Warner's collected writings, which then appeared, were first published in
the Atlantic Monthly. But about fourteen years before his death he became
closely connected with Harper's Magazine. From May, 1886, to March, 1892,
he conducted the Editor's Drawer of that periodical. The month following
this last date he succeeded William Dean Howells as the contributor of
the Editor's Study. This position he held until July, 1898. The scope of
this department was largely expanded after the death of George William
Curtis in the summer of 1892, and the consequent discontinuance of the
Editor's Easy Chair. Comments upon other topics than those to which his
department was originally devoted, especially upon social questions, were
made a distinct feature. His editorial connection with the magazine
naturally led to his contributing to it numerous articles besides those
which were demanded by the requirements of the position he held. Nearly
all these, as well as those which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, are
indicated in the bibliographical notes prefixed to the separate works.
There were, however, other literary enterprises in which he was
concerned; for the calls upon him were numerous, his own appetite for
work was insatiable, and his activity was indefatigable. In 1881 he
assumed the editorship of the American Men of Letters series. This he
opened with his own biography of Washington Irving, the resemblance
between whom and himself has been made the subject of frequent remark.
Later he became the editor-in-chief of the thirty odd volumes which make
up the collection entitled "The World's Best Literature." To this he
contributed several articles of his own and carefully allotted and
supervised the preparation of a large number of others. The labor he put
upon the editing of this collection occupied him a great deal of the time
from 1895 to 1898.
But literature, though in it lay his chief interest, was but one of the
subjects which employed his many-sided activity. He was constantly called
upon for the discharge of civic duties. The confidence felt by his
fellow-citizens in his judgment and taste was almost equal to the
absolute trust reposed in his integrity. The man who establishes a
reputation for the possession of these qualities can never escape from
bearing the burdens which a good character always imposes. If any work of
art was ordered by the state, Warner was fairly certain to be chosen a
member of the commission selected to decide upon the person who was to do
it and upon the way it was to be done. By his fellow-townsmen he was made
a member of the Park Commission. Such were some of the duties imposed;
there were others voluntarily undertaken. During the latter years of his
life he became increasingly interested in social questions, some of which
partook of a semi-political character. One of the subjects which engaged
his attention was the best method to be adopted for elevating the
character and conduct of the negro population of the country. He
recognized the gravity of the problem with which the nation had to deal
and the difficulties attending its solution. One essay on the subject was
prepared for the meeting held at Washington in May, 1900, of the American
Social Science Association, of which he was president. He was not able to
be there in person. The disease which was ultimately to strike him down
had already made its preliminary attack. His address was accordingly read
for him. It was a subject of special regret that he could not be present
to set forth more fully his views; for the debate, which followed the
presentation of his paper, was by no means confined to the meeting, but
extended to the press of the whole country. Whether the conclusions he
reached were right or wrong, they were in no case adopted hastily nor
indeed without the fullest consideration.
But a more special interest of his lay in prison reform. The subject had
engaged his attention long before he published anything in connection
with it. Later one of the earliest articles he wrote for Harper's
Magazine was devoted to it. It was in his thoughts just before his death.
He was a member of the Connecticut commission on prisons, of the National
Prison Association, and a vice-president of the New York Association for
Prison Reform. A strong advocate of the doctrine of the indeterminate
sentence, he had little patience with many of the judicial outgivings on
that subject. To him they seemed opinions inherited, not formed, and in
most cases were nothing more than the result of prejudice working upon
ignorance. This particular question was one which he purposed to make the
subject of his address as president of the Social Science Association, at
its annual meeting in 1901. He never lived to complete what he had in
mind.
During his later years the rigor of the Northern winter had been too
severe for Warner's health. He had accordingly found it advisable to
spend as much of this season as he could in warmer regions. He visited at
various times parts of the South, Mexico, and California. He passed the
winter of 1892-93 at Florence; but he found the air of the valley of the
Arno no perceptible improvement upon that of the valley of the
Connecticut. In truth, neither disease nor death entertains a prejudice
against any particular locality. This fact he was to learn by personal
experience. In the spring of 1899, while at New Orleans, he was stricken
by pneumonia which nearly brought him to the grave. He recovered, but it
is probable that the strength of his system was permanently impaired, and
with it his power of resisting disease. Still his condition was not such
as to prevent him from going on with various projects he had been
contemplating or from forming new ones. The first distinct warning of the
approaching end was the facial paralysis which suddenly attacked him in
April, 1900, while on a visit to Norfolk, Va. Yet even from that he
seemed to be apparently on the full road to recovery during the following
summer.
It was in the second week of October, 1900, that Warner paid me a visit
of two or three days. He was purposing to spend the winter in Southern
California, coming back to the East in ample time to attend the annual
meeting of the Social Science Association. His thoughts were even then
busy with the subject of the address which, as president, he was to
deliver on that occasion. It seemed to me that I had never seen him when
his mind was more active or more vigorous. I was not only struck by the
clearness of his views--some of which were distinctly novel, at least to
me--but by the felicity and effectiveness with which they were put.
Never, too, had I been more impressed with the suavity, the
agreeableness, the general charm of his manner. He had determined during
the coming winter to learn to ride the wheel, and we then and there
planned to take a bicycle trip during the following summer, as we had
previously made excursions together on horseback. When we parted, it was
with the agreement that we should meet the next spring in Washington and
fix definitely upon the time and region of our intended ride. It was on a
Saturday morning that I bade him good-by, apparently in the best of
health and spirits. It was on the evening of the following Saturday
--October 20th--that the condensed, passionless, relentless message which
the telegraph transmits, informed me that he had died that afternoon.
That very day he had lunched at a friend's, where were gathered several
of his special associates who had chanced to come together at the same
house, and then had gone to the office of the Hartford Courant. There was
not the slightest indication apparent of the end that was so near. After
the company broke up, he started out to pay a visit to one of the city
parks, of which he was a commissioner. On his way thither, feeling a
certain faintness, he turned aside into a small house whose occupants he
knew, and asked to sit down for a brief rest, and then, as the faintness
increased, to lie undisturbed on the lounge for a few minutes. The few
minutes passed, and with them his life. In the strictest sense of the
words, he had fallen asleep. From one point of view it was an ideal way
to die. To the individual, death coming so gently, so suddenly, is shorn
of all its terrors. It is only those who live to remember and to lament
that the suffering comes which has been spared the victim. Even to them,
however, is the consolation that though they may have been fully prepared
for the coming of the inevitable event, it would have been none the less
painful when it actually came.
Warner as a writer we all know. The various and varying opinions
entertained about the quality and value of his work do not require notice
here. Future times will assign him his exact position in the roll of
American authors, and we need not trouble ourselves to anticipate, as we
shall certainly not be able to influence, its verdict. But to only a
comparatively few of those who knew him as a writer was it given to know
him as a man; to still fewer to know him in that familiarity of intimacy
which reveals all that is fine or ignoble in a man's personality. Scanty
is the number of those who will come out of that severest of ordeals so
successfully as he. The same conclusion would be reached, whether we were
to consider him in his private relations or in his career as a man of
letters. Among the irritable race of authors no one was freer from petty
envy or jealousy. During many years of close intercourse, in which he
constantly gave utterance to his views both of men and things with
absolute unreserve, I recall no disparaging opinion ever expressed of any
writer with whom he had been compared either for praise or blame. He had
unquestionably definite and decided opinions. He would point out that
such or such a work was above or below its author's ordinary level; but
there was never any ill-nature in his comment, no depreciation for
depreciation's sake. Never in truth was any one more loyal to his
friends. If his literary conscience would not permit him to say anything
in favor of something which they had done, he usually contented himself
with saying nothing. Whatever failing there was on his critical side was
due to this somewhat uncritical attitude; for it is from his particular
friends that the writer is apt to get the most dispassionate
consideration and sometimes the coldest commendation. It was a part of
Warner's generous recognition of others that he was in all sincerity
disposed to attribute to those he admired and to whom he was attached an
ability of which some of them at least were much inclined to doubt their
own possession.
Were I indeed compelled to select any one word which would best give the
impression, both social and literary, of Warner's personality, I should
be disposed to designate it as urbanity. That seems to indicate best the
one trait which most distinguished him either in conversation or writing.
Whatever it was, it was innate, not assumed. It was the genuine outcome
of the kindliness and broad-mindedness of his nature and led him to
sympathize with men of all positions in life and of all kinds of ability.
It manifested itself in his attitude towards every one with whom he came
in contact. It led him to treat with fullest consideration all who were
in the least degree under his direction, and converted in consequence the
toil of subordinates into a pleasure. It impelled him to do unsought
everything which lay in his power for the success of those in whom he
felt interest. Many a young writer will recall his words of encouragement
at some period in his own career when the quiet appreciation of one meant
more to him than did later the loud applause of many. As it was in
public, so it was in private life. The generosity of his spirit, the
geniality and high-bred courtesy of his manner, rendered a visit to his
home as much a social delight as his wide knowledge of literature and his
appreciation of what was best in it made it an intellectual
entertainment.
THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
PRELIMINARY
This paper was prepared and delivered at several of our universities as
introductory to a course of five lectures which insisted on the value of
literature in common life--some hearers thought with an exaggerated
emphasis--and attempted to maintain the thesis that all genuine, enduring
literature is the outcome of the time that produces it, is responsive to
the general sentiment of its time; that this close relation to human life
insures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature;
and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying a
literature is to study the people for whom it was produced. Illustrations
of this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the English
literatures. This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaning
of the text of an old author, the same light that the reader
unconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life with
which he is familiar. The reader can test this by taking up his
Shakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, and
popular life of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is true
that good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought of
the time and place where it originated.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE
I hade a vision once--you may all have had a like one--of the stream of
time flowing through a limitless land. Along its banks sprang up in
succession the generations of man. They did not move with the stream-they
lived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generations
appeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history--the
sequence of human actions. The stream flowed on, opening for itself
forever a way through the land. I saw that these successive dwellers on
the stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels of
various size and form and rig--arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs,
boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with which
each builder launched his venture, and watched its performance and
progress. The anxiety was to invent and launch something that should
float on to the generations to come, and carry the name of the builder
and the fame of his generation. It was almost pathetic, these puny
efforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each new
venture. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched at
all; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated out for a
time, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over and
disappeared. Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in the
bufleting of the waves. Others danced on the flood, taking the sun on
their sails, and went away with good promise of a long voyage. But only a
few floated for any length of time, and still fewer were ever seen by the
generation succeeding that which launched them. The shores of the stream
were strewn with wrecks; there lay bleaching in the sand the ribs of many
a once gallant craft.
Innumerable were the devices of the builders to keep their inventions
afloat. Some paid great attention to the form of the hull, others to the
kind of cargo and the loading of it, while others--and these seemed the
majority--trusted more to some new sort of sail, or new fashion of
rudder, or new application of propelling power. And it was wonderful to
see what these new ingenuities did for a time, and how each generation
was deceived into the belief that its products would sail on forever. But
one fate practically came to the most of them. They were too heavy, they
were too light, they were built of old material, and they went to the
bottom, they went ashore, they broke up and floated in fragments. And
especially did the crafts built in imitation of something that had
floated down from a previous generation come to quick disaster. I saw
only here and there a vessel, beaten by weather and blackened by time
--so old, perhaps, that the name of the maker was no longer legible; or
some fragments of antique wood that had evidently come from far up the
stream. When such a vessel appeared there was sure to arise great dispute
about it, and from time to time expeditions were organized to ascend the
river and discover the place and circumstances of its origin. Along the
banks, at intervals, whole fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore,
and were piled up in bays, like the driftwood of a subsided freshet.
Efforts were made to dislodge these from time to time and set them afloat
again, newly christened, with fresh paint and sails, as if they stood a
better chance of the voyage than any new ones. Indeed, I saw that a large
part of the commerce of this river was, in fact, the old hulks and
stranded wrecks that each generation had set afloat again. As I saw it in
this foolish vision, how pathetic this labor was from generation to
generation; so many vessels launched; so few making a voyage even for a
lifetime; so many builders confident of immortality; so many lives
outlasting this coveted reputation! And still the generations, each with
touching hopefulness, busied themselves with this child's play on the
banks of the stream; and still the river flowed on, whelming and wrecking
the most of that so confidently committed to it, and bearing only here
and there, on its swift, wide tide, a ship, a boat, a shingle.
These hosts of men whom I saw thus occupied since history began were
authors; these vessels were books; these heaps of refuse in the bays were
great libraries. The allegory admits of any amount of ingenious
parallelism. It is nevertheless misleading; it is the illusion of an idle
fancy. I have introduced it because it expresses, with some whimsical
exaggeration--not much more than that of "The Vision of Mirza"--the
popular notion about literature and its relation to human life. In the
popular conception, literature is as much a thing apart from life as
these boats on the stream of time were from the existence, the struggle,
the decay of the generations along the shore. I say in the popular
conception, for literature is wholly different from this, not only in its
effect upon individual lives, but upon the procession of lives upon this
earth; it is not only an integral part of all of them, but, with its
sister arts, it is the one unceasing continuity in history. Literature
and art are not only the records and monuments made by the successive
races of men, not only the local expressions of thought and emotion, but
they are, to change the figure, the streams that flow on, enduring, amid
the passing show of men, reviving, transforming, ennobling the fleeting
generations. Without this continuity of thought and emotion, history
would present us only a succession of meaningless experiments. The
experiments fail, the experiments succeed--at any rate, they end--and
what remains for transmission, for the sustenance of succeeding peoples?
Nothing but the thought and emotion evolved and expressed. It is true
that every era, each generation, seems to have its peculiar work to do;
it is to subdue the intractable earth, to repel or to civilize the
barbarians, to settle society in order, to build cities, to amass wealth
in centres, to make deserts bloom, to construct edifices such as were
never made before, to bring all men within speaking distance of each
other--lucky if they have anything to say when that is accomplished--to
extend the information of the few among the many, or to multiply the
means of easy and luxurious living. Age after age the world labors for
these things with the busy absorption of a colony of ants in its castle
of sand. And we must confess that the process, such, for instance, as
that now going on here--this onset of many peoples, which is transforming
the continent of America--is a spectacle to excite the imagination in the
highest degree. If there were any poet capable of putting into an epic
the spirit of this achievement, what an epic would be his! Can it be that
there is anything of more consequence in life than the great business in
hand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say,
it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach our
destination sooner--getting there quickly being a supreme object. It is
well to force the soil to yield a hundred-fold, to congregate men in
masses so that all their energies shall be taxed to bring food to
themselves, to stimulate industries, drag coal and metal from the bowels
of the earth, cover its surface with rails for swift-running carriages,
to build ever larger palaces, warehouses, ships. This gigantic
achievement strikes the imagination.
If the world in which you live happens to be the world of books, if your
pursuit is to know what has been done and said in the world, to the end
that your own conception of the value of life may be enlarged, and that
better things may be done and said hereafter, this world and this pursuit
assume supreme importance in your mind. But you can in a moment place
yourself in relations--you have not to go far, perhaps only to speak to
your next neighbor--where the very existence of your world is scarcely
recognized. All that has seemed to you of supreme importance is ignored.
You have entered a world that is called practical, where the things that
we have been speaking of are done; you have interest in it and sympathy
with it, because your scheme of life embraces the development of ideas
into actions; but these men of realities have only the smallest
conception of the world that seems to you of the highest importance; and,
further, they have no idea that they owe anything to it, that it has ever
influenced their lives or can add anything to them. And it may chance
that you have, for the moment, a sense of insignificance in the small
part you are playing in the drama going forward. Go out of your library,
out of the small circle of people who talk of books, who are engaged in
research, whose liveliest interest is in the progress of ideas, in the
expression of thought and emotion that is in literature; go out of this
atmosphere into a region where it does not exist, it may be into a place
given up to commerce and exchange, or to manufacturing, or to the
development of certain other industries, such as mining, or the pursuit
of office--which is sometimes called politics. You will speedily be aware
how completely apart from human life literature is held to be, how few
people regard it seriously as a necessary element in life, as anything
more than an amusement or a vexation. I have in mind a mountain district,
stripped, scarred, and blackened by the ruthless lumbermen, ravished of
its forest wealth; divested of its beauty, which has recently become the
field of vast coal-mining operations. Remote from communication, it was
yesterday an exhausted, wounded, deserted country. Today audacious
railways are entering it, crawling up its mountain slopes, rounding its
dizzy precipices, spanning its valleys on iron cobwebs, piercing its
hills with tunnels. Drifts are opened in its coal seams, to which iron
tracks shoot away from the main line; in the woods is seen the gleam of
the engineer's level, is heard the rattle of heavily-laden wagons on the
newly-made roads; tents are pitched, uncouth shanties have sprung up,
great stables, boarding-houses, stores, workshops; the miner, the
blacksmith, the mason, the carpenter have arrived; households have been
set up in temporary barracks, children are already there who need a
school, women who must have a church and society; the stagnation has
given place to excitement, money has flowed in, and everywhere are the
hum of industry and the swish of the goad of American life. On this
hillside, which in June was covered with oaks, is already in October a
town; the stately trees have been felled; streets are laid out and graded
and named; there are a hundred dwellings, there are a store, a
post-office, an inn; the telegraph has reached it, and the telephone and
the electric light; in a few weeks more it will be in size a city, with
thousands of people--a town made out of hand by drawing men and women
from other towns, civilized men and women, who have voluntarily put
themselves in a position where they must be civilized over again.