might--carelessness, or an effect of haste, in the large mass of
results to which this author has already put his name. On the contrary
it seems to me that more and more he tends toward painstaking care,
and there is good reason to predict that his best and possibly most
brilliant work is yet to come. Regarding one work, since published,
he has told me that, having already pushed a long way toward the end
and finding that the affair went slowly, of a sudden it was borne in
upon him that he was on the wrong track. In a moment he swept 30,000
words of manuscript into his basket and started anew and with a good
heart. A great organizing capacity, a power of maintained effort, and a
willingness to take unstinted trouble, render the large volume of his
achievements as acceptable as the small bulk of another’s work. Faults
I think Mr. Ford has had, and still has, but it would be proper even
for the nicest criticism to discover a sure advance in the quality of
his style. Personally I have never been able to explain satisfactorily
the success of his most popular book, “The Honorable Peter Stirling.”
It is almost without a “literary” quip or term or phrase; the politics
present a stiff dose to novel readers, a class too satiated with an
unvarying diet not to crave spicier viands than those served to them
by the love motive of Mr. Ford’s story. Why then has this proved to be
one of the three stories of the past two years and more? I do not know,
unless it be that Mr. Ford, who is no egotist and not exclusive in his
sympathies, reflects in this book a genuine if unsentimental faith
in human nature of every degree. To such a faith humanity is always
responsive. He did not come crying in the wilderness with acrimony and
fanaticism, but gave the prototype of a gentleman of the heart and
not of long ancestry--a pure man in all things, even in metropolitan
politics, who stamped on evil, not shrank from it. There was a cry
for a politician who could be something to the “boys” besides a prig,
and Mr. Ford, _haud inexpertus_, produced him. It was bread and not a
stone, and the democracy, rampant yet not unclean, heard him gladly.
I have no purpose here to rehearse the merits of Mr. Ford’s various
writings. Current criticism certainly has him in its eye as a
conspicuous figure, and if he meets opposition he is not likely to
suffer neglect. Meanwhile another source of his success and of his
popularity seems to me to lie in his perfect intellectual and moral
normality. Great as is the volume of his work, it is sound throughout.
He strikes no shrill or wayward note; the social order is always
considered. He deals with the sound fruit of human life, and assumes
that good nature, honest love, money-making, clean and enjoyable
existence are not only possibilities but everyday realities. The
success of “The Story of an Untold Love” shows how ready people are for
an observance of all the commandments rather than for a breach of one.
It is with novels as with plays--cleanliness “goes.”
Mr. Ford’s large abilities, aided by fortunate inheritance, have been
used not for the ends of mere scholarship and to humor preciosity and
a love of what is fantastic and occasional, but to recognize common
wants and aspirations; yet at the same time he evinces an idealism
tempered by no little terrestrial wisdom and experience. Imagination
plays a larger part in his work--and I am here speaking of his creative
work--than appears at first sight. In “Peter Stirling” he has managed
to give to an immense metropolitan life an effect of homogeneity and
interrelation. The large and evanescent effects of a great city are
tempting themes, but those who try to catch and hold the impression for
the uses of a novel seldom succeed in giving more than fine details.
Our _genre_ painters of fiction have been admirable in this matter:
but to make one pattern of the huge confusion requires a knowledge
vouchsafed only to him who has acquired by daily contact the largest
and most vital experiences. The immensity of financial transactions,
the intricate shrewdness of politicians, aside from their corruptions,
the nice checks and balances of a higher social life must necessarily
escape the eye of the literary artist mainly because they lie beyond
his ken.
Cerebrally Mr. Ford is multiparous. He can be busy with a play, a
story, a biography, and with editing some historical work during the
same interval of time--the real marvel of it all being that, when these
come to publication, the world, which is said to know clearly what it
wants, accepts the results with apparent satisfaction. The power of
driving a quadriga of new books around the popular arena amid no little
applause, is due, I think, to qualities not inherent in the literary
mind as such, but implying a wider mental grasp.
A spirit of restlessness takes hold upon Mr. Ford when he is hardest
at work, and he shifts at pleasure from one to another of his several
desks or tables. I should imagine that the curiosity hunter of the
future, who might wish to possess the desk at which or the chair on
which the author of “Peter Stirling” sat when he penned that book,
might comfortably fill a storage-warehouse van with his new-found joys.
Like most good fellows who write, Mr. Ford knows the value of the night
and often works to best advantage when honest folk have been long abed.
It is a pleasure to think of the occasionally fortunate person who
writes when he wants to, not when he must, though I do not think it
would be difficult for so conscientious a worker as Mr. Ford to get up
friction at shortest notice and as occasion might require.
While it has been my purpose to refrain scrupulously from ministering
to that curiosity which cares less for the essential qualities, and
the intellectual methods of a character prominently before the world,
than for intrusive detail concerning personal caprices of taste and
modes of living, I shall not be content if I do not say that as a
personality Mr. Ford is as extraordinary as in his achievement. He is
alive to every issue of the day and of the hour. He is brilliant at
conversation, and perhaps even more brilliant at controversy, for I
can imagine no opposing argument so bristling with facts as to prevent
his making a cavalry charge on a whole table of unsympathetic hearers.
Life is at its keenest pitch when one is privileged to hear his urgent
voice, with no little command withal in its notes, and to see the
invincible clearness and dominance in his black-brown eyes.
This spirit of fearlessness, chastened as it is by an attitude of real
toleration and open-mindedness, colors Mr. Ford’s personal sympathies.
Believing as he does that every man must eventually work out his own
salvation and that present well-being may justly be sacrificed to
future growth, it would be impossible for him to choose any channel
for the expression of his personal loyalty other than that which should
strengthen and develop. It is no strange thing, then, that those
who seek his aid and counsel find him most helpful through a power
of stimulation which enhances instead of detracts from the sense of
self-reliance.
LINDSAY SWIFT.
[Since the foregoing was written, Mr. Paul Leicester Ford has died,
being shot through the heart by his brother Malcolm, who it is only
charitable to believe was temporarily insane. Mr. Ford had his best
years before him. He recently married, moved into a fine house built
to suit his own needs near Central Park, and his plans were mapped out
years in advance. He was engaged on a novel at the time of his death,
but had done so little on it that there is no possibility of its ever
seeing the light of print.--EDITORS.]
Transcriber’s Notes
Errors in punctuation have been fixed.
In the table of contents, “George P. Latkrop” changed to “George P.
Lathrop”
Page 32: “Boker make known” changed to “Boker made known”
Page 54: “Scotch balled” changed to “Scotch ballad”
Page 93: “multifarous aspects” changed to “multifarious aspects”
Page 114: “first appearancee” changed to “first appearance”
Page 174: “who anounnces” changed to “who announces”
Page 202: “bibliopole’s art” changed to “bibliophile’s art”
Page 284: “king has abdicted” changed to “king has abdicated”
Page 389: “New Engand” changed to “New England”