old locutions like "I guess," and sprinkling their talk with "Sirs," and
"Ma'ams,"--which have since come to be considered as Americanisms,
whereas they are really Elizabethanisms.
The possession of a language that is already consolidated, organized,
enriched with a vast vocabulary, and dignified by literary use, has two
effects. It makes the joyful and unconscious literature of adolescence,
the period of popular ballads and rhymed chronicles, quaint
animal-epics and miracle-plays, impossible. It offers to the literature
of maturity an instrument of expression equal to its needs.
But such a language carries with it discouragements as well as
invitations. It sets a high standard of excellence. It demands courage
and strength to use it in any but an imitative way.
Do not misunderstand me here. The Americans, since that blending of
experience which made them one people, have never felt that the English
language was strange or foreign to them. They did not adopt or borrow
it. It was their own native tongue. They grew up in it. They contributed
to it. It belonged to them. But perhaps they hesitated a little to use
it freely and fearlessly and originally while they were still in a
position of tutelage and dependence. Perhaps they waited for the
consciousness that they were indeed grown up,--a consciousness which did
not fully come until after the War of 1812. Perhaps they needed to feel
the richness of their own experience, the vigour of their own inward
life, before they could enter upon the literary use of that most rich
and vigorous of modern languages.
Another reason why American literature did not develop sooner was the
absorption of the energy of the people in other tasks than writing. They
had to chop down trees, to build houses, to plough prairies. It is one
thing to explore the wilderness, as Chateaubriand did, an elegant
visitor looking for the materials of romance. It is another thing to
live in the wilderness and fight with it for a living. Real pioneers are
sometimes poets at heart. But they seldom write their poetry.
After the Americans had won their security and their daily bread in the
wild country, they had still to make a State, to develop a social order,
to provide themselves with schools and churches, to do all kinds of
things which demand time, and toil, and the sweat of the brow. It was a
busy world. There was more work to be done than there were workmen to do
it. Industry claimed every talent almost as soon as it got into
breeches.
A Franklin, who might have written essays or philosophical treatises in
the manner of Diderot, must run a printing-press, invent stoves, pave
streets, conduct a postal service, raise money for the War of
Independence. A Freneau, who might have written lyrics in the manner of
André Chénier, must become a soldier, a sea-captain, an editor, a
farmer.
Even those talents which were drawn to the intellectual side of life
were absorbed in the efforts which belong to the current discussions of
affairs, the daily debate of the world, rather than to literature. They
disputed, they argued, they exhorted, with a direct aim at practical
results in morals and conduct. They became preachers, orators,
politicians, pamphleteers. They wrote a good deal; but their writing
has the effect of reported speech addressed to an audience. The mass of
sermons, and political papers, and long letters on timely topics, which
America produced in her first two hundred years is considerable. It
contains much more vitality than the imitative essays, poems, and
romances of the same period.
John Dickinson's "Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer," the sermons of
President Witherspoon of Princeton, the papers of Madison, Hamilton, and
Jay in the _Federalist_, are not bad reading, even to-day. They are
virile and significant. They show that the Americans knew how to use the
English language in its eighteenth-century form. But they were produced
to serve a practical purpose. Therefore they lack the final touch of
that art whose primary aim is the pleasure of self-expression in forms
as permanent and as perfect as may be found.
II. The second question which I shall try to answer is this: Why is not
the literature of America, not only in the beginning but also in its
later development, more distinctly American?
The answer is simple: _It is distinctly American_. But unfortunately the
critics who are calling so persistently and looking so eagerly for
"Americanism" in literature, do not recognize it when they see it.
They are looking for something strange, eccentric, radical, and rude.
When a real American like Franklin, or Irving, or Emerson, or
Longfellow, or Lanier, or Howells appears, these critics will not
believe that he is the genuine article. They expect something in the
style of "Buffalo Bill." They imagine the Spirit of America always in a
red shirt, striped trousers, and rawhide boots.
They recognize the Americanism of Washington when he crosses the forest
to Fort Duquesne in his leather blouse and leggings. But when he appears
at Mount Vernon in black velvet and lace ruffles, they say, "This is no
American after all, but a transplanted English squire." They acknowledge
that Francis Parkman is an American when he follows the Oregon trail on
horseback in hunter's dress. But when he sits in the tranquil library of
his West Roxbury home surrounded by its rose gardens, they say, "This is
no American, but a gentleman of Europe in exile."
How often must our critics be reminded that the makers of America were
not redskins nor amiable ruffians, but rather decent folk, with perhaps
an extravagant admiration for order and respectability? When will they
learn that the descendants of these people, when they come to write
books, cannot be expected to show the qualities of barbarians and
iconoclasts? How shall we persuade them to look at American literature
not for the by-product of eccentricity, but for the self-expression of a
sane and civilized people? I doubt whether it will ever be possible to
effect this conversion and enlightenment; for nothing is so strictly
closed against criticism as the average critic's adherence to the point
of view imposed by his own limitations. But it is a pity, in this case,
that the point of view is not within sight of the facts.
There is a story that the English poet Tennyson once said that he was
glad that he had never met Longfellow, because he would not have liked
to see the American poet put his feet upon the table. If the story is
true, it is most laughable. For nothing could be more unlike the
super-refined Longfellow than to put his feet in the wrong place, either
on the table, or in his verse. Yet he was an American of the Americans,
the literary idol of his country.
It seems to me that the literature of America would be more recognizable
if those who consider it from the outside knew more of the real spirit
of the country. If they were not always looking for volcanoes and
earthquakes, they might learn to identify the actual features of the
landscape.
But when I have said this, honesty compels me to go a little further and
admit that the full, complete life of America still lacks an adequate
expression in literature. Perhaps it is too large and variegated in its
outward forms, too simple in its individual types, and too complex in
their combination, ever to find this perfect expression. Certainly we
are still waiting for "the great American Novel."
It may be that we shall have to wait a long time for this comprehensive
and significant book which will compress into a single cup of fiction
all the different qualities of the Spirit of America, all the fermenting
elements that mingle in the vintage of the New World. But in this hope
deferred,--if indeed it be a hope that can be reasonably entertained at
all,--we are in no worse estate than the other complex modern nations.
What English novel gives a perfect picture of all England in the
nineteenth century? Which of the French romances of the last twenty
years expresses the whole spirit of France?
Meantime it is not difficult to find certain partial and local
reflections of the inner and outer life of the real America in the
literature, limited in amount though it be, which has already been
produced in that country. In some of it the local quality of thought or
language is so predominant as to act almost as a barrier to exportation.
But there is a smaller quantity which may fairly be called "good
anywhere"; and to us it is, and ought to be, doubly good because of its
Americanism.
Thus, for example, any reader who understands the tone and character of
life in the Middle States, around New York and Philadelphia, in the
first quarter of the nineteenth century, feels that the ideas and
feelings of the more intelligent people, those who were capable of using
or of appreciating literary forms, are well enough represented in the
writings of the so-called "Knickerbocker School."
Washington Irving, the genial humorist, the delicate and sympathetic
essayist and story-teller of _The Sketch-Book_, was the first veritable
"man of letters" in America. Cooper, the inexhaustible teller-of-tales
in the open air, the lover of brave adventure in the forest and on the
sea, the Homer of the backwoodsman, and the idealist of the noble
savage, was the discoverer of real romance in the New World.
Including other writers of slighter and less spontaneous talent, like
Halleck, Drake, and Paulding, this school was marked by a cheerful and
optimistic view of life, a tone of feeling more sentimental than
impassioned, a friendly interest in humanity rather than an intense
moral enthusiasm, and a flowing, easy style,--the manner of a company of
people living in comfort and good order, people of social habits, good
digestion, and settled opinions, who sought in literature more of
entertainment and relaxation than of inspiration or what the strenuous
reformers call "uplift."
After the days when its fashionable idol was Willis, and its honoured
though slightly cold poet was Bryant, and its neglected and embittered
genius was Edgar Allan Poe, this school, lacking the elements of inward
coherence, passed into a period of decline. It revived again in such
writers as George William Curtis, Donald Mitchell, Bayard Taylor,
Charles Dudley Warner, Frank R. Stockton; and it continues some of its
qualities in the present-day writers whose centre is undoubtedly New
York.
Is it imaginary, or can I really feel some traces, here and there, of
the same influences which affected the "Knickerbocker School" in such
different writers as Mark Twain and William Dean Howells, in spite of
their western origin? Certainly it can be felt in essayists like
Hamilton Mabie and Edward S. Martin and Brander Matthews, in novelists
like Dr. Weir Mitchell and Hopkinson Smith, in poets like Aldrich and
Stedman, and even in the later work of a native lyrist like Richard
Watson Gilder. There is something,--I know not what,--a kind of _urbanum
genus dicendi_, which speaks of the great city in the background and of
a tradition continued. Even in the work of such a cosmopolitan and
relentless novelist as Mrs. Wharton, or of such an independent and
searching critic as Mr. Brownell, my mental palate catches a flavour of
America and a reminiscence of New York; though now indeed there is
little or nothing left of the Knickerbocker optimism and cheerful
sentimentality.
The American school of historians, including such writers as Ticknor,
Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, and Parkman, represents the growing interest
of the people of the New World for the history of the Old, as well as
their desire to know more about their own origin and development.
Motley's _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, Parkman's volumes on the French
settlements in Canada, Sloane's _Life of Napoleon_, and Henry C. Lea's
_History of the Inquisition_ are not only distinguished works of
scholarship, but also eminently readable and interesting expressions of
the mind of a great republic considering important events and
institutions in other countries to which its own history was closely
related. The serious and laborious efforts of Bancroft to produce a
clear and complete _History of the United States_ resulted in a work of
great dignity and value. But much was left for others to do in the way
of exploring the sources of the nation, and in closer study of its
critical epochs. This task has been well continued by such historians as
John Fiske, Henry Adams, James Bach McMaster, John Codman Ropes, James
Ford Rhodes, Justin Winsor, and Sydney G. Fisher.
These are only some of the principal names which may be cited to show
that few countries have better reason than the United States to be proud
of a school of historians whose works are not only well documented, but
also well written, and so entitled to be counted as literature.
The Southern States, before the Civil War and for a little time after,
were not largely represented in American letters. In prose they had a
fluent romancer, Simms, who wrote somewhat in the manner of Cooper, but
with less skill and force; an exquisite artist of the short-story and
the lyric, Poe, who, although he was born in Boston and did most of his
work in Philadelphia and New York, may perhaps be counted
sympathetically with the South; two agreeable story-tellers, John Esten
Cooke and John P. Kennedy; two delicate and charming lyrists, Paul Hayne
and Henry Timrod; and one greatly gifted poet, Sidney Lanier, whose
career was cut short by a premature death.
But the distinctive spirit of the South did not really find an adequate
utterance in early American literature, and it is only of late years
that it is beginning to do so. The fine and memorable stories of George
W. Cable reflect the poesy and romance of the creole life in Louisiana.
James Lane Allen and Thomas Nelson Page express in their prose the
Southern atmosphere and temperament. The poems of Madison Cawein are
full of the bloom and fragrance of Kentucky. Among the women who write,
Alice Hegan Rice, "Charles Egbert Craddock," Ruth McEnery Stuart,
"George Madden Martin," and Mary Johnston may be named as charming
story-tellers of the South. Joel Chandler Harris has made the old negro
folk-tales classic, in his _Uncle Remus_,--a work which belongs, if I
mistake not, to one of the most enduring types of literature.
But beyond a doubt the richest and finest flowering of _belles lettres_
in the United States during the nineteenth century was that which has
been called "the Renaissance of New England." The quickening of moral
and intellectual life which followed the Unitarian movement in theology,
the antislavery agitation in society, and the transcendental
fermentation in philosophy may not have caused, but it certainly
influenced, the development of a group of writers, just before the
middle of the century, who brought a deeper and fuller note into
American poetry and prose.
Hawthorne, profound and lonely genius, dramatist of the inner life,
master of the symbolic story, endowed with the double gift of deep
insight and exquisite art; Emerson, herald of self-reliance and poet of
the intuitions, whose prose and verse flash with gem-like thoughts and
fancies, and whose calm, vigorous accents were potent to awaken and
sustain the intellectual independence of America; Longfellow, the
sweetest and the richest voice of American song, the household poet of
the New World; Whittier, the Quaker bard, whose ballads and lyrics
reflect so perfectly the scenery and the sentiment of New England;
Holmes, genial and pungent wit, native humorist, with a deep spring of
sympathy and a clear vein of poetry in his many-sided personality;
Lowell, generous poet of high and noble emotions, inimitable writer of
dialect verse, penetrating critic and essayist,--these six authors form
a group not yet equalled in the literary history of America.
The factors of strength, and the hidden elements of beauty, in the
Puritan character came to flower and fruit in these men. They were
liberated, enlarged, quickened by the strange flood of poetry,
philosophy, and romantic sentiment which flowed into the somewhat narrow
and sombre enceinte of Yankee thought and life. They found around them a
circle of eager and admiring readers who had felt the same influences.
The circle grew wider and wider as the charm and power of these writers
made itself felt, and as their ideas were diffused. Their work, always
keeping a distinct New England colour, had in it a substance of thought
and feeling, an excellence of form and texture, which gave it a much
broader appeal. Their fame passed from the sectional to the national
stage. In their day Boston was the literary centre of the United States.
And in after days, though the sceptre has passed, the influence of these
men may be traced in almost all American writers, of the East, the West,
or the South, in every field of literature, except perhaps the region
of realistic or romantic fiction.
Here it seems as if the West had taken the lead. Bret Harte, with his
frontier stories, always vivid but not always accurate, was the founder
of a new school, or at least the discoverer of a new mine of material,
in which Frank Norris followed with some powerful work, too soon cut
short by death, and where a number of living men like Owen Wister,
Stewart Edward White, and O. Henry are finding graphic stories to tell.
Hamlin Garland, Booth Tarkington, William Allen White, and Robert
Herrick are vigorous romancers of the Middle West. Winston Churchill
studies politics and people in various regions, while Robert Chambers
explores the social complications of New York; and both write novels
which are full of interest for Americans and count their readers by the
hundred thousand.
In the short-story Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, and Mrs. Deland have
developed characteristic and charming forms of a difficult art. In
poetry George E. Woodberry and William Vaughn Moody have continued the
tradition of Emerson and Lowell in lofty and pregnant verse. Joaquin
Miller has sung the songs of the Sierras, and Edwin Markham the chant of
labour. James Whitcomb Riley has put the very heart of the Middle West
into his familiar poems, humorous and pathetic.
And Walt Whitman, the "democratic bard," the poet who broke all the
poetic traditions? Is it too soon to determine whether his revolution in
literature was a success, whether he was a great initiator or only a
great exception? Perhaps so. But it is not too soon to recognize the
beauty of feeling and form, and the strong Americanism, of his poems on
the death of Lincoln, and the power of some of his descriptive lines,
whether they are verse or rhapsodic prose.
It is evident that such a list of names as I have been trying to give
must necessarily be very imperfect. Many names of substantial value are
omitted. The field is not completely covered. But at least it may serve
to indicate some of the different schools and sources, and to give some
idea of the large literary activity in which various elements and
aspects of the Spirit of America have found and are finding expression.
III. The real value of literature is to be sought in its power to
express and to impress. What relation does it bear to the interpretation
of nature and life in a certain country at a certain time? That is the
question in its historical form. How clearly, how beautifully, how
perfectly, does it give that interpretation in concrete works of art?
That is the question in its purely æsthetic form. What personal
qualities, what traits of human temperament and disposition does it
reveal most characteristically in the spirit of the land? That is the
question in the form which belongs to the study of human nature.
It is in this last form that I wish to put the question, just now, in
order to follow logically the line marked by the general title of these
lectures. The Spirit of America is to be understood not only by the five
elements of character which I have tried to sketch in outline,--the
instinct of self-reliance, the love of fair-play, the energetic will,
the desire of order, the ambition of self-development. It has also
certain temperamental traits; less easy to define, perhaps; certainly
less clearly shown in national and social institutions, but not less
important to an intimate acquaintance with the people.
These temperamental traits are the very things which are most
distinctive in literature. They give it colour and flavour. They are the
things which touch it with personality. In American literature, if you
look at it broadly, I think you will find four of these traits most
clearly revealed,--a strong religious feeling, a sincere love of nature,
a vivid sense of humour, and a deep sentiment of humanity.
(1) It may seem strange to say that a country which does not even name
the Supreme Being in its national constitution, which has no established
form of worship or belief, and whose public schools and universities
are expressly disconnected from any kind of church control, is at the
same time strongly religious, in its temperament. Yet strange as this
seems, it is true of America.
The entire independence of Church and State was the result of a
deliberate conviction, in which the interest of religion was probably
the chief consideration. In the life of the people the Church has been
not less, but more, potent than in most other countries. Professor
Wendell was perfectly right in the lectures which he delivered in Paris
four years ago, when he laid so much emphasis upon the influence of
religion in determining the course of thought and the character of
literature in America. Professor Münsterberg is thoroughly correct when
he says in his excellent book _The Americans_, "The entire American
people are in fact profoundly religious, and have been, from the day
when the Pilgrim Fathers landed, down to the present moment."
The proof of this is not to be seen merely in outward observance, though
I suppose there is hardly any other country, except Scotland, in which
there is so much church-going, Sabbath-keeping, and Bible-reading. It is
estimated that less than fifteen of the eighty millions of total
population are entirely out of touch with any church. But all this might
be rather superficial, formal, conventional. It might be only a
hypocritical cover for practical infidelity. And sometimes when one
reads the "yellow journals" with their flaming exposures of social
immorality, industrial dishonesty, and political corruption, one is
tempted to think that it may be so.
Yet a broader, deeper, saner view,--a steady look into the real life of
the typical American home, the normal American community,--reveals the
fact that the black spots are on the surface and not in the heart of the
country.
The heart of the people at large is still old-fashioned in its adherence
to the idea that every man is responsible to a higher moral and
spiritual power,--that duty is more than pleasure,--that life cannot be
translated in terms of the five senses, and that the attempt to do so
lowers and degrades the man who makes it,--that religion alone can give
an adequate interpretation of life, and that morality alone can make it
worthy of respect and admiration. This is the characteristic American
way of looking at the complicated and interesting business of living
which we men and women have upon our hands.