There is a rather frisky looking apartment house there now, a pastry
shop and tea room occupying the ground floor--behind it, the other
side of a venerable brick wall, a tiny, ancient burying ground. But in
days of yesteryear here stood a tavern of renown, the Old Grape Vine,
which on this site, Sixth Avenue at Eleventh Street, had given cheer
since Sixth Avenue was little more than a country road. A sagging,
soiled-white, two-story frame structure, with great iron grill lamps
before the door. Within, the main room was somewhat reminiscent of
London’s Olde Cheshire Cheese.
The proprietor was a canny Scot, one MacClellan. (“Old Mac”! Whither
has he gone?) I was coming along by there the other day, and I asked a
man with whom I chanced to walk if he remembered the Old Grape Vine.
“Ah! yes,” he said; “they had mutton pies there.” They did. And
excellent ale, also, served in battered pewter mugs. “They” had here,
too (some fifteen years ago), excellent society beneath the dingy
light. Roaring, roistering George Luks (as he was then) very much to
the fore. At the rickety mahogany table where Frans-Halsian George
held forth frequently was to be found the painter William J. Glackens,
and his brother “Lew”, humorous draughtsman for “Puck”. Ernest Lawson
sometimes came in. A Mr. Zinzig, a very pleasant soul and an excellent
pianist and teacher of the piano, often was of the company. A Mr.
Fitzgerald, art critic in those days of the “Sun”, occasionally “sat
in”. And a delightful old cock, Mr. Stephenson, art critic then of
the “Evening Post”. There was a man of the sea who continuously told
stories of Japan. (After eleven he was somewhat given to singing.)
There was an illustrator for a twopenny magazine, who (so as to seem
to be a large staff) signed a variety of names to his work. From the
land of R. L. S., he. One time while in a doze (somewhere else) he was
robbed. His comment upon his misfortune became a classic line. It was:
“By heaven! As long as whisky is sold to lose ten dollars is enough to
drive a Scot mad!” (This was long before anybody had even heard of the
illustrious Mr. Volstead.) And many more there were. Oh me! ah me! How
the picture has changed!
Well, the point of all this (if it have any point) is that it was in
the Old Grape Vine (of tender memory) that I first saw James Gibbons
Huneker. I think that, in his promenades as an impressionist, he was
there but seldom. Though we know that high among the Seven Arts he
rated the fine art of drinking Pilsner. The old places of Martin’s and
Lüchow’s (headquarters on a time for the musical cognoscenti) were
ports of call on his rounds, and he moved freely, I believe, among the
places of refreshment along the foreign quarter of lower Fourth Avenue.
At the Grape Vine, I understand, he was an especial friend of Luks, and
probably of Glackens and Lawson. And, though he was a very famous man,
he seemed to like the motley company.
Ten or twelve years ago I was earning a living more honestly than
perhaps I have been making one since. I was a clerk in a book
store--the retail department, it happened, of the house which publishes
Mr. Huneker’s books. And there, from my position “on the floor”, I
frequently saw him moving in and out. Moving rather slowly, with the
dignity of bulk. A distinguished figure, quietly but quite neatly
dressed, very erect in carriage, head held well back, supporting his
portliness with that physical pride of portly men, a physiognomy of
Rodinesque modeling--his cane a trim touch to the ensemble. He was,
I distinctly remember, held decidedly in regard by the retail staff
because he was (what, by a long shot, a good many “authors” were not)
exceedingly affable in manner to us clerks.
The moment I have particularly in mind was when Samuel Butler’s
volume “The Way of All Flesh” first appeared in an American edition.
We all know all about Butler now. But, looking back, it certainly is
astonishing how innocent most all of us then were of any knowledge
of the great author of “Erewhon”. Even so searching a student of
literature as W. C. Brownell was practically unacquainted with Butler.
He was taking home a copy of “The Way of All Flesh” to read. Mr.
Huneker was standing by. In some comment on the book, he remarked that
Butler had been a painter. “A painter!” exclaimed Mr. Brownell, in a
manner as though wondering how it came about he knew so little of the
man. “But this”, said Mr. Huneker, referring to the novel, “is not
his best stuff. That is in his note books.” Brownell: “And where are
they?” Huneker: “In the British Museum.” Mr. Brownell made a fluttering
gesture (as though to express that he “gave up”) toward Mr. Huneker.
“He knows everything!” he ejaculated.
We should, of course, be surprised now that anybody _did not_ know that
Butler had been a painter. When, just a short time ago, W. Somerset
Maugham adapted for the purposes of his sensational novel “The Moon
and Sixpence” the character and career of Paul Gauguin, it was in the
pages of Huneker that many first looked for, and found, intelligence
concerning the master of the Pont Aven school of painting. Well,
Gauguin is now an old story. And Ibsen, Tolstoy, Wagner, Nietzsche,
Meredith, Henry James, William James, Bergson, Anatole France,
Lemaître, Faguet, Shaw, Wilde, George Moore, Yeats, Synge, Schnitzler,
Rodin, Matisse, Picasso, Van Gogh, George Luks--they all are old
stories, too ... now. But it was our Steeplejack, James Huneker, who
was our pioneer watcher of the skies. And what in the large sweep
of his vision of the whole field of the world’s beauty he saw, he
reported with infinite gusto. “Gusto”, as H. L. Mencken in the Huneker
article of his “Book of Prefaces” says, “unquenchable, contagious,
inflammatory.”
The extent of the personal contact which Mr. Huneker enjoyed and
maintained with the first-rate literary men of the world, was amazing.
While I was with the bookshop I speak of, “presentation copies” of each
new book of his, to be sent out “with the compliments of the author”,
were piled up for forwarding literally several feet high. They went
to all the great in letters, in every country, that you could think
of. Anatole France, Joseph Conrad, Georg Brandes, Edmund Gosse, George
Moore--people like that.
Vast was the incoming stream of books to him: presentation copies,
review copies, publicity copies; so great a flood that it was necessary
for him periodically to call in an old book man to clear his shelves
by carting away a wagonload or two of genuine treasure. A catalogue I
one time saw of such volumes “from the library of James Huneker” was
sufficient in riches to have been the catalogue of the entire stock of
a very fair shop dealing in “association” volumes, first editions, and
so forth. And a survey of the books themselves made it quite apparent
that a reader who has read every word that Huneker ever printed (and
that would be a person who has read a good deal) may yet (very likely)
be a reader who has not read some of the best of Huneker. I refer to
“Jimmie’s” humorous, pungent marginalia.
Mr. Huneker’s close friends have taken occasion since his death to
speak warmly of his kindness toward obscure, struggling talent. There
was a side to him, akin to this, which I have not seen commented upon.
Huneker’s fame as a critic had been for years accepted throughout
Europe. When his “New Cosmopolis” was published (a book I did not
myself think so highly of) Joyce Kilmer, then newly come to journalism,
reviewed it for the New York “Times”, very eulogistically. Mr. Huneker
went to the trouble of looking up Kilmer to thank him very simply for
his praise.
Mr. Huneker was a loyal and disinterested servant of good literature
wherever he found it, and his happily was the power to be an ambassador
to success--as in the case of William McFee’s “Casuals of the Sea”.
Through my connection with the matter of “Casuals” I suppose it was,
that a correspondence came about between Mr. Huneker and me. And in all
my days I have never seen so energetic a correspondent. It seems to me
that I got a letter from him about every other morning. I dropped out
of the publishing business and went to Indiana for a time. I let him
know when I got there, my motive in this being mainly to notify him
that I _was_ out of the publishing business and so was no longer in a
position to give any business attention to letters relating to books.
But letters from him continued to reach me with the same regularity.
While, I hardly need say, I enjoyed this correspondence enormously, I
was decidedly embarrassed by it, as I could not but keenly feel that
I was taking up his time to no purpose. Still, of course, I felt that
I should answer each letter of his without an impolite delay, and no
sooner did he get my reply than he answered back again. Gradually,
however, we got the thing slowed down.
His letters were prodigal of witty things. I am afraid I have not kept
them; if I have, I do not know where they are--I move about a good
deal. One neat play of words I remember. I do not know whether or not
he himself ever used it elsewhere. I did use it in a book, giving due
credit to Mr. Huneker. I had told him that I was going in for writing
on my own. His comment was: “He that lives by the pen shall perish
by the pen.” Some of his letters, I recall, were signed, “Jim, the
Penman.”
And it was no simple trick to read them. He used a pale ink. The
handwriting was small, curious, and to me almost illegible. Why
compositors did not mob him I do not know. He wrote everything by hand;
never would learn to use a typewriter, and declared that he could not
acquire the faculty of dictation.
This leads me to the story of one of the articles he contributed to
+The Bookman+. When, upon my return to New York, I became (for a time)
editor of this magazine I pursued him for contributions. Yes, later on
he would send us something, but always it was later on, later on. I had
about given up hope of ever getting anything from him when a bulky wad
of closely-written “copy” on yellow paper arrived. Expecting that it
would take me a couple of days to decipher the manuscript, I joyously
acknowledged receipt of it at once, without a thought of questioning
the nature of the article. When I tried to read the article, after I
had held the first page sidewise, next upside down, then examined it
in a mirror, I “passed the buck” and sent the copy straight on to the
printers. If printers had read him before printers ought to be able
to again. I advertised the article to appear in the next number of
the magazine. When I got the article back in galley proofs--I got a
jolt. It wasn’t “+Bookman+ stuff” at all--all about a couple of “old
rounders”, as Mr. Huneker called them, taking a stroll.
I do not think that Mr. Huneker has as yet since his death, to the
time these rambling remarks are being written, received anything
like adequate recognition in the press. The “obituary” articles in
the newspapers have carried the air that he was hardly more than an
excellent “newspaper man”--somewhat older, but something like (dare
I say?) Heywood Broun or Alexander Woollcott. Ah! no; James Huneker
was a critic and an artist, and a figure, too, in our national life.
Though he was all his days until almost his last breath a hard-working
journalist with an immediate “copy date” before him. And though he most
naturally thought of himself, with common-sense pride in his calling,
as a journalist. I remember his one time speaking of Arnold Bennett as
“a hard-working journalist as well as a novel writer”. Indicating his
great esteem for the character of journalist. And he used to speak too,
with fraternal pride and affection in inflection, of young men who had
written good books as being among “our men”, meaning associated with
the same paper as himself.
At the remarkable funeral service held in the new Town Hall in New
York high and touching honor was done his memory by the stage and the
musical profession, but literature seemed to be officially represented
by the person of Richard LeGallienne alone, and painting and sculpture
not at all. The articles by Mr. Huneker’s colleagues among music
critics have seemed very largely to claim him as quite their own. True,
no doubt, his most penetrating writing was done in the field of musical
criticism. But, also, Huneker was an evangel who belongs to the Seven
Arts.
One thing should be added. It is a sad thing, but it is of the nature
of life. A good editorial in the current number of “The New Republic”
begins: “James Huneker named one of his best books ‘The Pathos of
Distance’. In a single day his own figure is invested with the memorial
gentleness there described.” No, not altogether in a single day. He
had already begun, and more than begun, to recede into the pathos of
distance. His flair was for the championship and interpretation of the
“new” men. And, for the most part, his new men had become old men. His
stoutest admirer must admit that Mr. Huneker’s work was “dated”.
But where (and this is sadder still) is his like to-day?
+Murray Hill+
_Alexander Woollcott_
Mr. Woollcott’s person is engaging enough to have jumped bodily from
the pages of Charles Dickens, an author whom, by the way, he greatly
admires. The first time I ever saw him was in Heywood Broun’s Paris
studio, on New Year’s Eve, 1917-18. He was, there, a private in the
United States Medical Corps, and his O. D.’s, I must say, made him
seem more Bairnsfather than Dickens. He was lounged on a large low
divan, peering solemnly at the company, a somewhat motley throng. Mr.
Woollcott is short, rotund, jovial, given to elaborate and biting
statements, punctuated by gestures which are often as grotesque
as they are incisive. He was born in Phalanx, New Jersey, and was
graduated from Hamilton College. Are not these facts, in themselves,
Dickensonian? Woollcott, to me, is the most interesting of our dramatic
critics; for he not only seems to have a knowledge of the theatre
but he occasionally permits himself rare and unreasoning enthusiasms
off the track of popular approval. His reputation was established
as critic of the New York “Times”. He is now critic and colyumist of
the “Herald”. It was his enthusiasm for Dickens which gave birth to a
delightful volume, “Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play”. His enthusiasm for
the army occasioned “The Command is Forward”. His enthusiasm for Mrs.
Fiske prompted, “Mrs. Fiske ... Her Views on Acting, Actors and the
Problems of the Stage”. More recently his essays have been collected
in “Shouts and Murmurs”. The story he tells here is, he says, no essay
at all. Maybe so. At any rate, it’s an interesting piece of literary
history even if it does not do Mr. Woollcott justice in displaying him
as the essayist of whimsicality and penetrating irony, which he is.