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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Down at Caxton’s, by Walter Lecky.
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<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 51886 ***</div>
<h1 class="faux">DOWN AT CAXTON’S.</h1>
<div class="figcenter" style="width: 498px;">
<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="498" height="800" alt="cover" />
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
<div class="maintitle">DOWN AT CAXTON’S.</div>
<div class="center"><br /><br /><br />————————————<br /><br /><br />
<span class="smcap">By</span> <span class="author">WALTER LECKY,</span><br />
<span class="authorof"><i>Author of “Green Graves in Ireland,” “Adirondack<br />
Sketches,” etc.</i></span><br />
<br />
<br />————————————<br /><br /><br />
<small>BALTIMORE:</small><br />
JOHN MURPHY & CO.<br />
1895.<br />
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
<p class="copyright">
<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1895, by Wm. A. McDermott.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<small>PRESS OF JOHN MURPHY & CO.</small><br />
</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<div class="center">
I DEDICATE<br />
<br />
<i>THIS SERIES OF SKETCHES</i><br />
<br />
<small>DONE AT ODD MOMENTS STOLEN FROM THE BUSY LIFE OF A COUNTRY<br />
DOCTOR, IN THE WILDEST PART OF THE ADIRONDACKS, TO THAT<br />
DEAR FRIEND, WHO WROTE FOR ME AND OTHER<br />
WANDERERS—IDYLS OF A SUMMER SEA—</small><br />
<br />
<small>TO</small><br />
<br />
<big>CHARLES WARREN STODDARD</big><br />
<br />
<small>OF THE</small><br />
<br />
<span class="smcap"><small>Catholic University, Washington, D. C.</small></span><br />
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<h2>Contents</h2>
<div class="tnote"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> This table of contents was created by the
transcriber.</div>
<p> <br /></p>
<div class="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
<tr><td align="left"><a href="#MEN">MEN.</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#RICHARD_MALCOLM_JOHNSTON">Richard Malcolm Johnston.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#MARION_CRAWFORD">Marion Crawford.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#CHARLES_WARREN_STODDARD">Charles Warren Stoddard.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#MAURICE_FRANCIS_EGAN">Maurice Francis Egan.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#JOHN_B_TABB">John B. Tabb.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#JAMES_JEFFREY_ROCHE">James Jeffrey Roche.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#GEORGE_PARSONS_LATHROP">George Parsons Lathrop.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#REV_BROTHER_AZARIAS">Rev. Brother Azarias.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><a href="#WOMEN">WOMEN.</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#KATHERINE_ELEANOR_CONWAY">Katherine Eleanor Conway.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#LOUISE_IMOGEN_GUINEY">Louise Imogen Guiney.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#MRS_BLAKE">Mrs. Blake.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#AGNES_REPPLIER">Agnes Repplier.</a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"> </td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><a href="#A_WORD">A WORD.</a></td></tr>
<tr><td align="left"><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><a href="#LITERATURE_AND_OUR_CATHOLIC">Literature and Our Catholic Poor.</a></span></td></tr>
</table></div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a><br /><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="MEN" id="MEN">MEN.</a></h2>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a><br /><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="RICHARD_MALCOLM_JOHNSTON" id="RICHARD_MALCOLM_JOHNSTON">RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON.</a></h2>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
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:</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
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 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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
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 <i>Southern Magazine</i>. The first
nine of my Dukesborough Tales were contributed
to that magazine. These fell into
the hands of the editor of <i>Harper’s Magazine</i>,
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
which I got pay. It was published in the
<i>Century</i>, 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.</p>
<p>“Of the female characters that I have
created, Miss Doolana Lines was my favorite,
while Mr. Bill Williams is my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>“He got to the house before five o’clock
in the morning, and opened the shutters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<h2><a name="MARION_CRAWFORD" id="MARION_CRAWFORD">MARION CRAWFORD.</a></h2>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
latter, that art is interpretation. One is a
stone-cutter, the other a sculptor.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
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 possessed
a faculty for story-writing, and I
prepared for a career very different from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
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.”</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
Rome of the Vandals will not feel heavy-hearted
at these lines?</p>
<p>“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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
that has seen the great Leo carried 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.”</p>
<p>Dinner was finished. A check, Paulo.
We rose and went.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="CHARLES_WARREN_STODDARD" id="CHARLES_WARREN_STODDARD">CHARLES WARREN STODDARD.</a></h2>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
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</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Where the deep blue ocean never replies</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To the sibilant voice of the spray.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p class="unindent">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 <i>parvenu</i>. 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
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 <i>San Francisco Chronicle</i>, 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 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
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</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“Seems to shine with a sunny ray,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the night looks like a mellowed day.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Isles where all things save man seem to have grown hoar in calm.</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In calm unbroken since their luscious youth.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
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?</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
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.”</p>
<p>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?”</p>
<p>“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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
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.”</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Its loveliness increases; it will never</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Pass into nothingness; but will keep</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A bower quiet for us and a sleep,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>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 as open as De
Amicis; and a little volume on Molokai.
At present he is the English professor at
the Catholic University.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“O Sun! be very slow to set;</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Sweet blossoms kiss me on the mouth;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O birds! you seem a chain of jet,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Blown over from the south.</span><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O cloud! press onward to the hill,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">He needs you for his falling streams</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The sun shall be my solace still</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And feed me with his beams.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O little humpback bumble bee!</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">O smuggler! breaking my repose,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I’ll slily watch you now and see</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Where all the honey goes.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yes, here is room enough for two;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I’d sooner be your friend than not;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Forgetful of the world, as true,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">I would it were forgot.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<h2><a name="MAURICE_FRANCIS_EGAN" id="MAURICE_FRANCIS_EGAN">MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.</a></h2>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
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
<i>modistes</i> 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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>Maurice Francis Egan, poet, essayist,
novelist, journalist, and all-round literary
man, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., May<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
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,
<i>McGee’s Weekly</i>. In 1881 he became
assistant editor of the <i>Freeman’s Journal</i>,
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
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.</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
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<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
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
latest volume, while containing many poems
that reveal hidden powers, has much of the
crudity and faults of earlier work. These
poems speak of better things that will be
fulfilled by the poet if he will consecrate
himself wholly to his art, shutting his mind
to the rabble shout and eulogious criticism.
Then may he hear the rhythms and cadences
of that music whose orchestra comprises
all things from the shells to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
stars, all beings from the worm to man,
all sounds from the voice of the little bird
to the voice of the great ocean. To these
translations men will cling to the last, and
in their clinging is the poet’s fame. In his
shorter poems, and notably in his sonnets,
Mr. Egan is at his best. Here his scope is
broader, his touch is firmer. The mastery
of musical expression, lacking in his longer
poems, is here to be met with in the fulness
of its beauty. As a writer of sonnets,
Mr. Egan has had great success. In this
line of writing he is easily at the head of
the younger American school of poets. “A
Night in June” is a charming piece of
word painting, full of beauty and power.
The reader of this exquisite sonnet will feel
how deftly the poet has put in words the
silent magic of such a night, when air and
earth have songs to sing. In the sonnet to
the old lyric master Theocritus, the poet’s
graceful interpretative touch is equally felt.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">Daphnis is mute, and hidden nymphs complain,</div>
<div class="verse">And mourning mingles with their fountain’s song;</div>
<div class="verse">Shepherds contend no more, as all day long</div>
<div class="verse">They watch their sheep on the wide, cyprus plain:</div>
<div class="verse">The master-voice is silent, songs are vain;</div>
<div class="verse">Blithe Pan is dead, and tales of ancient wrong</div>
<div class="verse">Done by the gods, when gods and men were strong,</div>
<div class="verse">Chanted to reeded pipes, no prize can gain.</div>
<div class="verse">O sweetest singer of the olden days,</div>
<div class="verse">In dusty books your idyls rare seem dead;</div>
<div class="verse">The gods are gone, but poets never die;</div>
<div class="verse">Though men may turn their ears to newer lays,</div>
<div class="verse">Sicilian nightingales enrapturéd</div>
<div class="verse">Caught all your songs, and nightly thrill the sky.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>The sonnet “Of Flowers” gives a happy
setting to a beautiful thought:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">There were no roses till the first child died,</div>
<div class="verse">No violets, no balmy-breathed heartsease,—</div>
<div class="verse">No heliotrope, nor buds so dear to bees,</div>
<div class="verse">The honey-hearted suckle, no gold-eyed</div>
<div class="verse">And lowly dandelion, nor, stretching wide</div>
<div class="verse">Clover and cowslip cups, like rival seas,</div>
<div class="verse">Meeting and parting, as the young spring breeze</div>
<div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>Runs giddy races, playing seek and hide.</div>
<div class="verse">For all Flowers died when Eve left Paradise,</div>
<div class="verse">And all the world was flowerless awhile,</div>
<div class="verse">Until a little child was laid in earth.</div>
<div class="verse">Then, from its grave grew violets for its eyes,</div>
<div class="verse">And from its lips rose-petals for its smile;</div>
<div class="verse">And so all flowers from that child’s death took birth.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>To those who have lovingly lingered
over the pages of Maurice de Guerin,
pages that breathe the old Greek world of
thought, the following sonnet, that paints
that modern Grecian with a few masterly
strokes, will be keenly relished. It is the
fine implications of these lines that is the
life of our hope for the poet and the future.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="center"><span class="smcap">Maurice de Guerin.</span></div>
<div class="verse">The old wine filled him, and he saw, with eyes</div>
<div class="verse">Anoint of Nature, fauns and dryads fair,</div>
<div class="verse">Unseen by others; to him maiden-hair</div>
<div class="verse">And waxen lilacs and those birds that rise</div>
<div class="verse">A-sudden from tall reeds, at slight surprise,</div>
<div class="verse">Brought charmed thoughts; and in earth everywhere,</div>
<div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>He, like sad Jacques, found a music, rare</div>
<div class="verse">As that of Syrinx to old Grecians wise.</div>
<div class="verse">A Pagan heart, a Christian soul, had he,</div>
<div class="verse">He followed Christ, yet for dead Pan he sighed,</div>
<div class="verse">Till earth and heaven met within his breast!</div>
<div class="verse">As if Theocritus, in Sicily,</div>
<div class="verse">Had come upon the Figure crucified,</div>
<div class="verse">And lost his gods in deep, Christ-given rest.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>As an essayist, Mr. Egan has touched
many subjects, and always in an entertaining
vein. Some of his essays are remarkable
for their plain speaking. He
has studied his race in their new surroundings,
knows equally well their virtues and
failings. If he can take an honest delight
in the virtues, he is capable of writing
with no uncertain sound on the failings,
failings that have been so mercilessly used
by the vulgarly comic school of American
playwrights. His essays are corrective
and should find their way into every Irish-American
home. They would tend to correct
many abuses and aid in the detection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
of those bunions so sacredly kept on the feet
of the Irish race—last relic of the Penal
times. A recent essay throws a series of
blue lights—the color so well liked by
Carlyle—on our shallow collegiate system.
Will it be read by our Catholic educators?
That is a question that time will answer.
If they read it aright they will be apt to
change their system of teaching the classics
parrot-like, an empty word translation.
They will transport their pupils from the
bare class-room to the sunny skies of Greece
and Rome, and under these skies see the
religious dogmas, the philosophical systems,
the fine arts, the entire civilization
of those ancient thought giving nations.
“What professor,” says de Guerin, “reading
Virgil and Homer to his pupils, has
developed the poetry of the Iliad or Æneid
by the poetry of nature under the Grecian
and Italian skies. Who has dreamt of
showing the reciprocal relation of the poets<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
to the philosophers, the philosophers to the
poets, and these in turn to the artists—Plato
to Homer, Homer to Phidias? It is
a want of this that makes the classics so
dull to youth, so useless to manhood.”</p>
<p>Mr. Egan, as a novelist, has written
many books, dealing mostly with Irish-American
life. These novels are filled
with strong, manly feeling, and Catholic
pictures beautiful enough to arrest the
attention of the most fastidious. In these
days of romance readers such books must
serve as an antidote to the subtle poison
that permeates the fictive art. They are
pleasant and instructive, and that is a high
tribute in these days of dulness and spiced
immorality. Take him all in all, perhaps
the most acceptable tribute is, that whatever
may be his gifts in the various rôles
he has essayed, heavy or slight, they have
been ungrudgingly used for his race and
religion.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="JOHN_B_TABB" id="JOHN_B_TABB">JOHN B. TABB.</a></h2>
<p>A friend once wrote to me: “What do
you know about a poet who signs his name
John B. Tabb, his poems are delicious?”
My answer was, that I knew nothing of his
personal history, but that his poems had
found their way into my aristocratic scrap-book.
Here I might pause to whisper that
the adjective aristocratic, in my sense, has
nothing haughty about it. When joined to
the noun scrap-book, a good commentator—they
are scarce—would freely translate
the phrase the indwelling of good poetry.
Since then my personal knowledge of the
poet has grown slowly, a slight stock and
no leaves. Even that, like my old coat, is
second-handed. Such material, no matter
how highly recommended by the keepers of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
the golden balls, is usually found to be a
poor bargain. But here it is, keeping in
mind that rags are better than no clothing,
and that older proverb—half a loaf is better
than no bread.</p>
<p>“John B. Tabb, (I quote) was born in
Virginia, when or where I know not. Becoming
a Catholic he studied for the priesthood
and was ordained.” Here my data
fails me. At present he is the professor of
literature in St. Charles’ College, Maryland.
It is something in his favor, this scanty
biographical fare. Where the biography
is long, laudatory, and in rounded periods,
it is approached as one would a snake in
the grass, with a kind of fear that in the
end you may be bitten. “May I be skinned
alive,” said that master of word-selection
and phrase-juggler, Flaubert, “before I
ever turn my private feelings to literary
account.” And the reader, with the stench
of recent keyhole biography in his nostrils,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
shouts “bravo.” Flaubert’s phrase might
easily have hung on the pen of the retiring
worshipper of the beautiful, “the Roman
Catholic priest, who drudges through a
daily round of pedagogical duties in St.
Charles’ College.” This quoted phrase may
stand. Pedagogy, at best, is a dull pursuit
for a poet. It is not congenial, and I have
held an odd idea that whatever was not congenial,
disguise it as you may, is drudgery.
And all this by way of propping the quoted
sentence. The strange thing is that in the
midst of this daily round of drudgery the
poet finds time to produce what a recent
critic well calls “verse-gems of thought.”
These verse-gems, if judged by intrinsic
evidence, would argue an environment other
than a drudgery habitation. In truth, it
is hard to desecrate them by predicating
of them any environment other than a
spiritual one.</p>
<p>This brings us to write of Fr. Tabb’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
poetry that it is elusive, from a critical
point of view. When you bring your preconceived
literary canons to bear upon it,
they are found wanting—too clumsy to test
the delicacy, fineness of touch, and the
permeated spiritualism embodied in the
verse-gem. It is well summarized in the
saying that “it possesses to the full a white
estate of virginal prayerful art.” One
might define it by negatives, such as the
contrary of passion poetry. The point of
view most likely to give the clearest conception
would be found in the sentence:
an evocation from within by a highly spiritualized
intelligence. The poet has caught
the higher music, the music of a soul in
which dwell order and method. In other
words, he has assiduously cultivated to its
fullest development both the spiritual sense
and the moral sense.</p>
<p>It is easy to trace in Fr. Tabb’s poetry
the influence of Sidney Lanier. It has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
been asserted, and with much truth, that
Lanier’s influence has strangely fascinated
the younger school of Southern
poets. Sladen, in his book on Younger
American Poets, tells us that “Lanier
differs from the other dead poets included
in his book, in that he was not only a
poet but the founder of a school of
poetry.” To his school belongs Fr. Tabb,
a school following the founder whose aim
is to depict</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“All gracious curves of slender wings,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Bark mottlings, fibre spiralings,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Fern wavings and leaf flickerings.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Yea, all fair forms and sounds and lights,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And warmths and mysteries and mights,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of Nature’s utmost depths and heights.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class="unindent">The defects of this school are best seen in
the founder. He was a musician before a
poet, and helplessly strove to catch shades
by words that can only be rendered by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
music. Fr. Tabb has learned this limitation
of his school. For the glowing semi-pantheism
of Lanier he has substituted
the true and no less beautiful doctrine
of Christianity. All his verse-gems are
redolent of his faith. They are religious
in the sense that they are begotten by
faith and breathe the air of the sanctuary.
To read them is to leave the hum and
pain of life behind, and enter the cloister
where all is silent and peaceful, where
dwelleth the spirit of God. Of them it
is safe to assert that their white estate
of virginal, prayerful art shall constitute
their immortality. Fr. Tabb has not, as
yet, thought fit to give them a more permanent
form than they have in the current
magazines. Catholic literature, and especially
poetry, is so meagre that when a
true singer touches the lyre it is not to be
wondered at that those of his household
should desire to possess his songs in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
more worthy dwelling than that of an
ephemeral magazine. In the absence of
the coming charming volume I quote from
my scrap-book a few of the verse-gems,
thereby trusting to widen the poet’s audience
and in an humble way gain lovers
for his long-promised volume.</p>
<p>What could illustrate the peculiar genius
of our poet better than the delicious gem
that he has called</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="center">“<span class="smcap">The White Jessamine.</span>”</div>
<div class="verse">I knew she lay above me,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where the casement all the night</span></div>
<div class="verse">Shone, softened with a phosphor glow</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of sympathetic light,</span></div>
<div class="verse">And that her fledgling spirit pure</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was pluming fast for flight.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Each tendril throbbed and quickened</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">As I nightly climbed apace,</span></div>
<div class="verse">And could scarce restrain the blossoms</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">When, anear the destined place,</span></div>
<div class="verse">Her gentle whisper thrilled me</div>
<div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ere I gazed upon her face.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">I waited, darkling, till the dawn</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Should touch me into bloom,</span></div>
<div class="verse">While all my being panted</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">To outpour its first perfume,</span></div>
<div class="verse">When, lo! a paler flower than mine</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Had blossomed in the gloom!</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>“Content” is another gem of exquisite
thought and workmanship.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="center"><span class="smcap">Content.</span></div>
<div class="verse">Were all the heavens an overladen bough</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of ripened benediction lowered above me,</span></div>
<div class="verse">What could I crave, soul-satisfied as now,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">That thou dost love me?</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The door is shut. To each unsheltered blessing</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Henceforth I say, “Depart! What wouldst thou of me?”</span></div>
<div class="verse">Beggared I am of want, this boon possessing,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">That thou dost love me.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>“Photographed” may well make the
trio in the more fully illustrating his
genius:—</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="center"><span class="smcap">Photographed.</span></div>
<div class="verse">For years, an ever-shifting shade</div>
<div class="verse">The sunshine of thy visage made;</div>
<div class="verse">Then, spider-like, the captive caught</div>
<div class="verse">In meshes of immortal thought.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">E’en so, with half-averted eye,</div>
<div class="verse">Day after day I passed thee by,</div>
<div class="verse">Till, suddenly, a subtler art</div>
<div class="verse">Enshrined thee in my heart of heart.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>“Not even the infinite surfeit of Columbus
literature of the last six months can
deprive Fr. Tabb’s tribute in Lippincott’s
of its sweetness and light,” says the <i>Review
of Reviews</i>:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">With faith unshadowed by the night,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Undazzled by the day,</span></div>
<div class="verse">With hope that plumed thee for the flight</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">And courage to assay,</span></div>
<div class="verse">God sent thee from the crowded ark,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Christ bearer, like the dove,</span></div>
<div class="verse">To find, o’er sundering waters dark,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">New lands for conquering love.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
<p>As a final selection, we may well conclude
these brief notes on a poet with staying
powers by quoting a poem, contributed to
the <i>Cosmopolitan</i>, called “Silence;” a poem
permeated with his fine spiritual sense:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Temple of God, from all eternity</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Alone like Him without beginning found;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of time, and space, and solitude the bound,</span></div>
<div class="verse">Yet in thyself of all communion free.</div>
<div class="verse">Is, then, the temple holier than he</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">That dwells therein? Must reverence surround</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">With barriers the portal, lest a sound</span></div>
<div class="verse">Profane it? Nay; behold a mystery!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">What was, remains; what is, has ever been:</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">The lowliest the loftiest sustains.</span></div>
<div class="verse">A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred—</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Virginity in motherhood—remains,</span></div>
<div class="verse">Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">The voice of Love’s unutterable word.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="JAMES_JEFFREY_ROCHE" id="JAMES_JEFFREY_ROCHE">JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE.</a></h2>
<p>In this age of rondeaus and other feats
in rhyme, it is pleasant to meet with a
little book that abhors all verse tricks of
the fin-de-siècle poets, and judiciously
follows the old masters. Such a little
book peeps at me from a corner in
my library, marked in capitals, “Poems
Worth Reading.” It was given to me
years ago by its author, and as a remembrance,
a few lines from the poem that
appealed most to my intellect in those
days, was written on its fly-leaf. It
was its author’s first book, and was put
forth with that shrinking modesty that
has heralded all meritorious work. Of
preface, that relic of egotism, there was
none.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>
<p>It was dedicated to one who was close
to his heart, to</p>
<div class="center">
“<span class="smcap">John Boyle O’Reilly</span>,<br />
<br />
My very dear friend, and an honorable gentleman.”<br />
</div>
<p>It had O’Reilly’s warm word to speed and
gain it a hearing, a word that would have
remained unwritten were it not that the
little volume, of its own worth, demanded
that the word but expressed its merit.
Since those days, it has travelled and
found a ready home. Its gentle humor
has made it quotable in the fashionable
salons, its quaintness tickled the lonely
scholar, stinging notes against wrong and
its brilliant biting to the very core of silk-dressed
sham, bespoke a hearty welcome
in the haunts of the poor and oppressed.</p>
<p>The volume was one of promise and
large hope. Of it O’Reilly wrote: “Not
for years has such a first book as this
appeared in America.” This recognition<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
was but a truth. The author is a true
poet, not a rhyme trickster or a cherry-stone
filer, that brood so thoroughly detested
by O’Reilly. He has something
to say, a genuine, poetical impression to
give in each poem. His genius, as that
of most poets of Celtic blood, is essentially
dramatic. This may best be seen in
that fine, man-loving poem, “Netchaieff.”
Netchaieff, a Russian Nihilist, was condemned
to prison for life. Deprived of
writing materials, he allowed his fingernail
to grow until he fashioned it into a
pen. With this he wrote, in his blood,
on the margin of a book, the story of his
sufferings. Almost his last entry was a
note that his jailer had just boarded up
the solitary pane which admitted a little
light into his cell. The “letter written
in blood” was smuggled out of prison and
published, and Netchaieff died very soon
after. The poet’s opening lines, relating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
to the Czar, Netchaieff’s death in prison,
show that the human interest of this poet
swallows up all other interests. The human
alone can heat his blood and rouse in
impassioned verse his indignation. How
finely conceived is the satire in these lines:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Netchaieff is dead, your Majesty.</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">You knew him not. He was a common hind,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Who lived ten years in hell, and then he died—</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To seek another hell, as we must think,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Since he was rebel to your Majesty.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>There are many startling lines in this
poem, lines that would give our fairy-airy
school of poets material for a dozen sonnets.
“For the People” is another poem
that shows the ink was not watered. It
is full of truth, unpleasant to the ears of
the well-fed and easy living, but truth
nevertheless, painted with a bold and masterly
hand. It is the critic’s way to call
poems of this kind passionate unreasonableness,
while an irregular ode to a cat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
or a ballade of the shepherdess is filled
with passionate reasonableness. All which
proves that these amusing gentlemen are
unconsciously sitting by the volcano’s side.
They have eyes and they see not; they
have ears and they hear not. The prophetic
voice of the poets who will sing
from their inner seeing, caring not whether
the age listens or hurries on, is lost on
these so-called literary interpreters. The
tocsin blast dies on the breeze, or speaks
to a few lonely thinkers who catch its
notes for future warning; the reed’s soft
sensuous music is hugged and repeated by
the critics and the commonplace. When
the lava tumbles forth, then the singer
whose songs were a part of him, passionate,
conceived in the white heat of truth,
may have the diviner’s crown. The critics
and commonplace, in their suffering, remember
the warning in these burning lines:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“There’s a serf whose chains are of paper; there’s a king with a parchment crown,</div>
<div class="verse">There are robber knights and brigands in factory, field and town;</div>
<div class="verse">But the vassal pays his tribute to a lord of wage rent;</div>
<div class="verse">And the baron’s toll is Shylock’s, with a flesh and blood per cent.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“The seamstress bends to her labor all night in a narrow room,</div>
<div class="verse">The child, defrauded of childhood, tiptoes all day at the loom,</div>
<div class="verse">The soul must starve, for the body can barely on husks be fed;</div>
<div class="verse">And the loaded dice of a gambler settle the price of bread.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“Ye have shorn and bound the Samson, and robbed him of learning’s light;</div>
<div class="verse">But his sluggish brain is moving, his sinews have all their might,</div>
<div class="verse">Look well to your gates of Gaza, your privilege, pride and caste!</div>
<div class="verse">The Giant is blind and thinking, and his locks are growing fast.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p>
<p>“Netchaieff” and “For the People” are
poems with a meaning. Their author is
a thinker, a keen student of the social
problems that convulse our every-day life.
He walks the city’s streets, and sees sights
and hears ominous murmuring. He uses
the poet’s right to translate these scenes
and sights into his own impassioned verse.
This done, his duty done. The Creator
must give brains to the reader. If that
has been done, the poet’s lines will fall
fresh and thought-provoking on his ears.
It will take him from Mittens, Marjorie’s
Kisses, April Maids and the school of fantastic
littleness, to man’s inhumanity to
man, the burning wrong of our day. An
Adirondack climb, but then the point of
view repays the exertion. It is generally
written that the author of Songs and Satires
is a comic poet. A half-way truth is expressed.
If by comic is meant humor,
yes; all poets who are worth looking into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
have in a greater or less degree that precious
gift. It is a distinct gain if the
author is an artist and knows how to use
it, dangerous to the commonplace, who put
it on with a white-wash brush. It is a
nice line that divides humor from buffoonery.
Our author is a humorist of that
school whose genius has been used to
alleviate human suffering. Its shafts are
not forged by the hammer of spleen on
the anvil of malice, but the workmanship
of love mourning for misery. His spirit
is akin to Hood’s. His touch is light,
but his poniard is a Damascene blade
well pointed. Cant has no foil to set it
off. “A Concord Love Song” is a charming
bit of satire. I can well remember
the effect it had on a teacher of mine, a
proud sage of that school of word-twisting
and transcendental gush. He sniffed and
pawed viciously, a sure sign that the poet’s
dart was safely lodged in the bull’s eye.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
Those who have, as a sleep seducer, read
some of the Concord fraternity’s vapid
musings on the pensive Here and the
doubtful Yonder, will deliciously relish
such lines as these:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“Ah, the joyless fleeting</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of our primal meeting,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the fateful greeting</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Of the How and Why!</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ah, the Thingness flying</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">From the Hereness, sighing</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">For a love undying</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That fain would die.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“Ah, the Ifness sadd’ning,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The Whichness madd’ning,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And the But ungladd’ning</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">That lie behind!</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">When the signless token</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of love is broken</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In the speech unspoken,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Of mind to mind.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>It is to his later and serious poems that
the critic must go to find the poet at his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
best. “At Sea” is a poem with a memory,
inasmuch as it is the “embodiment of as
beautiful a story of brotherly love as the
world makes record.” The poet’s brother,
Mr. John Roche, pay-clerk in the United
States Navy, died a hero’s death in the
Samoan disaster of March, 1889. Doubtless
it was from this loved brother that
the poet took his love for the sea, and the
gallant deeds of our young navy. Here
he is in his own field. “The Fight of the
Armstrong Privateer” shows genuine inspiration.
It has color and passion. The
reader feels the swing of the graphic lines
and a quickness in his own blood, while
the tale of daring rapidly and gracefully
unfolds itself.</p>
<p>James Jeffrey Roche was born at Mount
Mellick, Queens county, Ireland, forty-six
years ago. His father was a schoolmaster,
and to him the poet is indebted for his
early education. At a suitable age he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
entered St. Dunstan’s College, Charlottetown,
Prince Edward’s Island, the family
having emigrated there in the poet’s
infancy. Here he finished his classics and
showed his literary bent by the publishing
of a college journal. Having the valedictory
assigned to him, he hopelessly broke
down. The present year he returned to
St. Dunstan’s the orator of Commencement
day, as he wittily remarked, to finish
the valedictory that had overtaxed his
strength as a small boy. After leaving
college the poet came to Boston, entered
commercial life, remaining in that hardly
genial business for sixteen years. During
these years his pen was busy at the real
vocation of his life. He was for several
years the Boston correspondent of the
<i>Detroit Free Press</i>, and had been long an
editorial contributor to the <i>Pilot</i>, before
he took the position of assistant editor on
it, in 1883. As a journalist Mr. Roche<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
has few equals. His keen mind easily
grapples the questions of the day, while
his good sense in their discussion never
deserts him. In a few lines he goes to the
core. If his trenchant sarcasm punctures
the bubble, his humor will not fail to
make it ridiculous. It is not the windy
editorial in our day that tortures the
quacks, but the bright, pointed dart of a
paragraph. It is so easy to remember,
may be stored in the reader’s brain so
readily, and used with deadly effect at any
moment. A writer who knows him well
has this to say: “As a journalist he
combines two qualities not often found
together, discretion and brilliancy. The
former quality was well exemplified in his
editorial course during the recent crisis
in the history of the Irish National movement.
He handles political topics ably,
and in the treatment of the still broader
social and economic questions, writes with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
the strength and spirit worthy of the associate
and successor of that apostle of
human liberty and human brotherhood,
John Boyle O’Reilly.”</p>
<p>In truth, the one thing most essentially
felt in this writer, whether in prose or
poetry, is his sanity. There is no buncombe
in the former, no mawkishness
nor pedantic prettiness in the latter. His
genius has no pose. So much the better
for his fame and future. Mr. Roche’s
prose works are: “The Story of the Filibusters,”
a subject dear to a poet’s heart,
and the “Life of John Boyle O’Reilly,”
his chief and friend. This volume was the
work of ten weeks, and that in the hours
free from his editorial charge. It was a
feat that few men could so successfully
achieve. It had to be done. No sacrifice
was too great for Roche to make for his dead
friend. That his health did not give way
after the sleeplessness, work and worry of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
those ten weeks, is the wonder of those who
stood near to him. Despite the limited
time allowed to Mr. Roche, his biography
shows few signs of haste. It is well and
interestingly written, a lasting memorial
and a deep tribute of affection to one of
the most lovable characters of the century.
O’Reilly rises from this book as he was.
Friendship, while giving what was his due,
restrains all affections that might mar the
truth of the portrait. His stature was felt
to be large enough, without any additions
that crumble to time.</p>
<p>There are those of us who hope that the
poet, with greater leisure, will give to
O’Reilly’s race a monograph to be treasured
and read by each household, a monograph
where the best in O’Reilly’s character
shall be emphasized, and so lovingly
set that those who read shall take heed
and learn, while blessing him who gave
the setting. The book as it is costs too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
much and is hardly compact enough for
those who need the strong lessons of such
a life as O’Reilly’s. In a smaller compass
and at less cost, done in that delightful
way so thoroughly shown in his art of
paragraphing, the little book would be a
guide-post to many a struggling lad and
lass. And to the young of our race must
we look and to the exiled part for the full
flowering. As the poet, so is the man,
cheery, unaffected, kindly and man-loving.
He has no airs, lacks the melodramatic of
the airy-fairy school. He does not pretend
that the gift of prophecy is his, nor
hint that it sleeps amid verbal ingenuities.
He has a song to sing, a tale to tell,
and he does it with all the craft that is
in him. In person Mr. Roche is of the
medium height, well-built, rather dark
complexioned, with abundant jet-black
hair and brilliant hazel eyes.</p>
<p>In concluding this sketch of a genuine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
man and true poet, I am tempted to quote
the little poem he so graciously wrote in
the fly-leaf of his “Songs and Satires:”</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“They chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone;</div>
<div class="verse">The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own;</div>
<div class="verse">The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone,</div>
<div class="verse">Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">Ye left her there alone!</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain;</div>
<div class="verse">The night that hath no morrow was brooding on the main;</div>
<div class="verse">But lo! a light is breaking, of hope for thee again;</div>
<div class="verse">’Tis Perseus’ sword a-flaming, thy dawn of day proclaiming,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 7em;">Across the Western main.</span></div>
<div class="verse">O Ireland! O my country! he comes to break thy chain.”</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="GEORGE_PARSONS_LATHROP" id="GEORGE_PARSONS_LATHROP">GEORGE PARSONS LATHROP.</a></h2>
<p>In the footsore journey through Mexico,
when dinner gladdened our vision, poor
Read would solemnly remark, “dinners
are reverent things.” Society accepted this
definition. I use society in the sense that
Emerson would. “When one meets his
mate,” writes the Concord sage, “society
begins.” Read was mine, and to-day his
quaint remark haunts me with melancholy
force. Thoughts of a dinner with the subject
of this sketch, George Parsons Lathrop,
and one whose fair and forceful life has
been quenched, flit through my mind. It
was but yesterday that I bade the gentle
scholar farewell, unconsciously a long farewell,
for Azarias has fled from the haunts
of mortality.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“This is the burden of the heart,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The burden that it always bore;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">We live to love, we meet to part,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And part to meet on earth no more.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Colonel Johnson had read one of his
charming essays. Brother Azarias and
George Parsons Lathrop had listened with
rapt attention to the most loveable writer
of the New South. After the lecture I
was asked to join them, for, as the author
of Lucille asks, “where is the man that
can live without dining?” That dinner,
now that one lies dead, enters my memory
as reverent and makes of Read’s remark a
truth. Men may or may not appear best
at dinner. Circumstances lord over most
dinners. As it was the only opportunity
I had to snap my kodak, you must accept
my picture or seek a better artist. Kodak-pictures,
when taken by amateurs, are
generally blurred. And now to mine.</p>
<p>A man of medium height, strongly built,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
broad shouldered, the whole frame betokening
agility; face somewhat rounded giving
it a pleasant plumpness, with eyes quick,
nervous and snappy, lighting up a more
than ordinary dark complexion—such is
Parsons Lathrop, as caught by my camera.
His voice was soft, clear as a bell-note, and,
when heard in a lecture hall, charming; a
slight hesitancy but adds to the pleasure of
the listener. In reading he affects none of
the dramatic poses and Delsarte movements
that makes unconscious comedians of our
tragic-readers. It is pleasant to listen to
such a man, having no fear that in some
moving passage, carried away by some
quasi-involuntary elocutionary movement,
he might find himself a wreck among the
audience. The lines of Wordsworth are
an apt description of him:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“Yet he was a man</span></div>
<div class="verse">Whom no one could have passed without remark,</div>
<div class="verse">Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs,</div>
<div class="verse">And his whole figure, breathed intelligence.”</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>Mr. Lathrop was born in Honolulu,
Hawaiian Islands, August 25, 1851. It
was a fit place for a poet’s birthplace,
“those gardens in perfect bloom, girded
about with creaming waves.” He came of
Puritan stock, the founder of his family
being the Rev. John Lathrop, a Separatist
minister, who came to Massachusetts in
1634. Some of his kinsmen have borne a
noble part in the creation of an American
literature, notably the historian of the
Dutch and the genial autocrat, Wendell
Holmes. His primary education was had
in the public schools of New York; from
thence he went to Dresden, Germany,
returning in 1870 to study law at Columbia
College. Law was little to his liking. The
dry and musty tomes, wherein is written
some truth and not a little error, sanctioned
by one generation of wiseacres to be whittled
past recognition by another generation
of the same species, could hardly hope to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
hold in thraldom a mind that had from
boyhood browsed in the royal demesne of
literature. Law and literature, despite the
smart sayings of a few will not run in the
same rut. In abandoning law for literature,
he but followed the law of his being. What
law lost literature gained. On a trip
abroad a year later he met Rose Hawthorne,
the second daughter of the great Nathaniel,
wooed, and won her. This marriage was
by far the happiest event in his life, the
crowning glory of his manhood, a fountain
of bliss to sustain his after life. Years
later, in a little poem entitled, “Love that
Lives,” referring to the woman that was his
all, he addresses her in words that needed
no coaxing by the muses, but had long
been distilled by his heart, ready for his
pen to give them a setting and larger life.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">“Dear face—bright, glinting hair—</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Dear life, whose heart is mine—</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The thought of you is prayer,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The love of you divine.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In starlight, or in rain;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">In the sunset’s shrouded glow;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ever, with joy or pain,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">To you my quick thoughts go.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>And summing up, he tells us the kind of
a bond that holds them. It is the</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Love that lives;</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Its spring-time blossoms blow</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">’Mid the fruit that autumn gives;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">And its life outlasts the snow.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>In 1875 he became assistant editor of
that staid and stately magazine the <i>Atlantic
Monthly</i>, thereby adding to his fame, while
it brought him into intimate relationship
with the best current thought of the time.
Few American literary men have not, at
some time of their career, been closely
allied with the press. Mr. Lathrop has
been no exception. For two years, from
’77 to ’79, his brilliant pen guided the
destinies of the <i>Boston Courier</i>. In 1879
he purchased Hawthorne’s old home, “The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
Wayside,” in Concord, Mass., making it
his home until his removal to New York
in 1883. His present residence is at New
London, Conn., where a beautiful home,
with its every nook consecrated to books
and paintings, tells of an ideal literary
life and companionship. Mr. Lathrop’s
genius is many sided. This is often a sign
of strength. Men, says a recent critic,
with a great and vague sense of power in
them are always doubtful whether they
have reached the limits of that power, and
naturally incline to test this in the field in
which they feel they have fewer rather
than more numerous auguries of success.
Into many fields this brilliant writer has
gone, and with success. In some he has
sowed, in others reaped a golden harvest.
He was a pioneer in that movement which
rightfully held that an author had something
to do with his brain-work. It seems
strange that in this nineteenth century such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
a proposition should demand a defender.
Sanity, however, is not so widespread as
the optimists tell. The contention of those
that denied copyright was, “Ideas are
common property.” So they are, says our
author, but granting this, don’t think you
have bagged your game? How about the
form in which those ideas are presented?
Is not the author’s own work, wrought out
with toil, sweat and privation—is not the
labor bestowed upon that form as worthy
of proper wage as the manual skill devoted
to the making of a jumping jack? Yet no
one has denied that jumping-jacks must be
paid for. This was sound reasoning and
would have had immediate effect, had
Congress possessed a ha’penny worth of
logic. As it was, years were wasted agitating
for a self-evident right, men’s energies
spent, and at length a half-loaf reluctantly
given.</p>
<p>In another field Mr. Lathrop has been a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
worker almost single-handed, that of encouraging
a school of American art. A
few years ago a daub from France was
valued more than a marvellous color-study
of John La Farge, or a canvas breathing
the luminous idealism of Waterman.
Critics sniffed at American art, while they
went into rhapsody over some foreign little
master. Our author, whose keen perception
had taught him that the men who
toiled in attics, without recompense in
the present, and dreary prospects for the
future, for the sake of art, were not to be
branded as daubers, but as real artists,
the fathers of American art, became their
defender. He pointed out the beauties of
this new school, its strength, and above
all, that whatever it might have borrowed
from foreign art, it was American
in the core. Men listened more for the
sake of the writer than interest in his
theme. Gradually they became tolerant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
and admitted that there was such a thing
as American art.</p>
<p>It was natural that the son-in-law of
America’s greatest story-teller should try
his strength in fiction. His first novels
show a trace of Hawthorne. They are
romantic, while the wealth of language
bewilders. This, as a critic remarks, was
an “indication of opulence and not of
poverty.” The author was feeling his
way. His later works bear no trace of
Hawthorne; they are marked by his own
fine spiritual sense. The plots are ingenious,
poetically conceived and worked
out with a deftness and subtlety that
charms the reader. There is an air of
fineness about them totally foreign to the
pyrotechnic displays of current American
fiction. The author is an acute observer,
one who looks below the surface, an ardent
student of psychology. His English is
scholarly, has color and dramatic force.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
His novels are free from immoral suggestions,
straining after effect, overdoing
the pathetic and incongruous padding, the
ordinary stock of our <i>fin de siècle</i> novelists.
The reading of them not only amuses, a
primary condition of all works of fiction,
but instructs and widens the reader’s
horizon on the side of the good and true.
In poetry Mr. Lathrop has attained his
greatest strength. Some of his war-poems
are full of fine feeling and manly vigor.
He is no carver of cherry-stones or singer
of inane sonnets and meaningless rondeaus,
but a poet who has something to
say; none of your humanity messages,
but songs that are human, songs that find
root in the human heart. Of his volumes
“Rose and Rooftree,” “Dreams and Days,”
a critic writes:</p>
<p>“There are poems in tenderer vein
which appeal to many hearts, and others
wrought out of the joys and sorrows of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
the poet’s own life, which draw hearts to
him, as “May Rose” and the “Child’s
Wish Granted” and “The Flown Soul,”
the last two referring to his only son,
whose death in early childhood has been
the supreme grief of his life. The same
critic notes the exquisite purity and delicacy
of these poems, and that “in a day
when the delusion is unfortunately widespread
that these cannot co-exist with
poetic fervor and strength.”</p>
<p>In March of 1891 Mr. Lathrop, after
weary years of aimless wandering in the
barren fields of sectarianism found, as
Newman and Brownson had found, that
peace which a warring world cannot give,
in the bosom of the Catholic Church.
Where Emerson halted, shackled by
Puritanism and its traditional prejudice
towards Catholicism, Lathrop, as Brownson,
in quest of new worlds of thought,
critically examined the old church and her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
teachings, finding therein the truth that
makes men free. This step of Lathrop’s,
inexplicable to many of his friends, is
explained in his own way, in the manly
letter that concludes this sketch. Such a
letter must, by its truthfulness, have held
his friends. “May we not,” says Kegan
Paul, “carry with us loving and tender
memories of men from whom we learn
much, even while we differ and criticise?”</p>
<p>“Humanly speaking, I entered into
Catholicity as a result of long thought
and meditation upon religion, continuing
through a number of years. But there
must have been a deeper force at work,
that of the Holy Spirit, by means of what
we call grace, for a longer time than I suspected.
Certainly I was not attracted by
‘the fascinations of Rome,’ that are so
glibly talked about, but which no one has
ever been able to define to me. Perhaps
those that use the phrase refer to the outward<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
symbols of ritual, that are simply the
expressive adornment of the inner meaning—the
flower of it. I, at any rate, never
went to Mass but once with any comprehension
of it, before my conversion, and had
seldom even witnessed Catholic services
anywhere; although now, with knowledge
and experience, I recognize the Mass—which
even that arch, unorthodox author,
Thomas Carlyle, called ‘the only genuine
thing of our times’—as the greatest action
in the world. Many Catholics had been
known to me, of varying merit; and some
of them were valued friends. But none of
these ever urged or advised or even hinted
that I should come into the Church. The
best of them had (as large numbers of my
fellow-Catholics have to-day) that same
modesty and reverence toward the sacred
mysteries that caused the early Christians
also to be slow in leading catechumens—or
those not yet fully prepared for belief—into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
the great truths of faith. My observations
of life, however, increasingly convinced
me that a vital, central, unchanging
principle in religion was necessary, together
with one great association of Christians in
place of endless divisions—if the promise
made to men was to be fulfilled, or really
had been fulfilled. When I began to ask
questions, I found Catholics quite ready to
answer everything with entire straightforwardness,
gentle good-will, yet firmness.
Neither they nor the Church evaded anything.
They presented and defended the
teaching of Christ in its entirety, unexaggerated
and undiminished; the complete
faith, without haggling or qualification or
that queer, loose assent to every sort of
individual exception and denial that is
allowed in other organizations. I may
say here, too, that the Church, instead of
being narrow or pitiless toward those not
of her communion, as she is often mistakenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
said to be, is the most comprehensive
of all in her interpretation of
God’s mercy as well as of his justice. And,
instead of slighting the Bible, she uses it
more incessantly than any of the Protestant
bodies; at the same time shedding upon it
a clear, deep light that is the only one that
ever enabled me to see its full meaning and
coherence. The fact is, those outside of the
Church nowadays are engaged in talking
so noisily and at such a rate, on their own
hook, that they seldom pause to hear what
the Church really says, or to understand
what she is. Once convinced of the true
faith, intellectually and spiritually, I could
not let anything stand in the way of affirming
my loyalty to it.”</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="REV_BROTHER_AZARIAS" id="REV_BROTHER_AZARIAS">REV. BROTHER AZARIAS.</a></h2>
<p>It is delicious in this age of hurried
bookmaking, to run across a thinker. It
gives one the same kind of sensation that
comes to the sportsman, when a monarch
of the glen crosses his path. Bookmakers
are as many as leaves of the Adirondacks
after the hasty gallop of a mountain storm;
thinkers are scarce. When, then, amid
the leafy mass, one discovers the rare bird
hiding from vulgar gaze, an irresistible
desire to find his lurking place seizes the
observer. This lurking place may be old
to many; it was only the other day that I
discovered it,—when a friend placed in
my hands “Phases of Thought and
Criticism,” by Brother Azarias. This book,
the sale of which has been greater in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
England than on this side of the water, is
one of suggestive criticism—a criticism
founded on faith. The author holds with
another thinker, that “Religion is man’s
first and deepest concern. To be indifferent
is to be dull or depraved, and doubt is
disease.” Each chapter of his book expresses
a distinct social and intellectual
force. Each embodies a verifying ideal;
for, continues the author, “the criticism
that busies itself with the literary form is
superficial, for food it gives husks.”</p>
<p>While the author will not concede that
mere literary form is the all in all that our
modern masters claim, yet he would not
be found in the ranks of M. de Bonniers,
who declares that an author need not
trouble himself about his grammar; let
him have original ideas and a certain style,
and the rest is of no consequence. The
author of “Phases of Thought,” believes
first in the possession of ideas, for without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
them an author is a sorry spectacle. He
also believes that an attractive style will
materially aid in the diffusion of these
ideas. Many good books fall still-born
from the press, for no other reasons than
their slovenly style. Readers now-a-days
will not plod along poor roads, when a
turnpike leads to the same destination.
The grammar marks the parting of ways.
Brother Azarias rightfully holds that good
grammar is an essential part of every
great writer’s style. Classics are so, by
correct grammar as well as by original
ideas. This easy dictum of the slipshod
writers—that if an idea takes you off your
feet you must not trouble yourself about
the grammar that wraps it, is but a specious
pleading for their ignorance of what
they pretend to despise.</p>
<p>The great difference between this book
and the many on similar subjects is in the
manner of treatment. It starts from a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
solid basis; that basis the creed of the
Catholic Church. The superstructure of
lofty thought reared on this basis is in a
style at once pellucid and crisp. The
author is not only a thinker rare and
original; he is a scholar broad and masterly.</p>
<p>Believing that his Church holds the keys
of the “kingdom come,” and as a consequence,
a key to all problems moral and
social that can move modern society, he
grapples with them, after the manner of a
knight of old, courteously but convincingly.
His teaching is that, outside the bosom
of the Catholic Church jostle the warring
elements of confusion and uncertainty. In
her fold can man find that rest, that sweet
peace promised by the Redeemer. Her
philosophy is the wisdom worth cherishing,
the curing balm that philosophers vainly
seek outside her pale. To the weary and
thought-stricken would this great writer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
bring his often and beautifully taught lesson,
that the things of this world are not the
puppets of chance, nor lots of the pantheistic
whole, but parts of a well-ordered
system, governed by a paternal being,
whom we, His children, address in that
touching prayer, “Father, who art in
Heaven.” From that Father came a Son,
not mere man, not only a great prophet,
not only a law-giver, but the true Son of
God, equal to the Father, from all eternity,
whose mission was, to teach all men that
would listen, the way that leads to light.
That this identical mission is, and will be
continued to the consummation of the ages
by the Catholic Church. That in the
truth of these things, all men, who lovingly
seek, will be confirmed, not that mere
intellect alone could be the harbinger of
such truths, for, as he has so well put
it:—“Human reason and human knowledge,
whether considered individually or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
collectively in the race are limited to the
natural. Knowledge of the supernatural
can come only from a Divine Teacher.”</p>
<p>One may be convinced of every truth of
revealed religion, and yet not possess the
gift of faith. That gift is purely gratuitous.
If, however, the seeker humbly and
honestly desires the acquisition of these
truths, and knocks, the door of the chamber
of truth shall be opened unto him, for this
has the Saviour promised. That door once
opened, the Spirit of God breathes on the
seeker, it opens the eyes of the soul, it
reveals beyond all power of doubt or cavil,
or contradiction, the supernatural as a fact,
solemn, universal, constant throughout the
vicissitudes of the age. While the author
fashions these lofty truths on the anvil
of modern scholarship, the reader finds
himself, like the school children, in
Longfellow’s poem, looking in through
the artist’s open door full of admiration,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
fascinated by burning sparks. Pages have
been written about the ideal, defining it, in
verbiage fatiguing and elusive.</p>
<p>It is a trick of pretended scholarship, to
hide thought with massive word-boulders.
What a difference in the process of this
rare scholar?</p>
<p>A flying spark from his anvil lights up
the dullest intellect. It is a stimulus to
the weary brain, after wading through
essays as to what constitutes an ideal, to
have the gentle scholar, across the blazing
pine logs, on a winter’s night, say: “A
genius conceives and expresses a great
thought. The conception so expressed
delights. It enters men’s souls; it compels
their admiration. They applaud and are
rejoiced that another masterpiece has been
brought into existence to grace the world
of art and letters. The genius alone is
dissatisfied. Where others see perfection,
he perceives something unexpressed; beyond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
the reach of his art. Try as best he
may, he cannot attain that indefinable
something. Deep in his inner consciousness
he sees a type so grand and perfect
that his beautiful production appears to
him but a faint and marred copy of that
original. That original is the ideal; and
the ideal it is that appeals to the aesthetic
and calls forth men’s admiration.” What
a divining power has this student, in
plummeting the vagaries of modern culture!</p>
<p>“Every school of philosophy has its disciples,
who repeat the sayings of their
masters with implicit confidence, without
ever stopping to question the principles
from which those sayings arise or the
results to which they lead.” These chattering
disciples will affect to sneer at the
Christian belief, while they lowly sit at
the feet of one of their mud gods singing
“thou art the infallible one.” They will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
not question their position simply because
“these systems are accepted not so much
for truth’s sake as because they are the
intellectual fashions of the day.” Such men
change their philosophy as quickly as a
Parisian dressmaker his styles. It may
yet be shown by some mighty Teuton
that vagaries in philosophy and dress are
closely allied, and that the synthetic philosophy
of Herbert Spencer is responsible
for the coming of crinoline. What a delightful
thrust at that school of criticism
that singles out an author or a book as
the very acme of perfection, seeing wisdom
in absurdities and truth in commonplace
fiction, is given in these lines: “Paint a
daub and call it a Turner, and forthwith
these critics will trace in it strokes of
genius.” With a twinkle in his eye he
asks, “Think you they understand the real
principles of art criticism?” You will be
easily able to answer that question when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
you have mastered this pithy definition
of true criticism, be it of literature or of
art, “that it is all-embracing.” It has
no antagonism to science so long as she
travels in her rightful domain. When
“science has her superstitions and her
romancings as unreal and shadowy as
those of the most ephemeral literature,
then it is the duty of criticism to administer
the medicine of truth and purge the
wayward jade of her humors.”</p>
<p>To such a mind as that of the author
of “Phases of Thought,” with its thorough
knowledge of the art of criticism and its
perfect equipment, the separating of the
chaff from the meal of an author becomes
not only a pleasure but a duty. This is
best seen by a perusal of Chapter III,
dealing with Emerson and Newman as
types. With a few masterly strokes the
real Emerson, not the phantom or brain
figment of Burroughs and Woodberry and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
the long line of fad disciples, passes before
us. Not an inch is taken from his stature.
His intellectual beauties and defects, so
strongly drawn, but confirm the reader in
the truth of the portraiture. One catches
not only a glimpse of the man, but the
springs of his soul-struggles. Emerson
in his hungry quest for intellectual food,
ranged through the philosophies of the
east and west, purposely ignoring that of
the Catholic Church. This sin cost him
whole worlds of thought hidden from his
vision. Newman had the same hunger to
appease, but where Emerson turned away
Newman, ever in search for truth, kept
on, and found it in the Catholic Church.
The analysis of these two minds is done in
a masterly way. Azarias has no prejudices.
If he puts his fingers on defects
and descants on their nature and treatment,
he will, no less, point out beauties
and lovingly linger among them. He is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
knight in the cause of truth, and would
not herd with the carping critics. He will
tell you that Emerson’s mind was like an
Æolian harp. “It was awake to the most
delicate impressions, and at every breath
of thought it gave out a music all its own,”
and that the reading of him with understanding
“is a mental tonic bracing for
the cultured intellect as is Alpine air
for the mountaineer.” The pages of this
book teem with thought clothed in language
whose sparkling beauty is all the
author’s own. From such a book it is
difficult to select. Emerson has well said,
“No one can select the beautiful passages
of another for you. Do your own quarrying.”
I abide by this quotation, and should
ask every lover of the beautiful and true
to buy this fecund book.</p>
<p>Patrick Francis Mullaney, better known
as Brother Azarias, was born in Killenaule
County, Tipperary, Ireland, June<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
29th, 1847. Like the majority of eminent
men that his country has given birth to,
he came of its noble peasantry. The old
tale was here enacted. The parents left
the land of their birth in search of a home
in our better land. This found, Azarias
joined them. At the age of fifteen he
joined the Christian Brothers. That great
Order gave free scope to his fine abilities.
In 1866 he was chosen professor of mathematics
and English literature at Rock Hill
College, Maryland. He continued in this
position for ten years. At the expiration
of his professorship he travelled a year
through Europe, collecting materials and
writing his “Development of Old English
Thought.” On his return he became president
of Rock Hill College, holding that
position until recalled to Paris by his
Superior in 1866. After an absence of
three years Brother Azarias returned to
the States as professor of English literature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
at the De La Salle Institute, New
York. This is not only an important position,
but it gives leisure, and that ready
access to the great libraries, so prized by
literary men.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a><br /><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="WOMEN" id="WOMEN">WOMEN.</a></h2>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a><br /><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="KATHERINE_ELEANOR_CONWAY" id="KATHERINE_ELEANOR_CONWAY">KATHERINE ELEANOR CONWAY.</a></h2>
<p>“Next room to that of Roche’s,” said
the dear O’Reilly, showing me his nest of
poets, “is a gentle poetess.”</p>
<p>The door was wide open. It is a question
with my mind if the room ever
knew a door. Be this as it may, there
sat, with her chair close drawn to her
desk, a frail, delicate-looking woman.
The ordinary eye might see nothing in a
face that was winsome, if not handsome;
yet, let the dainty mouth curve in
speech, and at once a subtle attraction,
lit up by lustrous eyes, permeated the
face. One characteristic that made itself
felt, in the most sparse conversation with
this woman, was her humility, a rare
virtue among American literary women.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
I have known not a few among that
irritable class who, no sooner had they
sipped the most meagre draught of fame,
than they became intoxicated with their
own importance, and for the balance of
life wooed that meretricious goddess, Notoriety.
In fiery prose and tuneful song
they told of the dire misfortunes that
had been heaped upon their sex by that
obstinate vulgar biped, man. Their literature—for
that is the name given to
the crudest offspring of the press in
these days—is noisy, and, says a witty
writer, a noisy author is as bad as a
barrel organ,—a quiet one is as refreshing
as a long pause in a foolish sermon.
Clergymen, who have listened to a brother
divine on grace, will be the first to see
the point. Our authoress—(a female filled
with the vanity that troubled Solomon
says I should write female author)—is a
quiet and unobtrusive writer. Of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
tricks that catch and the ways that are
crooked in literature, she knows nothing,
and what is better, no amount of tawdry
fame could induce her to swerve a jot from
the hard stony road that leads to enduring
success, the only goal worth striving for
in the domain of letters. I am well aware
that in the popular list of women-writers
mouthed by the growing herd of flippant
readers that have no other use for a book
than as a time-killer,—a herd to whom
ideas are as unpalatable as disestablishment
to an English parson—you will fail
to find the name of Katherine Conway.
The reason is simple. She has no fads to
air in ungrammatical English, no fallacies
to adduce in halting metre. It was a
Boston critic who echoed the dictum of the
French critic—that grammar has no place
in the world of letters. Only have ideas,
that is, write meaningless platitudes, grandiose
nothings, something that neither<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
man, the angels above nor the demons
down under the sea, may decipher, and
this illusive verbiage will make you famous.
A school of critics will herald your work
with such adjectives as “noble, lofty, absorbing,
soul-inspiring;” nay, more, a
pious missionary friend may be found to
to translate the verbiage into Syriac, as a
present for converts. Borne on the tide of
such criticism, not a few women writers
have mistaken the plaudits of notoriety,
that passing show, for fame. It was a
saying of De Musset’s that fame was a
tardy plant, a lover of the soil. Be this
as it may, it is safe to assert that its coming
is not proclaimed by far-fetched similes,
frantic metaphors, sensuous images, ranting
style, ignorance of metre, want of grammar;
the dishes are not of the voluptuous,
morbid or the monstrous kind. Its thirst
is not slaked at sewers of dulness spiced
with immorality. These symptoms savor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
of one disease known to all pathologists as
notoriety. In an age of this dreaded
disease it is surely refreshing to meet with
works that breathe gentleness and repose,—a
beautiful trust in religion, and a warm,
natural heart for humanity. These traits
will the reader find in abundance in the
pages of Katherine Conway. “What kills
a poet,” says Aldrich, “is self-conceit.” Of
all the forms self-conceit may assume none
is more foolish or detrimental, especially
to a woman-poet, than the pluming of
oneself as the harbinger of some renovating
gospel, some panacea for human infirmities.
What is the burden of your
message? says the critic to the young poet.
Straightway the poet evolves a message,
and as messages of this kind ought to be
mysterious, the poet wraps them in a jargon
as unintelligible as Garner’s monkey
dialect. Thus in America has risen a
school of woman poetry, deluded by false<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
criticism, calling itself a message to humanity,
dubbed rightly the school of
passion, and one might add, of pain. This
school may ask, “Am I to be debarred
from treating of the passions on the score
of sex.” By no means; the passions are
legitimate subjects. Love, one of them, is
your most attractive theme, but as Lilly
has it, love is not to you what it is to the
physiologist, a mere animal impulse which
man has in common with moths and
molluscs. Your task is to extract from
human life, even in its commonest aspects,
its most vulgar realities, what it contains of
secret beauty; to lift it the level of art, not
to degrade art to its level. Few American
writers more fully realized these great
artistic truths than the master under
whose fatherly tuition Miss Conway had
long been placed. Boyle O’Reilly was a
Grecian in his love for nature. As such it
was his aim to seek the beautiful in its commonest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
aspects, its most vulgar realities.
No amount of claptrap or fine writing
could make him mistake a daub for a
Turner. In the bottom of his soul he
detested the little bardlings who had
passed nature by, without knowing her,
who wove into the warp and woof of
their dulness the putridity of Zola and
morbidity of Marie Bashkirtseff. Under
such a guide, the poetic ideal set before
Miss Conway has been of the highest,
and the highest is only worth working
for. This ideal must be held unswervingly,
even if one sees that books that
are originally vicious are “placarded
in the booksellers’ windows; sold on the
street corners; hawked through the railroad
trains; yea, given away, with packages
of tea or toilet soap, in place of the
chromo, mercifully put on the superannuated
list.” These books are but foam
upon the current of time, flecking its surface<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
for a moment, and passing away into
oblivion, while what Miss Conway happily
calls the literature of moral loveliness, or
what might as aptly be called the literature
of all time, remains our contribution
to posterity. Its foundations, to follow the
thought of Azarias, are deeply laid in
human nature, and its structure withstands
the storms of adversity and the eddies of
events. For such a literature O’Reilly
made a life struggle; his pupil has closely
followed his footsteps in the charming,
simple, melodious volume that lies before
me, “A Dream of Lilies.” Rarely has a
Catholic book had a more artistic setting,
and one might add, rarely has a volume of
Catholic verse deserved it more. Here the
poetess touches her highest point, and
proves that years of silence have been
years of study and conscientious workmanship.
In her poem “Success” may be
found the key to this volume;</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Ah! know what true success is; young hearts dream,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Dream nobly and plan loftily, nor deem</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">That length of years is length of living. See</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">A whole life’s labor in an hour is done;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Not by world-tests the heavenly crown is won,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To God the man is what he means to be.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>“Dream nobly and plan loftily” has
been the guiding spirit of this volume.
It is a book of religious verse in the true
sense, not in the general acceptance of
modern religious verse, which is generally
dull twaddle, egotism, mawkishness,
blind gropings and haunting fears. The
gentle spirit of Christ breathes through
it, making an atmosphere of peace and
repose. There is no bigotry to jar, no
narrowness to chafe us, but the broad
upland of Christian charity and truth.
Nor has our author forgotten that even
truth if cast in awkward mould may
be passed over. To her poems she has
given a dainty setting without sacrificing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
a jot of their strength. After reading
such a book a judicious bit of Miss Conway’s
prose comes to my mind. “And as
that Catholic light, the only true vision,
brightens about us, we realize more and
more that literary genius, take it all and
all, has done more to attract men to good
than to seduce men to evil; that the best
literature is also the most fascinating, and
even by its very abundance is more than
a match for the bad; that time is its best
ally; that it is hard, if not impossible,
to corrupt the once formed pure literary
taste; and, finally, that as makers of literature
or critics or disseminators of it, it is
our duty to believe in the best, hope in the
best, and steadfastly appeal to the best in
human nature; for we needs must love the
highest when we see it.”</p>
<p>Katherine Eleanor Conway was born of
Irish parents, in Rochester, on the 6th of
Sept., 1853. Her early studies were made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
in the convent schools of her native city.
From an early age she had whisperings of
the muse. These whisperings at the age of
fifteen convinced her that her true sphere
of action was literature. In 1875 she
commenced the publication of a modest
little Catholic monthly, contributing poems
and moral tales, under the <i>nom-de-plume</i> of
“Mercedes,” to other Catholic journals, in
the spare hours left from editing her little
venture and teaching in the convent. In
1878 she became attached to the Buffalo
<i>Union and Times</i>. To this journal she contributed
the most of the poems to be found
in her maiden volume,—“On the Sunrise
Slope,”—a volume whose rich promise has
been amply fulfilled in the “Dream of
Lilies.” Her health failing, she sought a
needful rest in Boston. Her fame had
preceded her, and the gifted editor of the
<i>Pilot</i>, ever on the lookout for a hopeful
literary aspirant of his race, held out a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
willing hand to the shy stranger. “Come
to us,” he said, in a voice that knew no
guile, “and help us in the good fight.”
That fight—the crowning glory of O’Reilly’s
noble life—was to gain an adequate position
for his race and religion from the puritanism
of New England. How that race and
religion were held before his coming, may
be best told in the language of Miss
Conway, taken from a heart-sketch of her
dead master and minstrel:—</p>
<p>“Notwithstanding Matignon and Cheverus,
and the Protestant Governor Sullivan,
Catholic and Irish were, from the outset,
simply interchangeable terms—and terms of
odium both—in the popular New England
mind; in vain the bond of a common language,
in vain the Irishman’s prompt and
affectionate acceptance of the duties of
American citizenship. To but slight softening
of prejudice even his sacrifice of blood
and life on every battle-field in the Civil<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
War, in proof of the sincerity of his political
profession of faith. He and his were
still hounded as a class inferior and apart.
They were almost unknown in the social
and literary life of New England. Their
pathetic sacrifices for their kin beyond the
sea, their interest in the political fortunes
of the old land, were jests and by-words.
Their religion was the superstition of the
ignorant, vulgar and pusillanimous; or, at
best, motive for jealous suspicion of divided
political allegiance and threatened “foreign”
domination. Their children suffered
petty persecutions in the public schools.
The stage and the press faithfully reflected
the ruling popular sentiment in their caricatures
of the Catholic Irishman.”</p>
<p>She accepted O’Reilly’s call and stood
by his side with Roche, Guiney, Blake,
until the hard fought battle against the
prejudice to Irishism and Catholicism,
planted in New England by the bigoted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
literature of Old England, was abated, if
not destroyed; until its shadows, if cast
now, are cast by the lower rather than
the higher orders in the world of intellect
and refinement. “And the shortening of
the shadow is proof that the sun is rising,”
proof that her work has been far from
vain. And when from the grey dawn of
prejudice will come forth the white morrow
of charity and truth, the singer and her
songs will not be forgotten.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<h2><a name="LOUISE_IMOGEN_GUINEY" id="LOUISE_IMOGEN_GUINEY">LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY.</a></h2>
<p>In speaking with the author of a “Dream
of Lilies,” I casually mentioned the name
of another Boston poetess, “one of the <i>Pilot</i>
poets,” as the gifted Carpenter was wont to
speak of those whose genius was nursed by
Boyle O’Reilly. For a few years previous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
to my coming, little waif poems, suggestive
of talent and refinement, had seen light
in the columns of that brilliant journal.
They had about them that something which
makes the reader hazard a bet that the
youngster when fully fledged would some
day leave the lowlands of minor minstrelsy
for a height on Parnassus. From this
singer Miss Conway had that morning
received a notelet. It was none of the
ordinary kind, a little anarchistic, if one
might judge from the awkward pen-sketch
of a hideous grinning skeleton-skull held
by cross-bones which served as an illustration
to the bantering text that followed, in
a rather cramped girlish hand. The notelet
was signed Louise Imogen Guiney.</p>
<p>“Are you not afraid, Miss Conway,” said
I, “to receive such warning notes?” “It
is from the best girl in America,” was the
frank reply; “read it.” A perusal of the few
dashing lines was enough, and my generous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
host, reading my eyes, gave me the
coveted notelet. That notelet begot an
interest in the writer; an interest fully
repaid by the strong, careful work put
forth under her name. Louise Imogen
Guiney, poet, essayist, dramatist, was born
in Boston, that city of “sweetness and
light,” in January, 1862. Her parents
were Irish. Her father, Patrick Guiney,
came from the hamlet of Parkstown,
County Tipperary, at an early age. He
was a man of the most blameless and
noble character. During the civil war,
as Col. Guiney of the Irish Ninth Massachusetts
Volunteers, his heroism on behalf
of his adopted country won him the grateful
admiration of all lovers of freedom.
This admiration at the close of the war
was substantially shown by his election as
Judge of Probate. Constant suffering from
an old wound, received at the battle of the
Wilderness, gave the old soldier but few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
years to enjoy honors from his fellow-citizens.
His death was mourned by all who
loved virtue and honor. Of him a Boston
poet sang:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Large heart and brave! Tried soul and true!</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">How thickly in thy life’s short span,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">All strong sweet virtues throve and grew,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">As friend, as hero, and as man.</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Unmoved by thought of blame or praise,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Unbought by gifts of power and pride,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Thy feet still trod Time’s devious ways</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">With Duty as thy law and guide.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Good blood, you will say, from whence
our poet came, and blood counts even in
poetry. I have no anecdotes to relate of
Miss Guiney’s early years. I am not
sure that there were any. Anecdotes are
usually manufactured in later life, if the
subject happens to become famous. Her
education was carefully planned, and intelligently
carried out. She was not held
in the dull routine of the school-room, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
was allowed to emancipate herself in the
works of the poets. What joy must have
been her’s, scampering home after the
study of <i>de omni scibili</i>, the ordinary curriculum
of any American school, to a quiet
nook and the dream of her poets. Amid
these dreams came the siren whisperings
of the muse, telling her of the poet within
struggling for life and expression. These
struggles begot a tiny little volume happily
named “Songs at the Start.” The great
American reviewer, who, ordinarily,</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Bolts every book that comes out of the press,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Without the least question of larger or less,”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p class="unindent">on this occasion, by some untoward event,
stumbled on a truth when he informed us,
with the air of one who rarely touches
earth, that the book bore signs of promise.
The people, by all means a better critic,
were more apt in their judgment of the
young singer. A few years later they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
asked her to write the memorial poem for
the services in commemoration of General
Grant. Thus honored by her native city,
in an easy way she was led to climb the
ladder of fame. In 1885 appeared her first
volume of essays, “Goose Quill Papers;”
in 1887 a volume of poems bearing the
fanciful name of “White-Sail;” in 1888 a
pretty book for children; in 1892 “Monsieur
Henri, a Foot-note to French History.”
It us something to be noted in
regard to a “Foot-note to French history,”
that the novelist Stevenson, in his far-off
home in Samoa, was publishing at the
same time a work which bore a decided
likeness to her title. Stevenson’s book was
published as “A Foot-Note to History.”
In 1893 appeared her latest volume of
verse, being a selection of poems previously
published in American magazines. This
selection (the poet has a genuine knack
for tacking taking names to her volumes)<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
is quaintly named “A Wayside Harp,”
and dedicated to a brace of Irish poets, the
Sigerson sisters. The graceful dedication
as well as many of its strongest and most
artistic poems, were the outcome of a trip
to Great Britain and Ireland. The author
travelled with open eyes, and brought back
many a dainty picture of the scenes she
had so lovingly witnessed. This volume
fulfils the early promise, and what is more,
gives indubitable signs that the poet possesses
a reserve force. Not a few women
poets write themselves out in their first
volume. Not so with Miss Guiney, every
additional volume shows greater strength
and more complete mastery of technique.
After the surfeit of twaddle passing current
as poetry, such a book as “A Wayside
Harp” should find a waiting audience,
Miss Guiney has the essentials of a poet,
which I take to be color, music, perfume
and passion. In their use she is an artist.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
In her first book an excess of these everywhere
prevailed; it was from this excess,
however, that the prudent critic would
have hazarded a doubt as to her fitness
to join the company of the bards. Since
then she has been an ardent student.
This study has not only taught her limitations,
a thing that saves so much after
pruning, but that other lesson, forgotten
by so many bardlets, that the greatest
poetic effects are the result of the masterful
mixing of a few simple colors. It is
well that she has learned these lessons at
the outset of her career. Let not the fads
and fancies of this <i>fin de siècle</i> and the
senseless worship of those poetasters who
scorn sense while they hug sound lead her
from the true road of song. No amount of
meaningless words airily strung together,
no amount of gymnastic rhyming feats can
produce a poet. They are the badges of
those wondrous little dunces that pass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
nature with a frown, alleging in the language
of the witty Bangs that “Nature
is not art.” Guiney’s friend and faithful
mentor, O’Reilly, had taught her to abhor
all those who spent their waking hours
chiselling cherry stones. To him it was a
poet’s duty to aim high, attune his lyre,
not to the petty, but the manly and hopeful;
never to debase the lyre by an utterance
of selfishness, but to consecrate it
with the strains of liberty and humanity.
If Guiney follows the teachings of her
early friend—teachings which are substantially
sound, she will yet produce poems
that the world will not willingly let die.
That Rosetti fad of hiding a mystic meaning
in a poem, now occupying the brains
of our teeming songsters, is now and then
to be met with in our poet. It is a trade-trick.
Poetry is sense—common-sense at
that, and you cannot rim common-sense
things with mystical hues. Abjuring these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
trade-tricks, and shaking off the trammels
of her curious and extensive reading and
evolving from herself solely, she has, says
Douglas Sladen, a great promise before
her. As an instance of this promise let us
quote that fine poem, “The Wild Ride,”
which is full of genuine inspiration, and
which may be the means of introducing to
some the most thoroughly gifted Catholic
woman writer of our country.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="center"><span class="smcap">The Wild Ride.</span></div>
<div class="verse">I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,</div>
<div class="verse">All day, the commotion of sinewy mane-tossing horses;</div>
<div class="verse">All night from their cells the importunate tramping and neighing,</div>
<div class="verse">Cowards and laggards fall back but alert to the saddle,</div>
<div class="verse">Straight, grim, and abreast, vault our weather-worn galloping legion,</div>
<div class="verse">With a stirrup cup each to the one gracious woman that loves him.</div>
<div class="verse"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>The road is thro’ dolour and dread, over crags and morasses!</div>
<div class="verse">There are shapes by the way, there are things that appall or entice us!</div>
<div class="verse">What odds! We are knights, and our souls are but bent on the riding!</div>
<div class="verse">I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,</div>
<div class="verse">All day, the commotion of sinewy, mane-tossing horses;</div>
<div class="verse">All night from their cells the importunate tramping and neighing,</div>
<div class="verse">We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm wind;</div>
<div class="verse">We leap to the infinite dark, like the sparks from the anvil,</div>
<div class="verse">Thou leadest! O God! All’s well with thy troopers that follow.</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>It was only natural that the daughter of
an Irish patriot should sing of her father’s
land, and that in a style racy of that land.
It was a hazardous experiment, as many
an Irish American singer has learned in
sorrow. That Miss Guiney has come out
of the trying ordeal successfully, may be
seen in the following little snatch, full of
the aroma of green Erin:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="center"><span class="smcap">An Irish Peasant Song.</span></div>
<div class="verse">I try to knead and spin, but my life is low the while;</div>
<div class="verse">Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile;</div>
<div class="verse">Yet when I walk alone, and think of naught at all,</div>
<div class="verse">Why from me that’s young should the wild tears fall?</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The shower-stricken earth, the earth-colored streams,</div>
<div class="verse">They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams;</div>
<div class="verse">And yonder ivy fondling the broken castle wall,</div>
<div class="verse">It pulls my heart, till the wild tears fall.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill,</div>
<div class="verse">And far as Leighlin cross the fields are green and still;</div>
<div class="verse">But once I hear a blackbird in Leighlin hedges call,</div>
<div class="verse">The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall!</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Miss Guiney possesses a charming personality.
Her manner is “unaffected, girlish
and modest.” There is about her none
of the curtness and prudishness of the
blue-stocking. Success has not turned her
head, literary homage has not made her
forget that they who will build for time
must need work long and patiently, using
only the best material. By so doing may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
it be written of her work, as she has
written of Brother Bartholomew’s:</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Wonderful verses! fair and fine,</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Rich in the old Greek loveliness;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">The seer-like vision, half divine;</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Pathos and merriment in excess,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And every perfect stanza told,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of love and of labor manifold.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<h2><a name="MRS_BLAKE" id="MRS_BLAKE">MRS. BLAKE.</a></h2>
<p>Boston is a charming city. It is the
whim of the passing hour to sneer at the
modest dame. Henry James has done so.
Is not the author of “Daisy Miller” and
other interminable novels a correct person
to follow? The disciples of the Mutual Admiration
Society in American Letters will
vociferously answer “yes.” Old-fashioned
people may have another way. Scattered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
here and there possibly a few there are
who hold that Hawthorne was a better
novelist than Howells is, that Holmes’
poetry is as good as Boyesen’s, and that
Emerson’s criticisms are more illuminative
than James’. Be this as it may, Boston is
a charming place to all those who had the
good fortune to have been welcomed by its
warm-hearted citizen, Boyle O’Reilly. To
those who knew his struggles, and the
earnest striving, until his weary spirit
sought its final home, for Catholic literature
in its true sense, the charm but increases.</p>
<p>It was owing to his kindness that I
found myself one blustery, raw day, ringing
the door-bell of an ordinary well to-do
brick house. Houses now and then carry
on their fronts an inkling of their occupants.
A door was opened, my card handed
to a feminine hand; the aperture was not
as yet wide enough to catch a glimpse of
the face. The card was a power. “Come<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
in,” said a woman’s voice, and the door
was wide open. I followed the guide, and
was soon in a plain, well furnished room,
in presence of a motherly-looking woman.
She was knitting; at least that is part of
my memory’s picture. Near her hung a
mocking-bird, whose notes now and then
were peculiarly sad. Despite the graceful
lines of the Cavalier Lovelace, iron bars
do a prison make for bird and man. And
the songs sung behind these bars are but
bits of the crushed-out life. I was welcomed,
and during busy years have held
the remembrance of that visit with its
hour of desultory chat and a mocking-bird’s
broken song. The motherly-looking
woman, with her strong Celtic face
freshly furrowed by sorrow in the loss of
beloved children, was a charming talker
and a good listener, things rarely found
in your gentle or fiery poetess. She had
just published, under the initials M. A. B.,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
a volume of children’s verse, and, as is
natural with an author who had finished
a piece of work, was full of it. The pretense
of some authors that they are bored
to speak of their own books is a sly suggestion
to praise them for their humility.
Mrs. Blake—for that is the motherly-looking
woman’s name—spoke of her work
without any hiccoughing gush or false
modesty. Her eyes lit up, and the observer
read in them honesty. She was
deeply interested, as all thinking women
must be, in the solution of the social
problems that have arisen in our times,
and will not be downed at the biddance of
capitalist or demagogue. With her clear-cut
intellect she was able to grasp a salient
point, purposely hidden by the swarm of
curists with their panacea remedies, that
these problems must be solved in the light
of religion. Man must return to Christ, not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
the “cautious, statistical Christ” paraded
in the social show, not</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“The meteor blaze</span></div>
<div class="verse">That soon must fail, and leave the wanderer blind,</div>
<div class="verse">More dark and helpless far, than if it ne’er had shined,”</div>
</div>
</div>
<p class="unindent">but the Christ of the Gospels, the Bringer
of peace and good-will—the Bearer of
burdens, the soul-guider—Christ, loving
and acting, as found in the Catholic Church.
Hecker had begun the preface of his wonderful
book with a truth, “The age is out
of joint.” Problems to be solved, and
lying around them millions of broken
hearts. “The age is out of joint.” Who
will bring the light and rightify the age?
Mrs. Blake has but one answer. Bring
the employers and the employed nearer
the Christ of the Catholic Church. This
was O’Reilly’s often expressed and worked-for
idea. It is the key-note of much of his
poetry. It is the germ of his “Bohemia.”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
It was impossible to live, as Mrs. Blake
did, on the most friendly terms with such a
man and not be smitten with his life-thought.
In not a few published social
papers Mrs. Blake has thrown out valuable
and suggestive hints as to the best means
of bringing the weary world under the
sweet sway of religion. Her voice, it is
true, is but one voice in the social wilderness,
but individual efforts must not
be thwarted, for is not a fresh period
opening in which the individuality, the
personality, of souls acting under the
direct guidance of the Holy Ghost, will
take up all that is good in modern ideas,
and the cords of our tent be strengthened
and its stakes enlarged? “What we have
to dread is neither ‘historical rancor’ nor
‘philosophical atheism,’” “nor the instinct
of personal freedom.” It is, in the
words of Dr. Barry, that we should set
little store by that “freedom wherewith<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
Christ has made us free,” and that being
born into a church where we may have the
grandest spiritual ideas for the asking, we
should fold our hands in slumber and
be found, at length, “disobedient to the
heavenly vision.” Against such perils
Hecker, the noblest life as yet in our
American church, made a life-fight. On
his side was Boyle O’Reilly, Roche, Mrs.
Blake, Katherine Conway and Louise
Guiney. Nor pass such lives in vain.</p>
<p>Mrs. Blake was born in Dungarvan, Co.
Waterford, Ireland. In childhood she was
brought to Massachusetts. In 1865 she
was married to Dr. J. G. Blake, a leading
physician of Boston. She has made that
city her home, and is highly esteemed
in its literary and social circles. Among
her published books may be mentioned
“Poems,” Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1882,
dedicated to her husband; “On The Wing,”
a pretty volume of Californian sketches;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
“Rambling Talk,” a series of papers contributed
to the Boston journals.</p>
<p>Her sketches are the agreeable jottings of
a highly cultivated woman; seeing nature
in the light of poetry rather than science,
she has made a series of charming pictures
out of her wanderings. They are
not free from sentiment,—illusions if you
will, but that is their greatest charm.
“The world of reality is a poor affair.”
So many books of travel are annually
appearing,—books that have no excuse for
being other than to prove how widespread
dulness and incapacity is, that a trip with
a guide like Mrs. Blake has but one failing,—its
shortness. Neither in her travels
nor in her literary articles does Mrs. Blake
body forth her best prose utterance. These
must be found in her earnest social papers,
where her woman’s heart, saddened by the
miseries of its fellows, pours out its streams
of consolation and preaches (all earnest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
souls must be preachers now-a-days) the
only and all sufficient cure—the Church.</p>
<p>An extract from one of these papers will
best show her power. She is portraying
the Church manifesting itself in the individual
as well as the family life, pleading
for the central idea of her system. “Jesus
Christ is the complement of man,”—the
restorer of the race. The Catholic Church
is the manifestation of Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>“There are, alas! too many weaknesses
into which thoughtlessness and opportunity
lead one class as well as the other. But
still there is to be seen almost without
exception, among practical Catholics, young
wives, content and happy, welcoming from
the very outset of married life the blessed
company of the little ones who are to
guard them as do their angels in heaven;
proud like Cornelia of their jewels; gladly
accepting comparative poverty and endless
care; while their sisters outside the Church<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
buy the right to idleness and personal
adorning at the expense of the childless
homes which are a disgrace and menace
to the nation. There is the honor and
purity of the fireside respected; the overpowering
sweetness and strength of family
ties acknowledged; the reverential love
that awaits upon the father and mother
shown. There are sensitive and refined
women bearing sorrow with resignation and
hardship without rebellion; combating pain
with patience and fulfilling harsh duty
without complaint. In a tremendous over-proportion
to those who attempt to live
outside its helpfulness, and in exact ratio
to their practical devotion to the observances
of the Church, they find power of
resisting temptation in spite of poverty,
and overcoming impulse by principle. Can
the world afford to ignore an agency by
which so much is accomplished?</p>
<p>“So much for the practical side, which is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
the moral that particularly needs pointing
at this moment. Of the spiritual amplitude
and sustaining which the Church
gives there is little need to speak. Only
a woman can know what Faith means in
the existence of women. The uplift which
she needs in moments of great trial; the
sustaining power to bear the constant
harassment of petty worries; the outlet
for emotions which otherwise choke the
springs, the tonic of prayer and belief;
the assurance of a force sufficiently divine
and eternal to satisfy the cravings of
human longing—what but this is to make
life worth living for her? And where
else, in these days of scepticism, is she to
find such immortal dower? It is a commentary
upon worldly wisdom, that it has
attempted to ignore this necessity, and left
woman under the increased pressure of
her new obligations, to rely solely upon
such frail reeds as human respect and conventional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
morality. She needs the inspiration
of profound conviction and practical
piety a hundredfold more than ever before.
The woman of the old time, secluded within
the limits of the household, surrounded by
the material safeguard of custom, might
lead an untroubled existence even if devotion
and faith were not vital principles
with her. The woman of to-day, harassed,
beset, tempted, driven by necessity, drawn
this way and that by bad advice and worse
example, is attempting a hopeless task
when she tries the same experiment.”</p>
<p>The poetry of Mrs. Blake is rational
and wholesome. She knows her gifts and
is content to use them at their best, giving
us songs in a minor key, that if they add
little to human thought, yet make the
world better from their coming. In the
poems of childhood she is particularly
happy. She knows children, their joys
and sorrows, has caught their ways. Her’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
is a heart that has danced in the joy of
motherhood and been stricken when the
“dead do not waken.” She is our only
intelligent writer of children’s poems.
The assertion may be controverted. A
hundred Catholic poets for children may
be cited writers “of genius profound,” of
“exquisite fancy,” “whose works should
grace every parish library.” I quote a
stereotyped criticism, a constant expression
with Catholic reviewers. I laugh, in
my hermitage, and blandly suggest, to all
whom it may concern, that insanity in
jingles is not relished by sane children.
I speak from experience, having perpetrated
a selection from the one hundred
on a class of bright boys and girls. Peaceful
sleep, and, let us hope, pleasant dreams,
came to their aid. Shall I ever, Comus,
forget their faces in the transition moment
from dulness to delight? Let us cease
cant and rapturous criticism. Catholic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
literature, to survive the time that gave
it birth, must be built on other foundations.
Hasty and unconscious productions
must be branded as such. We must have,
as the French so well put it, a horror of
“pacotille” and “camelotte.” “If my
works are good,” said the sculptor Rude,
“they will endure; if not, all the laudation
in the world would not save them
from oblivion.” The same may well be
written of Catholic literature. Whether
for children or grown-up men or women,
as a Catholic critic, whose only aim has
been to gain an audience for my fellow
Catholic writers whose works can bear a
favorable comparison with the best contemporary
thought, I ask that the best
shall be given, and that given, it shall be
joyfully received; that trash shall not fill
the book-cases, lie on the parlor-tables, be
puffed in our weeklies, and genius and
sacrifice be forgotten. I ask that the works<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
of Stoddard, Johnston, Egan, Roche, Azarias,
Lathrop, Tabb, Miss Repplier, Guiney,
Katherine Conway, Mrs. Blake, find a
welcome in each Catholic household, and
that the Catholic press make their delightful
personalities known to our rising generation.
Of their best they have given. Shall
they die before we acknowledge it?</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<h2><a name="AGNES_REPPLIER" id="AGNES_REPPLIER">AGNES REPPLIER.</a></h2>
<p>A friend of mine, a dweller in the city,
a lover of red bricks, one to whom the
sound of the dray-cart merrily grinding
on the pavement is sweeter music than a
burst of woodland song, has tardily conceded
that the Adirondacks, on a summer
day, is pleasant. I value his testimony
and record it with pleasure. Let us be
thankful for small favors when cynics are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
the donors. For me these woods, lakes
and crystal streams hold an indescribable
charm. They are the true abode of man.
Here is liberty, while the city is but a cage,
with its thousands uttering the plaintive
cry of Sterne’s prisoned starling, “I cannot
get out.” For the hum of wheels we have
the songs of birds, the music of waterfalls,
the purr of mountain brooks and the
harmonies of the winds playing through
the thousand different species of trees, each
one differing in melody, but combining
in one grand symphony. Orchestras are
muffled music when compared to nature’s
lute. The pipes of Pan is but a poet’s
struggle to embody in speech such a
symphony. For the city’s smells, that not
even a Ruskin could paint, albeit they are
far from elusive, we have the mountain air
that has dallied with the streams and stolen
the fragrance of a thousand clover fields.
Every man to his taste. There is no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
disputing of this. Lamb loved bricks and
Wordsworth such scenes as ours; yet,
Lamb would be as sadly missed from our
libraries as Wordsworth. Swing my hammock
in the shade of yonder pines, good
Patsy. A robin is piping his sweetest
notes to his brooding spouse, the Salmon
river runs at my feet, biting the sandy
shore, laughing loud when a saucy stone
falls in its current. From over the hills
comes the scent of new-mown hay; bless
me! this is pleasant. To add to this enjoyment
you have brought a book—something
bright, you tell me. I’ll soon see. And
gliding into my hammock, I said my first
good morning to Agnes Repplier. It was
a breezy good morning, one of those where
the hand unconsciously goes out as much as
to say: Old fellow, you don’t know how glad
I am to see you. There was no friend with
a white cravat standing on the first page to
introduce us, and tell us that the authoress<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
bore in her book a fecund message to
struggling humanity, and that the major
part of that same humanity could not see
it; hence it was his duty to stand at the
portal and solve the riddle. There was no
begging for recognition on the score of
ancestors, fads or isms. I am Agnes
Repplier, said the book; how do you like
me? A few pages perused, and my own
voice amusingly fell on my ears, saying
first class. Here was a woman who thought—not
the trivial thought that nauseates in
the books of so many literary women—but
virile aggressive thought, that provokes,
contradicts, and, like Hamlet’s ghost, will
not be downed. This thought is folded in
a garment, whose many hues quicken the
curiosity and make her pages a continual
feast of wit, droll irony, and illuminative
criticism all curiously and harmoniously
blended. Her pages are rich in suggestion,
apt in quotation. You are constantly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
aroused, put on your guard, laughingly
disarmed, and that in a way that Lamb
would have loved. She has no awe in the
presence of literary gods. Lightly she
trips up to them with her poniard, shows
by a pass that they are made of mud, and
that the aureole that encircles them is but
the work of your crude imagination. Clearing
away your shreds and patches she puts
the author in a plain suit before you, and,
how you wonder, that with all your boasted
knowledge you have called for years a
jackdaw a peacock!</p>
<p>How delightful to watch this critic
armed <i>cap-a-pie</i>, demolishing some fad, that
has masqueraded for years as genuine
literature. Is it little Lord Fauntleroy, a
character sloppy, inane, impossible to real
life, yet hugged to the heart by the
commonplace. Miss Repplier keenly surveys
her ground, as an artist would the
statue of his rival, notes the foibles, cant,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
false poses, and crazy-quilt jargon used
to deck pet characters. Experience has
taught her that you cannot combat seriously
the commonplace. “The statesman or the
poet,” says Dudley Warner, “who launches
out unmindful of this, will be likely to
come to grief in his generation.” Sly
humor, pungent sarcasm, are the weapons
effectively used. The little Lord is unrobed,
and the life that seemed so full of
charity and virtue, becomes but a mixture
of hypocrisy and snobbery. Yet, if some
of our critics could, “all the dear old
nursery favorites must be banished from
our midst, and the rising generation of
prigs must be nourished exclusively on
Little Lord Fauntleroy, and other carefully
selected specimens of milk and water diet.”
The dear land of romance, in its most
charming phase, that phase represented by
Red Riding Hood, Ali Baba, Blue Beard,
and the other heroes of our nurseryhood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
must be eliminated, for children are no
longer children, in the old sense of believing
“in such stuff” without questioning.
American children, at any rate, are too
sensitively organized to endure the unredeemed
ferocity of the old fairy stories, we
are told, and it is added, “no mother
nowadays tells them in their unmitigated
brutality.” These are the empty sayings
of the realists, who would have every
child break its dolls to analyze the sawdust.
The most casual observer of American
homes knows that our children will not be
fed on such stuff as realists are able to
give, but will turn wistfully back to those
brave old tales which are their inheritance
from a splendid past, and of which no
hand shall rob them. As Miss Repplier
so well puts it, “we could not banish Blue
Beard if we would. He is as immortal as
Hamlet, and when hundreds of years shall
have passed over this uncomfortably enlightened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
world, the children of the future—who,
thank Heaven, can never, with all
our efforts, be born grown-up—will still
tremble at the blood-stained key, and rejoice
when the big brave brothers come
galloping up the road.” Ferocity, brutality,
if you will, may couch on every page,
but this is much better than the sugared
nothingness of Sunday school tales, and
beats all hollow, as the expression goes,
the many tricks perpetrated on children by
the school of analytical fiction. Children
will read Blue Beard, and thank Heaven,
as grown-up men, for such a childish
pleasure, adding a prayer for her who
wrote the “Battle of the Babies.” Bunner
and others have accused Miss Repplier of
ignoring contemporary works, of rudely
closing in their face her library door and
saying he who enters here must have
outgrown his swaddling clothes, must have
rounded out his good half-century. This<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
may be one of Bunner’s skits. Even if it
were not, there is more than one precedent
to follow. Hazlitt, in his delightful chat
on the “Reading of Old Books,” begins
his essay, “I hate to read new books.”
This author has the courage of his convictions;
you do not grope in the dark to
know why. Here is the reason, and it is
easier to assent to it than to deny it.
“Contemporary writers may generally be
divided into two classes—one’s friends or
one’s foes. Of the first we are compelled
to think too well, and of the last we are
disposed to think too ill, to receive much
genuine pleasure from the perusal, or to
judge fairly of the merits of either. One
candidate for literary fame, who happens
to be of our acquaintance writes finely, and
like a man of genius; but unfortunately
has a foolish fad, which spoils a delicate
passage;—another inspires us with the
highest respect for his personal talents and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
character, but does not come quite up to
our expectation in print.” All these contradictions
and petty details interrupt the
calm current of our reflections. These are
sound reasons; as if to clinch them he
adds, “but the dust, smoke, and noise of
modern literature have nothing in common
with the pure, silent air of immortality.”</p>
<p>Miss Repplier, an admirer of Hazlitt,
and if one may hazard a guess, her master
in style, would not go so far. She believes
in keeping up with a decent portion of
current literature, and “this means perpetual
labor and speed,” whereas idleness
and leisure are requisite for the true enjoyment
of books. To read all the frothings
of the press for the sake of being called a
contemporary critic were madness. She
concurs with another critic that reading is
not a duty, and that no man is under any
obligation to read what another man wrote.
When Miss Repplier stumbles across an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
unknown volume, picking it up dubiously,
and finds in it an hour of placid but
genuine enjoyment, although it is a modern
book, wanting in sanctifying dust, she will
use all her art to make in other hearts a
loving welcome for the little stranger. “A
By-Way in Fiction” tells in her own way,
of a recent book born of Italian soil and
sunshine, “The Chevalier of Pensieri
Vani.” It is the essayist’s right to read
those books, ancient or modern, that are to
her taste, and it is a bit of impertinence in
any writer to particularly recommend to
Miss Repplier a list of books, which she is
naturally indisposed to consider with much
kindness, thrust upon her as they are, like
paregoric or porous plaster. “If there be
people who can take their pleasures medicinally,
let them read by prescription and
grow fat.” Our authoress can do her own
quarrying. One of the darts thrown at
this charming writer is, that she would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
have children pore through books at their
own sweet, wild will, unoppressed by that
modern infliction—foot-notes. That, when
a child would meet the word dog, an
asterisk would not hold him to a foot-note
occupying a page and giving all that science
knows about that interesting animal. This
is precisely the privilege that your modern
critic will not allow. He will have his
explanations, his margins, “build you a
bridge over a rain-drop, put ladders up a
pebble, and encompass you on every side
with ingenious alpen-stocks and climbing
irons, yet when perchance you stumble and
hold out a hand for help, behold! he is
never there to grasp it.” What does a
boy, plunging into Scott or Byron, want
with these atrocities? The imagery that
peoples his mind, the music that sweeps
through his soul, these, and not your stilted
erudition, are the milk and honey of boyhood.
“I once knew a boy,” says Miss<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
Repplier, in that sparkling defense, ‘Oppression
of Notes,’ “who so delighted in
Byron’s description of the dying gladiator
that he made me read it to him over and
over again. He did not know—and I
never told him—what a gladiator was.
He did not know that it was a statue, and
not a real man described. He had not the
faintest notion of what was meant by the
Danube, or the Dacian mother or a Roman
holiday; historically and geographically,
the boy’s mind was a happy blank. There
was nothing intelligent, only a blissful
stirring of the heartstrings by reason of
strong words and swinging verse, and his
own tangle of groping thoughts.” Had
the reader stopped the course of the swinging
verse to explain these unknown words,
boyish happiness would have flown, oppression
become complete, and let us hope
sleep would have rescued the bored boy
from such an ordeal.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p>
<p>Cowley, full of good sense, is on the side
of our essayist. In his essay “On Myself”
he relates the charm of verse, falling on
his boyish ear, without comprehending
fully its purport. “I believe I can tell the
particular little chance that filled my head
first with such chimes of verse as have
never since left ringing there. For I remember
when I began to read, and to take
some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie
in my mother’s parlor (I know not by what
accident, for she herself never in her life
read any book but of devotion), but there
was wont to lie Spenser’s works; this I
happened to fall upon, and was infinitely
delighted with the stories of the knights,
giants, and monsters, and brave houses,
which I found everywhere there (though
my understanding had little to do with all
this), and by degrees with the tinkling of
the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so
that I think I had read him all over, before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
I was twelve years old, and was thus made
a poet as immediately as a child is made
an eunuch.” The charm of Miss Repplier’s
pages lies in their good sense. She is a
lover of the good and beautiful, a hater
of shams and shoddies. Everything she
touches becomes more interesting, whether
it be Gastronomy, Old Maids, Cats, Babies,
or the New York Custom House. Like
Lamb and Hazlitt, a lover of old books,
finding in them the pure silent air of
immortality, she will welcome graciously
any new book whose worth is its passport.</p>
<p>Agnes Repplier was born in the city of
brotherly love more than thirty years ago.
Her father was John Repplier, a well-known
coal merchant. Her earliest playmates
were books. Her mother a brilliant
and lovable woman, fond of books, and, as
a friend of her’s informed me, a writer of
ability, watched over and directed the
education of her more brilliant daughter.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
Under such a mother, amid scenes of culture,
Agnes grew up, finding in books a
solace for ill-health that still continues to
harry her. When she entered the arena
of authorship, by training and study she
was well equipped. At once she was
reckoned as a sovereign princess of “That
proud and humble ... Gipsey Land,”
one of the very elect of Bohemia. She
came, as Stedman says, “with gentle satire
or sparkling epigram to brush aside the
fads and fallacies of this literary <i>fin de
siècle</i>, calling upon us to return to the
simple ways of the masters.” Her charming
volumes should be in the hands of
every student of literature as a corrective
against the debasing theories and tendencies
of modern book-making. The student
will find that if she does not know all
things in heaven and on earth, she may
plead in the language of Little Breeches:</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 2em;">“I never ain’t had no show;</span></div>
<div class="verse">But I’ve got a middlin’ tight grip, sir</div>
<div class="verse">On the handful o’ things I know.”</div>
</div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="A_WORD" id="A_WORD">A WORD.</a></h2>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a><br /><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="LITERATURE_AND_OUR_CATHOLIC" id="LITERATURE_AND_OUR_CATHOLIC">LITERATURE AND OUR CATHOLIC
POOR.</a></h2>
<p>We are told, with some show of truth,
that this age shall be noted in history as one
given to the study of social problems. The
contemporary literature of a country is a
good index to what people are thinking
about. Magazines are, as a rule, for their
time, and deal with the forces upward in
men’s minds. The most cursory glance at
their contents will show the predominance
of the Social Problem treated from some
phase or other. The best minds are engaged
as partisans. Social science may be
said to be the order of the day. It has
crushed poetry to the skirts of advertising,
romance is its happy basking ground. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
drama has made it its own. There are
some, fogies of course, so says your sapient
scientist, who believe that the social science
so spasmodically treated in current literature
is but a passing fad, and that poetry
shall be restored to her old quarters, romance
amuse as of old, and the drama be
winnowed of rant, scenic sensation, and
bestial morality. These dreams may be
vain, but then even fogies have their hopes.
A branch of this science—the tree is overshadowing—treats
of the literature and the
masses. Anything about the masses interests
me.</p>
<p>When I read the other day, “Literature
and the Masses; a Social Study,” among
the contents of a <i>fin de siècle</i> magazine, I
would have pawned my wearing apparel
rather than go home without it. Its reading
was painful, as all reading must be
where the author knows less about his
subject than the ordinary reader. Later,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
another article fell in my way, dealing with
the same subject. Its author had more
material, but his use of it was clumsy. It
was while reading this article, that I noted
the utter stupidity with which things
Catholic are treated by the ordinary literary
purveyor. These ephemeral pen-wielders
seem to hold the most fantastic
notions of the Church. What Azarias says
of Emerson is true of them: “They seek
truth in every religious and philosophical
system outside of the teachings of the
Catholic Church.” They will not drink
from Rome. To correct all this author’s
errors is not my plan. In this paper I
restrict myself to a part of the same subject,
Literature and Our Catholic Poor. I
prefer an independent study to patchwork.
It is the usual thing in such studies
to present credentials. I present mine.
Five years’ life in the tenement districts of
New York and other great cities of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
Union, in full contact, from the peculiarity
of my position, with the poor. During
these years I was led to make a study of
their reading. This study, to be intelligible,
must be prefaced by a few hints on their
life and environment. It is useless to deny
the often-repeated assertion that their lot
in the great cities is hard and crushing. It
is a continual struggle for nominal existence.
The children commence work at a
premature age. Their education is meagre
and broken. Marriage is entered in early
life, without the slightest provision. To
these marriages there is little selection.
The girls have been brought up in factories,
household restraint frets their soul.
Of household economy, so necessary to the
city toiler, they know nothing. If ends
meet it is well. If not, there is trust and
sorrow. The day of their marriage means
a few stuffy rooms, badly ventilated, filled
with the most bizarre and useless furniture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
put in by shylock, who will, in the coming
years, exact ten times their value. Thus
started, children are born, puny and sickly,
prey of physician and druggist. If these
children survive, at an early age they follow
the father and mother by entering
foundries and factories to toil life’s weary
round away. When they die the family is
pauperized for years. It is a common
plaint of the tenements that “I would have
been worth something if my boy had not
died.” Every death is not only a drain on
the immediate family, but on their friends,
who are supposed to turn out and give
“the corpse a decent burial.” The decent
burial means coaches, flowers and whiskey.
The most casual observer must notice the
giant part liquor plays, in the lives of the
poor. Liquor and its concomitant, tobacco,
in the deadly form of cigarettes, are known
to the boy. He has been brought up in
that atmosphere. His father has his cheap,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
ill-smelling cigar and frothy pint for supper.
His mother and a few gossiping
friends have chased the heavy day with a
few pints “because they were dry.” He
delights in being the Mercury of the
“growler.” Hanging by the balustrade he
sips the beer, “just to taste it.” That taste,
alas, lingers through life. As he grows
older it becomes more refined. His teachers
are the sumptuous, dazzling bar-rooms
guarding each city corner, while betraying
the nation. The owners of these vice
palaces are wise in their generation. For
his stuffy home, broken furniture and
cheerless aspects, they show him wide, airy
rooms, polished furniture, bevelled glass
mirrors, dazzling light, music, gaiety, companionship,
and the illusive charm of revelry.
The reading matter in such places
is on a par with the other attractions. It
is sensational. Its authors are skilled in
the base development of the passions. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
smacks obscenity, and early dulls the intellect
to finer things. To be enmeshed in its
threads is the greatest sorrow of a young
life. When the bar-room does not allure,
there is another siren to be taken into account.
It is the promiscuous gathering at
the neighbor’s house who has been so unfortunate
as to find a music dealer to trust
him with a piano at three times its price.
Here gather the Romeos and Juliets to</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">“Sing and dance</div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And parley vous France,</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Drink beer Alanna</span></div>
<div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And play on the grand piano.”</span></div>
</div>
</div>
<p>The songs are of no literary value, sometimes
comic, sometimes sentimental, more
often with an ambiguity that is more suggestive
than downright obscenity. Of the
so-called comic, “McGinty” was a great
hit, while “After the Ball” was its equal
in the sentimental line. It is a strange
sight to see pale, flaccid, worn-out Juliet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
thrum the indifferent piano, while near her
in a dramatic posture, learned from some
melo-dramatic actor, stands twisted Romeo,
singing some sentimental song, balancing
his voice to the poor performer, and indifferent
piano. To hear such stuff—I speak
from auricular demonstration—is no small
affliction. After songs come dances, weary
night flies quickly away. Work comes
with the morrow. Sleepy and tired they
buckle on their armor and go out uncomplainingly
to tear and wear the sickly body.
Thus generation after generation passes to
the tread-mill and beyond. It is not to be
expected that the literature of such people
would be of a high grade. To say that
they have no time to read were a fallacy,
inasmuch as they do read. Here the question
arises, what do they read? I answer
that they possess a literature of their own,
both in weekly journals and published volumes.
They support, strange as it may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
seem, a school of novelists for their delectation.
These journals are a medley of blood-and-thunder
stories, far-fetched jokes,
sporting news, etiquette as she is above
stairs, marriage hints, palmistry, dress
making, now and then a page of original
topical music hemmed with fake advertising.
The point to be noted in these journals,
a shrewd business one, they are never
beyond the reader’s intelligence. Their
novels must be simple and amusing. That
is, their author must know how to spin a
story. He must amuse. Each weekly instalment
must have its comic as well as
tragic denouement. The hero must be a
villain of the most approved type, neither
wanting in courage nor in cunning. The
heroine must be on the side of the angelic,
mesmerized by the prowess of her hero.
A vast quantity of supers are constantly
on hand, in case of emergency. Murders,
suicides, broken hearts and lesser afflictions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
are of frequent occurrence. The hero may
perish at any moment, provided a more
reckless devil takes his place. Half a dozen
heroines may come to grief in one serial.
An author must be lavish. Provided he is,
style is not reckoned, and bad grammar
but adds a taking flavor. Woe be to the
editor who would inflict on his readers a
novel of the school of Henry James or Paul
Bourget. The masses hold that the primary
condition of fiction is to amuse. They
are right. These journals are carried in
ladies’ satchels, they stick out of young
men’s pockets. On ferry-boats, in street
cars, in their stuffy rooms, in the few minutes
snatched from the dinner hour they
are eagerly read. They may be crumpled
and thrust into the pocket at any moment.
No handwashing is necessary to handle
them. Their cost is light, five cents a week.
By a system of interchange a club of five
may for that cost peruse five different story<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
papers. This system is in general practice.
The greatest amount for the least money
strongly appeals to the poor. The novels
in book form are of a much lower grade
than the serials. Written by profligate men
and women, in a vile style, their only object
is to undermine morality. Falsity to
the marriage vows, deception, theft, the
catalogue of a criminal court, is strongly
inculcated as the right path. These novels,
generally in paper covers, are showy and
eye-catching. A voluptuous siren on the
cover, with an ambiguous title allures the
minor to his ruin. I have known not a
few book-sellers who passed as eminently
respectable, do a thriving trade in this class
of books. The fact that they kept the stock
in drawers in the rear of their stores told
of their conscious complicity in the destruction
and degradation of our youth. These
novels are cheap, within the reach of the
poor, a point to be noted. The question<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
arises, what can be done to counteract this
spread of pernicious literature among our
Catholic poor? There is but one answer
on the lips of those who should be heard;
fight it with good literature—yet literature
not beyond their understanding. Put in
their hands good novels, whose primary
purpose is to amuse. The good-natured
gentleman who would put into the hands
of the poor as a Christmas gift Fabiola,
Callista, Pauline Seward, etc., would make
a great mistake. These books would become
playthings for greasy babies or curled
paper to light the “evening smoke.” The
bread winners will not be bored. They
have worked hard all day, and at evening
want some kind of amusement. The book
must be nervy, a tonic. Dictionaries are
scarce in the haunts of the poor. Footnotes
are an abomination. The author must
whisk the reader along. A rapid canter,
only broken by hearty laughter or honest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
pity. Have we any Catholic novels that
will do this? It is the plaint of the know-nothing
scribes, tossing their empty skulls,
to write a capital No. From experience I
answer yes. The novels of that true writer
of boys’ stories, Father Finn, are just the
thing for the poor. They want to read of
boys that are not old men, none of your
goody-goody little nobodies. A boy is no
fool. In real life he would not chum with
your sweet little Toms, your praying,
psalm-singing Jamies, and your dying
angelic Marys. Nor shall he in books,
thank heaven. Father Finn has drawn the
boy as he is. His books would be joyfully
welcomed, if published in a cheap paper
form, say at twenty-five cents per copy.
List to the wail of the fattening Catholic
publisher, who will read that idea. It is,
however, a sane one. If Protestants can
make cheap books, thereby creating the
market, why not Catholics? Until this is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
done it is useless to cry out, as authors do,
nobody will buy my books. Yes, your
books will be bought if they are reasonable
in price, and properly placed before
the public. As it is, your books are snuffed
out by the immense amount of trash
handled by the ordinary Catholic bookseller,
and you help this by writing deep-dyed
hypocrisy of the trash-makers. Azarias
mildly expresses my idea in one of his
posthumous papers: “Catholic reviewers
must plead guilty to the impeachment of
having been in the past too laudatory of
inferior work.” The stories of that sterling
man, Malcolm Johnston, called Dukesborough
Tales, I once gave to a wretched
family. On visiting them a week after,
what delight it was to hear the health-giving
laughter they had found in them.
To another family I gave Billy Downs.
Asking how they liked them, I was told
that they were as “fine as silk.” A youth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
of fourteen, his face decidedly humorous,
volunteered the criticism that “Billy had
no grit.” During the illness of four or five
patients of mine I read the assembled
family “Chumming With a Savage,” “Joe
of Lahaina.” When I came to the final sentence
in Joe, where Charlie Stoddard leaves
him “sitting and singing in the mouth of
his grave—clothed all in death,” two of the
youngsters burst into tears, while the father
much agitated, said, “Doctor, I don’t see
how he had the heart to leave him.” They
were so much attached to the book that,
although it had been my choice old chum
in many a land, I gave it to them. Lately
I gave “Life Around Us,” a collection of
stories by Maurice F. Egan. It was a great
success. Egan has the true touch for the
masses when he wishes. Another little
story much prized was Nugent Robinson’s
“Better Than Gold.” To these might be
added in cheap form those of Marian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
Brunowe, May Crowley, Helen Sweeney, a
promising young writer, and Lelia Bugg.
How to reach the poor with these books
presents few obstacles. Cardinal Vaughan
has solved the difficulty in England. Attach
to every parish church in city and
country a library of well selected interesting
Catholic books. Let their circulation
be free of charge. The great majority of
Catholic poor attend some of the Sunday
Masses. If the library is open, they will
gladly take a book home. The reading of
this book will instil a taste. They will tell
their friends of it. It will be the subject
of many a chat. If it is cheap, not a few of
the neighbors will wish to purchase it.
Their criticism, always racy and generally
correct, will, as Birrell has pointed out in
one of his essays, be its sure pass to success.
After a year’s friendly intercourse the
library will become a necessity, and they
will gladly pay a fee for their week’s delight.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
The author that has won their hearts
will be on their lips, his new books, on
account of old ties, will be eagerly purchased
and loudly proclaimed.</p>
<p>Families that are shy and backward as
church-members, might be visited and
literature left. This I hold is priestly work.
If they come not to Christ, let us, as the
teachers of old, bring Christ to them. It
will be read. After your footsteps can be
no longer heard curiosity will come to your
assistance. The little maid will pick it up,
the parents will read. I have again and
again left those charming temperance
manifestoes of Father Mahony in homes of
squalor and misery, the outcome of weekly
drunks. These stray leaves, I am happy
to write, in many cases marked the beginning
of better things.</p>
<p>To counteract the serials is, to use an expression,
a horse of another color. Our
weeklies are, as a general rule, dull. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
poor take a squint at some of the dailies.
This squint gives them the gist of their
world. They do not care, as they will tell
you, “to be reading the same thing over
twice.” Our weeklies are too often a rehash
of the dailies. Another remark that
I often heard among them is, “that our
weeklies have too much Irish news.” They
are not wanting in patriotism to the home
of many of their fathers, yet what interest
could they be supposed to take in the long-winded
personal rivalries of Irish statesmen,
or the rank rant of the one hundred
orators that strut that unhappy isle. A
bit of McCarthy, or Sexton, will be welcomed,
but they rightly draw the line at
page after page of rhodomontade. If, instead
of this stuff, living articles were
written, short stories, poems, biographies
of eminent Catholics, their Church and her
great mission made known, then would the
poor read, and a powerful weapon against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
the serials be placed in our hands. There
are some of our weeklies that cannot be
classed under this criticism. They are
few.</p>
<p>The Ave Maria, founded and conducted
by one who is thoroughly capable, could be
easily made a great favorite with the poor.
Its contents are varied and replete with
good things. I have used it with effect.
Another and later venture is the Young
Catholic, by the Paulists, which will fill a
want. Its editor is full of sane ideas.
Boys’ stories, full of adventure, spirited
pictures, will win it a way to all young
hearts. These papers may never reach the
poor, if folding our arms we stand idly
by, expecting the masses by intuition to
know their value. Could not parish libraries
have cheap editions for free distribution
among the poorer denizens? To defray
expenses, a collection might be taken up
twice a year. No good Catholic will begrudge<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
a few cents, when he knows that it
will go to brighten the hard life of his less
fortune-favored brother. The critic who
does nothing in life but sneer may call this
Utopian. It is the old cuckoo call, known
to every man that tries to help his fellows.
Newman, Barry, Lilly, Brownson, Hecker,
Ireland, Spalding, all the glittering names
on our rosary have heard it, and went their
way, knowing full well that if the finger of
God traces their path, human obstacles are
of little weight. The plan, however, is
eminently practical. In one of the poorest
parishes in the diocese of Ogdensburgh,
it has been tried and with abundant success.
I remember well last summer with
what pleasure I heard a mountain urchin
ask his pastor, “Father, can I have the
<i>Pilot</i>?” This urchin had made the acquaintance
of James Jeffrey Roche and
Katherine E. Conway. He was in good
company. Infidelity is going to our poor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
Her weapon is the printing press. The
pulpit is well, but its arm is too short.</p>
<p>Shall we stand idly by and lose our own,
or shall we buckle on the armor of intelligent
methods as mirrored in this paper,
thereby not only delivering our own from
its coarseness and petrifaction, but carrying
the kindly light to those who know us
not? Let us remember in these days,
when socialism claims the poor, that our
Church is not alone for the cultured, it is
pre-eminently her duty to lead and guide
the masses. This, to a great extent, must
be done by the newspaper and book-stall.</p>
<p>Our Church must man the printing
press with the same zeal which animated
the Jesuit scholars, explorers and
civilizers of three hundred years ago;
“then will our enemies be as much surprised
as disheartened.”</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<div class="chapter"></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a><br /><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p>
<h2><a name="GREEN_GRAVES_IN_IRELAND" id="GREEN_GRAVES_IN_IRELAND">GREEN GRAVES IN IRELAND.</a></h2>
<div class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> WALTER LECKY,<br />
<i>Author of “Adirondack Sketches,” “Down at Caxton’s,” etc.</i><br />
————————</div>
<h3>PRESS COMMENTS:</h3>
<p>A new beam, a new factor in American Literature.—<i>Maurice
F. Egan.</i></p>
<p>Charming essays.—<i>C. Warren Stoddard.</i></p>
<p>They deserve book form.—<i>Brother Azarias.</i></p>
<p>Destined to win early recognition.—<i>R. Malcolm Johnston.</i></p>
<p>Lecky imitates himself. He is pungent, witty, humorous
and epigrammatic, with dashes of occasional eloquence.—<i>Eugene
Davis in Western Watchman.</i></p>
<p>“Green Graves in Ireland,” by Walter Lecky, is a delightful
little book.—<i>Western Watchman.</i></p>
<p>It is a well written, and pathetic tribute to the heroes who
suffered in the holy cause of freedom.—<i>Donahoe’s Magazine.</i></p>
<p>There is mingled pathos and humor in the volume.—<i>Ave
Maria.</i></p>
<p>The author’s style is bright and pungent; and this literary
flavor he preserves throughout the pages of this very attractive
book. He understands the spirit and sparkle of the Irish
mind, and he has caught a good deal of it in his jaunting car
excursions about the Irish capital.—<i>Catholic World.</i></p>
<p>A clever monograph. Walter Lecky has written exquisitely.—<i>Catholic
News, N. Y.</i></p>
<p>The book will interest all who really love the country of the
bards, and will be an excellent stimulus to young persons inclined
to forget the fame of their ancestors.—<i>Boston Pilot.</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span></p>
<p>Large literary ability.—<i>Union Times.</i></p>
<p>An important and valuable addition to the growing literature
of America.—<i>True Witness.</i></p>
<p>The paper and type of the little volume are excellent; surprisingly
so, for the low price at which it may be procured.
For the rest we can say that Mr. Lecky’s style invests his
subject with a charm which, we think, will induce the most
unwilling reader who has opened his little book to persevere
through its entire contents.—<i>American Ecclesiastical Review.</i></p>
<p>Walter Lecky is comparatively a new name in literature, but
it is one destined to stand for good and beautiful things,
especially the Catholic readers. His Adirondack sketches in
the Catholic World are one of the brightest features of that
excellent magazine.—<i>Boston Pilot.</i></p>
<hr class="full" />
<div class="tnote"><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b> Text uses “her’s” where most would expect “hers.”
Additionally, many of the quotation marks do not match. They were retained
as printed.</div>
<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 51886 ***</div>
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