purposes of the tourist, interested in what our country is and means.
The greater number have come to exploit the country "for what there
is in it," by lecturing. Their lecture managers have been alert and
exceedingly successful in making advertising agencies of our clubs, our
social organizations, and even our private parlors, by way of drawing
money into the purses of their clients.
[Sidenote: A Question of Provincialism]
Did anybody ever hear of an American author of equal rank with these
going to England on a lecture or reading tour, and getting himself
advertised by London clubs and in London drawing-rooms in the like
fashion? And if any American author--even one of the highest
rank--should try to do anything of the sort, would his bank account
swell in consequence as those of our British literary visitors do? Are
we, after all, provincial? Have we not yet achieved our intellectual and
social independence?
I am persuaded that some of us have, though not many. One night at a
club I asked Brander Matthews if I should introduce him to a second-rate
English man of letters who had been made a guest of the evening. He
answered:
"No--unless you particularly wish it, I'd rather talk to you and the
other good fellows here. He hasn't anything to say that would interest
me, unless it is something he has put into the lectures he's going to
deliver, and he can't afford to waste on us any of that small stock of
interesting things."
But as a people, have we outgrown our provincialism? Have we achieved
our intellectual independence? Have we learned to value our own
judgments, our own thinking, our own convictions independently of
English approval or disapproval? I fear we have not, even in criticism.
When the novel "Democracy" appeared I wrote a column or two about it in
the _Evening Post_, treating it as a noteworthy reflection of our own
life, political and social--not very great but worthy of attention.
The impulse of my article was that the literature of a country should
be a showing forth of its life, its thought, its inspirations, its
aspirations, its character, its strength, and its weaknesses. That
anonymous novel seemed to me to be a reflection of all these things in
some degree and I said so in print. All the other newspapers of the
country dismissed the book in brief paragraphs, quite as if it had had
no distinctive literary quality of its own. But a year or so later the
English critics got hold of the novel and wrote of it as a thing of
significance and consequence. Thereupon, the American newspapers that
had before given it a paragraph or so of insignificant reference, took
it up again and reviewed it as a book that meant something, evidently
forgetting that they had ever seen it before.
This is only one of many incidents of criticism that I might relate in
illustration of the hurtful, crippling, paralyzing provincialism that
afflicts and obstructs our literary development.
A few years ago the principal of a great and very ambitious preparatory
school whose function it was to fit young men for college, sent me his
curriculum "for criticism," he said,--for approval, I interpreted. He
set forth quite an elaborate course in what he called "The Literature of
the English Language." Upon looking it over I found that not one American
book was mentioned in the whole course of it, either as a required study
or as "collateral reading"--a title under which a multitude of second- or
third-rate English works were set down.
For criticism I suggested that to the American boy who was expected to
become an American man of culture, some slight acquaintance with Irving,
Hawthorne, Emerson, Motley, Prescott, Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, Poe,
Parkman, Lowell, Mark Twain, Mr. Howells, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Paul
Hayne, Sidney Lanier, James Whitcomb Riley, Bret Harte, John Hay, and
some other American writers might really be of greater advantage than
familiarity with many of the English authors named.
His answer was conclusive and profoundly discouraging. It was his
function, he said, to prepare boys for their entrance examinations in
our great colleges and universities, "and not one of these," he added,
"names an American author in its requirement list."
I believe the colleges have since that time recognized American
literature in some small degree, at least, though meagerly and with no
adequate recognition of the fact that a nation's literature is the voice
with which it speaks not only to other countries and to posterity but to
its own people in its own time, and that acquaintance with it ministers,
as no other scholarship does, to good, helpful, patriotic citizenship.
[Sidenote: A Library Vandal]
One of the English writers who came to this country possibly for his own
country's good, gave me some trouble. I was editing _Hearth and Home_ at
the time, and he brought me for sale a number of unusually good things,
mainly referring to matters French and Italian. He was absolute master
of the languages of both those countries, and his acquaintance with
their literature, classical, medieval, and modern, was so minute that he
knew precisely where to find any literary matter that seemed salable.
With a thrift admirable in itself, though misdirected, it was his
practice to go to the Astor Library, find what he wanted in rare books
or precious foreign newspaper files, translate it, and then tear out and
destroy the pages he had plundered. In that irregular fashion he made
quite a literary reputation for himself, though after detection he had
to retire to Philadelphia, under the orders of Mr. Saunders, Librarian
of the Astor Library, who decreed banishment for him as the alternative
of prosecution for the mutilation of books.
He carried the thing so far, at last, that I regarded it as my duty
to expose him, and I did so in my capacity as literary editor of the
_Evening Post_. I was instantly threatened with a libel suit, but the
man who was to bring it left at once on a yachting trip to the West
Indies, and so far as I can learn has never reappeared either in America
or in Literature. It is one of the abiding regrets of my life that the
papers in that libel suit were never served upon me.
LXI
In the autumn of 1882 a little group of literary men, assembled around
Richard Watson Gilder's fireside, decided to organize an Authors Club
in New York. They arranged for the drafting of a tentative constitution
and issued invitations for twenty-five of us to meet a little later at
Lawrence Hutton's house in Thirty-fourth Street to organize the club.
We met there on the 13th of November and, clause by clause, adopted a
constitution.
It was obvious in that little assemblage itself, that some such
organization of authors was badly needed in New York. For, though there
were only twenty-five of us there, all selected by the originating
company, every man of us had to be introduced to some at least of the
others present. The men of letters in New York did not know each other.
They were beset by unacquaintance, prejudices, senseless antagonisms,
jealousies, amounting in some cases to hatreds. They had need to be
drawn together in a friendly organization, in which they could learn to
know and like and appreciate each other.
[Sidenote: The Founding of the Authors Club]
So great were the jealousies and ambitions to which I have referred that
early in the meeting Mr. Gilder--I think it was he--called three or four
of us into a corner and suggested that there was likely to be a fight
for the presidency of the club, and that it might result in the defeat
of the entire enterprise. At Mr. Gilder's suggestion, or that of some
one else--I cannot be sure because all of us in that corner were in
accord--it was decided that there should be no president of the club,
that the government should be vested in an executive council, and that
at each of its meetings the council should choose its own chairman. In
later and more harmonious years, since the men of the club have become
an affectionate brotherhood, it has been the custom for the council to
elect its chairman for a year, and usually to reelect him for another
year. But at the beginning we had conditions to guard against that no
longer exist--now that the literary men of New York know and mightily
like each other.
The eligibility clause of the constitution as experimentally drawn up
by the committee, prescribed that in order to be eligible a man must be
the author of "at least one book proper to literature," or--and there
followed a clause covering the case of magazine editors and the like.
As a reader for a publishing house, I scented danger here. Half in play,
but in earnest also, I suggested that the authorship of at least one
book proper to literature would render pretty nearly the entire adult
male population of the United States eligible to membership in the
club, unless some requirement of publication were added. My manuscript
reading had seemed to me at least to suggest that, and, as a necessary
safeguard, I moved to insert the word "published" before the word
"book," and the motion was carried with the laughter of the knowing
for its accompaniment.
The club was very modest in its beginnings. As its constituent members
were mainly persons possessed of no money, so the club had none. For a
time our meetings were held at the houses of members--Lawrence Hutton's,
Dr. Youmans's, Richard Grant White's, and so on. But as not all of us
were possessed of homes that lent themselves to such entertainment, we
presently began meeting at Sieghortner's and other restaurants. Then
came a most hospitable invitation from the Tile Club, offering us the
use of their quarters for our meetings. Their quarters consisted, in
fact, of a kitchen in the interior of a block far down town--I forget
the number of the street. The building served Edwin A. Abbey as a
studio--he had not made his reputation as an artist then--and the good
old Irishwoman who cared for the rooms lived above stairs with her
daughter for her sole companion. This daughter was Abbey's model, and
a portrait of her, painted by his hand, hung in the studio, with a
presentation legend attached. The portrait represented one of the most
beautiful girls I have ever seen. It was positively ravishing in its
perfection. One day I had occasion to visit the place to make some
club arrangement, and while there I met the young lady of the portrait.
She was of sandy complexion, freckled, and otherwise commonplace in an
extreme degree. Yet that exquisitely beautiful portrait that hung there
in its frame was an admirably faithful likeness of the girl, when one
studied the two faces closely. Abbey had not painted in the freckles;
he had chosen flesh tints of a more attractive sort than the sandiness
of the girl's complexion; he had put a touch of warmth into the
indeterminate color of her pale red hair; and above all, he had painted
intelligence and soul into her vacuous countenance. Yet the girl and the
portrait were absolutely alike in every physical detail.
I have not wondered since to learn that the husbands of high-born
English dames, and the fathers of English maidens have been glad to pay
Abbey kings' ransoms for portraits of their womankind. Abbey has the
gift of interpretation, and I do not know of any greater gift.
[Sidenote: Dime Novels]
The rear building in which we met by virtue of the Tile Club's
hospitality was approached through an alleyway, or covered gallery
rather, concerning which there was a tradition that two suicides and
a murder had been committed within its confines.
"How inspiring all that is!" said John Hay one night after the
traditions had been reported in a peculiarly prosaic fashion by a
writer of learned essays in psychology and the like, who had no more
imagination than an oyster brings to bear upon the tray on which it
is served. "It makes one long to write romantic tragedies, and lurid
dramas, and all that sort of thing," Mr. Hay went on. "I'm sorely
tempted to enter upon the career of the dime novelist."
This set us talking of the dime novel, a little group of us assembled
in front of the fire. Some one started the talk by saying that the dime
novel was an entirely innocent and a very necessary form of literature.
There John Hay broke in, and Edwin Booth, who was also present,
sustained him.
"The dime novel," Mr. Hay said, "is only a rude form of the story of
adventure. If Scott's novels had been sufficiently condensed to be sold
at the price, they would have been dime novels of the most successful
sort. Your boy wants thrill, heroics, tall talk, and deeds of
derring-do, and these are what the dime novelist gives him in abundance,
and even in lavish superabundance. I remember that the favorite book of
my own boyhood was J. B. Jones's 'Wild Western Scenes.' His 'Sneak' was
to me a hero of romance with whom Ivanhoe could in no way compare."
"But dime novels corrupt the morals of boys," suggested some one of the
company.
"Do they?" asked Mr. Hay. Then a moment later he asked: "Did you ever
read one of them?"
The interrupter admitted that he had not.
"Till you do," said Mr. Hay, "you should hesitate to pass judgment. The
moral standards of the dime novel are always of the highest. They are
even heroic in their insistence upon honor and self-sacrifice in behalf
of the right. They are as chivalric as the code of honor itself. There
is never anything unclean in the dime novel, never anything that even
squints at toleration of immorality. The man beset by foes is always
gallantly supported by resolute fellows with pistols in their hands
which they are ready to use in behalf of righteousness. The maiden
in trouble has champions galore, whose language may not always square
itself with Sunday School standards, but whose devotion to the task of
protecting innocence is altogether inspiring."
"What about their literary quality?" asked some one in the group.
"It is very bad, I suppose," answered Edwin Booth, "but that isn't the
quality they put to the front. I have read dozens, scores, hundreds of
them, and I have never challenged their literary quality, because that
is something to which they lay no claim. Their strength lies in dramatic
situations, and they abound in these. I must say that some of them are
far better, stronger, and more appealing than are many of those that
have made the fortune of successful plays."
"Do you read them for the sake of the dramatic situations, Mr. Booth?"
some one asked.
"No. I read them for the sake of sleep," he replied. "I read them just
as I play solitaire--to divert my mind and to bring repose to me."
LXII
[Sidenote: The Authors Club]
It was not long after that that the Authors Club secured quarters
of its own in Twenty-fourth Street, and became an established social
organization. For it was never a literary club, but always strictly a
social one, having a literary basis of eligibility to membership. From
the beginning we refused to read papers at each other, or in any other
way to "improve our minds" on club evenings by any form of literary
exercise. As the carpenter, who dresses lumber and drives nails and
miters joints for his daily bread does not seek his evening recreation
by doing those things for amusement, so we who were all hard-working men
of letters, earning our living with the pen, had no mind to do as
amateurs that which we were daily and hourly doing as professionals.
In the same way we decided at the outset to eschew every form of
propagandism. The club has had no cause to advocate, no doctrine to
promulgate, no "movement" to help or hinder. It has been and still is
strictly a social club composed of men of letters, and having for its
guests interesting men of all other professions. Hence it has prospered
and its members have become intimates with no trace or suggestion
of friction between them. I think I am safe in saying that no other
organization has done so much for the amelioration of the literary life,
the removal of prejudices and bitternesses and spites and jealousies,
and for the upbuilding of cordial friendship among writers. I think
there is no man in the club who doesn't count every other man there
his friend.
The point emphasized above--that the club is a social, not a literary
organization--is important. Neglect of it has led to a good deal of
ill-informed and misdirected criticism. At the very beginning, on the
night of the club's organization, we made up a list of somewhat more than
a score of literary men who should be made members upon the invitation
of our Executive Council without the formality of proposal and election.
From that list we excluded--by unanimous vote--one man whose literary
work abundantly qualified him for membership, but whose cantankerous
self-satisfaction rendered him, in the general opinion, a man not
"clubbable." The trouble with him was not so much that he regarded
himself, as he once avowed in company that he did, as "a greater than
Shakespeare," but that he was disposed to quarrel with everybody who
failed to recognize the assumption as a fact.
If ours had been a literary club, he must have been admitted to
membership without question. As it was a social club, we didn't want
him, and three several efforts that he afterwards made to secure
admission failed. The like has happened in the cases of two or three
other men whose literary work rendered them eligible, but whose personal
peculiarities did not commend them.
Chiefly, however, the club has been criticised for its failure to admit
women to membership. Paul Leicester Ford said to me on that subject one
day:
"I'll have nothing to do with your club. You arrogantly refuse to
admit women, though women are doing quite as much as men in American
literature."
[Sidenote: Why Women Are Not Eligible]
I explained several things to him. I reminded him that the Authors
Club set up no pretension to be completely representative of American
literary activity; that it was merely a club formed by gentlemen who
felt the need of it, for the purpose of bringing literary men together
for social intercourse over their pipes and sandwiches; that the
admission of women would of necessity defeat this solitary purpose, and
that their exclusion was no more a slight than that which he put upon
his nearest friends whenever he gave a dinner or a theater party to
which he could not invite everybody on his eligible list. Then I pointed
out another difficulty and a supreme one. If we should admit women on
the same terms of eligibility that we insisted upon in the case of men,
a host of writing women would become eligible, while our own wives and
daughters would in most cases be ineligible. If, in order to cover that
difficulty we should admit the wives and daughters of male members, we
should be obliged to admit also the husbands, sons, and fathers of our
female members, so that presently we should become a mob of men and
women, half or more of whom were ineligible under our original conception
of the club and its reason for being. There is also the consideration
that every club must and does exclude more than it includes; that in
requiring New England birth or descent for membership, the New England
Society excludes perhaps nine-tenths of the people of New York, while
without that requirement the Society would lose its distinctive
character and be no New England Society at all.
Mr. Ford was so far convinced that he authorized me to propose his name
for membership, but before I had opportunity to do so, the tragedy that
ended his life had befallen.
The club has found ways of marking its appreciation of the literary
equality of women without destroying its own essential being. In
February and March of each year it gives four afternoon receptions to
women. In so far as it can find them out, the club's Executive Council
invites to all of these receptions, besides the wives and daughters
of its own members, every woman in the land whose literary work would
render her eligible to membership if she were a man. In addition to
this, every member of the club has the privilege of inviting any other
women he pleases.
I do not think the club is deficient in gallantry, nor do I find any such
thought prevalent among the pleasing throng of gentlewomen who honor us
by accepting our invitations.
Our first quarters were meagerly furnished, of course. It took every
dollar we had to furnish them even in the plainest way. There was neither
a sofa nor an upholstered chair in our rooms. Cheap, straight-backed,
cane-seated chairs alone were there. One night when General Sherman was
a guest, some one apologized for our inability to offer him a more
comfortable seat. The sturdy old soldier always had an opinion ready
made to suit every emergency.
"Comfortable?" he responded. "Why, what do you call these chairs if they
are not comfortable? I don't believe in cushions. They are unnatural;
they are devices of self-indulgence and luxury. The law ought to forbid
their existence. They make men limp and flabby when they ought to be
strong and vigorous and virile. The best chair in the world is one with
a raw bull's hide for a seat, and with leathern thongs to tighten it
with when it stretches. Next best is the old-fashioned, wooden-bottomed
kitchen chair that cost forty cents when I was a boy. I don't suppose
they make 'em now. People are too luxurious to know when they are well
off."
Presently some one spoke to him of his "March to the Sea," and he
instantly replied:
"It's all romantic nonsense to call it that. The thing was nothing more
nor less than a military change of base--a thing familiar to every
student of tactics; but a poet got hold of it, nicknamed it the 'March
to the Sea,' and that's what everybody will call it, I suppose, till the
crack of doom, unless it is forgotten before that time."
Perhaps the hard-fighting veteran's appreciation of the romantic aspect
of great achievements was less keen than that of a company of creative
writers. Perhaps his modesty got the better of him.
[Sidenote: The First "Watch Night"]
It happened early in the history of the Authors Club that the regular
meeting night fell one year on the thirty-first of December. At first it
was suggested that the date be changed, but some one remembered the old
custom of the Methodists who held "Watch Night" meetings, seeing the old
year out and the new year in with rejoicing and fervent singing. Why
shouldn't we have a "Watch Night" after our own fashion? The suggestion
was eagerly accepted. No programme was arranged, no order of exercises
planned. Nothing was prearranged except that with friendship and jollity
and the telling of stories we should give a farewell to the old year and
a welcome to the new.
Fortunately, Mark Twain was called upon to begin the story telling,
and he put formality completely out of countenance at the very outset.
Instead of standing as if to address the company, he seized a chair,
straddled it, and with his arms folded across its back, proceeded
to tell one of the most humorous of all his stories. Frank Stockton
followed with his account of the "mislaid corpse" and before the new
year had an hour or two of age, there had been related enough of
exquisitely humorous incident--real or fanciful--to make the fortune
of two or three books of humor.
At midnight we turned out the gas and sang a stanza or two of "Auld Lang
Syne" by way of farewell to the old year. Then, with lights all ablaze
again, we greeted the new year in the familiar "He's a jolly good
fellow."
Max O'Rell was my guest on one of these occasions, and in one of his
later books he gave an account of it. After recording the fact that "at
precisely twelve o'clock the lights are turned out," he added a footnote
saying in solemn fashion: "A clock is _borrowed for the occasion_."
I saw a good deal of that witty Frenchman during his several visits to
America. I wrote an introduction to the American edition of his "John
Bull, Jr.," and it served to protect that work with a copyright entry.
He never paid me a cent for the service.
That was because I refused to accept the remuneration he pressed upon me.
I offer that as a jest which he would have appreciated keenly.