Part 12
But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. A good reason for marking favourite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail. You have the pleasure of going over the old ground, and recalling both the intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.
Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils. One should have one’s own bookshelves, which should not have doors, glass windows, or keys; they should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye. The best of mural decorations is books; they are more varied in colour and appearance than any wall-paper, they are more attractive in design, and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities, so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends. The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing. You do not have to read them all. Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books; and I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers. “Have you read all of these books?” “Some of them twice.” This reply is both true and unexpected.
There are of course no friends like living, breathing, corporeal men and women; my devotion to reading has never made me a recluse. How could it? Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality. But book-friends have this advantage over living friends; you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it. The great dead are beyond our physical reach, and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible; as for our personal friends and acquaintances, you cannot always see them. Perchance they are asleep, or away on a journey. But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for YOU. They “laid themselves out,” they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favourable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their inmost heart of heart. The “real Charles Dickens” is in his novels, not in his dressing-room.
Everyone should have a few reference books, carefully selected, and within reach. I have a few that I can lay my hands on without leaving my chair; this is not because I am lazy, but because I am busy.
One should own an Authorised Version of the Bible in big type, a good one-volume dictionary, the one-volume _Index and Epitome_ to the _Dictionary of National Biography_, a one-volume History of England and another of the United States, Ryland’s _Chronological Outlines of English Literature_, Whitcomb’s _Chronological Outlines of American Literature_, and other works of reference according to one’s special tastes and pursuits. These reference books should be, so far as possible, up to date.
The works of poets, dramatists, novelists, essayists, historians, should be selected with care, and should grow in number in one’s private library from the dawn of youth to the day of death.
First editions are an expensive luxury, but are more interesting to the average mind than luxurious bindings. When you hold in your hand a first edition of the seventeenth century, you are reading that book in its proper time-setting; you are reading it as the author’s contemporaries read it; maybe your copy was handled by the author himself. Furthermore, unless you have paid too much for it, it is usually a good investment; it increases in value more rapidly than stocks and shares, and you have the advantage of using it. It is great fun to search book-catalogues with an eye to bargains; it is exciting to attend an auction sale.
But of course most of us must be content to buy standard authors, living and dead, in modern editions. Three qualities are well to bear in mind. In getting any book, get the complete edition of that book; not a clipped, or condensed, or improved or paraphrased version. Second, always get books in black, clear, readable type. When you are young, you don’t mind; youth has the eyes of eagles. But later, you refuse to submit to the effort--often amounting to pain--involved in reading small type, and lines set too close together. Third, get volumes that are light in weight. It is almost always possible to secure this inestimable blessing in standard authors. Some books are so heavy that to read them is primarily a gymnastic, rather than mental exercise; and if you travel, and wish to carry them in your bag or trunk, they are an intolerable burden. Refuse to submit to this. There was a time when I could tell, merely by “hefting” it, whether a book had been printed in England or in America; but American publishers have grown in grace, and today many American books are easy to hold.
Some books must be bought in double column; but avoid this wherever possible, and buy such books only when economy makes it necessary to have the complete works of the author in one volume. A one-volume Shakespeare is almost a necessity; but it should be used for reference, as we use a dictionary, never for reading. Get Shakespeare in separate volumes, one play at a time. It is better to have some of an author’s works in attractive form, than to have them complete in a cumbrous or ugly shape.
Remember that for the price of one ticket to an ephemeral entertainment, you can secure a book that will give strength and pleasure to your mind all your life. Thus I close by saying two words to boys and girls, men and women: BUY BOOKS.
XLV
THE GREATEST COMMON DIVISOR
Some distinguished novelists are like lofty peaks. Few ascend them and those who do breathe rarefied air. There are writers whose fame is apparently secure who have never had many readers, and there are writers who have an enormous public and no fame. George Meredith and Henry James were men of genius, and there will always be enough people of taste to save some of their books from oblivion; but neither of these authors made much money. Both Meredith and James would have liked to have a million readers; perhaps it is to their credit that they made no compromises to increase the sales of their works, perhaps they could not have succeeded in such an undertaking had they tried.
While in the long run it is popularity that determines a writer’s fame--not only Shakespeare, but every first rate English poet has today many thousands of readers--there are also “trashy” books which sell like gasolene, and there are trashy books which do not sell at all. It is a comforting thought that the majority of trashy books have a smaller sale than masterpieces, and that the best book ever written has had, has, and will have the largest sale of all.
It won’t do to prefer posterity to popularity; posterity is more cruel to the average writer than are his contemporaries. Shakespeare was the most popular Elizabethan dramatist; Ben Jonson, the foremost press agent of his time, said that his friend Shakespeare had surpassed all the writers of Greece and Rome, which was exactly what John Dryden, the foremost press agent of his time, said of his contemporary, Milton. Gray’s _Elegy_, Byron’s _Childe Harold_, Tennyson’s _In Memoriam_, Kipling’s _Recessional_, were popular two weeks after their publication, and they are popular now. In the long run the best books have the largest sales.
In every age, however, there are certain novelists of prodigious vogue, whose works nevertheless are to readers of good taste negligible. The common people read them gladly and the Scribes and Pharisees regard them with scorn. When our high school teachers and junior college professors wish to relieve their systems of accumulated bile, they pour out before their sceptical pupils bitter denunciations of Harold Bell Wright, the late Gene Stratton Porter and Zane Grey. They try to persuade their flocks that the books by these writers are not interesting; but the flocks know that they are, and instead of despising these novelists, they lose confidence in their instructors.
Far be it from me to pretend that Mr. Wright and Mr. Grey are literary artists, or to enter the lists as a champion of their works. What I have read of them has not left me with an insatiable appetite for more. But here is a fact of interest to students of books and of human nature--of the “works” of Porter and of Wright over nine million copies have been sold, and as we rate five readers to every copy, each of these two worthies has an audience of forty-five million readers. What does this mean? Many will say it means that the public loves trash. I don’t believe it; the majority of books are trash, and the majority of books do not sell. Some critics and some unsuccessful writers say that they could write just the same sort of thing if they would stoop to it; I don’t believe it. The financial rewards of popularity are so great that many writers would produce tales of adventure if they were sure of a million readers.
It is possible that boys and girls read these books because of their good qualities rather than because of their defects. Why is it that these authors are Greatest Common Divisors? Why do they make the largest appeal to the largest number of people?
Well, in the first place they are novelists, and the foremost of recent novelists, Thomas Hardy, says that the novel should tell a story. The average school-boy knows that a book by Wright, Porter or Grey will have a good story. The majority of our novelists either will not or can not tell a story. All they have is a time-plot, beginning with the smells the baby had in his cradle, of no interest to any one except the novelist, going on with his fights and loves at school, etc., etc. Most people are like the Sultan in the Arabian Nights, they love a good story; Wright, Porter and Grey furnish it. The lives of most boys and girls are not romantic or unusual; in the novel they get an escape from life, a change of air, a vacation; and there is nothing boys love more than a vacation. Again, however deficient in conduct boys and girls may be, they instinctively love courage, honour, truth, beauty, magnanimity; the novels of the Terrible Three all work for righteousness. In the eternal conflict between good and evil, these Greatest Common Divisors are on the right side; even if they do not know much about style, or much about psychology, or much about subtlety of motive, they do know the difference between right and wrong, something that some much bepraised novelists seem to have forgotten or to think unimportant.
I do not believe the majority of supercilious critics and other cultivated mature readers began in early youth by reading great books exclusively; I think they read _Jack Harkaway_, and _Old Sleuth_, and the works of Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. From these enchanters they learned a thing of importance--the delight of reading. Once having learned that having found that a book, easily procurable, is the key to happy recreation, they obtained a never-failing resource of happiness.
A similar thing is observable in poetry. If a boy learns to love highly exciting narrative poetry, or pretty sentiments set to easy tunes, it is more probable that he will later love great poetry than if he never caught the lilt of words in youth.
Nothing that I have said is at variance with one of my oft-expressed beliefs--those parents who are not only interested in the welfare of their children, but are capable of setting them a good example, do not need to use the Greatest Common Divisor so often. They can by sympathetic intercourse with their children, and by patience, bring them up from the start on the Bible, Shakespeare, Bunyan, Swift, Defoe and other writers of genius; but a large number of boys and girls come to our schools from uncultivated homes, and from parents who are stupid, or selfish, or silly; these children must learn the magic of books, and it is my belief that the makers of exciting stories, with sentiment laid on thick, with heroes and heroines who are brave, honourable and virtuous are performing a public service.
XLVI
THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME
Baseball is American in its origin, development and area. It is also American in its dynamic qualities of speed and force, and in the shortness of time required to play a full game and reach a decision. Americans do not love serial games like cricket; in literature they are better at writing short stories than at novels, and they enjoy games where a verdict is soon reached.
Looking back over the history of this national pastime, I can remember when the pitcher was allowed nine balls before losing his man, and one year in the last century it took four strikes to retire the batsman. I can also remember when a foul ball caught on the first bound was “out,” when a foul tip--often successfully imitated by clever catchers--was “out,” and I played the game many years before an uncaught foul was a strike. In order to have a wider radius for fouls, the catcher used to stand far back, moving up behind the bat only after the second strike, or when bases had the tenancy of opponents. Every advance in the rules has been in the direction of speed; and at present the game seems unimprovable.
Nearly every game has some inherent defect; as putting is sixty-five per cent of golf, so pitching is sixty-five per cent of baseball. Moral: Be a good putter, and see that your nine has a good pitcher.
Pitching seems to be a greater physical and mental strain than in the last century, although the box artist does not pitch so many balls in the average game as he used to. In spite of that fact, Radbourne of Providence, who was the greatest professional pitcher I ever saw, won the national championship for his team in 1884 by pitching every day for a long period. And his team-mate, the late John M. Ward, who afterwards joined New York, told me that in 1879 he pitched sixty-six consecutive games! The universal disease of nerves, from which no twentieth century American is exempt, is probably responsible for the more careful treatment of pitchers today.
On July 23, 1884, the Providence club, then in the National league, was crippled for pitchers. Radbourne went into the box from that date until September 26 when he had won the National league pennant, daily, except August 2, 18, 20. He pitched thirty-six games during that period, twenty-two on consecutive days, and winning eighteen. Of the thirty-six, he won thirty-one, lost four, and tied one.
Tim Keefe in 1888 broke Radbourne’s record for straight games won, by winning nineteen, and Marquard in 1912 equalled Keefe’s. Next to Radbourne comes Joe Wood, with sixteen straight, won in 1912.
Radbourne’s total feat for the 1884 season of pitching seventy-seven games (seventy-four National league championships and three world series, winning three straight in the world series--no other pitcher was used) is another record that stands.
The greatest baseball player of all time is Tyrus Raymond Cobb, of Georgia. He not only holds an unexampled batting record, his speed in the outfield was so great that he was moved from right to centre, and in his base-running it is not much to say that he raised the art to a higher plane. Ordinarily, the best of players was content to steal second, but if Cobb saw that the ball was not going to beat him to the second bag, he kept right on to third. The bewildered second baseman, who naturally had a psychological caesura when the attempted play failed, had to begin all over again in order to catch his parting guest at third. And, flustered as he was by the sheer audacity of the thing, he was apt to be wild. Cobb capitalised his reputation; he knew the basemen were all “laying for him,” and owing to that curse which has always afflicted humanity, which makes it more difficult to do a thing in proportion to one’s desire to do it, they found it more of a task to retire Cobb than to retire anyone else. If they had not known it was Cobb, they could have got him. Mr. Cobb told me once that it was largely a matter of mind reading; he had to out-guess his opponents, he had to know what they were going to do. Certainly his stealing of bases has been phenomenal; he would steal first base if he could.
His ambitious, fiery, high-strung disposition, which is largely responsible for his success, has also caused him to lose his temper on the field. This is regrettable, and of course, must be punished. And yet I have some sympathy for these lapses, and do not condemn them unqualifiedly as some colder judges do. The anxiety to win is what enrages a player when things go wrong, and I fully understand it though I recognise its sinfulness. Although I myself was very carefully brought up by a pious father and mother, and although I had the unspeakable advantage of being a Yale graduate, I once threw a bat at an umpire when he called me out on strikes. In order to atone for this sin, I have often--like Doctor Johnson--stood unprotected in the rain, when I had no umbrella.
The greatest baseball pitcher in Yale’s history was Amos Alonzo Stagg, of the class of 1888. He won the championship over both Harvard and Princeton five successive years, pitching in every championship game. He headed the batting order, was a fine base-runner, and in minor games, played behind the bat, on the bases and in the outfield. He knew baseball thoroughly. He never had great speed, or wide curves; but he had marvellous control and a memory that was uncanny. If a batsman faced him once, Stagg never forgot him, and thereafter never gave that batsman anything he wanted.
Carter, of the class of ’95, was a great pitcher and all-round ball player, as different in other respects from Stagg as could well be imagined. Stagg was very short; Carter was six foot four. Carter had blinding speed with tremendous curves. But if you compare his record of championships with that of his predecessor, you will see why I rate him second to Stagg. These two men, are, I think, Yale’s foremost box heroes.
Baseball is not so spectacular as football, but in one respect it has a great advantage over its more lusty rival. Everyone sees what happens in baseball; the spectator sees every play, and he knows instantly the reason for every success and every failure. In football the ball is concealed in the line, very few can see exactly what has happened, and no one knows whether a run or a touchdown is going to count or not, until the official has given his consent; and if he withholds his approval, and the ball is brought back, the spectators do not know why.
XLVII
TEN SIXTY-SIX
All persons who speak the English language should never forget the year 1066, for although it bloomed and faded long ago, it was an important event in our lives. In that year William the Conqueror sailed across the English Channel, landed on the south coast of England, and his descendants and those of his party are there yet.
No wonder the British are proud of their naval and military history. England is separated from the continent by only twenty miles; and yet since 1066 not a single person has got into England and stayed there without an invitation. For nearly nine hundred years England has successfully repelled boarders. Many able and determined foes devoted all their energies to realise their heart’s desire. The Spanish Armada was a grandiose war-fleet, but Sir Francis Drake and the surface of the Channel that has made so many tourists seasick, were too powerful a combination for the gallant Spaniards. The dream of Napoleon was to invade and possess England; the nearest he ever got to it was St. Helena. There is an enormous column at Boulogne which was erected to “commemorate the intention of Napoleon to invade England.” I knew that intentions were often used as pavingstones in a certain locality; but, like Browning’s futile lovers in _The Statue and the Bust_, the immobility of the commemoration is an ironical commentary. In the World War, the Central Powers were well-equipped for an expeditionary force on land, water and air; the best-selling novel in Germany in 1916 was called _General Hindenburg’s March into London_, but it was a work of the imagination.
In reading Tennyson’s play _Harold_, it is interesting to see that his sympathies are all with the Saxon king; and it is well to remember that William could not have conquered England had not Harold been engaged in a fatal civil war with his own brother Tostig. Was there ever a more suicidal folly? When William landed, Harold was fighting away up in the North in what is now Yorkshire; and he had to bring his army down to the South coast through incredibly bad roads, and there meet the First Soldier of Europe.
However and whatever Tennyson may have thought, William’s victory was the best thing that ever happened to England and to those who now speak English. The battle of Hastings meant much to Americans. Not only was William a statesman and law-and-order man, he made English a world language. By the addition of the Romance languages to Anglo-Saxon, he doubled the richness of our vocabulary; English is a gorgeous hash of Teutonic and Latin tongues. But William did far more for us than that. Anglo-Saxon, the language spoken by Harold in London, is more unlike the language spoken by King George V than the language of Virgil in Rome is unlike the language spoken by Mussolini. Anglo-Saxon is a difficult language, as difficult for a beginner as German; furthermore, it is inflected. William, although he did not know it, made English the universal language, the clearing-house of human speech in the twentieth century. It is easier for an American to learn either French or German than it is for a German to learn French or a Frenchman to learn German. Not only are there many words in English which are like French words, but the most blessed result of this victory in 1066 was the eventual simplification of English grammar and syntax.