for little elaborate description. He was born and brought up among
simple, sincere people, whose wants were few, whose tastes were
easily satisfied, whose lives were natural and untainted by any such
influences as make for cerebral hyperæmia, or other neurasthenic
complaints incidental, as Dr. Hammond says, to modern city life. The
village of Eatonton, in Middle Georgia, was Mr. Harris’s birth-place.
Since Mr. Henry Watterson, in his book on Southern humor, and other
writers, have made Mr. Harris an older man than he really is, it is
well to state, as “official,” that he was born on the 9th of December,
1848. Eatonton is a small town now, but it was smaller then. It was
surrounded by plantations, and on one of these Mr. Harris spent his
earliest years as other Southern children do. At six he began to read.
Among the first of his literary acquaintances was the delightful “Vicar
of Wakefield.” The boy’s schooling was such as reading the best of
the authors of the periods of Queen Anne and the Georges, and a few
terms at the Eatonton Academy, could give. He read his text-books,
but was bitterly opposed to getting them by heart. When he was about
twelve years old an incident occurred which shaped his whole life.
The Eatonton postmaster kept a sort of general store--the “country
store” of New England,--and its frequenters were at liberty to read the
copies of the Milledgeville and other rural papers which were taken
by subscribers. In one of these, _The Countryman_, young Harris found
that it was edited by a Mr. Turner, whose acquaintance he had made not
very long before, and he thrilled with the thought that he knew a real
editor. Finding that a boy was wanted he wrote for the place, secured
it, and soon learned all that was to be gathered in so small an office.
In addition to this acquirement of knowledge, by the permission of Mr.
Turner, he had access to a library of three thousand volumes, which he
read under the judicious guidance of their owner. Among these books he
lived for several years in the very heart of the agricultural region,
and he pondered over his reading to the music of the clicking types,
with the scamper of the cat-squirrels over the roof and the patter of
the acorns dropped by the jay-birds. For amusement he hunted rabbits
with a pack of half-bred harriers, or listened to the tales of the
plantation Negro, who was there to be found in primitive perfection of
type. It was on the Turner plantation that the original Uncle Remus
told his stories to the little boy. So it was that he absorbed the
wonderfully complete stores of knowledge of the Negro which have since
given him fame. He heard the Negro’s stories and enjoyed them, observed
his characteristics and appreciated them. Time went on. The printer boy
set type, read books, hunted rabbits, ’possums, and foxes, was seized
with an ambition to write, and had begun to do so when Sherman’s army
went marching through Georgia. Slocum’s corps was reviewed by Harris
sitting astride a fence. This parade left the neighborhood in chaos,
and young Harris and _The Countryman_ took a long vacation. At last
peace and quiet and the issue of _The Countryman_ were restored. But
the paper had had its day.
Mr. Harris was now a full-fledged compositor, and he set his “string”
of the Macon Daily _Telegraph_ for some months. Then he left to go to
New Orleans as the private secretary of the editor of _The Crescent
Monthly_. This position was not arduous, and Mr. Harris found time to
write bright paragraphs for the city press at about the same time that
George W. Cable was trying his hand at the same kind of work. _The
Crescent Monthly_ soon waned, and with its end Mr. Harris found himself
back in Georgia as editor of the Forsyth _Advertiser_, which was and
is one of the most influential weekly papers in Georgia. He was not
only editor, but he set most of the type, worked off the edition on
a hand-press, and wrapped and directed his papers for the mail. His
editorials here, directed against certain abuses in the State, were
widely copied for their pungent criticism and bubbling humor. They
attracted the attention of Colonel W. T. Thompson, author of “Major
Jones’s Courtship,” who was then editor of the Savannah _Daily News_,
and he offered Mr. Harris a place on his staff. It was accepted. This
was in 1871. In 1873 Mr. Harris was married. He remained in Savannah
until September, 1876, when the yellow-fever epidemic caused him to
go up in the mountains to Atlanta, where he became an editor of the
_Constitution_. At that time the paper was beginning to make a more
than local reputation by the humorous Negro dialect sketches by Mr.
S. W. Small, under the name of “Old Si.” Shortly after Mr. Harris’s
arrival Mr. Small left the _Constitution_ to engage in another
enterprise, and the proprietors, in their anxiety to replace one of the
most attractive features of their paper, turned to Mr. Harris for aid.
He was required to furnish two or three sketches a week. He took an
old Negro with whom he had been familiar on the Turner place, and made
him chief spokesman in several character sketches. Their basis was the
projection of the old-time Negro against the new condition of things
brought about by the War.
These succeeded well; but tiring of them after awhile, he wrote one
night the first sketch as it appears in the published volume, “Uncle
Remus.” To the North this was a revelation of an unknown life. The
slight but strong frame in which the old Negro’s portrait was set,
the playful propinquity of smiles and tears, and the fresh humor and
absolute novelty of the folk-lore tale existing as a hidden treasure
in the South, were revealed for the first time to critical admiration.
The sketches were widely copied in leading journals, like the staid
_Evening Post_ of New York. Both the _Constitution_ and Mr. Harris soon
found that they had a national reputation. When the volume containing
the collected sketches was published, it was an immediate success.
It was soon reprinted in England; and still sells steadily in large
numbers, giving exquisite pleasure to thousands of children and their
elders. A second collection of tales, most of which were published in
_The Century_, but some of which made their first appearance in _The
Critic_, was republished in 1883, and in that year Mr. Harris was
introduced anew to the general public as the writer of a sketch in
Harper’s _Christmas_, which showed for the first time that the firm and
artistic hand which drew the Negro to perfection had mastered equally
well the most difficult art of elaborate character-drawing and of
dramatic development. “Mingo,” the first successful short story of Mr.
Harris, was followed by “At Teague Poteet’s” in _The Century_.
I have dwelt somewhat at length on the incidents of Mr. Harris’s
career for three reasons: first, because the facts have never before
been printed; second, because they illustrate in a remarkable way
the influence of environment on a literary intellect, whose steady,
healthy, progressive growth and development can be clearly traced;
and third, because it is evident that Mr. Harris is a young man who
has passed over the plains of apprenticeship and is mounting the hill
of purely literary fame, whose acclivity he has overcome by making
a further exertion of the strength and power which he has indicated
though not fully displayed. At present he lives two lives. One is that
of his profession. His duties are arduous, and consume much of his
time. Much of the best work in the _Constitution_, which has given
that paper fame as a representative of “the new South,” is due to Mr.
Harris. In the history of Southern journalism he will occupy a high
place for having introduced in that part of the United States personal
amenities and freedom from sectional tone. He has discussed national
topics broadly and sincerely, in a style which is effective in “molding
public opinion,” but which is not literature. His second life begins
where the other ends. It is literally divided as day is from night,
for his editorial work is done at the _Constitution_ office in the
day-time, and his literary work is done at home at night. On the one
side he works for bread and butter, on the other he works for art, and
from the motive that always exists in the best literary art. At home
he is hardest at work when apparently most indolent, and he allows his
characters to gallop around in his brain and develop long before he
touches pen to paper. When he reaches this stage his work is slow and
careful, and in marked contrast to his editorial work, which is dashed
off at white heat, as such work must be.
Perhaps the best illustration I can give of his methods is to describe
the genesis of “At Teague Poteet’s,” which may also be interesting as
giving an insight into the work of creative authorship. The trial of
two United States Deputy-Marshals for the killing of an under-witted,
weak, unarmed, and inoffensive old man, who was guilty only of the
crime of having a private still for “moonshine”--not a member of the
mountain band,--was progressing in Atlanta when the subject of simple
proper names as titles of stories came up in the _Constitution_ office.
One of the staff cited Scott’s “Ivanhoe,” Thackeray’s “Pendennis,”
and Dickens’s “David Copperfield” as instances of books which were
likely to attract readers by their titles, and taking up a Georgia
state-directory, the speaker’s eye fell on the name Teague Poteet.
He suggested to Mr. Harris that if he merely took that name and wove
around it the story of the moonshiner’s trial, it would attract as
many readers as Uncle Remus; and it was further suggested that Mr.
Harris should make a column sketch of the subject for the next Sunday’s
_Constitution_. From this simple beginning Teague Poteet grew after
several months’ incubation, and when it was published in _The Century_
it will be remembered how the public hailed it as disclosing a new
phase of American life, similar to those revealed by Cable, Craddock
and the rest of the new generation. No one unfamiliar with the people
can fully appreciate how truthful and exact is the description of
characteristics; or how accurately the half-humorous, half-melancholy
features of the stern drama of life in the locality are wrought out,
yielding promise of greater things to come.
In person Mr. Harris has few peculiarities. In stature he is of the
average height of the people of his section, rather under the average
height of the people of the Eastern and Middle States. The Northern
papers have spoken of Mr. Cable as a little man. He and Mr. Harris are
about of a size, which is not much excelled in their section except by
the lank giants of the mountains. His features are small. His face is
tanned and freckled. His mouth is covered by a stubbly red mustache,
and his eyes are small and blue. Both his eyes and mouth are extremely
mobile, sensitive and expressive. There is probably no living man more
truly diffident; but his diffidence is the result of excessive sympathy
and tenderness, which cause the bright blue eyes to well up at any bit
of pathos just as they fairly sparkle with humor. His amusements and
tastes are few and simple. His constant companions are Shakspeare,
Job, St. Paul, and Ecclesiastes. He is devoted to his family, which
consists of his mother, his wife, four exceedingly bright boys and a
girl, and the flock of mocking-birds that winters in his garden. He
never goes into society or to the theatre. He once acted as dramatic
critic of the _Constitution_, but his misery at being obliged to see
and criticise dull actors was so acute that he soon resigned the
position. The small-talk of society has no attractions for him. His
home is enough. When his children are tired and sleepy and are put to
bed, he writes at the fireside where they have been sitting. It is
warm in winter, and cool in summer, and never lonely; and so strong is
his domestic instinct that although he had a room built specially as a
study, he soon deserted its lonely cheerlessness for the comforts of
his home, where his tender and kindly nature makes him loved by every
one.
ERASTUS BRAINERD.
PROF. J. A. HARRISON
PROF. J. A. HARRISON
AT LEXINGTON, VA.
Professor Harrison’s home is in Lexington, a quaint old town in
the “Valley of Virginia.” Situated on North River, an affluent of
the James, Lexington is surrounded by mountains covered with a
native growth of beautiful foliage. In the distance tower aloft the
picturesque Peaks of Otter; nearer by is seen the unique Natural
Bridge. For nearly a century it has been a university town. Two
institutions of learning have generated about the place an intellectual
atmosphere. More than one literary character has made it a home. It
is, indeed, an ideal spot for the studious scholar and the diligent
_littérateur_.
James Albert Harrison was born at Pass Christian, Mississippi, the
latter part of 1848. His first lessons were given by private tutors.
Later, his family moved to New Orleans and he entered the public
schools of that city. From the public schools he went to the High
School, at the head of his class. But shortly afterwards, in 1862, New
Orleans fell and his family went into exile. They wandered about the
Confederacy some time, from pillar to post, till finally they stuck
in Georgia till the close of the War. This fortunate event kept him
from becoming a midshipman on the _Patrick Henry_. Finally the family
returned to New Orleans. Deprived of regular instruction he had been
giving himself up to voracious, but very miscellaneous, reading; but
now, under a learned German Jew, he began to prepare himself for the
University of Virginia, where he remained two years--until, he says,
“I had to go to work.” After teaching a year near Baltimore he went
to Europe, and studied two years at Bonn and Munich. On his return,
in 1871, he was elected to the chair of Latin and Modern Languages in
Randolph Macon College, Virginia. In 1875 he was called to the chair of
English and Modern Languages in Vanderbilt University; but he remained
where he was till the next year. Then he accepted the corresponding
chair in Washington and Lee University, which he has held ever since.
There, in September, 1885, the happiest event of his life took place.
He was married to a daughter of Virginia’s famous “War Governor,”
Governor Letcher.
Prof. Harrison comes of a literary family. His father, who was a
leading citizen of New Orleans, and quite wealthy till some time after
the War, belonged to the Harrison family of Virginia. His mother was a
descendant of the Mayor of Bristol in Charles II.’s time, as is shown
by a family diary begun in 1603 and continued to the present day. On
this side, too, he is related to John Hookham Frere, the translator of
Aristophanes. Others of his literary kinsfolk are Miss F. C. Baylor,
author of “On Both Sides” and “Behind the Blue Ridge,” and Mrs.
Tiernan, author of “Homoselle,” “Suzette,” etc. In Prof. Harrison’s
library there are about 3000 volumes, in 15 or 20 different languages,
while here and there through the house are scattered bric-à-brac,
pictures, and a heterogeneous collections of odds and ends picked up in
travel--feather-pictures and banded agates from Mexico, embroideries
and pipes from Constantinople, souvenirs from Alaska, British America,
Norway, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Greece. His naturally good
taste in art and music has been well cultivated. His conversation is
delightful--now racy with anecdote, now bristling with repartee, again
charming with instruction. More than any other man, I think, he is a
harbinger of better things at the South. He is a real son of the new
South. In him the old and the new are harmoniously blended. To the
polish, the suavity, the refinement of the old South are added the
earnestness, the enthusiasm, the wider and more useful culture of the
new. Up to this time his life has been spent in study, in travel, in
teaching, and in writing.
In teaching and in scholarly work Professor Harrison has been unusually
active. Since 1871 he has taught nine months of every year; and almost
every year has seen from his pen some piece of scholarly work in the
domain of English, French or German literature and philology. Heine’s
“Reisebilder,” “French Syntax,” “Negro English,” “Creole Patois,”
“Teutonic Life in Beowulf,” ten lectures on “Anglo-Saxon Poetry” before
Johns Hopkins University--these, with several other publications, bear
witness to his industry and his scholarship. But his chief claim to
regard in this department of literature is in originating the “Library
of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” and in his work on the “Handy Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary.” The first volume of the Library, that on Beowulf, at
once took the first place with English and American scholars, and
was adopted as a text-book in Oxford and other universities. In the
lecture-room Professor Harrison is pleasant, genial, helpful and alert.
His students like him as a man, and take pride in showing his name on
their diplomas. He had not been teaching two years before he convinced
every one that only thorough scholarship could win that signature.
At a very early age Professor Harrison began to write doggerel
for the New Orleans _Picayune_ and _Times_. While a student at
the University of Virginia he wrote an article for the Baltimore
_Episcopal Methodist_ called “Notre Dame de Paris,” which attracted
much attention. His next piece of literary work was a paper on
Björnstjerne Björnson, which won the $50 gold medal given by _The
University Magazine_. As he was not a matriculate at the time, the
prize could not be awarded. In 1871 his “first literary effort,” as he
calls it, appeared in _Lippincott’s Magazine_. It was entitled “Goethe
and the Scenery about Baden-Baden.” Then essay after essay followed
in quick succession from his pen. Soon after this his connection with
_The Southern Magazine_ began, which resulted in a series of essays
on French, German, English, Swedish, and Italian poets. These were
published by Hurd & Houghton, in 1875, under the title of “A Group
of Poets and their Haunts,” and the edition was immediately sold. In
literary circles, especially in Boston, this book won for the young
author firm standing-ground. His first work is chiefly remarkable for
the overflow of a copious vocabulary and the almost riotous display of
a rich fancy and abundant learning. We are swept along with the stream
in which trees torn up by the roots from Greek and Latin banks come
whirling, dashing, plunging by in countless numbers; the waters spread
out on all sides, but we are not always quite sure of the channel.
Since then the waters have subsided, and we see a broad channel and a
current swift and clear. In 1876 Professor Harrison made a visit to
Greece, and on his return published through Houghton, Osgood & Co. a
volume of “Greek Vignettes.” The London _Academy_ expressed the general
opinion of this book in the following sentence: “It is so charmingly
written that one can hardly lay it down to criticise it.” In 1878 a
visit to Spain resulted in another book, “Spain in Profile,” which
was followed in 1881 by the “History of Spain.” In 1885 the Putnams
began to publish the Story of the Nations, and Professor Harrison’s
“Story of Greece” was given the place of honor as the initial volume
of the series. His chief characteristics, as shown in these works,
are critical insight and descriptive power. His versatile fancy,
too, is ever giving delightful surprises, as in this little note
anent Dr. Holmes’s seventy-fifth birthday: “He is the Light of New
England, as Longfellow was the Love, and Emerson the Intellect. I saw
a wonderful cactus in Mexico, all prickles and blossoms--Dr. Oliver
Wendell Holmes all over; but the blossoms hid the prickles.” Some
of his most elaborate descriptions are found in “Spain in Profile,”
such as the “Alhambra,” “A Spanish Bull-fight”; others again in _The
Critic_ (“Venice from a Gondola,” “A Summer in Alaska,” etc.) to which
he has long been a constant contributor. His critical insight is
shown in such reviews as those of Ruskin, Poe, Balzac, and Froude’s
“Oceana,” and in such brief essays as “An Italian Critic,” “Two
Views of Shelley,” “George Sand and Diderot,” etc. His contributions
to other periodicals have been numerous. His articles in _The
Nation_, _Literary World_, _Current_, _Independent_, _Home Journal_,
_Lippincott’s_, _Manhattan_, _Overland Monthly_, _American Journal of
Philology_, _Anglia_, etc., would fill several volumes. Two charming
stories--“P’tit-José-Ba’tiste,” a Creole story, and “Dieudonnée,” a
West Indian Creole story--testify to his skill in this kind of writing.
Since 1895 he has been professor of English and Romance languages in
the University of Virginia. Several trips to different parts of Europe,
visits to Alaska, British America, Mexico, and the West Indies, during
which he studied the languages as well as the customs of the peoples,
have given him many a “peep over the edge of things.”
W. M. BASKERVILL.
COL. JOHN HAY
COL. JOHN HAY
IN WASHINGTON
It was a happy thought that inspired _The Critic’s_ series of Authors
at Home. The very idea was benevolence. One of its charms is the
reader’s sense of mutuality--reciprocity. Has not Col. Hay, for
instance, been a welcomed guest beneath many, many roof-trees, beside
many, many hearthstones; and are his own doors to be shut with a
“Procul, O procul este, profani!”? One can fancy the gratitude of
posterity for these contemporary sketches of those whose lips have been
touched and tongues loosened by the song-inspirer--of those who have
“instructed our ignorance, elevated our platitudes, brightened our
dullness, and delighted our leisure.” For the lack of a _Critic_ in the
past, how little we know of those authors at home whom we forgather
with in imagination! A scrap of this memoir, that biography, and yonder
letter, makes a ragged picture at best. There was only one Boswell, and
he, as Southey says, has gone to heaven for his “Johnson,” if ever a
man went there for his good works. The mind’s eye, of course, pictures
Rogers at one of his famous breakfasts; the galaxy at Holland House;
Coleridge monotoning, with Lamb furnishing puns for periods; “smug
Sydney,” ten miles from a lemon, scattering pearls before Yorkshire
swine; Dr. Johnson at Thrale’s, drinking tea and bullying his betters;
Dryden enthroned at the Kit-kat; but all the portraits, save those
by Boswell, are unsatisfactory--mere outlines without coloring, and
lacking that essential background, the “at home.”
Great political revolutions are the results or causes of literary
schools; and the future student of our literature will note with
more emphasis than we, that one of the incidents or results of the
war between the sections was the birth of a new school of writers
whose works are distinctively original and distinctively American.
To this class, who have won, and are winning, fame for themselves
while conferring it upon their country, belongs Col. Hay. His earlier
writings have the characteristics of freshness, vigor and intensity
which indicate an absence of the literary vassalage that dwarfed the
growth and conventionalized or anglicized American writers as a class.
Travel and indwelling among the shrines of the Old World’s literary
gods and goddesses, have not un-Americanized either the man or the
author. The facile transition from “Jim Bludso” to “A Woman’s Love” is
paralleled by that from a bull-fight to a Bourbon duel.
Though not at all ubiquitous, Col. Hay is a man of many homes,--that
of his birth, Indiana; that of his Alma Mater, “Brown,” whose memory
he has gracefully and affectionately embalmed in verse; that of his
Mother-in-Law, Illinois, having been admitted to her bar in 1861. This
great year--1861--the pivot upon which turned so many destinies,--saw
him “at home” in the White House. Next to his own individual claims
upon national recognition, his relations to the martyred President, the
well-known confidence, esteem and affection which that great guider of
national destiny felt for his youthful secretary, have rendered his
name as familiar as a household word. At home in the tented fields of
the Civil War, at home in the diplomatic circles of Paris, Vienna, and
Madrid, Col. Hay, after an exceptionally varied experience, planted his
first vine and fig-tree in Cleveland, Ohio, and his second in the City
of Washington. Between these two homes he vibrates. The summer finds
him in his Euclid Avenue house, which occupies the site where that
of Susan Coolidge once stood. Around its far-reaching courtyard and
uncramped, unfenced spaciousness, she moved--that happiest of beings,
one endeared to little stranger hearts all over the land.
Among the many handsome residences erected within a few years in
Washington, Col. Hay’s is one of the largest. Its solid mass of
red brick, massive stone trimmings, stairway and arched entrance,
Romanesque in style, give it an un-American appearance of being built
to stay. The architect, the late H. H. Richardson, seems to have
dedicated the last efforts of dying genius to the object of making
the structure bold without and beautiful within. The great, broad
hall, the graceful and roomy stairway, the large dining-room on the
right, wainscoted in dark mahogany, with its great chimney-place and
great stone mantel-piece extending beyond on either side; the other
chimney-places with African marble mantelpieces; the oak wainscoting
of the large library, and the colored settles on either side of
the fireplace; the cosey little room at the entrance; the charming
drawing-room--in brief, it seems as though Mr. Richardson contemplated
a monument to himself when he designed this beautiful home. The library
is the largest room; and it was there that I found Col. Hay at home in
every sense. The walls are shelved, hung (not crowded) with pictures;
the works of _virtu_ break the otherwise staring ranks of books.