THE CLUB OF FREE DISCUSSION.
Hermia looked at her reflection that evening with a smile. The shadowed
emerald of her velvet gown made her hair glow like vibrant flame. The
color wandered through her cheeks and emptied itself into her lips. Her
eyes were as green as the limpid floor of ocean-hollowed caverns. Across
her ivory-white shoulder swept a curving blue vein, thin as an infant’s
lash, and on the rise of her right breast were three little moles, each
marking the corner of a tiny triangle.
Mr. Simms called for her promptly, and when they arrived at the
club-rooms they strolled about looking at the pictures and the people
until the exercises began. There were many literary and artistic
celebrities present, all of whom looked much like ordinary and well-bred
people; but to Hermia there was a luminous halo about each. It was her
first experience in the literary world, and she felt as if she had
entered the atmosphere of a dream. It was one of her few satisfactory
experiments. She was much stared at; everybody knew her by reputation if
not by sight; and a number of men asked to be presented.
Among them was Mr. Overton, the editor who had published her poem in his
magazine. She changed color as he came up, but his manner at once
assured her that she was not recognized: he would have vindicated his
fraternity, indeed, had he been keen-sighted enough to recognize in this
triumphant, radiant creature the plain, ill-dressed, stooping girl with
whom he had talked for half an hour at the close of a winter’s day two
years before. Hermia, of course, no longer wrote; life offered her too
many other distractions.
Mr. Overton suggested that they should go into the lecture-room and
secure good seats. He found them chairs and took one beside Hermia.
“Ogden Cryder gives the address to-night,” he said, after he had
satisfied Hermia’s curiosity in regard to the names of a half-dozen
people. “Do you like his books?”
“Fairly. Do you?”
Mr. Overton laughed. “That is rather a direct question, considering that
I print one of his stories about every six months.”
“Oh, you might not like them. You might publish them out of tender
regard for the demands of your readers.”
Mr. Overton had a characteristic American face, thin, nervous, shrewd,
pleasant. He gave Hermia a smile of unwonted frankness. “I will confide
to you, Miss Suydam, that such is the case with about two-thirds I
publish. I thank Heaven that I do not have to read a magazine as well as
publish it. I have an associate editor who sits with his finger on the
pulse of the public, and relieves me of much vexation of spirit.”
“But tell me what you think of Mr. Cryder.”
Mr. Overton raised his eyebrows. “He is indisputably the best dialect
writer we have, and he is a charming exponent of surface passions.
Whether he would drown if he plunged below the surface is a question; at
all events he might become improper, and morality pays in this magazine
era. There he is now; no doubt we shall have a delightful address.”
Hermia turned her head quickly, but Cryder had taken a chair at the foot
of the rostrum, and there were many heads between her own and his. A
moment later, however, the president of the club made the preliminary
remarks, and then gave place to Cryder.
Hermia watched him breathlessly as he ascended the steps and stood
beside the table, waiting for the hearty welcome to subside. Was it _he_
at last? He was certainly good to look at; she had never seen more
charming eyes—clear golden-hazel, half melancholy, wholly intelligent.
His small, well-shaped head was thickly covered with short, soft,
gold-brown hair; the delicate, aristocratic features were as finely cut
as those on an intaglio; and the thin, curved lips were shaded by a
small mustache. His figure, tall, light, graceful, had a certain
vibrating activity even in repose. His hand was white and tapering as
that of a woman, and his auditors were given opportunity to appreciate
it.
The subject of the lecture was “The Dialect Element in American
Fiction,” and Mr. Cryder did it justice in a clear, ringing, musical
voice. He very properly remarked that it was the proud boast of America
that no other country, ancient or modern, could present such an array of
famous dialects, consequently no other country had ever had such
infinite variety in her literature. He would say nothing of the several
hundred dialects as yet awaiting the Columbus-pen of genius; he would
merely speak of those nine already discovered and immortalized—the
Negro, the Yankee, the Southern, the Creole, the Tennessee Mountain, the
Cow-boy, the Bret Harte Miner, the Hoosier, and the Chinese. Each of
these, although springing from one bosom, namely, that of the Great
American People, had as distinct an individuality as if the product of
an isolated planet. Such a feature was unique in the history of any
country or any time. The various _patois_ of the French, the
provincialisms of the English, the barbarisms of the Scotch, the brogue
of the Irish, were but so many bad and inconsequent variations upon an
original theme. Reflect, therefore, upon the immense importance of
photographing and preserving American neologies for the benefit of
posterity! In the course of time would inevitably come the homogeneity
of the human race; the negro, for instance, would pervade every corner
of the civilized earth, and his identity become hopelessly entangled
with that of his equally de-individualized blonde brother. His dialect
would be a forgotten art! Contemporaries would have no knowledge of it
save through the painstaking artists of their ancestors’ time. Reflect,
then, upon the heavy responsibility which lay upon the shoulders of the
author of to-day. Picture what must be the condition of his conscience
at the end of his record if he has failed to do his duty by the negro
dialect! Picture the reproaches of future generations if they should be
left ignorant of the unique vernacular of their grandfathers’ serfs!
(Applause.) He did not lay such stress upon the superior importance of
the negro dialect because he had enrolled himself among its faulty
exponents; he had taken his place in its ranks _because_ of that
superior importance. Nevertheless, he was by no means blind to the
virtues of those other eight delightful strings in the Great National
Instrument. No one enjoyed more than he the liquid and incomprehensible
softness of the Creole, the penetrating, nasonic strength of the Yankee,
the delicious independence of the Hoosier, the pine-sweet, redwood-calm
transcriptions of the prose-laureate of the West. He loved them all, and
he gloried in the literary monument of which they were the separate
stones.
To do Mr. Cryder’s oration justice would be a feat which no modest
novelist would attempt. Those who would read that memorable speech in
its entirety and its purity will find it in the archives of the club, in
the sixth volume of the Sessional Records. After reading brief and pithy
extracts from the nine most famous dialect stories of the day, he sat
down with the applause of approval in his ears.
Hermia turned to Mr. Overton: “He was guying, I suppose,” she said.
Mr. Overton stared. “Certainly not,” he said, severely. “The value of
precisely rendered dialect is incalculable.”
Hermia, quite snubbed, said no more; and in a few moments, Mr. Duncan, a
shrewd, humorous-looking little Scotchman, rose to reply.
“I have nothing whatever to say in contradiction to Mr. Cryder’s remarks
regarding the value of dialect,” he said, looking about with a bland,
deprecating smile. “On the contrary, I have yet another word to add in
its favor. I hold that the value of dialect to the American author has
never yet been estimated. When a story has a lot of dialect, you never
discover that it hasn’t anything else. (Laughter, and a surprised frown
from Cryder.) Furthermore, as America is too young to have an
imagination, the dialect is an admirable and original substitute for
plot and situations.” (Laughter and mutterings; also a scowl from
Cryder.) “Again, there is nothing so difficult as the handling of modern
English: it is a far speedier and easier road to fame to manipulate a
dialect familiar to only an insignificant section of our glorious sixty
millions.” (“Hear, hear!” from a pair of feminine lips, and many
sympathetic glances at Cryder’s flashing eyes.) “Yet again, the common
fault found with our (I wish it understood that I speak always from the
standpoint of the country which I have adopted)—with our writers is
lack of passion. Now, nobody can be expected to be passionate when
groaning in the iron stays of dialect. Dialect is bit and curb to the
emotions, and it is only an American who is sharp enough to perceive the
fact and make the most of it. What is more, pathos sounds much better in
dialect than in cold, bald English, just as impropriety sounds better in
French, and love-making in Spanish. Contrast, for instance, the relative
pathos of such sentences as these—the throbbing sadness of the one, the
harsh bathos of the other: ‘I done lubbed you, Sally!’ ‘I loved you,
Maria.’” (Laughter from one side of the house; ominous silence from the
other.) “Truly, ’tis in the setting the jewel shines. I would like to
say, in conclusion,” he went on, imperturbably, “that Mr. Cryder, in his
enumeration of American neologics has omitted one as important and
distinctive as any in his category, namely, that of fashionable society.
In the virility, the variety, and the amplitude of her slang, America is
England’s most formidable rival.”
He left the platform amidst limited applause, and then Mr. Cryder’s
pent-up wrath burst forth, and he denounced in scathing terms and
stinging epigrams the foreigner who had proved himself incapable of
appreciating one of his country’s most remarkable developments, and
attempted to satirize it from his petty point of view.
The auditors were relieved when the exercises were over and the club’s
disruption postponed, and, betaking themselves to the supper-room,
dismissed both lecture and reply from their minds.
Hermia was standing by one of the tables talking to three or four men,
when Mr. Simms brought up Cryder and introduced him. Cryder looked
absent and somewhat annoyed. He was evidently not in a mood to be
impressed by feminine loveliness. At the end of a few moments Hermia
wisely let him go, although with a renewed sense of the general flatness
of life. At the same time she was somewhat amused, and sensible enough
to know that it could not have been otherwise.
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