When I was requested to furnish a dramatic biography of Mr. Howells, I
was confronted with what seemed an insuperable difficulty. The more I
thought of William Dean Howells, the less dramatic did he seem to me.
The only way that occurred to me of introducing a dramatic element
into our proposed interview was for me to assault him with tongue or
pen, in the hope that he might take energetic measures to resent my
intrusion; but as, notwithstanding his unvarying kindness to me, and
many unforgotten benefits, I cherished only the friendliest feelings
for him, I could not persuade myself to procure dramatic interest at
such a price.
My second objection, I am bound to confess, arose from my own sense of
dignity which rebelled against the _role_ of an interviewer, and it
was not until my conscience was made easy on this point that I agreed
to undertake the present article. I was reminded that it was an
ancient and highly dignified form of literature I was about to revive;
and that my precedent was to be sought not in the modern newspaper
interview, but in the Platonic dialogue. By the friction of two
kindred minds, sparks of thought may flash forth which owe their
origin solely to the friendly collision. We have a far more vivid
portrait of Socrates in the beautiful conversational turns of "The
Symposium" and the first book of "The Republic," than in the purely
objective account of Xenophon in his "Memorabilia." And Howells,
though he may not know it, has this trait in common with Socrates,
that he can portray himself, unconsciously, better than I or anybody
else could do it for him.
If I needed any further encouragement, I found it in the assurance that
what I was expected to furnish was to be in the nature of "an exchange
of confidences between two friends with a view to publication." It
was understood, of course, that Mr. Howells was to be more confiding
than myself, and that his reminiscences were to predominate; for an
author, however unheroic he may appear to his own modesty, is bound
to be the hero of his biography. What made the subject so alluring to
me, apart from the personal charm which inheres in the man and all
that appertains to him, was the consciousness that our friendship was of
twenty-two years' standing, and that during all that time not a
single jarring note had been introduced to mar the harmony of our
relation.
Equipped, accordingly, with a good conscience and a lead pencil
(which remained undisturbed in my breast-pocket), I set out to
"exchange confidences" with the author of "Silas Lapham" and "A Modern
Instance." I reached the enormous human hive on Fifty-ninth Street
where my subject, for the present, occupies a dozen most comfortable
and ornamental cells, and was promptly hoisted up to the fourth floor
and deposited in front of his door. It is a house full of electric
wires and tubes--literally honeycombed with modern conveniences. But
in spite of all these, I made my way triumphantly to Mr. Howells's
den, and after a proper prelude began the novel task assigned to me.
[Illustration: PROFESSOR BOYESEN IN HIS STUDY AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE.]
"I am afraid," I remarked quite _en passant_, "that I shall be
embarrassed not by my ignorance, but by my knowledge concerning your
life. For it is difficult to ask with good grace about what you
already know. I am aware, for instance, that you were born at Martin's
Ferry, Ohio, March 11, 1837; that you removed thence to Dayton, and a
few years later to Jefferson, Ashtabula County; that your father
edited, published, and printed a country newspaper of Republican
complexion, and that you spent a good part of your early years in the
printing office. Nevertheless, I have some difficulty in realizing the
environment of your boyhood."
_Howells._ If you have read my "Boy's Town," which is in all
essentials autobiographical, you know as much as I could tell you. The
environment of my early life was exactly as there described.
_Boyesen._ Your father, I should judge, then, was not a strict
disciplinarian?
_Howells._ No. He was the gentlest of men--a friend and companion to
his sons. He guided us in an unobtrusive way without our suspecting
it. He was continually putting books into my hands, and they were
always good books; many of them became events in my life. I had no end
of such literary passions during my boyhood. Among the first was
Goldsmith, then came Cervantes and Irving.
_Boyesen._ Then there was a good deal of literary atmosphere about
your childhood?
_Howells._ Yes. I can scarcely remember the time when books did not
play a great part in my life. Father was by his culture and his
interests rather isolated from the community in which we lived, and
this made him and all of us rejoice the more in a new author, in whose
world we would live for weeks and months, and who colored our thoughts
and conversation.
[Illustration: THE BIRTHPLACE OF W. D. HOWELLS AT MARTINS FERRY, OHIO.]
_Boyesen._ It has always been a matter of wonder to me that, with so
little regular schooling, you stepped full-fledged into literature
with such an exquisite and wholly individual style.
_Howells._ If you accuse me of that kind of thing, I must leave you to
account for it. I had always a passion for literature, and to a boy
with a mind and a desire to learn, a printing office is not a bad
school.
_Boyesen._ How old were you when you left Jefferson, and went to
Columbus?
_Howells._ I was nineteen years old when I went to the capital and
wrote legislative reports for Cincinnati and Cleveland papers;
afterwards I became one of the editors of the "Ohio State Journal." My
duties gradually took a wide range, and I edited the literary column
and wrote many of the leading articles. I was then in the midst of my
enthusiasm for Heine, and was so impregnated with his spirit, that a
poem which I sent to the "Atlantic Monthly" was mistaken by Mr. Lowell
for a translation from the German poet. When he had satisfied himself,
however, that it was not a translation, he accepted and printed it.
_Boyesen._ Tell me how you happened to publish your first volume,
"Poems by Two Friends," in partnership with John J. Piatt.
_Howells._ I had known Piatt as a young printer; afterwards when he
began to write poems, I read them and was delighted with them. When he
came to Columbus I made his acquaintance, and we became friends. By
this time we were both contributors to the "Atlantic Monthly." I may
as well tell you that his contributions to our joint volume were far
superior to mine.
_Boyesen._ Did Lowell share that opinion?
_Howells._ That I don't know. He wrote me a very charming letter, in
which he said many encouraging things, and he briefly reviewed the
book in the "Atlantic."
_Boyesen._ What was the condition of society in Columbus during those
days?
_Howells._ There were many delightful and cultivated people there,
and society was charming; the North and South were both represented,
and their characteristics united in a kind of informal Western
hospitality, warm and cordial in its tone, which gave of its very
best without stint. Salmon P. Chase, later Secretary of the Treasury,
and Chief Justice of the United States, was then Governor of Ohio.
He had a charming family, and made us young editors welcome at his
house. All winter long there was a round of parties at the different
houses; the houses were large and we always danced. These parties were
brilliant affairs, socially, but besides, we young people had many
informal gayeties. The old Starling Medical College, which was
defunct as an educational institution, except for some vivisection
and experiments on hapless cats and dogs that went on in some
out-of-the-way corners, was used as a boarding-house; and there was
a large circular room in which we often improvised dances. We young
fellows who lodged in the place were half a dozen journalists,
lawyers, and law-students; one was, like myself, a writer for the
"Atlantic," and we saw life with joyous eyes. We read the new
books, and talked them over with the young ladies whom we seem to
have been always calling upon. I remember those years in Columbus
as among the happiest years of my life.
_Boyesen._ From Columbus you went as consul to Venice, did not you?
[Illustration: THE GIUSTINIANI PALACE, HOWELLS' HOME IN VENICE.]
_Howells._ Yes. You remember I had written a campaign "Life of
Lincoln." I was, like my father, an ardent Anti-slavery man. I went
myself to Washington soon after President Lincoln's inauguration. I
was first offered the consulate to Rome; but as it depended entirely
upon perquisites, which amounted only to three or four hundred dollars
a year, I declined it, and they gave me Venice. The salary was raised
to fifteen hundred dollars, which seemed to me quite beyond the dreams
of avarice.
_Boyesen._ Do not you regard that Venetian experience as a very
valuable one?
_Howells._ Oh, of course. In the first place, it gave me four years of
almost uninterrupted leisure for study and literary work. There was,
to be sure, occasionally an invoice to be verified, but that did not
take much time. Secondly, it gave me a wider outlook upon the world
than I had hitherto had. Without much study of a systematic kind, I
had acquired a notion of English, French, German, and Spanish
literature. I had been an eager and constant reader, always guided in
my choice of books by my own inclination. I had learned German. Now,
my first task was to learn Italian; and one of my early teachers was a
Venetian priest, whom I read Dante with. This priest in certain ways
suggested Don Ippolito in "A Foregone Conclusion."
_Boyesen._ Then he took snuff, and had a supernumerary calico
handkerchief?
_Howells._ Yes. But what interested me most about him was his
religious skepticism. He used to say, "The saints are the gods
baptized." Then he was a kind of baffled inventor; though whether his
inventions had the least merit I was unable to determine.
_Boyesen._ But his love story?
_Howells._ That was wholly fictitious.
_Boyesen._ I remember you gave me, in 1874, a letter of introduction
to a Venetian friend of yours, named Brunetta, whom I failed to find.
_Howells._ Yes, Brunetta was the first friend I had in Venice. He was
a distinctly Latin character--sober, well-regulated, and probity
itself.
_Boyesen._ Do you call that the Latin character?
_Howells._ It is not our conventional idea of it; but it is fully as
characteristic, if not more so, than the light, mercurial,
pleasure-loving type which somehow in literature has displaced the
other. Brunetta and I promptly made the discovery that we were
congenial. Then we became daily companions. I had a number of other
Italian friends too, full of beautiful _bonhomie_ and Southern
sweetness of temperament.
[Illustration: W. D. HOWELLS, AFTER HIS RETURN FROM VENICE.]
_Boyesen._ You must have acquired Italian in a very short time?
_Howells._ Yes; being domesticated in that way in the very heart of
that Italy, which was then _Italia irridente_, I could not help
steeping myself in its atmosphere and breathing in the language, with
the rest of its very composite flavors.
_Boyesen._ Yes; and whatever I know of Italian literature I owe
largely to the completeness of that soaking process of yours. Your
book on the Italian poets is one of the most charmingly sympathetic
and illuminative bits of criticism that I know.
_Howells._ I am glad you think so; but the book was never a popular
success. Of all the Italian authors, the one I delighted in the most
was Goldoni. His exquisite realism fascinated me. It was the sort of
thing which I felt I ought not to like; but for all that I liked it
immensely.
_Boyesen._ How do you mean that you ought not to like it?
_Howells._ Why, I was an idealist in those days. I was only
twenty-four or twenty-five years old, and I knew the world chiefly
through literature. I was all the time trying to see things as others
had seen them, and I had a notion that, in literature, persons and
things should be nobler and better than they are in the sordid
reality; and this romantic glamour veiled the world to me, and kept me
from seeing things as they are. But in the lanes and alleys of Venice
I found Goldoni everywhere. Scenes from his plays were enacted before
my eyes, with all the charming Southern vividness of speech and
gesture, and I seemed at every turn to have stepped at unawares into
one of his comedies. I believe this was the beginning of my revolt.
But it was a good while yet before I found my own bearings.
_Boyesen._ But permit me to say that it was an exquisitely delicate
set of fresh Western senses you brought with you to Venice. When I was
in Venice in 1878, I could not get away from you, however much I
tried. I saw your old Venetian senator, in his august rags, roasting
coffee; and I promenaded about for days in the chapters of your
"Venetian Life," like the Knight Huldbrand, in the Enchanted Forest in
"Undine," and I could not find my way out. Of course, I know that,
being what you were, you could not have helped writing that book, but
what was the immediate cause of your writing it?
_Howells._ From the day I arrived in Venice I kept a journal in
which I noted down my impressions. I found a young pleasure in
registering my sensations at the sight of notable things, and
literary reminiscences usually shimmered through my observations. Then
I received an offer from the "Boston Daily Advertiser," to write
weekly or bi-weekly letters, for which they paid me five dollars, in
greenbacks, a column, nonpareil. By the time this sum reached Venice,
shaven and shorn by discounts for exchange in gold premium, it had
usually shrunk to half its size or less. Still I was glad enough to
get even that, and I kept on writing joyously. So the book grew in my
hands until, at the time I resigned in 1865, I was trying to have it
published. I offered it successively to a number of English
publishers; but they all declined it. At last Mr. Truebner agreed to
take it, if I could guarantee the sale of five hundred copies in
the United States, or induce an American publisher to buy that
number of copies in sheets. I happened to cross the ocean with Mr.
Hurd of the New York firm of Hurd & Houghton, and repeated Mr.
Truebner's proposition to him. He refused to commit himself; but some
weeks after my arrival in New York, he told me that the risk was
practically nothing at all, and that his firm would agree to take the
five hundred copies. The book was an instant success. I don't know
how many editions of it have been printed, but I should say that
its sale has been upward of forty thousand copies, and it still
continues. The English weeklies gave me long complimentary notices,
which I carried about for months in my pocket like love-letters, and
read surreptitiously at odd moments. I thought it was curious that
other people to whom I showed the reviews did not seem much
interested.
[Illustration: W. D. HOWELLS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT CAMBRIDGE IN
1868.]
_Boyesen._ After returning to this country, did not you settle down in
New York?
_Howells._ Yes; I was for a while a free lance in literature. I did
whatever came in my way, and sold my articles to the newspapers,
going about from office to office, but I was finally offered a place
in "The Nation," where I obtained a fixed position at a salary. I
had at times a sense that, by going abroad, I had fallen out of the
American procession of progress; and, though I was elbowing my way
energetically through the crowd, I seemed to have a tremendous
difficulty in recovering my lost place on my native soil, and
asserting my full right to it. So, when young men beg me to recommend
them for consulships, I always feel in duty bound to impress on them
this great danger of falling out of the procession, and asking them
whether they have confidence in their ability to reconquer the
place they have deserted, for while they are away it will be pretty
sure to be filled by somebody else. A man returning from a residence
of several years abroad has a sense of superfluity in his own
country--he has become a mere supernumerary whose presence or absence
makes no particular difference.
_Boyesen._ What year did you leave "The Nation" and assume the
editorship of "The Atlantic"?
_Howells._ I took the editorship in 1872, but went to live in
Cambridge six or seven years before. I was first assistant editor
under James T. Fields, who was uniformly kind and considerate, and
with whom I got along perfectly. It was a place that he could have
made odious to me, but he made it delightful. I have the tenderest
regard and the highest respect for his memory.
_Boyesen._ I need scarcely ask you if your association with Lowell was
agreeable?
_Howells._ It was in every way charming. He was twenty years my
senior, but he always treated me as an equal and a contemporary. And
you know the difference between thirty and fifty is far greater than
between forty and sixty, or fifty and seventy. I dined with him every
week, and he showed the friendliest appreciation of the work I was
trying to do. We took long walks together; and you know what a rare
talker he was. Somehow I got much nearer to him than to Longfellow. As
a man, Longfellow was flawless. He was full of noble friendliness and
encouragement to all literary workers in whom he believed.
_Boyesen._ Do you remember you once said to me that he was a most
inveterate praiser?
[Illustration: W. D. HOWELLS' SUMMER HOME AT BELMONT IN 1878.]
_Howells._ I may have said that; for in the kindness of his heart, and
his constitutional reluctance to give pain, he did undoubtedly often
strain a point or two in speaking well of things. But that was part of
his beautiful kindliness of soul and admirable urbanity. Lowell, you
know, confessed to being "a tory in his nerves;" but Longfellow, with
all his stateliness of manner, was nobly and perfectly democratic. He
was ideally good; I think he was without a fault.
_Boyesen._ I have never known a man who was more completely free from
snobbishness and pretence of all kinds. It delighted him to go out of
his way to do a man a favor. There was, however, a little touch of
Puritan pallor in his temperament, a slight lack of robustness; that
is, if his brother's biography can be trusted. What I mean to say is,
that he appears there a trifle too perfect; too bloodlessly, and
almost frostily, statuesque. I have always had a little diminutive
grudge against the Reverend Samuel Longfellow for not using a single
one of those beautiful anecdotes I sent him illustrative of the warmer
and more genial side of the poet's character. He evidently wanted to
portray a Plutarchian man of heroic size, and he therefore had to
exclude all that was subtly individualizing.
_Howells._ Well, there is always room for another biography of
Longfellow.
_Boyesen._ At the time when I made your acquaintance in 1871, you were
writing "Their Wedding Journey." Do you remember the glorious talks we
had together while the hours of the night slipped away unnoticed? We
have no more of those splendid conversational rages now-a-days. How
eloquent we were, to be sure; and with what delight you read those
chapters on "Niagara," "Quebec," and "The St. Lawrence;" and with what
rapture I listened! I can never read them without supplying the
cadence of your voice, and seeing you seated, twenty-two years younger
than now, in that cosey little library in Berkeley Street.
_Howells._ Yes; and do you mind our sudden attacks of hunger, when we
would start on a foraging expedition into the cellar, in the middle of
the night, and return, you with a cheese and crackers, and I with a
watermelon and a bottle of champagne? What jolly meals we improvised!
Only it is a wonder to me that we survived them.
_Boyesen._ You will never suspect what an influence you exerted upon my
fate by your friendliness and sympathy in those never-to-be-forgotten
days. You Americanized me. I had been an alien, and felt alien in
every fibre of my soul, until I met you. Then I became domesticated.
I found a kindred spirit who understood me, and whom I understood; and
that is the first and indispensable condition of happiness. It was at
your house, at a luncheon, I think, that I met Henry James.
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR OF "ANNIE KILBURN."]
_Howells._ Yes; James and I were constant companions. We took daily
walks together, and his father, the elder Henry James, was an
incomparably delightful and interesting man.
_Boyesen._ Yes; I remember him well. I doubt if I ever heard a more
brilliant talker.
_Howells._ No; he was one of the best talkers in America. And didn't
the immortal Ralph Keeler appear upon the scene during the summer of
'71 or '72?
_Boyesen._ Yes; your small son "Bua" insisted upon calling him "Big
Man Keeler" in spite of his small size.
_Howells._ Yes, Bua was the only one who ever saw Keeler life-size.
_Boyesen._ I remember how he sat in your library and told stories of
his negro minstrel days and his wild adventures in many climes, and
did not care whether you laughed with him or at him, but would join
you from sheer sympathy, and how we all laughed in chorus until our
sides ached!
_Howells._ Poor Keeler! He was a sort of migratory, nomadic survival;
but he had fine qualities, and was well equipped for a sort of
fiction. If he had lived he might have written the great American
novel. Who knows?
_Boyesen._ Was not it at Cambridge that Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson visited
you?
_Howells._ No; that was in 1881, at Belmont, where we went in order to
be in the country, and give the children the benefit of country air.
When I met Bjoernson before, we had always talked Italian; but the
first thing he said to me at Belmont, was: "Now we will speak
English." And when he had got into the house, he picked up a book and
said in his abrupt way: "We do not put enough in;" meaning thereby,
that we ignored too much of life in our fiction--excluded it out of
regard for propriety. But when I met him, some years later, in Paris,
he had changed his mind about that, for he detested the French
naturalism, and could find nothing to praise in Zola.
_Boyesen._ I am going to ask you one of the interviewer's stock
questions, but you need not answer, you know: Which of your books do
you regard as the greatest?
_Howells._ I have always taken the most satisfaction in "A Modern
Instance." I have there come closest to American life as I know it.
_Boyesen._ But in "Silas Lapham" it seems to me that you have got a
still firmer grip on American reality.
_Howells._ Perhaps. Still I prefer "A Modern Instance." "Silas Lapham"
is the most successful novel I have published, except "A Hazard of New
Fortunes," which has sold nearly twice as many copies as any of the
rest.
_Boyesen._ What do you attribute that to?
_Howells._ Possibly to the fact that the scene is laid in New York;
the public throughout the country is far more interested in New York
than in Boston. New York, as Lowell once said, is a huge pudding, and
every town and village has been helped to a slice, or wants to be.
_Boyesen._ I rejoice that New York has found such a subtly appreciative
and faithful chronicler as you show yourself to be in "A Hazard of New
Fortunes." To the equipment of a great city--a world-city as the Germans
say--belongs a great novelist; that is to say, at least one. And even
though your modesty may rebel, I shall persist in regarding you
henceforth as _the_ novelist _par excellence_ of New York.
_Howells._ Ah, you don't expect me to live up to _that_ bit of taffy!