distinction of being the author of the best German novel, _Wilhelm
Meister_. The best translation of this was written and published
by Thomas Carlyle more than one hundred years ago. In reading this
translation, therefore, one is reading in the same book the works of
two men of genius. Carlyle had had almost no opportunity to hear spoken
German; he was largely self-taught. But it was characteristic of his
honesty, industry, conscience, as well as of his literary gifts, that
he should have done his difficult work so well that no one has been
able to equal it.
In the course of the novel occurs the exquisite lyric _Know’st thou the
land?_ The best English translation of this song was made about fifteen
years ago by the late James Elroy Flecker.
No absolutely first-rate translation of Dante into English exists. The
best plan is probably to read one in prose and one in verse; the prose
by Charles Eliot Norton, the verse by Cary.
A large number of English writers have had a try at Homer. George
Chapman, whose version inspired Keats, made a thundering Elizabethan
poem. Pope, according to his contemporary, Young, put Achilles into
petticoats, but Pope’s translation has anyhow the merit of being
steadily interesting. Butcher and Lang wrought together an excellent
prose version of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, while the latter poem was
artistically translated into rhythmic prose by George Herbert Palmer.
There is an English translation of another work that stands with
Taylor’s _Faust_ as being all but impeccable. This is Edward
FitzGerald’s version of the stanzas of Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald really
wrote a great English poem; it is only necessary to compare his version
with a literal prose translation, in Nathan Haskell Dole’s admirable
Variorum edition, to see how big is the debt we owe FitzGerald. If Omar
and Edward have met in the other world, I am sure Old Fitz has received
due acknowledgment.
The great Russian novelists, Turgeney, Dostoevski and Chekhov, have
been magnificently translated by Constance Garnett. She has also
Englished some of the novels of Tolstoi and Gogol. She has a positive
genius for translation. In the centenary year--1928--began an entirely
new version of the complete works of Tolstoi, by Aylmer Maude. Mr.
Maude knew Tolstoi intimately and is himself an admirable writer.
XXXIV
MUSIC OF THE SPHERES
When I was a small boy in Hartford, I often used to see Mark Twain
standing in the open air in his shirt-sleeves, the eternal cigar in
his mouth and a billiard cue in his hand. The billiard room was on
the top floor of his house and a tiny balcony projected from one of
the windows; nearly all dwellings built in the seventies had strange
abscesses of that kind. While his opponent was shooting, Mark would
come out on that platform for a breath of air. Billiards was the only
game he cared for; he was by no means fond of exercise. He always said,
“Never stand up when you can sit down; never sit down when you can
lie down.” Many years later, when he was living in New York, he often
attended professional billiard matches and the spectators often looked
away from the table at Mark’s superb leonine head and noble old face.
Another famous contemporary writer also found his only recreation in
billiards--this was Herbert Spencer. Every afternoon he would give
himself and the unknowable a rest and go to the Athenæum Club in London
for a game, where his own cue is still preserved as a memorial. If
none of his cronies was available, he would challenge a stranger. His
philosophy afforded no balm in defeat. On one occasion when he was
beaten badly he put his cue in the rack and remarked testily that to
play billiards well was an accomplishment; to play it too well was the
sign of a misspent life.
It is rather strange, since most of our American games are derived from
the English, that we should have taken billiards from France. Few games
are more uncommon in the United States than English billiards; cricket
is not nearly so unusual a spectacle.
Almost every American boy wants to play billiards. When I was fourteen
one of my schoolmates found a man who wished to sell a small table--it
had rubber tubes for cushions--but the price was prohibitive, twenty
dollars. Our total assets were seventy-five cents. We remembered
that my friend’s sister had received a twenty dollar gold piece as a
birthday present. Of what possible use could it be to her? We persuaded
her to donate it to the good cause, and if any one thinks that our
powers of persuasion were extraordinary, he thinks accurately, for
I subsequently persuaded her to become my wife. We bought the table
and set it up in my house late one Saturday night, too late, alas, to
play. Father would not allow me to touch it on Sunday, and early Monday
morning I had to be off to school. We got out at four o’clock, made
straight for that table and played till eleven at night, not stopping
to eat.
I know of no game at which professional skill has developed more
rapidly than at billiards. It seems incredible, but only fifty years
ago there were four balls on the table and the ordinary friendly game
was 34 points! Almost any professional today could run a thousand
points--indeed he could go on indefinitely.
I regret that the beautiful game of cushion-caroms, so common in the
eighties among the professionals, has become obsolete. In that game
there could be no nursing, because one had to make the cue ball hit
the cushion either before making the carom or after hitting the object
ball. The gentlemen of the green cloth who were most proficient at this
game were Vignaux, the Frenchman, and the Americans, “Jake” Schaefer,
father of the present expert of that name; Slosson, Sexton and Sutton.
In Allyn Hall at Hartford I saw a great match between Vignaux and
Schaefer. M. Vignaux was a large man and very dignified; in his
evening clothes he looked like a prime minister. Mr. Schaefer was so
small that Maurice Daly used to call him the little shaver. They were
formally introduced to the spectators by the referee, who remarked with
immense unction, “Mr. Schaefer has never in his life played with his
coat on; he asks the kind permission of the audience to remove it.”
This privilege was granted with fervent applause. When the game began
to go against him, M. Vignaux also removed his swallowtail.
At that time the highest run that had ever been made at cushion-caroms
was 77, which had been accomplished by Sexton. On this night, by
dazzling open-table play, Schaefer made a run of 70. He was called the
Wizard, because he played with extreme rapidity, exactly the opposite
of Slosson, who was known as the Student.
Now the popular professional game is the balkline, 18.2. A recent
champion is Edouard Horemans of Belgium, who won the title from young
Schaefer in a hair-raising match at San Francisco. Horemans is a
left-handed player and in every respect a worthy champion. His rail
play is phenomenal. I saw him give an exhibition on his first visit to
America in 1920 and it was clear that he was a dangerous competitor.
Who is the greatest player in history? It is hard to say, but I suspect
there never was a greater player than Napoleon Ives. He was one of the
first to use a cue weighing more than twenty ounces and was all but
unbeatable. Schaefer (senior) once beat him with the anchor shot, which
was afterward barred. Unfortunately, tuberculosis cut Ives off in his
prime. The heated room, the chalk dust and the excitement of close
contests were too much for him.
XXXV
DOG BOOKS
The dog, except in very high latitudes, is not so useful as the horse,
the mule, the camel, the donkey; he cannot supply food and drink, like
the cow and the goat; but for all that, he is, among all the lower
animals, man’s best friend. Even here, as in bipeds, we do not prize
our friends for what they can do for us, but for their mental and moral
qualities.
If it were possible to collect in one heap all the books and articles
that men have written in praise of dogs, it would be a sky-scraper.
I cannot tell what the earliest literary allusion to dogs is; but I
think it strange that the Bible is so silent. Those books representing
the social history of the Jews for many centuries, contain the most
beautiful poetry and prose ever written, as well as the most tender and
comforting assurances; but they indicate little interest in animals
as companions or pets. The word dog is repeatedly used as a term of
degradation, and for some unknown reason the Jews were forbidden to
bring into the sanctuary the price of a dog, which was coupled with the
wages of sin. The only allusion I have found to the dog as a companion
is in the Apocrypha, in the eleventh chapter of Tobit: “So they went
their way, and the dog went after them.” Even here the dog apparently
had to force his attentions upon man, which is a way he has when
unappreciated.
The fact that in the New Testament the dogs ate of the crumbs from the
table and that the street dogs licked the sores of Lazarus the beggar,
proves nothing in the way of appreciation; other animals moved freely
about the houses in Palestine, and they were not kept for the charm of
their company.
But in the old Indian books of the East, many centuries before Christ,
the dog’s fidelity and social attractions were prized; as is shown by
the well-known story of the righteous pilgrim coming to the gates of
heaven with his dog. He was told to walk right in. “And my dog?” “Oh,
no dogs allowed.” “All right, then I don’t go in.” This man thought
heaven would not be heaven without dogs, as Siegmund cared naught for
heaven without Sieglinde.
Pope alluded to the Indian love of dogs:
“But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.”
The Greeks loved dogs. One of the most affecting incidents in Homer’s
_Odyssey_ is where Ulysses returns after years of wandering, and, being
in rags, no one recognises him. But his dog Argos, who had waited for
his master expectantly all these years, instantly sees and knows him,
and through the beggar’s disguise salutes the king. He wags his tail
and dies of joy.
English literature is filled with dogolatry. Dr. John Brown’s _Rab
and His Friends_ (1858), became a little classic. Tennyson worshipped
dogs, and always had two or three huge dogs in the room while he
composed poetry, which he read aloud to them. His poem _Owd Roa_ (Old
Rover), describes how a dog saved a family when the house was on fire.
Bret Harte made a marvellous sketch of the strange appearance and
characteristics of the dog Boonder. Stevenson wrote a whimsical essay,
_The Character of Dogs_, in which he proves conclusively that many
dogs are snobs. They certainly are; they will fawn on well-dressed
strangers, and try to bite the iceman.
Maeterlinck has declared that the dog is the only conscious being
in the world who knows and is sure of his god; in _The Blue Bird_
he exalted the moral character of the dog, though I find it hard
to forgive him for his slander of the cat. Richard Harding Davis’s
masterpiece--among all his brilliant short stories--is _The Bar
Sinister_, an imaginative study of dogs. Rudyard Kipling has celebrated
the virtues of dogs both in prose and verse.
Vivisection and dogs have called out many poems, of which two of the
most notable are Robert Browning’s _Tray_ and Percy MacKaye’s _The
Heart of a Dog_.
Jack London’s masterpiece is _The Call of the Wild_, where the great
dog reverted to primitive impulses and habits. This is an imperishable
work of literature, and although cast in the form of prose fiction,
has much of the elevation and majesty of poetry. Among contemporary
writers, Albert Payson Terhune has specialised in dogs, and done
admirable work in canine psychoanalysis. The late Senator Vest, when
a young man, made a speech in court on dogs which will outlast his
political orations.
But of all the works in prose or verse, ancient or modern that
celebrates the virtues of the dog, the most admirable is the novel,
_Bob, Son of Battle_, by the late Alfred Ollivant. It was published in
1898, and was his first book, written under peculiar circumstances. Mr.
Ollivant was a young Englishman who had injured his spine in football;
then, having apparently recovered, he received a commission in the
artillery at the age of nineteen. A fall from his horse permanently
injured him, so that he was an invalid for the rest of his life--he
died in 1927. For the first few years he was not able to leave his
bed, and at the age of twenty, in horizontal pain and weakness, began
to write _Bob_. It took him three years to finish the book. In England
it was published under the poor title, _Owd Bob_, and attracted no
attention; but in America the publishers wisely changed the name to the
alliterative _Bob, Son of Battle_, and the book sold by the hundred
thousand. (Those who are interested in the first editions should know
that the first English edition differs in style from the first American
edition; the London publishers delayed publication, and the author
revised the story without injuring it.)
It is a curious fact that this book, written by an Englishman for
Englishmen, and dealing exclusively with English scenes and customs,
should have attracted no attention in the land of its birth, while
selling like the proverbial hot cakes in every city and village in
America. In public lectures in Texas, California, and all over the
middle West and the East, I had only to mention the name of this novel
and a wave of delighted recognition swept over the audience. But
even ten years after its appearance it was practically unheard of in
England. I asked William De Morgan, Henry Arthur Jones, and William
Archer if they had read it; they had never heard of it.
Some years after that, however, a cheap edition was published in Great
Britain, and the book slowly made its way, and is now over there as
here an acknowledged classic. Its popularity was increased by its
being made into a motion picture, and Mr. Ollivant was elected to the
Athenæum.
The two most remarkable dogs I ever met in fiction are both in _Bob,
Son of Battle_--the hero, Bob, the Grey Dog of Kenmuir, and the villain
Red Wull. Their continued rivalry has an epic force and fervour. It
is the eternal strife between the Power of Light and the Power of
Darkness.
XXXVI
GOING TO HONOLULU
Remember to pronounce the first syllable to rhyme with “bone,” not with
“on.” But, above all, remember, when you are there, never to speak of
coming from the United States or from America--you are in the United
States. Call your home “the mainland.” I was once giving a lecture in
California and I thoughtlessly began a sentence this way: “When I get
back to America”--I never finished that sentence. It was owing only to
the sense of humour possessed by the audience that I was able to finish
the lecture.
People who have travelled all over the world say there are only two
places that may accurately be called paradise; they are the Hawaiian
Islands and Ceylon. If the wind is right, you get the spicy perfume
from Ceylon before the island is visible, as it is written in the
missionary hymn. I have never seen Ceylon, but Hawaii will do very well
as an earthly paradise. The most vivid and alluring description of it
came from the pen of Mark Twain and is to be found at the end of that
work of genius, _Roughing It_. In a certain sense, Mark was always
homesick for these islands. He saw them in his youth and he remembered
them in his old age.
In honor of Lord Sandwich, Captain Cook in 1778 named them the Sandwich
Islands. The next year he was killed there and a native chief affirmed
that he had eaten the Captain’s heart. I hope it gave him indigestion.
The islands were conquered by the native king, Kamehameha I, who died
in 1819. He was a great man, a combination of warrior and statesman,
like William the Conqueror.
In 1820 the American missionaries arrived. They found the natives
amiable, like many of the children of the sun, but without religion,
morality or education. Just the most blessed state imaginable, say many
of our modern writers, whose highest ideal for humanity is animalism.
The advantage of such an ideal is that one does not have to struggle to
reach it--hence its popularity.
These missionaries were heroic. They came around Cape Horn in sailing
vessels and they had to send their children back to the mainland for
education by the same route. All ministers of the gospel believe in
education and make sacrifices for it.
King Kalakaua was a picturesque and easy-tempered monarch, who loved
liquor. His trip around the world was an illuminating excursion in
every sense of the word. When he was at the British court, a terrific
question of etiquette arose which puzzled the wise men. Should he,
in going into dinner after Queen Victoria, precede or follow Edward,
Prince of Wales? The matter was settled by the tact and wit of the
Prince. “The man is either a king and should precede me, or he should
go into the dining-room with a napkin over his arm.”
In 1893 Queen Liliuokalani tried to get a new Constitution giving
more power to the throne. An American revolution--the third in our
history--took place, and a republic was established, with the late
Sanford B. Dole as President. In 1898 the republic was annexed to the
United States and in 1900 became the Territory of Hawaii. It will some
day become a State.
The voyage thither from San Francisco usually takes six days. Leaving
the Golden Gate in a cold fog, one sees hump-backed whales, and thirty
miles out the only land, the Farallone Islands, a desolate, melancholy
place for school teachers. But school teachers are used to getting the
worst of it. The weather is cold for two days, then mild, then warm;
plenty of flying fish by day, strange phosphorescence in the sea by
night, and overhead unfamiliar stars. The Southern Cross appears, a
subject for dispute.
The climate is celestial--much too good for this world. Never hot,
never cold in Honolulu. The year round it usually has a minimum of 70,
a maximum of 83. The constant northeast trade winds make the climate
suitable for civilised man, but they also bring frequent showers. The
inhabitants will not admit that these showers are rain--they call them
liquid sunshine. They are indeed liquid. On one elevation the wind
blows so hard that it is difficult to stand upright and on top of one
mountain I saw a waterfall up instead of down, the wind catching it
just as it left the rock. But on the small island Oahu, containing
Honolulu, one can find an immense variety of wind and weather. Those
who dislike showers can live where it practically never rains; other
places have genial, windless heat, and still others have the cooling,
beneficent breeze.
It is an international place and the brethren dwell together in unity.
The streets are filled with Americans, Hawaiians, Japanese, Chinese,
Portuguese, English, Germans and other folks, who seem to get along
together very well indeed. Punahou College was founded in 1841 and is
the oldest American college or university west of the Mississippi.
There I saw a remarkable historical pageant, attended by ex-President
Dole and ex-Queen Lil. One of the natives made a long address to the
Queen, which I wish I could have understood. Her face was grave and
impassive and when I was presented to her, I was deeply impressed by
her anachronistic expression. She seemed to be living in the past.
I visited many of the schools. At Kaiulaui School there were among the
pupils fifty-eight varieties of nationalities--I remember the exact
number, as it was one more than the mystic fifty-seven. The United
States flag was brought out; the children sang The Star-Spangled
Banner. Then they recited part of Longfellow’s _Building of the Ship_.
In the primary grade of another school, the teacher was a Japanese
lady. The children seem entirely free from the bigotry of nationalism.
The word “foreigner” is not an epithet and the children exhibit that
rarest of all human things--democracy.
The natural wonders on the biggest island of the group, Hawaii, beggar
description. You must go there yourselves. But I have always been more
interested in human nature than in nature. I have seldom seen the
latter and never the former show to better advantage than in these
delectable oases of the ocean.
XXXVII
HYMNS
The church to which I belong has this very day furnished itself with a
new set of hymn-books; when I enter my accustomed pew tomorrow morning
I shall find there attractive new volumes. Which fact leads me to the
consideration of hymns in general.
The worst verses in the world are to be found among epitaphs and
encomiums of the dead. I remember a certain town in Connecticut where
the local poet hovered over the bedside of the dying, like a vulture
watching a sick horse. Before the corpse was cold, this poetical ghoul
had his poem on the “remains” in the village paper. You had to get up
very early in the morning to die before he beat you to it, as Matthew
Arnold would not say. He added new terrors to death.
Well, probably, in the number of bad verses, hymns rank a good second
to epitaphs. There are so many bad hymns that some scoffers think
there are few good ones. Such a generalisation is wide of the truth.
The literature of hymnology contains many masterpieces; innumerable
hymns of the church are as beautiful in poetic art as they are devout
in aspiration. If we took all the hymns out of English literature, the
loss would be huge.
If a secret ballot could be taken among all classes of people to
discover the choice of the favourite hymn, I think it would appear that
Cardinal Newman’s _Lead, Kindly Light_ had a majority of votes.
I happened to be in London at the time of Newman’s death in 1890,
himself just as old as the nineteenth century. Then were the old bitter
controversies forgotten; Catholics, Protestants and the unclassed
united in tributes to the genius and beauty of the great Cardinal’s
mind and character. And as creeds were for the moment forgotten, so
there came instinctively to every one’s lips the words of Newman’s
creedless hymn, as creedless as the Lord’s Prayer.
The vicissitudes of literary fame are beyond divination. Who, including
first of all Newman, could have dreamed that when the young man
composed that poem, it would outlast his scholarly, controversial,
pietistic and literary prose of eighty years? Yet such is the fact.
On June 16, 1833, while in a calm at sea, on board an orange-boat and
thinking of his doctrinal perplexities, these lines came into Newman’s
mind; as suddenly, as inexplicably, as fortunately as the stanzas
_Crossing the Bar_ came to Tennyson on a ferryboat crossing the Solent.
Newman called the poem, _The Pillar and the Cloud_.
For details concerning its composition and for some interesting
criticisms on the poem itself I will refer readers to Dr. Joseph J.
Reilly’s admirable book, _Newman as a Man of Letters_.
Two of our best American hymn writers are two of our national
poets--Whittier and Holmes. The hymns of Whittier are beautiful in
their simplicity, sincerity, and universal application:
In simple trust like those who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.
and the universally known hymn, beginning
We may not climb the heavenly steeps.
The splendid hymn by Oliver Wendell Holmes, commencing
Lord of all being, throned afar,
is sung somewhere every Sunday.
Two hymns by Addison, written more than two hundred years ago, are
familiar to all churchgoers--one, _The spacious firmament on high_,
which was a favourite with Thackeray, and the other, beginning
When all Thy mercies, O my God.
I have always especially liked one stanza of this hymn:
Ten thousand thousand precious gifts
My daily thanks employ;
Nor is the least a cheerful heart
That tastes those gifts with joy.
After enumerating many blessings for which he is grateful to God,
Addison quite rightly includes the gift of a cheerful heart. Those who
are ever fastidious, difficult to please and not grateful for anything
miss much happiness.
The king of hymn-writers is Isaac Watts (1674–1748). Although
churchgoers sing his hymns every Sunday, he has never received due
literary credit for his magnificent sacred poems. _When I Survey the
Wondrous Cross_ is a hymn of tremendous passion. In one of his novels
Arnold Bennett calls it “that amazing hymn.” In other hymns by Watts
there is an austere grandeur.