James Lane Allen.
Photo by Hollinger, N. Y.
JAMES LANE ALLEN.
Afewnovelists know the world which renews its youth every spring and that dies every autumn, as intimately as Thoreau knew it. One of these novelists is Thomas Hardy, whose description of Egdon Heath in "The Return of the Native" has long been in use as a model in the English Department at Harvard. One of these also is James Lane Allen, the Kentucky schoolmaster.
The chapter entitled "Hemp" in "The Reign of Law," contains abundant evidence of this loving power. Here is a random choice:
"One day something is gone from earth and sky: Autumn has come, season of scales and balances, when the earth, brought to judgment for its fruits, says, 'I havedone what I could—now let me rest!'
"Fall!—and everywhere the sights and sounds of falling. In the woods, through the cool silvery air, the leaves, so indispensable once, so useless now. Bright day after bright day, dripping night after dripping night, the never-ending filtering or gusty fall of leaves. The fall of walnuts, dropping from bare boughs with muffled boom into the deep grass. The fall of the hickory-nut, rattling noisily down through the scaly limbs and scattering its hulls among the stones of the brook below. The fall of buckeyes, rolling like balls of mahogany into the little dust paths made by sheep, in the hot months, when they had sought those roofs of leaves. The fall of acorns, leaping out of their matted green cups as they strike the rooty earth. The fall of red haw, persimmon, and pawpaw, and the odorous wild plum in its valleythickets. The fall of all seeds whatsoever of the forest, now made ripe in their high places and sent back to the ground, there to be folded in against the time when they shall rise again as the living generations; the homing, downward flight of the seeds in the many-colored woods all over the quiet land."
Mr. Mabie, writing once inThe Outlook, dwelt on what has been called the "landscape beauty" of Mr. Allen's work. "No American novelist," he said "has so imbedded his stories in Nature as has James Lane Allen; and among English novels one recalls only Mr. Hardy's three classics of pastoral England, and among French novelists George Sand and Pierre Loti. Nature furnishes the background of many charming American stories, and finds delicate or effective remembrance in the hands of writers like Miss Jewett and Miss Murfree;but in Mr. Allen's romances Nature is not behind the action; she is involved in it. Her presence is everywhere; her influence streams through the story; the deep and prodigal beauty which she wears in rural Kentucky shines on every page; the tremendous forces which sweep through her disclose their potency in human passion and impulse...."
And when James MacArthur was editingThe Bookmanhe said: "Poetry, 'the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,' according to Wordsworth, 'the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science,'—that poetry irrespective of rhyme and metrical arrangement which is as immortal as the heart of man, is distinctive in Mr. Allen's work from the first written page. Like Minerva issuing full-formed from the head of Jove, Mr. Allen issues from his long years of silence andseclusion a perfect master of his art—unfailing in its inspiration, unfaltering in its classic accent." It was Mr. MacArthur, who, speaking of "The Choir Invisible," said that "it would be difficult to recall any other novel since 'The Scarlet Letter' that has touched the same note of greatness, or given to one section of our national life, as Hawthorne's classic did to another, a voice far beyond singing."
Mr. MacArthur's remark that Mr. Allen came forth from "his long years of silence and seclusion a perfect master of his art" is largely true. Although born about half a century ago, it was not until 1884 that he settled down to writing. Not many of our distinguished writers passed thirty before tasting the bitter-sweet fruit of authorship.
Mr. Allen was born on a farm in Fayette County, Kentucky, a few miles from Lexington;and on the farm he spent his early childhood. His mother's maiden name was Helen Foster. Her parents, who were of the Scotch-Irish stock which settled in Pennsylvania before the Revolution, had found a permanent home in Mississippi. On his father's side he is a descendant of the Virginians who formed the Kentucky pioneers. The son was graduated from Kentucky University—which has been pictured in the history of his latest hero, David,—in 1872. For several years afterward he taught in district schools, at first near his home, and later in Missouri. Still later he became a private tutor; then he took a professorship in his alma mater; and at length he brought his career as a teacher to a close while at Bethany College, West Virginia. That very year, 1884, he moved to New York, put away his text-books, and plunged into the sea ofliterature. One who knew him in those days has described him as "a blond young giant with a magnificent head and a strong, kindly face."
From the day of his decision to be a writer until the present time Mr. Allen has worked industriously and successfully. Fifteen years ago the chief literary and critical magazines published many of his essays, and from time to time his short stories appeared inHarper's MagazineandThe Century Magazine. These short stories were afterward collected and published under the title of "Flute and Violin." Then appeared at irregular intervals "The Blue Grass Region of Kentucky," "A Kentucky Cardinal" and its sequel, "Aftermath," "A Summer in Arcady," "The Choir Invisible," and, latest of all, "The Reign of Law."
The author's high reputation was firmly established by "A Kentucky Cardinal" and "Aftermath." "In these two books," said one critic, looking backward, "Nature was interwoven benignantly with the human nature resting on her bosom, leading her lover, Adam Moss, with gentle influences to the human lover, and, when bereft of human love, receiving him back into her healing arms." The books made as deep an impression upon Englishmen as upon Americans; indeed, as late as the spring of 1900 theLondon Academydevoted a page to a flattering and most sympathetic review of them. The gentle, playful humor, the healthy joyousness, the rare tenderness displayed by Mr. Allen in these two books, are irresistible. Months, and even years, after laying the books down, the reader must remember the many delightful sketches of which they are made.
"And while I am watching the birds, they are watching me. Not a little fop among them, having proposed and been accepted, but perches on a limb, and has the air of putting his hands mannishly under his coat-tails and crying out to me, 'Hello! Adam, what were you made for?' 'You attend to your business, and I'll attend to mine,' I answer, 'You have one May; I have twenty-five!' He didn't wait to hear. He caught sight of a pair of clear brown eyes peeping at him out of a near tuft of leaves, and sprang thither with open arms and the sound of a kiss."
What charming sport! What uncommon perception! And here is one of his choice, frank, bucolic sentiments:
"The longer I live here the better satisfied I am in having pitched my earthly camp-fire, gypsylike, on the edge of a town, keeping it on one side, and the green fields, lanes and woods on the other. Each, inturn, is to me as a magnet to the needle. At times the needle of my nature points towards the country. On that side everything is poetry. I wander over field and forest, and through me runs a glad current of feeling that is like a clear brook across the meadows of May. At others the needle veers round, and I go to town—to the massed haunts of the highest animal and cannibal. That way nearly everything is prose. I can feel the prose rising in me as I step along, like hair on the back of a dog, long before any other dogs are in sight. And, indeed, the case is much that of a country dog come to town, so that growls are in order at every corner. The only being in the universe at which I have ever snarled, or with which I have rolled over in the mud and fought like a common cur, is Man."
"Summer in Arcady" shocked many who had fallen in love with the pastoral simplicity and spiritual delicacy of the two preceding books; but it was generally admitted that the book showed an advance in the author's powers, particularly in his power of vivid dialogue. In his first novel Mr. Allen had written that "The simple, rural, key-note of life is still the sweetest," and a change to another key-note, tremulous with pathos and tragedy, surprised the reading public; but the opinion that it was likely to prove a stepping-stone to higher things found general favor. Nor was this opinion unsound, for "The Choir Invisible" lifted its author for the time above the heads of all his contemporaries.
Both here and in England the book fairly leaped to success; both here and in England it was praised almost unqualifiedly. An American critic, writing of it, said: "Mr. Allen stands to-day in the front rankof American novelists. 'The Choir Invisible' will solidify a reputation already established and bring into clear light his rare gifts as an artist. For this latest story is as genuine a work of art as has come from an American hand." An English critic noted that it was "highly praised, and with reason." "It is written," he said, "with singular delicacy, and has an old-world fragrance which seems to come from the classics we keep in lavender."
The book succeeded so immensely that an attempt was made to dramatize it, but the attempt failed. The atmosphere of the book proved to be too ethereal, too spiritual, for dramatization.
That "The Choir Invisible" solidified Mr. Allen's reputation was demonstrated by the eagerness of the demand for "The Reign of Law." In some respects this is Mr. Allen's greatest work: it reveals evena deeper knowledge of nature than he ever revealed before, and it deals more intimately with things which have revolved around his own career.
Fame has little to do with the sale of books. If "The Kentucky Cardinal," "The Choir Invisible," and "The Reign of Law" had not been sold by the thousands, Mr. Allen's fame would still be of more than transient quality. There is nothing ephemeral about these stories: they are, strictly speaking, a part of our classical literature. The vividness of the pictures will always be fresh and interesting.
Taking too literally Mr. Allen's remark in "The Reign of Law" that Kentucky University is a ruin and will always remain a ruin, the reading public has generally decided, we have found, that the university, the author's alma mater, does notexist. It does exist, but, apparently, not in the condition in which the author would have it. Before "The Reign of Law" had been long on the market, he and the president of Kentucky University fell into a controversy which makes an interesting chapter in the academic side of the history of the Blue Grass State.
Mr. Allen works slowly and carefully, as may be inferred from the number and the character of his books. And he lives quietly, modestly. He is not in the least given to the exploitation of his habits and his manners, even so far as they may be connected with his literary work. Little has ever been heard of him by the thousands who hurry to read his books, and who read them only to praise him. Some time ago his publishers issued a brochure dealing with his career, and the vital facts contained in it, if put together, would not cover morethan twenty or thirty ordinary lines.
It should be said before ending, however, that the author of "The Reign of Law" is looked up to almost filially by the younger writers of the middle West. They are never weary of applauding him and of indicating, publicly as well as privately, his extraordinary reputation. Traces of his style, notably as it appears in his Corot-like pictures of nature, may be found in their writings. Indeed, it is quite likely that nothing would please one of these fine young men more than to have it said of his work that it resembles the masterly work of James Lane Allen.
Thomas Nelson Page.
Photo by Davis & Sanford.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE.
Thomas Nelson Pagefirst came into national prominence seventeen years ago through the publication byThe Century Magazineof the short story called "Marse Chan." He received eighty dollars for the story.
A few years ago, in conversation with Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, the author related the incidents which led to the writing of "Marse Chan." At the bottom was a letter which a friend had shown him. "This letter," said Mr. Page, "was from an illiterate girl in Georgia to her soldier sweetheart. The letter was poorly written and poorly spelled, but full of pathos. The girl had, it seems, trifled with the man, but after he had left for the war she had realized her great love for him and writtento him. She wrote: 'I know I have treated you mean. I ain't never done right with you all the time. When you asked me to marry you, I laughed, and said I wouldn't have you, and it makes me cry to think you are gone away to the war. Now, I want you to know that I love you, and I want you to git a furlow and come home and I'll marry you.' With a few words of affection the letter closed, but a postscript was added: 'Don't come home without a furlow, for unless you come home honorable I won't marry you.' This letter was received by the soldier only a few days before the battle of Seven Pines, and after he was shot it was found in his breast pocket, just over his heart. The pathos of it struck me so forcibly that out of it came the story of 'Marse Chan.'"
Thomas Nelson Page was thirty-one when "Marse Chan" appeared, and at thattime his shingle was new outside his office in Richmond. Mr. Page was born in Hanover County, Virginia, on April 23, 1853, and is consequently now in his forty-ninth year. A description of the house in which he was born—Oakland, it was called—may be found in "Two Little Confederates." On both sides he is a lineal descendant of Gen. Thomas Nelson, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. It has been said that there is scarcely an old family in all Virginia to which the author is not related in some degree. One of his cousins is the Princess Troubetskoy, Amélie Rives before her marriage, whose first husband was John Armstrong Chanler. At the time of the birth of Thomas the Pages were comparatively wealthy, but later, during the war, they lost most of their wealth. Thomas's first reading lessons, in the Waverley novels, were given him by an aunt, who also taughthim to read the Episcopal prayer-book. His education was interrupted by the outbreak of the war, for his father accepted a commission in the Confederate army. Occasionally the boy visited his father in camp, when the troops were on the road from Oakland to Richmond. Once he witnessed a bombardment. Happily, he was old enough to appreciate the gossip of the war which passed around the negro cabins.
Like all the slaveholders, the Pages were much reduced in riches when the war ended, but, nevertheless, at the age of sixteen, Thomas was sent to Washington and Lee University. Of his college days he once said:
"My standing was not high. I don't know that I had much ambition to be one of the first honor men. At any rate, I got no medals of any kind. I suppose I was a fair average student, but I hear that I devotedmyself more to outside reading than to my studies. I was a member of the literary society, and for a time was the editor of the college paper. Contrary to the usual custom, I wrote short articles instead of long essays, and from this got the nick-name of 'The Short-Article Editor.' I wrote, I suppose, much for the pleasure of seeing myself in print. I was very bashful in those days, and I know that I trembled when I first got up to speak in the literary society. I had a chum at college who is now one of the most famous lawyers of the country. He excels as a debater. He was also bashful, and during our college days he joined with me in a method of improving our oratorical powers. We would get together in a room, and, having closed the doors, would debate with each other, upon some question. One would stand on one side of the table and one on the other andwe would declaim away, each having a fifteen minutes' speech and a like time for answers. This practice helped me materially in my work as a lawyer."
After his graduation from Washington and Lee University, Mr. Page secured employment as a teacher in a private school in Kentucky, not far from Louisville. There he taught for a year, and he says that he enjoyed it very much. He kept his pen at work steadily. The influential paper in the part of the country where he was teaching, was, of course,The Louisville Courier-Journal. The young teacher was intensely interested in Ik Marvel's books, and he wrote some essays in imitation of Marvel and sent them to theCourier-Journal. They were rejected. From what he has said since, their rejection was not a source of much discouragement to him.
At the end of a year the rebuffed essayist returned to his home in Virginia, and, soon after, deciding to study law, he entered the law school of the University of Virginia. Greatly to his credit, he got his degree in a year. Meantime, however, he kept up his interest in literature. While at the University of Virginia he contributed to the college paper. It was also his habit, while at home, to write stories on slates for the entertainment of his friends, and erase the stories after he had read them. At school, too, he began to write stories in the negro dialect, and he continued this practice in his law office in Richmond. At his office he wrote the first of his works accepted by the magazines, a poem called "Unc' Gabe's White Folks," which was published inScribner'sin 1876. He received fifteen dollars for it. He was very proud of that unpretentious check. Later he wrote a historical article relating to thecentennial celebration in old Yorktown, and then he sent out his first story, "Marse Chan." It was paid for promptly, but, like many another story sent to the magazines, particularly stories from unknown authors, it remained unpublished for several years. Finally, overcome by impatience, the author wrote to ascertain what had become of it, and shortly afterward he received a proof of it. With its publication in 1884 came instant popularity.
But at no time previous to his moving to Washington was literature first in Page's mind. In the beginning, at Richmond, he wrote only at night, when his day's work was done; and for a time he actually ceased writing fiction entirely lest it might interfere with the practice of his profession. For, as a matter of fact, he has been a very successful lawyer. Six months after he had settled down in Richmond he was ableto support himself with his earnings at the bar, and during the eighteen years which followed, that is, up to the time of his settling down in Washington, his income was chiefly from law.
So, it was some time before "Marse Chan" was succeeded by "Meh Lady," "Unc' Edinburg's Drowndin'," "Polly" and "Ole 'Stracted." It was said in those days that the stories were like variations on a single theme; but we are inclined to agree with the critic who said: "For this we feel no disposition to quarrel with Mr. Page, being eager to hear the tale as often as he may find ways to tell it, and grateful to him for such beautiful and faithful pictures of a society now become portion and parcel of the irrevocable past." To Mr. Page and his equally delightful contemporary, Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, the reading public is indebted for no smallnumber of the most charming features of American literature.
It may please those who enjoy particulars to know that the popular writer regards "Unc' Edinburg's Drowndin'," which was first to follow "Marse Chan," as his best picture of Virginia life. Mr. Page, in 1886, married Miss Anne Seddon Bruce, the daughter of Charles Bruce of Charlotte County, Virginia, largely for whose entertainment he had written his early stories; and before the death of Mrs. Page in 1888 Mr. Page had written "Meh Lady" and had published "In Ole Virginia," a collection of his works, all in dialect.
In those days, by the way, his work was often compared by the critics with the work of Mr. Harris. Perhaps the fairest comparison was made by Mr. Coleman, who admired the two authors quite equally.
"Mr. Page," said the critic, "enjoys the reputation of having written the most exquisite story of the war that has yet appeared ("Marse Chan"). In comparison with the works of Joel Chandler Harris, though both authors deal with the negro, the one in no wise interferes with the proper appreciation of the other. In Uncle Remus Mr. Harris has given us the truer insight into the character of the type to which he belongs, while the venerable family servant is somewhat idealized by Mr. Page, and, moreover, is made to tell a story possessing a value and interest of its own not entirely dependent upon the personality of the narrator and his race peculiarities. In the matter of dialect, Mr. Page has the advantage, though this may be due, in part, to the difference between the Virginia negro and his brother of Georgia."
The Virginian has portrayed the sweeter side of the old slavery days, in direct contrastto Mrs. Stowe's picture of the harsher side. In the master he has delineated forbearance, confidence, protection; in the slave, respect, devotion and fidelity. Without a scruple he has felt constrained to make one of his characters say of the days before the war: "Dem wuz good ole times, marster—de bes' Sam ever see! De wuz, in fac'! Niggers did n' hed nothin' 't all to do—jes' hed to 'ten' to de feedin' an' cleanin' de hosses, an' doin' what de marster tell 'em to do; an' when dey wuz sick, dey had things sent 'em out de house, an' de same doctor came to see 'em whar 'ten' to de white folks when dey wuz po'ly. Dyah war n' no trouble nor nuthin."
A few years ago Mr. Page was asked if he wrote rapidly. "Yes and no," he replied. "I write the first draft as rapidly as I can and then go over it very carefully in the revision. I try to simplify my writingsas much as possible. The more simple it is, I think, the better it is. I find, however, that the revision often takes away the spirit from the first draft. I lay away the manuscript, and looking at it several weeks later, I can see that the first draft is truer to nature than the more stilted revision. I think I do more careful work now than I have done in the past. My ideal is far above anything I have ever done, and I sometimes despair of approaching it. There is one thing I do, however, which I think is a good plan for any writer. That is, I always give the best I have in me to the story which I am writing. I do not save anything which I think might perhaps be of use to me in the future. The cream, if you could use that expression, always goes to the present."
In 1891 the author of "Marse Chan" left Richmond and went to New York tosucceed Charles Dudley Warner in the conduct of "The Drawer" inHarper's Monthly, Mr. Warner succeeding Mr. Howells, who at that time leftHarper'sfor theCosmopolitan, in the conduct of "The Study." That same year Mr. Page appeared as a public reader. Two years later he married Mrs. Henry Field of Chicago, a granddaughter of Governor Barbour of Virginia, and since then, for the most part, he has lived and worked in Washington. By far his most ambitious work is "Red Rock," a novel which has done much to affect favorably the old attitude of the North toward the South.
Not many of our writers rest their fame on fewer works.
Richard Harding Davis.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
Agreatmany persons, indeed, a great many critics, have called Richard Harding Davis superficial. They obviously had one thing in mind and said another. Perhaps they may have meant to say that sometimes Mr. Davis dealt in superficialities. We lean toward Professor Harry Thurston Peck's opinion. "Mr. Davis, in fact," he says, "because of the predominance in him of the journalistic motive, is a photographer rather than an artist; but he is a very skillful and adept photographer."
No person of superficial temperament could have described with so much humor Van Bibber's attempt to practice economy, or could have given us the affecting conclusion of "Princess Aline," or could havewritten many paragraphs of "The Exiles." No sympathetic human being who has ever read "The Exiles" will forget the picture of the outlawed boodle alderman in Tangier, saying to a visitor about to return to New York with a clean conscience and a strong hunger to see the familiar sights:
"'I'll tell you what youcando for me, Holcombe. Some night I wish you would go down to Fourteenth Street, some night this spring, when the boys are sitting out on the steps in front of the Hall, and just take a drink for me at Ed. Lally's; just for luck. Will you? That's what I'd like to do. I don't know nothing better than Fourteenth Street of a summer evening, with all the people crowding into Pastor's, on one side of the Hall, and the Third Avenue L-cars running by on the other. That's a gay sight, ain't it now? With all the girls coming in and out of Theiss's, and the sidewalkscrowded. One of them warm nights when they have to have the windows open, and you can hear the music in at Pastor's, and the audience clapping their hands. That's great, isn't it? Well,' he laughed and shook his head, 'I'll be back there some day, won't I,' he said, wistfully, 'and hear it for myself?'"
It would be hard to find in fiction a more affecting picture done with fewer strokes and with closer fidelity to human nature. It is a picture which must strike the attentive reader, and particularly the attentive New York reader, full on the heart strings.
Mr. Davis has the habit of looking at the odd things in life. Without this habit no man can be a first-class reporter; and our author has proved himself a first-class reporter in many parts of the world and for many papers.
Like every well-trained reporter, Mr. Davis is continually "seeing things." As he said to his friend Mr. Sangree, some months ago: "I never walk one city block that I do not see twenty things to interest me. I tire my friends sometimes by pointing them out. Their minds run in different channels. But this ability to see things is my greatest joy in life, incidentally my living. I cultivated it when I began reporting, and to this day if I see a man turn in a car to look out the window I unconsciously turn with him. He may have observed something that escaped me—something that contains an element of human interest, and I hold no effort wasted that may add to this general cargo of life's impressions."
No able reporter could have worked long under Charles A. Dana and escaped the objective habit. In fact, a story which Mr. Sangree tells of his friend's experience onThe Evening Sunillustrates the point.
"At eight o' clock one spring morning," says Mr. Sangree, "the blotter at police headquarters recorded a trifling fire on the East Side. News being dull, Davis was sent to cover it. He found a rickety tenement house in which fire had little more than singed the top floor. The crowd had left, a few ashes were smouldering, and the insurance adjusters were examining the place.
"'Nothing here,' said the policeman on watch. 'Only five hundred dollars damage and a bum lodger asphyxiated. He's in that room.'
"The reporters peeped, saw the blackened face and rigid form, a man unnamed and forgotten—and wrote a paragraph.The Evening Sunreporter, in mousing about saw an alarm clock by the dead man's side with the hand pointing to seven o' clock.
"'What time did you break in here?' he asked.
"'Let me see,' yawned the bluecoat; 'Seven o' clock it was. I remember because that alarm was going off just as I got inside.'
"'That's my story,' said Davis, and he began his account, touching and vivid, simply with: 'The man died at six-thirty. The alarm went off at seven. It was just half an hour too late.'"
"What impressed me," said the author, discussing the story subsequently, "was that impotent alarm clock jangling away when the owner was dead. A man's existence had been cut off because that fifty-cent clock could not give its alarm a few minutes earlier."
This illustrates what was meant when we said that Mr. Davis takes an objective view of life. His experience as a reporter was invaluable to him; and he took Dr. Hale'sadvice, and ended the experience at the right time. Doubtless many good writers have been spoiled by indulging too long in the fascinations of newspaper work.
A large part of his training as a reporter the creator of Van Bibber obtained in his native city, during his service on thePhiladelphia Press, for which paper he went to work when he was a little more than twenty. There is a portrait of him taken at the age of twenty-three, in the disguise in which he worked while getting the information which drove the nest of thieves out of Wood street.
While Davis was working for thePhiladelphia Press, by the way, he and his associates in the reporters' room fell in love with one of Stevenson's thrilling short stories, "A Lodging for the Night." They could not restrain their admiration; so they wrote an enthusiastic letter to the gentlesick man off there in Samoa. And to the spokesman of the admiring crew Stevenson replied:
Dear Sir:Why, thank you very much for your frank, agreeable and natural letter. It is certainly very pleasant that all you young fellows wholly enjoy my work, and get some good out of it; and it was very kind in you to write and tell me so. The tale of the suicide is excellently droll; and your letter, you may be sure, will be preserved. If you are to escape, unhurt, out of your present business, you must be very careful, and you must find in your heart much constancy. The swiftly done work of the journalist, and the cheap finish and ready-made methods to which it leads, you must try to counteract in private by writing with the most considerate slowness and on the most ambitious models. And when I say 'writing'—O, believe me, it is re-writing that I have chiefly in my mind. If you will do this I hope to hear ofyou some day.Please excuse this sermon fromYour obligedRobert Louis Stevenson.
Dear Sir:
Why, thank you very much for your frank, agreeable and natural letter. It is certainly very pleasant that all you young fellows wholly enjoy my work, and get some good out of it; and it was very kind in you to write and tell me so. The tale of the suicide is excellently droll; and your letter, you may be sure, will be preserved. If you are to escape, unhurt, out of your present business, you must be very careful, and you must find in your heart much constancy. The swiftly done work of the journalist, and the cheap finish and ready-made methods to which it leads, you must try to counteract in private by writing with the most considerate slowness and on the most ambitious models. And when I say 'writing'—O, believe me, it is re-writing that I have chiefly in my mind. If you will do this I hope to hear ofyou some day.
Please excuse this sermon from
Your obliged
Robert Louis Stevenson.
This letter, brought to light a short while ago by Mr. Sangree, in a magazine article, discloses an exchange of sentiments creditable to all the correspondents concerned.
For a time the promising journalist was overmastered by an ambition to be an editor, and he established a short-lived dramatic periodical calledThe Stage. In 1889 he reported the Johnstown flood for a Philadelphia paper, and then, the following summer, went abroad with the All-Philadelphia cricket team. Upon his return to this country, New York charmed him, and there, for the most part, he has lived ever since. At first he was connected withThe Evening Sun. During this connection he wrote his delightful "VanBibber" stories. But these were not his first stories. His first stories were written while he was editor of a paper at Lehigh College, in his student days. The stories numbered about a dozen, and Mr. Davis collected them and paid ninety dollars to have them published in book form. The book has scarcely ever been heard of since. Later, while at Johns Hopkins University, he wrote his first accepted story, "Richard Carr's Baby," a sort of foot-ball tale, which was published in St. Nicholas. However, the "Van Bibber" stories were his first work of any serious account; they were the first work to bring him popularity.
After the "Van Bibber" sketches came his most sparkling gem, "Gallegher," a newspaper story which was refused by three editors and then published, with immediate success, inScribner's Magazine.Later appeared in quick succession "The Other Woman," "An Unfinished Story," "My Disreputable Friend, Mr. Raegan," and the other short stories which soon made their author's name familiar to the reading public on both sides of the ocean.
In 1890 Davis became editor ofHarper's Weekly. This position he left a year or so later to travel across the continent, with "The West Through a Car Window" as the result. Then he went to London, and described the life there; and then he went to Egypt and wrote "The Rulers of the Mediterranean." He was now fairly well started; and since then his pen has never been idle.
Since Mr. Davis's advent as a serious writer of fiction he has been subjected on one side to the most extravagant praise and on the other to the most merciless censure. The critics on both sides have made mattersworse by dropping the subject at hand and bringing out for public inspection vast quantities of personal anecdotes about the unfortunate author, most of which stories are probably apocryphal. In fact, at one time the newspaper comments were so vulgar that the helpless victim said to a friend who visited him in New York: "If I thought I was like the man the newspapers make me out to be, I would not only cut my own acquaintance; I'd cut my own throat." But, so far as the public ever found out, he took the slings and arrows philosophically. He could afford to. One by one his new works have prospered.
It was at the height of this hypercritical hostility that, in 1897, Davis was suddenly missed. About the same time the stories in theLondon Timeson the war between Turkey and Greece began to attract universal attention. TheTimes, said one ofthe New York newspapers, which had shown especial bitterness toward its former reporter, has discovered a brilliant war correspondent. It seemed that people all over the world were asking, Who is he? It was Mr. Davis, proving, under the cloak of theTimes'traditional anonymity his right to be respected as a descriptive writer of the first quality. He repeated this success the next year in Cuba, during the Spanish war, when his extraordinary skill in the description of picturesque incidents was favored by the circumstance that the generals and admirals themselves were sending home virtually all the news.
When, last year, Mr. Davis went to South Africa it was commonly expected that he would take sides with the British. Never was public expectation more emphatically at fault. In a moment he took the measure of the British cause and the Britishtactics; both of these things disgusted him. He put Mr. Kipling himself to shame by serving "the God of Things as They Are"; and as a result he forfeited many friendships which he had made in England. But he won the hearts of his countrymen. His courageous honesty destroyed in this country the last vestige of captious hostility.
To-day, at the age of thirty-eight, just at the entrance to full-blown life, Mr. Davis is widely admired and honored. He has pleased the light-hearted with his pretty romantic tales, and he has satisfied the strong of heart with his many examples of an unerring sense of the true comedy and the true pathos of life, and, moreover, of his remarkable personal fearlessness. Perhaps the term which a friend applied to him is most fitting—perhaps he may best be called a "sublimated reporter"; foryour sublimated reporter must be at once an imperturbable philosopher and an artist holding the mirror up to nature.
The author's marriage to Miss Cecil Clark of Chicago, at Marion, Massachusetts, on May 4, 1899, was an event remarkable for its jollity. Last year Mrs. Davis accompanied her husband to South Africa. She is said to be as skillful with the pencil as he is with the pen.
John Kendrick Bangs.
Photo by Hollinger, N. Y.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS.
Adozenyears or so ago, when Mr. Bangs faced at home an audience, which had gathered to hear his address on "The Evolution of the Humorist," he said:
"I was born in and have resided in Yonkers for a number of years; I have braved the perils of life in this community, and have endured, without a murmur, the privations common to all of us."
A modest biography, and withal an illustration of Mr. Bangs's philosophy. He takes things as they come—and leaves his imprint on them. Comparisons of skill aside, no man could do more.
John Kendrick Bangs was born in Yonkers, New York, in May, 1862. His father, Francis N. Bangs, was a prominentNew York lawyer, in fact, one of the most prominent lawyers the New York bar has ever known. His grandfather was the Rev. Nathan Bangs, D.D., the first historian of the Methodist Church in this country, the first editor of a Methodist paper, and for many years president of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
In 1883, after receiving such an education as any New York boy of a well-to-do New York family receives, young Bangs was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy from the School of Political Science of Columbia University, New York. For a year and a half afterward he studied law in his father's office—studied at "long range," as he has said himself. But all the time he was impatient to go into literature. "I was more of a fighter," he says, "and it seemed to me that a man hasenough battles of his own to wage without rushing after the battles of other people." Gradually his inherited fondness for literature smothered his zeal as a student of law. While contributing in his undergraduate days to the college paper,Acta Columbiana, he had enjoyed a taste of literary glory. So, between dips into his father's dry volumes, he wrote little sketches in his characteristic vein. These tentative works introduced him favorably to the managers ofLife, and, late in 1884, he became associated with Mr. Mitchell in the editorship of that entertaining periodical. In addition to his editorial work he undertook to maintain the attractive "By the Way" page, and to this valuable feature ofLifehe contributed an extraordinary amount of original matter. What would not have been asked of many other men was requested of the new humorist in the mostcasual manner, for he quickly proved that, besides possessing a keen literary instinct and that kindly and delightful insight into human nature which, brought together, double the value of a comic paper, he also possessed remarkable energy and power of application.
In 1887, while still connected withLife, and shortly after his marriage, young Bangs went abroad, and during this absence from editorial work his first book, "Roger Camorden, a Strange Story," was published. It was an unusual and very promising tale of hallucination, and its success was encouraging. That same year, in collaboration with his friend and classmate, Frank Dempster Sherman, he produced a series of satirical and humorous pieces, which were put into a volume under the title of "New Waggings of old Tales." Soon afterward he resigned fromLife,in order to devote more time to larger work.
The first product of the rising author's independent career was a travesty on "The Taming of the Shrew" called "Katherine," which he wrote for a dramatic association connected with the Seventh Regiment of the New York National Guard. It followed the Shakespearean construction rather closely, and, with its many quips and gags and jolly songs, made a first-rate libretto for a comic opera. The popularity of the travesty advertised the fame of Bangs from one end of Manhattan Island to the other. The following year, for the same organization, he wrote another travesty, "Mephistopheles, a Profanation"; and this, too, won much popularity and further brightened its author's name.
The happy results of his experience as the father of three boys were noticeable inthe book which Mr. Bangs published in 1891, "Tiddledywink Tales," the first of a series of amusing stories for children. The other divisions of this series are "In Camp with a Tin Soldier," "The Tiddledywink Poetry Book," and "Half Hours with Jimmie-Boy," books that have endeared their author to half the grown-up children in the land. It was by means of these books that he became a most welcome contributor to Harper's Round Table and to the juvenile departments of various literary syndicates. A novel, "Toppleton's Client," appeared in 1893, and in that year also appeared his first widely successful work, "Coffee and Repartee," a collection of Idiot papers, which has been described, and with good reason, as a mixture of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Bill Nye. Those were not, compared with the present time, enthusiastic literary days, and yet in a fewyears fifty thousand copies of the little book were sold. "Coffee and Repartee" was followed at regular intervals by "The Water-Ghost," "The Idiot," "Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica," and by the other books whose names have at some time, been on every liberal reader's tongue.
One of the most entertaining of the New Yorker's books is "Ten Weeks in Politics," behind the writing of which is a story worth telling. In 1894 Mr. Bangs was nominated by the Democrats for Mayor of Yonkers. "No candidate, I sincerely believe," says his friend Mr. Corbin, "ever entered a political campaign with greater seriousness or with a more strenuous desire to devote himself to the public good; and except for any one of half a dozen accidents he would have been elected. To begin with, one of the cleverest of New York newspapers, the editorial policy ofwhich has been suspected of personal prejudice, appeared to bear a grudge against Mr. Bangs, and persecuted him in prose and in verse with the implication that he was making a farce of politics. But the real cause of his defeat, as he explains with a quiet smile, was the fact that he refused one midnight to turn his house into a beer garden for the benefit of a local German band that serenaded him; and in point of fact the votes of the musicians and their heelers were enough to turn the scale. Though Mr. Bangs is always willing to laugh at the figure he cut as a politician, he has never lost the sense of his duty as a citizen. His victorious rival had the magnanimity, which in such cases is scarcely to be distinguished from political wisdom, to offer him a subordinate position in his administration—on the Board of Education, I think. Mr. Bangshad the magnanimity, which could not have contained the least scruple of policy, to accept the position and to fill it to the best of his ability, even while he was writing his 'Ten Weeks in Politics.' This episode is thoroughly characteristic."
Mr. Bangs has spoken of that defeat as the greatest blessing that he ever met. "In later years," he says, "when I saw how I would have been forced to abandon my chosen profession for politics, when I learned that the mayoralty would have taken every moment of my time, I was glad that I had been defeated. I saw, for the first time, the truth in the saying that a man can do more to bring success within his grasp by standing by his original proposition, even if it be a humorous one. And politics and humor do not mix, unless you happen to be a cartoonist."
Politics and humor mix well enough in the right man; but it is not to be doubted that literature has been the gainer by the result of that election in Yonkers. The defeated candidate would probably have made an excellent Mayor. He certainly would have made a conscientious Mayor; and by reason of this conscientiousness the reading public would have missed books which have made us certain that Mr. Bangs is a gifted humorist.
Mr. Corbin, by the way, tells another interesting story of his friend's characteristic activity. "Once when I went to Yonkers," says Mr. Corbin, "he appeared as the proprietor of a livery stable. He explained that the business had been running down when he took it, and that by charging himself a thousand or two a year for cab hire he was making a 'go' of it; and that moreover, as he paid his account to himself it did not cost him anything toride. The plain fact seemed to be that his ready purse and his business sense had saved a humble neighbor from misfortune."
Before closing the political chapter of Mr. Bangs's career it may prove interesting to quote from a "send-off" which a Yonkers paper gave him on March 10, 1894, just before the German band episode.
"Mr. Bangs," it said, "is a Democrat of the strictest kind, and can always be relied upon to care for and advance the interests of his party, while at the same time he will so guard and guide the municipal ship as to avoid the rocks of reckless expenditure, and pass safely into the harbor of wise economy. With such a candidate the Democracy believes it can surely recapture the mayoralty, and at the same time secure for the city a young, able, and in all respects a competent, honest, andfaithful chief magistrate.
"Mr. Bangs is popular in the club life of the city, being a member of the old Palisade Boat Club and the Yonkers Lawn Tennis Club. In the latter he is the Chairman of the Entertainment Committee, and also a member of the Building and Book Committees. He is not only one of the best lawn tennis players in the club, but in the alleys of the boat club has proved himself a skillful bowler, having figured conspicuously in the recent annual tournament. He recently proved himself a public speaker of no mean order when he delivered his lecture on 'The Evolution of the Humorist from Adam to Bill Nye,' for a charitable object. He also took prominent part in the last charity ball, which is the social event of the season in this city."
How that catalogue of social and athletic qualifications must have appealed to a manof the victim's sense of humor!
Mr. Bangs takes his own medicine. He firmly believes that humor sweetens life. "Show me a man who does not appreciate humor," he said once, "and I will show you a man who is morbid, cynical, unresponsive to every fine impulse of nature. Such a man is worse than a pessimist, and more to be pitied. Take some of the greatest and most successful men in the world. Humor has always played an important part in their lives. Often a funny incident has marked the turning-point of a great man's career; often some ridiculous position has been the impetus of a new start in life. Humor is as necessary to the home as is the cooking stove. I mean good, healthy humor. It eases the mind and it becomes an educator; it fills and makes pleasant many a long night; it gives encouragement to the wanderer; itrelieves the tired mother of the burden of her cares; it encourages men and women to look on the bright side of life, and the bright side is the only side which should be exposed to view. Literature is the best vehicle of humor. In literature it lives the longest, and in literature it can be studied and appreciated to the best advantage. Someone has said that literature robs humor of its spontaneity! A mistake! A great mistake! A good, solid humorous book, or passage in a book, can be appreciated a hundred times over. The mind retains fun longer than it retains cold facts. You will hear a man repeat something funny that he read, years after, when he couldn't, for his life, tell you the rudiments of the mathematical problems which he spent years in trying to master. A good man looks upon a good book as a friend. He goes to it for consolation wheneverhe feels blue and sullen, whenever nostalgia claims him as her own. How quickly do the careworn, the tired, the strugglers, the successful ones as well, find rest in the realms of humor!"
In the course of his busy life—to give some facts not to be found in the Yonkers eulogy—Mr. Bangs has been vestryman of a church, a purchaser of books for a public library, a journalist, and a director of a private school. At present he is giving brilliant service as editor ofHarper's Weekly. Meantime, his pen, or his typewriter, is not idle at home, as the publication a few months ago of "The Idiot at Home" attests.