Mr. Howells has reached that point of life and success where he can
afford to sit down and look back. But he is not that sort of man. He
will probably continue to work and to look forward until, in the words
of Hamlet, he shuffles off this mortal coil.
William Dean Howells was born in Martin's Ferry, Belmont County, Ohio,
March 1, 1837. He has therefore reached the ripe age of sixty-four.
When he was three years old his father moved from Martin's Ferry to
Hamilton and bought _The Intelligencer_, a weekly paper. Nine years
afterward he sold _The Intelligencer_ and moved to Dayton, becoming
proprietor of the _Dayton Transcript_. This paper had been a
semi-weekly, but Mr. Howells changed it to a daily; and his son William
went to work for him. It was William's business to rise at four in the
morning and sell the paper about town. But the _Transcript_ proved a
failure, so the Howells family left Dayton and moved into the country
on the banks of the Miami, where for a year a log-cabin was their home.
Mr. Howells tells a characteristic story of those struggling days,
"When I was a boy," he said some years ago, "I worked on my father's
paper. Among other things, I set type. Those were days of great
struggle for all of us. The paper was not profitable, and ours was a
large family. My tastes and ambitions were all literary, and I wanted
to write a story. Instead of writing it and then setting it up in type,
I composed it at the case and put it in type as I invented it. We
printed a chapter of it weekly in the paper, and so it was published
as fast as I got it up. I tried to get three or four chapters ready
in advance, but I could not do it. All I could possibly accomplish
was to have one installment ready every time the paper went to press.
This went on for a long while, and that story became a burden to me.
It stretched out longer and longer, but I could see no way to end
it. Every week I resolved that that story should be finished in the
next week's paper; every week it refused to be finished. Finally I
became positively panic stricken, and ended it somehow or other. The
experience discouraged me to some extent. I made up my mind that I
could not invent."
In 1851, when William was fourteen, the family moved from the country
to Columbus, where his father got employment as a clerk in the House of
Representatives, and also as a compositor on the _Ohio State Journal_.
William went to work as a reporter on the _Journal_. Five years later
he became the Columbus correspondent of the _Cincinnati Gazette_. In
1859 he took the position of news editor of the _Ohio State Journal_.
Later that same year Howells senior, from whom the son evidently
inherited his industry and ambition, bought the _Ashtabula Sentinel_
and transferred the property to Jefferson, whither the family moved.
William took the position of subeditor of the _Sentinel_.
From time to time poems by young Howells had appeared in the Ohio
newspapers. Some of his verses, too, had even been published by _The
Atlantic Monthly_. In 1860, in collaboration with John J. Piatt, he
published his first volume of verse--"Poems by Two Friends." In 1860,
also, Howells's "Life of Abraham Lincoln" was published. With the
earnings of this immediately popular work our author journeyed to the
East by way of Canada. In Boston he first met James Russell Lowell, who
was then editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_. Afterward he visited the
publishers, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, primarily in connection with
one of his poems which _The Atlantic_ then had in hand, "The Pilot's
Story." Mr. Fields introduced Howells to Mr. Ticknor, "who, I fancied,"
says Howells in his "Literary Friends and Acquaintance," "had not
then read my poem; but he seemed to know what it was from the junior
partner, and he asked me whether I had been paid for it. I confessed
that I had not, and then he got out a chamois-leather bag, and took
from it five half-eagles in gold and laid them on the green cloth top
of the desk, in much the shape and of much the size of the Great Bear.
I have never since felt myself paid so lavishly for any literary work,
though I have had more for a single piece than the twenty-five dollars
that dazzled me in this constellation. The publisher seemed aware
of the poetic character of the transaction; he let the pieces lie a
moment, before he gathered them up and put them into my hand, and said,
'I always think it is pleasant to have it in gold.'"
While making his residence in Boston, Howells met Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Hawthorne and Emerson. Emerson rather discouraged him by
remarking as they were saying good-bye to each other, that one might
very well give a pleasant hour to poetry "now and then."
When the young Ohioan met Mr. Fields again he proposed himself as
assistant editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_. Mr. Fields replied that if
the post had not just been filled the intrepid poet certainly should
have had it.
"He was charmingly kind," writes Mr. Howells of the interview; "he
entered with the sweetest interest into the story of my economic life,
which had been full of changes and chances already. But when I said
very seriously that I was tired of these fortuities, and would like to
be settled in something he asked with dancing eyes,
"'Why, how old are you?'
"'I am twenty-three,' I answered, and then the laughing fit took him
again.
"'Well,' he said, 'you begin young, out there!'"
From 1861 to 1865, during the War of the Rebellion, Mr. Howells was
United States Consul at Venice, which position was a reward for
his life of Lincoln. In Venice he wrote occasionally for American
newspapers; and there he also wrote the articles of which, eventually,
his delightful "Venetian Life" and "Italian Journeys" were composed.
Returning to this country, he re-entered the newspaper world, working
mostly for the _New York Tribune_ and the _New York Times_; and he
also became a regular contributor to _The Nation_. In 1866 he achieved
his great ambition, Mr. Fields appointing him assistant editor of _The
Atlantic Monthly_. From that year until 1886, when he moved to New
York, he lived on terms of enviable intimacy with the group of great
writers which made Boston the one brilliant literary centre the country
has ever seen.
However, this success did not come until after many defeats. Mr.
Howells's letters from Venice were published regularly in the _Boston
Advertiser_; but elsewhere, for the most part, the young author had
met little encouragement. It was only just before he left Venice,
when Lowell, then, with Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, joint editor of
the _North American Review_, accepted Howells's article on "Recent
Italian Comedy," that the cloud broke. Lowell accepted the manuscript
in "one of his loveliest letters," as Mr. Howells says. "His message"
the author confesses, "came after years of thwarted endeavor, and
reinstated me in the belief that I could still do something in
literature. To be sure, the letters in the _Advertiser_ had begun to
make their impression; among the first great pleasures they brought me
was a recognition from my diplomatic chief in Vienna; but I valued my
admission to the _North American_ peculiarly because it was Lowell let
me in, and because I felt that in his charge it must be the place of
highest honor." Financially, the encouragement was slight. The _North
American_ was "as poor as it was proud"; and it paid Howells for his
article at the rate of only two dollars a page. From the _Advertiser_
he had been paid at the rate of about a dollar a thousand words. It was
on March 19, 1866, his twenty-ninth birthday, that the vagrant author
began his work on _The Atlantic_ at a salary of fifty dollars a week.
"The whole affair," Mr. Howells writes, "was conducted by Fields with
his unfailing tact and kindness, but it could not be kept from me that
the qualification I had as practical printer for the work was most
valued, if not the most valued, and that as proof-reader I was expected
to make it avail on the side of economy. Somewhere in life's feast
the course of humble-pie must always come in; and if I did not wholly
relish this bit of it, I dare say it was good for me, and I digested it
perfectly."
It was a most delicate position which he occupied on _The Atlantic_
from 1866 to 1872, when Fields withdrew and Mr. Howells became
sole editor. In the beginning, as he says himself, he ventured to
distinguish mediocrity in some verses by Whittier. "He sent me a poem,"
says Howells, "and I had the temerity to return it, and beg him for
something else. He magnanimously refrained from all show of offence,
and after a while, when he had printed the poem elsewhere, he gave me
another. By this time, I perceived that I had been wrong, not as to
the poem returned, but as to my function regarding him and such as he.
I had made my reflections, and never again did I venture to pass upon
what contributors of his quality sent me. I took it, and printed it,
and praised the gods; and even now I think that with such men it was
not my duty to play the censor in the periodical which they had made
what it was. They had set it in authority over American literature, and
it was not for me to put myself in authority over them. Their fame was
in their own keeping, and it was not my part to guard it against them."
At another time, when a choice was accidentally enforced between a poem
by Holmes and a poem by Emerson, Mr. Howells had the courage to request
Emerson that his poem might be held over for the next number. Emerson
wrote back to "return the proofs and break up the forms." "I could not
go to this iconoclastic extreme with the electrotypes of the magazine,"
says Mr. Howells, "but I could return the proofs. I did so, feeling
that I had done my possible, and silently grieving that there could be
such ire in heavenly minds."
From 1872 until 1880 Mr. Howells was sole editor of _The Atlantic_;
and the rich social and literary experience which he gained during
that term he has embodied in that most delightful of American bookmen's
chronicles, "Literary Friends and Acquaintance."
Mr. Howells's first piece of fiction, "Their Wedding Journey," was
published in 1872, the year that he became sole editor of _The
Atlantic_. Seven years ago in a newspaper interview, Mr. Howells made
this statement in regard to this work: "I wrote 'Their Wedding Journey'
without intending to make it a piece of fiction or considering it to be
one after I had finished it. It was simply a book of American travel,
which I hoped to make attractive by a sugar coating of romance. I was
very familiar with the route over which I had taken the bridal couple,
and I knew it was beautiful, and, like most American scenery, was not
appreciated. The book was more of a success than I expected it to be.
I attributed its success to the descriptions of American scenery and
places. I gave it to a family friend and asked her to mark those parts
of it which she thought real incidents. I was very much astonished and
greatly pleased to find, when she returned it, that she had marked some
passages which were purely invention. This made me ask myself if I
might not hope to write a novel some day."
The question was evidently answered in the affirmative, for after
1872 Mr. Howells's output of fiction became regular and profuse. His
novels have all been more or less popular. He is fondest himself of
"A Modern Instance," we are told; and he regards "A Hazard of New
Fortunes" as his best novel. It may safely be said that the book which
it was the greatest pleasure to him to write is "Literary Friends and
Acquaintance," published late last year. Altogether his works number
about seventy-five. Mr. Howells is a plodder. "I believe," he once said
to an interviewer, "in the inspiration of hard work." As a rule all
successful authors have held this belief.
Mr. Howells resigned from _The Atlantic_ in 1880 to engage in general
literary work. Six years later he formally transferred his allegiance
from Boston to New York by accepting charge of "The Editor's Study" in
_Harper's_. Afterward, for a time, he was editor of _The Cosmopolitan_.
Late in 1900 he resumed his editorial connection with _Harper's_.
Although admired the world over, and dignified with the title of Doctor
of Laws, which he got from Yale in 1871, Mr. Howells is hospitable and
genial, just as Dr. Holmes was; and many young writers with more or
less glittering names owe much to his counsel and his encouragement.
[Illustration: BRET HARTE.]