct Professor of English at Columbia +University. There is also Prof. Alfred Noyes. But there are also some +thousand or so poets in the United States who will be surprised to know +that the college wants them. Academic appreciation of poets has +generally consisted of a cordial welcome given their collected works two +hundred years after their deaths. + +"English as a cultural finish," Professor Erskine continued, "has gone +by the board. English is taught nowadays with as much seriousness as +philosophy or history. Art in all its forms is considered as the history +of the race, and treated seriously by the student as well as by the +professor. To-day the students regard Shakespeare and Tennyson as very +important men. They study them as in a course in philosophy they would +study Bergson. Literature, philosophy, and history have been drawn +together as one subject, as they should be." + +"What," I asked, "are some of the extra-curricular manifestations of +literary interest among the students?" + +"In the first place," he answered, "the extraordinary amount of writing +done by the students. It is not at all unusual now for a Columbia +student to sell his work to the regular magazines. The student who +writes for the magazines and newspapers is no longer a novelty. +Randolph Bourne, who was recently graduated, contributed a number of +essays to the _Atlantic Monthly_ during his junior and senior years. + +"Many of the students write for the newspapers. The better sort of +newspaper humorists have had a strong influence on the undergraduate +mind; they have shown the way to writing things that are funny but have +an intellectual appeal. This has resulted in the production of some +really excellent light verse. Also, Horace's stock has gone up. + +"During the last two years some remarkable plays have been handed into +the Columbia University Dramatic Association. Not only were they +serious, but also they were highly poetic. + +"And this," said Professor Erskine, "marks what I hope is the +distinguishing literary atmosphere at Columbia. The trend of the plays +written by Columbia students is strongly poetic. This is not true, +perhaps, of the plays written by students of other institutions. The +writers of plays want to write poetic plays, and--what is perhaps even +more surprising--the other students do not consider poetic drama +'high-brow stuff.' + +"Philolexian, the oldest of the Columbia literary societies, has been +producing Elizabethan plays. These plays have been enthusiastically +received, and the enthusiasm does not seem to show any signs of dying +down. The students come to the study of these plays with a feeling of +familiarity, for they have seen them acted." + +"Does this enthusiasm for literature show itself in the college +magazine?" I asked. + +"It shows itself," answered Professor Erskine, "by the absence of a +literary magazine. The literary magazine has completely collapsed. In +small colleges, far away from the cities where the regular magazines are +published, the college magazine is the only available outlet for the +work of the students who can write. But here in New York the students +know the condition of the literary market, and the more skilful writers +among them do not care to give their writings to an amateur publication +when they can sell them off the campus. So the _Columbia Monthly_ got +only second-best material. The boys who really could write would not +sacrifice their work by burying it in a college publication, so the +_Columbia Monthly_ died. + +"The history of a literary club we have up here, called Boar's Head, is +significant. It was started as a sort of revival of an older +organization called King's Crown. At first the program consisted of an +address at each meeting by some prominent writer. For a while the +meetings were well attended, but gradually the interest died down. + +"At length I found what the trouble was--the boys wanted to do their own +entertaining. Now work by the members is read at every meeting; there +are no addresses by outsiders. + +"And here again the poetic trend of the undergraduate mind at Columbia +is displayed. The Scribblers' Club, which consisted of short-story +writers, is dead--there were not enough short-story writers to support +it. And at the meetings of Boar's Head there have been read, during the +past two years, only one or two short stories. + +"The boys bring plays and poems to the Boar's Head meetings, but not +short stories. Last year most of the poems which were read were short +lyrics. Toward the end of last year and during the present year longer +poems have been read. They are not poems in the Masefield manner; they +are modeled rather on Keats and Coleridge. This fact has interested me +because the magazines, as a rule, have not been buying long poems. I +was interested to see that William Stanley Braithwaite, in his excellent +_Anthology of Magazine Verse and Year-Book of American Poetry_, calls +attention to the increasing popularity of the longer poem. + +"Last year Boar's Head decided to bring out a little book containing the +best of the poems that were read at its meetings. A number of +subscribers at twenty-five cents each were procured, and _Quad Ripples_ +was published. It contained only short poems. This year Boar's Head has +published _Odes and Episodes_, a collection of light verse by one of its +former members, Archie Austin Coates. It soon will publish a collection +of poems read at its meetings, and all these poems are long. Some of +these poems are so good that it is a real sacrifice for the boys to have +them printed in this book instead of in some magazine. + +"Of course, there were always 'literary men' at Columbia, but they were +considered unusual. Now they no longer even form a class by themselves. +One of our best writers of light verse is the captain of the baseball +team. + +"Speaking of light verse and baseball," continued Professor Erskine, +"there is a certain connection between the _Columbia Monthly_ and +football, besides the obvious parallel which lies in the fact that both +have ceased to exist. Some of the boys express eagerness to revive the +college magazine, just as they express eagerness to revive football. But +it is, I believe, merely a matter of pride with them. They are eager to +have football and to have a college magazine; they are not so eager to +contribute to the support of either institution. + +"One proof of the literary renascence of Columbia is that the essays +written in the regular course of the work in philosophy and in English +are better than ever before." + +"Do you believe," I asked, "that being in the city has had a good effect +on literary activity among Columbia students?" + +He answered: "I do think so, decidedly. It has produced an extreme +individualism and has given the boys enterprising minds. It is true that +it has its disadvantages, it has made the student, so to speak, +centrifugal, and has destroyed collegiate co-operation of the old sort. +But it has produced an original, independent type of student. + +"The older type of college student was interested in football because he +knew that people expected him to be interested in football. The +Columbia student of to-day is interested in poetry, not because it is a +Columbia tradition to be interested in poetry, but because his tastes +are naturally literary." + +Several of the causes of this poetic renascence at Columbia had been +mentioned in the course of our conversation, but Professor Erskine had +ignored one of the most important of them. So I will mention it now. It +is John Erskine. + + + + +_CITY LIFE VERSUS LITERATURE_ + +JOHN BURROUGHS + + +"Well," said John Burroughs, "she doesn't seem to want us out here, so I +guess we'll have to go in." So we left the little summer-house +overlooking the Hudson and went into the bark-walled study. + +Now, "she" was a fat and officious robin, and her nest was in a corner +of the summer-house just over my head, as I sat with the +poet-naturalist. The nest was full of hungry and unprepossessing young +robins, and the mother robin seemed to be annoyed in her visits to it by +our talk. As we walked to the study, leaving to the robin family +undisputed possession of the summer-house, I heard John Burroughs say in +tones of mild indignation, half to himself and half to me: + +"I won't stand this another year! This is the third year she's taken +possession of that summer-house, and next May she simply must build her +nest somewhere else!" + +Nevertheless, I think that this impudent robin will rear her 1917 brood +in John Burroughs's summer-house, if she wants to. + +When I walked up from the station to Riverby--John Burroughs's +twenty-acre home on the west shore of the Hudson--I was surprised by the +agility of my seventy-nine-year-old companion. He walked with the +elastic step of a young man, and his eyes and brain were as alert as in +the days when he showed Emerson and Whitman the wild wonders of the +hills. + +"Living in the city," he said, "is a discordant thing, an unnatural +thing. The city is a place to which one goes to do business; it is a +place where men overreach one another in the fight for money. But it is +not a place in which one can live. + +"Years ago, I think, it was possible to have a home in the city. I used +to think that a home in Boston might possibly be imagined. But no one +can have a home in New York in all that noise and haste. + +"Sometimes I am worried by the thought of the effect that life in the +city will have on coming generations. All this grind and rush and roar +of the Subway and the surface cars must have some effect on the children +of New-Yorkers. And that effect cannot be good. + +"And what effect can it have on our literature? It might produce, I +suppose, in the writer's mind, a sense of the necessity of haste, a +passionate desire to get his effect as quickly as possible. But can it +give him sharpness of intellect and keenness of aesthetic perception! I'd +like to think so, but I can't. I don't see how literature can be +produced in the city. Literature must have repose, and there is no +repose in New York so far as I can see. + +"Of course I have no right to speak for other writers. Some people can +find repose in the city--I can't. I hear that people write on the +trains, on the omnibus, and in the Subway--I don't see how they do it!" + +"Have you noticed," I asked, as we left the lane and walked down a +grassy slope toward the study, "that the city has not as yet set its +mark on our literature?" + +"I think," said John Burroughs, "that much of our modern fiction shows +what I may call a metropolitan quality; it seems made up of showy +streets and electric light. But I don't know. I don't read much +fiction. I turn more to poetry and to meditative essays. Some poets find +beauty in the city, and they must, I suppose, find repose there. Richard +Watson Gilder spent nearly all his life in a city and reflected the life +of the city in his poems. And Edmund Clarence Stedman was thoroughly a +poet of the city. I don't think that any of Emerson's poems smack of the +city. They smack of the country, and of Emerson's study in the country, +his study under the pines, where, as he wrote: + + the sacred pine-tree adds + To the leaves her myriads. + +"Of the younger poets, John James Piatt has written beautifully of the +city. He wrote a very fine poem called 'The Morning Street,' which +appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ some years ago. In it he describes +vividly the hush of early morning in a great city, when the steps of a +solitary traveler echo from the walls of the sleeping houses. I don't +suppose Piatt is known to many readers of this generation. He was a +friend of Howells, and was the co-author with Howells of _Poems by Two +Friends_, published in the early sixties. This was Howells's first +venture." + +We were in the bark-walled study now, seated before the great stone +fireplace, in which some logs were blazing. On the stone shelf I saw, +among the photographs of Carlyle and Emerson and other friends of my +host, a portrait of Whitman. + +"Your friend, Walt Whitman," I said, "got inspiration from the city." + +"Yes," said John Burroughs, "he got inspiration from the city, but you +wouldn't call his poems city poetry. His way of writing wasn't +metropolitan, you know; you might say that he treated the city by a +country method. What he loved about the city was its people--he loved +the throngs of men, he loved human associations. + +"But he was a born lover of cities, Whitman was. He loved the city in +all its phases, mainly because he was such a lover of his kind, of the +'human critter,' as he calls him. Whitman spent most of his life in the +city, and was more at home there than in the country. He came to +Brooklyn when he was a boy, and there he worked in a law-office, and as +a printer and on the _Eagle_. + +"For a while, I remember, he drove a 'bus up and down Broadway when the +driver, who was a friend of his, was sick. That's where he got the +stuff he put in _The Funeral of an Old Omnibus-driver_. He put in it all +the signs and catch-words of the 'bus-drivers." + +John Burroughs pointed his steady old hand at a big framed photograph on +the wall. It is an unusual portrait of Walt Whitman, showing him seated, +with his hands clasped, with a flaring shirt collar, like a sailor's. + +"Whitman," John Burroughs continued, "seems to be appealing more and +more to young men. But in the modern Whitmanesque young poets I don't +see much to suggest Whitman, except in form. They do clever things, but +not elemental things, not things with a cosmic basis. Whitman, with all +his commonness and nearness, reached out into the abysmal depths, as his +imitators fail to do. I think Robert Frost has been influenced by +Whitman. His _North of Boston_ is very good; it is genuine realism; it +is a faithful, convincing picture of New England farm life. When I first +saw the book I didn't think I'd read three pages of it, but I read it +all with keen interest. It's absolutely true. + +"I used to see Whitman often when he and I were working in Washington. +And he came up to see me here. When I was in Washington Whitman used to +like to come up to our house for Sunday morning breakfast. Mrs. +Burroughs makes capital pancakes, and Walt was very fond of them, but he +was always late for breakfast. The coffee would boil over, the griddle +would smoke, car after car would go jingling by, and no Walt. But a car +would stop at last, and Walt would roll off it and saunter up to the +door--cheery, vigorous, serene, putting every one in good humor. And how +he ate! He radiated health and hopefulness. This is what made his work +among the sick soldiers in Washington of such inestimable value. Every +one who came into personal relations with him felt his rare, compelling +charm. + +"Very few young literary men of Whitman's day accepted him. Stedman did, +and the fact is greatly to his credit. Howells and Aldrich were repelled +by his bigness. All the Boston poets except Emerson hesitated. Emerson +didn't hesitate--unlike Lowell and Holmes, he kept open house for big +ideas." + +I asked Mr. Burroughs what, in his opinion, had brought about the change +in the world's attitude toward Whitman. + +"Well," he replied, looking thoughtfully into the radiant depths of the +open fire, "when Whitman first appeared we were all subservient to the +conventional standards of English literature. We understood and +appreciated only the pretty and exact. Whitman came in his working-man's +garb, in his shirt sleeves he sauntered into the parlor of literature. + +"We resented it. But the young men nowadays are more liberal. More and +more Whitman is forcing on them his open-air standards. Science +supplemented by the human heart gives us a bigger and freer world than +our forefathers knew. And then the European acceptance of Whitman had +had its effect. We take our point of view so largely from Europe. And a +force like Whitman's must be felt slowly; it's a cumulative thing." + +"You believe," I said, "that Whitman is our greatest poet?" + +"Oh yes," he replied, "Whitman is the greatest poet America has +produced. He is great with the qualities that make Homer and the classic +poets great. Emerson is more precious, more intellectual. Whitman and +Emerson are our two greatest poets." + +While we strolled over the pleasant turf and watched a wood-thrush +resting in the cool of the evening above her half-built nest among the +cherry blossoms, John Burroughs returned to the subject that we had +discussed on our way from the station--the city's evil effect on +literature. + +"Business life," he said, "is inimical to poetry. To write poetry you +must get into an atmosphere utterly different from that of the city. And +one of the greatest of all enemies of literature is the newspaper. The +style of writing that the newspaper has brought into existence is as far +as possible from art and literature. When you are writing for a daily +paper, you don't try to say a thing in a poetic or artistic way, but in +an efficient way, in a business-like way. There is no appeal to the +imagination, no ideality. A newspaper is a noisy thing that goes out +into the street and shouts its way into the attention of people. + +"If you are going to write poetry you must say to certain phases of the +newspapers, 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' A poet can't be developing his +gossiping faculty and turning everything hot off the griddle. The daily +paper is a new institution, and it has come to stay. But it has bad +manners, and it is the enemy of all meditation, all privacy, all things +that make for great art. + +"It's the same way with nature and writing about nature. From nature we +get not literature, but the raw material for literature. It is very +important for us to remember that the bee does not get honey from the +flowers; it makes honey from what it gets from the flowers. What it gets +from the flowers is nothing but sweet water. The bee gets its sweet +water, retires, thinks it over, and by a private process makes it into +honey. + +"So many nature-writers fail to profit by the example of the bee. They +go into the woods and come out again and write about their +experience--but they don't give us honey. They don't retire and subject +what they find in the woods to a private process. They don't give us +honey; they give us just a little sweet water, pretty thoroughly +diluted. + +"In my own work--if I may mention it in all humbleness--I have tried for +years not to give the world just a bare record, but to flavor it, so to +speak, with my own personality, as the bee turns the sweet water that it +gets into honey by adding its own formic acid. + +"If I lived in the city I couldn't do any writing, unless I succeeded in +obliterating the city from my consciousness. But I shouldn't try to +force my standards on every one. Other men live in the cities and +write--Carlyle did most of his work in London. But he lived a secluded +life even in the city, and he had to have his yearly pilgrimage to +Scotland." + +It is some years since John Burroughs has written poetry, although all +his prose is clearly the work of a poet. And it is safe to say that +better known than any of his intimate prose studies of the out-of-door +world--better known even than _Wake Robin_ and that immortal _A Hunt for +the Nightingale_ and _In Fresh Fields_--is one of his poems, _Waiting_, +the poem that begins: + + Serene, I fold my hands and wait, + Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea; + I rave no more 'gainst time or fate, + For lo! my own shall come to me. + +"I wrote _Waiting_," he said, "in 1862, when I was reading medicine in +the office of a country physician. It was a dingy afternoon, and I was +feeling pretty blue. But the thought came to me--I suppose I got it from +Goethe or some of the Orientals, probably by way of Emerson--that what +belonged to me would come to me in time, if I waited--and if I also +hustled. So I waited and I hustled, and my little poem turned out to be +a prophecy. My own has come to me, as I never expected it to come. The +best friends I have were seeking me all the while. There's Henry Ford; +he had read all my books, and he came to me--that great-hearted man, the +friend of all the birds, and my friend. + +"The poem first appeared in the _Knickerbocker Magazine_. That magazine +was edited by a Cockney named Kinneha Cornwallis. It ran long enough to +print one of Cornwallis's novels, and then it died. I remember that the +_Knickerbocker Magazine_ never paid me for _Waiting_, and the poem +didn't attract any attention until Whittier printed it in his _Songs of +Three Centuries_. + +"It has been changed and tampered with and had all sorts of things done +to it. It was found among the manuscripts of a poet down South after his +death, and his literary executor was going to print it in his book. He +wrote to me and asked if I could show a date for it earlier than 1882. I +said, 'Yes, 1862!' and that settled that matter. + +"There was a man in Boston that I wanted to kick! He wrote to me and +asked if he could print _Waiting_ on a card and circulate it among his +friends. I told him he could, and sent him an autographed copy to make +sure he'd get it straight. He sent me a package of the printed cards, +and I found that he had added a stanza to it--a religious stanza, all +about Heaven's gate! He had left out the second stanza, and added this +religious stanza. He was worried because God had been left out of my +poem--poor God, ignored by a little atom like me! + +"When people ask me where I got the idea in it, I generally say that my +parents were old-school Baptists and believed in foreordination, and +that's the way that foreordination cropped out in me--it's a sort of +transcendental version of foreordination. I think the poem is true--like +attracts like; it's the way in which we are constituted, rather than any +conscious factor, that insures success. It's that that makes our +fortunes, it's that that is the 'tide in the affairs of men' that +Shakespeare meant." + +A few rods from John Burroughs's riverside house a brown thrush is +building her nest in a cherry-tree. She is a bird of individual ideas, +and is thoroughly convinced that paper, not twigs and leaves, forms the +proper basis for her work. It is pleasant to think of John Burroughs +seated in his study communing with the memories of Whitman and Emerson, +and his other great dead friends. But it is pleasanter to think of him, +as I saw him, anxious and intent, his great white beard mingled with the +cherry blossoms, as he strolled over to fix the paper base of the +thrush's nest so that the wind could not destroy it. + + + + +_"EVASIVE IDEALISM" IN LITERATURE_ + +ELLEN GLASGOW + + +What is the matter with American literature? There are many answers that +might be made to this often-asked question. "Nothing" might be one +answer. "Commercialism" might be another. But the answer given by Ellen +Glasgow, whose latest successful novel of American manners and morals is +_Life and Gabriella_, is "evasive idealism." + +I found the young woman who has found in our Southern States themes for +sympathetic realism rather than picturesque romance temporarily +resident, inappropriately enough, in a hotel not far from Broadway and +Forty-second Street. And I found her to be a woman of many ideas and +strong convictions. One strongly felt and forcibly expressed conviction +was that the "evasive idealism" which is evident in so much of our +popular fiction is in reality the chief blemish on the American +character, manifesting its baleful influence in our political, social, +and economic life. Miss Glasgow first used the term "evasive idealism" +in an effort to explain why contemporary English novels are better than +contemporary American novels. + +"Certainly," she said, "the novels written by John Galsworthy and the +other English novelists of the new generation are better than anything +that we are producing in the United States at the present time. And I +think that the reason for this is that in America we demand from our +writers, as we demand from our politicians, and in general from those +who theoretically are our men of light and leading, an evasive idealism +instead of a straightforward facing of realities. In England the demand +is for a direct and sincere interpretation of life, and that is what the +novelists of England, especially the younger novelists, are making. But +what the American public seems to desire is the cheapest sort of sham +optimism. And apparently our writers--a great many of them--are ready +and eager to meet this demand. + +"You know the sort of book which takes best in this country. It is the +sort of book in which there is not from beginning to end a single +attempt to portray a genuine human being. Instead there are a number of +picturesque and attractive lay figures, and one of them is made to +develop a whimsical, sentimental, and maudlinly optimistic philosophy of +life. + +"That is what the people want--a sugary philosophy, utterly without any +basis in logic or human experience. They want the cheapest sort of false +optimism, and they want it to be uttered by a picturesque, whimsical +character, in humorous dialect. Books made according to this receipt +sell by the hundreds of thousands. + +"I don't know which is the more tragic, the fact that a desire for this +sort of literary pabulum exists, or the fact that there are so many +writers willing to satisfy that desire. But I do know that the +widespread enthusiasm for this sort of writing is the reason for the +inferiority of our novels to those of England. And, furthermore, I think +that this evasive idealism, this preference for a pretty sham instead of +the truth, is evident not only in literature, but in every phase of +American life. + +"Look at our politics! We tolerate corruption; graft goes on +undisturbed, except for some sporadic attacks of conscience on the part +of various communities. The ugliness of sin is there, but we prefer not +to look at it. Instead of facing the evil and attacking it manfully we +go after any sort of a false god that will detract our attention from +our shame. Just as in literature we want the books which deal not with +life as it is, but with life as it might be imagined to be lived, so in +politics we want to face not hard and unpleasant facts, but agreeable +illusions. + +"Nevertheless," said Miss Glasgow, "I think that in literature there are +signs of a movement away from this evasive idealism. It is much more +evident in England than in America, but I think that in the course of +time it will reach us, too. We shall cease to be 'slaves of words,' as +Sophocles said, and learn that the novelist's duty is to understand and +interpret life. And when our novelists and our readers of novels +appreciate the advisability of this attitude, then will the social and +political life of the United States be more wholesome than it has been +for many a year. The new movement in the novel is away from sentimental +optimism and toward an optimism that is genuine and robust." + +"Then a novel may be at once optimistic and realistic?" I said. "That +is not in accord with the generally received ideas of realism." + +"It is true of the work of the great realists," answered Miss Glasgow. +"True realism is optimistic, without being sentimental." + +"What realists have been optimistic?" I asked. + +"Well," said Miss Glasgow, "Henry Fielding, one of the first and +greatest of English realists, surely was an optimist. And there was +Charles Dickens--often, it is true, he was sentimental, but at his best +he was a robust optimist. + +"But the greatest modern example of the robust optimistic realist, +absolutely free from sentimentality, is George Meredith. Galsworthy, who +surely is a realist, is optimistic in such works as _The Freelands_ and +_The Patricians_. And Meredith is always realistic and always +optimistic. + +"The optimism I mean, the optimism which is a distinguishing +characteristic of George Meredith's works, does not come from an evasion +of facts, but from a recognition of them. The constructive novelist, the +novelist who really interprets life, never ignores any of the facts of +life. Instead, he accepts them and builds upon them. And he perceives +the power of the will to control destiny; he knows that life is not what +you get out of it, but what you put into it. This is what the younger +English novelists know and what our novelists must learn. And it is +their growing recognition of this spirit that makes me feel that the +tendency of modern literature is toward democracy." + +"What is the connection between democracy and the tendency you have +described?" I asked. + +"To me," Miss Glasgow answered, "true democracy consists chiefly in the +general recognition of the truth that will create destiny. Democracy +does not consist in the belief that all men are born free and equal or +in the desire that they shall be born free and equal. It consists in the +knowledge that all people should possess an opportunity to use their +will to control--to create--destiny, and that they should know that they +have this opportunity. They must be educated to the use of the will, and +they must be taught that character can create destiny. + +"Of course, environment inevitably has its effect on the character, and, +therefore, on will, and, therefore, on destiny. You can so oppress and +depress the body that the will has no chance. True democracy provides +for all equal opportunities for the exercise of will. If you hang a +man, you can't ask him to exercise his will. But if you give him a +chance to live--which is the democratic thing to do--then you put before +him an opportunity to exercise his will." + +"But what are the manifestations of this new democratic spirit?" I +asked. "Is not the war, which is surely the greatest event of our time, +an anti-democratic thing?" + +"The war is not anti-democratic," Miss Glasgow replied, "any more than +it is anti-autocratic. Or rather, I may say it is both anti-democratic +and anti-autocratic. It is a conflict of principles, a deadly struggle +between democracy and imperialism. It is a fight for the new spirit of +democracy against the old evil order of things. + +"Of course, I do not mean that the democracy of France and England is +perfect. But with all its imperfections it is nearer true democracy than +is the spirit of Germany. We should not expect the democracy of our +country to be perfect. The time has not come for that. 'Man is not man +as yet,' as Browning said in _Paracelsus_. + +"The war is turning people away from the false standards in art and +letters which they served so long. The highly artificial romantic novel +and drama are impossible in Europe to-day. The war has made that sort +of thing absolutely absurd. And America must be affected by this just as +every other nation in the world is affected. To our novelists and to all +of us must come a sense of the serious importance of actual life, +instead of a sense of the beauty of romantic illusions. There are many +indications of this tendency in our contemporary literature. For +instance, in poetry we have the Spoon River Anthology--surely a sign of +the return of the poet to real life. But the greatest poets, like the +greatest novelists, have always been passionately interested in real +life. Walt Whitman and Robert Browning always were realists and always +were optimistic. Whitman was a most exultant optimist; he was optimistic +even about dying. + +"Among recent books of verse I have been much impressed by Masefield's +_Good Friday_. There is a work which is both august and sympathetic; Mr. +Masefield's treatment of his theme is realistic, yet thoroughly +reverent. There is one line in it which I think I never shall forget. It +is, 'The men who suffer most endure the least.' + +"_Good Friday_ is a sign of literature's strong tendency toward reality. +It seems to me to be a phase of the general breaking down of the +barriers between the nations, the classes, and the sexes. But this +breaking down of barriers is something that most of our novelists have +been ignoring. Mary Watts has recognized it, but she is one of the very +few American novelists to do so." + +"But this sort of consciousness is not generally considered to be a +characteristic of the realistic novelist," I said. And I mentioned to +Miss Glasgow a certain conspicuous American novelist whose books are +very long, very dull, and distinguished only by their author's obsession +with sex. He, I said, was the man of whom most people would think first +when the word realist was spoken. + +"Of course," said Miss Glasgow, "we must distinguish between a realist +and a vulgarian, and I do not see how a writer who is absolutely without +humor can justly be called a realist. Consider the great realists--Jane +Austen, Henry Fielding, Anthony Trollope, George Meredith--they all had +humor. What our novelists need chiefly are more humor and a more serious +attitude toward life. If our novelists are titanic enough, they will +have a serious attitude toward life, and if they stand far enough off +they will have humor. + +"I hope," Miss Glasgow added, "that America will produce better +literature after the war. I hope that a change for the better will be +evident in all branches of literary endeavor. We have to-day many +novelists who start out with the serious purpose of interpreting life. +But they don't interpret it. They find that it is easier to give the +people what they want than to interpret life. Therefore this change in +the character of our novels must come after the people themselves are +awakened to a sense of the importance of real life, instead of life +sentimentally and deceptively portrayed. + +"I think that our novels to-day are better than they were twenty-five +years ago. Of course, we have no Hawthorne to-day, but the general +average of stories is better than it was. We have so many accomplished +writers of short stories. There is Katharine Fullerton Gerould. What an +admirable artist she is! Mary E. Wilkins has written some splendid +interpretations of New England life, and Miss Jewett reflected the mind +and soul of a part of our country." + + + + +_"CHOCOLATE FUDGE" IN THE MAGAZINES_ + +FANNIE HURST + + +Only a few years ago Fannie Hurst's name was unknown to most readers. +But in a surprisingly short time Miss Hurst's short stories, especially +her sympathetic and poignantly realistic studies of the life of the +Jewish citizens of New York, have earned for her popular as well as +critical approval. + +Fannie Hurst's fame has been won almost entirely through the most widely +circulated weekly and monthly magazines. And yet when I talked to this +energetic young woman the other morning in her studio in Carnegie Hall, +I found her attitude toward the magazines anything but friendly. She +accused them of printing what she called "chocolate-fudge" fiction. And +she said it in a way which indicated that chocolate fudge is not her +favorite dish. + +"I do not feel," she said, "that the American magazine is exerting +itself toward influencing our fiction for the better. In most cases it +is content to pander to the untutored public taste instead of attempting +anything constructive. + +"The magazine public is, after all, open to conviction. But phlegm and +commercialism on the part of most of our magazines lead them to give the +public what it wants rather than what is good for it. + +"'If chocolate-fudge fiction will sell the magazine, give 'em chocolate +fudge!' say editors and publishers. Small wonder that American +fiction-readers continue bilious in their demands. Authors, meanwhile, +who like sweet butter on their bread--it is amazing how many +do--continue to postpone that Big Idea, and American fiction pauses by +the wayside." + +"What is the remedy for this condition, Miss Hurst?" I asked. "Would +matters be better if the writers did not have to comply with the demands +of the magazines--if they had some other means of making a living than +writing?" + +Miss Hurst did not answer at once. At length she said, thoughtfully: + +"It would seem that to escape this almost inevitable overlapping of +bread and sweet butter the writer of short stories should not depend +upon the sale of his work for a living, but should endeavor to provide +himself with some other source of income. + +"Theoretically, at least, such a condition would eliminate the +pot-boilers and safeguard the serious worker from the possibility of +'misshaping' his art to meet a commercial condition. + +"I say theoretically because from my own point of view I cannot conceive +of short-story writing as an avocation. The gentle art of short fiction +consumes just about six hours of my day at the rate of from twenty to +twenty-five days on a story of from eight to ten thousand words. And +since I work best from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., I can think of no remunerative +occupation outside those hours except cabaret work or night clerking." + +"What about present-day relationship between American publishers and +authors?" I asked, "Do you think they are all they should be?" + +"American publishers and authors," Miss Hurst replied, "to-day seem to +be working somewhat at cross-purposes, owing partially, I think, to the +great commercial significance that has become attached to the various +rights, such as motion-picture, serial, dramatic, book, etc., and which +are to be reckoned with in the sale of fiction. + +"There is little doubt that authors have suffered at the hands of +publishers on these various scores, oftener than not the publisher and +not the author reaping the benefits accruing from the author's ignorance +of conditions or lack of foresight. + +"The Authors' League has been formed to remedy just that evil--and it +was a crying one. + +"On the other hand, it is certain that fiction-writers are better paid +to-day than ever in the history of literature, and if a man is writing a +seventy-five-dollar story there is a pretty good reason why. + +"I feel a great deal of hesitancy about the present proposed affiliation +of authors with labor. There is so much to be said on both sides! + +"If the publisher represents capital and the author labor, my sympathies +immediately veer me toward labor. But do they? That same question has +recently been thrashed out by the actors, and they have gone over to +labor. Scores of our most prominent American authors are of that same +persuasion. + +"I cannot help but feel that for publisher and author to assume the +relationship of employer and employee is a dangerous step. All forms of +labor do not come under the same head. And I am the last to say that +writing is not hard labor. But Cellini could hardly have allied himself +with an iron-workers' guild. All men are mammals, but not all mammals +are men! + +"It seems doubly unfortunate, with the Authors' League in existence to +direct and safeguard the financial destiny of the author, to take a step +which immediately places the author and publisher on the same basis of +relationship that exists between hod-carrier and contractor. + +"As a matter of fact, I am almost wont to question the traditional lack +of business acumen in authors. On the contrary, almost every successful +author of my acquaintance not only is pretty well able to take care of +himself, but owns a motor-car and a safety-deposit box at the same time. +And I find the not-so-successful authors prodding pretty faithfully to +get their prices up. + +"The Authors' League is a great institution and fills a great need. It +was formed for just the purpose that seems to be prompting authors to +unionize--to instruct authors in their rights and protect them against +infringements. + +"Why unionize? Next, an author will find himself obliged to lay aside +his pen when the whistle blows, and publishers will be finding +themselves obliged to deal in open-shop literature." + +"And what effect are the moving pictures going to have on fiction?" I +asked. "Will it be good or bad?" + +"Up to the present," Miss Hurst replied, "moving pictures have, in my +opinion, been little else than a destructive force where American +fiction is concerned. Picturized fiction is on a cheap and sensational +level. Even classics and standardized fiction are ruthlessly defamed by +tawdry presentation. With the mechanics of the motion picture so +advanced, it is unfortunate that the photoplay itself is not keeping +pace with that advancement. + +"Motion pictures are in the hands of laymen, and they show it. The +scenario-writers, so-called 'staff writers,' have sprung up overnight, +so to speak, and, from what I understand, when authors venture into the +field they are at the mercy of the moving-picture director. + +"Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett could not endure to sit through the +picture presentation of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, so mutilated was it. + +"Of course, scenario-writing is a new art, and this interesting form of +expression has hardly emerged from its infancy. Except perhaps in such +great spectacles as 'The Birth of a Nation,' where, after all, the play +is not the thing." + +I asked Miss Hurst if she agreed with those who believe that Edgar Allan +Poe's short stories have never been surpassed. I found that she did not. + +"I should say," she said, "that since Poe's time we have had masters of +the short story who have equaled him. Poe is, of course, the legitimate +father of the American short story, and, coupled with that fact, was +possessed of that kind of self-consciousness which enabled him to +formulate a law of composition which has not been without its influence +upon our subsequent short fiction. + +"But in American letters there is little doubt that in the last one +hundred years the short story has made more progress than any other +literary type. We are becoming not only proficient, but pre-eminent in +the short story. I can think off-hand of quite a group of writers, each +of whom has contributed short-story classics to our literature. + +"There are Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James (if we may claim him), +Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, O. Henry, Richard +Harding Davis, Jack London, and Booth Tarkington. And I am sure that +there are various others whose names do not occur to me at this moment." + +"You mentioned O. Henry," I said. "Then you do not share Katharine +Fullerton Gerould's belief that O. Henry's influence on modern fiction +is bad?" + +"I decidedly disagree," said Miss Hurst, with considerable firmness, +"with the statement that O. Henry wrote incidents rather than short +stories, and is a pernicious influence in modern letters. That his +structural form is more than anecdotal can be shown by an analysis of +almost any of his plots. + +"But it seems pedantic to criticize O. Henry on the score of structure. +Admitting that the substance of his writings does rest on frail +framework, even sometimes upon the trick, he built with Gothic skill and +with no obvious pillars of support. + +"Corot was none the less a landscape artist because he removed that +particular brown tree from that particular green slope. O. Henry's +facetiousness and, if you will, his frail structures, are no more to be +reckoned with than, for instance, the extravagance of plot and the +morbid formality we find in Poe. + +"The smiting word and the polished phrase he quite frankly subordinated +to the laugh, or the tear with a sniffle. Just as soon call red woolen +underwear pernicious! + +"The Henry James school has put a super-finish upon literature which, it +is true, gives the same satisfying sense of wholeness that we get from a +Greek urn. But, after all, chastity is not the first and last requisite. +O. Henry loved to laugh with life! It was not in him to regard it with a +Mona Lisa smile." + +Miss Hurst has confined her attention so closely to American +metropolitan life that I thought it would be interesting to have her +opinion as to the truth of the remark, attributed to William Dean +Howells, that American literature is merely a phase of English +literature. In reply to my question she said: + +"I agree with Mr. Howells that American literature up to now has been +rather a phase of English literature. His own graceful art is an example +of cousinship. American literature probably will continue to be an +effort until our American melting-pot ceases boiling. + +"_David Copperfield_ and _Vanity Fair_ come from a people whose lineage +goes back by century-plants and not by Mayflowers. Theodore Dreiser and +Ernest Poole, sometimes more or less inarticulately, are preparing us +for the great American novel. When we reach a proper consistency the +boiling is bound to cease, and, just as inevitably, the epic novel must +come." + + + + +_THE NEW SPIRIT IN POETRY_ + +AMY LOWELL + + +Miss Amy Lowell, America's chief advocate and practitioner of the new +poetry, would wear, I supposed, a gown by Bakst, with many Oriental +jewels. And incense would be burning in a golden basin. And Miss Lowell +would say that the art of poetry was discovered in 1916. + +But there is nothing exotic or artificial about Miss Lowell's appearance +and surroundings. Nor did the author of _Sword Blades and Poppy Seed_ +express, when I talked to her the other day, any of the extravagant +opinions which conservative critics attribute to the _vers libristes_. +Miss Lowell talked with the practicality which is of New England and the +serenity which is of Boston; she was positive, but not narrowly +dogmatic; she is keenly appreciative of contemporary poetry, but she has +the fullest sense of the value of the great heritage of poetical +tradition that has come down to us through the ages. + +There is so much careless talk of _imagisme_, _vers libre_, and the new +poetry in general that I thought it advisable to begin our talk by +asking for a definition or a description of the new poetry. In reply to +my question Miss Lowell said: + +"The thing that makes me feel sure that there is a future in the new +poetry is the fact that those who write it follow so many different +lines of thought. The new poetry is so large a subject that it can +scarcely be covered by one definition. It seems to me that there are +four definite sorts of new poetry, which I will attempt to describe. + +"One branch of the new poetry may be called the realistic school. This +branch is descended partly from Whitman and partly from the +prose-writers of France and England. The leading exponents of it are +Robert Frost and Edgar Lee Masters. These two poets are different from +each other, but they both are realists, they march under the same +banner. + +"Another branch of the new poetry consists of the poets whose work shows +a mixture of the highly imaginative and the realistic. Their thought +verges on the purely imaginative, but is corrected by a scientific +attitude of mind. I suppose that this particular movement in English +poetry may be said to have started with Coleridge, but in England the +movement hardly attained its due proportions. Half of literary England +followed Wordsworth, half followed Byron. It is in America that we find +the greatest disciple of Coleridge in the person of Edgar Allan Poe. The +force of the movement then went back to France, where it showed clearly +in Mallarme and the later symbolists. To-day we see this tendency +somewhat popularized in Vachell Lindsay, although perhaps he does not +know it. And if I may be so bold as to mention myself, I should say that +I in common with most other imagists belong to this branch, that I am at +once a fantasist and a realist. + +"Thirdly, we have the lyrico-imaginative type of poet. Of this branch +the best example that I can call to mind is John Gould Fletcher. The +fourth group of the new poets consists of those who are descended +straight from Matthew Arnold. They show the Wordsworth influence +corrected by experience and education. Browning is in their line of +descent. Characteristics of their work are high seriousness, +astringency, and a certain pruning down of poetry so that redundancy is +absolutely avoided. Of this type the most striking example is Edwin +Arlington Robinson." + +"Miss Lowell," I said, "the opponents of the new poetry generally attack +it chiefly on account of its form--or rather, on account of its +formlessness. And yet what you have said has to do only with the idea +itself. You have said nothing about the way in which the idea is +expressed." + +"There is no special form which is characteristic of the new poetry," +said Miss Lowell, "and of course 'formlessness' is a word which is +applied to it only by the ignorant. The new poetry is in every form. +Edgar Lee Masters has written in _vers libre_ and in regular rhythm. +Robert Frost writes in blank verse. Vachell Lindsay writes in varied +rhyme schemes. I write in both the regular meters and the newer forms, +such as _vers libre_ and 'polyphonic prose.' + +"It is a mistake to suppose, as many conservative critics do, that +modern poetry is a matter of _vers libre_. _Vers libre_ is not new, but +it is valuable to give vividness when vividness is desired. _Vers libre_ +is a difficult thing to write well, and a very easy thing to write +badly. This particular branch of the new poetry movement has been +imitated so extensively that it has brought the whole movement into +disrepute in the eyes of casual observers. But we must remember that no +movement is to be judged by its obscure imitators. A movement must be +judged by the few people at its head who make the trend. There cannot be +many of them. In the history of the world there are only a few supreme +artists, only a small number of great artists, only a limited number of +good artists. And to suppose that we in America at this particular +moment can be possessed of many artists worthy of consideration is +ridiculous. + +"Undoubtedly the fact that a great number of people are engaged to-day +in producing poetry is a great stimulus and helps to create a proper +atmosphere for those men whose work may live. For it is a curious fact +that the artistic names that have come down to us are those of men who +have lived in the so-called great artistic periods, when many other men +were working at the same thing." + +I asked Miss Lowell to tell something of this _vers libre_ which is so +much discussed and so little understood. She said: + +"_Vers libre_ is based upon rhythm. Its definition is 'A verse form +based upon cadence rather than upon exact meter.' It is a little +difficult to define cadence when dealing with poetry. I might call it +the sense of balance. + +"The unit of _vers libre_ is the strophe, not the line or the foot, as +in regular meter. The strophe is a group of words which round themselves +satisfactorily to the ear. In short poems this complete rounding may +take place only at the end, making the poem a unit of a single movement, +the lines serving only to give the slight up-and-down effect necessary +to the voice when the poem is read aloud. + +"In longer poems the strophe may be a group of lines. Poetry being a +spoken and not a written art, those not well versed in the various +poetic forms will find it simpler to read _vers libre_ poems aloud, +rather than to try to get their rhythm from the printed page. For people +who are used only to the exact meters, the printed arrangement of a +_vers libre_ poem is a confusing process. To a certain extent cadence is +dependent upon quantity--long and short syllables being of peculiar +importance. Words hurried over in reading are balanced by words on which +the reader pauses. Remember, also, that _vers libre_ can be either +rhymed or unrhymed." + +"One objection," I said, "that many critics bring up against unrhymed +poetry is that it cannot be remembered." + +"I cannot see that that is of the slightest importance," Miss Lowell +replied. "The music that we whistle when we come out of the theater is +not the greatest music we have heard. + + "Zaccheus he + Did climb a tree + His Lord to see + +is easily remembered. But I refuse to think that it is great poetry. + +"The enemies of _vers libre_," she continued, "say that _vers libre_ is +in no respect different from oratory. Now, there is a difference between +the cadence of _vers libre_ and the cadence of oratory. Lincoln's +Gettysburg address is not _vers libre_, it is rhythmical prose. At the +prose end of cadence is rhythmical prose; at the verse end is _vers +libre_. The difference is in the kind of cadence. + +"Recently a writer in _The Nation_ took some of Meredith's prose and +made it into _vers libre_ poems which any poet would have been glad to +write. Then he took some of my poems and turned them into prose, with a +result which he was kind enough to call beautiful. He then pertinently +asked what was the difference. + +"I might answer that there is no difference. Typography is not relevant +to the discussion. Whether a thing is written as prose or as verse is +immaterial. But if we would see the advantage which Meredith's +imagination enjoyed in the freer forms of expression, we need only +compare these lyrical passages from his prose works with his own +metrical poetry." + +I asked Miss Lowell about the charge that the new poets are lacking in +reverence for the great poets of the past. She believes that the charge +is unfounded. Nevertheless, she believes that the new poets do well to +take the New England group of writers less seriously than conservative +critics would have them take them. + +"America has produced only two great poets, Whitman and Poe," said Miss +Lowell. "The rest of the early American poets were cultivated gentlemen, +but they were more exactly English provincial poets than American poets, +and they were decidedly inferior to the parent stock. The men of the New +England group, with the single exception of Emerson, were cultivated +gentlemen with a taste for literature--they never rose above that level. + +"No one can judge his contemporaries. We cannot say with certainty that +the poets of this generation are better than their predecessors. But +surely we can see that the new poets have more originality, more of the +stuff out of which poetry is made, than their predecessors had, aside +from the two great exceptions that I have mentioned." + +"What is the thing that American poetry chiefly needs?" I asked. + +"Well," said Miss Lowell, "I wish that there were a great many changes +in our attitude toward literature. I wish that no man could expect to +make a living by writing. I wish that the magazines did not pay for +contributions--few of them do in France, you know. And I wish that the +newspapers did not try to review books. But the thing that we chiefly +need is informed and authoritative criticism. + +"We have very few critics, we have practically none who are writing +separate books on contemporary verse. When I was writing my _French +Poets_ I read twenty or thirty books on contemporary French poetry, +serious books, written by critics who make a specialty of the poetry of +their own day. + +"We have nothing like this in America. The men who write critical books +write of the literature of a hundred years ago. No critical mind is +bent toward contemporary verse. There are a few newspaper critics who +pay serious attention to contemporary verse--William Stanley +Braithwaite, O. W. Firkins, and Louis Untermeyer, for example--but there +are only a few of them. + +"What is to be desired is for some one to be as interested in criticism +as the poets are in poetry. It was the regularity of Sainte-Beuve's +'Causeries du Lundi' that gave it its weight. What we want is a critic +like that, who is neither an old man despairing of a better job nor a +young man using his newspaper work as a stepping-stone to something +higher. Of course, brilliant criticisms of poetry appear from time to +time, but what we need is criticism as an institution. + +"After all," said Miss Lowell, in conclusion, "there are only two kinds +of poetry, good poetry and bad poetry. The form of poetry is a matter of +individual idiosyncrasy. It is only the very young and the very old, the +very inexperienced or the numbed, who say, 'This is the only way in +which poetry shall be written!'" + + + + +_A NEW DEFINITION OF POETRY_ + +EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON + + +At no time in the history of literature have the critics been able to +agree upon a definition of poetry. And the recent popularity of _vers +libre_ and _imagisme_ has made the definer's task harder than ever +before. Is rhyme essential to poetry? Is rhythm essential to poetry? Can +a mere reflection of life justly be called poetry, or must imagination +be present? + +I put some of these questions to Edwin Arlington Robinson, who wrote +_Captain Craig_, _The Children of the Night_, _The Town Down the River_, +_The Man Against the Sky_ and _Merlin: A Poem_. And this man, whom +William Stanley Braithwaite and other authoritative critics have called +the foremost of American poets, this student of life, who was revealing +the mysterious poetry of humanity many years before Edgar Lee Masters +discovered to the world the vexed spirits that haunt Spoon River, +rewarded my questioning with a new definition of poetry. He said: + +"Poetry is a language that tells us, through a more or less emotional +reaction, something that cannot be said. + +"All real poetry, great or small, does this," he added. "And it seems to +me that poetry has two characteristics. One is that it is, after all, +undefinable. The other is that it is eventually unmistakable." + +"'Eventually'!" I said. "Then you think that poetry is not always +appreciated in the lifetime of its maker?" + +Mr. Robinson smiled whimsically. "I never use words enough," he said. +"It is not unmistakable as soon as it is published, but sooner or later +it is unmistakable. + +"And in the poet's lifetime there are always some people who will +understand and appreciate his work. I really think that it is impossible +for a real poet permanently to escape appreciation. And I can't imagine +anything sillier for a man to do than to worry about poetry that has +once been decently published. The rest is in the hands of Time, and Time +has more than often a way of making a pretty thorough job of it." + +"But why is it," I asked, "that a great poet so often is without honor +in his own generation, where mediocrity is immediately famous?" + +"It's hard to say," said Mr. Robinson, thoughtfully regarding the +glowing end of his cigar. "Many causes prevent poetry from being +correctly appraised in its own time. Any poetry that is marked by +violence, that is conspicuous in color, that is sensationally odd, makes +an immediate appeal. On the other hand, poetry that is not noticeably +eccentric sometimes fails for years to attract any attention. + +"I think that this is why so many of Kipling's worst poems are greatly +overpraised, while some of his best poems are not appreciated. _Gunga +Din_, which is, of course, a good thing in its way, has been praised far +more than it deserves, because of its oddity. And the poem beginning +'There's a whisper down the field' has never been properly appreciated. +It's one of the very best of Kipling's poems, although it is marred by a +few lapses of taste. One of his greatest poems, by the way, _The +Children of the Zodiac_, happens to be in prose. + +"But I am always revising my opinion of Kipling. I have changed my mind +about him so often that I have no confidence in my critical judgment. +That is one of the reasons why I do not like to criticise my American +contemporaries." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that this tendency to pay attention chiefly to +the more sensational poets is as characteristic of our generation as of +those that came before?" + +"I think it applies particularly to our own time," he replied. "More +than ever before oddity and violence are bringing into prominence poets +who have little besides these two qualities to offer the world, and some +who have much more. It may seem very strange to you, but I think that a +great modern instance of this tendency is the case of Robert Browning. +The eccentricities of Browning's method are the things that first turned +popular attention upon him, but the startling quality in Browning made +more sensation in his own time than it can ever make again. I say this +in spite of the fact that Browning and Wordsworth are taken as the +classic examples of slow recognition. Wordsworth, you know, had no +respect for the judgment of youth. It may have been sour grapes, but I +am inclined to think that there was a great deal of truth in his +opinion. + +"I think it is safe to say that all real poetry is going to give at some +time or other a suggestion of finality. In real poetry you find that +something has been said, and yet you find also about it a sort of nimbus +of what can't be said. + +"This nimbus may be there--I wouldn't say that it isn't there--and yet I +can't find it in much of the self-conscious experimenting that is going +on nowadays in the name of poetry. + +"I can't get over the impression," Mr. Robinson went on, with a +meditative frown, "that these post-impressionists in painting and most +of the _vers libristes_ in poetry are trying to find some sort of short +cut to artistic success. I know that many of the new writers insist that +it is harder to write good _vers libre_ than to write good rhymed +poetry. And judging from some of their results, I am inclined to agree +with them." + +I asked Mr. Robinson if he believed that the evident increase in +interest in poetry, shown by the large sales of the work of Robert Frost +and Edgar Lee Masters and Rupert Brooke, indicated a real renascence of +poetry. + +"I think that it indicates a real renascence of poetry," he replied. "I +am sufficiently child-like and hopeful to find it very encouraging." + +"Do you think," I asked, "that the poetry that is written in America +to-day is better than that written a generation ago?" + +"I should hardly venture to say that," said Mr. Robinson. "For one +thing, we have no Emerson. Emerson is the greatest poet who ever wrote +in America. Passages scattered here and there in his work surely are the +greatest of American poetry. In fact, I think that there are lines and +sentences in Emerson's poetry that are as great as anything anywhere." + +I asked Mr. Robinson whether he thought the modern English poets were +doing better work than their American contemporaries. At first he was +unwilling to express an opinion on this subject, repeating his statement +that he mistrusted his own critical judgment. But he said: + +"Within his limits, I believe that A. E. Housman is the most authentic +poet now writing in England. But, of course, his limits are very sharply +drawn. I don't think that any one who knows anything about poetry will +ever think of questioning the inspiration of _A Shropshire Lad_." + +"Would you make a similar comment on any other poetry of our time?" I +asked. + +"Well," said Mr. Robinson, reflectively, "I think that no one will +question the inspiration of some of Kipling's poems, of parts of John +Masefield's _Dauber_, and some of the long lyrics of Alfred Noyes. But I +do not think that either of these poets gives the impression of finality +which A. E. Housman gives. But the way in which I have shifted my +opinion about some of Rudyard Kipling's poems, and most of Swinburne's, +makes me think that Wordsworth was very largely right in his attitude +toward the judgment of youth. But where my opinions have shifted, I +think now that I always had misgivings. I fancy that youth always has +misgivings in regard to what is later to be modified or repudiated." + +Then I asked Mr. Robinson if he thought that the war had anything to do +with the renascence of poetry. + +"I can't see any connection," he replied. "The only effect on poetry +that the war has had, so far as I know, is to produce those five sonnets +by Rupert Brooke. I can't see that it has caused any poetical event. And +there's no use prophesying what the war will or will not do to poetry, +because no one knows anything about it. The Civil War seems to have had +little effect on poetry except to produce Julia Ward Howe's _Battle +Hymn of the Republic_, Whitman's poems on the death of Lincoln, and +Lowell's 'Ode.'" + +"Mr. Robinson," I said, "there has been much discussion recently about +the rewards of poetry, and Miss Amy Lowell has said that no poet ought +to be expected to make a living by writing. What do you think about it?" + +"Should a poet be able to make a living out of poetry?" said Mr. +Robinson. "Generally speaking, it is not possible for a poet to make a +decent living by his work. In most cases it would be bad for his +creative faculties for a poet to make as much money as a successful +novelist makes. Fortunately, there is no danger of that. Now, assuming +that a poet has enough money to live on, the most important thing for +him to have is an audience. I mean that the best poetry is likely to be +written when poetry is in the air. If a poet with no obligations and +responsibilities except to stay alive can't live on a thousand dollars a +year (I don't undertake to say just how he is going to get it), he'd +better go into some other business." + +"Then you don't think," I said, "that literature has lost through the +poverty of poets?" + +"I certainly do believe that literature has lost through the poverty of +poets," said Mr. Robinson. "I don't believe in poverty. I never did. I +think it is good for a poet to be bumped and knocked around when he is +young, but all the difficulties that are put in his way after he gets to +be twenty-five or thirty are certain to take something out of his work. +I don't see how they can do anything else. + +"Some time ago you asked me," said Mr. Robinson, "how I accounted for +our difficulty in making a correct estimate of the poetry of one's own +time. The question is a difficult one. I don't even say that it has an +answer. But the solution of the thing seems to me to be related to what +I said about the quality of finality that seems to exist in all real +poetry. Finality seems always to have had a way of not obtruding itself +to any great extent." + + + + +_LET POETRY BE FREE_ + +JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY + + +Mrs. Lionel Marks--or Josephine Preston Peabody, to call her by the name +which she has made famous--is a poet whose tendency has always been +toward democracy. From _The Singing Leaves_, her first book of lyrics, +to _The Piper_ (the dramatic poem which received the Stratford-on-Avon +prize in 1910), and _The Wolf of Gubbio_, the poetic representation of +events in St. Francis's life in her latest published book, she has +chosen for her theme not fantastic and rare aspects of nature, nor the +new answers of her own emotions, but things that are common to all +normal mankind--such as love and religion. Also, without seeming to +preach, she is always expressing her love for Liberty, Equality, and +Fraternity, and although she never dwells upon the overworked term, she +is as devoted an adherent of the brotherhood of man as was William +Morris. + +Therefore I was eager to learn whether or not she held the +opinion--often expressed during the past months--that poetry is becoming +more democratic, less an art practised and appreciated by the chosen +few. Also I wanted to know if she saw signs of this democratization of +poetry in the development of free verse, or _vers libre_, as those who +write it prefer to say, in the apparently growing tendency of poets to +give up the use of rhyme and rhythm. + +"Certainly, poetry is steadily growing more democratic," said Mrs. +Marks. "More people are writing poetry to-day than fifty years ago, and +the appreciation of poetry is more general. Most poets of genuine +calling are writing now with the world in mind as an audience, not +merely for the entertainment of a little literary cult. + +"But I do not think that the _vers libre_ fad has any connection with +this tendency, or with the development of poetry at all. Indeed, I do +not think that the cult is growing; we hear more of it in the United +States than we did a year or two ago, but that is chiefly because London +and Paris have outworn its novelty, so the _vers libristes_ concentrate +their energies on Chicago and New York. + +"I love some 'free verse.' Certainly, there may be times when a poet +finds he can express his idea or his emotion better without rhyme and +rhythm than with them. But verse that is ostentatiously free--free verse +that obviously has been made deliberately--that is a highly artificial +sort of writing, bears no more relation to literature than does an +acrostic. Neither the themes nor the methods of those who call +themselves _vers libristes_ are democratic; they are, in the worst sense +of the word, the sense which came into use at the time of the French +Revolution, aristocratic. + +"The canon of the _vers libristes_ is essentially aristocratic. They +contend, absurdly enough, that all traditional forms of rhyme and rhythm +constitute a sort of bondage, and therefore they arbitrarily rule them +out. Not for them are the fetters that bound Shelley's spirit to the +earth! Also they arbitrarily rule out what they call, with their +fondness for labels, the 'sociological note,' 'didacticism,' +'meanings'--any ideas or emotions, in fact, that may be called communal +or democratic. + +"My own canon is that all themes are fit for poetry and that all methods +must justify themselves. If I may be permitted to make a clumsy +wooden-toy apothegm I would say that poetry is rhythmic without and +within. If we turn Carlyle's sometimes cloudy prose inside out we find +that it has a silver lining of poetry. + +"Neither can I understand why the _vers libristes_ believe that their +sort of writing is new. Leopardi wrote what would be called good +_imagisme_, although the _imagistes_ do not seem to be aware of the +fact, and the theory that rhyme is undesirable in poetry has appeared +sporadically time and again in the history of poetry. When Sir Philip +Sidney was alive there were pedants who argued against the use of rhyme, +and some of them confuted their own arguments by writing charming lyrics +in the traditional manner. By dint of reading the fine eye-cracking +print in the Globe Edition of Spenser I found that the author of the +_Faerie Queen_ at one time took seriously Gabriel Harvey's arguments +against rhyme and made an unbelievably frightful experiment in rhymeless +verse--as bad as the parodists of our band-wagon. + +"The other day I asked some one in the Greek department of Harvard how +to read a fragment of Sappho's that I wanted to teach my children to +say. He said that no one nowadays could know how certain of Sappho's +poems really should be read, because the music for them had been lost, +and they were all true lyrics, meant to be sung and sung by Sappho to +music of her own making. So you see that poets who avowedly make verses +that can appeal only to the eye, successions of images, in which the +position of the words on the page is of great importance, believe that +they are the successors of poets whose work was meant not to be read, +but to be sung, whose verses fitted the regular measure of music. + +"As I said before," said Mrs. Marks, smiling, "I have no objection to +free verse when it is a spontaneous expression. But I do object to free +verse when it is organized into a cult that denies other freedoms to +other poets! And I object to the bigotry of some of the people who are +trying to impose free verse upon an uninterested world. + +"And also I object to the unfairness of some of the advocates of free +verse. When they compare free verse, and what I suppose I must call +chained verse, they take the greatest example of unrhymed poetry that +they can find--the King James version of the Book of Job, perhaps--and +say: 'This is better than "Yankee Doodle." Therefore, free verse is +better than traditional verse.' + +"You see," said Mrs. Marks, "the commonest thing there is, I may say the +most democratic thing, is the rhythm of the heart-beat. A true poet +cannot ignore this. At the greatest times in his life, when he is filled +with joy or despair, or when he has a sense of portent, man is aware of +his heart, of its beat, of its recurrent tick, tick; he is aware of the +rhythm of life. When we are dying, perhaps the only sense that remains +with us is the sense of rhythm--the feeling that the grains of sand are +running, running, running out. + +"The pulse-beat is a tremendous thing. It is the basis of all that men +have in common. All life is locked up in its regularly recurrent rhythm. +And it is that rhythm that appears in our love-songs, our war-songs, in +all the poetry of the human cycle from lullabies to funeral chants. In +the great moments of life men feel that they must be sharing, that they +must have something in common with other men, and so their emotions +crystallize into the ritual of rhythm, which is the most democratic +thing that there is. + +"Primitive poetry, poetry that comes straight from the hearts of the +people, sometimes circulating for generations without being committed to +paper, is strongly traditional. The convention of regular rhyme and +rhythm is never absent. What could be more conventional and more +democratic than the old ballad, with its recurrent refrain in which the +audience joined? Centuries ago in the Scotch Highlands the +ballad-makers, like the men who wrote the 'Come-all-ye's' in our +great-grandfather's time, used regular rhyme and rhythm. And if these +poets were not democratic, then there never was such a thing as a +democratic poet." + +"But is it not true," I asked, "that Whitman is considered the most +democratic poet of his day, and that his avoidance of rhyme and regular +rhythm is advanced as proof of his democracy?" + +"Whitman," said Mrs. Marks, "was a democrat in principle, but not in +poetic practice. He loved humanity, but he still waits to reach his +widest audience because his verse lacks strongly stressed, communal +music. The only poems which he wrote that really reached the hearts of +the people quickly are those which are most nearly traditional in +form--_When Lilacs Last in Dooryards Bloomed_ and _Captain, My Captain!_ +in which he used rhyme. + +"You see, nothing else establishes such a bond with memory as rhyme. + +"Did you ever think," said Mrs. Marks, suddenly, "that the truest +exuberance of life always expresses itself rhythmically? Children are +generous with the most intricate rhythms; they do not eat ice-cream in +the disorderly grown-up way; they eat it in a pattern, turning the +saucer around and around; they skit alternate flagstones or every third +step on the stairway. Because they are overflowing with life they +express themselves in rhythm. _Vers libre_ is too grown-up to be the +most vital poetry; one of the ways in which the poet must be like a +little child is in possessing an exuberance of life. His life must +overflow. + +"The poets especially remember that Christ said, 'I am come that ye +might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly.' + +"The rhythm of life," said Mrs. Marks, thoughtfully. "The rhythm of +life. Who is conscious of his heart-beats except at the great moments of +life, and who is unconscious of them then? The music of poetry is the +witness of that intense moment when there is discovered to man or woman, +when there reverberates through his brain and being, the tremendous +rhythm and refrain whereby we live." + +Mrs. Marks has no patience with those who use the term "sociological" in +depreciation of all poetry that is not intensely subjective and +personal. + +"There are some critics," she said, "who would condemn the Lord's Prayer +as 'sociological' because it begins 'Our Father' instead of 'My Father.' + +"The true poet must be a true democrat; he must, if he can, share with +all the world the vision that lights him; he must be in sympathy with +the people. The war has made a great many European poets aware of this +fact. Think how the war changed Rupert Brooke, for instance? He had been +a most aristocratic poet, making poems, some of which could only repel +minds less in love with the fantastic. But he shared the great emotion +of his countrymen, and so he wrote out of his deeply wakened, sudden +simplicity those sonnets which they all can understand and must forever +cherish. + +"The war will help make poetry. It has swept away the fads and cults +from Europe; they find a peaceful haven in the United States, but they +will not live as dogmas. In the democracy that is soon to come may all +'isms' founder and lose themselves! And may all true freedoms come into +their own, with the maker, his mind and his tools." + + + + +_THE HERESY OF SUPERMANISM_ + +CHARLES RANN KENNEDY + + +"But, of course," said Charles Rann Kennedy, violently (he says most +things rather violently), "you understand that the war's most important +effect on literature was clearly evident long before the war began!" + +I did not understand this statement, and said so. Thereupon the author +of _The Servant in the House_ and _The Terrible Meek_ said: + +"We have so often been told that great events cast their shadows before, +that the tremendous truth of the phrase has ceased to impress us. The +war which began in August, 1914, exercised a tremendous influence over +the mind of the world in 1913, 1912, 1911, and 1910. The great wave of +religious thought which swept over Europe and America during those years +was caused by the approach of the war. The tremendous pacifist +movement--not the weak, bloodless pacifism of the poltroon, but the +heroic, flaming pacifism of the soldier-hearted convinced of sin--was a +protest against the menacing injustice of the war; it was the world's +shudder of dread. + +"The literature of the first decade of the twentieth century was more +thoroughly and obviously influenced by the war than will be that of the +decade following. Think of that amazing quickening of the conscience of +the French nation, a quickening which found expression in the novels of +Rene Bazin, the immortal ballads of Francis Jammes, and in the work of +countless other writers! These people were preparing themselves and +their fellow-countrymen for the mighty ordeal which was before them. + +"It is blasphemous to say that the war can only affect things that come +after it; to say that is to attempt to limit the powers of God. There +are, of course, some writers who can only feel the influence of a thing +after it has become evident; after they have carefully studied and +absorbed it. But there are others, the manikoi, the prophetic madmen, +who are swayed by what is to happen rather than by what has happened. +I'm one of them. + +"The war held me in its spell long before the German troops crossed +Belgian soil. I wrote my _The Terrible Meek_ by direct inspiration from +heaven in Holy Week, 1912. + +"I put that in," said Mr. Kennedy (who looks very much like Gilbert K. +Chesterton's _Man-alive_), suddenly breaking off the thread of his +discourse, "not only because I know that it is the absolute truth, but +because of the highly entertaining way in which it is bound to be +misinterpreted. + +"New York's dramatic critics, the Lord Chamberlain of England, the +military authorities of Germany and Great Britain--all these people were +charmingly unanimous in finding _The Terrible Meek_ blasphemous, +villainous, poisonous. Even the New York MacDowell Club, after two +stormy debates, decided to omit all mention of _The Terrible Meek_ from +its bulletin. Perhaps this was not entirely because the play was +'sacrilegious'; the club may possibly have been influenced by the fact +that its author was a loud person with long hair, who told unpleasant +truths in reputable gatherings. And copies of the published book of the +play, which were accompanied by friendly letters from the author, were +refused by every monarch now at war in Europe! + +"But in 1914 and 1915 _The Terrible Meek_ suddenly found, to its own +amazement, that it had become a respectable play! Its connection with +the present war became evident. It has been the subject of countless +leading articles; it has been read, and even acted, in thousands of +churches. On the occasion of the first production of the despised play +in New York City, my wife and I received a small pot of roses from a +girls' school which we sometimes visit. In due time this was planted by +the porch of our summer home in Connecticut. This year--three years only +after its planting--the rose-tree covers three-quarters of the big +porch, and last summer it bore thousands of blooms. Now these things are +a parable! + +"No, the Lord does not have to wait until the beginnings of mighty wars +for them vitally to influence the literature of the world. Upon some of +us He places the burden of the coming horror years before. + +"Although I am and always have been violently opposed to war, I cannot +help observing what this war has already commenced to do for literature. +It is killing Supermanism--and I purposely call it by that name to +distinguish it from the mere actual doctrine that Nietzsche may or may +not have taught. The damnable heresy, as it historically happened among +us, was already beginning to influence very badly most of our young +writers. Clever devilism caught the trick of it too easily. Now, heresy +is sin always and everywhere; and this heresy was a particularly black +and deadly kind of sin. It ate into the very heart of our life. + +"And yet there was a reason, almost an excuse, for the power which the +Superman idea got over the minds of writers after Bernard Shaw's first +brilliant and engaging popularization of it. And the excuse is that +Supermanism, with its emphasis on strength and courage and life, was to +a great extent a healthy and almost inevitable reaction from the maudlin +milk-and-water sort of theology and morals that had been apologetically +handed out to us by weak-kneed religious teachers. + +"We had too much of the 'gentle Jesus' of the Sunday-school. In our maze +of evil Protestantisms, we had lost sight of the real Son of God who is +Jesus Christ. We had lost the terrible and lovely doctrine of the wrath +of the Lamb. + +"And so a great many writers turned to Supermanism with a shout of +relief. They were sick of milk and water, and this seemed to be strong +wine. But Supermanism is heresy, and it rapidly spread over the world, +most perniciously influencing all intellectual life. + +"And there were so many things to help Supermanism! There was the +general acceptance of the doctrine of biological necessity as an +argument for war--Bernhardi actually used that phrase, I believe--the +idea that affairs of the spirit are determined exteriorly. There was the +acceptance of various extraordinary interpretations of Darwin's theory +of evolution! Every little man called himself a scientist, and took his +own little potterings-about very seriously. Everything had to be a +matter of observation, these little fellows said; they would believe +only what they saw. They didn't know that real scientists always begin +_a priori_, that real scientists always know the truth first and then +set about to prove it. + +"Well, all these people helped the heresy of Supermanism along. But the +people who helped it along chiefly were the apologetic Christians, who +should have combated it with fire and sword. It was helped along by the +sort of Christian who calls himself 'liberal' and 'progressive,' the +sort of Christian who says, 'Of course, I'm not orthodox.' When any one +says that to me, I always answer him in the chaste little way which so +endears me to my day and generation: 'Hell, aren't you? I hope I am!' + +"This sort of so-called Christian helps Supermanism in two ways. In the +first place, the 'progressive' Christians are great connoisseurs of +heresy, they simply love any new sort of blasphemous philosophy, whether +it comes from Germany or Upper Tooting. They love to try to assimilate +all the new mad and wicked ideas, and graft them on Christianity. I +suppose it's their idea of making the Lord Jesus Christ up to date and +attractive. They love to try to engrave pretty patterns on the Rock of +Ages. And Supermanism was to them a new and alluring pattern. + +"Of course a Supermanism might be worked out on strictly Christian +lines, the Superman in that case being the Christ. But that is not the +way in which the theory has historically worked out. No! Mr. Superman as +we've actually known him in the world recently is the Beast that was +taken, and with him the false prophets that wrought miracles before him, +with which he had deceived them that had received the mark of the Beast +and them that had worshiped his image. And these, in the terrible +symbolism of St. John, you will remember, got fire and brimstone for +their pains! As now! + +"Then there was your Christian Supermanism that tried to get up a weak +little imitation of the wrath of the Lamb. This was your bastard by +theatricality and popularity out of so-called muscular Christianity. Not +the virile 'muscular Christianity' of Charles Kingsley, mind you--a +power he won almost alone, by blood and tears; but the 'safe' thing of +the after generation, the 'all things to all men'--when success was well +assured. This is your baseball Christianity, the Christianity of the +'punch,' of the piled-up heap of dollars, of the commercially counted +'conversions' and the rest of the blasphemies! Christ deliver us from +it, if needs be, even by fire! + +"Well, Supermanism cast its shadow over all forms of literary +expression. The big and the little mockers all fell under its +spell--they had their fling at Christianity in their novels, their +plays, their poems. In the novel Supermanism was evident not so much in +direct attacks on Christianity as in a brutal and pitiless realism. +Perhaps some of this hard realism was a natural reaction from the +eye-piping sentimentality of some of the Victorian writers. But most of +it was merely Supermanism in fiction--pessimism, egotism, fatalism, +cruelty. + +"One thing to be said for the Christian Scientists, the Mental Healers, +the New Thought people generally, is that they did a real service +through all this bad time by refusing to recognize any such heresy as +biological determination as applied to things spiritual. They really did +teach man's freedom up there in the heavens where he properly belongs. +They refused to be bound by the earth, and all the appearances and the +exterior causes thereof. Their Superman, if they ever used the phrase, +was at least the Healer, the spirit spent for others, not for self. + +"If you were to ask me what were the war's most conspicuous effects on +literature just at present, I would say conviction of sin, repentance +and turning to God. There can be no suggestion of Supermanism in our +literature now. We have rediscovered the Christian Virtues. If a man +writes something about blond-beasting through the world for his own +good, all we have to do is to stick up in front of his eyes a crucifix. +For the world has seen courage and self-abnegation of the kind that +Christ taught--it has seen men throw their lives away. The war has +shown the world that the man who will throw away his life is braver and +stronger and greater than the man who plunges forward to safety over the +lives of others. The world has learned that he who loses his life shall +gain it. + +"The war has thrown a clear light upon Christianity, and now all the +little apologetic 'progressive' Christians see that the world had never +reacted against orthodox Christianity as such, but only against the +bowelless unbelief which masqueraded as Christianity. We have had so +many ministers who talked about Christ as they would have talked about +kippered herrings--even with less enthusiasm. But now any one who speaks +or writes about Christianity after this will have to know that he has to +do with something terribly real. + +"Of course, during the war the only people who can write about it are +those who are in the red-hot period of youth. Young men of genius write +in times of stress. The war forces genius to flower prematurely--that is +how we got the noble sonnets of Rupert Brooke. + +"And after the war will come to the making of literature the man who has +conquered pain and agony. And that is the real Superman, the Christian +Superman, the Superman who has always been the normal ideal of the +world. Carlyle's Superman was nearer the truth than was Nietzsche's, for +Carlyle's Superman idea was grounded in courage and sacrifice and love; +his Superman was some one worth fighting for and dying for. And the war +is showing us that this is the true Superman, if we want to save the +world for nobler ends. + +"And the war, I believe, will do away with the tommy-rotten objection to +'message' in literature. Don't misunderstand me. Of course, we all +object to the stupid 'story with a purpose' in the Sunday-school sense +of that phrase. We don't want literature used as a sugar-coating around +the illuminating lesson that God loves little Willie because he fed the +dicky-birds and didn't say 'damn'! Yet we want literature to awake again +and be as always in the great days--a message. Literature must be a +direct message from the heart of the author to the heart of the world. +The _Prometheus Vinctus_ was such a message. So also the _Antigone_. All +Greek drama was. + +"All the little literary and artistic cults are dead or dying. The idea +of literature as a thing distinct from life is dead. Writers can never +again think of themselves as a race separate from the rest of humanity. +All the artificial Bohemias have been destroyed, and can never again +exist; for now at last the new world is about to dawn. Christ is coming. + +"And yet this war has made evident the importance of literature. It has +made words real again. It has shown that men cannot live forever on a +lie, written or spoken. God has come upon us like a thief in the night, +and He has judged by our words. Some of us He has turned to madness and +the vain babblings of heathendom. I am no wild chauvinist; though a man, +English-born, it gives me no joy to speak of Germans as Huns, and to +heap up hate and indignation against them. Nor in my wildest flights of +romanticism can I dream that an England yet possessing Lord Northcliffe +and the present Government can be all that God might call delightful. +Mr. Superman has invaded England right enough, that I sadly know; and +Prussianism is not all in Potsdam. + +"Yet it is significant, in view of the Superman's birthplace, in view of +the fact that the German people have very largely accepted his doctrine +and ideal, that the men who stand for speech among them, in their public +manifestoes have been delivered over unto confusion and a lie. The +logician has been illogical, the literary artist rendered without form +and void. Their very craft has turned to impotence and self-destruction. +I repeat, this is no happiness to me. Rather, I think of the Germany I +have loved, and I weep for the pity of it all. I am no friend of kings +and kaisers and bankers and grocers and titled newspaper editors, that I +should make their bloodiness mine. But I cannot help but see the sign of +God written across the heavens in words of living fire. + +"As I said in _The Terrible Meek_: 'There is great power in words. All +the things that ever get done in the world, good or bad, are done by +words.' + +"What we'll have to rediscover is that literature, like life, begins +with the utterance of a word. And until people realize once again that a +word is no mere dead thing buried in a dictionary, but the actual, +awful, wonderful Life of God Himself, we shall neither have nor deserve +to have a literature!" + + + + +_THE MASQUE AND DEMOCRACY_ + +PERCY MACKAYE + + +The community masque, _Caliban by the Yellow Sands_, is primarily +intended to honor the memory of Shakespeare on the three-hundredth +anniversary of his death. But its significance goes further than the +purpose of commemoration. Mr. Percy MacKaye, the author, tells me that +he sees his masque as part of a movement which shall bring poetry to the +service of the entire community, which shall make poetry democratic, in +the best sense of the word, and that the result of this movement will be +to create conditions likely to produce out of the soil of America a +great renascence of the drama. + +Mr. MacKaye undoubtedly is the busiest poet in the United States of +America. When he talked to me about the significance of the community +masque, rehearsals of the various groups that are to take part in it +were going on all over the city. Every few minutes he was called away +to confer with some of the directors of the masque, or some of the +actors taking part in it. For a while Mr. John Drew was with us, talking +of his appearance, in the character of Shakespeare, in epilogue. Mr. +Robert Edmund Jones, the designer of the inner scenes, brought over some +new drawings, and there were telephone conversations about music and +costumes and other important details of the monster production. + +"The fact," said Mr. MacKaye, "that the masque is a poem primarily +intended to be heard rather than to be read, is itself a movement toward +the earlier and more democratic uses of poetry. Poetry appeals +essentially to the ear, and is an art of the spoken word, yet, on +account of our conditions of life, the written word is considered +poetry. + +"This was not true in Shakespeare's time. And in the sort of work that I +am doing is shown a return to the old ideal. A masque is a poem that can +be visualized and acted. First of all it must be a poem, otherwise it +cannot be anything but a more or less warped work of art. + +"With much of the new movement in the theater I am heartily in sympathy; +but the movement seems to me one-sided. A large part of it has to do +with visualization. Emphasis is laid on the appeal to the eye rather +than the appeal to the ear, because the men of genius, like Gordon +Craig, who have been leaders in the movement, have been interested in +that phase of dramatic presentation. + +"Now I think that this one-sidedness is regrettable. When Gordon Craig +called his book on dramatic visualization _The Art of the Theater_ he +was wrong. He should have called it 'An Art of the Theater.' + +"These men have neglected part of the human soul. They have forgotten +that the greatest part of the appeal of a drama is to the ear. The ear +brings up the most subtle of all life's associations and connotations. +By means of the ear the motions and ideas are conjured up in the mind of +the audience. + +"Now, while the new movement in the theater is visual in character, the +new movement in poetry is, so to speak, audible. The American poets are +insisting more and more on the importance of the spoken word in poetry, +as distinct from its shadow on the printed page. Whether they write +_vers libre_ or the usual rhymed forms, they appreciate the fact that +they must write poems that will be effective when read aloud. Surely +this is a wholesome movement, likely to tend more and more toward +definite dramatic expression on the part of the poets, whether to +audiences through actors on the stage, or to audiences gathered to hear +the direct utterances of the poets themselves. + +"This being so, the stage tending more toward visualization, and poetry +tending more and more toward the spoken word, where shall we look for +the co-ordinating development? I think that we shall find it in the +community masque. The community masque draws out of the unlabored and +untrammeled resources of our national life its inspiration and its +theme. It requires our young poets to get closely in touch with our +national life, with our history and with contemporary attitudes and +ideals. To do this it is first of all necessary to have the poetic +vision. The great need of the day is of the poet trained in the art of +the theater. + +"The pageant and the masque offer the ideal conditions for the rendering +of poetry. The poet who writes the lyric may or may not ordinarily be +the one to speak it. In the masque the one who speaks the poem is the +one chosen to do so because of his special fitness for the task. I have +chosen my actors for the Shakespeare masque with special reference to +their ability to speak poetry." + +"But what has this to do," I asked, "with making poetry more +democratic?" + +"For one thing," Mr. MacKaye answered, "it gives the poet a larger +audience. People who never read poetry will listen to poetry when it is +presented to them in dramatic form. I have found that the result of the +presentation of a community masque is to interest in poetry a large +number of people who had hitherto been deaf to its appeal. In St. Louis, +when I started a masque, that queer word with a 'q' in it was understood +by a comparatively small number. But after the masque was produced +nearly every high-school boy and girl in the town was writing masques. + +"No one can observe the progress of the community masque without seeing +that it is surely a most democratic art form. I read my St. Louis masque +before assemblies of ministers, in negro high schools, before clubs of +advertising-men, at I. W. W. meetings--before men of all conditions of +life and shades of opinion. It afforded them a sort of spiritual and +intellectual meeting-place, it gave them a common interest. Surely that +is a democratic function. + +"The democracy of the masque was forcefully brought to my attention +again at the recent dinner by Otto Kahn to the Mayor's Honorary +Committee for the New York Shakespeare Celebration. After James M. Beck +had made a speech, Morris Hillquit, also a member of the committee, +arose and addressed the company. He pointed out more clearly than I have +heard it done before that in this cause extremes of opinion met, that +art was producing practical democracy. + +"And yet," said Mr. MacKaye, hastily, "the masque stands for the +democracy of excellence, not the democracy of mediocrity. What is art +but self-government, the harmonizing of the elements of the mind? There +can be no art where there is no discipline, there can be no art where +there is not a high standard of excellence. + +"As I said," he continued, "the original appeal of poetry was to the ear +as well as to the eye. In the days when poetry was a more democratic art +than it has been in our time and that of our fathers, the poet spoke his +poems to a circle of enthralled listeners. The masque is spoken through +many mouths, but it might be spoken or chanted by the bard himself. + +"There has never before been so great an opportunity for the revival of +the poetic drama. Ordinarily when a poetic drama is presented the cast +has been drawn from actors trained in the rendition of prose. Inevitably +the tendency has been for them to give a prose value to the lines of +poetry. In selecting a cast for a masque, special attention is given to +the ability of the actors to speak poetry, so the poem is presented as +the poet intended. + +"It may be that the pageant and masque movement represents the full +flowering of the renascence of poetry which all observers of +intellectual events have recognized. But these movements are perennial; +I do not like to think of a renascence of poetry because I do not think +that poetry has been dead. I feel that it is desirable for the poets to +become aware of the opportunities presented to them by the masque, the +opportunities to combine the art of poetry with the art of the theater, +and thus put poetry at the service of mankind. + +"I have felt that the Poetry Society of America, an organization whose +activities certainly are stimulating and encouraging to every friend of +the art, might serve poetry better if its members were to place more +emphasis on creation and less on criticism. At their meetings now +criticism is the dominant note. Poems written by the members are read +aloud and criticized from the floor. This is excellent, in its place, +but its effect is to lay stress on the critical function of the poet, +which, after all, is not his main function. What the members of the +Poetry Society should do is to seek co-operatively to create something. +And for this the masque offers them a golden opportunity. + +"The flowering of poetry is a thing of infinite variety. There must be +variety in a masque if the masque is to continue to be a worthy and +popular art form. Standardization would be fatal to the masque, and I +have stood out against it with all the power I possess. The masque and +the pageant must not degenerate into traveling shows, done according to +a fixed receipt. There must be the vision in it, and when the people see +the vision they respond marvelously." + +Percy MacKaye is the son of Steele MacKaye, the author of _Hazel Kirke_ +and other popular plays. From the very beginning of his literary career +his chief ambition has seemed to be to bring about a closer +_rapprochement_ between poetry and the drama. + +When Mr. MacKaye was graduated from Harvard, in 1897, there were in that +university no courses, technical or otherwise, in the modern drama. The +official acceptance of his own commencement part _On the Need of +Imagination in the Drama of To-day_ was the first official sanction of +the subject, which was commented upon by the _Boston Transcript_ as +something unprecedented in the annals of university discussion, +especially of Harvard. It was not until seven or eight years had passed +that Prof. George P. Baker began his courses in dramatic technique. + +The development of the pageant and the masque has been for years the +object of Mr. MacKaye's tireless endeavors. He has spoken of the masque +as "the potential drama of democracy." Two years ago in St. Louis he had +his first technical opportunity on a large scale to experiment in +devising this sort of communal entertainment. There, during five +performances, witnessed by half a million people, some seven thousand +citizens of St. Louis took part in his masque, in association with the +pageant by Thomas Wood Stevens. + +"The outgoing cost of the St. Louis production," said Mr. MacKaye, "was +$122,000; the income, $139,000. The balance of $17,000 has been devoted +to a fund for civic art. If these seem large sums, we must look back to +the days of the classic Greek drama and remember that the cost of +producing a single play by Sophocles at Athens was $500,000. + +"The St. Louis production was truly a drama of, for, and by the people, +a true community masque. _Caliban by the Yellow Sands_ is a community +masque, given as the central popular expression of some hundreds of +supplementary Shakespearian celebrations. + +"I call this work a masque, because it is a dramatic work of symbolism, +involving in its structure pageantry, poetry, and the dance. But I have +not thought to relate its structure to a historic form; I have simply +sought by its structure to solve a problem of the art of the theater. +That problem is the new one of creating a focus of dramatic technique +for the growing but groping movement vaguely called 'pageantry,' which +is itself a vital sign of social evolution--the half-desire of the +people not merely to remain receptive to a popular art created by +specialists, but to take part themselves in creating it; the +desire,--that is, of democracy consistently to seek expression through +a drama of and by the people, not merely for the people. + +"Six years ago, after the pageant-masque of the city of Gloucester, +Massachusetts, I wrote, in _Scribner's Magazine_, an article in which I +said that I found in the three American pageant-masques which I had seen +recently, the Gloucester Pageant, the Masque at Aspet, and the +California Redwood Festival, the expression of community spirit focused +by co-operating artists in dramatic form. I said then, what I feel even +more strongly after my work with the St. Louis Pageant and the +Shakespearian Masque, that pageantry is poetry for the masses. + +"The parade of Election Day, the processions of Antics and Horribles on +the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving Day, the May-Queen rituals of +children--these make an elemental appeal to every one. What is this +elemental appeal? Is it not the appeal of symbolism, the expression of +life's meanings in sensuous form? Crude though it may be, pageantry +satisfies an elemental instinct for art, a popular demand for poetry. +This instinct and this demand, like other human instincts and demands, +may be educated, refined, developed into a mighty agency of +civilization. Refinement of this deep, popular instinct will result +from a rational selection in correlation of the elements of pageantry. +Painting, dancing, music, and sculpture (the last as applied to classic +groupings) are appropriately the special arts for selecting those +elements, and drama is the special art of correlating them. + +"The form of pageantry most popular and impressive in appeal as a fine +art is that of the dramatic pageant, or masque. It is not limited to +historic themes. All vital modern forces and institutions of our nation +might appropriately find symbolic expression in the masque. + +"And in this would be seen the making of art democratic. Thus would the +art of poetry and the art of the drama be put at the service of mankind. +Artistic gifts, which now are individualized and dispersed, would be +organized to express the labors and aspirations of communities, +reviving, for the noblest humanism of our own times, the traditions of +Leonardo da Vinci, Ben Jonson, and Inigo Jones. The development of the +art of public masques, dedicated to civic education, would do more than +any other agency to provide popular symbolic form and tradition for the +stuff of a noble national drama. The present theaters cannot develop a +public art, since they are dedicated to a private speculative business. +The association of artists and civic leaders in the organization of +public masques would tend gradually to establish a civic theater, owned +by the people and conducted by artists, in every city of the nation. + +"I expressed these ideas," said Mr. MacKaye, "some years ago, before the +pageant movement had reached its present pitch of popularity. All my +experiences since that time have given me a firmer conviction that the +masque is the drama of democracy, and I believe that the chief value of +the Shakespearian masque is as a step forward in the progress of the +co-operative dramatic and poetic expression of the people. + +"_Caliban by the Yellow Sands_ will be given at the City College Stadium +May 23d, 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th. After its New York performance it +will be available for production elsewhere on a modified scale of stage +performance. After June 1st it is planned that a professional company, +which will co-operate with the local communities, will take the masque +on tour. + +"The subtitle of _Caliban by the Yellow Sands_ is _A Community Masque of +the Art of the Theater_, _Devised and Written to Commemorate the +Tercentenary of the Death of Shakespeare_. The dramatic-symbolic motive +of the masque I have taken from Scene 2 of Act I of _The Tempest_, where +Prospero says: + + It was mine art + When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape + The pine and let thee out. + +"The art of Prospero I have conceived as the art of Shakespeare in its +universal scope--that many-visioned art of the theater, which age after +age has come to liberate the imprisoned imagination of mankind from the +fetters of brute force and ignorance; that same art which, being usurped +or stifled by groping part-knowledge, prudery, or lust, has been botched +in its ideal aims, and has wrought havoc, hypocrisy, and decadence. +Caliban is in this masque that passionate child-curious part of us all, +groveling close to his origin, yet groping up toward that serener plane +of pity and love, reason, and disciplined will, on which Miranda and +Prospero commune with Ariel and his spirits. + +"The theme of the masque--Caliban seeking to learn the art of +Prospero--is, of course, the slow education of mankind through the +influences of co-operative art--that is, of the art of the theater in +its full social scope. This theme of co-operation is expressed earliest +in the masque through the lyric of Ariel's Spirits taken from _The +Tempest_; it is sounded, with central stress, in the chorus of peace +when the kings clasp hands on the Field of the Cloth of Gold; and, with +final emphasis, in the gathering together of the creative forces of +dramatic art in the Epilogue. + +"So I have tried to make the masque bring that message of co-operation +which I think all true art should bring. And the masque is the form +which seems to me destined to bring about this desired co-operation, to +bring back, perhaps, the conditions which existed in the spacious days +of the great Greek drama. The growth in popularity of masques and +pageants is preparing the way for a new race of poet dramatists, of +poets who will use their knowledge of the art of the theater to +interpret the people to themselves. And out of this new artistic +democracy will come, let us hope, our new national poetry and our new +national drama." + +THE END + + * * * * * + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES + + +The duplicate book title and chapter titles have been removed. Also the +following misprints have been corrected: + + TOC: put in "Tippecanoe" without a hyphen (in "Tippecanoe + County, Indiana") + + TOC: "Mackaye" changed to "MacKaye", as in all other instances + ("Percy Mackaye was born in New York City...") + + p. 56: "countinent" changed to "continent" ("Yet in their time + these men set the whole countinent in a roar.") + + p. 75: period is added after the middle initial W (ROBERT W. + CHAMBERS) + + p. 78: period is added the following sentence: The most + imaginative and fantastic romances must have their basis in real + life. + + p. 107: put in "dive-keeper" with a hyphen (no other instance in + the text) + + p. 112: put in "soulless" without a hyphen (no other instances + in the text) + + p. 178: opening double quote changed to single quote ('If ye had + not plowed with my heifer....) + + p. 218: put in "catch-words" with a hyphen (no other instances + in the text) + + p. 243: put in "motion-picture" with a hyphen (no other + instances in the text) + + p. 247: put in "off-hand" with a hyphen ("I can think off-hand + of quite a group of writers....") + + p. 283: put in "Dooryards" without a hyphen ("When Lilacs Last + in Dooryards Bloomed") + + p. 293: put in "everywhere" without a hyphen ("heresy is sin + always and everywhere;") + + p. 294: "Of couse" changed to "Of course" ("Of course, I'm not + orthodox.") + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literature in the Making, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERATURE IN THE MAKING *** + +***** This file should be named 34313.txt or 34313.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/3/1/34313/ + +Produced by Elizaveta Shevyakhova, Suzanne Shell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net +(This file was produced from images generously made +available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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