the song of "Ben Bolt." Yet one day during his later years I heard him
angrily say in response to some mention of that song: "Oh, damn 'Ben
Bolt.' It rides me like an incubus."
LIX
[Sidenote: Letters of Introduction]
While I was conducting my literary shop at home, there came to me many
persons bearing letters of introduction which I was in courtesy bound
to honor. Some of these brought literary work of an acceptable sort for
me to do. Through them a number--perhaps a dozen or so--of books were
brought to me to edit, and in the course of the work upon such books
I made a few familiar friends, whose intimacy in my household was a
pleasure to me and my family while the friends in question lived. They
are all dead now--or nearly all.
But mainly the bearers of letters of introduction who came to me at
that time were very worthy persons who wanted to do literary work, but
had not the smallest qualification for it. Some of them had rejected
manuscripts which they were sure that I, "with my influence," could
easily market to the replenishment of their emaciated purses. For the
conviction that the acceptance of manuscripts goes chiefly by favor
is ineradicable from the amateur literary mind. I have found it quite
useless to explain to such persons that favor has nothing to do with
the matter, that every editor and every publisher is always and eagerly
alert to discern new writers of promise and to exploit them. The persons
to whom these truths are told, simply do not believe them. They _know_
that their own stories or essays or what not, are far superior to those
accepted and published. Every one of their friends has assured them
of that, and their own consciousness confirms the judgment. Scores of
them have left my library in full assurance that I was a member of some
"literary ring," that was organized to exclude from publication the
writings of all but the members of the ring. It was idle to point out
to them the introduction of Saxe Holm, of Constance Fenimore Woolson, of
Mrs. Custer, of Charles Egbert Craddock, or of any other of a dozen or
more new writers who had recently come to the front. They were assured
that each of these had enjoyed the benefits of "pull" of some sort.
One charming young lady of the "Society" sort brought me half a dozen
letters of introduction from persons of social prominence, urging her
upon my attention. She had written a "Society novel," she told me, and
she wanted to get it published. She was altogether too well informed
as to publishing conditions, to send her manuscript to any publisher
without first securing "influence" in its behalf. She was perfectly well
aware that I was a person possessed of influence, and so she had come to
me. Wouldn't I, for a consideration, secure the acceptance of her novel
by some reputable house?
I told her that "for a consideration"--namely, fifty dollars--I would
read her manuscript and give her a judgment upon its merits, after which
she might offer it to any publisher she saw fit, and that that was all
I could do for her.
[Sidenote: The Disappointment of Lily Browneyes]
"But you are 'on the inside' at Harpers'," she replied, "and of course
your verdict is conclusive with them."
"In some cases it is," I answered. "It has proved to be so in one
peculiar case. I recently sold the Harpers a serial story of my own for
their _Young People_. Afterwards a story of Captain Kirk Munroe's came
to me for judgment. It covered so nearly the same ground that mine did,
that both could not be used. But his story seemed to me so much better
than my own, for the use proposed, that I advised the Harpers to accept
it and return to me my own already accepted manuscript. They have acted
upon my advice and I am a good many hundreds of dollars out of pocket in
consequence. Now, my dear Miss Browneyes," I added, "you see upon what
my influence with the Harpers rests. In so far as they accept literary
productions upon my advice, they do so simply because they know that my
advice is honest and represents my real judgment of the merits of things
offered for publication. If I should base my recommendations upon any
other foundation than that of integrity and an absolutely sincere
critical judgment, I should soon have no more influence with the
Harpers than any truckman in the streets can command. I will read your
manuscript and give you my honest opinion of it, for fifty dollars, if
you wish me to do so. But I do not advise you to do that. Judging of it
in advance, from what I have seen of you, and from what I know of the
limitations of the Society life you have led, I strongly advise you
not to waste fifty dollars of your father's money in that way. It is
scarcely conceivable that with your very limited knowledge of life, and
your carefully restricted outlook, you can have written a novel of any
value whatever. You had better save your fifty dollars to help pay for
your next love of a bonnet."
"I'm awfully disappointed," she said. "You see it would be so nice to
have all my Society friends talking about 'Lily Browneyes's book,' and
perhaps that ought to be considered. You see almost every one of my
Society friends would buy the book 'just to see what that little
chatterbox, Lily Browneyes, has found to write about.' I should think,
that would make the fortune of the book."
"How many Society friends have you, Miss Browneyes?" I asked.
"Oh, heaps of them--scores--dead oodles and scads of 'em, as we girls
say."
"But really, how many?" I persisted. "Suppose your book were published,
how many of your Society friends could you confidently reckon upon as
probable purchasers? Here's paper and a pencil. Suppose you set down
their names and tot them up."
She eagerly undertook the task, and after half an hour she had a list
of forty-odd persons who would pretty surely buy the book--"if they
couldn't borrow it," she added.
I explained the matter to her somewhat--dwelling upon the fact that
a sale of two thousand copies would barely reimburse the publisher's
outlay.
She said I had been "very nice" to her, but on the whole she decided
to accept my advice and not pay me fifty dollars for a futile reading
of the manuscript. I was glad of that. For it seemed like breaking a
butterfly to disappoint so charming a young girl.
The letters Lily Browneyes brought me had at least the merit of
sincerity. They were meant to help her accomplish her purpose, and
not as so many letters of the kind are, to get rid of importunity by
shifting it to the shoulders of some one else. I remember something
that illustrates my meaning.
I presided, many years ago, at a banquet given by the Authors Club to
Mr. William Dean Howells. Nothing was prearranged. There was no schedule
of toasts in my hand, no list of speakers primed to respond to them.
With so brilliant a company to draw upon I had no fear as to the results
of calling up the man I wanted, without warning.
In the course of the haphazard performance, it occurred to me that we
ought to have a speech from some publisher, and accordingly I called
upon Mr. J. Henry Harper--"Harry Harper," we who knew and loved him
called him.
His embarrassment was positively painful to behold. He made no attempt
whatever to respond but appealed to me to excuse him.
[Sidenote: Mark Twain's Method]
At that point Mark Twain came to the rescue by offering to make Mr.
Harper's speech for him. "I'm a publisher myself," he explained,
"and I'll speak for the publishers."
A roar of applause welcomed the suggestion, and Mr. Clemens proceeded to
make the speech. In the course of it he spoke of the multitude of young
authors who beset every publisher and beseech him for advice after he
has explained that their manuscripts are "not available" for publication
by his own firm, with its peculiar limitations. Most publishers cruelly
refuse, he said, to do anything for these innocents. "I never do that,"
he added. "I always give them good advice, and more than that, I always
do something for them--_I give them notes of introduction to Gilder_."
I am persuaded that many scores of the notes of introduction brought to
me have been written in precisely that spirit of helpless helpfulness.
Sometimes, however, letters of introduction, given thoughtlessly, are
productive of trouble far more serious than the mere waste of a busy
man's time. It is a curious fact that most persons stand ready to give
letters of introduction upon acquaintance so slender that they would
never think of personally introducing the two concerned, or personally
vouching for the one to whom the letter is given.
When I was editing _Hearth and Home_ Theodore Tilton gave a young
Indiana woman a letter of introduction to me. He afterwards admitted to
me that he knew nothing whatever about the young woman.
"But what can one do in such a case?" he asked. "She was charming and
she wanted to know you; she was interested in you as a Hoosier
writer"--the Indiana school of literature had not established itself at
that early day--"and when she learned that I knew you well she asked for
a letter of introduction. What could I do? Could I say to her, 'My dear
young lady, I know very little about you, and my friend, George Cary
Eggleston, is so innocent and unsophisticated a person that I dare not
introduce you to him without some certificate of character?' No. I
could only give her the letter she wanted, trusting you to discount any
commendatory phrases it might contain, in the light of your acquaintance
with the ways of a world in which letters of introduction are taken
with grains of salt. Really, if I mean to commend one person to
another, I always send a private letter to indorse my formal letter
of introduction, and to assure my friend that there are no polite lies
in it."
[Sidenote: Some Dangerous Letters of Introduction]
In this case the young woman did nothing very dreadful. Her character
was doubtless above reproach and her reformatory impulses were no more
offensive than reformatory impulses that concern others usually are.
My only complaint of her was that she condemned me without a hearing,
giving me no opportunity to say why sentence should not be pronounced
upon me.
In her interview, she was altogether charming. She was fairly well
acquainted with literature, and was keenly appreciative of it. We talked
for an hour on such subjects, and then she went away. A week or so
later she sent me a copy of the Indiana newspaper for which she was a
correspondent. In it was a page interview with me in which all that I
had said and a great deal that I had not said was set forth in detail.
There was also a graphic description of my office surroundings. Among
these surroundings was my pipe, which lay "naked and not ashamed" on my
desk. Referring to it, the young woman wrote that one saddening thing
in her visit to me was the discovery that "this gifted young man is a
victim of the tobacco habit."
Worse still, she emphasized that lamentable discovery in her headlines,
and made so much of her compassionate regret that if I had been an
inmate of a lunatic asylum, demented by the use of absinthe or morphine,
her pity could hardly have been more active.
I do not know that this exhibition of reformatory ill manners did me any
serious harm, but it annoyed me somewhat.
When I was serving as literary editor of the _Evening Post_, a very
presentable person came to me bearing a note of introduction from
Richard Henry Stoddard. Mr. Stoddard introduced the gentleman as James
R. Randall, author of "My Maryland" and at that time editor of a
newspaper in Augusta, Georgia. Mr. Randall was a person whom I very
greatly wanted to know, but it was late on a Saturday afternoon, and
I had an absolutely peremptory engagement that compelled me to quit the
office immediately. Accordingly, I invited the visitor to dine with me
at my house the next day, Sunday, and he accepted.
Sunday came and the dinner was served, but Mr. Randall was not there.
Next morning I learned that on the plea of Saturday afternoon and closed
banks he had borrowed thirty-five dollars from one of my fellow-editors
before leaving. This, taken in connection with his failure to keep his
dinner engagement with me, aroused suspicion. I telegraphed to Augusta,
asking the newspaper with which Mr. Randall was editorially connected
whether or not Mr. Randall was in New York. Mr. Randall himself replied
saying that he was not in New York and requesting me to secure the
arrest of any person trying to borrow money or get checks cashed in his
name. He added: "When I travel I make my financial arrangements in
advance and don't borrow money of friends or strangers."
When I notified Stoddard of the situation, so that he might not commend
his friend, "Mr. Randall," to others, I expressed the hope that he had
not himself lent the man any money. In reply he said:
"Lent him money? Why, my dear George Cary Eggleston, what a creative
imagination you must have! 'You'd orter 'a' been a poet.' Still, if
I had had any money, as of course I hadn't, I should have lent it
to him freely. As he didn't ask for it--probably he knew my chronic
impecuniosity too well to do that--I didn't know he was 'on the borrow.'
Anyhow, I'm going to run him to earth."
[Sidenote: Moses and My Green Spectacles]
And he did. It appeared in the outcome that the man had called upon
Edmund Clarence Stedman, bearing a letter from Sidney Lanier--forged, of
course. Stedman had taken him out to lunch and then, as he expressed
a wish to meet the literary men of the town, had given him a note of
introduction to Stoddard together with several other such notes to
men of letters, which were never delivered. The man proved to be the
"carpetbag" ex-Governor Moses, who had looted the state of South Carolina
to an extent that threatened the bankruptcy of that commonwealth. He had
saved little if anything out of his plunderings, and, returning to the
North, had entered upon a successful career as a "confidence man." He
was peculiarly well-equipped for the part. Sagacious, well-informed,
educated, and possessed of altogether pleasing manners, he succeeded
in imposing himself upon the unsuspecting for many years. At last, some
years after my first encounter with him, he was "caught in the act"
of swindling, and sent for a term to the Massachusetts state prison.
On his release, at the end of his sentence, he resumed his old business
of victimizing the unsuspicious--among whom I was one. It was only
a few years ago when he rang my door bell and introduced himself as a
confidential employee of the Lothrop Publishing Company of Boston, who
were my publishers. He had seen me, he said, during the only visit I had
ever made to the offices of the company, but had not had the pleasure
of an introduction. Being in New York he had given himself the pleasure
of calling, the more because he wished to consult me concerning the
artistic make-up of a book I then had in preparation at the Lothrops'.
His face seemed familiar to me, a fact which I easily accounted for on
the theory that I must have seen him during my visit to the publishing
house. For the rest he was a peculiarly agreeable person, educated,
refined, and possessed of definite ideas. We smoked together, and as
an outcome of the talk about cigars, I gave him something unusual.
An indiscreetly lavish friend of mine had given me a box of gigantic
cigars, each of which was encased in a glass tube, and each of which had
cost a dollar. I was so pleased with my visitor that I gave him one of
these, saying that it didn't often happen to a man who had anything to
do with literature to smoke a dollar cigar.
At the end of his visit he somewhat casually mentioned the fact that
he and his wife were staying at the Astor House, adding:
"We were anxious to leave for Boston by a late train to-night but I find
it impracticable to do so. I've suffered myself to run short of money
and my wife has made the matter worse by indulging in an indiscreet
shopping tour to-day. I have telegraphed to Boston for a remittance and
must wait over till it comes to-morrow. It is a very great annoyance,
as I am needed in Boston to-morrow, but there is no help for it."
I asked him how much money was absolutely necessary to enable him to
leave by the late train, which there was still time to catch, and after
a moment of mental figuring, he fixed upon the sum of sixteen dollars
and fifty cents as sufficient.
It was Sunday night and I had only a dollar or so in my pocket, but with
a keenly realizing sense of his embarrassment, I drew upon my wife's
little store of household change, and made up the sum required. He
seemed very grateful for the accommodation, but before leaving he asked
me to let him take one of those dollar cigars, to show to a friend in
Boston.
About half an hour after he had left, I suddenly remembered him and
identified him as Moses--ex-carpetbag governor of South Carolina,
ex-convict, and _never_ ex-swindler. A few calls over the telephone
confirmed my conviction and my memory fully sustained my recollection
of the man. A day or two later he was arrested in connection with an
attempted swindle, but I did not bother to follow him up. I acted upon
the dictum of one of the most successful men I ever knew, that "it's
tomfoolery to send good money after bad."
LX
[Sidenote: English Literary Visitors]
It was during the period of my withdrawal from newspaper work that Mr.
Edmund Gosse made his first visit to this country. At that time he had
not yet made the reputation he has since achieved for scholarship and
literary accomplishment. As a scholar he was young and promising rather
than a man of established reputation. As a writer he was only beginning
to be known. But he was an Englishman of letters and an agreeable
gentleman, wherefore we proceeded to dine him and wine him and make much
of him--all of which helped the success of his lecture course.
I interrupt myself at this point to say that we do these things more
generously and more lavishly than our kin beyond sea ever think of
doing them. With the exception of Mark Twain, no living American author
visiting England is ever received with one-half, or one-quarter, or
one-tenth the attention that Americans have lavished upon British
writers of no greater consequence than our own. If Irving Bacheller, or
Charles Egbert Craddock, or Post Wheeler, or R. W. Chambers, or Miss
Johnston, or Will Harben, or Thomas Nelson Page, or James Whitcomb
Riley, or any other of a score that might be easily named should visit
London, does anybody imagine that he or she would receive even a small
fraction of the attention we have given to Sarah Grand, Mr. Yeats, Max
O'Rell, B. L. Farjeon, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. Locke, and others? Would
even Mr. Howells be made to feel that he was appreciated there as much
as many far inferior English writers have been in New York? Are we
helplessly provincial or hopelessly snobbish? Or is it that our English
literary visitors make more skilful use of the press agent's peculiar
gifts? Or is it, perhaps, that we are more generous and hospitable than
the English?
Mr. Gosse, at any rate, was worthy of all the attention he received, and
his later work has fully justified it, so that nothing in the vagrant
paragraph above is in any way applicable to him.
Mr. Gosse had himself carefully "coached" before he visited America.
When he came to us he knew what every man of us had done in literature,
art, science, or what not, and so far he made no mistakes either of
ignorance or of misunderstanding.
"Bless my soul!" said James R. Osgood to me at one of the breakfasts,
luncheons or banquets given to the visitor, "he has committed every
American publishers' catalogue to memory, and knows precisely where each
of you fellows stands."
Upon one point, however, Mr. Gosse's conceptions were badly awry. He
bore the Civil War in mind, and was convinced that its bitternesses were
still an active force in our social life. One night at the Authors Club
I was talking with him when my brother Edward came up to us and joined
in the conversation. Mr. Gosse seemed surprised and even embarrassed.
Presently he said:
"It's extremely gratifying, you know, but this is a surprise to me. I
understand that you two gentlemen held opposite views during the war,
and one of the things my mentors in England most strongly insisted upon
was that I should never mention either of you in talking with the other.
It is very gratifying to find that you are on terms with each other."
"On terms?" said Edward. "Why, Geordie and I have always been twins.
I was born two years earlier than he was, but we've been twin brothers
nevertheless, all our lives. You see, we were born almost exactly on
the line between the North and the South, and one fell over to one side
and the other to the other. But there was never anything but affection
between us."
[Sidenote: An Amusing Misconception]
On another occasion Mr. Joe Harper gave a breakfast to Mr. Gosse at
the University Club. There were seventy or eighty guests--too many for
anything like intimate converse. To remedy this Mr. Harper asked about a
dozen of us to remain after the function was over, gather around him at
the head of the table--tell all the stories we could remember, and "give
Mr. Gosse a real insight into our ways of thinking," he said.
Gordon McCabe and I were in the group, and Mr. Gosse, knowing perfectly
what each of us had written, knew, of course, that McCabe and I had
fought on the Southern side during the Civil War. If he had not known
the fact in that way he must have discovered it from the stories we told
of humorous happenings in the Confederate service. Yet here we were, on
the most cordial terms with men who had been on the other side. It was
all a bewildering mystery to Mr. Gosse, and presently he ventured to ask
about it.
"Pardon me," he said to Mr. Harper, "it is all very gratifying, I'm
sure, but I don't quite understand. I think Mr. Eggleston and Mr. McCabe
were in active service on the Southern side during the war?"
"Yes," answered Mr. Harper, "and they have told us all about it in
their books."
"And the rest of you gentlemen sided with the North?"
"Yes."
"Well, it's very gratifying, of course, but it is astonishing to a
stranger to find you all on such terms of friendship again."
"Isn't it?" broke in Mr. Harper. "Here we are, having champagne together
quite like old friends, while we all know that only a dozen years or so
ago, McCabe and Eggleston were down there at Petersburg trying with all
their might to _kill our substitutes_."
The company laughed heartily at the witticism. Mr. Gosse smiled and a
little later, in an aside, he asked me to explain just what Mr. Harper
had meant by "substitutes."
Mr. Gosse left a sweet taste in our mouths when he sailed for home.
The attentions he had received here had in no way spoiled him. From
beginning to end of his stay he never once manifested the least feeling
of superiority, and never once did his manner suggest that British
condescension, which is at once so amusing and so insulting to
Americans. The same thing was true of Matthew Arnold, who, I remember,
made himself a most agreeable guest at a reception the Authors Club
gave him in the days of its extreme poverty. But not all English men
of letters whom I have met have been like-minded with these. A certain
fourth- or fifth-rate English novelist, who was made the guest of honor
at a dinner at the Lotus Club, said to me, as I very well remember:
"Of course you have no literature of your own and you must depend for
your reading matter upon us at home." The use of "at home" meaning
"in England," was always peculiarly offensive in my ears, but my
interlocutor did not recognize its offensiveness. "But really, you know,
your people ought to pay for it."
He was offering this argument to me in behalf of international
copyright, my interest in which was far greater than his own. For
because of the competition of ten-cent reprints of English books, I was
forbidden to make a living by literature and compelled to serve as a
hired man on a newspaper instead.