_March 2._ The truth of the difference of quality between the business
man and the scholar was quickly brought home to me. On the last evening
of my visit, Mr. Blodgett revealed the reason for his latest kindness.
“I got you here,” he explained, “to look you over and see what you were
fit for, thinking I might work you in somewhere. No,” he continued, as
he saw the questioning hopefulness on my face, “you wouldn’t do in
business. You’ve got a sight too much conscience and sympathy, and a
sight too little drive. All business is getting the best of somebody
else, and you’re the kind of chap who’d let a fellow up just because
you’d got him down.” Seeing the sadness in my face, for I knew too well
he had fathomed me, he added kindly, “Don’t get chicken-hearted over
what I say. It’s easy enough to outwit a man; the hard thing is not to
do it. I’d go out of the trade to-morrow, if it weren’t for the boss
and Agnes, for I get tired of the meanness of the whole thing. But they
want to cut a figure, and that isn’t to be done in this town for
nothing. I’ll find something for you yet that sha’n’t make you sell
your heart and your soul as well as your time.”
I was too full of my love and my purpose, however, for this to
discourage me. The moment my determination to remain in New York was
taken, I wrote to Jastrow, Humzel, and others of my German friends,
telling them that for business reasons I had decided to be known as
Rudolph Hartzmann, and asking if they would stretch friendship so far
as to give me letters in that name to such American publishers and
editors as they knew. Excepting Jastrow, they all responded with
introductions so flattering that I was almost ashamed to present them,
and he wrote me that he had not offered my books for sale, and begged
me to reconsider my refusal of the professorship. He even offered, if I
would accept the appointment, to divide with me his tuition fees, and
suggested that his own advancing years were a pledge that his position
would erelong be vacant for me to step into. It almost broke my heart
to have to write him that I could not accept his generous offer. In
July I received a second letter from him, most touching in its attempt
to keep back the grief he felt, but yielding to my determination. He
sent me many good introductions, and submitted a bid for my library
from a bookseller; but knowing the books to be worth at least double
the offer, I held the sale in abeyance.
My first six months in New York disheartened me greatly, though now I
know that I succeeded far better than I could have expected to do, in
the dullness of the summer. My work was the proof-reading of my book of
travel in its varying polyglots, seeing through the press English
versions of my two text-books, and writing a third in both English and
German. Furthermore, my letters of introduction had made me known to a
number of the professors of Columbia College, and by their influence I
received an appointment to deliver a course of lectures on race
movements the following winter; so I prepared my notes in this leisure
time. But this work was far too little to fill my time, and I wrote all
kinds of editorials, essays, and reviews, fairly wearing out the
editors of the various magazines and newspapers with my frequent calls
and articles. Finally I attempted to sell my books to several
libraries; but though the tomes and the price both tempted several,
none had the money to spend on such a collection.
My book of travel was published in September, was praised by the
reviews, and at once sprang into a good sale for a work of that class;
for Europe is interested in whatever bears on her cancer growth,
commonly called the Eastern question. Since Europeans approved the
book, Americans at once bought and discussed it; to prove, I suppose,
that as a nation we are no longer tainted with provincialism,—as if
that very subservience to transatlantic opinion were not the best proof
that the virus still works within us. It was issued anonymously,
through the fear that if I put my pseudonym on the title-page it might
lead to inquiry about the author which would reveal his identity with
Donald Maitland, for whom I only wished oblivion. As a result the
question of authorship was much mooted, some declaring a well-known
Oxford professor to be the man, others ascribing the volume to a famous
German traveler, and Humzel being named by some; but most of the
reviews suggested that it was the work of an Eastern savant, and I
presume that my style was tinged with orientalism.
You cannot tell what a delight it was to me to learn, at our first
meeting in the autumn, that you had read my book. I went in November to
the Lenox Library to verify a date, and found you there. I could not
help interrupting your reading for a moment,—I had so longed for a
glimpse and a word,—and you took my intrusion in good part. I drew a
book and pretended to read, merely to veil my covert watching of you;
and when you rose to go, I asked permission to walk with you.
“Your notebook suggests that you are a writer by profession, Dr.
Hartzmann?” you surmised.
“Yes.”
“And you have to come to America for material?”
“I have come to America permanently.”
“How unusual!”
“In what respect?”
“For a European writer to come to New York to do more than lecture
about himself, have his vanity and purse fed, and return home to write
a book about us that we alone read.”
I laughed and said, “You make me very glad that I am the exception to
the rule.”
“I presume more would make the venture if they found the atmosphere
less uncongenial. New York as a whole is so absorbed in the task of
trans-shipping the products of the busiest nations of two continents
that everything is ranked as secondary that does not subserve that end:
and the Muses starve.”
“I suppose New York is not the best of places in which to live by art
or letters, if compared with London or Paris; yet if a man can do what
the world wants done, he can earn a livelihood here.”
“But he cannot gain the great prizes that alone are worth the winning,
I fear. I have noticed that American writers only reach American
audiences, while European authors not merely win attention at home, but
have vogue and sale here. The London or Paris label is quite as
effective in New York or Chicago in selling books as in selling
clothes.”
“I suppose cultivated Europe is as heedless of the newer peoples as the
peoples of the Orient are of those of the Occident. Yet I think that if
as good work were turned out in this country as in the Old World, the
place of its production would not seriously militate against its
success.”
“And have you found it so?”
“Nothing I have yet written in this country merits Continental
attention.”
“I hope you have succeeded to your own satisfaction?”
“It may amuse you to know that though I had many good letters of
introduction to editors in this country, I could not get a single
article accepted till some friends of mine in Asia came to my aid.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“Perhaps you remember reading, last August, of an outbreak of some
tribes in the Hindoo Kush? Those hill peoples are in a state of
perennial ferment, and usually Europe pays no attention to their
bellicose proceedings; but luckily for me, the English premier, at that
particular moment, was holding his unwilling Parliament together in an
attempt to pass something, and finding it intractable in that matter,
he cleverly used this outbreak to divert attention and excite
enthusiasm. Rising in the House of Commons, he virtually charged the
outbreak to Russian machination against the beloved Emir, and pledged
the nation to support that civilized humanitarian against the barbaric
despot of Russia. At once the papers were full of unintelligible
cablegrams telling of the doings in those far-away mountains; and my
hurriedly written editorials and articles, which nevertheless showed
some comprehension of the geography and people, were snapped up avidly,
and from that time I have found papers or periodicals glad to print
what I write.”
You laughed, and said, “How strangely the world is tied together in
these days, that the speech of an English prime minister about some
Asian septs should give a German author entrée to New York editorial
sanctums!”
“The cables have done more in aid of the brotherhood of man than all
the efforts of the missionaries.”
“I thought you were a conservative, and disapproved of modern
innovations,” you suggested archly.
“With innovators, yes.”
“Then the Levantine does not entirely disapprove of our Hesperian
city?”
“My knowledge of New York is about as deep,” I answered, smiling, “as
my Eastern blood.”
“Only skin-deep,” you said.
“Just sufficient for a disguise.”
“As long as you are silent, yes.”
“Is my English so unmistakable?”
“Not your tongue, but your thought. Of course your vicinage, costume,
and complexion made me for a moment accept your joke of nationality, at
that first meeting, but before you had uttered half your defense of the
older races I felt sure that you were not a product of one of them.”
“Why was that?”
“Because it is only Christians who recognize and speak for the rights
of other peoples.”
“You forget that the religion of Buddha is toleration. We Christians
preach the doctrine, but practice extermination, forgiving our enemies
after killing them,” I corrected. “I do not think we differ much in
works from even El Mahdi.”
“Would El Mahdi ever have spoken for other races?”
“You know the weak spot in my armor, Miss Walton,” I was obliged to
confess.
“That is due to you, Dr. Hartzmann. What you stated that night
interested me so deeply that I have been reading up about the Eastern
races and problems. I wonder if you have seen this new book of travel,
The Debatable Lands between the East and West?”
“Yes,” I assented, thinking that twenty over-lookings of it in
manuscript and proof entitled me to make the claim.
“You will be amused to hear that, when reading it, I thought of you as
the probable writer, not merely because it begins in the Altai range
and ends at Tangier, but as well because some of the ideas resemble
yours. Mr. Whitely, however, tells me he has private information that
Professor Humzel is the author. Do you know him?”
“He was my professor of history at Leipzig.”
“That accounts for the agreement in thought. You admire the book?”
“I think it is a conscientious attempt to describe what the author
saw.”
“Ah, it is much more than that!” you exclaimed. “At a dinner in London,
this autumn, I sat next the Earl—— next a member of the Indian Council,
and he told me he considered it a far more brilliant book than
Kinglake’s Eothen.”
I knew I had no right to continue this subject, but I could not help
asking, “You liked it?”
“Very much. It seems to me a deep and philosophic study of present and
future problems, besides being a vivid picture of most interesting
countries and peoples. It made me long to be a nomad myself, and wander
as the author did. The thought of three years of such life, of such
freedom, seems to stir in me all the inherited tendency to prowl that
we women supposedly get from Mother Sphinx.”
“Civilization steals nature from us and compounds the theft with art.”
“Tell me about Professor Humzel,” you went on, “for I know I should
like him, merely from the way he writes. One always pictures the German
professor as a dried-up mind in a dried-up body, but in this book one
is conscious of real flesh and blood. He is a young man, I’m sure.”
“Sixty-two.”
“He has a young heart, then,” you asserted. “Is he as interesting to
talk with as he makes himself in his book?”
“Professor Humzel is very silent.”
“The people who have something to say are usually so,” you sighed.
“A drum must be empty to make a noise,” I said, smiling, “and perhaps
the converse is true.”
I cannot say what there was in that walk which cheered me so, except
your praise of my book,—sweeter far though that was than the world’s
kindly opinion; yet over and above that, in our brief interchange of
words, I was made conscious that there was sympathy between us,—a
sympathy so positive that something like our old-time friendship seemed
beginning. And the thought made me so happy that for a time my troubles
were almost forgotten.
Good-night, Maizie.