Chapter X

Booksby Arnold Bennett

Books

by Arnold Bennett

Novels:A MAN FROM THE NORTHTHE GRAND BABYLON HOTELTHE GATES OF WRATHANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNSLEONORAHUGOA GREAT MANTHE BOOK OF CARLOTTAWHOM GOD HATH JOINEDTHE OLD ADAMBURIED ALIVETHE OLD WIVES’ TALECLAYHANGERDENRY THE AUDACIOUS [In England, THE CARD]HILDA LESSWAYSTHE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNSHELEN WITH THE HIGH HANDTHE GLIMPSETHE CITY OF PLEASURETHESE TWAINTHE LION’S SHARETHE PRETTY LADYTHE ROLL CALLMR. PROHACKLILIANPlays:CUPID AND COMMONSENSEWHAT THE PUBLIC WANTSTHE HONEYMOONMILESTONES [With Edward Knoblauch]THE GREAT ADVENTURETHE TITLEJUDITHSACRED AND PROFANE LOVETHE LOVE MATCH

Novels:

A MAN FROM THE NORTH

THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL

THE GATES OF WRATH

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS

LEONORA

HUGO

A GREAT MAN

THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA

WHOM GOD HATH JOINED

THE OLD ADAM

BURIED ALIVE

THE OLD WIVES’ TALE

CLAYHANGER

DENRY THE AUDACIOUS [In England, THE CARD]

HILDA LESSWAYS

THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS

HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND

THE GLIMPSE

THE CITY OF PLEASURE

THESE TWAIN

THE LION’S SHARE

THE PRETTY LADY

THE ROLL CALL

MR. PROHACK

LILIAN

Plays:

CUPID AND COMMONSENSE

WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS

THE HONEYMOON

MILESTONES [With Edward Knoblauch]

THE GREAT ADVENTURE

THE TITLE

JUDITH

SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE

THE LOVE MATCH

Sourceson Arnold Bennett

Sources

on Arnold Bennett

Who’s Who[In England].

English Literature During the Last Half Century, by John W. Cunliffe. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Arnold Bennett.A booklet published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, 1911. (Out of print.)

The Truth About an Author, by Arnold Bennett. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.

The Author’s Craft, by Arnold Bennett. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.

Some Modern Novelists, by Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett. HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY.

Arnold Bennett, by J. F. Harvey Darton, in the WRITERS OF THE DAY series.

The critical articles on Mr. Bennett and his individual books are too numerous to mention. The reader is referred to the New York Public Library or the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., and to the Annual Index of Periodical Publications for the last twenty years.

Chapter XA CHAPTER FOR CHILDREN

I know of only one book which really aids parents and others who have to oversee children’s reading. That is Annie Carroll Moore’s invaluableRoads to Childhood. The author, as supervisor of work with children in the New York Public Library, has had possibly a completer opportunity to understand what children like to read and why they like it than any other woman. What is more, she has the gift of writing readably about both children and books, and an unusual faculty for reconciling those somewhat opposite poles—things children like to read and the things it is well for them to read.

Miss Moore says that the important thing is a discovery of personality in children and a respect for their natural inclinations in reading—an early and live appreciation of literature and good drawings is best imparted by exposure rather than by insistence upon a too rigid selection. “What I like about these papers,” said one young mother,“is that they are good talk. You can pick the book up and open it anywhere without following a course of reading or instruction to understand it. There is full recognition of the fact that children are different and react differently to the same books at different periods of their development.”

Maude Radford Warren’sTales Told by the Ganderis one of those books for children that adults find interesting, too; and there is a new series of children’s books by May Byron, concerning which I must say a few words. The series is called “Old Friends in New Frocks” and here are a few of the titles:

Billy Butt’s Adventure: The Tale of the Wolf and the Goat.

Little Jumping Joan: The Tale of the Ants and the Grasshopper.

Jack-a-Dandy: The Tale of the Vain Jackdaw.

These books are noteworthy for their beautiful illustrations. Each volume has an inspired and fanciful frontispiece in colours by E. J. Detmold and line illustrations by Day Hodgetts. Moreover, there are end papers and the binding has a picture in colour that begins on the back and extends all the way around in front. Naturally they are for very young children—shall we say up to seven years old?

On April 29, 1922, the Philadelphia Public Ledger printed a letter from twelve-year-old Marion Kummer, as follows:

“Dear Mr. Editor: My father asked me to write you a story about him and they say at school that I am good at stories, so I thought I would. I think he thinks I can write and become a great writer like him some day, but I would rather be a great actress like Leonora Ulrick. I saw her in a play where she went to sleep and they stuck pins in her but could not wake her up, which part I should not like. But at that I would rather be an actress because acting is pleasanter and more exciting and you do not have to write on the typewriter all day and get a pain in your back. Daddy says he would rather shovel coal but he does not, but snow sometimes, which has been very plentiful about here this winter, also sledding.

“When he is not working, he goes for a walk with the dogs, or tells us most any question we should ask almost like an encikelopedia. He is very good-natured and I love the things he writes, especially plays. Daddy has just finished a children’s book calledThe Earth’s Storyabout how it began millions of years ago when there was a great many fossils, so nice for children. Also about stone axes. My brother Fred made one but when he was showing us how it worked the head came off and hit me on the foot and Ikicked him. So stone axes were one of the man’s first weapons. Daddy read us each chapter when it was done and we helped him except baby brother who wrote with red crayon all over one chapter when no one was there, and he should not have been in Daddy’s office anyway. Daddy has to draw horses and engines for him all the time. He gets tired of it but what can he do?”

Now this is very pleasant, for here on the table is the first volume ofThe Earth’s Story—The First Days of Manby Frederic Arnold Kummer; and this book for children has a preface for parents in it. In that preface Mr. Kummer says:

“In this process of storing away in his brain the accumulated knowledge of the ages the child’s mind passes, with inconceivable rapidity, along the same route that the composite minds of his ancestors travelled, during their centuries of development. The impulse that causes him to want to hunt, to fish, to build brush huts, to camp out in the woods, to use his hands as well as his brain, is an inheritance from the past, when his primitive ancestors did these things. He should be helped to trace the route they followed with intelligence and understanding, he should be encouraged to know the woods, and all the great world of out-of-doors, to make and use the primitive weapons, utensils, toys, his ancestors made and used, to come into closer contact with the fundamental laws of nature, and thus to lay a groundwork for wholesome and practical thinkingwhich cannot be gained in the classroom or the city streets.

“As has been said, the writer has tested the methods outlined above. The chapters inThe First Days of Manare merely the things he has told his own children. It is of interest to note that one of these, a boy of seven, on first going to school, easily outstripped in a single month a dozen or more children who had been at school almost a year, and was able to enter a grade a full year ahead of them. The child in question is not in the least precocious, but having understood the knowledge he has gained, he is able to make use of it, he has a definite mental perspective, a sure grasp on things, which makes study of any kind easy for him, and progression correspondingly rapid.”

To say thatJungle Tales, Adventures in India, by Howard Anderson Musser is a series of missionary tales of adventure in India, is to give no idea of the thrills within its covers. There are fights with tigers, bears and bandits, and there is one long fight against ignorance and disease, superstition and merciless greed. And the fighter? He was an American athlete, who had won honour on the track and football field. Great for boys!

iii

The EnglishWho’s Whosays: “Colonel Stevenson Lyle Cummins”—then follows a string of degrees—“David Davies Professorof Tuberculosis, University College, South Wales, Monmouthshire, and Principal Medical Officer to the King Edward VII. Welsh National Memorial Association since 1921.... Entered Army 1897; Captain, 1900; Major, 1909; Lieutenant-Colonel, 1915; Colonel, 1918; served Nile Expedition, 1898 (medal with clasp, despatches); Sudan 1900, 1902; Sudan, 1904 (Clasp); Osmanieh 4th class, 1907; European War, 1914-18 (C.B., C.M.G., despatches six times, Brevetted Colonel); Legion of Honour (Officer), Couronne de Belgique (Officer); Col. 1918; Croix de Guerre (Belgian), 1918, retired from Army, 1921.”

But I don’t suppose that it was as a consequence of anything in that honourable record that Colonel Cummins wrotePlays for Children, in three volumes. I suppose it was in consequence of another fact which the EnglishWho’s Whomentions (very briefly and abbreviatedly) as “fourc.”

The possession of four children is a natural explanation of three volumes of juvenile plays.

But wait a moment! Did Colonel Cummins write them wholly for his youngsters? As I read these little plays, it seems to me that there is frequently an undercurrent of philosophy, truth, satire—what you will—which, unappreciated by the youngsters themselves, will make these household dramas ingratiating to their parents. At any rate, this is exceptional work; you may be sure it is, for publishers are not in the habit of bringing out an author’s three volumes of children’s playsall at one stroke, and that is what is happening with Colonel Cummins’s little dramas.

What is there to say in advance aboutThe Fairy Flute, by Rose Fyleman? No one of the increasing number who have read her utterly charming book of poems for children,Fairies and Chimneys, will need more than the breath that this book is coming. I shall give myself (and I think everyone who reads this) the pleasure of quoting a poem fromFairies and Chimneys. This will show those who do not know the work of Rose Fyleman what to expect:

PEACOCKS

Peacocks sweep the fairies’ rooms;

They use their folded tails for brooms;

But fairy dust is brighter far

Than any mortal colours are;

And all about their tails it clings

In strange designs of rounds and rings;

And that is why they strut about

And proudly spread their feathers out.

Francis Rolt-Wheeler has spent years at sea, travelled a great deal in the West Indies, and South America, trapped at Hudson Bay, punched cattle in the far West, lived in mining camps, traversed the greater part of the American continent on horseback, lived with the Indians of the plains and lived with the Indians of the Pueblos,was a journalist for several years, has been in nearly every country of the world, and when last heard from (May, 1922) was meandering through Spain on his way to Morocco intending to take journeys on mule-back among the wild tribes of the Riff. He is studying Arabic and Mohammedan customs to prepare himself for this latest adventure. He writes boys’ books.

Can he write boys’ books? If a man of his experience cannot write boys’ books, then boys’ books are hopeless.

Plotting in Pirate Seas, besides the thrill of the story relating Stuart Garfield’s adventures in Haiti, contains glimpses of the whole pageant we call “the history of the Spanish Main.” There is a chapter which gives an account of Teach and Blackbeard, the buccaneers. Other chapters offer natural history in connection with Stuart Garfield’s hunt for his father. The boy gets an inside view of newspaper work and a clear idea of native life in Haiti and of conditions which brought about American intervention on the island.

Hunting Hidden Treasure in the Andesis, explicitly, the story of Julio and his guidance of two North American boys to the buried treasure of the Incas; but the book is much more than that. It gives, with accuracy and exceptional interest, a panorama of South American civilisation.

These are the first two volumes of the “Boy Journalist Series.” Two other books, the firsttwo volumes in the series called “Romance-History of America,” are:

In the Days Before Columbus, which deals with the North America that every youngster wants to know about—a continent flung up from the ocean’s bed and sculptured by ice; a continent that was kept hidden for centuries from European knowledge by the silent sweep of ocean currents; a continent that developed civilisations comparable with the Phoenician and Egyptian; the continent of the Red Man. The book places what we customarily call “American History” in its proper perspective by hanging behind it the stupendous backdrop of creation and the prehistoric time.

The Quest of the Western Worldis not the usual story of Columbus, preceded by a few allusions to the adventurings of earlier navigators. Dr. Rolt-Wheeler has written a book which goes back to the days of Tyre and Sidon, which includes the core of the old Norse and Irish sagas, and which comes down to Columbus with all the rich tapestry of a daring past unrolled before the youthful reader. Nor does the author stand on the letter of his title; he tells the story of the Quest both backward and forward, tying up the past with the present and avoiding, with singular success, the fatal effect which makes a child feel: “All this was a long time ago; it hasn’t anything to do with me or today.”

And now two new Rolt-Wheeler books are ready!Heroes of the Ruins, the third volume ofthe “Boy Journalist Series,” tells of a fourteen-year-old who lived for four years of war in trenches and dugouts. Andre, the Mole, went from one company to another, dodged the authorities and successfully ran the risks of death, emerging at the end to take up the search for his scattered family, from whom he had been separated in the early days of the fighting.

The third volume in the “Romance-History of America” books isThe Coming of the Peoples, which tells how the French, Spanish, English and Dutch settled early America.

Olive Roberts Barton is a sister of Mary Roberts Rinehart. When she taught school in Pittsburgh for several years before her marriage, she worked with children of all sizes and ages during part of that time and found small children were her specialty. She says:

“Working with them, and giving out constantly as one must with small children, was like casting bread upon waters. It came back to me, what I was giving them, not after many days but at once; their appreciation, their spontaneous sympathy, their love gave to me something I could get nowhere else, and it was enriching. I felt then, as I still feel, that children give us the best things the world has to offer, and my effort has been to make some return. Twice during the crises in my marriedlife I went back to the schoolroom for comfort. Once after the death of one of my own children, when I had no others left, and again when my husband went to the battle-fields of France.

“I have written with the same experience as I taught. My first successes were with adult fiction. I have had something like six hundred short stories published by syndicates, and magazine articles have appeared from time to time, but gradually I realised that I wanted children for my audience. Several years ago I publishedCloud Boat Stories. LaterThe Wonderful Land of Up. A syndicate editor saw these books and asked me to start a children’s department for the five hundred papers he served. That was the beginning of the ‘Twins.’ Nancy and Nick were born two years ago. They still visit their little friends every day in the columns of many newspapers. What a vast audience I have! A million children! No wonder one wishes to do his best.

“I have two children of my own. They are my critics. What they do not like, I do not write. We all love the out-of-doors and to us a bird or a little wild animal is a fairy.”

But when I try to say something about theNancy and Nickseries I find it has all been said for me (and said so much better!) by that accomplished bookseller, Candace T. Stevenson:

“I have just finished all of the books by Olive Roberts Barton. They are truly spontaneous anddelightful. In fact, they have carried my small group of children listeners and myself along as breathlessly as if they were Alice in Wonderland or Davy and the Goblin. They are delightful nonsense with exactly the right degree of an undercurrent of ideas which they can make use of in their business of everyday living. Children love morals which are done as skilfully as the chapter on Examinations in Helter Skelter Land, and Sammy Jones, the Topsy Turvy Boy in Topsy Turvy Land, and I found my group not only seriously discussing them but putting them into practice. Speaking of putting things into practice, there is only one spot in all of the books which seemed to me as if it might get some children into trouble. The description of Waspy Weasel’s trick on the schoolmaster in Helter Skelter Land where he squeezes bittersweet juice into the schoolmaster’s milk and puts him to sleep, I think would lead any inquiring mind to try it.

“The whale who loved peppermints, Torty Turtle with his seagull’s wings on, the adventures of the children when they help Mr. Tingaling collect the rents—this isn’t the same old stuff of the endless ‘bedtime’ stories which are dealt out to us by the yard. These animals are real people with the tinge which takes real imagination to paint.

“At first I was disappointed in the pictures, but as I read on I came to like those also, and I found that they were wholly satisfactory to the children. The picture of the thousand legger with all hisshoes on is entrancing, and poor Mrs. Frog cutting out clothes because the dressmaker had made them for the children when they were still tadpoles. These books ought to come like an oasis in the desert to the poor-jaded-reading-aloud-parent.”

At Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, in a small house built from her own plans and standing 2,000 feet above sea level, in a growing shade of trees, lives Marion Ames Taggart, author of the Jack-in-the-Box series—four children’s books that renew their popularity every year. They are:

AT GREENACRES

THE QUEER LITTLE MAN

THE BOTTLE IMP

POPPY’S PLUCK

At GreenacresandThe Queer Little Manare particularly good to read aloud to a group of children; they really are the mystery and detective story diluted for children.

Miss Taggart, an only child and extremely frail in childhood, had the good fortune as a consequence of ill-health to be educated entirely at home. As a result she had free access to really good books—for the home was in Haverhill, Mass. She began to carry out a cherished wish to write for young girls in 1901, when her first book (for girls of about sixteen) was published in St.Nicholas. She has a habit of transplanting four-footed friends in her stories under their own names—as where, in the Jack-in-the-Box series, one finds Pincushion, Miss Taggart’s own plump grey kitten.

What will the children say toA Wonder Book, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, with pictures in color by Arthur Rackham? I do not know why I ask this rhetorical question, which, like most questions of the sort, should be followed by exclamation points! There will be exclamations, at any rate, over this book, surely the most beautiful of the year, perhaps of several years. The quality of Arthur Rackham’s work is well known, its artistic value is undisputedly of the very highest. And Hawthorne’s text—the story of the Gorgon’s head, the tale of Midas, Tanglewood, and the rest—is of the finest literary, poetic and imaginative worth.

Chapter XICOBB’S FOURTH DIMENSION

As a three-dimensional writer, Irvin S. Cobb has long been among the American literary heavy-weights. Now that he has acquired a fourth dimension, the time has come for a new measurement of his excellences as an author.

Among those excellences I know a man (responsible for the manufacture of Doran books) who holds that Cobb is the greatest living American author. The reason for this is severely logical, to wit: Irvin Cobb always sends in his copy in a perfect condition. His copy goes to the manufacturer of books with a correctly written title page, a correctly written copyright page, the exact wording of the dedication, an accurate table of contents, and so on, all the way through the manuscript. Moreover, when proofs are sent to Mr. Cobb, he makes very few changes. He reduces to a minimum the difficulties of a printer and his changes are always perceptibly changes for the better.

But I don’t suppose that any of this would redound to Cobb’s credit in the eyes of a literary critic.

IRVIN S. COBB

And to return to the subject of the fourth dimension: My difficulty is to know in just what direction that fourth dimension lies. Is the fourth dimension of Cobb as a novelist or as an autobiographer? It puzzles me to tell inasmuch as I have before me the manuscripts of Mr. Cobb’s first novel,J. Poindexter, Colored, and his very first autobiography, a volume calledStickfuls.

The title ofStickfulswill probably not be charged with meaning to people unfamiliar with newspaper work. Perhaps it is worth while to explain that in the old days, when type was set by hand, the printer had a little metal holder called a “stick.” When he had set a dozen lines—more or less—he had a “stickful.” Although very little type is now set by hand, the stick as a measure of space is still in good standing. The reporter presents himself at the city desk, tells what he has got, and is told by the city editor, “Write a stickful.” Or, “Write two sticks.” And so on.

Stickfulsis not so much the story of Cobb’s life as the story of people he has met and places he has been, told in a series of extremely interesting chapters—told in a leisurely and delightful fashion of reminiscence by a natural association of one incident with another and one person with someone else. For example, Cobb as a newspaper man, covered a great many trials in court; andone of the chapters ofStickfulstells of famous trials he has attended.

Now about this novel of Cobb’s: Jeff Poindexter will be remembered by all the readers of Mr. Cobb’s short stories as the negro body servant of old Judge Priest. InJ. Poindexter, Colored, we have Jeff coming to New York. Of course, New York seen through the eyes of a genuine Southern darkey is a New York most of us have never seen. There’s nothing like sampling, so I will let you begin the book:

“My name is J. Poindexter. But the full name is Jefferson Exodus Poindexter, Colored. But most always in general I has been known as Jeff for short. The Jefferson part is for a white family which my folks worked for them one time before I was born, and the Exodus is because my mammy craved I should be named after somebody out of the Bible. How I comes to write this is this way:

“It seems like my experiences here in New York is liable to be such that one of my white gentleman friends he says to me I should take pen in hand and write them out just the way they happen and at the time they is happening, or right soon afterwards, whilst the memory of them is clear in my brain; and then he’s see if he can’t get them printed somewheres, which on the top of the other things which I now is, will make me an authorwith money coming in steady. He says to me he will fix up the spelling wherever needed and attend to the punctuating; but all the rest of it will be my own just like I puts it down. I reads and writes very well but someway I never learned to puncture. So the places where it is necessary to be punctual in order to make good sense and keep everything regulation and make the talk sound natural is his doings and also some of the spelling. But everything else is mine and I asks credit.

“My coming to New York, in the first place, is sort of a sudden thing which starts here about a month before the present time. I has been working for Judge Priest for going on sixteen years and is expecting to go on working for him as long as we can get along together all right, which it seems like from appearances that ought to be always. But after he gives up being circuit judge on account of him getting along so in age he gets sort of fretful by reasons of him not having much to do any more and most of his own friends having died off on him. When the State begins going Republican about once in so often, he says to me, kind of half joking, he’s a great mind to pull up stakes and move off and go live somewheres else. But pretty soon after that the whole country goes dry and then he says to me there just naturally ain’t no fitten place left for him to go without he leaves the United States.”

It seems that Judge Priest finally succumbed to an invitation to visit Bermuda, a place where agentleman can still raise a thirst and satisfy it. Jeff could not stand the house without the Judge in it; and when an opportunity came to go to New York, Jeff went.

iii

The biographer of Cobb is Robert H. Davis, editor of Munsey’s Magazine, whose authoritative account I take pleasure in reprinting here—the more so because it appeared some time ago in a booklet which is now out of print. Mr. Davis’s article was first printed in The Sun, New York:

“Let me deal with this individual in a categorical way. Most biographers prefer to mutilate their canvas with a small daub which purports to be a sketch of the most significant event in the life of the accused. Around this it is their custom to paint smaller and less impressive scenes, blending the whole by placing it in a large gilded frame, which, for obvious reasons, costs more than the picture—and it is worth more. Pardon me, therefore, if I creep upon Mr. Cobb from the lower left-hand corner of the canvas and chase him across the open space as rapidly as possible. It is not for me to indicate when the big events in his life will occur or to lay the milestones of the route along which he will travel. I know only that they are in the future, and that, regardless of any of his achievements in the past, Irvin Cobb has not yet come into his own.

“The first glimpse I had of him was in a half-tone portrait in the New York Evening World five years ago. This picture hung pendant-like from a title which read ‘Through Funny Glasses, by Irvin S. Cobb.’ It was the face of a man scarred with uncertainty; an even money proposition that he had either just emerged from the Commune or was about to enter it. Grief was written on the brow; more than written, it was emblazoned. The eyes were heavy with inexpressible sadness. The corners of the mouth were drooped, heightening the whole effect of incomprehensible depression. Quickly I turned to the next page among the stock quotations, where I got my depression in a blanket form. The concentrated Cobb kind was too much for me.

“A few days later I came suddenly upon the face again. The very incongruity of its alliance with laughter overwhelmed me, and wonderingly I read what he had written, not once, but every day, always with the handicap of that half-tone. If Cobb were an older man, I would go on the witness stand and swear that the photograph was made when he was witnessing the Custer Massacre or the passing of Geronimo through the winter quarters of his enemies. Notwithstanding, he supplied my week’s laughter.

“Digression this:

“After Bret Harte died, many stories were written by San Franciscans who knew him when he first put in an appearance on the Pacific Coast.One contemporary described minutely how Bret would come silently up the stairs of the old Alta office, glide down the dingy hallway through the exchange room, and seat himself at the now historic desk. It took Bret fifteen minutes to sharpen a lead pencil, one hour for sober reflection, and three hours to write a one-stick paragraph, after which he would carefully tear it up, gaze out of the window down the Golden Gate, and go home.

“He repeated this formula the following day, and at the end of the week succeeded in turning out three or four sticks which he considered fit to print. In later years, after fame had sought him out and presented him with a fur-lined overcoat, which I am bound to say Bret knew how to wear, the files of the Alta were ransacked for the pearls he had dropped in his youth. A few gems were identified, a very few. Beside this entire printed collection the New England Primer would have looked like a set of encyclopedias. Bret worked slowly, methodically, brilliantly, and is an imperishable figure in American letters.

“Returning to Cobb: He has already written twenty times more than Bret Harte turned out during his entire career. He has made more people laugh and written better short stories. He has all of Harte’s subtle and delicate feeling, and will, if he is spared, write better novels about the people of today than Bret Harte, with all his genius and imagination, wrote around the Pioneers. I know of no single instance where oneman has shown such fecundity and quality as Irvin Cobb has so far evinced, and it is my opinion that his complete works at fifty will contain more good humour, more good short stories, and at least one bigger novel than the works of any other single contemporaneous figure.

“He was born in Paducah, Kentucky, in June, ’76. I have taken occasion to look into the matter and find that his existence was peculiarly varied. He belonged to one of those old Southern families-there being no new Southern families—and passed through the public schools sans incident. At the age of sixteen he went into the office of The Paducah Daily News as a reportorial cub.

“He was first drawn to daily journalism because he yearned to be an illustrator. Indeed, he went so far as to write local humorous stories, illustrating them himself. The pictures must have been pretty bad, although they served to keep people from saying that his literature was the worst thing in the paper.

“Resisting all efforts of the editor, the stockholders and the subscribers of The Paducah Daily News, he remained barricaded behind his desk until his nineteenth year, when he was crowned with a two-dollar raise and a secondary caption under his picture which read ‘The Youngest Managing Editor of a Daily Paper in the United States.’

“If Cobb was consulted in the matter of thisreview, he would like to have these preliminaries expunged from his biography. But the public is entitled to the details.

“It is also true that he stacked up more libel suits than a newspaper of limited capital with a staff of local attorneys could handle before he moved to Louisville, where, for three years, he was staff correspondent of The Evening Post. It was here that Cobb discovered how far a humorist could go without being invited to step out at 6 a.m. and rehearse ‘The Rivals’ with real horse-pistols.

“The first sobering episode in his life occurred when the Goebel murder echoed out of Louisville. He reported this historic assassination and covered the subsequent trials in the Georgetown court house. Doubtless the seeds of tragedy, which mark some of his present work, were sown here. Those who are familiar with his writings know that occasionally he sets his cap and bells aside and dips his pen into the very darkness of life. We find it particularly in three of his short stories entitled ‘An Occurrence Up a Side Street,’ ‘The Belled Buzzard,’ and ‘Fishhead.’ Nothing better can be found in Edgar Allan Poe’s collected works. One is impressed not only with the beauty and simplicity of his prose, but with the tremendous power of his tragic conceptions and his art in dealing with terror. There appears to be no phase of human emotion beyond his pen. Without an effort he rises from the level of actualitiesto the high plane of boundless imagination, invoking laughter or tears at will.

“After his Louisville experience Cobb married and returned to Paducah to be managing editor of The Democrat. Either Paducah or The Democrat got on his nerves and, after a comparison of the Paducah school of journalism with the metropolitan brand, he turned his face (see Evening World half-tone) in the direction of New York, buoyed up by the illusion that he was needed there along with other reforms.

“He arrived at the gates of Manhattan full of hope, and visited every newspaper office in New York without receiving encouragement to call again. Being resourceful he retired to his suite of hall bedrooms on 57th Street West and wrote a personal note to every city editor in New York, setting forth in each instance the magnificent intellectual proportions of the epistolographer. The next morning, by mail, Cobb had offers for a job from five of them. He selected The Evening Sun.

“At about that time the Portsmouth Peace Conference convened, and The Sun sent the Paducah party to help cover the proceedings. Upon arriving at Portsmouth, Cobb cast his experienced eye over the situation, discovered that the story was already well covered by a large coterie of competent, serious-minded young men, and went into action to write a few columns daily on subjects having no bearing whatsoever on the conference. These stories were written in the ebullition ofyouth, inspired by the ecstasy which rises from the possession of a steady job; a perfect deluge from the well springs of spontaneity. There wasn’t a single fact in the entire series, and yet The Sun syndicated these stories throughout the United States. All they possessed was I-N-D-I-V-I-D-U-A-L-I-T-Y.

“At the end of three weeks, Cobb returned to New York, to find that he could have a job on any newspaper in it. This brings him to The Evening World, the half-tone engraving, which was the first glimpse I had of him, and the dawn of his subsequent triumphs. For four years he supplied the evening edition and The Sunday World with a comic feature, to say nothing of a comic opera, written to order in five days. The absence of a guillotine in New York State accounts for his escape for this latter offence. Nevertheless, in all else his standard of excellence ascended. He reported the Thaw trial in long-hand, writing nearly 600,000 words of testimony and observation, establishing a new style for reporting trials, and gave further evidence of his power. That performance will stand out in the annals of American journalism as one of the really big reportorial achievements.

“At about this juncture in his career Cobb opened a door to the past, reached in and took out some of the recollections of his youth. These he converted into ‘The Escape of Mr. Trimm,’ his first short fiction story. It appeared in TheSaturday Evening Post. The court scene was so absolutely true to life, so minutely perfect in its atmosphere, that a Supreme Court judge signed an unsolicited and voluntary note for publication, in which he said that Mr. Cobb had reported with marvelous accuracy and fulness a murder trial at which His Honour had presided.

“Gelett Burgess, in a lecture at Columbia College, said that Cobb was one of the ten great American humourists. Cobb ought to demand a recount. There are not ten humourists in the world, although Cobb is one of them. The extraordinary thing about Cobb is that he can turn a burst of laughter into a funeral oration, a snicker into a shudder and a smile into a crime. He writes in octaves, striking instinctively all the chords of humour, tragedy, pathos and romance with either hand. Observe this man in his thirty-ninth year, possessing gifts the limitations of which even he himself has not yet recognised.

“In appraising a genius, we must consider the man’s highest achievement, and in comparing him with others the verdict must be reached only upon consideration of his best work. For scintillant wit and unflagging good humour, read his essays on the Teeth, the Hair and the Stomach. If you desire a perfect blending of all that is essential to a short story, read ‘The Escape of Mr. Trimm’ or ‘Words and Music.’ If you are in search of pure, unadulterated, boundless terror, the gruesome quality, the blackness of despair and the fearof death in the human conscience, ‘Fishhead,’ ‘The Belled Buzzard’ or ‘An Occurrence Up a Side Street’ will enthrall you.

“Thus in Irvin Cobb we find Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Edgar Allan Poe at their best. Reckon with these potentialities in the future. Speculate, if you will, upon the sort of a novel that is bound, some day, to come from his pen. There seem to be no pinnacles along the horizon of the literary future that are beyond him. If he uses his pen for an Alpine stock, the Matterhorn is his.

“There are critics and reviewers who do not entirely agree with me concerning Cobb. But they will.

“As I write these lines I recall a conversation I had with Irvin Cobb on the hurricane deck of a Fifth Avenue ’bus one bleak November afternoon, 1911. We had met at the funeral of Joseph Pulitzer, in whose employ we had served in the past.

“Cobb was in a reflective mood, chilled to the marrow, and not particularly communicative.

“At the junction of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street we were held up by congested traffic. After a little manœuvring on the part of a mounted policeman, the Fifth Avenue tide flowed through and onward again.

“‘It reminds me of a river,’ said Cobb, ‘into which all humanity is drawn. Some of these people think because they are walking up-stream they are getting out of it. But they never escape. The current is at work on them. Some day they willget tired and go down again, and finally pass out to sea. It is the same with real rivers. They do not flow uphill.’

“He lapsed into silence.

“‘What’s on your mind?’ I inquired.

“‘Nothing in particular,’ he said, scanning the banks of the great municipal stream, ‘except that I intend to write a novel some day about a boy born at the headwaters. Gradually he floats down through the tributaries, across the valleys, swings into the main stream, and docks finally at one of the cities on its banks. This particular youth was a great success—in the beginning. Every door was open to him. He had position, brains, and popularity to boot. He married brilliantly. And then The Past, a trivial, unimportant Detail, lifted its head and barked at him. He was too sensitive to bark back. Thereupon it bit him and he collapsed.’

“Again Cobb ceased talking. For some reason—indefinable—I respected his silence. Two blocks further down he took up the thread of his story again:

“‘—and one evening, just about sundown, a river hand, sitting on a stringpiece of a dock, saw a derby hat bobbing in the muddy Mississippi, floating unsteadily but surely into the Gulf of Mexico.’

“As is his habit, Cobb tugged at his lower lip.

“‘What are you going to call this novel?’

“‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

“‘Why not “The River”?’

“‘Very well, I’ll call it “The River.”’

“He scrambled from his seat. ‘I’m docking at Twenty-seventh Street. Good-bye. Keep your hat out of the water.’

“Laboriously he made his way down the winding staircase from the upper deck, dropped flat-footed on the asphalt pavement, turned his collar up, leaned into the gust of wind from the South, and swung into the cross-current of another stream.

“I doubt if he has any intention of calling his story ‘The River.’ But I am sure the last chapter will contain something about an unhappy wretch who wore a derby hat at the moment he walked hand in hand with his miserable Past into the Father of Waters.

“For those who wish to know something of his personal side, I can do no better than to record his remarks to a stranger, who, in my presence, asked Irvin Cobb, without knowing to whom he was speaking, what kind of a person Cobb was.

“‘Well, to be perfectly frank with you,’ replied the Paducah prodigy, ‘Cobb is related to my wife by marriage, and if you don’t object to a brief sketch, with all the technicalities eliminated, I should say in appearance he is rather bulky, standing six feet high, not especially beautiful, a light roan in colour, with a black mane. His figure is undecided, but might be called bunchy in places. He belongs to several clubs, includingThe Yonkers Pressing Club and The Park Hill Democratic Marching Club, and has always, like his father, who was a Confederate soldier, voted the Democratic ticket. He has had one wife and one child and still has them. In religion he is an Innocent Bystander.’

“Could anything be fuller than this?”

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