COBB'S FOURTH DIMENSION
=i=
As a three-dimensional writer, Irvin S. Cobb has long been among the
American literary heavy-weights. Now that he has acquired a fourth
dimension, the time has come for a new measurement of his excellences as
an author.
Among those excellences I know a man (responsible for the manufacture of
Doran books) who holds that Cobb is the greatest living American author.
The reason for this is severely logical, to wit: Irvin Cobb always sends
in his copy in a perfect condition. His copy goes to the manufacturer of
books with a correctly written title page, a correctly written copyright
page, the exact wording of the dedication, an accurate table of contents,
and so on, all the way through the manuscript. Moreover, when proofs are
sent to Mr. Cobb, he makes very few changes. He reduces to a minimum the
difficulties of a printer and his changes are always perceptibly changes
for the better.
But I don't suppose that any of this would redound to Cobb's credit in the
eyes of a literary critic.
[Illustration: IRVIN S. COBB]
And to return to the subject of the fourth dimension: My difficulty is to
know in just what direction that fourth dimension lies. Is the fourth
dimension of Cobb as a novelist or as an autobiographer? It puzzles me to
tell inasmuch as I have before me the manuscripts of Mr. Cobb's first
novel, _J. Poindexter, Colored_, and his very first autobiography, a
volume called _Stickfuls_.
The title of _Stickfuls_ will probably not be charged with meaning to
people unfamiliar with newspaper work. Perhaps it is worth while to
explain that in the old days, when type was set by hand, the printer had a
little metal holder called a "stick." When he had set a dozen lines--more
or less--he had a "stickful." Although very little type is now set by
hand, the stick as a measure of space is still in good standing. The
reporter presents himself at the city desk, tells what he has got, and is
told by the city editor, "Write a stickful." Or, "Write two sticks." And
so on.
_Stickfuls_ is not so much the story of Cobb's life as the story of people
he has met and places he has been, told in a series of extremely
interesting chapters--told in a leisurely and delightful fashion of
reminiscence by a natural association of one incident with another and one
person with someone else. For example, Cobb as a newspaper man, covered a
great many trials in court; and one of the chapters of _Stickfuls_ tells
of famous trials he has attended.
=ii=
Now about this novel of Cobb's: Jeff Poindexter will be remembered by all
the readers of Mr. Cobb's short stories as the negro body servant of old
Judge Priest. In _J. Poindexter, Colored_, we have Jeff coming to New
York. Of course, New York seen through the eyes of a genuine Southern
darkey is a New York most of us have never seen. There's nothing like
sampling, so I will let you begin the book:
"My name is J. Poindexter. But the full name is Jefferson Exodus
Poindexter, Colored. But most always in general I has been known as Jeff
for short. The Jefferson part is for a white family which my folks worked
for them one time before I was born, and the Exodus is because my mammy
craved I should be named after somebody out of the Bible. How I comes to
write this is this way:
"It seems like my experiences here in New York is liable to be such that
one of my white gentleman friends he says to me I should take pen in hand
and write them out just the way they happen and at the time they is
happening, or right soon afterwards, whilst the memory of them is clear in
my brain; and then he's see if he can't get them printed somewheres, which
on the top of the other things which I now is, will make me an author with
money coming in steady. He says to me he will fix up the spelling wherever
needed and attend to the punctuating; but all the rest of it will be my
own just like I puts it down. I reads and writes very well but someway I
never learned to puncture. So the places where it is necessary to be
punctual in order to make good sense and keep everything regulation and
make the talk sound natural is his doings and also some of the spelling.
But everything else is mine and I asks credit.
"My coming to New York, in the first place, is sort of a sudden thing
which starts here about a month before the present time. I has been
working for Judge Priest for going on sixteen years and is expecting to go
on working for him as long as we can get along together all right, which
it seems like from appearances that ought to be always. But after he gives
up being circuit judge on account of him getting along so in age he gets
sort of fretful by reasons of him not having much to do any more and most
of his own friends having died off on him. When the State begins going
Republican about once in so often, he says to me, kind of half joking,
he's a great mind to pull up stakes and move off and go live somewheres
else. But pretty soon after that the whole country goes dry and then he
says to me there just naturally ain't no fitten place left for him to go
without he leaves the United States."
It seems that Judge Priest finally succumbed to an invitation to visit
Bermuda, a place where a gentleman can still raise a thirst and satisfy
it. Jeff could not stand the house without the Judge in it; and when an
opportunity came to go to New York, Jeff went.
=iii=
The biographer of Cobb is Robert H. Davis, editor of Munsey's Magazine,
whose authoritative account I take pleasure in reprinting here--the more
so because it appeared some time ago in a booklet which is now out of
print. Mr. Davis's article was first printed in The Sun, New York:
"Let me deal with this individual in a categorical way. Most biographers
prefer to mutilate their canvas with a small daub which purports to be a
sketch of the most significant event in the life of the accused. Around
this it is their custom to paint smaller and less impressive scenes,
blending the whole by placing it in a large gilded frame, which, for
obvious reasons, costs more than the picture--and it is worth more. Pardon
me, therefore, if I creep upon Mr. Cobb from the lower left-hand corner of
the canvas and chase him across the open space as rapidly as possible. It
is not for me to indicate when the big events in his life will occur or to
lay the milestones of the route along which he will travel. I know only
that they are in the future, and that, regardless of any of his
achievements in the past, Irvin Cobb has not yet come into his own.
"The first glimpse I had of him was in a half-tone portrait in the New
York Evening World five years ago. This picture hung pendant-like from a
title which read 'Through Funny Glasses, by Irvin S. Cobb.' It was the
face of a man scarred with uncertainty; an even money proposition that he
had either just emerged from the Commune or was about to enter it. Grief
was written on the brow; more than written, it was emblazoned. The eyes
were heavy with inexpressible sadness. The corners of the mouth were
drooped, heightening the whole effect of incomprehensible depression.
Quickly I turned to the next page among the stock quotations, where I got
my depression in a blanket form. The concentrated Cobb kind was too much
for me.
"A few days later I came suddenly upon the face again. The very
incongruity of its alliance with laughter overwhelmed me, and wonderingly
I read what he had written, not once, but every day, always with the
handicap of that half-tone. If Cobb were an older man, I would go on the
witness stand and swear that the photograph was made when he was
witnessing the Custer Massacre or the passing of Geronimo through the
winter quarters of his enemies. Notwithstanding, he supplied my week's
laughter.
"Digression this:
"After Bret Harte died, many stories were written by San Franciscans who
knew him when he first put in an appearance on the Pacific Coast. One
contemporary described minutely how Bret would come silently up the stairs
of the old Alta office, glide down the dingy hallway through the exchange
room, and seat himself at the now historic desk. It took Bret fifteen
minutes to sharpen a lead pencil, one hour for sober reflection, and three
hours to write a one-stick paragraph, after which he would carefully tear
it up, gaze out of the window down the Golden Gate, and go home.
"He repeated this formula the following day, and at the end of the week
succeeded in turning out three or four sticks which he considered fit to
print. In later years, after fame had sought him out and presented him
with a fur-lined overcoat, which I am bound to say Bret knew how to wear,
the files of the Alta were ransacked for the pearls he had dropped in his
youth. A few gems were identified, a very few. Beside this entire printed
collection the New England Primer would have looked like a set of
encyclopedias. Bret worked slowly, methodically, brilliantly, and is an
imperishable figure in American letters.
"Returning to Cobb: He has already written twenty times more than Bret
Harte turned out during his entire career. He has made more people laugh
and written better short stories. He has all of Harte's subtle and
delicate feeling, and will, if he is spared, write better novels about the
people of today than Bret Harte, with all his genius and imagination,
wrote around the Pioneers. I know of no single instance where one man has
shown such fecundity and quality as Irvin Cobb has so far evinced, and it
is my opinion that his complete works at fifty will contain more good
humour, more good short stories, and at least one bigger novel than the
works of any other single contemporaneous figure.
"He was born in Paducah, Kentucky, in June, '76. I have taken occasion to
look into the matter and find that his existence was peculiarly varied. He
belonged to one of those old Southern families-there being no new Southern
families--and passed through the public schools sans incident. At the age
of sixteen he went into the office of The Paducah Daily News as a
reportorial cub.
"He was first drawn to daily journalism because he yearned to be an
illustrator. Indeed, he went so far as to write local humorous stories,
illustrating them himself. The pictures must have been pretty bad,
although they served to keep people from saying that his literature was
the worst thing in the paper.
"Resisting all efforts of the editor, the stockholders and the subscribers
of The Paducah Daily News, he remained barricaded behind his desk until
his nineteenth year, when he was crowned with a two-dollar raise and a
secondary caption under his picture which read 'The Youngest Managing
Editor of a Daily Paper in the United States.'
"If Cobb was consulted in the matter of this review, he would like to have
these preliminaries expunged from his biography. But the public is
entitled to the details.
"It is also true that he stacked up more libel suits than a newspaper of
limited capital with a staff of local attorneys could handle before he
moved to Louisville, where, for three years, he was staff correspondent of
The Evening Post. It was here that Cobb discovered how far a humorist
could go without being invited to step out at 6 a.m. and rehearse 'The
Rivals' with real horse-pistols.
"The first sobering episode in his life occurred when the Goebel murder
echoed out of Louisville. He reported this historic assassination and
covered the subsequent trials in the Georgetown court house. Doubtless the
seeds of tragedy, which mark some of his present work, were sown here.
Those who are familiar with his writings know that occasionally he sets
his cap and bells aside and dips his pen into the very darkness of life.
We find it particularly in three of his short stories entitled 'An
Occurrence Up a Side Street,' 'The Belled Buzzard,' and 'Fishhead.'
Nothing better can be found in Edgar Allan Poe's collected works. One is
impressed not only with the beauty and simplicity of his prose, but with
the tremendous power of his tragic conceptions and his art in dealing with
terror. There appears to be no phase of human emotion beyond his pen.
Without an effort he rises from the level of actualities to the high plane
of boundless imagination, invoking laughter or tears at will.
"After his Louisville experience Cobb married and returned to Paducah to
be managing editor of The Democrat. Either Paducah or The Democrat got on
his nerves and, after a comparison of the Paducah school of journalism
with the metropolitan brand, he turned his face (see Evening World
half-tone) in the direction of New York, buoyed up by the illusion that he
was needed there along with other reforms.
"He arrived at the gates of Manhattan full of hope, and visited every
newspaper office in New York without receiving encouragement to call
again. Being resourceful he retired to his suite of hall bedrooms on 57th
Street West and wrote a personal note to every city editor in New York,
setting forth in each instance the magnificent intellectual proportions of
the epistolographer. The next morning, by mail, Cobb had offers for a job
from five of them. He selected The Evening Sun.
"At about that time the Portsmouth Peace Conference convened, and The Sun
sent the Paducah party to help cover the proceedings. Upon arriving at
Portsmouth, Cobb cast his experienced eye over the situation, discovered
that the story was already well covered by a large coterie of competent,
serious-minded young men, and went into action to write a few columns
daily on subjects having no bearing whatsoever on the conference. These
stories were written in the ebullition of youth, inspired by the ecstasy
which rises from the possession of a steady job; a perfect deluge from the
well springs of spontaneity. There wasn't a single fact in the entire
series, and yet The Sun syndicated these stories throughout the United
States. All they possessed was I-N-D-I-V-I-D-U-A-L-I-T-Y.
"At the end of three weeks, Cobb returned to New York, to find that he
could have a job on any newspaper in it. This brings him to The Evening
World, the half-tone engraving, which was the first glimpse I had of him,
and the dawn of his subsequent triumphs. For four years he supplied the
evening edition and The Sunday World with a comic feature, to say nothing
of a comic opera, written to order in five days. The absence of a
guillotine in New York State accounts for his escape for this latter
offence. Nevertheless, in all else his standard of excellence ascended. He
reported the Thaw trial in long-hand, writing nearly 600,000 words of
testimony and observation, establishing a new style for reporting trials,
and gave further evidence of his power. That performance will stand out in
the annals of American journalism as one of the really big reportorial
achievements.
"At about this juncture in his career Cobb opened a door to the past,
reached in and took out some of the recollections of his youth. These he
converted into 'The Escape of Mr. Trimm,' his first short fiction story.
It appeared in The Saturday Evening Post. The court scene was so
absolutely true to life, so minutely perfect in its atmosphere, that a
Supreme Court judge signed an unsolicited and voluntary note for
publication, in which he said that Mr. Cobb had reported with marvelous
accuracy and fulness a murder trial at which His Honour had presided.
"Gelett Burgess, in a lecture at Columbia College, said that Cobb was one
of the ten great American humourists. Cobb ought to demand a recount.
There are not ten humourists in the world, although Cobb is one of them.
The extraordinary thing about Cobb is that he can turn a burst of laughter
into a funeral oration, a snicker into a shudder and a smile into a crime.
He writes in octaves, striking instinctively all the chords of humour,
tragedy, pathos and romance with either hand. Observe this man in his
thirty-ninth year, possessing gifts the limitations of which even he
himself has not yet recognised.
"In appraising a genius, we must consider the man's highest achievement,
and in comparing him with others the verdict must be reached only upon
consideration of his best work. For scintillant wit and unflagging good
humour, read his essays on the Teeth, the Hair and the Stomach. If you
desire a perfect blending of all that is essential to a short story, read
'The Escape of Mr. Trimm' or 'Words and Music.' If you are in search of
pure, unadulterated, boundless terror, the gruesome quality, the blackness
of despair and the fear of death in the human conscience, 'Fishhead,' 'The
Belled Buzzard' or 'An Occurrence Up a Side Street' will enthrall you.
"Thus in Irvin Cobb we find Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Edgar Allan Poe at
their best. Reckon with these potentialities in the future. Speculate, if
you will, upon the sort of a novel that is bound, some day, to come from
his pen. There seem to be no pinnacles along the horizon of the literary
future that are beyond him. If he uses his pen for an Alpine stock, the
Matterhorn is his.
"There are critics and reviewers who do not entirely agree with me
concerning Cobb. But they will.
"As I write these lines I recall a conversation I had with Irvin Cobb on
the hurricane deck of a Fifth Avenue 'bus one bleak November afternoon,
1911. We had met at the funeral of Joseph Pulitzer, in whose employ we had
served in the past.
"Cobb was in a reflective mood, chilled to the marrow, and not
particularly communicative.
"At the junction of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street we were held up
by congested traffic. After a little manoeuvring on the part of a mounted
policeman, the Fifth Avenue tide flowed through and onward again.
"'It reminds me of a river,' said Cobb, 'into which all humanity is drawn.
Some of these people think because they are walking up-stream they are
getting out of it. But they never escape. The current is at work on them.
Some day they will get tired and go down again, and finally pass out to
sea. It is the same with real rivers. They do not flow uphill.'
"He lapsed into silence.
"'What's on your mind?' I inquired.
"'Nothing in particular,' he said, scanning the banks of the great
municipal stream, 'except that I intend to write a novel some day about a
boy born at the headwaters. Gradually he floats down through the
tributaries, across the valleys, swings into the main stream, and docks
finally at one of the cities on its banks. This particular youth was a
great success--in the beginning. Every door was open to him. He had
position, brains, and popularity to boot. He married brilliantly. And then
The Past, a trivial, unimportant Detail, lifted its head and barked at
him. He was too sensitive to bark back. Thereupon it bit him and he
collapsed.'
"Again Cobb ceased talking. For some reason--indefinable--I respected his
silence. Two blocks further down he took up the thread of his story
again:
"'--and one evening, just about sundown, a river hand, sitting on a
stringpiece of a dock, saw a derby hat bobbing in the muddy Mississippi,
floating unsteadily but surely into the Gulf of Mexico.'
"As is his habit, Cobb tugged at his lower lip.
"'What are you going to call this novel?'
"'I don't know. What do you think?'
"'Why not "The River"?'
"'Very well, I'll call it "The River."'
"He scrambled from his seat. 'I'm docking at Twenty-seventh Street.
Good-bye. Keep your hat out of the water.'
"Laboriously he made his way down the winding staircase from the upper
deck, dropped flat-footed on the asphalt pavement, turned his collar up,
leaned into the gust of wind from the South, and swung into the
cross-current of another stream.
"I doubt if he has any intention of calling his story 'The River.' But I
am sure the last chapter will contain something about an unhappy wretch
who wore a derby hat at the moment he walked hand in hand with his
miserable Past into the Father of Waters.
"For those who wish to know something of his personal side, I can do no
better than to record his remarks to a stranger, who, in my presence,
asked Irvin Cobb, without knowing to whom he was speaking, what kind of a
person Cobb was.
"'Well, to be perfectly frank with you,' replied the Paducah prodigy,
'Cobb is related to my wife by marriage, and if you don't object to a
brief sketch, with all the technicalities eliminated, I should say in
appearance he is rather bulky, standing six feet high, not especially
beautiful, a light roan in colour, with a black mane. His figure is
undecided, but might be called bunchy in places. He belongs to several
clubs, including The Yonkers Pressing Club and The Park Hill Democratic
Marching Club, and has always, like his father, who was a Confederate
soldier, voted the Democratic ticket. He has had one wife and one child
and still has them. In religion he is an Innocent Bystander.'
"Could anything be fuller than this?"
=iv=
It was Mr. Davis, also, who in the New York Herald of April 23, 1922, made
public the evidence for the following box score:
1st 2nd
Best Writer of Humour Cobb ----
Best All-Round Reporter Cobb ----
Best Local Colourist Cobb ----
Best in Tales of Horror Cobb ----
Best Writer of Negro Stories ---- Cobb
Best Writer of Light Tarkington Cobb and
Humorous Fiction Harry Leon Wilson
Best Teller of Anecdotes Cobb Cobb
"Not long ago a group of ten literary men--editors, critics, readers and
writers--were dining together. Discussion arose as to the respective and
comparative merits of contemporaneous popular writers. It was decided that
each man present should set down upon a slip of paper his first, second
and third choices in various specified but widely diversified fields of
literary endeavour, and that then the results should be compared. Admirers
of Cobb's work will derive a peculiar satisfaction from the outcome. It
was found that as a writer of humour he had won first place; that as an
all round reporter he had first place; that as a handler of local colour
in the qualified sense of a power of apt, swiftly-done, journalistic
description, he had first place. He also had first place as a writer of
horror yarns. He won second place as a writer of darkey stories. He tied
with Harry Leon Wilson for second place as a writer of light humorous
fiction, Tarkington being given first place in this category. As a teller
of anecdotes he won by acclamation over all contenders. Altogether his
name appeared on eight of the ten lists."
Cobb lives at Ossining, New York. He describes himself as lazy, but
convinces no one. He likes to go fishing. But he has never written any
fish stories.
BOOKS BY IRVIN S. COBB
BACK HOME
COBB'S ANATOMY
THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
COBB'S BILL OF FARE
ROUGHING IT DE LUXE
EUROPE REVISED
PATHS OF GLORY
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
FIBBLE, D.D.
SPEAKING OF OPERATIONS
LOCAL COLOR
SPEAKING OF PRUSSIANS
THOSE TIMES AND THESE
THE GLORY OF THE COMING
THE THUNDERS OF SILENCE
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
FROM PLACE TO PLACE
"OH, WELL, YOU KNOW HOW WOMEN ARE!"
THE ABANDONED FARMERS
SUNDRY ACCOUNTS
A PLEA FOR OLD CAP COLLIER
ONE THIRD OFF
EATING IN TWO OR THREE LANGUAGES
J. POINDEXTER, COLORED
STICKFULS
Plays:
FUNABASHI
BUSYBODY
BACK HOME
SERGEANT BAGBY
GUILTY AS CHARGED
UNDER SENTENCE
SOURCES ON IRVIN S. COBB
Who's Who in America.
Who's Cobb and Why? Booklet published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.
(Out of print).
Article by Robert H. Davis in the book section of THE NEW YORK HERALD
for April 23, 1922.
Robert H. Davis, 280 Broadway, New York.