Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  It is well known how proud he was of his Oxford gown, not merely because it symbolized the honor in which he was held by the highest literary body in the world, but because it was so rich and so beautiful. The red and the lavender of the cloth flattered his eyes as the silken black of the same degree of Doctor of Letters, given him years before at Yale, could not do. His frank, defiant happiness in it, mixed with a due sense of burlesque, was something that those lacking his poet-soul could never imagine; they accounted it vain, weak; but that would not have mattered to him if he had known it. In his London sojourn he had formed the top-hat habit, and for a while he lounged splendidly up and down Fifth Avenue in that society emblem; but he seemed to tire of it, and to return kindly to the soft hat of his Southwestern tradition.

  He disliked clubs; I don’t know whether he belonged to any in New York, but I never met him in one. As I have told, he himself had formed the Human Race Club, but as he never could get it together it hardly counted. There was to have been a meeting of it the time of my only visit to Stormfield in April of last year; but of three who were to have come I alone came. We got on very well without the absentees, after finding them in the wrong, as usual, and the visit was like those I used to have with him so many years before in Hartford, but there was not the old ferment of subjects. Many things had been discussed and put away for good, but we had our old fondness for nature and for each other, who were so differently parts of it. He showed his absolute content with his house, and that was the greater pleasure for me because it was my son who designed it. The architect had been so fortunate as to be able to plan it where a natural avenue of savins, the closeknit, slender, cypress-like cedars of New England, led away from the rear of the villa to the little level of a pergola, meant some day to be wreathed and roofed with vines. But in the early spring days all the landscape was in the beautiful nakedness of the northern winter. It opened in the surpassing loveliness of wooded and meadowed uplands, under skies that were the first days blue, and the last gray over a rainy and then a snowy floor. We walked up and down, up and down, between the villa terrace and the pergola, and talked with the melancholy amusement, the sad tolerance of age for the sort of men and things that used to excite us or enrage us; now we were far past turbulence or anger. Once we took a walk together across the yellow pastures to a chasmal creek on his grounds, where the ice still knit the clayey banks together like crystal mosses; and the stream far down clashed through and over the stones and the shards of ice. Clemens pointed out the scenery he had bought to give himself elbow-room, and showed me the lot he was going to have me build on. The next day we came again with the geologist he had asked up to Stormfield to analyze its rocks. Truly he loved the place, though he had been so weary of change and so indifferent to it that he never saw it till he came to live in it. He left it all to the architect whom he had known from a child in the intimacy which bound our families together, though we bodily lived far enough apart. I loved his little ones and he was sweet to mine and was their delighted-in and wondered-at friend. Once and once again, and yet again and again, the black shadow that shall never be lifted where it falls, fell in his house and in mine, during the forty years and more that we were friends, and endeared us the more to each other.

  XXV.

  My visit at Stormfield came to an end with tender relucting on his part and on mine. Every morning before I dressed I heard him sounding my name through the house for the fun of it and I know for the fondness; and if I looked out of my door, there he was in his long nightgown swaying up and down the corridor, and wagging his great white head like a boy that leaves his bed and comes out in the hope of frolic with some one. The last morning a soft sugarsnow had fallen and was falling, and I drove through it down to the station in the carriage which had been given him by his wife’s father when they were first married, and been kept all those intervening years in honorable retirement for this final use. Its springs had not grown yielding with time; it had rather the stiffness and severity of age; but for him it must have swung low like the sweet chariot of the negro “spiritual” which I heard him sing with such fervor, when those wonderful hymns of the slaves began to make their way northward. ‘Go Down, Daniel’, was one in which I can hear his quavering tenor now. He was a lover of the things he liked, and full of a passion for them which satisfied itself in reading them matchlessly aloud. No one could read ‘Uncle Remus’ like him; his voice echoed the voices of the negro nurses who told his childhood the wonderful tales. I remember especially his rapture with Mr. Cable’s ‘Old Creole Days,’ and the thrilling force with which he gave the forbidding of the leper’s brother when the city’s survey ran the course of an avenue through the cottage where the leper lived in hiding: “Strit must not pass!”

  Out of a nature rich and fertile beyond any I have known, the material given him by the Mystery that makes a man and then leaves him to make himself over, he wrought a character of high nobility upon a foundation of clear and solid truth. At the last day he will not have to confess anything, for all his life was the free knowledge of any one who would ask him of it. The Searcher of hearts will not bring him to shame at that day, for he did not try to hide any of the things for which he was often so bitterly sorry. He knew where the Responsibility lay, and he took a man’s share of it bravely; but not the less fearlessly he left the rest of the answer to the God who had imagined men.

  It is in vain that I try to give a notion of the intensity with which he pierced to the heart of life, and the breadth of vision with which he compassed the whole world, and tried for the reason of things, and then left trying. We had other meetings, insignificantly sad and brief; but the last time I saw him alive was made memorable to me by the kind, clear judicial sense with which he explained and justified the labor-unions as the sole present help of the weak against the strong.

  Next I saw him dead, lying in his coffin amid those flowers with which we garland our despair in that pitiless hour. After the voice of his old friend Twichell had been lifted in the prayer which it wailed through in broken-hearted supplication, I looked a moment at the face I knew so well; and it was patient with the patience I had so often seen in it: something of puzzle, a great silent dignity, an assent to what must be from the depths of a nature whose tragical seriousness broke in the laughter which the unwise took for the whole of him. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes — I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.

  LITERATURE AND LIFE

  This collection of short pieces was published in 1902, although many of the items had previously appeared in magazines. Arranged into four sections, the first contains biographical sketches, some of which deal with Howells’s career as a professional writer. The second section contains more generic short stories and essays on various themes. In the third section, Howells discusses some of his ‘literary passions’, which span the whole length and breadth of literature in English. The final section is an extended essay on the theme of ‘Criticism and Fiction’.

  Title page of the first edition

  CONTENTS

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

  PART I.

  THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  VII.

  VIII

  IX.

  X.

  XI.

  CONFESSIONS OF A SUMMER COLONIST

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV

  THE EDITOR’S RELATIONS WITH THE YOUNG CONTRIBUTOR

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  LAST DAYS IN A DUTCH HOTEL (1897)

  I.

  II.

  III

  IV

  V.

  VI.

&n
bsp; VII.

  VIII.

  SOME ANOMALIES OF THE SHORT STORY

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  AMERICAN LITERARY CENTRES

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  THE STANDARD HOUSEHOLD-EFFECT COMPANY

  I.

  II.

  STACCATO NOTES OF A VANISHED SUMMER

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  PART II. SHORT STORIES AND ESSAYS

  WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK

  I.

  II.

  III.

  SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  WILD FLOWERS OF THE ASPHALT

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV

  A CIRCUS IN THE SUBURBS

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  A SHE HAMLET

  I.

  II.

  III.

  THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  SAWDUST IN THE ARENA

  I.

  II.

  III.

  AT A DIME MUSEUM

  I.

  II.

  AMERICAN LITERATURE IN EXILE

  I.

  II.

  THE HORSE SHOW

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  THE PROBLEM OF THE SUMMER

  I.

  II.

  III.

  AESTHETIC NEW YORK FIFTY-ODD YEARS AGO

  I.

  II.

  FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  THE ART OF THE ADSMITH

  I.

  II.

  III.

  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAGIARISM

  I.

  II.

  PURITANISM IN AMERICAN FICTION

  I.

  II.

  THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART

  I.

  II.

  III.

  POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  STORAGE

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV

  “FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HI-O”

  I.

  II.

  III.

  IV.

  V.

  VI.

  PART III. MY LITERARY PASSIONS

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

  I. THE BOOKCASE AT HOME

  II. GOLDSMITH

  III. CERVANTES

  IV. IRVING

  V. FIRST FICTION AND DRAMA

  VI. LONGFELLOW’S “SPANISH STUDENT”

  VII. SCOTT

  VIII. LIGHTER FANCIES

  IX. POPE

  X. VARIOUS PREFERENCES

  XI. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

  XII. OSSIAN

  XIII. SHAKESPEARE

  XIV. IK MARVEL

  XV. DICKENS

  XVI. WORDSWORTH, LOWELL, CHAUCER

  XVII. MACAULAY

  XVIII. CRITICS AND REVIEWS

  XIX. A NON-LITERARY EPISODE

  XX. THACKERAY

  XXI. “LAZARILLO DE TORMES”

  XXII. CURTIS, LONGFELLOW, SCHLEGEL

  XXIII. TENNYSON

  XXIV. HEINE

  XXV. DE QUINCEY, GOETHE, LONGFELLOW

  XXVI. GEORGE ELIOT, HAWTHORNE, GOETHE, HEINE

  XXVII. CHARLES READE

  XXVIII. DANTE

  XXIX. GOLDONI, MANZONI, D’AZEGLIO

  XXX. “PASTOR FIDO,” “AMINTA,” “ROMOLA,” “YEAST,” “PAUL FERROLL”

  XXXI. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN, BJORSTJERNE BJORNSON

  XXXII. TOURGUENIEF, AUERBACH

  XXXIII. CERTAIN PREFERENCES AND EXPERIENCES

  XXXIV. VALDES, GALDOS, VERGA, ZOLA, TROLLOPE, HARDY

  XXXV. TOLSTOY

  PART IV. CRITICISM AND FICTION

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V.

  VI.

  VII.

  VIII.

  IX.

  X.

  XI.

  XII.

  XIII.

  XIV.

  XV.

  XVII.

  XVIII.

  XIX.

  XX.

  XXI.

  XXII.

  XXIII.

  XXIV.

  XXV.

  XXVI.

  XXVII.

  Cover of the first edition

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL

  Perhaps the reader may not feel in these papers that inner solidarity which the writer is conscious of; and it is in this doubt that the writer wishes to offer a word of explanation. He owns, as he must, that they have every appearance of a group of desultory sketches and essays, without palpable relation to one another, or superficial allegiance to any central motive. Yet he ventures to hope that the reader who makes his way through them will be aware, in the retrospect, of something like this relation and this allegiance.

  For my own part, if I am to identify myself with the writer who is here on his defence, I have never been able to see much difference between what seemed to me Literature and what seemed to me Life. If I did not find life in what professed to be literature, I disabled its profession, and possibly from this habit, now inveterate with me, I am never quite sure of life unless I find literature in it. Unless the thing seen reveals to me an intrinsic poetry, and puts on phrases that clothe it pleasingly to the imagination, I do not much care for it; but if it will do this, I do not mind how poor or common or squalid it shows at first glance: it challenges my curiosity and keeps my sympathy. Instantly I love it and wish to share my pleasure in it with some one else, or as many ones else as I can get to look or listen. If the thing is something read, rather than seen, I am not anxious about the matter: if it is like life, I know that it is poetry, and take it to my heart. There can be no offence in it for which its truth will not make me amends.

  Out of this way of thinking and feeling about these two great things, about Literature and Life, there may have arisen a confusion as to which is which. But I do not wish to part them, and in their union I have found, since I learned my letters, a joy in them both which I hope will last till I forget my letters.

  “So was it when my life began;

  So is it, now I am a man;

  So be it when I shall grow old.”

  It is the rainbow in the sky for me; and I have seldom seen a sky without some bit of rainbow in it. Sometimes I can make others see it, sometimes not; but I always like to try, and if I fail I harbor no worse thought of them than that they have not had their eyes examined and fitted with glasses which would at least have helped their vision.

  As to the where and when of the different papers, in which I suppose their bibliography properly lies, I need not be very exact. “The Man of Letters as a Man of Business” was written in a hotel at Lakewood in the May of 1892 or 1893, and pretty promptly printed in Scribner’s Magazine; “Confessions of a Summer Colonist” was done at York Harbor in the fall of 1898 for the Atlantic Monthly, and was a study of life at that pleasant resort as it was lived-in the idyllic times of the earlier settlement, long before motors and almost before private carriages; “American Literary Centres,” “American Literature in Exile,” “P
uritanism in American Fiction,” “Politics of American Authors,” were, with three or four other papers, the endeavors of the American correspondent of the London Times’s literary supplement, to enlighten the British understanding as to our ways of thinking and writing eleven years ago, and are here left to bear the defects of the qualities of their obsolete actuality in the year 1899. Most of the studies and sketches are from an extinct department of “Life and Letters” which I invented for Harper’s Weekly, and operated for a year or so toward the close of the nineteenth century. Notable among these is the “Last Days in a Dutch Hotel,” which was written at Paris in 1897; it is rather a favorite of mine, perhaps because I liked Holland so much; others, which more or less personally recognize effects of sojourn in New York or excursions into New England, are from the same department; several may be recalled by the longer- memoried reader as papers from the “Editor’s Easy Chair” in Harper’s Monthly; “Wild Flowers of the Asphalt” is the review of an ever- delightful book which I printed in Harper’s Bazar; “The Editor’s Relations with the Young Contributor” was my endeavor in Youth’s Companion to shed a kindly light from my experience in both seats upon the too-often and too needlessly embittered souls of literary beginners.

  So it goes as to the motives and origins of the collection which may persist in disintegrating under the reader’s eye, in spite of my well- meant endeavors to establish a solidarity for it. The group at least attests, even in this event, the wide, the wild, variety of my literary production in time and space. From the beginning the journalist’s independence of the scholar’s solitude and seclusion has remained with me, and though I am fond enough of a bookish entourage, of the serried volumes of the library shelves, and the inviting breadth of the library table, I am not disabled by the hard conditions of a bedroom in a summer hotel, or the narrow possibilities of a candle-stand, without a dictionary in the whole house, or a book of reference even in the running brooks outside.

  W. D. HOWELLS.

  PART I.

  THE MAN OF LETTERS AS A MAN OF BUSINESS

  I think that every man ought to work for his living, without exception, and that, when he has once avouched his willingness to work, society should provide him with work and warrant him a living. I do not think any man ought to live by an art. A man’s art should be his privilege, when he has proven his fitness to exercise it, and has otherwise earned his daily bread; and its results should be free to all. There is an instinctive sense of this, even in the midst of the grotesque confusion of our economic being; people feel that there is something profane, something impious, in taking money for a picture, or a poem, or a statue. Most of all, the artist himself feels this. He puts on a bold front with the world, to be sure, and brazens it out as Business; but he knows very well that there is something false and vulgar in it; and that the work which cannot be truly priced in money cannot be truly paid in money. He can, of course, say that the priest takes money for reading the marriage service, for christening the new-born babe, and for saying the last office for the dead; that the physician sells healing; that justice itself is paid for; and that he is merely a party to the thing that is and must be. He can say that, as the thing is, unless he sells his art he cannot live, that society will leave him to starve if he does not hit its fancy in a picture, or a poem, or a statue; and all this is bitterly true. He is, and he must be, only too glad if there is a market for his wares. Without a market for his wares he must perish, or turn to making something that will sell better than pictures, or poems, or statues. All the same, the sin and the shame remain, and the averted eye sees them still, with its inward vision. Many will make believe otherwise, but I would rather not make believe otherwise; and in trying to write of Literature as Business I am tempted to begin by saying that Business is the opprobrium of Literature.