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YOUNG EWING ALLISON
--_A REMINISCENCE_
[Illustration: _Photograph By Cusick._
Young Ewing Allison]
"The man who wrote such a poem should not be unknelled, unhonored
and unsung."
--_Walt Mason._
THE DEAD MEN'S SONG:
BEING THE
STORY OF A POEM AND A REMINISCENT SKETCH
OF ITS AUTHOR
YOUNG EWING ALLISON
TOGETHER WITH A BROWSE THROUGH OTHER
GEMS OF HIS AND RECOLLECTIONS
OF OLDER DAYS
BY
HIS FRIEND AND ASSOCIATE
CHAMPION INGRAHAM HITCHCOCK
_Incorporated with which are Facsimiles
of Certain Interesting Manuscripts_
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
1914
COPYRIGHT BY CHAMPION INGRAHAM HITCHCOCK
1914
IN THESE PAGES
A WORD SAID BEFOREHAND
Explaining How a Certain "Chap" Lost His Temper and Found It Again
Very Quickly.
DERELICT, By Young Ewing Allison
A Reminiscence of Stevenson's "Treasure Island" Based On the
Quatrain of Captain Billy Bones.
PICTURING THE INDIVIDUAL
With Some Observations About A Man Whom I Have the Honor to Call
Friend.
MAN AND NEWSPAPER MAN
A Peep Into Personal Records of the Past With Some Comments of a
Current Nature.
JUST BROWSING AROUND
Excursions Into the "Higher Altitudes" With Something About the
Books Up There.
IN THE OPERATIC FIELD
Being a Look Behind the Scenes With Some Glimpses of a Pursuing
Jinx.
BALLAD OF DEAD MEN
The Same Being Mostly About Able Pirates And the Very Able
Descendant of a Pirate.
IF THERE IS CONTROVERSY!
Just a Few Bits From the Olden Days With Some Comment On a Certain
Critic.
SOME CLIPPINGS--AND A LETTER
Which Tells How One Who Did Not Know Set Himself Up As a "Chanty"
Authority.
YO-HO-HO AND A BOTTLE OF RUM
Discussed As a Chanty Entertainingly By a Mariner and With a
Deep-Sea Flavor.
SUPPLEMENTING _the_ TEXT
YOUNG EWING ALLISON (By Cusick) _Frontispiece._
A "Sitting" for Which Photograph Forms A Story Known Only to This
Writer.
DERELICT _Illuminating the Poem_
Facsimiles of the Original Illustrations in _Rubric_ (Vol. 1,
No. 1, 1901) to Which Certain Piratical Tints Have Been Added.
"A TEMPTING BAUBLE"
Said "Bauble" Being a Check (to Cover the Cost of a Certain Book)
Which Allison Returned in a Frame With a Few Comments of His Own.
YOUNG E. ALLISON (By Wyncie King)
_Louisville Herald_ Demon Caricaturist's Conception of a Pirate's
Poet, With a Cigarette Replacing the Customary "Stogie."
THE INFALLIBLE (By Charles Dana Gibson)
A "Type" in Every Old Daily Newspaper Office, Reproduced from
_Century_ (October, 1889), Illustrating "The Longworth Mystery."
BOOK OF "THE OGALLALLAS"
Being a Facsimile (Slightly Reduced) of the Cover of Allison's
First Opera Pursued and Captured By a Jinx.
FROM THE OLD "PROMPT" BOOK
Page (slightly reduced) From "The Mouse and the Garter," Showing
Allison's Characteristic Penciled Notations.
"A PIRATICAL BALLAD" (Words and Music)
Facsimile in Miniature of the First Printed Verses of "Derelict"
Published and Copyrighted by William A. Pond & Co., 1891.
* * * * *
Together With Certain Letters and Memoranda, Proofs, Mss., etc.,
About "Fifteen Dead Men," in Facsimile of Young E. Allison's
Characteristic Handwriting, which are to be Found in a "Pocket" in
the Inside Back Cover of This Volume.
A WORD SAID BEFOREHAND
If a careless and uninformed writer in _The New York Times Book Review_ had
not hazarded the speculation in his columns that it was very doubtful if
Young Ewing Allison wrote the famous poem "Fifteen Men on the Dead Man's
Chest," the creation and perfection of which took him through a period of
about six years, the idea of undertaking a sketch of him and the stuff he
has done might never have occurred to me. While not exactly thankful to the
New York editor, I have abandoned a blood-thirsty raid on his sanctum and a
righteous indignation has been dissipated in the serene pleasure I have
found in expressing an appreciation of Allison's genius in this private
volume for our friends. God bless the Old Scout! In all of our intimate
years there has been such a complete understanding between us that spoken
words have been largely unnecessary, and so the opportunity of saying
publicly what has ever been in my heart, is a rare one, eagerly seized.
C. I. H.
Louisville, November, 1914.
_THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED TO HER WHOSE FAITH IN ME AND LOVE FOR ME
NEVER WANED_
[Illustration]
DERELICT
A Reminiscence of "Treasure Island"
YOUNG E. ALLISON
_Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_
(_Cap'n Billy Bones his song._)
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The mate was fixed by the bos'n's pike,
The bos'n brained with a marlinspike
And Cookey's throat was marked belike
It had been gripped
By fingers ten;
And there they lay,
All good dead men,
Like break-o'-day in a boozing-ken--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
* * * * *
Fifteen men of a whole ship's list--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Dead and bedamned, and the rest gone whist!--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
The skipper lay with his nob in gore
Where the scullion's axe his cheek had shore--
And the scullion he was stabbed times four.
And there they lay,
And the soggy skies
Dripped all day long
In up-staring eyes--
At murk sunset and at foul sunrise--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Fifteen men of 'em stiff and stark--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Ten of the crew had the Murder mark--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
'Twas a cutlass swipe, or an ounce of lead,
Or a yawing hole in a battered head--
And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.
And there they lay--
Aye, damn my eyes!--
All lookouts clapped
On paradise--
All souls bound just contrariwise--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
[Illustration]
Fifteen men of 'em good and true--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Every man jack could ha' sailed with Old Pew--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
There was chest on chest full of Spanish gold,
With a ton of plate in the middle hold,
And the cabins riot of stuff untold.
And they lay there
That had took the plum,
With sightless glare
And their lips struck dumb,
While we shared all by the rule of thumb--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
* * * * *
_More was seen through the sternlight screen--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings ondoubt where a woman had been--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a thin dirk slot through the bosom spot
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the knife
And that took the blade!
By God! she was stuff for a plucky jade--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!_
* * * * *
Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight,
With twice ten turns of a hawser's bight,
And we heaved 'em over and out of sight--
With a yo-heave-ho!
And a fare-you-well!
And a sullen plunge
In the sullen swell
Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PICTURING _the_ INDIVIDUAL
One of my earliest recollections of my friend and business associate for
very many, very short and very happy years, is a conversation in the old
Chicago Press Club rooms on South Clark Street, near Madison, in the early
90's, about three o'clock one morning, when the time for confidences
arrives--if ever it does. What his especial business in Chicago was at that
particular moment makes no particular difference. He might have been
rehearsing "The Ogallallas," or mayhap he was on duty as Kentucky
commissioner to the World's Fair. As a matter of mere fact he was there and
we had spent an evening and part of a morning together and were bent on
extending the session to daybreak. Sunrise on Madison Street always was a
wonderful sight. The dingy buildings on that busy old thoroughfare,
awakening to day-life, then appeared as newly painted in the mellow of the
early morning.
My companion knew something was coming. Our chairs were close
together--side by side--and we were looking each in the other's face. He
had his hand back of his ear. "Allison," I said--and I suppose that after a
night in his company I was so impregnated with his strong personality that
I had my hand back of my ear too, and spoke in a low, slightly drawling
nasal, like his--"Allison," I repeated, "don't you miss a great deal by
being deaf?" Now, it is said with tender regret, but a deep and sincere
regard for truth, that my friend makes a virtue of a slight deafness. He
uses it to avoid arguments, assignments, conventions, parlor parties--and
bores--and deftly evades a whole lot of "duty" conversations as well. Of
course I know all this now, but in those days I thought his lack of
complete hearing an infirmity calling for a sort of sympathy on my part.
Anyway it was three o'clock in the morning, and...!
"Well," he replied, after a little pause, "I can't say that I do. You see,
if anyone ever says anything worth repeating, he always tells me about it
anyway." Such is the philosophical trend that makes Allison an original
with a peculiar gift of expression both in the spoken and written word. He
is literary to his finger tips, in the finest sense of the word, for pure
love, his own enjoyment and the pleasure of his friends. There is an
ambition for you! With all his genuine modesty (and he is painfully modest)
by which the light of his genius is hid under even less than the Scriptural
bushel, he has a deep and healthy and honorable respect for fame--not of
the cheap and tawdry, lionizing kind, but fame in an everlasting
appreciation of those who think with their own minds. Almost any pen
portraiture could but skim the surface of a nature so gifted and with which
daily association is so delightful--an association which is a constant
fillip to the mind in fascinating witticisms, in deft characterizations of
men and things, and in deep drafts on memory's storehouse for odd incidents
and unexpected illuminations. A long silence from "Allison's corner" may
precede a gleeful chortle, as he throws on my desk some delicious satirical
skit with a "Well, I've got that out of my system, anyway!"
Allison has a method of prose writing all his own. If you could see him day
in and out, you would soon recognize the symptoms. An idea strikes him; he
becomes abstracted, reads a great deal, pull down books, fills pages of
particularly ruled copy paper with figures from a big, round, black pencil
until you might think he was calculating the expenditures of a Billion
Dollar Congress. He is not a mathematician but, like Balzac, simply dotes
on figures. Then comes the analytical stage and that he performs on foot,
walking, head bent forward, upstairs, downstairs, outdoors, around the
block, in again, through the clattering press room and up and down the
hall. When the stride quickens and he strikes a straight line for his desk,
his orderly mind has arranged and classified his subject down to the
illuminating adjectives even and the whole is ready to be put on paper.
Though his mind is orderly, his desk seldom is. He is the type of
old-school editor who has everything handy in a profound confusion. He
detests office system, just as he admires mental arrangement. I got a
"rise" out of him only once when making a pretence of describing his very
complex method of preserving correspondence, and then he flared: "It saved
us a lot of trouble, didn't it?" The fact was patent, but the story is
apropos. Allison was complaining to a friend of office routine.
"Hitch has no heart," he said. "He comes over here, takes letters off my
desk and puts 'em into an old file somewhere so no one can find them.
That's no way to do. When a letter comes to me I clip open the end with my
shears, like a gentleman, read it, and put it back in the envelope. When in
the humor I answer it. Of course there is no use keeping a copy of what I
write; I know well enough what _I_ say. All I want to keep is what the
other fellow said to me. When it is time to clean the desk, I call a boy,
have him box all the letters and take them over to the warehouse. Then
whenever I want a letter I know damned well where it is--it's in the
warehouse." It really happened that certain important and badly needed
letters were "in the warehouse" and so Allison's system was vindicated.
Just the mere mention of his system brings up the delightful recollections
of his desk-cleaning parties, Spring and Fall, events so momentous that
they almost come under the classification of office holidays. The dust
flies, torn papers fill the air and the waste-baskets, and odd memoranda
come to light and must be discussed. While wielding the dust cloth Allison
hums "Bing-Binger, the Baritone Singer," has the finest imaginable time and
for several day wears an air of such conscious pride that every paper laid
upon his desk is greeted with a terrible frown.
Musical? Of course. His is the poetic mind, the imaginative, with an
intensely practical, analytical perception--uncanny at times. He is
perfectly "crazy" about operas, reads everything that comes to his
hand--particularly novels--and is an inveterate patron of picture shows.
"Under no strain trying to hear 'em talk," he confidences. While such
occasions really are very rare, once in an age he becomes depressed--a
peculiar fact (their rarity) in one so temperamental. After the fifth call
within a month to act as pall-bearer at a funeral, he was in the depths. A
friend was trying to cheer him.
"Isn't it too bad, Mr. Allison," the friend suggested, "that we can't all
be like the lilies in the field, neither toiling nor spinning, but shedding
perfume everywhere?"
"That lily business is all right," was Allison's retort, "but if I were a
flower it would be just my luck to be a tube-rose and be picked for a
funeral!"
In all our years of association and friendship, I have never known him to
do an unkind or dishonorable act. He is considerate of others,
tender-hearted, sentimental. But, believe me, in "contrariwise," he is
flinty obsidian when it comes to his convictions. Shams and hypocrites and
parading egotists are his particular and especial abomination and when he
gets on the editorial trail of one of that ilk, he turns him inside out and
displays the very secrets of what should be his immortal soul. He is always
poking fun at friends and they laugh with him at what he writes about them,
which recalls one of his earliest and best bits of advice--"never to write
about a man so that others will laugh _at_ him, unless your intention is
deliberately to hurt his feelings. Write so that he will laugh _with_ you."
If I could have one grand wish it would be that everybody could know him as
I do: the man; the book-worm; the toastmaster; the public speaker; the
writer; the sentimentalist; the friend. Absolutely natural and approachable
at all times with never the remotest hint of theatricalism, (unless the
careless tossing over his shoulder of one flap of the cape of a cherished
brown overcoat might be called theatrical), he is yet so many sided and
complex that, without this self-same naturalness, often would be
misunderstood. That he never cultivated an exclusiveness or built about
himself barriers of idiosyncrasy is a distinct credit to his common sense.
He's chock-full of that!
Let us see just how versatile Young Allison is. Years ago--twenty-six to be
exact--he took the dry old subject of insurance and week in and out made it
sparkle with such wit and brilliancy that every-day editorials became
literary gems which laymen read with keenest enjoyment. Insurance writing
might be said to be his vocation--a sort of daily-bread affair, well
executed, because one should not quarrel with his sustenance--with
librettos for operas, and poems and essays as an avocation. Fate must have
doomed his operas in the very beginning, for despite some delicious
productions, captivating in words and spirit, and set to slashing music,
they go unsung because a a malign Jinx pursued.
While Allison is an omnivorous reader of novels and every other form of
book, which he carries to and from his home in a favorite brown-leather
handbag of diminutive size, he never had an ambition to create novels,
though to his everlasting credit wrote two for a particular purpose which
he accomplished by injecting the right tone or "color" into tales depicting
the inner life on daily newspapers. We of the old Press Club used to grow
choleric as we would read stories about alleged newspaper men, but a serene
satisfaction fell upon us when Allison's reflections appeared. They were
"right!" And while "resting" (definition from the private dictionary of
Cornelius McAuliff) from the more or less arduous and routine and yet
interest-holding duties of newspaper-man, Allison's relaxation and
refreshment come in studies of human nature in all its mystifying aspects,
whether in war or in peace; or in the sports--prize-fighting and baseball;
or in the sciences; in politics; in the streets or in the home. Or they
come from pleasure in the creation of essays on books--novels; of lectures;
of formal and serious addresses; of tactful and witty toasts.
From my viewpoint Allison appears in public speaking to best advantage at
banquets, either when responding to some toast, or as toastmaster. On such
occasions he very quickly finds the temper of his listeners and without
haste or oratorical effect, for he never orates, and almost without
gesture, he "gets 'em" and "keeps 'em." Knowing how little he hears at
public functions his performances at the head of the table, when acting as
toastmaster, to me are only a shade removed from the marvelous. Either he
has an uncanny second-sight, or that vaunted deafness is all a big
pretense, for I have heard him "pull stuff" on a preceding speaker so pat
that no one else could be made to believe what I knew was the truth:
that--he--had--not--heard--a--single--word--uttered!
[Illustration: _A Check in a Frame Returned without Inelegant
Marks of "Paid"_]
Perchance as a character note, should be added here a line or two about a
work undertaken in behalf of a friend on a few hours notice for which he
received a reward only in thanks. This friend had contracted to write
certain memoirs but was incapacitated by illness and hung out the distress
signal. Allison responded, shut himself up for a month, and produced a
smooth and well balanced work of five hundred and fifty pages. Once I sent
him a check to cover the cost of one of his books but he declared the check
a "tempting bauble" and returned it framed. But I got a copy just the same
inscribed "With the compliments of the Author" which I prized just as much
as if I had paid for it with a clearing house certificate.
Physically he is of medium height, rather slight in form and, when walking,
stoops a bit with head forward and a trifle to one side. In conversing he
has a captivating trick of looking up while his head is bent and keeping
his blue eyes nailed to yours pretty much all the time. Around eyes and
mouth is ever lurking a wrinkling smile and its break--the laugh--is hearty
and contagious with a timbre of peculiar huskiness. His face is a trifle
thin through the cheeks, which accentuates a breadth of head, now crowning
with silvery--and let me whisper this--slowly thinning hair. Stubby white
mustaches for facial adornment, and cloth of varying brown shades to
encompass the physical man, complete the picture.
Such is Young Ewing Allison as I see him.
MAN _and_ NEWSPAPER MAN
Young Allison is a Kentuckian (Henderson, December 23, 1853) and proud of
it with a pride that does not restrain him from seeing the peculiarities
and frailties as well as the admirable traits of his fellow natives and
skillfully putting them on paper to his own vast delight--and theirs too.
What he gives, he is willing to take with Cromwell-like philosophy: "Paint
me warts and all!" To speak of Allison in any sense whatever must be in the
character of newspaper man, since to this work his whole life has been
devoted. And if I may speak with well intentioned frankness: He's a damn
good editor, too! However little our lay friends may understand this
message, aside from its emphasis, I rest secure in the thought that to the
brotherhood it opens a wide vista of qualifications to which reams might be
devoted without doing full justice to the subject. Today he might not be
the ideal city editor, or night editor, or managing editor of our great
modern miracle-machines called newspapers, but I have yet to meet the man
who can more quickly absorb, analyze, sum-up and deliver an editorial
opinion, so deliciously phrased and so nicely gauged. He who can do this is
the embodiment of all staff editors!
If I may be pardoned for a moment, I will get myself associated with
Allison and proceed with this relation. In 1888 he left daily newspaper
work to found _The Insurance Herald_, though he continued old associations
by occasional contributions, and in 1899 sold that publication and
established _The Insurance Field_. In the fall of 1902 when presented with
the opportunity of becoming editor-in-chief of _The Daily Herald_ in
Louisville, he gave up temporarily an active connection with _The Insurance
Field_ and in January, 1903, chose me to carry on this latter work, from
which I am thankful to say he was absent only three years.
Allison is newspaper man through and through and was all but born in the
business for he was "a devil in his own home town" of Henderson in a
printing office when thirteen, "Y. E. Allison, Jr., Local Editor" on the
village paper at fifteen and city reporter on a daily at seventeen. Up to
this point in his career I might find a parallel for my own experience, but
there the comparison abruptly ceases. He became a writer while I took to
blacksmithing according to that roystering Chicagoan, Henry Barrett
Chamberlin, who thinks because he once owned a paper called _The Guardsman_
in days when a new subscription often meant breakfast for the two of us,
that he is at liberty to cast javelins at my style of writing. And yet, to
be perfectly frank, I have always been grateful for even _his_ intimation
that I had a "style." Allison once accepted--I can hardly say enjoyed--one
of those subscription breakfasts------But that is a matter not wholly
concerned with his newspaper experience, which has extended through nearly
all the daily "jobs:" reporter and city editor of _The Evansville Journal_,
dramatic and city editor of _The Louisville Courier-Journal_; managing
editor of _The Louisville Commercial_, and after a lapse of years as
previously told, editor-in-chief of _The Daily Herald_.
Fifteen years or more ago, long before we dreamed of being associated in
business, Allison wrote me with the frankness that has characterized our
friendship from the first, just how he came to enter newspaper work. Where
he was concerned I was always "wanting to know" and he seemed ever willing
to tell--me. The letter was as usual written in lead pencil on soft,
spongy, ruled copy paper and that portion having reference to the subject
named is given verbatim:
You see I lost two years going to school--from seven to nine years
old. I was put out of all the private schools for incorrigible
"inattention"--then it was discovered that I had been partially
deaf and not guilty--but my schooling ended there and I was turned
loose on my father's library to get an education by main force--got
it by reading everything--had read Rousseau's "Confessions" at
14--and books replaced folks as companions. Wanted to get nearer to
books and so hired myself to the country printer and newspaper at
13--great disappointment to the family, my mother having dreams of
my becoming a preacher--[hell of a preacher I would have made]. I
had meantime begun and finished as much as a page apiece of many
stories and books, several epic poems--but one day the Old Man went
home to dinner and left me only a scrap of "reprint" to set during
his hour and a half of absence. It was six or eight lines nonpareil
about the Russian gentleman who started to drive from his country
home to the city one evening in his sleigh with his 4 children.
Wolves attacked them and one by one he threw the children to the
pack, hoping each time thus to save the others. When he had thrown
the last his sleigh came to the city gate with him sitting in it a
raving maniac. That yarn had been going the rounds of print since
1746. The Old Man was an absent-minded old child, and I knew it, so
I turned my fancy loose and enlarged the paragraph to a full galley
of long primer, composing the awful details as I set the type and
made it a thriller. The Old Man never "held copy" reading proof, so
he passed it all right and I saw myself an author in print for the
first time. The smell of printer's ink has never since been out of
my hair.
Allison's newspaper years are rich with experience, for while he could
never be classed as a Yellow Reformer, his caustic, or amusing, or pathetic
pen, as the case demanded, has never been idle. Away back in the old days
the gambling element in Louisville fairly "owned the town" and he attempted
to curtail their power. They tried to cajole him and to bribe him and when
both alike failed, intimidated the millionaire owner of the _Commercial_
out from under him! He either had to sacrifice Allison or his street
railway interests, and chose Allison to throw to the lions. But he made Mr.
Dupont go the whole length and "fire" him! He wouldn't resign when asked to
do so. And of course while it all lasted Allison had his meed of personal
amusement. For no editor ever took himself less seriously. Prominent
citizens came with fair words and he listened to them and printed them;
bribes were offered and accepted only for publication; while threats were
received joyously and made the subject of half-whimsical comment.
As a newspaper man Allison prided himself on never having involved any of
his papers in a libel suit, though he was usually the man who wrote the
"danger-stuff." He had complaints, yes; libel suits, no. Dick Ryan, known
in prehistoric newspaper circles in Louisville as "Cold Steel," because his
mild blue eyes hardened and glinted when his copy was cut--the typical
police court reporter who could be depended upon for a sobbing "blonde-girl
story" when news was off--always said that when a party came in to complain
of the hardship of an article, Allison talked to him so benevolently that
the complainant always went away in tears, reflecting on how much worse it
might have been if Allison hadn't softened the article that seemed so raw.
"Damned if I don't believe he cries with 'em, too!" said Ryan. "If I had
that sympathetic stop in my own voice I know I'd cry during ordinary
conversations, just listening to myself."
[Illustration: Young E Allison
_Caricature by Wyncie King
in Louisville Daily Herald_]
But of course the libel suit had to come to spoil an otherwise perfect
record. And of course it was political and sprang out of a red-hot state
campaign, while he was editor-in-chief of the _Herald_, in which his pen
went deep enough to enrage the adversary and force the libel case. Like all
political cases of this kind it was not a suit for damages, but an
indictment for criminal libel, found by a complaisant political grand jury
at the other end of the state--intended to cause the greatest amount of
annoyance and to die out slowly. By that means it costs the accused both
time and money while the state pays all expenses for the prosecution.
Judge "Bill" Smith, one of the greatest of Kentucky lawyers on
constitutional points, or rather Judge William Smith of the Jefferson
Circuit Court--because he has passed over now, taking his kindly and
childlike, yet keen and resourceful personality out of life's war for good
and all--Judge Smith told me the story of that case one night after we had
discussed down to the water-marks in the paper, his treasured copy of
Burns. And at my very urgent solicitation he transcribed the salient
features, not in all the intimate details of the spoken words, but with
deep poetic feeling and rare conception of their human aspects. He wrote:
There are three poets in Burns. One is the poet you read; the
second is the poet some mellow old Scot, with an edge on his
tongue, recites to you; the third and most wonderful is the Burns
that somebody with even a thin shred of a high voice sings to you.
Burns is translated to the fourth power by singing him--without
accompaniment--just the whinnying of a tenor or soprano voice,
vibrant with feeling and pathos, at the right time of the evening,
or in some penumbrous atmosphere of seclusion where memory can work
its miracles.
I was defending Allison in that libel case and we started off on
the 200-mile trip together. We had the smoker of the Pullman all to
ourselves, and after I had recited some furlongs of Burns to him,
he began to sing "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting Kiss" in a sort of
thin and whimpering quaver of a tenor that cut through the noise of
the train like a violin note through silence. I thought I knew the
poem, but it seemed to me I had never dreamed what was in it, with
the wail of a Highland woman pouring plaintive melody through the
flood gates of her heart. And he knew every one of them and sang
them all with the tailing of the bag-pipes in the sound.
I wasn't going down to practice law, but to practice patience and
politics. I had been on that circuit for years and knew the court
and the bar very well. So I said to Allison "Don't you sing one of
those songs again until I give the sign." And the first thing I did
was to bring him into touch with the circuit judge, who had the
room adjoining mine at the hotel. He was a Burns lover, too; and
besides as I had brought whiskey and as the town was prohibition,
there was really nowhere else for the judge to spend his evenings.
Soon we were capping back and forth, the judge and I, with Burns.
I don't remember now--nobody ever remembers, after a cold, snowy
night outside, between Burns quotations, hot whiskies, and
reminiscences, exactly how anything happens--but about 10 o'clock,
maybe, Allison was somewhere between "Jockey's Ta'en the Parting
Kiss," "Bonnie Doon," "Afton Water" and "Wert Thou in the Cauld
Blast," and the judge and I were looking deep into the coals of the
grate and crying softly and unconsciously together. You see it
wasn't only the songs. Every damned one of us was Scotch-Irish and
we just sat there and were transported back to the beginning of
ourselves in the bare old primitive homes of us in farm and
village, saw the log and coal fires of infancy blazing up again,
and heard the voices of our mothers crooning and caressing those
marvelous lines, and behind them _their_ mothers crooning and
wailing the same back in the unbroken line to Ayrshire and the
Pentland Hills. And all life was just a look into yesterday and the
troubles and the struggles of manhood fell right off as garments
and left us boys again. That's what's in Burns, the singing poet.
That is, when anybody knows how to sing him--not concert singers
with artfulness, but just a singer with the right quaver and the
whine of catgut in the voice and the tailing of Scotch pipes for
the swells. It was perhaps two o'clock of the morning when we stood
up, said "Little Willie's Prayer" softly together, arms on
shoulders, and the judge remarked:
"Allison, if you wrote like you sing Burns, maybe you wouldn't be
here--but it's well worth the trouble!"
I knew then there was no more politics to practice--just law enough
to be found to let the court stand firm when the time came.
The next night it was in the judge's room. Half a dozen old
followers of the circuit were there on the judge's tip. "You bring
your whiskey," he said to me, privately, "or there'll be none." And
I brought it. And between Burns and the bottle and the long low
silences of good country-bred men listening back through the soft
cadences of memory, the case was won that night. I think it was
Jock's song that did it. You never hear it sung by concert singers;
because it has no theatricalism in it. It's just the wailing of the
faith of the country lass in her lover:
'When the shades of evenin' creep
O'er the day's fair, gladsome e'e
Sound and safely may he sleep,
Sweetly blithe his waukenin' be.
He will think on her he loves,
Fondly he'll repeat her name,
For, where'er he distant roves,
Jockey's heart is still at hame.'
If you listen right close you'll hear the hiss of the kettle behind
it, and you can see the glow of the firelight and smell the sap of
green wood in the smoke.
Well, there were continuances; of course. It is never
constitutional to throw a case of politics out of court too soon.
We made that four hundred-mile round trip four times and, every
time, Burns sat at night where Blackstone ruled by day. Never one
word of the case from judge to accused, just continuances. But on
the last night--the case was to be pressed next day--the judge said
to Allison at the door, as he went off to bed:
"I think you will be before me in a case tomorrow. If the worst
comes and you demand your right to address the jury, the court will
sustain you. And I advise you give 'em 'Jockey's Ta'en the Parting
Kiss'--_and no more_. I know the jury."
But the case was dismissed; we were serenaded at the hotel and held
a reception. Driving away in a buggy over the fourteen miles to the
railway station, Allison said: "There never was a prettier
summer-time jail anywhere in the world than this one. I've been
down to see it. It has vines growing over the low, white-washed
walls, there's apple trees in the yard and the jailer has a curly
headed little girl of six who would bring 'em to you and could slip
'em through the barred window by standing on the split bottom chair
where her father sleeps in the shade after dinner. It's a beautiful
picture--but it hasn't got a single damned modern convenience for
winter and a six months' term would have landed me there till
January!"
I shall always believe this to be the most graceful, sympathetic and poetic
relation involving a legal case I ever heard and never will cease to give
thanks that my always strong and constantly growing admiration for Allison
led me to insist upon its transcription.
As soon as the trial fizzled I called on Allison at the _Herald_ office, to
extend congratulations and with eager requests for details.
"Well," Allison ruminated, with that ever present twinkle in his eye, "my
experience was very interesting. I found I had friends; and discovered
traces of a family unknown to history claiming direct kinship with
President Thomas Jefferson!"
When the "sports" brought about Allison's discharge from the _Commercial_
to stop his articles on the gambling control of Louisville, unconsciously
they added a forceful factor to insurance publishing and I might truthfully
say to the insurance business itself. I cannot begin to tell how much has
been encompassed in these twenty-six years, but our bound volumes are full
of his editorials and articles--the serious, the analytical, the
constructive, the caustic, the witty and the amusing. He created _The Piney
Woods Clarion_ and in quotations from that mythical publication put a new
light on the business. "Insurance Arabian Nights" which he declared were
"translated from the Persian," contained more of the odd conceits that
fairly flowed from his pen and these two series, with a marine policy-form
insuring the "contents" of Noah's Ark, concocted in collaboration with good
old Col. "Tige" Nelson (gone long ago, but not forgotten) are the classics
of the business.
During his insurance newspaper work Allison was once called upon to give a
public endorsement to a friend and very kindly expressed conviction that
had his management continued "all the interest of the company would have
been secured." When later on he was forced to criticise extraordinary acts
of this whilom friend, the endorsement was called up against him in a
broadside affidavit, which he promptly reviewed in the most deliciously
sarcastic editorial concluding:
And we do not hesitate to declare anew that "we believe if he had
been continued as president, all the interests of the company would
have been secured." It was certainly not his fault that he did not
secure more. Everything cannot be done in eleven months. But in the
language of the far-Western tombstone it can be justly said, "He
done what he could."
JUST BROWSING AROUND
One who has never read around the clock in a virtual debauch of novel
reading cannot appreciate Allison's "Delicious Vice;" no more can he
Field's "Dibdin's Ghost" who has not smuggled home under his coat some
cherished volume at the expense of his belly--and possibly someone else's
too! "The Delicious Vice!" What a tart morsel to roll on one's tongue in
anticipation and to speculate over before scanning the pages to discover
that the vice is not "hitting the pipe" or "snuffing happy dust" but is as
Allison paints it with whimsical but affectionate words, "pipe dreams and
fond adventures of an habitual novel-reader among some great books and
their people." These are the all too skimpy pages through which its author
rhapsodizes on the noble profession, makes a keen distinction between novel
readers and "women, nibblers and amateurs," brings up reminiscences of
"early crimes and joys" and discourses learnedly, discerningly and
entertainingly upon "good honest scoundrelism and villains." Every page is
the best and when the last has passed under your eye, you again begin
square at the beginning and read it all over. You are here only to have the
appetite spiced by one single gem quoted from the first novel for the boy
to read which of course is "Robinson Crusoe:"
... There are other symptoms of the born novel-reader to be
observed in him. If he reads at night he is careful so to place his
chair that the light will fall on the page from a direction that
will ultimately ruin the eyes--but it does not interfere with the
light. He humps himself over the open volume and begins to display
that unerring curvilinearity of the spine that compels his mother
to study braces and to fear that he will develop consumption. Yet
you can study the world's health records and never find a line to
prove that any man with "occupation or profession--novel-reading"
is recorded as dying of consumption. The humped-over attitude
promotes compression of the lungs, telescoping of the diaphragm,
atrophy of the abdominal abracadabra and other things (see
Physiological Slush, p. 179, et seq.);
but--it--never--hurts--the--boy!
To a novel-reading boy the position is one of instinct like that of
a bicycle racer. His eyes are strained, his nerves and muscles at
tension--everything ready for excitement--and the book, lying open,
leaves his hands perfectly free to drum on the sides of the chair,
slap his legs and knees, fumble in his pockets or even scratch his
head, as emotion and interest demand. Does anybody deny that the
highest proof of special genius is the possession of the instinct
to adapt itself to the matter in hand? Nothing more need be said.
Now, if you will observe carefully such a boy when he comes to a
certain point in "Robinson Crusoe" you may recognize the stroke of
fate in his destiny. If he's the right sort, he will read gayly
along; he drums, he slaps himself, he beats his breast, he
scratches his head. Suddenly there will come the shock. He is
reading rapidly and gloriously. He finds his knife in his pocket,
as usual, and puts it back; the top-string is there; he drums the
devil's tattoo, he wets his finger and smears the margin of the
page as he whirls it over and then--he finds--
"The--Print--of--a--Man's--Naked--Foot--on--the--Shore!!!"
Oh, Crackey! At this tremendous moment the novel-reader, who has
genius, drums no more. His hands have seized the upper edges of the
muslin lids, he presses the lower edges against his stomach, his
back takes an added intensity of hump, his eyes bulge, his heart
thumps--he is landed--landed!
Terror, surprise, sympathy, hope, skepticism, doubt--come all ye
trooping emotions to threaten and console; but an end has come to
fairy stories and wonder tales--Master Studious is in the awful
presence of Human Nature.
For many years I have believed that that
Print--of--a--Man's--Naked--Foot was set in Italic type in all
editions of "Robinson Crusoe." But a patient search of many
editions has convinced me that I must have been mistaken.
The passage comes sneaking along in the midst of a paragraph in
common Roman letters and by the living jingo, you discover it just
as Mr. Crusoe discovered the footprint itself!
I wish I might tell the reason why no scoundrel was ever a novel reader;
that I might browse for the benefit of those who have never been translated
into ecstacies over "good old honest scoundrelism and villains" or describe
my friend's first blinding and unselfish tears that watered the grave of
Helen Mar, but these are among the delicious experiences of the "Vice"
itself, so sacred that other hands, no matter how loving, may not be laid
upon them.
* * * * *
Allison has a very happy faculty of hitting upon titles for essays and
addresses that stir the imagination and whet the appetite. Probably the
best example is "The Delicious Vice" to which reference has just been made.
This title was more or less an evolution from an address delivered before
the Western Writers Association "On the Vice of Novel Reading" that started
a discussion lasting through one whole day. Allison is a warm champion of
The Novel as an institution, and as well an avowed and confirmed reader of
novels, which he declares are poetry in essence, lacking only the form and
rhyme but having measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of
poetry. He says that in all literature--
The great muse of History ranks first in dignity, power and
usefulness; but who will say that at her court the Prime Minister
is not the Novel which by its lightness, grace and address has
popularized history all over the world?
At that time the word "microbe" and the theory of its significance was in
the full swell of popular use. Allison took it to illustrate the essence of
spiritual intellectuality struggling against the swarming bacteria of
animalism that made up the rest of the human body controlled by the brain.
He pointed out that the difference between types of brains was two ounces
of grayish pulp, almost wholly absent in the unthinking herd of men. But it
enlarged in gradually lessening groups of men to the intellectual few that
dominate thought, thus:
The microbe that might have become glorious ounces of brain has
been content at first to become merely a little wart of pulp, which
finds expression in skill and quickness and more of coveted
leisure. There is the next higher terrace and another and another,
until finally it becomes a pyramid, ever more fragile and
symmetrical, the apex of which is a delicate spire, where the
purest intellects are elevated to an ever increasing height in ever
decreasing numbers, until in the dizzy altitude above the groveling
base below they are wrapped little by little in the cold solitude
of incarnate genius burning like suns with their own essence. It is
so far up that the eyes deceive and men dispute who it is that
stands at the top, but, whoever he may be, he has carried by the
force of strength, determination and patient will, the whole swarm
of his evil bacteria with him. They swarm through every terrace
below, increasing in force as the pyramid enlarges downward. It is
the pyramidal bulk of human nature with its finest brain, true to
anatomic principles, at the top. That radiance at the summit is the
delight and the aspiration of all below.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _The Infallible--Type of Handy Man formerly in
every Newspaper Office. Century, 1889_]
As an active, enthusiastic and successful newspaper man, every time Allison
read a novel depicting the reporter as a sharp-featured and
half-disreputable young man running about with pencil and note-book in hand
and making himself personally and professionally obnoxious, it produced
apoplectic tendencies that permanently threatened health and peace of mind.
Hence with the characteristic energy devoted to writing, he proceeded to
get it out of his system and produced "The Longworth Mystery," published in
_Century_,[1] (which it is interesting to note was illustrated by Charles
Dana Gibson who then signed himself "C. D. Gibson"), and "The Passing of
Major Kilgore," appearing in _Lippincott's_,[2] both depicting newspaper
life. When this latter novelette was printed it soothed me so that I had
the paper covers protected with more permanent boards and sent it on many
pilgrimages from which it safely returned enriched with further messages of
thanks to the creator for his good job. Having browsed deeply behind the
bindings of many books I have yet to find others written in the first
person, where the pronoun "I" is used by the relator so seldom as in either
"The Longworth Mystery" or "The Passing of Major Kilgore," the intimacy of
the relation the while being maintained very adroitly by the observations
of the "City Editor" who tells both stories. Major Kilgore in the latter
tale, is financial man on the _Banner_. He is an old school gentleman and
profound student of finances who finally goes mad over the study of the
market and while dreaming himself possessed of vast wealth, is seeking to
further the happiness of others where riches will assist. Of course the
denouement shattered many sumptuous air castles but it left the profession
the richer by a faithful portrayal. It is in the development of this tale
that Allison, ever seeking an opportunity to draw amusement from his
friends, created a fine occasion through a reminiscent conversation between
Major Kilgore and Colonel Hamilton to inject a famous Southern quartette,
Clarence Knowles, Col. John D. Young, James A. Thomas and Col. W. C.
Nelson, then in their prime, but who have since passed on to swell the
silent throng. Colonel Hamilton is trying to divert Major Kilgore, already
showing signs of mental unbalance:
"Some of the fellows we knew in the C. S. A. have had queer luck in
the shuffle, Kilgore. You remember Knowles of Georgia? I found him
keeping bar in Sacramento. Young of North Carolina, who led that
charge at Fredericksburg, is running a restaurant in Colorado; and
Thomas, of Tennessee--by the Lord Harry, he killed himself with
drink working in a mine in Arizona--had the jim-jams seven times
they say and thought his head was a rabbit's nest. Last time I saw
you riled, Kilgore, was that night in the trenches at
Fredericksburg when Nelson hid your tobacco bag. You wanted to
fight him, by the Lord Harry, there and then, but he wouldn't do
it--because he said he would rather kill Yankees than gentlemen.
And you both agreed to take your chances next day on a fool trial
which would fight the Yankees best!"
[1] Century, October, 1889.
[2] Lippincott's January, 1892.
Only one who knows Allison intimately can measure the delight, expressed in
chuckles of joy, with which he marked this passage in _Lippincott's_ and
mailed copies to the friends he had whimsically pilloried.
* * * * *
When one browses around among Allison's productions he runs across many odd
conceits as in "The Ballad of Whiskey Straight" which he declares was
"prepared according to the provisions of the Pure Food Law, approved 1906."
Whatever quarrel one might have with the subject itself, or the sentiment,
he cannot fail to fall a victim to the soft cadences of the rippling rhyme.
THE BALLAD OF WHISKEY STRAIGHT.
I
Let dreamers whine
Of the pleasures of wine
For lovers of soft delight;
But this is the song
Of a tipple that's strong--
For men who must toil and fight.
Now the drink of luck
For the man full of pluck
Is easy to nominate:
It's the good old whiskey of old Kentuck,
And you always drink it straight.
II