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We have so much +literature that from time to time it seems even to us we must have a +literary centre. We say to ourselves, with a good deal of logic, Where +there is so much smoke there must be some fire, or at least a fireplace. +But it is just here that, misled by tradition, and even by history, we +deceive ourselves. Really, we have no fireplace for such fire as we have +kindled; or, if any one is disposed to deny this, then I say, we have a +dozen fireplaces; which is quite as bad, so far as the notion of a +literary centre is concerned, if it is not worse. + +I once proved this fact to my own satisfaction in some papers which I +wrote several years ago; but it appears, from a question which has lately +come to me from England, that I did not carry conviction quite so far as +that island; and I still have my work all before me, if I understand the +London friend who wishes "a comparative view of the centres of literary +production" among us; "how and why they change; how they stand at +present; and what is the relation, for instance, of Boston to other such +centres." + + + + +I. + +Here, if I cut my coat according to my cloth, t should have a garment +which this whole volume would hardly stuff out with its form; and I have +a fancy that if I begin by answering, as I have sometimes rather too +succinctly done, that we have no more a single literary centre than Italy +or than Germany has (or had before their unification), I shall not be +taken at my word. I shall be right, all the same, and if I am told that +in those countries there is now a tendency to such a centre, I can only +say that there is none in this, and that, so far as I can see, we get +further every day from having such a centre. The fault, if it is a +fault, grows upon us, for the whole present tendency of American life is +centrifugal, and just so far as literature is the language of our life, +it shares this tendency. I do not attempt to say how it will be when, in +order to spread ourselves over the earth, and convincingly to preach the +blessings of our deeply incorporated civilization by the mouths of our +eight-inch guns, the mind of the nation shall be politically centred at +some capital; that is the function of prophecy, and I am only writing +literary history, on a very small scale, with a somewhat crushing sense +of limits. + +Once, twice, thrice there was apparently an American literary centre: at +Philadelphia, from the time Franklin went to live there until the death +of Charles Brockden Brown, our first romancer; then at New York, during +the period which may be roughly described as that of Irving, Poe, Willis, +and Bryant; then at Boston, for the thirty or forty years illumined by +the presence of Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Hawthorne, Emerson, Holmes, +Prescott, Parkman, and many lesser lights. These are all still great +publishing centres. If it were not that the house with the largest list +of American authors was still at Boston, I should say New York was now +the chief publishing centre; but in the sense that London and Paris, or +even Madrid and Petersburg, are literary centres, with a controlling +influence throughout England and France, Spain and Russia, neither New +York nor Boston is now our literary centre, whatever they may once have +been. Not to take Philadelphia too seriously, I may note that when New +York seemed our literary centre Irving alone among those who gave it +lustre was a New-Yorker, and he mainly lived abroad; Bryant, who was a +New Englander, was alone constant to the city of his adoption; Willis, a +Bostonian, and Poe, a Marylander, went and came as their poverty or their +prosperity compelled or invited; neither dwelt here unbrokenly, and Poe +did not even die here, though he often came near starving. One cannot +then strictly speak of any early American literary centre except Boston, +and Boston, strictly speaking, was the New England literary centre. + +However, we had really no use for an American literary centre before the +Civil War, for it was only after the Civil War that we really began to +have an American literature. Up to that time we had a Colonial +literature, a Knickerbocker literature, and a New England literature. +But as soon as the country began to feel its life in every limb with the +coming of peace, it began to speak in the varying accents of all the +different sections--North, East, South, West, and Farthest West; but not +before that time. + + + + +II. + +Perhaps the first note of this national concord, or discord, was sounded +from California, in the voices of Mr. Bret Harte, of Mark Twain, of Mr. +Charles Warren Stoddard (I am sorry for those who do not know his +beautiful Idyls of the South Seas), and others of the remarkable group of +poets and humorists whom these names must stand for. The San Francisco +school briefly flourished from 1867 till 1872 or so, and while it endured +it made San Francisco the first national literary centre we ever had, for +its writers were of every American origin except Californian. + +After the Pacific Slope, the great Middle West found utterance in the +dialect verse of Mr. John Hay, and after that began the exploitation of +all the local parlances, which has sometimes seemed to stop, and then has +begun again. It went on in the South in the fables of Mr. Joel Chandler +Harris's Uncle Remus, and in the fiction of Miss Murfree, who so long +masqueraded as Charles Egbert Craddock. Louisiana found expression in +the Creole stories of Mr. G. W. Cable, Indiana in the Hoosier poems of +Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, and central New York in the novels of Mr. +Harold Frederic; but nowhere was the new impulse so firmly and finely +directed as in New England, where Miss Sarah Orne Jewett's studies of +country life antedated Miss Mary Wilkins's work. To be sure, the +portrayal of Yankee character began before either of these artists was +known; Lowell's Bigelow Papers first reflected it; Mrs. Stowe's Old Town +Stories caught it again and again; Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, in her +unromantic moods, was of an excellent fidelity to it; and Mrs. Rose Terry +Cooke was even truer to the New England of Connecticut. With the later +group Mrs. Lily Chase Wyman has pictured Rhode Island work-life with +truth pitiless to the beholder, and full of that tender humanity for the +material which characterizes Russian fiction. + +Mr. James Lane Allen has let in the light upon Kentucky; the Red Men and +White of the great plains have found their interpreter in Mr. Owen +Wister, a young Philadelphian witness of their dramatic conditions and +characteristics; Mr. Hamlin Garlafid had already expressed the sad +circumstances of the rural Northwest in his pathetic idyls, colored from +the experience of one who had been part of what he saw. Later came Mr. +Henry B. Fuller, and gave us what was hardest and most sordid, as well as +something of what was most touching and most amusing, in the burly-burly +of Chicago. + + + + +III. + +A survey of this sort imparts no just sense of the facts, and I own that +I am impatient of merely naming authors and books that each tempt me to +an expansion far beyond the limits of this essay; for, if I may be so +personal, I have watched the growth of our literature in Americanism with +intense sympathy. In my poor way I have always liked the truth, and in +times past I am afraid that I have helped to make it odious to those who +believed beauty was something different; but I hope that I shall not now +be doing our decentralized literature a disservice by saying that its +chief value is its honesty, its fidelity to our decentralized life. +Sometimes I wish this were a little more constant; but upon the whole I +have no reason to complain; and I think that as a very interested +spectator of New York I have reason to be content with the veracity with +which some phases of it have been rendered. The lightning-or the flash- +light, to speak more accurately--has been rather late in striking this +ungainly metropolis, but it has already got in its work with notable +effect at some points. This began, I believe, with the local dramas of +Mr. Edward Harrigan, a species of farces, or sketches of character, +loosely hung together, with little sequence or relevancy, upon the thread +of a plot which would keep the stage for two or three hours. It was very +rough magic, as a whole, but in parts it was exquisite, and it held the +mirror up towards politics on their social and political side, and gave +us East-Side types--Irish, German, negro, and Italian--which were +instantly recognizable and deliciously satisfying. I never could +understand why Mr. Harrigan did not go further, but perhaps he had gone +far enough; and, at any rate, he left the field open for others. The +next to appear noticeably in it was Mr. Stephen Crane, whose Red Badge of +Courage wronged the finer art which he showed in such New York studies as +Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, and George's Mother. He has been followed +by Abraham Cahan, a Russian Hebrew, who has done portraits of his race +and nation with uncommon power. They are the very Russian Hebrews of +Hester Street translated from their native Yiddish into English, which +the author mastered after coming here in his early manhood. He brought +to his work the artistic qualities of both the Slav and the Jew, and in +his 'Jekl: A Story of the Ghetto', he gave proof of talent which his more +recent book of sketches--'The Imported Bride groom'--confirms. He sees +his people humorously, and he is as unsparing of their sordidness as he +is compassionate of their hard circumstance and the somewhat frowsy +pathos of their lives. He is a Socialist, but his fiction is wholly +without "tendentiousness." + +A good many years ago--ten or twelve, at least--Mr. Harry Harland had +shown us some politer New York Jews, with a romantic coloring, though +with genuine feeling for the novelty and picturesqueness of his material; +but I do not think of any one who has adequately dealt with our Gentile +society. Mr. James has treated it historically in Washington Square, and +more modernly in some passages of The Bostonians, as well as in some of +his shorter stories; Mr. Edgar Fawcett has dealt with it intelligently +and authoritatively in a novel or two; and Mr. Brander Matthews has +sketched it, in this aspect, and that with his Gallic cleverness, +neatness, and point. In the novel, 'His Father's Son', he in fact faces +it squarely and renders certain forms of it with masterly skill. He has +done something more distinctive still in 'The Action and the Word', one +of the best American stories I know. But except for these writers, our +literature has hardly taken to New York society. + + + + +IV. + +It is an even thing: New York society has not taken to our literature. +New York publishes it, criticises it, and circulates it, but I doubt if +New York society much reads it or cares for it, and New York is therefore +by no means the literary centre that Boston once was, though a large +number of our literary men live in or about New York. Boston, in my time +at least, had distinctly a literary atmosphere, which more or less +pervaded society; but New York has distinctly nothing of the kind, in any +pervasive sense. It is a vast mart, and literature is one of the things +marketed here; but our good society cares no more for it than for some +other products bought and sold here; it does not care nearly so much for +books as for horses or for stocks, and I suppose it is not unlike the +good society of any other metropolis in this. To the general, here, +journalism is a far more appreciable thing than literature, and has +greater recognition, for some very good reasons; but in Boston literature +had vastly more honor, and even more popular recognition, than +journalism. There journalism desired to be literary, and here literature +has to try hard not to be journalistic. If New York is a literary centre +on the business side, as London is, Boston was a literary centre, as +Weimar was, and as Edinburgh was. It felt literature, as those capitals +felt it, and if it did not love it quite so much as might seem, it always +respected it. + +To be quite clear in what I wish to say of the present relation of Boston +to our other literary centres, I must repeat that we have now no such +literary centre as Boston was. Boston itself has perhaps outgrown the +literary consciousness which formerly distinguished it from all our other +large towns. In a place of nearly a million people (I count in the +outlying places) newspapers must be more than books; and that alone says +everything. + +Mr. Aldrich once noticed that whenever an author died in Boston, the New- +Yorkers thought they had a literary centre; and it is by some such means +that the primacy has passed from Boston, even if it has not passed to New +York. But still there is enough literature left in the body at Boston to +keep her first among equals in some things, if not easily first in all. + +Mr. Aldrich himself lives in Boston, and he is, with Mr. Stedman, the +foremost of our poets. At Cambridge live Colonel T. W. Higginson, an +essayist in a certain sort without rival among us; and Mr. William James, +the most interesting and the most literary of psychologists, whose repute +is European as well as American. Mr. Charles Eliot Norton alone survives +of the earlier Cambridge group--Longfellow, Lowell, Richard Henry Dana, +Louis Agassiz, Francis J. Child, and Henry James, the father of the +novelist and the psychologist. + +To Boston Mr. James Ford Rhodes, the latest of our abler historians, has +gone from Ohio; and there Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, the Massachusetts +Senator, whose work in literature is making itself more and more known, +was born and belongs, politically, socially, and intellectually. Mrs. +Julia Ward Howe, a poet of wide fame in an elder generation, lives there; +Mr. T. B. Aldrich lives there; and thereabouts live Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart +Phelps Ward and Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, the first of a fame +beyond the last, who was known to us so long before her. Then at Boston, +or near Boston, live those artists supreme in the kind of short story +which we have carried so far: Miss Jewett, Miss Wilkins, Miss Alice +Brown, Mrs. Chase-Wyman, and Miss Gertrude Smith, who comes from Kansas, +and writes of the prairie farm-life, though she leaves Mr. E. W. Howe +(of 'The Story of a Country Town' and presently of the Atchison Daily +Globe) to constitute, with the humorous poet Ironquill, a frontier +literary centre at Topeka. Of Boston, too, though she is of western +Pennsylvania origin, is Mrs. Margaret Deland, one of our most successful +novelists. Miss Wilkins has married out of Massachusetts into New +Jersey, and is the neighbor of Mr. H. M. Alden at Metuchen. + +All these are more or less embodied and represented in the Atlantic +Monthly, still the most literary, and in many things still the first of +our magazines. Finally, after the chief publishing house in New York, +the greatest American publishing house is in Boston, with by far the +largest list of the best American books. Recently several firms of +younger vigor and valor have recruited the wasted ranks of the Boston +publishers, and are especially to be noted for the number of rather nice +new poets they give to the light. + + + + +V. + +Dealing with the question geographically, in the right American way, we +descend to Hartford obliquely by way of Springfield, Massachusetts, +where, in a little city of fifty thousand, a newspaper of metropolitan +influence and of distinctly literary tone is published. At Hartford +while Charles Dudley Warner lived, there was an indisputable literary +centre; Mark Twain lives there no longer, and now we can scarcely count +Hartford among our literary centres, though it is a publishing centre of +much activity in subscription books. + +At New Haven, Yale University has latterly attracted Mr. William H. +Bishop, whose novels I always liked for the best reasons, and has long +held Professor J. T. Lounsbury, who is, since Professor Child's death at +Cambridge, our best Chaucer scholar. Mr. Donald G. Mitchell, once +endeared to the whole fickle American public by his Reveries of a +Bachelor and his Dream Life, dwells on the borders of the pleasant town, +which is also the home of Mr. J. W. De Forest, the earliest real American +novelist, and for certain gifts in seeing and telling our life also one +of the greatest. + +As to New York (where the imagination may arrive daily from New Haven, +either by a Sound boat or by eight or ten of the swiftest express trains +in the world), I confess I am more and more puzzled. Here abide the +poets, Mr. R. H. Stoddard, Mr. E. C. Stedman, Mr. R. W. Gilder, and many +whom an envious etcetera must hide from view; the fictionists, Mr. R. H. +Davis, Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mr. Brander Matthews, Mr. Frank +Hopkinson Smith, Mr. Abraham Cahan, Mr. Frank Norris, and Mr. James Lane +Allen, who has left Kentucky to join the large Southern contingent, which +includes Mrs. Burton Harrison and Mrs. McEnery Stuart; the historians, +Professor William M. Sloane and Dr. Eggleston (reformed from a novelist); +the literary and religious and economic essayists, Mr. Hamilton W. +Mabie, Mr. H. M. Alden, Mr. J. J. Chapman, and Mr. E. L. Godkin, with +critics, dramatists, satirists, magazinists, and journalists of literary +stamp in number to convince the wavering reason against itself that here +beyond all question is the great literary centre of these States. There +is an Authors' Club, which alone includes a hundred and fifty authors, +and, if you come to editors, there is simply no end. Magazines are +published here and circulated hence throughout the land by millions; and +books by the ton are the daily output of our publishers, who are the +largest in the country. + +If these things do not mean a great literary centre, it would be hard to +say what does; and I am not going to try for a reason against such facts. +It is not quality that is wanting, but perhaps it is the quantity of the +quality; there is leaven, but not for so large a lump. It may be that +New York is going to be our literary centre, as London is the literary +centre of England, by gathering into itself all our writing talent, but +it has by no means done this yet. What we can say is that more authors +come here from the West and South than go elsewhere; but they often stay +at home, and I fancy very wisely. Mr. Joel Chandler Harris stays at +Atlanta, in Georgia; Mr. James Whitcomb Riley stays at Indianapolis; Mr. +Maurice Thompson spent his whole literary life, and General Lew. Wallace +still lives at Crawfordsville, Indiana; Mr. Madison Cawein stays at +Louisville, Kentucky; Miss Murfree stays at St. Louis, Missouri; Francis +R. Stockton spent the greater part of the year at his place in West +Virginia, and came only for the winter months to New York; Mr. Edward +Bellamy, until his failing health exiled him to the Far West, remained at +Chicopee, Massachusetts; and I cannot think of one of these writers whom +it would have advantaged in any literary wise to dwell in New York. He +would not have found greater incentive than at home; and in society he +would not have found that literary tone which all society had, or wished +to have, in Boston when Boston was a great town and not yet a big town. + +In fact, I doubt if anywhere in the world there was ever so much taste +and feeling for literature as there was in that Boston. At Edinburgh (as +I imagine it) there was a large and distinguished literary class, and at +Weimar there was a cultivated court circle; but in Boston there was not +only such a group of authors as we shall hardly see here again for +hundreds of years, but there was such regard for them and their calling, +not only in good society, but among the extremely well-read people of the +whole intelligent city, as hardly another community has shown. New York, +I am quite sure, never was such a centre, and I see no signs that it ever +will be. It does not influence the literature of the whole country as +Boston once did through writers whom all the young writers wished to +resemble; it does not give the law, and it does not inspire the love that +literary Boston inspired. There is no ideal that it represents. + +A glance at the map of the Union will show how very widely our smaller +literary centres are scattered; and perhaps it will be useful in +following me to other more populous literary centres. Dropping southward +from New York, now, we find ourselves in a literary centre of importance +at Philadelphia, since that is the home of Mr. J. B. McMasters, the +historian of the American people; of Mr. Owen Wister, whose fresh and +vigorous work I have mentioned; and of Dr. Weir Mitchell, a novelist of +power long known to the better public, and now recognized by the larger +in the immense success of his historical romance, Hugh Wynne. + +If I skip Baltimore, I may ignore a literary centre of great promise, but +while I do not forget the excellent work of Johns Hopkins University in +training men for the solider literature of the future, no Baltimore names +to conjure with occur to me at the moment; and we must really get on to +Washington. This, till he became ambassador at the Court of St. James, +was the home of Mr. John Hay, a poet whose biography of Lincoln must rank +him with the historians, and whose public service as Secretary of State +classes him high among statesmen. He blotted out one literary centre at +Cleveland, Ohio, when he removed to Washington, and Mr. Thomas Nelson +Page another at Richmond, Virginia, when he came to the national capital. +Mr. Paul Dunbar, the first negro poet to divine and utter his race, +carried with him the literary centre of Dayton, Ohio, when he came to be +an employee in the Congressional Library; and Mr. Charles Warren +Stoddard, in settling at Washington as Professor of Literature in the +Catholic University, brought somewhat indirectly away with him the last +traces of the old literary centre at San Francisco. + +A more recent literary centre in the Californian metropolis went to +pieces when Mr. Gelett Burgess came to New York and silenced the 'Lark', +a bird of as new and rare a note as ever made itself heard in this air; +but since he has returned to California, there is hope that the literary +centre may form itself there again. I do not know whether Mrs. Charlotte +Perkins Stetson wrecked a literary centre in leaving Los Angeles or not. +I am sure only that she has enriched the literary centre of New York by +the addition of a talent in sociological satire which would be +extraordinary even if it were not altogether unrivalled among us. + +Could one say too much of the literary centre at Chicago? I fancy, yes; +or too much, at least, for the taste of the notable people who constitute +it. In Mr. Henry B. Fuller we have reason to hope, from what he has +already done, an American novelist of such greatness that he may well +leave being the great American novelist to any one who likes taking that +role. Mr. Hamlin Garland is another writer of genuine and original gift +who centres at Chicago; and Mrs. Mary Catherwood has made her name well +known in romantic fiction. Miss Edith Wyatt is a talent, newly known, of +the finest quality in minor fiction; Mr. Robert Herrick, Mr. Will Payne +in their novels, and Mr. George Ade and Mr. Peter Dump in their satires +form with those named a group not to be matched elsewhere in the country. +It would be hard to match among our critical journals the 'Dial' of +Chicago; and with a fair amount of publishing in a sort of books often as +good within as they are uncommonly pretty without, Chicago has a claim to +rank with our first literary centres. + +It is certainly to be reckoned not so very far below London, which, with +Mr. Henry James, Mr. Harry Harland, and Mr. Bret Harte, seems to me an +American literary centre worthy to be named with contemporary Boston. +Which is our chief literary centre, however, I am not, after all, ready +to say. When I remember Mr. G. W. Cable, at Northampton, Massachusetts, +I am shaken in all my preoccupations; when I think of Mark Twain, it +seems to me that our greatest literary centre is just now at Riverdale- +on-the-Hudson. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Leaven, but not for so large a lump +Mark Twain +Not lack of quality but quantity of the quality +Our deeply incorporated civilization + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of American Literary Centers, +by William Dean Howells + |