BOOKS FOR HOLIDAYS IN THE OPEN
I am sometimes asked what books I advise men or women to take on
holidays in the open. With the reservation of long trips, where bulk is
of prime consequence, I can only answer: The same books one would read
at home. Such an answer generally invites the further question as to
what books I read when at home. To this question I am afraid my answer
cannot be so instructive as it ought to be, for I have never followed
any plan in reading which would apply to all persons under all
circumstances; and indeed it seems to me that no plan can be laid down
that will be generally applicable. If a man is not fond of books, to him
reading of any kind will be drudgery. I most sincerely commiserate such
a person, but I do not know how to help him. If a man or a woman is fond
of books he or she will naturally seek the books that the mind and soul
demand. Suggestions of a possibly helpful character can be made by
outsiders, but only suggestions; and they will probably be helpful
about in proportion to the outsider's knowledge of the mind and soul of
the person to be helped.
Of course, if any one finds that he never reads serious literature, if
all his reading is frothy and trashy, he would do well to try to train
himself to like books that the general agreement of cultivated and
sound-thinking persons has placed among the classics. It is as
discreditable to the mind to be unfit for sustained mental effort as it
is to the body of a young man to be unfit for sustained physical effort.
Let man or woman, young man or girl, read some good author, say Gibbon
or Macaulay, until sustained mental effort brings power to enjoy the
books worth enjoying. When this has been achieved the man can soon trust
himself to pick out for himself the particular good books which appeal
to him.
The equation of personal taste is as powerful in reading as in eating;
and within certain broad limits the matter is merely one of individual
preference, having nothing to do with the quality either of the book or
of the reader's mind. I like apples, pears, oranges, pineapples, and
peaches. I dislike bananas, alligator-pears, and prunes. The first fact
is certainly not to my credit, although it is to my advantage; and the
second at least does not show moral turpitude. At times in the tropics I
have been exceedingly sorry I could not learn to like bananas, and on
round-ups, in the cow country in the old days, it was even more
unfortunate not to like prunes; but I simply could not make myself like
either, and that was all there was to it.
In the same way I read over and over again "Guy Mannering," "The
Antiquary," "Pendennis," "Vanity Fair," "Our Mutual Friend," and the
"Pickwick Papers"; whereas I make heavy weather of most parts of the
"Fortunes of Nigel," "Esmond," and the "Old Curiosity Shop"--to mention
only books I have tried to read during the last month. I have no
question that the latter three books are as good as the first six;
doubtless for some people they are better; but I do not like them, any
more than I like prunes or bananas.
In the same way I read and reread "Macbeth" and "Othello"; but not "King
Lear" nor "Hamlet." I know perfectly well that the latter are as
wonderful as the former--I wouldn't venture to admit my shortcomings
regarding them if I couldn't proudly express my appreciation of the
other two! But at my age I might as well own up, at least to myself, to
my limitations, and read the books I thoroughly enjoy.
But this does not mean permitting oneself to like what is vicious or
even simply worthless. If any man finds that he cares to read "Bel Ami,"
he will do well to keep a watch on the reflex centres of his moral
nature, and to brace himself with a course of Eugene Brieux or Henry
Bordeaux. If he does not care for "Anna Karenina," "War and Peace,"
"Sebastopol," and "The Cossacks" he misses much; but if he cares for the
"Kreutzer Sonata" he had better make up his mind that for pathological
reasons he will be wise thereafter to avoid Tolstoy entirely. Tolstoy is
an interesting and stimulating writer, but an exceedingly unsafe moral
adviser.
It is clear that the reading of vicious books for pleasure should be
eliminated. It is no less clear that trivial and vulgar books do more
damage than can possibly be offset by any entertainment they yield.
There remain enormous masses of books, of which no one man can read more
than a limited number, and among which each reader should choose those
which meet his own particular needs. There is no such thing as a list of
"the hundred best books," or the "best five-foot library."
Dozens of series of excellent books, one hundred to each series, can be
named, all of reasonably equal merit and each better for many readers
than any of the others; and probably not more than half a dozen books
would appear in all these lists. As for a "five-foot library," scores
can readily be devised, each of which at some given time, for some given
man, under certain conditions, will be best. But to attempt to create
such a library that shall be of universal value is foreordained to
futility.
Within broad limits, therefore, the reader's personal and individual
taste must be the guiding factor. I like hunting books and books of
exploration and adventure. I do not ask any one else to like them. I
distinctly do not hold my own preferences as anything whatever but
individual preferences; and this chapter is to be accepted as
confessional rather than didactic. With this understanding I admit a
liking for novels where something happens; and even among these novels I
can neither explain nor justify why I like some and do not like others;
why, among the novels of Sienkiewicz, I cannot stand "Quo Vadis," and
never tire of "With Fire and Sword," "Pan Michael," the "Deluge" and the
"Knights of the Cross."
Of course, I know that the best critics scorn the demand among novel
readers for "the happy ending." Now, in really great books--in an epic
like Milton's, in dramas like those of Æschylus and Sophocles--I am
entirely willing to accept and even demand tragedy, and also in some
poetry that cannot be called great, but not in good, readable novels, of
sufficient length to enable me to get interested in the hero and
heroine!
There is enough of horror and grimness and sordid squalor in real life
with which an active man has to grapple; and when I turn to the world of
literature--of books considered as books, and not as instruments of my
profession--I do not care to study suffering unless for some sufficient
purpose. It is only a very exceptional novel which I will read if He
does not marry Her; and even in exceptional novels I much prefer this
consummation. I am not defending my attitude. I am merely stating it.
Therefore it would be quite useless for me to try to explain why I read
certain books. As to how and when, my answers must be only less vague. I
almost always read a good deal in the evening; and if the rest of the
evening is occupied I can at least get half an hour before going to bed.
But all kinds of odd moments turn up during even a busy day, in which it
is possible to enjoy a book; and then there are rainy afternoons in the
country in autumn, and stormy days in winter, when one's work outdoors
is finished and after wet clothes have been changed for dry, the
rocking-chair in front of the open wood-fire simply demands an
accompanying book.
Railway and steamboat journeys were, of course, predestined through the
ages as aids to the enjoyment of reading. I have always taken books with
me when on hunting and exploring trips. In such cases the literature
should be reasonably heavy, in order that it may last. You can under
these conditions read Herbert Spencer, for example, or the writings of
Turgot, or a German study of the Mongols, or even a German edition of
Aristophanes, with erudite explanations of the jokes, as you never would
if surrounded by less formidable authors in your own library; and when
you do reach the journey's end you grasp with eager appetite at old
magazines, or at the lightest of literature.
Then, if one is worried by all kinds of men and events--during critical
periods in administrative office, or at national conventions, or during
congressional investigations, or in hard-fought political campaigns--it
is the greatest relief and unalloyed delight to take up some really
good, some really enthralling book--Tacitus, Thucydides, Herodotus,
Polybius, or Goethe, Keats, Gray, or Lowell--and lose all memory of
everything grimy, and of the baseness that must be parried or conquered.
Like every one else, I am apt to read in streaks. If I get interested in
any subject I read different books connected with it, and probably also
read books on subjects suggested by it. Having read Carlyle's "Frederick
the Great"--with its splendid description of the battles, and of the
unyielding courage and thrifty resourcefulness of the iron-tempered
King; and with its screaming deification of able brutality in the name
of morality, and its practise of the suppression and falsification of
the truth under the pretense of preaching veracity--I turned to
Macaulay's essay on this subject, and found that the historian whom it
has been the fashion of the intellectuals to patronize or deride showed
a much sounder philosophy, and an infinitely greater appreciation of and
devotion to truth than was shown by the loquacious apostle of the
doctrine of reticence.
Then I took up Waddington's "Guerre de Sept Ans"; then I read all I
could about Gustavus Adolphus; and, gradually dropping everything but
the military side, I got hold of quaint little old histories of Eugene
of Savoy and Turenne. In similar fashion my study of and delight in
Mahan sent me further afield, to read queer old volumes about De Ruyter
and the daring warrior-merchants of the Hansa, and to study, as well as
I could, the feats of Suffren and Tegethoff. I did not need to study
Farragut.
Mahaffy's books started me to reread--in translation, alas!--the
post-Athenian Greek authors. After Ferrero I did the same thing as
regards the Latin authors, and then industriously read all kinds of
modern writers on the same period, finishing with Oman's capital essay
on "Seven Roman Statesmen." Gilbert Murray brought me back from Greek
history to Greek literature, and thence by a natural suggestion to parts
of the Old Testament, to the Nibelungenlied, to the Roland lay and the
_chansons de gestes_, to Beowulf, and finally to the great Japanese
hero-tale, the story of the Forty-Nine Ronins.
I read Burroughs too often to have him suggest anything save himself;
but I am exceedingly glad that Charles Sheldon has arisen to show what a
hunter-naturalist, who adds the ability of the writer to the ability of
the trained observer and outdoor adventurer, can do for our last great
wilderness, Alaska. From Sheldon I turned to Stewart Edward White, and
then began to wander afar, with Herbert Ward's "Voice from the Congo,"
and Mary Kingsley's writings, and Hudson's "El Ombu," and Cunningham
Grahame's sketches of South America. A re-reading of _The Federalist_
led me to Burke, to Trevelyan's history of Fox and of our own
Revolution, to Lecky; and finally by way of Malthus and Adam Smith and
Lord Acton and Bagehot to my own contemporaries, to Ross and George
Alger.
Even in pure literature, having nothing to do with history, philosophy,
sociology, or economy, one book will often suggest another, so that one
finds one has unconsciously followed a regular course of reading. Once I
travelled steadily from Montaigne through Addison, Swift, Steele, Lamb,
Irving, and Lowell to Crothers and Kenneth Grahame--and if it be
objected that some of these _could_ not have suggested the others I can
only answer that they _did_ suggest them.
I suppose that every one passes through periods during which he reads no
poetry; and some people, of whom I am one, also pass through periods
during which they voraciously devour poets of widely different kinds.
Now it will be Horace and Pope; now Schiller, Scott, Longfellow,
Körner; now Bret Harte or Kipling; now Shelley or Herrick or Tennyson;
now Poe and Coleridge; and again Emerson or Browning or Whitman.
Sometimes one wishes to read for the sake of contrast. To me Owen Wister
is the writer I wish when I am hungry with the memories of lonely
mountains, of vast sunny plains with seas of wind-rippled grass, of
springing wild creatures, and lithe, sun-tanned men who ride with utter
ease on ungroomed, half-broken horses. But when I lived much in cow
camps I often carried a volume of Swinburne, as a kind of antiseptic to
alkali dust, tepid, muddy water, frying-pan bread, sow-belly bacon, and
the too-infrequent washing of sweat-drenched clothing.
Fathers and mothers who are wise can train their children first to
practise, and soon to like, the sustained mental application necessary
to enjoy good books. They will do well also to give each boy or girl the
mastery of at least some one foreign language, so that at least one
other great literature, in addition to our own noble English literature,
shall be open to him or her. Modern languages are taught so easily and
readily that whoever really desires to learn one of them can soon
achieve sufficient command of it to read ordinary books with reasonable
ease; and then it is a mere matter of practise for any one to become
able thoroughly to enjoy the beauty and wisdom which knowledge of the
new tongue brings.
Now and then one's soul thirsts for laughter. I cannot imagine any one's
taking a course in humorous writers, but just as little can I sympathize
with the man who does not enjoy them at times--from Sydney Smith to John
Phoenix and Artemus Ward, and from these to Stephen Leacock. Mark
Twain at his best stands a little apart, almost as much so as Joel
Chandler Harris. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of course, is the laughing
philosopher, the humorist at his very highest, even if we use the word
"humor" only in its most modern and narrow sense.
A man with a real fondness for books of various kinds will find that his
varying moods determine which of these books he at the moment needs. On
the afternoon when Stevenson represents the luxury of enjoyment it may
safely be assumed that Gibbon will not. The mood that is met by Napier's
"Peninsular War," or Marbot's memoirs, will certainly not be met by
Hawthorne or Jane Austen. Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe," Motley's
histories of the Dutch Republic, will hardly fill the soul on a day when
one turns naturally to the "Heimskringla"; and there is a sense of
disconnection if after the "Heimskringla" one takes up the "Oxford Book
of French Verse."
Another matter which within certain rather wide limits each reader must
settle for himself is the dividing line between (1) not knowing anything
about current books, and (2) swamping one's soul in the sea of vapidity
which overwhelms him who reads _only_ "the last new books." To me the
heading employed by some reviewers when they speak of "books of the
week" comprehensively damns both the books themselves and the reviewer
who is willing to notice them. I would much rather see the heading
"books of the year before last." A book of the year before last which is
still worth noticing would probably be worth reading; but one only
entitled to be called a book of the week had better be tossed into the
wastebasket at once. Still, there are plenty of new books which are not
of permanent value but which nevertheless are worth more or less careful
reading; partly because it is well to know something of what especially
interests the mass of our fellows, and partly because these books,
although of ephemeral worth, may really set forth something genuine in a
fashion which for the moment stirs the hearts of all of us.
Books of more permanent value may, because of the very fact that they
possess literary interest, also yield consolation of a non-literary
kind. If any executive grows exasperated over the shortcomings of the
legislative body with which he deals, let him study Macaulay's account
of the way William was treated by his parliaments as soon as the latter
found that, thanks to his efforts, they were no longer in immediate
danger from foreign foes; it is illuminating. If any man feels too
gloomy about the degeneracy of our people from the standards of their
forefathers, let him read "Martin Chuzzlewit"; it will be consoling.
If the attitude of this nation toward foreign affairs and military
preparedness at the present day seems disheartening, a study of the
first fifteen years of the nineteenth century will at any rate give
us whatever comfort we can extract from the fact that our
great-grandfathers were no less foolish than we are.
Nor need any one confine himself solely to the affairs of the United
States. If he becomes tempted to idealize the past, if sentimentalists
seek to persuade him that the "ages of faith," the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, for instance, were better than our own, let him
read any trustworthy book on the subject--Lea's "History of the
Inquisition," for instance, or Coulton's abridgment of Salimbene's
memoirs. He will be undeceived and will be devoutly thankful that his
lot has been cast in the present age, in spite of all its faults.
It would be hopeless to try to enumerate all the books I read, or even
all the kinds. The foregoing is a very imperfect answer to a question
which admits of only such an answer.