that it was not the poet's freedom from financial cares at all, but
premature age, instead, that made his goddess of poesy fickle after
the advent of the pitifully belated fortune. Mr. Stedman spoke a far
truer word on this subject. "Poets," he said, "in spite of the
proverb, sing best when fed by wage or inheritance." "'Tis the
convinced belief of mankind," wrote Francis Thompson with a sardonic
smile, "that to make a poet sing you must pinch his belly, as if the
Almighty had constructed him like certain rudimentarily vocal dolls."
"No artist," declares Arnold Bennett, "was ever assisted in his career
by the yoke, by servitude, by enforced monotony, by economic
inferiority." And Bliss Carman speaks out loud and bold: "The best
poets who have come to maturity have always had some means of
livelihood at their command. The idea that any sort of artist or
workman is all the better for being doomed to a life of penurious
worry, is such a silly old fallacy, one wonders it could have
persisted so long." The wolf may be splendid at suckling journalism
and various other less inspired sorts of writing, but she is a
ferocious old stepmother to poetry.
There are some who snatch eagerly at any argument in support of the
existing order, and who triumphantly point out the number of good
poems that have been written under "seemingly" adverse conditions. But
they do not stop to consider how much better these poems might have
been made under "seemingly" favorable conditions. Percy Mackaye is
right in declaring that the few singers left to English poetry after
our "wholesale driving-out and killing-out of poets ... are of two
sorts: those with incomes and those without. Among the former are
found most of the excellent names in English poetry, a fact which is
hardly a compliment to our civilization."
Would that one of those excellent philanthropists who has grown so
accustomed to giving a million to libraries and universities that the
act has become slightly mechanical--might realize that he has, with
all his generosity, made no provision as yet for helping one of the
most indispensable of all educational institutions--the poet. Would
that he might realize how little good the poet of genius can derive
from the universities--places whose conservative formalism is even
dangerous to his originality, because they try to melt him along with
all the other students and pour him into their one mold. It is
distressing to think of all the sums now devoted to inducing callow,
overdriven sophomores to compose forced essays and doggerel, by luring
them on with the glitter of cash prizes. One shudders to think of all
the fellowship money which is now being used to finance reluctant
young dry-as-dusts while they are preparing to pack still tighter the
already overcrowded ranks of "professors of English literature"--whose
profession, as Gerald Stanley Lee justly remarks, is founded on the
striking principle that a very great book can be taught by a very
little man. This is a department of human effort which, as now usually
conducted, succeeds in destroying much budding appreciation of poetry.
Why endow these would-be interpreters of poetry, to the neglect of the
class of artists whose work they profess to interpret? What should we
think of England if her Victorian poets had all happened to be
penniless, and she had packed them off to Grub Street and invested,
instead, in a few more professors of Victorian literature?
Why should not a few thousands out of the millions we spend on
education be used to found fellowships of creative poetry? These would
not be given at first to those who wish to learn to write poetry; for
the first thousands would be far too precious for use in any such
wild-cat speculations. They would be devoted, rather, to poets of
proved quality, who have already, somehow, learned their art, and who
ask no more wondrous boon from life than fresh air and time to regain
and keep that necessary margin of vitality which must go to the making
of genuine poetry.
I would not have the incumbent of such a fellowship, however, deprived
suddenly of all outer incentives for effort. The abrupt transition
from constant worry and war among his members to an absolutely
unclouded life of pure vocation-following might be almost too violent
a shock, and unsettle him and injure his productivity for a time.
The award of such a fellowship must not, of course, involve the least
hint of charity or coercion. It should be offered and accepted as an
honor, not as a donation. The yearly income should, in my opinion, be
small. It should be such a sum as would almost, but not quite, support
the incumbent very simply in the country, and still allow for books
and an occasional trip to town. In some cases an income of a thousand
dollars, supplemented by the little that poetry earns and possibly by
a random article or story in the magazines, would enable a poet to
lead a life of the largest effectiveness.
It is my belief that almost any genuine poet who is now kept in the
whirl by economic reasons and thus debarred from the free practice of
his calling would gladly relinquish even a large salary and reduce his
life to simple terms to gain the inestimable privilege of devoting
himself wholly to his art before the golden bowl is broken. Many of
those who are in intimate touch with the poets of America to-day could
show any philanthropist how to do his land and the world more actual,
visible, immediate good by devoting a thousand dollars to poetry, than
by allowing an hundred times that sum to slip into the ordinary
well-worn grooves of philanthropy.
Some years ago a _questionnaire_ was submitted to various literary men
by a poetry-lover who hoped to induce a wealthy friend to subsidize
poets of promise in case these literary leaders approved the plan.
While the younger writers warmly favored the idea, a few of the older
ones discouraged it. These were, in all cases, men who had made a
financial success in more lucrative branches of literature than
poetry; and it was natural for the veterans, who had brawnily
struggled through the burden and heat of the day, to look with the
unsympathetic eye of the sturdy upon those frailer ones of the rising
generation who perhaps might, without assistance, be eliminated in the
rough-and-tumble of the literary market-place. Of course it was but
human for the veterans to insist that any real genius among their
youthful competitors "would out," and that any assistance would but
make life too soft for the youngsters, and go to swell the growing
"menace" of bad verse by mitigating the primal rigors of natural
selection. No doubt the generation of writers older than Wordsworth
quite innocently uttered these very same sentiments in voices of deep
authority when it was proposed to offer this young person a chance to
compose in peace. No. One fears that the attitude of these veterans
was not wholly judicial. But then, why should any haphazard group of
creative artists be expected to be judicial, anyway? One might as
reasonably go to the Louvre for classes in conic sections, or to the
Garden of the Gods for instruction in Rabbinical theology.
Few supporters of the general plan, on the other hand, were wholly in
favor of all the measures proposed for carrying it out. Some of the
most telling criticisms went to show that while poets of undoubted
ability ought to be helped, the method of their selection offers a
grave difficulty. H. G. Wells, who heartily approved the main idea,
brought out the fact that it would never do to leave the choice to a
jury, as no jury would ever have voted for half of the great poets who
have perished miserably. Juries are much too conventionally minded.
For they are public functionaries; or, if not that, at least they feel
self-consciously as if they were going to be held publicly
responsible, and are apt to bring extremely conventional, and perhaps
priggish, standards to bear upon their choice. "They invariably become
timid and narrow," wrote Mr. Wells, "and seek refuge in practical,
academic, and moral tests that invariably exclude the real men of
genius."
Prizes and competitions were considered equally ill-advised methods of
selection. It is significant that these methods are now being rapidly
dropped in the fields of sculpture and architecture. For the mere
thought of a competition is a thing essentially antagonistic to the
creative impulse; and talent is likely to acquit itself better than
genius in such a struggle. The idea of a poetic competition is a relic
of a pioneer mode of thought. Mr. Wells concluded that the decision
should be made by the individual. But I cannot agree with him that
that same individual should be the donor of the fellowship. It seems
to me that this would-be savior of our American poetry should select
the best judge of poets and poetry that he can discover and be guided
by his advice.
On general principles, there are several things that this judge should
_not_ be. He should not be a professor of English, because of the
professor's usual bias toward the academic. Besides, these fellowships
ought not in any way to be associated with institutions of
learning--places which are apt to fetter poets and surround them with
an atmosphere hostile to the creative impulse. Neither should this
momentous decision be left to editors or publishers, because they are
usually suffering from literary indigestion caused by skimming too
many manuscripts too fast, and because, at any rate, they ordinarily
pay little attention to poetry and hold it commercially "in one grand
despise." Nor should the normal type of poet be chosen as judge to
decide this question. For the poet is apt to have a narrow, one-sided
view of the field. He has probably developed his own distinctive style
and personality at the expense of artistic catholicity and kindly
breadth of critical judgment. The creative and the critical faculties
are usually as distinct and as mutually exclusive spheres as that of
the impassioned, partisan lawyer and the cool, impartial judge.
To whom, then, should the decision be left? It should, in my opinion,
be left to a real _judge_--to some broad, keen critic of poetry with a
clear, unbiased contemporary view of the whole domain of the art. It
matters not whether he is professional or amateur, so he is untouched
by academicism and has not done so much reading or writing as to
impair his mental digestion and his clarity of vision. Care, of
course, would have to be used in safeguarding the critic-judge against
undue pressure in favor of this candidate or that; and in safeguarding
the incumbent of the fellowship from yet more insidious influences.
For the apparently liberated poet would merely have exchanged prisons
if he learned that the founder of the fellowship wished to dictate
what sort of poetry he should write.
The idea of poetry fellowships is not as novel as it perhaps may
sound. It is no mere empirical theory. Americans ought to be proud to
know that, in a modest way, it has recently been tried here, and is
proving a success. I am told that already two masters of poetry have
been presented to us as free workers in their art by two Boston
philanthropists, and have been enabled to accomplish some of their
best work through such fellowships as are here advocated. This fact
should put cities like New York, Pittsburg, and Chicago on their
mettle. For they must realize that Boston, with her quiet,
slow-moving, Old-World pace, has not done to poetry a tithe of the
harm that her more energetic neighbors have, and should therefore not
be suffered to bear the entire brunt of the expiation.
Men say that money cannot buy a joyful heart. But next to writing a
great poem, I can scarcely imagine a greater happiness than to know
that a thousand of my dollars had enabled an imprisoned genius to
shake from his shoes the dust of a city office and go for a year to
"God's outdoors," there to free his system of some of the beauty that
had chokingly accumulated there until it had grown an almost
intolerable pain. What joy to know that my fellowship had given men
the modern New World "Hyperion," or "Prelude," or "Ring and the Book"!
And even if that whole year resulted in nothing more than a "Skylark,"
or a "Rabbi Ben Ezra," or a "Crossing the Bar"--could one possibly
consider such a result in the same thought-wave with dollars and
cents?
But this thousand dollars might do something even better than help
produce counterparts of famous poems created in other times and lands.
It might actually secure the inestimable boon of a year's leisure, a
procession of peaceful vistas, and a brimming cup for one of that "new
brood" of "poets to come" which Walt Whitman so confidently counted
upon to 'justify him and answer what he was for.' This handful of gold
might make it possible for one of these new poets to come into his
own, and ours, at once, and in his own person accomplish that fusion,
so devoutly to be wished, of those diverse factors of the greatest
poetry which have existed among us thus far only in awful
isolation--the possession of this one and that of our chief singers.
How fervently we poetry-lovers wish that one of the captains of
industry would feel impelled to put his hand into his pocket--if only
into his watch-pocket--or adorn his last testament with a modest
codicil! It would be such poetic justice if one of those who have
prospered through the very speeding-up process which has so seriously
crippled our poetry, should devote to its service a small tithe of
what he has won from poetry's loss--and thus hasten our renaissance of
singers, and bring a new dawn, 'brighter than before known,' out of
the dusk of the poets.
IX
THE JOYOUS MISSION OF MECHANICAL MUSIC
I wonder if any other invention has ever, in such a brief time, made
so many joyful hearts as the invention of mechanical music. It has
brought light, peace, gladness, and the gift of self-expression to
every third or fourth flat, villa, and lonely farmhouse in the land.
Its voice has literally gone out through all the earth, and with a
swiftness more like that of light than of sound.
Only yesterday we were marveling at the discovery of the larger
magazine audience. Until then we had never dreamed of addressing
millions of fellow creatures at one time, as the popular magazine now
does. Imagine the astonished delight of Plato or Cervantes, Poe or
Dickens, if they had been given in one week an audience equivalent in
number to five thousand readers a year for ten centuries! Dickens
would have called it, I think, "immortality-while-you-wait." Yet this
sort of immortality was recently placed at the immediate disposal of
the ordinary writer.
The miracle was unique in history. But it did not long remain so. Not
content with raining this wonder upon us, history at once poured down
a greater. One morning we awoke to find a new and still vaster medium
of expression, a medium whose globe-girdling voice was to that of the
five-million reader magazine as the roar of Niagara to the roar of a
Philadelphia trolley-car. To-day, from wherever civilized man has
obtained even a temporary foothold, there arise without ceasing the
accents of mechanical music, which talk persuasively to all in a
language so universal that even the beasts understand it and cock
applauding ears at the sound of the master voice. So that, while the
magazine writers now address the million, the composers and singers
and players make their bows to the billion.
Their omnipresence is astonishing. They are the last to bid you
farewell when you leave civilization. They are the first to greet you
on your return. When I canoed across the wild Allagash country, I was
sped from Moosehead Lake by Caruso, received with open arms at the
halfway house by the great-hearted Plancon, and welcomed to Fort Kent
by Sousa and his merry men. With Schumann-Heinck, Melba, and
Tetrazzini I once camped in the heart of the Sierras. When I persisted
to the uttermost secret corner of the Dolomites, I found myself
anticipated by Kreisler and his fiddle. They tell me that the portly
Victor Herbert has even penetrated with his daring orchestra through
darkest Africa and gone on to arrange a special benefit, in his home
town, for the dalai-lama of Tibet.
One of the most promising things about mechanical music is this: No
matter what kind of music or quality of performance it offers you,
you presently long for something a little better--unless your
development has been arrested. It makes small difference in this
respect which one of the three main varieties of instrument you happen
to own. It may be the phonograph. It may be the kind of automatic
piano which accurately reproduces the performances of the master
pianists. It may be the piano-player which indulgently supplies you
with technic ready-made, and allows you to throw your own soul into
the music, whether you have ever taken lessons or not. Or it may be a
combination of the last two. The influence of these machines is
progressive. It stands for evolution rather than for devolution or
revolution.
Often, however, the evolution seems to progress by sheer accident.
This is the way the accident is likely to happen. Jones is buying
records for the family phonograph. One may judge of his particular
stage of musical evolution by his purchases, which are: "Meet me in
St. Louis, Louis," "Dance of the Honey Bells," "Hello Central, Give me
Heaven," "Fashion Plate March," and "I Know that I'll be Happy when I
Die." He also notices in the catalogue a piece called "Tannhäuser
March," and, after some hesitation, buys this as well, because the
name sounds so much like his favorite brand of beer that he suspects
it to be music of a convivial nature--a medley of drinking-songs,
perhaps.
But that evening in the parlor it does not seem much like beer. When
the Mephisto Military Band strikes it up--far from seeming in the
least alcoholic, it exhilarates nobody. So Jones inters it in the
darkest corner of the music-cabinet. And the family devote themselves
to the cake-walks and comic medleys, the fandangoes and tangos, the
xylophone solos, the shakedowns and break-downs and the rags and
tatters of their collection until they have thoroughly exhausted the
delights thereof. Then, having had time to forget somewhat the
flatness of "Tannhäuser," and for want of anything better to do, they
take out the despised record, dust it, and insert it into the machine.
But this time, curiously enough, the thing does not sound quite so
flat. After repeated playings, it even begins to rival the "Fashion
Plate March" in its appeal. And it keeps on growing in grace until
within a year the "Fashion Plate March" is as obsolete as fashion
plates have a habit of growing within a year, while "Tannhäuser" has
won the distinction of being the best-wearing record in the cabinet.
Then it begins to occur to the Jones family that there must be two
kinds of musical food: candy and staples. Candy, like the "Fashion
Plate March," tastes wonderfully sweet to the unsophisticated palate
as it goes down; but it is easy to take too much. And the cheaper the
candy, the swifter the consequent revulsion of feeling. As for the
staples, there is nothing very piquant about their flavor; but if they
are of first quality, and if one keeps his appetite healthy, one
seems to enjoy them more and more and to thrive on them three times a
day.
Accordingly, Jones is commissioned, when next he visits the
music-store, to get a few more records like "Tannhäuser." On this
occasion, he may even be rash enough to experiment with a Schubert
march, or a Weber overture, or one of the more popular movements of a
Beethoven sonata. And so the train of evolution will rush onward,
bearing the Joneses with it until fashion-plate marches are things of
the misty, backward horizon, and the family has, by little and little,
come to know and love the whole blessed field of classical music. And
they have found that the word "classical" is not a synonym for
dry-rot, but that it simply means the music that wears best.
However the glorious mistake may occur, it is being made by someone
every hour. By such hooks and crooks as these, good music is finding
its way into more and more homes. Although its true "classical"
nature is detected at the first trial, it is not thrown away, because
it cost good money. It is put away and bides its time; and some day
the surprising fact that it has wearing qualities is bound to be
discovered. To those who believe in the law of musical evolution, and
who realize that mechanical music has reached the wide world, and is
even beginning to penetrate into the public library, the possibility
of these happy accidents means a sure and swift general development in
the appreciation of the best music.
Those who know that man's musical taste tends to grow better and not
worse, know also that _any_ music is better than no music. A
mechanical instrument which goes is better than a new concert grand
piano that remains shut.
"Canned music may not be the highest form of art," the enthusiast will
say with a needless air of half apology, half defiance, "but I enjoy
it no end." And then he will go on to tell how the parlor melodeon
had gathered dust for years until it was given in part exchange for a
piano-player. And now the thing is the joy of the family, and the home
is filled with color and effervescence, and every one's head is filled
with at least a rudiment of living, growing musical culture.
The fact is, the piano-player is turning thousands of supposedly
humdrum, prosaic people into musical enthusiasts, to their own immense
surprise. Many of these people are actually taking lessons in the
subtle art of manipulating the machine. They are spending more money
than they can afford on vast collections of rolls. They are going more
and more to every important concert for hints on interpretation.
Better still, the most musical among them are being piqued, by the
combined merits and defects of the machine, into learning to play an
_un_mechanical instrument for the joy of feeling less mechanism
interposed between themselves and "the real thing."
Machinery has already done as much for the true spirit of music as the
"safe and sane" movement has done for the true spirit of the Fourth of
July. Both have shifted the emphasis from brute noise and fireworks to
more spiritual considerations. The piano-player has done a great deal
to cheapen the glamour of mere technical display on the part of the
virtuosi and to redeem us from the thralldom of the school of Liszt.
Our admiration for musical gymnastics and tight-rope balancing is now
leaking away so fast through the perforations of the paper rolls that
the kind of display-piece known as the concerto is going out of
fashion. The only sort of concerto destined to keep our favor is, I
imagine, that of the Schumann or Brahms type, which depends for its
effect not at all on display, but on sound musicianship alone. The
virtuoso is destined soon to leave the circus business and bid a long
farewell to his late colleagues, the sword-swallower, the trapeze
artist, the strong man, the fat lady, the contortionist, and the
gentleman who conducts the shell-and-pea game. For presently the only
thing that will be able to entice people to concerts will be the soul
of music. Its body will be a perfectly commonplace affair.
Many a good musician fears, I know, that machine-made music will not
stop with annihilating vulgar display, but will do to death all
professional music as well. This fear is groundless. Mechanical
instruments will no more drive the good pianist or violinist or
'cellist out of his profession than the public library, as many once
feared, will drive the bookseller out of business. For the library,
after persuading people to read, has taught them how much pleasure may
be had from owning a book, with the privilege of marking it and
scribbling one's own ideas on the margins, and not having to rush it
back to headquarters at inopportune moments and pay to a stern young
woman a fine of eight cents. Likewise people are eventually led to
realize that the joy of passively absorbing the product of phonograph
or electric piano contrasts with the higher joy of listening
creatively to music which the hearer helps to make, in the same way
that borrowing a book of Browning contrasts with owning a book of
Browning. I believe that, just as the libraries are yearly educating
hosts of book-buyers, so mechanical music is coöperating with
evolution to swell the noble army of those who support concerts and
give private musicales.