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Title: Down at Caxton's Author: Walter Lecky Release Date: April 29, 2016 [EBook #51886] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOWN AT CAXTON'S *** Produced by Emmy, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) cover DOWN AT CAXTON’S. ———————————— By WALTER LECKY, Author of “Green Graves in Ireland,” “Adirondack Sketches,” etc. ———————————— BALTIMORE: JOHN MURPHY & CO. 1895. [1] Copyright, 1895, by Wm. A. McDermott. PRESS OF JOHN MURPHY & CO. [2] [3] I DEDICATE THIS SERIES OF SKETCHES DONE AT ODD MOMENTS STOLEN FROM THE BUSY LIFE OF A COUNTRY DOCTOR, IN THE WILDEST PART OF THE ADIRONDACKS, TO THAT DEAR FRIEND, WHO WROTE FOR ME AND OTHER WANDERERS—IDYLS OF A SUMMER SEA— TO CHARLES WARREN STODDARD OF THE Catholic University, Washington, D. C. Contents Transcriber's Note: This table of contents was created by the transcriber. MEN. Richard Malcolm Johnston. Marion Crawford. Charles Warren Stoddard. Maurice Francis Egan. John B. Tabb. James Jeffrey Roche. George Parsons Lathrop. Rev. Brother Azarias. WOMEN. Katherine Eleanor Conway. Louise Imogen Guiney. Mrs. Blake. Agnes Repplier. A WORD. Literature and Our Catholic Poor. MEN. RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. In that charming and dainty series of books published under the captivating title of “Fiction, Fact and Fancy,” and edited by the gifted son of the prince of American literary critics, there is a volume with the companionable name of Billy Downs. It is as follows that Mr. Stedman introduces the creator of Billy Downs and a host of other characters, mostly types of Middle Georgia life, that shall live with the language. “So we reach the tenth milestone of our ramble, and while we are resting by the wayside let us hail the gentleman who is approaching and ask him for ‘another story.’ We who have heard him before know that he seldom fails to respond to such a request, and always, too, in a manner quite inimitable. As he comes nearer you may observe the dignified, yet courteous and kindly bearing of a gentleman of the old school. The white hair and moustache, the sober dress, betoken the veteran, although they are almost contradicted by eyes and an innate youthfulness in word and thought. It is not difficult to recognize in Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnston the founder of a school of fiction and the dean of Southern men of letters.” The Colonel is the founder of a school of fiction, if by that school, we understand those, who are depicting for us the Georgia life of the ante-bellum days. In no otherwise can we assent to Mr. Stedman’s phrase. For American critics to claim the dialect school of fiction as their own in origin, is on a par with their other critical achievements. Dialect was born a long time before Columbus took his way westward. The first wave of mankind leaving the parent stock, in their efforts to survive, carried with them the germ of dialect. Fiction in its portrayal of men and manners of a given period, was bound to reproduce it faithfully— the very least to give us a semblance of that life. This could not be done in many instances without the use of dialect. To do so were to deprive the portraiture of individuality. Fiction produced on such lines would be worthless. Of late there has been much cavil against dialect writers. This cavil, strange to say, emanates from the Realists. They lay down the absurd code, that Art is purely imitative. She plays but a monkey part. Her sole duty is to depict life, paying leading attention to the portrayal of corns, bunions, and other horny excrescences, that so often accompany her. Realists will not be persuaded that such excrescences are abnormal. From a jaundiced introspection of their own little life, they frame canons of criticism to guide the world. With these congenial canons lying before them, one is astonished, if such a phrase may be used in the recent light of that school’s pyrotechnic display, that they can condemn dialect. Granted, for the sake of argument, that Art is merely imitative, will not the first duty of the novelist be to reproduce the exact language, and that when done by the master-hand of a Johnston carries with it not only the speaker’s tone, but the power of producing a mental image of the speaker—the very acme of the Realists’ school? To paint a Georgia cracker speaking the ordinary Boston-English would be like crowning the noble brow of a South Sea native with a tall Boston beaver. The effort would be unartistic, the effect ludicrous. Colonel Johnston believes in the imitativeness of Art, to the extent of reproducing for us the peculiar dialect of Middle Georgia. He has informed us that there is not a phrase in his novels that he has not heard amid the scenes of his stories. To reproduce these is a distinct triumph of the novelist’s art, but the Colonel has done more; into his every character has he breathed a soul. His figures are not the automaton skeletons of the Realists, but living men and women who have earnestly played life on the circumscribed stage of Middle Georgia. This life is fast passing away. Prof. Shaler, a competent authority, tells us: “At present the strong tide of modernism is sweeping over the old slave-holding States with a force which is certain to clear away a greater part of the archaic motives which so long held place in the minds of the people. With the death of this generation, which saw the rebellion, the ancient regime will disappear.” It can never be lost as long as the novels of Malcolm Johnston are extant. There, in days to come, by the cheery ingle-nook, will a new generation live over in his delightful pages the curious life of Georgia. Cuvier asked for a bone to construct his skeleton. The readers of the Dukesborough tales, Billy Downs, etc., will not only have the skeleton, but live men and women preserved for them by the novelist’s elixir. He has known his country and kept close to mother earth, having in his mind that “no language, after it has faded into diction, none that cannot suck up feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother earth of common folk, can bring forth a sound and lusty book. True vigor and heartiness of phrase do not pass from page to page, but from man to man.... There is death in the dictionary.” That the Colonel’s language has sucked up feeding juices secreted for it in the rich mother earth of common folk will be seen on every page. Let us take at random the communication of Jones Kendrick to his cousin Simeon Newsome, as to S’phrony Miller. Sim is a farmer lad overshadowed by the overpowering “dictionary use” of his Cousin Kendrick. Sim has gone a-wooin’ S’phrony. Kendrick hearing of this and urged by his mother and sister, comes to the conclusion that he would like to have S’phrony himself. This important fact he admits to Cousin Sim in the following choice morsel: Sim is overseeing his hands on the plantation; Kendrick approaches and is met by Sim. Kendrick speaks: “Ma and sister Maria have been for some time specified. They have both been going on to me about S’phrony Miller in a way and to an extent that in some circumstances might be called obstropolus, and to quiet their conscience I’ve begun a kind of a visitation over there, and my mind has arriv at the conclusion that she’s a good, nice piece of flesh, to use the expressions of a man of the world, and society. What do you think, Sim, of the matter under consideration, and what would you advise? I like to have your advice sometimes, and I’d like to know what it would be under all circumstances and appearances of a case which, as it stands, it seems to have, and it isn’t worth while to [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] conceal the fact that it does have, a tremendous amount of immense responsibility to all parties, especially to the undersigned, referring as is well known in books and newspaper advertisements to myself. What would you say to the above, Sim, in all its parts and parties?” It may interest the reader to know that Sim acquiesced “in all its parts and parties,” and that S’phrony became Mrs. Kendrick, while Sim took another mate. Of further interest to the imaginative young woman is the fact, that Mrs. Newsome and Mr. Kendrick perishing a few years later by some sort of quasi- involuntary but always friendly movements, executed in a comparatively brief time, S’phrony and Sim became one. In calling Johnston the dean of Southern men of letters, Stedman does not define his position. Page, the creator of Marse Chan, and one of the most talented of Southern dialect writers, negatively does so. In an article that has literary smack, but lacks critical perception, he rates him below Miss Murfree, James Lane Allen, and Cable. These three writers Page places at the head of Southern writers of fiction. Critics nowadays will adduce no proof; they simply affirm. The text of this discrimination should be the exactness of the character drawing, the life-like reproduction of environments, and the expertness of the dialect as a vehicle to convey the local flavor. It will hardly be gainsaid that Johnston knows his Georgia no less than Cable knows Louisiana. Johnston is a native of Georgia; the time of life most susceptible to local impressions was spent there. Cable’s boyhood was otherwise. It will not be thought of that in the painting of Creole life, Cable has excelled the painter of Georgia life. In the handling of dialect, Johnston and Harris touch the high water mark of Southern fiction. It was an old critical dictum that an author to succeed must be in sympathy with his subject; this may be affirmed of Johnston. It is otherwise with Cable, and especially with Lane, whose Kentucky pictures are often caricatures. Cable poses as the friend of the colored man. His pose is dramatic. It lends a charm to his New England recitations. We have a great love for champions of every kind. The most of Mr. Cable’s pages deal with Creole life, and for that life he has no sympathy. He paints it as essentially pagan, albeit it was essentially Catholic. A padre makes him sniff the air and paw ungraciously. The ceremonies of the church are so many pagan rites. Cable belongs to the school that contemns what it does not understand. His pictures of Creole life are untrue, and much as they were in vogue some years ago, are passing to the bourne of the forgotten. Johnston, although a living Catholic, fond of his church, and wedded to her every belief, draws an itinerant preacher of the Methodists with as much enthusiasm and sympathy as he would the clergy of his own church. He has no dislikes, nothing that is of man but interests this sunny- hearted romancer of the old South. Strange as it may seem, the knowledge of his wonderful power of story-telling came late and in an accidental way. It is best described in his own words. “Story-writing,” said the Colonel, “is the last thing for me in literature. I had published two or three volumes on English literature, and in conjunction with a friend had written a life of Alexander Stephens, and also a book on American and European literature, but had no idea of story-writing for money. Two or three stories of mine had found their way into the papers before I left Georgia. I had been a professor of English literature in Georgia, but during the war I took a school of boys. I removed to Baltimore and took forty boys with me and continued my school. There was in Baltimore, in 1870, a periodical called the Southern Magazine. The first nine of my Dukesborough Tales were contributed to that magazine. These fell into the hands of the editor of Harper’s Magazine, who asked me what I got for them. I said not a cent, and he wanted to know why I had not sent them to him. ‘Neelers Peeler’s Conditions’ was the first story for which I got pay. It was published in the Century, over the signature of Philemon Perch. Dr. Holland told Mr. Gilder to tell that man to write under his own name, adding that he himself had made a mistake in writing under a pseudonym. Sydney Lanier urged me to write, and said if I would do so he would get the matter in print for me. So he took ‘Neelers Peeler’s Conditions,’ and it brought me eighty dollars. I was surprised that my stories were considered of any value. I withdrew from teaching about six years ago, and since that time have devoted myself to authorship. I have never put a word in my book that I have not heard the people use, and very few that I have not used myself. Powelton, Ga., is my Dukesborough. I was born fourteen miles from there. “Of the female characters that I have created, Miss Doolana Lines was my favorite, while Mr. Bill Williams is my favorite among the male characters. I started Doolana to make her mean and stingy like her father, but I hadn’t written a page before she wrenched herself out of my hands. She said to me, ‘I am a woman, and you shall not make me mean.’ These stories are all of Georgia as it was before the war. In the hill country the institution of slavery was very different from what it was in the rice region or near the coast. Do you know the Georgia negro has five times the sense of the South Carolina negro? Why? Because he has always been near his master, and their relations are closer. My father’s negroes loved him, and he loved them, and if a negro child died upon the place my mother wept for it. Some time ago I went to the old place, and an old negro came eight miles, walked all the way, to see me. “He got to the house before five o’clock in the morning, and opened the shutters while I was asleep. With a cry he rushed into the room. ‘Oh, Massa Dick.’ We cried in each other’s arms. We had been boys together. One of my slaves is now a bishop—Bishop Lucius Holsey, one of the most eloquent men in Georgia.” These charming bits of autobiography show us the sterling nature of Malcolm Johnston, a nature at once cheerful, kind and loving. It is the object of such natures, in the pessimistic wayfares of life, to make friends, illuminating them with sunshine and tickling them with laughter. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] MARION CRAWFORD. In front of the Ara Coeli I stood. A swarthy Italian was telling of the dramatic death of Cola di Rienzi. His English was lightly worn, but it seemed to please his audience, and it was for that purpose they had paid their lire. The crazy- quilt language of the cicerone and his audacious way of handling history, made him cut an attractive figure in the eyes of most tourists, whose desires are amusement rather than study. As a type, to use a phrase borrowed from the school of psychological novelism, he was a study. To the student Rome is a city of absorbing interest, to the ordinary American bird of passage a dull place. It all depends on your point of view. If you are a scholar, a collector of old lace, or a vandal, Rome is your happy hunting ground. If these pursuits do not interest you, Roman beggars with all sorts and conditions of diseases, sometimes by nature, mostly by art, Roman fleas, and the gaunt ghosts of the Campagna quickly drive you from the capital of the Cæsars and Popes. A few other annoyances might be added, such as sour wine, whose mist fumes are not to be shriven by your bottle-let of eau de Cologne, garlic on the fringe of decay, and the provoking smell of salt fish in the last stage of decomposition. But you have come to Rome; it is a name to conjure with, and despite the drawbacks, you must have a glimpse, an ordinary bowing acquaintance, with the famed old dame. At the office, an English office, in the Piazza di Spagna, you have asked for a “droll guide.” Who could listen to a scholarly one amid such active drawbacks as wine, fleas and fish? Michael Angelo Orazio Pantacci is your man. What do you care for good English? Did you not leave New York to leave it behind? What do you care for Roman history? Pantacci is your man, and his lecture on Cola di Rienzi is a masterpiece. A stranger joined our little crowd. Pantacci at that moment had attained his descriptive high-water mark. His pose and voice were touchingly dramatic. Cola was, as he expressed it, “to perish.” The stranger smiled and passed on. His smile was a composite affair. It was easy to see in it Michael Angelo’s historical duplicity and our ignorant simplicity. The stranger was tall, with the shoulders slightly stooping, a nose as near an approach to the Grecian as an American may come, a heavy black mustache, ruddy cheeks, that whispered of English food mellowed with the glowing Chianti. Who is that man? I said to my companion, whose eyes had followed the stranger rather than Pantacci. “That,” said he, “is Marion Crawford, the author of the Saracenesca books. You remember reading them at Albano.” Tell me something about him. He is a very clever man. Cola has perished; let us leave Pantacci. On the way to Cordietti’s tell me something of his life. He knows how to tell a story, an art hardly to be met with in contemporary fiction. Fiction has abrogated to herself the whole domain of life, and thus the art of telling a story for the story’s sake is lost. Fiction has a mission. She freights herself with all isms. Scott, Manzoni, even the great wizard of Spanish fiction, could they live again, were failures. Introspection is the cult, and, happily for their fame, they knew nothing of it. These great masters told us how scenes of life were enacted. Why, they left to the inquisitive and later-day brood of commentators. Since then the all absorbing scientific spirit prevails, and we moderns brush away the delightful humor of Dickens for the analytical puzzles of Henry James; the keen satire of Thackeray for the coxcomberies of George Meredith. Fairy cult interests none, modern children are ancient men. Scepticism is rampant, and the cause of it is, in a great manner, due to the modern novelist. This product of the 19th century world-spirit coolly tells us that romance lies dead. Realism has taken her place. If we are to believe the theories of its votaries, it is without an ideal—a mere anatomical transcript of man. What this theory leads to is well illustrated by the gutter filth of Zola and Catulle Mendes. It makes novel writing a trade. One ceases to be astonished at the output, if he thoroughly grasps the difference between a tradesman and an artist. Trade is a word much used by realists. Grant Allen, writing of that realistic necromancer, Guy de Maupassant, has nothing apter to define his position than the phrase “he knows his trade.” In point of fact, Grant Allen enunciates a truth in this phrase, one that might be carried still further, by saying that his whole school are journeymen laborers, tradesmen, if you prefer, turning out work, tasteless and crude, at the bidding of the erubescent young person of the period. It is readily assumed that work of this kind is not, despite the word-jugglery of their school, realism. It does not deal with the true man, but with a phrase, and that abnormal. A better phrase in use in speaking of the works of this school is, “literature of disease.” The artist who lives must have a model, and that we call the ideal. The nearer he approaches this the more lasting his work. All the great artists had ideals. Workmen may be guided by the rule of thumb. The first lesson a great artist learns is, “The art that merely imitates can only produce a corpse; it lacks the vital spark, the soul, which is the ideal, and which is necessary in order to create a living organic reality that will quicken genius and arouse enthusiasm throughout the ages.” The gulf between the trade-novelist and the artist-novelist is of vital importance. The former believes that art is simply imitation, the latter, that art is interpretation. One is a stone-cutter, the other a sculptor. Crawford’s canon is that art is interpretative, not imitative, and, moreover, he has a story to tell and tells it for the story’s sake. He has no affinity with that school so pointedly described by the Scotch novelist, Barrie, as the one “which tells, in three volumes, how Hiram K. Wilding trod on the skirt of Alice M. Sparkins without anything coming of it.” “Cordietti’s,” said my friend, “give the order and I will tell you what I know of Crawford.” Paulo, said I to the waiter, some Chianti, and—well, a pigeon. “Crawford,” said my friend, “was born in Rome about thirty-five years ago. His career has been a strange one, full of life. His early years were spent in Rome, where his father was known as a sculptor, his boyhood in the vicinity of Union Square, his early manhood in England and India. In the latter country he was the editor, proof-reader, typesetter of a small journal in the natives’ interest. As such he was a thorn to the notorious freak, Blavatsky. Crawford is an American by inheritance, an Italian by breeding, an Englishman by training, an Indian by virtue of writing about India with the knowledge of a native. In 1873, by the financial panic, Mrs. Crawford lost her large fortune, and Marion was forced to shift for himself. He became a journalist, and as such wandered over most of the interesting part of the globe. On his return to New York, at the request of his uncle, Sam Ward, the epicurean, who had discerned his kinsman’s rare power of story-telling, he wrote his first book, Mr. Isaacs. It was a success. Of the writing of that book, Crawford has told us it was “very curious. I did not imagine that I [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] possessed a faculty for story-writing, and I prepared for a career very different from the career of a novelist. Yet I have found that all my early life was an unconscious preparation for that work. My boyhood was spent in Rome, where my parents had lived for many years. There I was put through the usual classical training—no, it was not the usual one, for the classics are much better taught in Italy than in this country. A boy in Italy by the time he is twelve is taught to speak Latin, and his training is so thorough that he can read it with ease. From Rome I went to Cambridge, England, and remained at the university several years. Then I studied for a couple of years at the German universities. During this time I went in for the sciences, and I expected to devote myself to scientific work. Finally I went off to the East, where I did a good deal of observing, and continued my studies of the Oriental languages, in which I had taken considerable interest. It was while I was in the East that I met Jacobs, the hero of Mr. Isaacs. Many of the events I have recorded in Mr. Isaacs were the actual experiences of Jacobs.” The writing of his first novel occupied the months of May and June, 1882; it was published the same year, and at once established its author in the front rank of living American writers of fiction. Since then Crawford has written twenty volumes of fiction. Crawford is frank and he tells us how he manages to produce in a few years the amount of an ordinary lifetime. “By living in the open air, by roughing it among the Albanian mountaineers, wandering by the sunny olive slopes and vineyards of Calabria, and by taking hard work and pot luck with the native sailors on long voyages in their feluccas,” are the means of the novelist to hold health and make his pen work a laxative employment. In these picturesque journeys, he lays the foundation of his stories, makes the plots and evolves the characters. He does not believe in Trollope’s idea of sitting down, pen in hand, and keep on sitting until at its own wild will the story takes ink. The story in these excursions has been fully fashioned, and it becomes but a matter of penmanship to record it. How quickly this is done may be seen from the rapid writing of the novelist, which averages 6,000 words the working day. This rapid composition has its defects, defects that are in some measure compensated by the photographic views of the life and manners of the people. These views are in the rough, but they are truer than when toned down. Poetry needs paring. The greatest novels have been those that came like Crawford’s, fresh from the brain, and were hastily despatched to the printer. Scott did not mope over the sheets. Thackeray’s were written to the tune of “more copy.” Your American critic, Stoddard, says:—“That Crawford is a man with many talents, and with great fertility of invention, is evident in every story that he has written. He has written more good stories and in more diverse ways than any English or American novelist. It does not seem to matter to him what countries or periods he deals with, or what kind of personages he draws, he is always equal to what he undertakes.” It may interest you, in ending this biographic sketch, to add that he is a convert to the Catholic Church, and with the American critic’s idea in view, a cosmopolitan. I was not astonished by the former information. To those who know Italy and Mr. Crawford’s wonderful drawing of it, there could be but one opinion, that the faith of the novelist was the same as that of his characters. No Protestant novelist, no matter how many years he had lived in Italy, could have drawn the portraits that play in the Saracenesca pages. One of his friends had this in his mind’s eye when he wrote of the superiority of the novelist’s writings on Italy over those of his countrymen. This writer tells us that “Crawford added the indispensable advantage of being a Catholic in religion, a circumstance that has not only allowed him a truer sympathy with the life there, but has afforded him an open sesame to many things which must be sealed books to Protestants.” As to my friend’s summing up Crawford as a cosmopolitan, in the every-day meaning of that word, I take issue. Cosmopolitan novelist is one who can produce a three-volume novel, whose scenes are laid in all the great centers of commerce, while he sits calmly in his library. No previous study of his novelistic surroundings are necessary. Does the age want the beginning of the plot in Cairo or Venice, half-way at Tokio, and a grand finale beyond the Gates Ajar? Your novelist is ready to turn out the regulation type with the greatest ease. Cosmopolitan novel-writing is simply a trade. The living through of local and artistic impressions, the study of types in their environment, the color of surroundings are unnecessary. Imagination, divorced from nature study, is left to guide the way. Once Crawford followed this school, and the result was “An American Politician,” the “worst novel ever produced by an American.” Had Crawford been a tradesman he might have produced a passable book, but being an artist, he failed, not knowing what paint to mix in order to get the coloring. The difference between an artist and tradesman, the one must go to nature direct, the other takes her secondhand. No artist can catch the lines of an Italian sunset from a studio window in London. “Art is interpretive, not imitative.” Crawford is only a novelist in the true sense when he knows his characters and their surroundings. This is amply proven in the charming volumes that make his Saracenesca series. Here he is at home, so to speak. The Rome of Pius IX, with its struggles, its ambitions, the designs of wily intriguers, the fall of the temporal power of the Papacy, the rise of an united Italy, the flocking to Rome of the scourings and outcasts of the provincial cities, the money-mad schemes of daring but ignorant speculators, and over all the lovely blue Italian sky, rise before us in all their minuteness at the biddance of Marion Crawford. His work is hardly inferior to genuine history; “for it affords that insight into the human mind, that acquaintance with the spirit of the age, without which the most minute knowledge is only a bundle of dry and meaningless facts.” Who that knows Rome of the Popes and Rome of the Vandals will not feel heavy-hearted at these lines? “Old Rome is dead, too, never to be old Rome again. The last breath has been breathed, the aged eyes are closed forever, corruption has done its work and the grand skeleton lies bleaching on seven hills, half covered with the piecemeal stucco of a modern architectural body. The result is satisfactory to those who have brought it, if not to the rest of the world. The sepulchre of old Rome in the new capital of united Italy.” The exclusiveness of the patrician families of Rome, families that a brood of novelists pretend to draw life-like, is happily hit by the painter Gouache. Gouache, long resident in Rome, being asked what he knows of Roman families, replies, “Their palaces are historic. Their equipages are magnificent. That is all foreigners see of Roman families.” Who that has seen the great Leo carried [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] through the grand sala, a vision of intellectual loveliness, will not recall it as he reads? “The wonderful face that seemed to be carved out of transparent alabaster, smiled and slowly turned from side to side as it passed by. The thin, fragile hand moved unceasingly, blessing the people.” “True,” said my friend, “his pages are delicious bits of the dead past. At every sentence we halt and find a memory. He has the sense of art, if Maupassant’s definition of it as ‘the profound and delicious enjoyment which rises to your heart before certain pages, before certain phrases’ be correct.” Dinner was finished. A check, Paulo. We rose and went. CHARLES WARREN STODDARD. Venice, that lovely city by the sea, has been described a thousand times by the painter’s brush, by the poet’s pen. It is the last bit of poetry left to us, in the ever increasing dulness of this world—the only place that one would expect to meet a goblin or a genial Irish fairy. It is not the intention of this paper to describe the queenly city. More than a thousand kodak fiends are daily doing that work, with the eagerness of a money-lender and the artistic sense of a fence painter. A city may, however, have many attractions, other than its magic beauty; nay, even a dull uninteresting place may become interesting from some great historic event that happened there, or from some impression caught and treasured in memory’s store-house. Venice has a charm for me other than the poetry that lurks in its every stone; it was there that I first dipped into one of those rare books whose charms grow around the heart soft and green as a vine- tendril. A professor of mine, one of those men who hugs one saying in life, thereon building a false reputation for wisdom, was in the habit of saying, “Accidents are the spice of life.” As it is his only contribution approaching the threshold of the philosopher’s goddess that I heard in the five years of his weary cant, I willingly record it. To me it expresses a truth, albeit five years is a long hunt. Illustrations sometimes improve the text, and this brief paper, by the way, is but a design to enhance the professor’s. It was an accident, pure and simple, that made me wend my way to the Rialto, there to lean against the parapet watching some probably great unknown painting, something that might be anything the imagination cared to conjure up. It was an accident that made an English divine ask me in sputtering French what the painter was working on. It was an accident that made me inform him in common American English that my telescope, by some accidental foresight, was at my lodgings. The divine was a genial man, one of those breaths of spring that we sometimes meet in life. Invited to my lodgings, he fancied a few tiny volumes of the apostle of “sweetness and light” to pass those hours that hang heavily, in all lands save Eden. In my pocket he thrust, as he remarked, “a no ordinary book, one that will hold you as in a vice.” This proceeding was rather remarkable, had he not in the same breath invited me to take a gondola to one of the isles, and there enjoy the pocketed volume. It is delightful to meet a genuine man, speaking your mother-tongue, after weary months of Italian delving. To the little isle we went, an isle known to readers of Byron, as the place where he labored long under Armenian monks to learn their guttural tongue, the monks say “with success.” I knew nothing, in those days, of destructive criticism. After a tour in the monastery, of the ordinary Italian type, I lay down on the green sward under the beneficent shade of a huge palm, wrapped in the odors of a thousand flowers that sleepily nodded to the music of the creamy breakers on the rocky shore. Books have their atmosphere as well as men. Deprive them of it, and many a charm is lost. I drew the little volume from my pocket, and there in that atmosphere, akin to the one in which it was begot, I read of life in summer seas, life that floats along serene and sweet as a bell-note on a calm, frosty night, life “Where the deep blue ocean never replies To the sibilant voice of the spray.” My Anglican friend was unable to give any clue to the author’s identity, other than what the meagre title-page afforded. The title-page was of that modest kind that says, “Enter in and see for yourself.” It had none of the tricks of book- making, and none of the airs of a parvenu. Under other skies than Italian I learned that the author of “South Sea Idyls,” Charles Warren Stoddard, poet and traveller, was one of the kindest and most modest of men. In truth, that it was the combination of these rare qualities that had kept him from the crowd when lesser men made prodigious sales of their wares. To the man of mediocrity, it is a tickling sensation to float with the current to the music of the shore-rabble, who shout from an innate desire to hear their voices. With the possessor of that rare gift, genius, the mouthings of the present count little; it is for a future hold on man, that he toils. It is to do something, to paint a face, to carve a bust whose glorious shape shall hand to the ages a form of beauty, to weave a snatch of melody that shall go down the stream of time consoling dark souls. Mediocrity is mortal, genius immortal. The common mind, without bogging in metaphysics or transcendentalism, subjects so dear to American critics, may readily grasp the destination by a comparison in poetry of the “Proverbial Philosophy” with “In Memoriam,” in prose “Barriers Burned Away,” with “Waverly.” Another point for mediocrity, perhaps from its possessor’s view the best: it is well recompensed in this life. The very reverse is the case with genius. If then the author of the “South Sea Idyls” is not as popular with the crowd as the writers of short stories who revel in analysis, whether it be a gum-boil or the falling of my lady’s fan, he can have no fear. It is but his badge of superiority. The few great men, who are the literary arbiters of each century, have spoken, and their verdict is the verdict of posterity. “One does these things but once,” say they, “if one ever does them, but you have done them once for all; no one need ever write of the South Sea again.” Here, it is well to impress on the casual reader, in the light of this verdict, a great historic truth cobwebbed over by critical spiders; that it was not the Italians that gave the chaplet to Dante, nor the Spaniards to Cervantes, nor the Portuguese to Camoëns, nor the Germans to Goethe, but the great cosmopolitan few, scattered over the world, guardians of the garden of immortality. Charles Warren Stoddard was born in Rochester, N. Y., 7th August, 1843. At an early age he left his native state, with his family and emigrated to California, that fertile foster-mother of American literary men. In that delightful state, region of plants and flowers, was passed his boyhood, a boyhood rich in promise, strengthened by a good education. With a natural bent for travel, fed by the tales of travellers and the waters of romance, it was his happy luck, at the age of twenty-three to find himself appointed to that really bright journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, as its correspondent. The commission was a roving one, and the young correspondent was left free to contribute sketches in his own inimitable way. Let us believe that the editor well knew the choice mind he had secured in the young writer, and [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] so knowing was unwilling to put restrictions of the common newspaper kind in his way. How could such a correspondent be harnessed in the dull statistics and ribald gossip of these days? It was otherwise, as we his debtors know. He was to wander at his own sweet will. The slight vein of sweet melancholy that came with his life, drove him far from the grimy haunts of civilization, far from the sickening thud of men thrown against the cobble-stones of poverty. He sailed away with not a pang of sorrow to those golden isles embedded in summer seas, where the moon “Seems to shine with a sunny ray, And the night looks like a mellowed day. Isles where all things save man seem to have grown hoar in calm. In calm unbroken since their luscious youth.” To a man of Stoddard’s genius and delicate perception, one thing could have been foreseen. These lands yet warm with the sunshine of youth would play melodies on his soul, as the winds on Æolian harps; melodies hitherto unknown to the jaded working world. That he could catch these airs and give them a tangible form, was not so sure. Others had heard these siren airs, but failed to yoke them to speech. Melville, now and then, had reproduced a few notes; notes full of dreamy beauty, making us long for the master who was to give the full and perfect song. That master was found in Stoddard. He produced, as Howells so finely has said, “the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that ever were written about the life of that summer ocean,” things “of the very make of the tropic spray,” which “know not if it be sea or sun.” Whether you open with a prodigal in Tahiti and see for yourself “that there are few such delicious bits of literature in the language,” or follow the writer, who, thanking the critics, prefers to find out for himself the worth of a writer, commences at the beginning with the charming tale of “Kana-ana,” you will be in company with the acute critic who has pronounced the life of the summer sea, “once done,” by Stoddard, “and that for all time.” What should we look for in such a book? “Pictures of life, for melody of language, for shapes and sounds of beauty;” and these are to be found without stint in the “South Sea Idyls.” The form of Kana-ana haunts me, “with his round, full girlish face, lips ripe and expressive, not quite so sensual as those of most of his race; not a bad nose, by any means; eyes perfectly glorious —regular almonds—with the mythical lashes that sweep.” Kana-ana, who had tasted of civilization, finding it hollow, pining for his own fair land, and when restored to the shade of his native palms, wasting away, dying delirious, in his tiny canoe, rocked to death by the spirit of the deep. Or is it Taboo—“the figure that was like the opposite halves of two men bodily joined together in an amateur attempt at human grafting, whose trunk was curved the wrong way; a great shoulder bullied a little shoulder, and kept it decidedly under; a long leg walked right around a short leg that was perpetually sitting itself down on invisible seats, or swinging itself for the mere pleasure of it,” meeting him by the enchanting cascade. Or is it Joe of Lahaina, whose young face seemed to embody a whole tropical romance. Joe, his bright scape-grace, met with months after in that isle of lost dreams and salty tears, the leper-land of Molokai. Who shall forget the end of that tale, where the author steals away in the darkness from the dying boy? “I shall never see little Joe again, with his pitiful face, growing gradually as dreadful as a cobra’s, and almost as fascinating in its hideousness. I waited, a little way off in the darkness, waited and listened, till the last song was ended, and I knew he would be looking for me to say good night. But he did not find me, and he will never again find me in this life, for I left him sitting in the dark door of his sepulchre—sitting and singing in the mouth of his grave—clothed all in Death.” It matters little whether it be Kana-ana, Taboo or Joe of Lahaina, the hand of a master was at their birth, the spell of the wizard is around them. The full development of Stoddard’s genius is not found in character-drawing, great as that gift undoubtedly is, but in his wonderful reproduction of the ever-changing hues of land and sea, under the tropical sun. What description is better fitted to fill the eye with beauty, the ear with melody, than these lines from the very first page of his “South Sea Idyls?” “Once a green oasis blossomed before us—a garden in perfect bloom, girdled about with creamy waves; within its coral cincture pendulous boughs trailed in the glassy waters; from its hidden bowers spiced airs stole down upon us; above all the triumphant palm trees clashed their melodious branches like a chorus with cymbals; yet from the very gates of this paradise a changeful current swept us onward, and the happy isle was buried in night and distance.” It is not easy to make extracts from this charming book. It is a mosaic, to be read as a whole. A tile, no matter how beautiful it may be, can give no adequate conception of the mosaic of which it forms a part. It may, however, stimulate us to procure it. These extracts taken at random, would that they might have the same effect. The book, once so rare, is now within the easy reach of all. The new edition lately published by the Scribners is all that one could ask, and is a fitting home for the undying melodies of the summer seas. To read it is to be reminded of the opening lines of Endymion. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever, Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but will keep A bower quiet for us and a sleep, Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.” Stoddard’s other works are a volume of poems, San Francisco, 1867; “Mashallah,” a work that produces, as no other work written in English, the Egypt of to-day. In this work his touch is as light as that of Gautier, while his eyes are [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] as open as De Amicis; and a little volume on Molokai. At present he is the English professor at the Catholic University. With the quoting of a little poem, “In Clover,” a poem full of his delicate touches, I close this sketch of a writer to whom I am much indebted for happy hours under Italian skies and in Adirondack camps. “O Sun! be very slow to set; Sweet blossoms kiss me on the mouth; O birds! you seem a chain of jet, Blown over from the south. O cloud! press onward to the hill, He needs you for his falling streams The sun shall be my solace still And feed me with his beams. O little humpback bumble bee! O smuggler! breaking my repose, I’ll slily watch you now and see Where all the honey goes. Yes, here is room enough for two; I’d sooner be your friend than not; Forgetful of the world, as true, I would it were forgot.” [54] MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN. The poet-critic Stedman, in his book on American poetry, gives a few lines to what he terms the Irish-American school. His definition is a little misleading, as some of the poets he cites were more American than the troop of lesser bards that grace his polished pages. It is rather a strange notion of American critics that Prof. Boyesen, having cast aside the language of Norseland to sport in the larger waters of our English tongue, is metamorphosed into a true American, while the literary sons and daughters of Irish parents, born and striking root in American soil, are marked with a foreign brand. It is the old story of English literary prejudice reproduced by American critics. American modistes go to Paris for their fashions, American critics to the Strand for their literary canons. It is pleasant to know that the bulk of the people stay at home. In this Irish-American school one meets with the name of Maurice Francis Egan. “A sweet and true poet” is Stedman’s criticism. Coming from a master in the art of literary interpretation, it must occupy a place in all coming estimates of Mr. Egan’s poetry. This criticism is, nevertheless, short and unsatisfactory, it gives no true idea of the poet’s place in the letters of his country. It merely, if one is inclined to agree with Stedman, establishes that Mr. Egan has a place among the bards. In the hall of Parnassus, however, there are so many stalls that the ordinary reader prefers to have the particular place assigned to each bard pointed out. The author of this sketch, while not accredited to the theatre of Parnassus, may be able to give to those who are not under the guidance of a uniformed usher some hints whereby Mr. Egan’s particular place may be discerned; that place is among the minor poets. The major stalls are all empty, waiting for the coming men, so glibly prophesied about by the little makers of our every-day literature. Maurice Francis Egan, poet, essayist, novelist, journalist, and all-round literary man, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., May 24, 1852. His first instructors were the Christian Brothers, at their well-known La Salle College in that city. From La Salle he went to Georgetown College, as a professor of English. After leaving Georgetown he edited a short-lived venture, McGee’s Weekly. In 1881 he became assistant editor of the Freeman’s Journal, and remained virtually at the head of that paper until the death of its founder and the passing of the property to other hands. The founding of the Catholic University, and the acceptance of its English professorship by Warren Stoddard, made a vacancy in the faculty of Notre Dame University. This vacancy was offered to and accepted by Mr. Egan. There are few places better fitted as a poet’s home than Notre Dame. Beautiful scenery to fill the eye, brilliant society to spur the mind, and a spacious library freighted with the riches of the past. In comparison with the majority of the Catholic writers, the poet’s journey in life has been comparatively smooth, though far from what it should have been. He has published the following volumes:—“That Girl of Mine,” 1879; “Preludes,” 1880; “Song Sonnets,” London, 1885; “Theatre,” 1885; “Stories of Duty,” 1885; “Garden of Roses,” 1886; “Life Around Us,” 1886; “Novels and Novelists,” 1888; “Patrick Desmond,” 1893; “Poems,” 1893. To this list must be added innumerable articles in magazines and weekly journals. Judged by the signed output, it is safe to write that the English professor of Notre Dame is a very busy man. The wonder is that a mind so occupied by so many diverse things can write entertainingly of each. The poet’s first book, a few sonnets and poems, was for “sweet charity’s sake,” and had but a limited circulation. It is safe to say that every first book of a genuine poet, despite its crudities, will show the seeker signs of things to come. Egan’s book was not without promises, but in truth these promises are only partly fulfilled in his latest volume of verse. There may be many reasons adduced for this disparity between promise and fulfilment. One of them is the haste with which poetry is published. Horace’s dictum of using the file has been long since forgotten. The rabble calls for poetry, and, like the Italian and his lentils, care little for the quality. If the poet harkens to the calls (and who among the contemporary bards has laughed it to scorn?) he exchanges perpetuity for the present, notoriety for fame. Nor will the rabble leave the poet freedom in choosing his material. He is simply a tradesman, and must use what is placed at his disposal. Things great and grand must be left unto that day when the poet, untrammelled by worldly care, shall write his heart’s dream. If the time ever comes, the poet learns in sorrow that his dreams will never float into human speech, for the hand has lost its cunning. So the days of youth and manhood pass, blowing bubbles or decorating platitudes. Death snatches the poetling, and oblivion is his coverlid. The songs he sang died with the rabble. The new generation asked for a poet that could drill into the human heart and bring forth its secrets—a listener to nature, her interpreter to man. To such a one the vocabulary of a minor bard is useless. Another reason, more applicable to our author, is that he has been unfortunate to be a pioneer in Catholic American literature. His poems, appealing, as they do, to a distinct class, and that far from being a book-buying one, will fail to attract the lynx-eyed critic who cares only for the general literary purveyor. From such a source, the poet’s chance of corrective criticism has been slight. The class to which Mr. Egan belongs has no criticism to offer its literary food givers. If an author’s book sells, his name is blazoned forth in half a hundred headless petty journals. His most glaring defects become through their glasses mystic beauty spots. He is invited to lecture on all kinds of subjects. A clique grows around him, whose duty it is to puff the master. The reasons, frankly adduced, have limited the scope and dwarfed the really fine genius of Maurice Egan. His...