in his native state and then serving as tutor for a short time, he
entered the Confederate army. During his war experiences, whether in
the field or in prison, he studied poetry and played the flute. These
two arts were his passions for life. While yet in his college days he
had acquired a fine reputation as a flute-player. At eighteen he was
said to be the best flute-player in Georgia. One of his college
friends at the time made record of his admiration in writing,--"Tutor
Lanier is the finest flute-player you or I ever saw. It is perfectly
splendid--his playing. He is far-famed for it. His flute cost fifty
dollars, and he runs the notes as easily as any one on the piano."
The passionate love of his sensitive soul is revealed in this poetic
description of a visit to the opera:
"I have just come in from the _Tempest_ at the Grand Opera House ...
and my heart is so full.... In one interlude between the scenes we had
a violin solo, adagio, with soft accompaniment by orchestra. As the
fair tender notes came, they opened like flower-buds expanding into
flowers under the sweet rain of the accompaniment. Kind heavens! My
head fell on the seat in front, I was weighed down with great loves
and great ideas and divine inflowings and devout outflowings, and as
each note grew and budded, and became a bud again and died into a
fresh birth in the next bud tone, I also lived these flower-tone
lives, and grew and expanded, and folded back and died and was born
again, and partook of the unfathomable mysteries of flowers and
tones." And at another time he writes in the same vein,--"'Twas
opening night of Theodore Thomas' orchestra at Central Park Garden,
and I could not resist the temptation to go and bathe in the sweet
amber seas of this fine orchestra, and so I went, and tugged me
through a vast crowd, and, after standing some while, found a seat,
and the baton waved, and I plunged into the sea, and lay and floated.
Ah! the dear flutes and oboes and horns drifted me hither and thither,
and the great violins and small violins swayed me upon waves, and
overflowed me with strong lavations, and sprinkled glistening foam in
my face, and in among the clarinetti, as among waving water-lilies
with plexile stems, pushed my easy way, and so, even lying in the
music waters, I floated and flowed, my soul utterly bent and
prostrate." Who has ever written more expressively of that ecstasy
that lays hold of the sensuous soul of the lover of fine music?
Lanier is one of the heroic souls of song. Like Stevenson he was
cheery enough to jest about his poverty. His contest with the demon of
Want seems to have been fiercer even than was the warfare waged by the
gay romancer. Lanier wishes to meet Charlotte Cushman, but he is not
sure that he can; he must sell a poem or two to get the price of a
suitable new dress coat. "Alas," he writes to the lady herself, in
that gay spirit of humor which is the strong defense of some sensitive
souls, "with what unspeakable care I would have brushed this present
garment of mine in days gone by, if I had dreamed that the time would
come when so great a thing as a visit to _you_ might hang upon the
little length of its nap! Behold, it is not only in man's breast that
pathos lies, and the very coat lapel that covers it may be a tragedy."
The poetic temperament is commonly supposed to be at variance with
domestic tranquillity. The domestic life of Lanier is a contradiction
to that popular belief. He ends one of his letters to his wife with
this petition,--"Let us lead them (the children) to love everything
in the world, above the world, and under the world adequately; that is
the sum and substance of a perfect life. And so God's divine rest be
upon every head under the roof that covers thine this night, prayeth
thy husband."
In his letter to Gibson Peacock, January 6, 1878, we have a charming
picture of the delight of a man who has at last found a place to nest
his family, after some years of forlorn wanderings and uncertainties:
"...I have also moved my family into our new home, have had a
Christmas tree for the youngsters, have looked up a cheap school for
Harry and Sidney, have discharged my daily duties as first flute of
the Peabody Orchestra, have written a couple of poems and part of an
essay on Beethoven and Bismarck, have accomplished at least a hundred
thousand miscellaneous nothings.... We are in a state of supreme
content with our new home; it really seems to me as incredible that
myriads of people have been living in their own homes heretofore; as
to the young couple with a first baby it seems impossible that a great
many other couples have had similar prodigies. Good heavens! how I
wish that the whole world had a home.
"I confess that I am a little nervous about the gas bills, which must
come in, in the course of time; and there are the water rates, and
several sorts of imposts and taxes; but then the dignity of being
liable to such things is a very supporting consideration. No man is a
Bohemian who has to pay a water tax and a street tax. Every day when I
sit down in my dining-room--_my_ dining-room! I find the wish growing
stronger that each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner,
could come and dine with me. How I would carve out the merry-thoughts
for the old hags! How I would stuff the big wan-eyed rascals till
their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the
dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so that every wayfarer
must perforce pass through; there the traveler, rich or poor, found
always a trencher and wherewithal to fill it. Three times a day in my
own chair at my own table, do I envy that knight and wish that I might
do as he did."
LXVIII
THE STORY OF MARK TWAIN'S DEBTS
The story of "Mark Twain's Debts" is told in _The Bookman_ by
Frederick A. King. We are permitted to tell the story in Mr. King's
own words:
An anecdote is recorded of Mark Twain and General Grant, who, in
company with William D. Howells, once sat together at luncheon, spread
in the General's private office in the purlieus of Wall Street, in the
days when war and statesmanship had been laid aside, and the hero of
battles and civic life was endeavoring to retrieve his scattered
fortunes by a trial of business.
"Why don't you write your memoirs?" asked Mark Twain, mindful of how
much there was to record, and how eager would be the readers of such a
work.
But the General with characteristic modesty demurred, and the point
was not pressed. This was several years before the failure of the firm
of Ward and Grant, which swept away the General's private fortune,
leaving him an old man, broken in health, and filled with anxiety
about the provision for his family after he should be gone.
When the evil days at last came, some memory of the suggestion
dropped by his friend, the humorist--who could be immensely serious,
too, when need be--may have led to the task that, in added contention
with pain and suffering, constituted the last battle that the General
should fight.
Whatever the influence moving General Grant to the final decision to
compose his memoirs, it happened, to his great fortune, that Mark
Twain again called, and found that the work he had long ago suggested
was at last in progress; but also that the inexperienced writer,
modestly underestimating the commercial value of his forthcoming work,
was about to sign away the putative profits. Fifty thousand dollars
offered for his copyright seemed a generous sum to the unliterary
General Grant, and it took the vehement persuasion of one who was
himself a publisher to convince him that his prospective publishers
would not hesitate at quadrupling that sum rather than lose the chance
of publishing the book.
When the conjecture was proven true, the General with characteristic
generosity, withdrew the contract from his prospective publishers and
placed it in the hands of the firm that Mark Twain headed. All the
provisions were amply fulfilled; for when Mark Twain paid his last
visit to the stricken author at the place of sojourn on Mount
McGregor, he brought to the now speechless sufferer the smile of
happiness and satisfaction by saying: "General, there is in the bank
now royalties on advanced sales aggregating nearly $300,000. It is at
Mrs. Grant's order."
The anecdote is given at this length because, taken in connection
with subsequent events dealing with General Grant's benefactor, it
points a forceful illustration of the irony of fortune. There came a
day when the very instrument by which Mark Twain was enabled to
provide a peaceful close to the life of a brave warrior, and to
guarantee affluence for his family, delivered himself a stroke that
dissipated his own fortune at a time when age is supposed to have
absorbed the vigor for a new grapple with destinies.
In 1884 the publishing firm of C.L. Webster and Company was organized
to publish the works of Mark Twain. Of this firm Mark Twain was
president; but he took little active part in the management of its
affairs. Able to conceive in broad outlines successful policies, he
was singularly deficient in the power to handle the details of their
execution. On April 18, 1894, the firm whose business enterprises had
always figured in large sums through the immense popularity of the
author-publisher's own works, the _Memoirs of General Grant_, and the
_Life of Pope Leo_, made an assignment for the benefit of its
creditors. The bankrupt firm acknowledged liabilities approximating
$80,000. What in the ordinary view of commercial affairs would have
furnished but one item in the list of failures which record the
misfortunes of ninety per cent who engage in business, became in this
instance a notable case through the eminence of the chief actor.
What might he have done?
The law could lay claim upon his personal assets. To surrender these
possessions proved no act of self-sacrifice, considering his wife's
fortune, upon which the law had no claim. His wife, however, joined
him in the act of renunciation, and they stood together penniless.
Beyond this point there could be no legal, and, to many minds, no
moral responsibility for the debts of his firm. One can speculate upon
the force of the temptation to take advantage of the position. Mark
Twain was sixty years old, and ill at that. Having sacrificed all he
possessed to meet the demands of his creditors, he might justly claim
the benefit of what remained of capacity for wealth-producing labor.
His own words in reply to a slander which insinuated that he had set
to work again for his own benefit are splendid for inspiration and
honesty:
"The law recognizes no mortgage on a man's brain, and a merchant who
has given up all he has may take advantage of the laws of insolvency,
and start free again for himself; but I am not a business man, and
honor is a harder master than the law. It cannot compromise for less
than a hundred cents on the dollar."
... The great parallel case to the one here under examination is that
of Sir Walter Scott, who lost his all through the failure of his
printers, the Ballantynes, and between January, 1826, and January,
1828, earned for his creditors nearly L40,000. In the early stages of
this trial he suffered acutely from the attitude of his friends, and
he records in his diary how some would smile as if to say: "Think
nothing about it, my lad; it is quite out of our thoughts;" how others
adopted an affected gravity "such as one sees and despises at a
funeral," while the best bred "just shook hands and went on."
How the world treated Mark Twain we learn from the speech at the
banquet given by the Lotus Club on his return from his arduous journey
around the world: "There were ninety-six creditors in all, and not by
a finger's weight did ninety-five out of the ninety-six add to the
burden of that time."
"'Don't you worry, and don't you hurry,' was what they said." With the
courage of a man buffeted, but not beaten, he gathered himself up for
"one more last try for fortune and fair fame." In the latter part of
1895 he started out on a tour of the English-speaking countries of the
world to give lectures and readings from his own works.
There were misgivings, of course, as to the success of the venture.
Here was a field not absolutely untried, but not hitherto cultivated
to the point of assured success. In 1873 he had made a lecture tour in
England and in 1885 had given platform readings in company with George
W. Cable. But age had sapped the zest for public appearance, and he
was skeptical of his power to move people with interest in his books.
Moreover, there was a further thing to be considered, a possible
impediment to success among the English colonies which he proposed to
visit. His popularity with Englishmen had never been great, owing to
the liberties he had taken with that nation's people in _Innocents
Abroad_.
The latter apprehension was the more remote, however, for, starting
from New York, he had a continent to traverse before embarking for the
shores that held for him an uncertain welcome. To test his ability to
interest an audience, to "try it on the dog," as they say in
theatrical parlance, he subjected himself to the severest test
possible, crossed to Randall's Island and read before a company of
boys. Unsophisticated by the lecturer's reputation as a humorist, the
boys proved to be the organs of sincerest testimony to the permanence
of the old power to amuse, and the first public appearance in
Cleveland, Ohio, was undertaken with fewer misgivings.
From Vancouver, Mark Twain sailed for Sidney and gave readings before
the English-speaking communities of Australia; then continued on to
Tasmania, New Zealand, Ceylon, India and South Africa.
His fears as to his welcome among Englishmen were proved to be
groundless. In Australia, great as was his success as a lecturer, his
personal success outweighed even that, and the market on his books was
exhausted. We cannot follow him on this trip of mingled arduous labor
and personal satisfaction. The humorous reactions of his homely vision
upon the quaint, the bizarre, the pretentious, aspects of life in
remote parts of the world may be read in his own record of this
journey, _Following the Equator_. There are few things to record of
this great effort to pay his debts.
In India he was taken ill, but the disease was not severe. In June,
1897, when he had circled the globe and had settled for a time in
London, cablegrams came from that city announcing his mental and
physical collapse. The English-speaking world was stricken with
sympathy, and the New York _Herald_ at once began a subscription fund
for his relief. The report was contradicted at once, but admiration
for the author's strenuous effort seemed to grow, and the _Herald_
fund was assuming generous proportions when the following
characteristic message declining to accept the relief came from the
proposed beneficiary:
I was glad when you instituted that movement, for I was tired
of the fact and worry of debt, but I recognized that it is not
permissible for a man whose case is not hopeless to shift his
burden to other men's shoulders.
In November of the same year a report was circulated that he was out
of debt, but from Vienna, whither he had gone to live, came a laconic
cablegram nailing the optimistic impeachment:
Lie. Wrote no such letters. Still deeply in debt.
Nearly half of the original indebtedness needed to be paid, and here,
with scarcely an opposing voice in judgment, he might have waived the
claim upon himself for his firm's responsibilities, but he avowed that
he would pay dollar for dollar.
The time of accomplishment was not long in coming. When the
undertaking was begun, it was with the resolution to clear up the debt
in three years. Allowing for the unexpected, it was feared it would
take four, then at the age of sixty-four a new start in life would be
open to the author, who might point to a considerable occupancy of
space on library shelves and regard a life work accomplished. It took
but two years and a half to pay the debt. He began the effort the
latter part of 1895 and finished it in the early part of 1898.
His return to America and his home in 1900 was, in the unromantic
procedure of our self-conscious days, of the nature of a triumph. He
was formally welcomed by the Lotus Club, and, of course, as delicately
as might be, he was praised for his honesty. His reply to compliment
was a generous recognition of social virtue, which renders easier such
an effort as he made.
Said he:
Your president has referred to certain burdens which I was
weighted with. I am glad he did, as it gives me an opportunity
which I wanted. To speak of those debts--you all knew what he
meant when he referred to it, and to the poor bankrupt firm of
C.L. Webster and Company. No one has said a word about those
creditors. There were ninety-six creditors in all, and not by
a finger's weight did ninety-five out of the ninety-six add to
the burden of that time. They treated me well; they treated me
handsomely. I never knew I owed them anything; not a sign came
from them.
The story is one of simple elements, and suits the prosaic character
of our age. It does not match Sir Walter's for romance. There was no
such brain-racking work; no forcing of the phantasmal multitude of the
poet's brain to dance to pay the expenses of the funeral; no mediaeval
castle to sacrifice; no tragic failure of the ultimate goal. What
there is of real romance seems obscured by the facts of more or less
safe speculation upon assured futures. It was a safe business venture.
The hero was not unworthy of the praises which his peers at the Lotus
dinner were glad to lavish. Said St. Clair McKelway:
"He has enough excess and versatility to be a genius. He has enough
quality and quantity of virtues to be a saint. But he has honorably
transmuted his genius into work, whereby it has been brought into
relations with literature and with life. And he has preferred warm
fellowship to cool perfection, so that sinners love him and saints are
content to wait for him."
LXIX
HAMLIN GARLAND'S LITERARY BEGINNING
Hamlin Garland is one of the writers whose name suggests the great
Northwest. He was born in Wisconsin in 1860, went to Iowa and later to
Dakota, striving at an early age to wrest a living from the soil. At
ten years of age he plowed seventy acres of land. His vivid
descriptions of Western farm-life are not the results of reading and
casual observation, supplemented by a vivid imagination; they are the
products of actual experiences.
In a personal interview with Mr. Garland, Frank G. Carpenter gives us
the following interesting particulars:
"The conversation here turned to Mr. Garland's literary work, and he
told me how he was first led to write by reading Hawthorne's _Mosses
from an Old Manse_. This book so delighted him that he wanted to write
essays like it for a living, and he practised at this during the
intervals of his school-teaching and studying for years. It was not
until he was older that he attempted fiction or poetry. The story of
his first published article is a curious one. Said he:
"'My first literary success was a poem which I wrote for _Harper's
Weekly_, entitled 'Lost in the Norther.' It was a poem describing a
blizzard and the feelings of a man lost in it. I received twenty-five
dollars for it.'
"'That must have been a good deal of money to you then, Mr. Garland?'
"'It was,' was the reply. 'It was my first money in literature, and I
spent it upon my father and mother. I paid five dollars for a copy of
Grant's _Memoirs_, which I sent father, and with the remaining twenty
dollars I bought a silk dress for my mother. It was the first silk
dress she had ever had.'
"'When did you write your first fiction?'
"'My mother got half of the money I received for that,' replied Mr.
Garland, 'as it was due to her that I wrote it. I had been studying in
Boston for several years, when I went out to Dakota to visit my
parents. The night after I arrived I was talking with mother about old
times and old friends. She told me how one family had gone back to New
York for a visit, and had returned very happy, in getting back to
their Western home. As she told the story, the pathos of it struck me.
I went into another room and began to write. The story was one of the
best chapters of my book _Main-Traveled Roads_. I read it to mother,
and she liked it, and upon telling her that I thought it was worth at
least seventy-five dollars, she replied: "Well, if that is so, I think
you ought to _divvy_ with me, for I gave you the story." "I will,"
said I, and so, when I got my seventy-five dollars, I sent her a check
for thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents. I got many other good
suggestions during that trip to Dakota. I wrote poems and stories.
Some of the stories were published in _The Century_, and I remember
that I received six hundred dollars within two weeks from its editors.
It was perhaps a year later before I published my first book. It had a
good sale, and I have been writing from that day to this.'
"Hamlin Garland spends a part of every year in the West. He has bought
the old home place where he was born in Wisconsin, and he has there a
little farm of four acres, upon which he raises asparagus,
strawberries, onions, and bushels of other things. His mother lives
with him. During my talk with him the other night he said: 'I like the
West and the Western people. I have been brought up with them, and I
expect to devote my life to writing about them. I spend a portion of
each summer on the Rocky Mountains, camping out. I like to go where I
can sleep in the open air and have elbow-room away from the crowded
city.'"
LXX
STEPHEN CRANE: A "WONDERFUL BOY"
In 1900, Stephen Crane, while yet barely thirty, died. His early
passing away was widely regarded as a loss to American literature. In
England he was especially admired as a vigorous writer. His _The Red
Badge of Courage_ won him wide recognition as a keen analyst. Old
soldiers who read the story could not believe that it was written by a
boy who was born after the war had ended. By many critics his stories
of boyhood are considered the writings that shall be longest
remembered. Shortly before his death Mr. Crane wrote the following
letter to the editor of a Rochester daily:
"My father was a Methodist minister, author of numerous works of
theology, and an editor of various periodicals of the church. He was a
graduate of Princeton, and he was a great, fine, simple mind. As for
myself, I went to Lafayette College, but did not graduate. I found
mining-engineering not at all to my taste. I preferred base-ball.
Later I attended Syracuse University, where I attempted to study
literature, but found base-ball again much more to my taste. My first
work in fiction was for the New York _Tribune_, when I was eighteen
years old. During this time, one story of the series went into the
_Cosmopolitan_. At the age of twenty I wrote my first novel--_Maggie_.
It never really got on the market, but it made for me the friendship
of William Dean Howells and Hamlin Garland, and since that time I have
never been conscious for an instant that those friendships have at all
diminished. After completing _Maggie_, I wrote mainly for the New York
_Press_ and for _The Arena_. In the latter part of my twenty-first
year I began _The Red Badge of Courage_, and completed it early in my
twenty-second year. The year following I wrote the poems contained in
the volume known as _The Black Riders_. On the first day of last
November I was precisely twenty-nine years old and had finished my
fifth novel, _Active Service_. I have only one pride, and that is that
the English edition of _The Red Badge of Courage_ has been received
with great praise by the English reviewers. I am proud of this simply
because the remoter people would seem more just and harder to win."
In another letter to the same editor he writes about his literary
sincerity:
"The one thing that deeply pleases me is the fact that men of sense
invariably believe me to be sincere. I know that my work does not
amount to a string of dried beans--I always calmly admit it--but I
also know that I do the best that is in me without regard to praise or
blame. When I was the mark for every humorist in the country, I went
ahead; and now when I am the mark for only fifty per cent of the
humorists of the country, I go ahead; for I understand that a man is
born into the world with his own pair of eyes, and he is not at all
responsible for his vision--he is merely responsible for his quality
of personal honesty. To keep close to this personal honesty is my
supreme ambition."
LXXI
EUGENE FIELD