Smilingly she held out her hand. "Very well, you may give me my share now."
"Wait till I write it," I replied, a little taken aback.
Going to my room I set to work and wrote nearly two thousand words of the sketch. This I brought out later in the day and read to her with considerable excitement. I really felt that I had struck out a character which, while it did not conform to the actual woman in the case, was almost as vivid in my mind.
Mother listened very quietly until I had finished, then remarked with sententious approval. "That's good. Go on." She had no doubt of my ability to go on—indefinitely!
I explained to her that it wasn't so easy as all that, but that I could probably finish it in a day or two. (As a matter of fact, I completed the story in Boston but mother got her share of the "loot" just the same.)
Soon afterward, while sitting in the door looking out over the fields, I pencilled the first draft of a little poem calledColor in the Wheatwhich I also read to her.
She received this in the same manner as before, from which it appeared that nothing I wrote could surprise her. Her belief in my powers was quite boundless. Father was inclined to ask, "What's the good of it?"
Of course all of my visit was not entirely made up of hard labor in the field. There were Sundays when we could rest or entertain the neighbors, and sometimes ashower gave us a few hours' respite, but for the most part the weeks which I spent at home were weeks of stern service in the ranks of the toilers.
There was a very good reason for my close application to the fork-handle. Father paid me an extra price as "boss stacker," and I could not afford to let a day pass without taking the fullest advantage of it. At the same time, I was careful not to convey to my pupils and friends from Boston the disgraceful fact that I was still dependent upon my skill with a pitch-fork to earn a living. I was not quite sure of their approval of the case.
At last there came the time when I must set my face toward the east.
It seemed a treachery to say good-bye to my aging parents, leaving them and my untrained sister to this barren, empty, laborious life on the plain, whilst I returned to the music, the drama, the inspiration, the glory of Boston. Opposite poles of the world could not be farther apart. Acute self-accusation took out of my return all of the exaltation and much of the pleasure which I had expected to experience as I dropped my harvester's fork and gloves and put on the garments of civilization once more.
With heart sore with grief and rebellion at "the inexorable trend of things," I entered the car, and when from its window I looked back upon my grieving mother, my throat filled with a suffocating sense of guilt. I was deserting her, recreant to my blood!—That I was re-enacting the most characteristic of all American dramas in thus pursuing an ambitious career in a far-off city I most poignantly realized and yet—I went! It seemed to me at the time that my duty lay in the way of giving up all my selfish plans in order that I might comfort my mother in her growing infirmity, and counsel and defend my sister—but I did not. I went away borneon a stream of purpose so strong that I seemed but a leak in its resistless flood.
This feeling of bitterness, of rebellion, of dissatisfaction with myself, wore gradually away, and by the time I reached Chicago I had resolved to climb high. "I will carry mother and Jessie to comfort and to some small share, at least, in the world of art," was my resolve. In this way I sought to palliate my selfish plan.
Obscurely forming in my mind were two great literary concepts—that truth was a higher quality than beauty, and that to spread the reign of justice should everywhere be the design and intent of the artist. The merely beautiful in art seemed petty, and success at the cost of the happiness of others a monstrous egotism.
In the spirit of these ideals I returned to my small attic room in Jamaica Plain and set to work to put my new conceptions into some sort of literary form.
In the slow procession of my struggling fortunes this visit to the West seems important, for it was the beginning of my career as a fictionist. My talk with Kirkland and my perception of the sordid monotony of farm life had given me a new and very definite emotional relationship to my native state. I perceived now the tragic value of scenes which had hitherto appeared merely dull or petty. My eyes were opened to the enforced misery of the pioneer. As a reformer my blood was stirred to protest. As a writer I was beset with a desire to record in some form this newly-born conception of the border.
No sooner did I reach my little desk in Jamaica Plain than I began to write, composing in the glow of a flaming conviction. With a delightful (and deceptive) sense of power, I graved with heavy hand, as if with pen of steel on brazen tablets, picture after picture of the plain. I had no doubts, no hesitations about the kind of effect I wished to produce. I perceived little that was poetic, little that was idyllic, and nothing that was humorous in the man, who, with hands like claws, was scratching a scanty living from the soil of a rented farm, while his wife walked her ceaseless round from tub to churn and from churn to tub. On the contrary, the life of such a family appealed to me as an almost unrelievedly tragic futility.
In the few weeks between my return and the beginningof my teaching, I wrote several short stories, and outlined a propagandist play. With very little thought as to whether such stories would sell rapidly or not at all I began to send them away, to theCentury, toHarper's, and other first class magazines without permitting myself any deep disappointment when they came back—as they all did!
However, having resolved upon being printed by the best periodicals I persisted. Notwithstanding rejection after rejection I maintained an elevated aim and continued to fire away.
There was a certain arrogance in all this, I will admit, but there was also sound logic, for I was seeking the ablest editorial judgment and in this way I got it. My manuscripts were badly put together (I used cheap paper and could not afford a typist), hence I could not blame the readers who hurried my stories back at me. No doubt my illegible writing as well as the blunt, unrelenting truth of my pictures repelled them. One or two friendly souls wrote personal notes protesting against my "false interpretation of western life."
The fact that I, a working farmer, was presenting for the first time in fiction the actualities of western country life did not impress them as favorably as I had expected it to do. My own pleasure in being true was not shared, it would seem, by others. "Give us charming love stories!" pleaded the editors.
"No, we've had enough of lies," I replied. "Other writers are telling the truth about the city,—the artisan's narrow, grimy, dangerous job is being pictured, and it appears to me that the time has come to tell the truth about the barn-yard's daily grind. I have lived the life and I know that farming is not entirely made up of berrying, tossing the new-mown hay and singingThe Old Oaken Bucketon the porch by moonlight.
"The working farmer," I went on to argue, "has to live in February as well as June. He must pitch manure as well as clover. Milking as depicted on a blue china plate where a maid in a flounced petticoat is caressing a gentle Jersey cow in a field of daisies, is quite unlike sitting down to the steaming flank of a stinking brindle heifer in flytime. Pitching odorous timothy in a poem and actually putting it into a mow with the temperature at ninety-eight in the shade are widely separated in fact as they should be in fiction. For me," I concluded, "the grime and the mud and the sweat and the dust exist. They still form a large part of life on the farm, and I intend that they shall go into my stories in their proper proportions."
Alas! Each day made me more and more the dissenter from accepted economic as well as literary conventions. I became less and less of the booming, indiscriminating patriot. Precisely as successful politicians, popular preachers and vast traders diminished in importance in my mind, so the significance of Whitman, and Tolstoi and George increased, for they all represented qualities which make for saner, happier and more equitable conditions in the future. Perhaps I despised idlers and time-savers unduly, but I was of an age to be extreme.
During the autumn Henry George was announced to speak in Faneuil Hall, sacred ark of liberty, and with eager feet my brother and I hastened to the spot to hear this reformer whose fame already resounded throughout the English-speaking world. Beginning his campaign in California he had carried it to Ireland, where he had been twice imprisoned for speaking his mind, and now after having set Bernard Shaw and other English Fabians aflame with indignant protest, was about to run for mayor of New York City.
I have an impression that the meeting was a noon-daymeeting for men, at any rate the historical old hall, which had echoed to the voices of Garrison and Phillips and Webster was filled with an eager expectant throng. The sanded floor was packed with auditors standing shoulder to shoulder and the galleries were crowded with these who, like ourselves, had gone early in order to ensure seats. From our places in the front row we looked down upon an almost solid mosaic of derby hats, the majority of which were rusty by exposure to wind and rain.
As I waited I recalled my father's stories of the stern passions of anti-slavery days. In this hall Wendell Phillips in the pride and power of his early manhood, had risen to reply to the cowardly apologies of entrenched conservatism, and here now another voice was about to be raised in behalf of those whom the law oppressed. My brother had also readProgress and Povertyand both of us felt that we were taking part in a distinctly historical event, the beginning of a new abolition movement.
At last, a stir at the back of the platform announced the approach of the speaker. Three or four men suddenly appeared from some concealed door and entered upon the stage. One of them, a short man with a full red beard, we recognized at once,—"The prophet of San Francisco" as he was then called (in fine derision) was not a noticeable man till he removed his hat. Then the fine line of his face from the crown of his head to the tip of his chin printed itself ineffaceably upon our minds. The dome-like brow was that of one highly specialized on lines of logic and sympathy. There was also something in the tense poise of his body which foretold the orator.
Impatiently the audience endured the speakers who prepared the way and then, finally, George stepped forward, but prolonged waves of cheering again and againprevented his beginning. Thereupon he started pacing to and fro along the edge of the platform, his big head thrown back, his small hands clenched as if in anticipation of coming battle. He no longer appeared small. His was the master mind of that assembly.
His first words cut across the air with singular calmness. Coming after the applause, following the nervous movement of a moment before, his utterance was surprisingly cold, masterful, and direct. Action had condensed into speech. Heat was transformed into light.
His words were orderly and well chosen. They had precision and grace as well as power. He spoke as other men write, with style and arrangement. His address could have been printed word for word as it fell from his lips. This self-mastery, this graceful lucidity of utterance combined with a personal presence distinctive and dignified, reduced even his enemies to respectful silence. His altruism, his sincere pity and his hatred of injustice sent me away in the mood of a disciple.
Meanwhile a few of his followers had organized an "Anti-Poverty Society" similar to those which had already sprung up in New York, and my brother and I used to go of a Sunday evening to the old Horticultural Hall on Tremont Street, contributing our presence and our dimes in aid of the meeting. Speakers were few and as the weeks went by the audiences grew smaller and smaller till one night Chairman Roche announced with sad intonation that the meetings could not go on. "You've all got tired of hearing us repeat ourselves and we have no new speaker, none at all for next week. I am afraid we'll have to quit."
My brother turned to me—"Here's your 'call,'" he said. "Volunteer to speak for them."
Recognizing my duty I rose just as the audience was leaving and sought the chairman. With a tremor ofexcitement in my voice I said, "If you can use me as a speaker for next Sunday I will do my best for you."
Roche glanced at me for an instant, and then without a word of question, shouted to the audience, "Wait a moment! Wehavea speaker for next Sunday." Then, bending down, he asked of me, "What is your name and occupation?"
I told him, and again he lifted his voice, this time in triumphant shout, "Professor Hamlin Garland will speak for us next Sunday at eight o'clock. Come and bring all your friends."
"You are in for it now," laughed my brother gleefully. "You'll be lined up with the anarchists sure!"
That evening was in a very real sense a parting of the ways for me. To refuse this call was to go selfishly and comfortably along the lines of literary activity I had chosen. To accept was to enter the arena where problems of economic justice were being sternly fought out. I understood already something of the disadvantage which attached to being called a reformer, but my sense of duty and the influence of Herbert Spencer and Walt Whitman rose above my doubts. I decided to do my part.
All the week I agonized over my address, and on Sunday spoke to a crowded house with a kind of partisan success. On Monday my good friend Chamberlin,The ListenerofThe Transcriptfilled his column with a long review of my heretical harangue.—With one leap I had reached the lime-light of conservative Boston's disapproval!
Chamberlin, himself a "philosophical anarchist," was pleased with the individualistic note which ran through my harangue. The Single Taxers were of course, delighted for I admitted my discipleship to George, and my socialistic friends urged that the general effect of myargument was on their side. Altogether, for a penniless student and struggling story writer, I created something of a sensation. All my speeches thereafter helped to dye me deeper than ever with the color of reform.
However, in the midst of my Anti-Poverty Campaign, I did not entirely forget my fiction and my teaching. I was becoming more and more a companion of artists and poets, and my devotion to things literary deepened from day to day. A dreadful theorist in some ways, I was, after all, more concerned with literary than with social problems. Writing was my life, land reform one of my convictions.
High in my attic room I bent above my manuscript with a fierce resolve. From eight o'clock in the morning until half past twelve, I dug and polished. In the afternoon, I met my classes. In the evening I revised what I had written and in case I did not go to the theater or to a lecture (I had no social engagements) I wrote until ten o'clock. For recreation I sometimes drove with Dr. Cross on his calls or walked the lanes and climbed the hills with my brother.
In this way most of my stories of the west were written. Happy in my own work, I bitterly resented the laws which created millionaires at the expense of the poor.
These were days of security and tranquillity, and good friends thickened. Each week I felt myself in less danger of being obliged to shingle, though I still had difficulty in clothing myself properly.
Again I saw Booth play his wondrous round of parts and was able to complete my monograph which I calledThe Art of Edwin Booth. I even went so far as to send to the great actor the chapter on hisMacbethand received from him grateful acknowledgments, in a charming letter.
A little later I had the great honor of meeting him for a moment and it happened in this way. The veteran reader, James E. Murdock, was giving a recital in a small hall on Park Street, and it was privately announced that Edwin Booth and Lawrence Barrett would be present. This was enough to justify me in giving up one of my precious dollars on the chance of seeing the great tragedian enter the room.
He came in a little late, flushing, timid, apologetic! It seemed to me a very curious and wonderful thing that this man who had spoken to millions of people from behind the footlights should be timid as a maid when confronted by less than two hundred of his worshipful fellow citizens in a small hall. So gentle and kindly did he seem.
My courage grew, and after the lecture I approached the spot where he stood, and Mr. Barrett introduced me to him as "the author of the lecture onMacbeth."—Never had I looked into such eyes—deep and dark and sad—and my tongue failed me miserably. I could not say a word. Booth smiled with kindly interest and murmured his thanks for my critique, and I went away, down across the Common in a glow of delight and admiration.
In the midst of all my other duties I was preparing my brother Franklin for the stage. Yes, through some mischance, this son of the prairie had obtained the privilege of studying with a retired "leading lady" who still occasionally made tours of the "Kerosene Circuit" and who had agreed to take him out with her, provided he made sufficient progress to warrant it. It was to prepare him for this trip that I met him three nights in the week at his office (he was bookkeeper in a cutlery firm) and there rehearsedEast Lynne,Leah the Forsaken, andThe Lady of Lyons.
From seven o'clock until nine I held the book whilsthe pranced and shouted and gesticulated through his lines.
At last, emboldened by his star's praise, he cut loose from his ledger and went out on a tour which was extremely diverting but not at all remunerative. The company ran on a reef and Frank sent for carfare which I cheerfully remitted, crediting it to his educational account.
The most vital literary man in all America at this time was Wm. Dean Howells who was in the full tide of his powers and an issue. All through the early eighties, reading Boston was divided into two parts,—those who liked Howells and those who fought him, and the most fiercely debated question at the clubs was whether his heroines were true to life or whether they were caricatures. In many homes he was read aloud with keen enjoyment of his delicate humor, and his graceful, incisive English; in other circles he was condemned because of his "injustice to the finer sex."
As for me, having begun my literary career (as the reader may recall) by assaulting this leader of the realistic school I had ended, naturally, by becoming his public advocate. How could I help it?
It is true a large part of one of my lectures consisted of a gratuitous slam at "Mr. Howells and the so-called realists," but further reading and deeper thought along the lines indicated by Whitman, had changed my view. One of Walt's immortal invitations which had appealed to me with special power was this:
Stop this day and night with meAnd you shall possess the origin of all poems;You shall no longer take things at second or third handNor look through the eyes of the dead,Nor through my eyes either,But through your own eyes....You shall listen to all sides,And filter them from yourself.
Stop this day and night with meAnd you shall possess the origin of all poems;You shall no longer take things at second or third handNor look through the eyes of the dead,Nor through my eyes either,But through your own eyes....You shall listen to all sides,And filter them from yourself.
Thus by a circuitous route I had arrived at a position where I found myself inevitably a supporter not only of Howells but of Henry James whose work assumed ever larger significance in my mind. I was ready to concede with the realist that the poet might go round the earth and come back to find the things nearest at hand the sweetest and best after all, but that certain injustices, certain cruel facts must not be blinked at, and so, while admiring the grace, the humor, the satire of Howells' books, I was saved from anything like imitation by the sterner and darker material in which I worked.
My wall of prejudice against the author ofA Modern Instancereally began to sag when during the second year of my stay in Boston, I took up and finishedThe Undiscovered Country(which I had begun five or six years before), but it wasThe Minister's Chargewhich gave the final push to my defenses and fetched them tumbling about my ears in a cloud of dust. In fact, it was a review of this book, written for theTranscriptwhich brought about a meeting with the great novelist.
My friend Hurd liked the review and had it set up. The editor, Mr. Clement, upon reading it in proof said to Hurd, "This is an able review. Put it in as an editorial. Who is the writer of it?" Hurd told him about me and Clement was interested. "Send him to me," he said.
On Saturday I was not only surprised and delighted by the sight of my article in large type at the head of the literary page, I was fluttered by the word which Mr. Clement had sent to me.
Humbly as a minstrel might enter the court of his king, I went before the editor, and stood expectantly while he said: "That was an excellent article. I have sent it to Mr. Howells. You should know him and sometime I will give you a letter to him, but not now. Wait awhile. War is being made upon him just now, and if you wereto meet him your criticism would have less weight. His enemies would say that you had come under his personal influence. Go ahead with the work you have in hand, and after you have put yourself on record concerning him and his books I will see that you meet him."
Like a knight enlisted in a holy war I descended the long narrow stairway to the street, and went to my home without knowing what passed me.
I ruminated for hours on Mr. Clement's praise. I read and re-read my "able article" till I knew it by heart and then I started in, seriously, to understand and estimate the school of fiction to which Mr. Howells belonged. I read every one of his books as soon as I could obtain them. I read James, too, and many of the European realists, but it must have been two years before I called upon Mr. Clement to redeem his promise.
Deeply excited, with my note of introduction carefully stowed in my inside pocket, I took the train one summer afternoon bound for Lee's Hotel in Auburndale, where Mr. Howells was at this time living.
I fervently hoped that the building would not be too magnificent for I felt very small and very poor on alighting at the station, and every rod of my advance sensibly decreased my self-esteem. Starting with faltering feet I came to the entrance of the grounds in a state of panic, and as I looked up the path toward the towering portico of the hotel, it seemed to me the palace of an emperor and my resolution entirely left me. Actually I walked up the street for some distance before I was able to secure sufficient grip on myself to return and enter.
"It is entirely unwarranted and very presumptuous in me to be thus intruding on a great author's time," I admitted, but it was too late to retreat, and so I kept on. Entering the wide central hall I crept warily across its polished, hardwood floor to the desk where a highlyornate clerk presided. In a meek, husky voice I asked, "Is Mr. Howells in?"
"He is, but he's at dinner," the despot on the other side of the counter coldly replied, and his tone implied that he didn't think the great author would relish being disturbed by an individual who didn't even know the proper time to call. However, I produced my letter of introduction and with some access of spirit requested His Highness to have it sent in.
A colored porter soon returned, showed me to a reception room off the hall, and told me that Mr. Howells would be out in a few minutes. During these minutes I sat with eyes on the portieres and a frog in my throat. "How will he receive me? How will he look? What shall I say to him?" I asked myself, and behold I hadn't an idea left!
Suddenly the curtains parted and a short man with a large head stood framed in the opening. His face was impassive but his glance was one of the most piercing I had ever encountered. In the single instant before he smiled he discovered my character and my thought as though his eyes had been the lenses of some singular and powerful x-ray instrument. It was the glance of a novelist.
Of course all this took but a moment's time. Then his face softened, became winning and his glance was gracious. "I'm glad to see you," he said, and his tone was cordial. "Won't you be seated?"
We took seats at the opposite ends of a long sofa, and Mr. Howells began at once to inquire concerning the work and the purposes of his visitor. He soon drew forth the story of my coming to Boston and developed my theory of literature, listening intently while I told him of my history of American Ideals and my attempt at fiction.
My conception of the local novel and of its great importance in American literature, especially interested the master who listened intently while I enlarged upon my reasons for believing that the local novel would continue to grow in power and insight. At the end I said, "In my judgment the men and women of the south, the west and the east, are working (without knowing it) in accordance with a great principle, which is this: American literature, in order to be great, must be national, and in order to be national, must deal with conditions peculiar to our own land and climate. Every genuinely American writer must deal with the life he knows best and for which he cares the most. Thus Joel Chandler Harris, George W. Cable, Joseph Kirkland, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary Wilkins, like Bret Harte, are but varying phases of the same movement, a movement which is to give us at last a really vital and original literature!"
Once set going I fear I went on like the political orator who doesn't know how to sit down. I don't think I did quit. Howells stopped me with a compliment. "You're doing a fine and valuable work," he said, and I thought he meant it—and he did mean it. "Each of us has had some perception of this movement but no one has correlated it as you have done. I hope you will go on and finish and publish your essays."
These words uttered, perhaps, out of momentary conviction brought the blood to my face and filled me with conscious satisfaction. Words of praise by this keen thinker were like golden medals. I had good reason to know how discriminating he was in his use of adjectives for he was even then the undisputed leader in the naturalistic school of fiction and to gain even a moment's interview with him would have been a rich reward for a youth who had only just escaped from spreadingmanure on an Iowa farm. Emboldened by his gracious manner, I went on. I confessed that I too was determined to do a little at recording by way of fiction the manners and customs of my native West. "I don't know that I can write a novel, but I intend to try," I added.
He was kind enough then to say that he would like to see some of my stories of Iowa. "You have almost a clear field out there—no one but Howe seems to be tilling it."
How long he talked or how long I talked, I do not know, but at last (probably in self-defense), he suggested that we take a walk. We strolled about the garden a few minutes and each moment my spirits rose, for he treated me, not merely as an aspiring student, but as a fellow author in whom he could freely confide. At last, in his gentle way, he turned me toward my train.
It was then as we were walking slowly down the street, that he faced me with the trust of a comrade and asked, "What would you think of a story dealing with the effect of a dream on the life of a man?—I have in mind a tale to be calledThe Shadow of a Dream, or something like that, wherein a man is to be influenced in some decided way by the memory of a vision, a ghostly figure which is to pursue him and have some share in the final catastrophe, whatever it may turn out to be. What would you think of such a plot?"
Filled with surprise at his trust and confidence, I managed to stammer a judgment. "It would depend entirely upon the treatment," I answered. "The theme is a little like Hawthorne, but I can understand how, under your hand, it would not be in the least like Hawthorne."
His assent was instant. "You think it not quite like me? You are right. It does sound a little lurid. I maynever write it, but if I do, you may be sure it will be treated in my own way and not in Hawthorne's way."
Stubbornly I persisted. "There are plenty who can do the weird kind of thing, Mr. Howells, but there is only one man who can write books likeA Modern InstanceandSilas Lapham."
All that the novelist said, as well as his manner of saying it was wonderfully enriching to me. To have such a man, one whose fame was even at this time international, desire an expression of my opinion as to the fitness of his chosen theme, was like feeling on my shoulder the touch of a kingly accolade.
I went away, exalted. My apprenticeship seemed over! To America's chief literary man I was a fellow-writer, a critic, and with this recognition the current of my ambition shifted course. I began to hope that I, too, might some day become a social historian as well as a teacher of literature. The reformer was still present, but the literary man had been reinforced, and yet, even here, I had chosen the unpopular, unprofitable side!
Thereafter the gentle courtesy, the tact, the exquisite, yet simple English of this man was my education. Every hour of his delicious humor, his wise advice, his ready sympathy sent me away in mingled exaltation and despair—despair of my own blunt and common diction, exaltation over his continued interest and friendship.
How I must have bored that sweet and gracious soul! He could not escape me. If he moved to Belmont I pursued him. If he went to Nahant or Magnolia or Kittery I spent my money like water in order to follow him up and bother him about my work, or worry him into a public acceptance of the single tax, and yet every word he spoke, every letter he wrote was a benediction and an inspiration.
He was a constant revelation to me of the swift transitions of mood to which a Celtic man of letters is liable. His humor was like a low, sweet bubbling geyser spring. It rose with a chuckle close upon some very somber mood and broke into exquisite phrases which lingered in my mind for weeks. Side by side with every jest was a bitter sigh, for he, too, had been deeply moved by new social ideals, and we talked much of the growing contrasts of rich and poor, of the suffering and loneliness of the farmer, the despair of the proletariat, and though I could never quite get him to perceive the difference between his program and ours (he was always for some vague socialistic reform), he readily admitted that land monopoly was the chief cause of poverty, and the first injustice to be destroyed. "But you must go farther, much farther," he would sadly say.
Of all of my literary friends at this time, Edgar Chamberlin of theTranscriptwas the most congenial. He, too, was from Wisconsin, and loved the woods and fields with passionate fervor. At his house I met many of the young writers of Boston—at least they were young then—Sylvester Baxter, Imogene Guiney, Minna Smith, Alice Brown, Mary E. Wilkins, and Bradford Torrey were often there. No events in my life except my occasional calls on Mr. Howells were more stimulating to me than my visits to the circle about Chamberlin's hearth—(he was the kind of man who could not live without an open fire) and Mrs. Chamberlin's boundlessly hospitable table was an equally appealing joy.
How they regarded me at that time I cannot surely define—perhaps they tolerated me out of love for the West. But I here acknowledge my obligation to "The Listener." He taught me to recognize literary themes in the city, for he brought the same keen insight, the same tender sympathy to bear upon the crowds of the streets that heused in describing the songs of the thrush or the whir of the partridge.
He was especially interested in the Italians who were just beginning to pour into The North End, displacing the Irish as workmen in the streets, and often in his column made gracious and charming references to them, softening without doubt the suspicion and dislike with which many citizens regarded them.
Hurd, on the contrary, was a very bookish man. He sat amidst mountains of "books for review" and yet he was always ready to welcome the slender volume of the new poet. To him I owe much. From him I secured my first knowledge of James Whitcomb Riley, and it was Hurd who first called my attention to Kirkland'sZury. Through him I came to an enthusiasm for the study of Ibsen and Bjornsen, for he was widely read in the literature of the north.
On the desk of this hard-working, ill-paid man of letters (who never failed to utter words of encouragement to me) I wish to lay a tardy wreath of grateful praise. He deserves the best of the world beyond, for he got little but hard work from this. He loved poetry of all kinds and enjoyed a wide correspondence with those "who could not choose but sing." His desk was crammed with letters from struggling youths whose names are familiar now, and in whom he took an almost paternal interest.
One day as I was leaving Hurd's office he said, "By the way, Garland, you ought to know Jim Herne. He's doing much the same sort of work on the stage that you and Miss Wilkins are putting into the short story. Here are a couple of tickets to his play. Go and see it and come back and tell what you think of it."
Herne's name was new to me but Hurd's commendation was enough to take me down to the obscure theaterin the South End whereDrifting Apartwas playing. The play was advertised as "a story of the Gloucester fishermen" and Katharine Herne was the "Mary Miller" of the piece. Herne's part was that of a stalwart fisherman, married to a delicate young girl, and when the curtain went up on his first scene I was delighted with the setting. It was a veritable cottage interior—not an English cottage but an American working man's home. The worn chairs, the rag rugs, the sewing machine doing duty as a flowerstand, all were in keeping.
The dialogue was homely, intimate, almost trivial and yet contained a sweet and touching quality. It was, indeed, of a piece with the work of Miss Jewett only more humorous, and the action of Katharine and James Herne was in key with the text. The business of "Jack's" shaving and getting ready to go down the street was most delightful in spirit and the act closed with a touch of true pathos.
The second act, a "dream act" was not so good, but the play came back to realities in the last act and sent us all away in joyous mood. It was for me the beginning of the local color American drama, and before I went to sleep that night I wrote a letter to Herne telling him how significant I found his play and wishing him the success he deserved.
Almost by return mail came his reply thanking me for my good wishes and expressing a desire to meet me. "We are almost always at home on Sunday and shall be very glad to see you whenever you can find time to come."
A couple of weeks later—as soon as I thought it seemly—I went out to Ashmont to see them, for my interest was keen. I knew no one connected with the stage at this time and I was curious to know—I was almost frenziedly eager to know the kind of folk the Hernes were.
My first view of their house was a disappointment. It was quite like any other two-story suburban cottage. It had a small garden but it faced directly on the walk and was a most uninspiring color. But if the house disappointed me the home did not. Herne, who looked older than when on the stage, met me with a curiously impassive face but I felt his friendship through this mask. Katharine who was even more charming than "Mary Miller" wore no mask. She was radiantly cordial and we were friends at once. Both persisted in calling me "professor" although I explained that I had no right to any such title. In the end they compromised by calling me "the Dean," and "the Dean" I remained in all the happy years of our friendship.
Not the least of the charms of this home was the companionship of Herne's three lovely little daughters Julie, Chrystal and Dorothy, who liked "the Dean"—I don't know why—and were always at the door to greet me when I came. No other household meant as much to me. No one understood more clearly than the Hernes the principles I stood for, and no one was more interested in my plans for uniting the scattered members of my family. Before I knew it I had told them all about my mother and her pitiful condition, and Katharine's expressive face clouded with sympathetic pain. "You'll work it out," she said, "I am sure of it," and her confident words were a comfort to me.
They were true Celts, swift to laughter and quick with tears; they inspired me to bolder flights. They met me on every plane of my intellectual interests, and our discussions of Herbert Spencer, Henry George, and William Dean Howells often lasted deep into the night. In all matters concerning the American Drama we were in accord.
Having found these rare and inspiring souls I was notcontent until I had introduced them to all my literary friends. I became their publicity agent without authority and without pay, for I felt the injustice of a situation where such artists could be shunted into a theater in The South End where no one ever saw them—at least no one of the world of art and letters. Their cause was my cause, their success my chief concern.
Drifting Apart, I soon discovered, was only the beginning of Herne's ambitious design to write plays which should be as true in their local color as Howells' stories. He was at this time working on two plays which were to bring lasting fame and a considerable fortune. One of these was a picture of New England coast life and the other was a study of factory life. One becameShore Acresand the otherMargaret Fleming.
From time to time as we met he read me these plays, scene by scene, as he wrote them, and whenMargaret Flemingwas finished I helped him put it on at Chickering Hall. My brother was in the cast and I served as "Man in Front" for six weeks—again without pay of course—and did my best to let Boston know what was going on there in that little theater—the first of all the "Little Theaters" in America. Then came the success ofShore Acresat the Boston Museum and my sense of satisfaction was complete.
How all this puts me back into that other shining Boston! I am climbing again those three long flights of stairs to theTranscriptoffice. Chamberlin extends a cordial hand, Clement nods as I pass his door. It is raining, and in the wet street the vivid reds, greens, and yellows of the horse-cars, splash the pavement with gaudy color. Round the tower of the Old South Church the doves are whirling.
It is Saturday. I am striding across the Common to Park Square, hurrying to catch the 5:02 train. Thetrees of the Mall are shaking their heavy tears upon me. Drays thunder afar off. Bells tinkle.—How simple, quiet, almost village-like this city of my vision seems in contrast with the Boston of today with its diabolic subways, its roaring overhead trains, its electric cars and its streaming automobiles!
Over and over again I have tried to re-discover that Boston, but it is gone, never to return. Herne is dead, Hurd is dead, Clement no longer edits theTranscript, Howells and Mary Wilkins live in New York. Louise Chandler Moulton lies deep in that grave of whose restful quiet she so often sang, and Edward Everett Hale, type of a New England that was old when I was young, has also passed into silence. His name like that of Higginson and Holmes is only a faint memory in the marble splendors of the New Public Library. The ravening years—how they destroy!
In the summer of 1889, notwithstanding a widening opportunity for lectures in the East, I decided to make another trip to the West. In all my mother's letters I detected a tremulous undertone of sadness, of longing, and this filled me with unrest even in the midst of the personal security I had won. I could not forget the duty I owed to her who had toiled so uncomplainingly that I might be clothed and fed and educated, and so I wrote to her announcing the date of my arrival.
My friend, Dr. Cross, eager to see The Short-Grass Country which was a far-off and romantic territory to him, arranged to go with me. It was in July, and very hot the day we started, but we were both quite disposed to make the most of every good thing and to ignore all discomforts. I'm not entirely certain, but I think I occupied a sleeping car berth on this trip; if I did so it was for the first time in my life. Anyhow, I must have treated myself to regular meals, for I cannot recall being ill on the train. This, in itself, was remarkable.
Strange to say, most of the incidents of the journey between Boston and Wisconsin are blended like the faded figures on a strip of sun-smit cloth, nothing remains definitely distinguishable except the memory of our visit to my Uncle William's farm in Neshonoc, and the recollection of the pleasure we took in the vivid bands of wild flowers which spun, like twin ribbons of satin, from beneath the wheels of the rear coach as we rushedacross the state. All else has vanished as though it had never been.
These primitive blossoms along the railroad's right-of-way deeply delighted my friend, but to me they were more than flowers, they were cups of sorcery, torches of magic incense. Each nodding pink brought back to me the sights and sounds and smells of the glorious meadows of my boyhood's vanished world. Every weed had its mystic tale. The slopes of the hills, the cattle grouped under the trees, all wrought upon me like old half-forgotten poems.
My uncle, big, shaggy, gentle and reticent, met us at the faded little station and drove us away toward the sun-topped "sleeping camel" whose lines and shadows were so lovely and so familiar. In an hour we were at the farm-house where quaint Aunt Maria made us welcome in true pioneer fashion, and cooked a mess of hot biscuit to go with the honey from the bees in the garden. They both seemed very remote, very primitive even to me, to my friend Cross they were exactly like characters in a story. He could only look and listen and smile from his seat in the corner.
William, a skilled bee-man, described to us his methods of tracking wild swarms, and told us how he handled those in his hives. "I can scoop 'em up as if they were so many kernels of corn," he said. After supper as we all sat on the porch watching the sunset, he reverted to the brave days of fifty-five when deer and bear came down over the hills, when a rifle was almost as necessary as a hoe, and as he talked I revived in him the black-haired smiling young giant of my boyhood days, untouched of age or care.
He was a poet, in his dreamy reticent way, for when next morning I called attention to the beauty of the view down the valley, his face took on a kind of wistfulsweetness and a certain shyness as he answered with a visible effort to conceal his feeling—"I like it—No place better. I wish your father and mother had never left the valley." And in this wish I joined.
On the third day we resumed our journey toward Dakota, and the Doctor, though outwardly undismayed by the long hard ride and the increasing barrenness of the level lands, sighed with relief when at last I pointed out against the level sky-line the wavering bulk of the grain elevator which alone marked the wind-swept deserted site of Ordway, the end of our journey. He was tired.
Business, I soon learned, had not been going well on the border during the two years of my absence. None of the towns had improved. On the contrary, all had lost ground.
Another dry year was upon the land and the settlers were deeply disheartened. The holiday spirit of eight years before had entirely vanished. In its place was a sullen rebellion against government and against God. The stress of misfortune had not only destroyed hope, it had brought out the evil side of many men. Dissensions had grown common. Two of my father's neighbors had gone insane over the failure of their crops. Several had slipped away "between two days" to escape their debts, and even little Jessie, who met us at the train, brave as a meadow lark, admitted that something gray had settled down over the plain.
Graveyards, jails, asylums, all the accompaniments of civilization, were now quite firmly established. On the west lay the lands of the Sioux and beyond them the still more arid foot-hills. The westward movement of the Middle Border for the time seemed at an end.
My father, Jessie told me, was now cultivating more than five hundred acres of land, and deeply worried, forhis wheat was thin and light and the price less than sixty cents per bushel.
It was nearly sunset as we approached the farm, and a gorgeous sky was overarching it, but the bare little house in which my people lived seemed a million miles distant from Boston. The trees which my father had planted, the flowers which my mother had so faithfully watered, had withered in the heat. The lawn was burned brown. No green thing was in sight, and no shade offered save that made by the little cabin. On every side stretched scanty yellowing fields of grain, and from every worn road, dust rose like smoke from crevices, giving upon deep-hidden subterranean fires. It was not a good time to bring a visitor to the homestead, but it was too late to retreat.
Mother, grayer, older, much less vigorous than she had been two years before, met us, silently, shyly, and I bled, inwardly, every time I looked at her. A hesitation had come into her speech, and the indecision of her movements scared me, but she was too excited and too happy to admit of any illness. Her smile was as sweet as ever.
Dr. Cross quietly accepted the hot narrow bedroom which was the best we could offer him, and at supper took his place among the harvest help without any noticeable sign of repugnance. It was all so remote, so characteristic of the border that interest dominated disgust.
He was much touched, as indeed was I, by the handful of wild roses which father brought in to decorate the little sitting-room. "There's nothing I like better," he said, "than a wild rose." The old trailer had noticeably softened. While retaining his clarion voice and much of his sleepless energy, he was plainly less imperious of manner, less harsh of speech.
Jessie's case troubled me. As I watched her, studied her, I perceived that she possessed uncommon powers,but that she must be taken out of this sterile environment. "She must be rescued at once or she will live and die the wife of some Dakota farmer," I said to mother.
Again I was disturbed by the feeling that in some way my own career was disloyal, something built upon the privations of my sister as well as upon those of my mother. I began definitely to plan their rescue. "They must not spend the rest of their days on this barren farm," I said to Dr. Cross, and my self-accusation spurred me to sterner resolve.
It was not a pleasant time for my good friend, but, as it turned out, there was a special providence in his being there, for a few days later, while Jessie and I were seated in the little sitting-room busily discussing plans for her schooling we heard a short, piercing cry, followed by low sobbing.
Hurrying out into the yard, I saw my mother standing a few yards from the door, her sweet face distorted, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "What is it, mother?" I called out.
"I can't lift my feet," she stammered, putting her arms about my neck. "I can't move!" and in her voice was such terror and despair that my blood chilled.
It was true! She was helpless. From the waist downward all power of locomotion had departed. Her feet were like lead, drawn to the earth by some terrible magnetic power.
In a frenzy of alarm, Jessie and I carried her into the house and laid her on her bed. My heart burned with bitter indignation. "This is the end," I said. "Here is the result of long years of ceaseless toil. She has gone as her mother went, in the midst of the battle."
At the moment I cursed the laws of man, I cursed myself. I accused my father. Each moment my remorse and horror deepened, and yet I could do nothing, nothingbut kneel beside the bed and hold her hand while Jessie ran to call the doctor. She returned soon to say she could not find him.
Slowly the stricken one grew calmer and at last, hearing a wagon drive into the yard, I hurried out to tell my father what had happened. He read in my face something wrong. "What's the matter?" he asked as I drew near.
"Mother is stricken," I said. "She cannot walk."
He stared at me in silence, his gray eyes expanding like those of an eagle, then calmly, mechanically he got down and began to unhitch the team. He performed each habitual act with most minute care, till I, impatient of his silence, his seeming indifference, repeated, "Don't you understand? Mother has had a stroke! She is absolutely helpless."
Then he asked, "Where is your friend Dr. Cross?"
"I don't know, I thought he was with you."
Even as I was calling for him, Dr. Cross came into the cabin, his arms laden with roses. He had been strolling about on the prairie.
With his coming hope returned. Calmly yet skillfully he went to the aid of the sufferer, while father, Jessie and I sat in agonized suspense awaiting his report.
At last he came back to us with gentle reassuring smile.
"There is no immediate danger," he said, and the tone in which he spoke was even more comforting than his words. "As soon as she recovers from her terror she will not suffer"—then he added gravely, "A minute blood vessel has ruptured in her brain, and a small clot has formed there. If this is absorbed, as I think it will be, she will recover. Nothing can be done for her. No medicine can reach her. It is just a question of rest and quiet." Then to me he added something which stunglike a poisoned dart. "She should have been relieved from severe household labor years ago."
My heart filled with bitterness and rebellion, bitterness against the pioneering madness which had scattered our family, and rebellion toward my father who had kept my mother always on the border, working like a slave long after the time when she should have been taking her ease. Above all, I resented my own failure, my own inability to help in the case. Here was I, established in a distant city, with success just opening her doors to me, and yet still so much the struggler that my will to aid was futile for lack of means.
Sleep was difficult that night, and for days thereafter my mind was rent with a continual and ineffectual attempt to reach a solution of my problem, which was indeed typical of ambitious young America everywhere. "Shall I give up my career at this point? How can I best serve my mother?" These were my questions and I could not answer either of them.
At the end of a week the sufferer was able to sit up, and soon recovered a large part of her native cheerfulness although it was evident to me that she would never again be the woman of the ready hand. Her days of labor were over.
Her magnificent voice was now weak and uncertain. Her speech painfully hesitant. She who had been so strong, so brave, was now both easily frightened and readily confused. She who had once walked with the grace and power of an athlete was now in terror of an up-rolled rug upon the floor. Every time I looked at her my throat ached with remorseful pain. Every plan I made included a vow to make her happy if I could. My success now meant only service to her. In no other way could I justify my career.
Dr. Cross though naturally eager to return to thecomfort of his own home stayed on until his patient had regained her poise. "The clot seems in process of being taken up," he said to me, one morning, "and I think it safe to leave her. But you had better stay on for a few weeks."
"I shall stay until September, at least," I replied. "I will not go back at all if I am needed here."
"Don't fail to return," he earnestly advised. "The field is just opening for you in Boston, and your earning capacity is greater there than it is here. Success is almost won. Your mother knows this and tells me that she will insist on your going on with your work."
Heroic soul! She was always ready to sacrifice herself for others.
The Doctor's parting words comforted me as I returned to the shadeless farmstead to share in the work of harvesting the grain which was already calling for the reaper, and could not wait either upon sickness or age. Again I filled the place of stacker while my father drove the four-horse header, and when at noon, covered with sweat and dust, I looked at myself, I had very little sense of being a "rising literary man."
I got back once again to the solid realities of farm life, and the majesty of the colorful sunsets which ended many of our days could not conceal from me the starved lives and lonely days of my little sister and my aging mother.
"Think of it!" I wrote to my brother. "After eight years of cultivation, father's farm possesses neither tree nor vine. Mother's head has no protection from the burning rays of the sun, except the shadow which the house casts on the dry, hard door-yard. Where are the 'woods and prairie lands' of our song? Is this the 'fairy land' in which we were all to 'reign like kings'?Doesn't the whole migration of the Garlands and McClintocks seem a madness?"
Thereafter when alone, my mother and I often talked of the good old days in Wisconsin, of David and Deborah and William and Frank. I told her of Aunt Loretta's peaceful life, of the green hills and trees.
"Oh, I wish we had never left Green's Coulee!" she said.
But this was as far as her complaint ever went, for father was still resolute and undismayed. "We'll try again," he declared. "Next year will surely bring a crop."
In a couple of weeks our patient, though unable to lift her feet, was able to shuffle across the floor into the kitchen, and thereafter insisted on helping Jessie at her tasks. From a seat in a convenient corner she picked over berries, stirred cake dough, ground coffee and wiped dishes, almost as cheerfully as ever, but to me it was a pitiful picture of bravery, and I burned ceaselessly with desire to do something to repay her for this almost hopeless disaster.
The worst of the whole situation lay in the fact that my earnings both as teacher and as story writer were as yet hardly more than enough to pay my own carefully estimated expenses, and I saw no way of immediately increasing my income. On the face of it, my plain duty was to remain on the farm, and yet I could not bring myself to sacrifice my Boston life. In spite of my pitiful gains thus far, I held a vital hope of soon,—very soon—being in condition to bring my mother and my sister east. I argued, selfishly of course, "It must be that Dr. Cross is right. My only chance of success lies in the east."
Mother did her best to comfort me. "Don't worry about us," she said. "Go back to your work. I amgaining. I'll be all right in a little while." Her brave heart was still unsubdued.
While I was still debating my problem, a letter came which greatly influenced me, absurdly influenced all of us. It contained an invitation from the Secretary of the Cedar Valley Agriculture Society to be "the Speaker of the Day" at the County Fair on the twenty-fifth of September. This honor not only flattered me, it greatly pleased my mother. It was the kind of honor she could fully understand. In imagination she saw her son standing up before a throng of old-time friends and neighbors introduced by Judge Daly and applauded by all the bankers and merchants of the town. "You must do it," she said, and her voice was decisive.
Father, though less open in his expression, was equally delighted. "You can go round that way just as well as not," he said. "I'd like to visit the old town myself."
This letter relieved the situation in the most unexpected way. We all became cheerful. I began to say, "Of course you are going to get well," and I turned again to my plan of taking my sister back to the seminary. "We'll hire a woman to stay with you," I said, "and Jessie can run up during vacation, or you and father can go down and spend Christmas with old friends."
Yes, I confess it, I was not only planning to leave my mother again—I was intriguing to take her only child away from her. There is no excuse for this, none whatever except the fact that I had her co-operation in the plan. She wanted her daughter to be educated quite as strongly as I could wish, and was willing to put up with a little more loneliness and toil if only her children were on the road to somewhere.
Jessie was the obstructionist. She was both scared and resentful. She had no desire to go to school in Osage. She wanted to stay where she was. Mother neededher,—and besides she didn't have any decent clothes to wear.
Ultimately I overcame all her scruples, and by promising her a visit to the great city of Minneapolis (with the privilege of returning if she didn't like the school) I finally got her to start with me. Poor, little scared sister, I only half realized the agony of mind through which you passed as we rode away into the Minnesota prairies!
The farther she got from home the shabbier her gown seemed and the more impossible her coat and hat. At last, as we were leaving Minneapolis on our way to Osage she leaned her tired head against me and sobbed out a wild wish to go home.
Her grief almost wrecked my own self-control but I soothed her as best I could by telling her that she would soon be among old friends and that she couldn't turn back now. "Go on and make a little visit anyway," I added. "It's only a few hours from Ordway and you can go home at any time."
She grew more cheerful as we entered familiar scenes, and one of the girls she had known when a child took charge of her, leaving me free to play the part of distinguished citizen.
The last day of the races was in action when I, with a certain amount of justifiable pride, rode through the gate (the old familiar sagging gate) seated beside the President of the Association. I wish I could believe that as "Speaker of the Day," I filled the sons of my neighbors with some small part of the awe with which the speakers of other days filled me, and if I assumed something of the polite condescension with which all public personages carry off such an entrance, I trust it will be forgiven me.
The event, even to me, was more inspiring inanticipation than in fulfillment, for when I rose to speak in the band-stand the wind was blowing hard, and other and less intellectual attractions were in full tide. My audience remained distressingly small—and calm. I have a dim recollection of howling into the face of the equatorical current certain disconnected sentences concerning my reform theory, and of seeing on the familiar faces of David Babcock, John Gammons and others of my bronzed and bent old neighbors a mild wonder as to what I was talking about.
On the whole I considered it a defeat. In the evening I spoke in the Opera House appearing on the same platform whence, eight years before, I had delivered my impassioned graduating oration on "Going West." True, I had gone east but then, advice is for others, not for oneself. Lee Moss, one of my classmates, and in those Seminary days a rival orator, was in my audience, and so was Burton, wordless as ever, and a little sad, for his attempt at preaching had not been successful—his ineradicable shyness had been against him. Hattie was there looking thin and old, and Ella and Matilda with others of the girls I had known eight years before. Some were accompanied by their children.
I suspect I aroused their wonder rather than their admiration. My radicalism was only an astonishment to them. However, a few of the men, the more progressive of them, came to me at the close of my talk and shook hands and said, "Go on! The country needs just such talks." One of these was Uncle Billy Frazer and his allegiance surprised me, for he had never shown radical tendencies before.
Summing it all up on my way to Chicago I must admit that as a great man returning to his native village I had not been a success.
After a few hours of talk with Kirkland I started eastby way of Washington in order that I might stop at Camden and call upon old Walt Whitman whose work I had been lecturing about, and who had expressed a willingness to receive me.
It was hot and dry in the drab little city in which he lived, and the street on which the house stood was as cheerless as an ash-barrel, even to one accustomed to poverty, like myself, and when I reached the door of his small, decaying wooden tenement, I was dismayed. It was all so unlike the home of a world-famous poet.
It was indeed very like that in which a very destitute mechanic might be living, and as I mounted the steps to Walt's room on the second story my resentment increased. Not a line of beauty or distinction or grace rewarded my glance. It was all of the same unesthetic barrenness, and not overly clean at that.
The old man, majestic as a stranded sea-God, was sitting in an arm chair, his broad Quaker hat on his head, waiting to receive me. He was spotlessly clean. His white hair, his light gray suit, his fine linen all gave the effect of exquisite neatness and wholesome living. His clear tenor voice, his quiet smile, his friendly hand-clasp charmed me and calmed me. He was so much gentler and sweeter than I had expected him to be.
He sat beside a heap of half-read books, marked newspapers, clippings and letters, a welter of concerns which he refused to have removed by the broom of the caretaker, and now and again as he wished to show me something he rose and hobbled a step or two to fish a book or a letter out of the pile. He was quite lame but could move without a crutch. He talked mainly of his good friends in Boston and elsewhere, and alluded to his enemies without a particle of rancor. The lines on his noble face were as placid as those on the brow of anox—not one showed petulance or discouragement. He was the optimist in every word.
He spoke of one of my stories to which Traubel had called his attention, and reproved me gently for not "letting in the light."
It was a memorable meeting for me and I went away back to my work in Boston with a feeling that I had seen one of the very greatest literary personalities of the century, a notion I have had no cause to change in the twenty-seven years which have intervened.