Mr. Howells has written a long series of poems, novels, sketches, stories,
and essays, and has been perhaps the most continuous worker in the literary
art among American writers. He was born at Martin's Perry, Belmont County,
Ohio, March 1, 1837, and the experiences of his early life have been
delightfully told by himself in _A Boy's Town_, _My Year in a Log Cabin_,
and _My Literary Passions_. These books, which seem like pastimes in the
midst of Howells's serious work, are likely to live long, not only as
playful autobiographic records, but as vivid pictures of life in the middle
west in the middle of the nineteenth century. The boy lived in a home where
frugality was the law of economy, but where high ideals of noble living
were cheerfully maintained, and the very occupations of the household
tended to stimulate literary activity. He read voraciously and with an
instinctive scent for what was great and permanent in literature, and
in his father's printing-office learned to set type, and soon to make
contributions to the local journals. He went to the state Capitol to report
the proceedings of the legislature, and before he was twenty-two had become
news editor of the _State Journal_ of Columbus, Ohio.
But at the same time he had given clear intimations of his literary
skill, and had contributed several poems to the _Atlantic Monthly_. His
introduction to literature was in the stirring days just before the war for
the Union, and he had a generous enthusiasm for the great principles which
were then at stake. Yet the political leaven chiefly caused the bread
he was baking to rise, and his native genius was distinctly for work in
creative literature. His contribution to the political writing of the day,
besides his newspaper work, was a small campaign life of Lincoln; and
shortly after the incoming of the first Republican administration he
received the appointment of consul at Venice.
At Venice he remained from 1861 to 1865, and these years may fairly be
taken as standing for his university training. He carried with him to
Europe some conversance with French, German, Spanish, and Italian, and an
insatiable thirst for literature in these, languages. Naturally now he
concentrated his attention on the Italian language and literature, but
after all he was not made for a microscopic or encyclopaedic scholar, least
of all for a pedant. What he was looking for in literature, though he
scarcely so stated it to himself at the time, was human life, and it
was this first-hand acquaintance he was acquiring with life in another
circumstance that constituted his real training in literature. To pass from
Ohio straight to Italy, with the merest alighting by the way in New York
and Boston, was to be transported from one world to another; but he carried
with him a mind which had already become naturalized in the large world of
history and men through the literature in which he had steeped his mind. No
one can read the record of the books he had revelled in, and observe the
agility with which he was absorbed, successively, in books of greatly
varying character, without perceiving how wide open were the windows of his
mind; and as the light streamed in from all these heavens, so the inmate
looked out with unaffected interest on the views spread before him.
Thus it was that Italy and Venice in particular afforded him at once the
greatest delight and also the surest test of his growing power. The swift
observation he had shown in literature became an equally rapid survey of
all these novel forms before him. The old life embedded in this historic
country became the book whose leaves he turned, but he looked with the
greatest interest and most sympathetic scrutiny on that which passed
before his eyes. It was novel, it was quaint, it was filled with curious,
unexpected betrayals of human nature, but it was above all real, actual,
a thing to be touched and as it were fondled by hands that were deft by
nature and were quickly becoming more skilful by use. Mr. Howells began to
write letters home which were printed in the _Boston Daily Advertiser_, and
grew easily into a book which still remains in the minds of many of his
readers the freshest of all his writings, _Venetian Life_. This was
followed shortly by _Italian Journeys_, in which Mr. Howells gathered his
observations made in going from place to place in Italy. A good many years
later, after returning to the country of his affection, he wrote a third
book of a similar character under the title of _Tuscan Cities_. But his use
of Italy in literature was not confined to books of travels; he made and
published studies of Italian literature, and he wove the life of the
country into fiction in a charming manner. Illustrations may be found in
_A Foregone Conclusion_, one of the happiest of his novels, whose scene
is laid in Venice, in _The Lady of the Aroostook_, and in many slight
sketches.
When Mr. Howells returned to America at the close of his term as consul, he
found warm friends whom he had made through his writings. He served for a
short time on the staff of _The Nation_, of New York, and then was invited
to Boston to take the position of assistant editor of the _Atlantic
Monthly_ under Mr. Fields. This was in 1866, and five years later, on the
retirement of Mr. Fields, he became editor, and remained in the position
until 1881, living during this period in Cambridge. He was not only editor
of the magazine; he was really its chief contributor. Any one who takes the
trouble to examine the pages of the _Atlantic Index_ will see how far his
work outnumbers in titles that of all other contributors, and the range of
his work was great.
He wrote a large proportion of the reviews of books, which in those
days constituted a marked feature of the magazine. These reviews were
conscientiously written, and showed penetration and justice, but they had
besides a felicitous and playful touch which rendered them delightful
reading, even though one knew little or cared little for the book reviewed.
Sometimes, though not often, he wrote poems, but readers soon learned
to look with eagerness for a kind of writing which seemed almost more
individual with him than any other form of writing. We mean the humorous
sketches of every-day life, in which he took scenes of the commonest
sort and drew from them an inherent life which most never suspected, yet
confessed the moment he disclosed it. He would do such a common-place
thing as take an excursion down the harbor, or even a ride to town in a
horse-car, and come back to turn his experience into a piece of genuine
literature. A number of these pieces were collected into a volume entitled
_Suburban Sketches_.
It is interesting to observe how slowly yet surely Mr. Howells drew
near the great field of novel-writing, and how deliberately he laid the
foundations of his art. First, the graceful sketch which was hardly
more than a leaf out of his note-book; then the blending of travel with
character-drawing, as in _A Chance Acquaintance_ and _Their Wedding
Journey_, and later stories of people who moved about and thus found the
incidents which the author had not to invent, as in _The Lady of the
Aroostook_. Meanwhile, the eye which had taken note of surface effects was
beginning to look deeper into the springs of being, and the hand which had
described was beginning to model figures also which stood alone.
So there followed a number of little dramatic sketches, where the persons
of the drama carried on their little play; and since they were not on a
stage before the spectator, the author constructed a sort of literary stage
for the reader; that is to say, he supplied by paragraphs what in a regular
play would be stage directions. This is seen in such little comedies as _A
Counterfeit Presentment_, which, indeed, was put on the stage. But instead
of pushing forward on this line into the field of great drama, Mr. Howells
contented himself with dexterous strokes with a fine pen, so to speak, and
created a number of sparkling farces like _The Parlor Car_.
The real issue of all this practice in the dramatic art was to disengage
the characters he created from too close dependence on the kind of
circumstance, as of travel, which the author did not invent, and to give
them substantial life in the working out of the drama of their spiritual
evolution. Thus by the time he was released from editorial work, Mr.
Howells was ready for the thorough-going novel, and he gave to readers such
examples of art as _A Modern Instance_, _The Rise of Silas Lapham_, and
that most important of all his novels, _A Hazard of New Fortunes_. By the
time this last novel was written, he had become thoroughly interested, not
merely in the men, women, and children about him, but in that mysterious,
complex order named by us society, with its roots matted together as in a
swamp, and seeming to many to be sucking up maleficent, miasmatic vapors
from the soil in which it was rooted. Like many another lover of his kind,
he has sought to trace the evils of individual life to their source in this
composite order, and to guess at the mode by which society shall right
itself and drink up healthy and life-giving virtues from the soil.
But it must not be inferred that his novels and other literary work have
been by any means exclusively concerned with the reconstruction of the
social order. He has indeed experimented with this theme, but he has always
had a sane interest in life as he sees it, and with the increasing scope
of his observation he has drawn his figures from a larger world, which
includes indeed the world in which he first began to find his characters
and their action.
Not long after retiring from the _Atlantic_ he went to live in New York,
and varied his American experience with frequent travels and continued
residence in Europe. For a while he maintained a department in _Harper's
Magazine_, where he gave expression to his views on literature and the
dramatic art, and for a short period returned to the editorial life
in conducting _The Cosmopolitan_; later he entered also the field of
lecturing, and thus further extended the range of his observation. For many
years, Mr. Howells was the writer of “Editor's Easy Chair” in Harper's
Magazine. In 1909 he was made president of the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. Mr. Howells's death occurred May 11, 1920.
This in fine is the most summary statement of his career in
literature,--that he has been a keen and sympathetic observer of life, and
has caught its character, not like a reporter going about with a kodak and
snapping it aimlessly at any conspicuous object, but like an alert artist
who goes back to his studio after a walk and sets down his comments on what
he has seen in quick, accurate sketches, now and then resolving numberless
undrawn sketches into some one comprehensive and beautiful picture.