Part 1

Chapter 13,653 wordsPublic domain

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FAMOUS AUTHORS--MEN

FAMOUS AUTHORS (MEN)

E. F. HARKINS

Author of "Famous Authors (Women)," "The Schemers," etc.

Illustrated

L·C·Page·&·Company Boston Publishers

Fourth Impression, February, 1906

Colonial Press Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U.S.A.

PREFACE

_The aim of this book is to present to the reading public sketches of some of its American literary heroes. There are heroes young and old; but in literature, especially, age has little to do with favorites. At the same time, it will be noted that the subjects of these sketches occupy places in or near the centre of the literary stage. The lately dead, like Maurice Thompson; the hero of the last generation, like Edward Everett Hale; the young man who has made his first successful flight--these do not come within the scope of the present work. So, if some reader miss his favorite, let him understand that at least there was no malice in the exclusion._

_A part of the aim has been to present the social or personal as well as the professional side of the authors. Many of the anecdotes commonly told of well-known novelists are apocryphal or imaginary. Care, therefore, has been taken to separate the wheat from the chaff. Wherever it was possible, preference has been given the statements of the authors themselves._

_The sketches are arranged chronologically, that is, in the order of the authors' first publications. No other arrangement, indeed, would seem fair among so gifted and popular a company, writing for a public that discriminates while it encourages and enjoys._

CONTENTS

_Page_

Preface 5 William Dean Howells 11 Bret Harte 27 Mark Twain 43 "Lew" Wallace 59 George W. Cable 75 Henry James 91 Francis Richard Stockton 107 Joel Chandler Harris 123 S. Weir Mitchell 139 Robert Grant 155 F. Marion Crawford 169 James Lane Allen 185 Thomas Nelson Page 201 Richard Harding Davis 215 John Kendrick Bangs 231 Hamlin Garland 247 Paul Leicester Ford 263 Robert Neilson Stephens 279 Charles D. G. Roberts 299 Winston Churchill 317

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

_Page_

William Dean Howells _Frontispiece_ Bret Harte 27 George W. Cable 75 Francis Richard Stockton 107 S. Weir Mitchell 139 Robert Grant 155 F. Marion Crawford 169 James Lane Allen 185 Thomas Nelson Page 201 Richard Harding Davis 215 John Kendrick Bangs 231 Hamlin Garland 247 Robert Neilson Stephens 279 Charles G. D. Roberts 299 Winston Churchill 317

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Mr. Howells has reached that point of life and success where he can afford to sit down and look back. But he is not that sort of man. He will probably continue to work and to look forward until, in the words of Hamlet, he shuffles off this mortal coil.

William Dean Howells was born in Martin's Ferry, Belmont County, Ohio, March 1, 1837. He has therefore reached the ripe age of sixty-four. When he was three years old his father moved from Martin's Ferry to Hamilton and bought _The Intelligencer_, a weekly paper. Nine years afterward he sold _The Intelligencer_ and moved to Dayton, becoming proprietor of the _Dayton Transcript_. This paper had been a semi-weekly, but Mr. Howells changed it to a daily; and his son William went to work for him. It was William's business to rise at four in the morning and sell the paper about town. But the _Transcript_ proved a failure, so the Howells family left Dayton and moved into the country on the banks of the Miami, where for a year a log-cabin was their home.

Mr. Howells tells a characteristic story of those struggling days, "When I was a boy," he said some years ago, "I worked on my father's paper. Among other things, I set type. Those were days of great struggle for all of us. The paper was not profitable, and ours was a large family. My tastes and ambitions were all literary, and I wanted to write a story. Instead of writing it and then setting it up in type, I composed it at the case and put it in type as I invented it. We printed a chapter of it weekly in the paper, and so it was published as fast as I got it up. I tried to get three or four chapters ready in advance, but I could not do it. All I could possibly accomplish was to have one installment ready every time the paper went to press. This went on for a long while, and that story became a burden to me. It stretched out longer and longer, but I could see no way to end it. Every week I resolved that that story should be finished in the next week's paper; every week it refused to be finished. Finally I became positively panic stricken, and ended it somehow or other. The experience discouraged me to some extent. I made up my mind that I could not invent."

In 1851, when William was fourteen, the family moved from the country to Columbus, where his father got employment as a clerk in the House of Representatives, and also as a compositor on the _Ohio State Journal_. William went to work as a reporter on the _Journal_. Five years later he became the Columbus correspondent of the _Cincinnati Gazette_. In 1859 he took the position of news editor of the _Ohio State Journal_. Later that same year Howells senior, from whom the son evidently inherited his industry and ambition, bought the _Ashtabula Sentinel_ and transferred the property to Jefferson, whither the family moved. William took the position of subeditor of the _Sentinel_.

From time to time poems by young Howells had appeared in the Ohio newspapers. Some of his verses, too, had even been published by _The Atlantic Monthly_. In 1860, in collaboration with John J. Piatt, he published his first volume of verse--"Poems by Two Friends." In 1860, also, Howells's "Life of Abraham Lincoln" was published. With the earnings of this immediately popular work our author journeyed to the East by way of Canada. In Boston he first met James Russell Lowell, who was then editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_. Afterward he visited the publishers, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, primarily in connection with one of his poems which _The Atlantic_ then had in hand, "The Pilot's Story." Mr. Fields introduced Howells to Mr. Ticknor, "who, I fancied," says Howells in his "Literary Friends and Acquaintance," "had not then read my poem; but he seemed to know what it was from the junior partner, and he asked me whether I had been paid for it. I confessed that I had not, and then he got out a chamois-leather bag, and took from it five half-eagles in gold and laid them on the green cloth top of the desk, in much the shape and of much the size of the Great Bear. I have never since felt myself paid so lavishly for any literary work, though I have had more for a single piece than the twenty-five dollars that dazzled me in this constellation. The publisher seemed aware of the poetic character of the transaction; he let the pieces lie a moment, before he gathered them up and put them into my hand, and said, 'I always think it is pleasant to have it in gold.'"

While making his residence in Boston, Howells met Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hawthorne and Emerson. Emerson rather discouraged him by remarking as they were saying good-bye to each other, that one might very well give a pleasant hour to poetry "now and then."

When the young Ohioan met Mr. Fields again he proposed himself as assistant editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_. Mr. Fields replied that if the post had not just been filled the intrepid poet certainly should have had it.

"He was charmingly kind," writes Mr. Howells of the interview; "he entered with the sweetest interest into the story of my economic life, which had been full of changes and chances already. But when I said very seriously that I was tired of these fortuities, and would like to be settled in something he asked with dancing eyes,

"'Why, how old are you?'

"'I am twenty-three,' I answered, and then the laughing fit took him again.

"'Well,' he said, 'you begin young, out there!'"

From 1861 to 1865, during the War of the Rebellion, Mr. Howells was United States Consul at Venice, which position was a reward for his life of Lincoln. In Venice he wrote occasionally for American newspapers; and there he also wrote the articles of which, eventually, his delightful "Venetian Life" and "Italian Journeys" were composed.

Returning to this country, he re-entered the newspaper world, working mostly for the _New York Tribune_ and the _New York Times_; and he also became a regular contributor to _The Nation_. In 1866 he achieved his great ambition, Mr. Fields appointing him assistant editor of _The Atlantic Monthly_. From that year until 1886, when he moved to New York, he lived on terms of enviable intimacy with the group of great writers which made Boston the one brilliant literary centre the country has ever seen.

However, this success did not come until after many defeats. Mr. Howells's letters from Venice were published regularly in the _Boston Advertiser_; but elsewhere, for the most part, the young author had met little encouragement. It was only just before he left Venice, when Lowell, then, with Prof. Charles Eliot Norton, joint editor of the _North American Review_, accepted Howells's article on "Recent Italian Comedy," that the cloud broke. Lowell accepted the manuscript in "one of his loveliest letters," as Mr. Howells says. "His message" the author confesses, "came after years of thwarted endeavor, and reinstated me in the belief that I could still do something in literature. To be sure, the letters in the _Advertiser_ had begun to make their impression; among the first great pleasures they brought me was a recognition from my diplomatic chief in Vienna; but I valued my admission to the _North American_ peculiarly because it was Lowell let me in, and because I felt that in his charge it must be the place of highest honor." Financially, the encouragement was slight. The _North American_ was "as poor as it was proud"; and it paid Howells for his article at the rate of only two dollars a page. From the _Advertiser_ he had been paid at the rate of about a dollar a thousand words. It was on March 19, 1866, his twenty-ninth birthday, that the vagrant author began his work on _The Atlantic_ at a salary of fifty dollars a week.

"The whole affair," Mr. Howells writes, "was conducted by Fields with his unfailing tact and kindness, but it could not be kept from me that the qualification I had as practical printer for the work was most valued, if not the most valued, and that as proof-reader I was expected to make it avail on the side of economy. Somewhere in life's feast the course of humble-pie must always come in; and if I did not wholly relish this bit of it, I dare say it was good for me, and I digested it perfectly."

It was a most delicate position which he occupied on _The Atlantic_ from 1866 to 1872, when Fields withdrew and Mr. Howells became sole editor. In the beginning, as he says himself, he ventured to distinguish mediocrity in some verses by Whittier. "He sent me a poem," says Howells, "and I had the temerity to return it, and beg him for something else. He magnanimously refrained from all show of offence, and after a while, when he had printed the poem elsewhere, he gave me another. By this time, I perceived that I had been wrong, not as to the poem returned, but as to my function regarding him and such as he. I had made my reflections, and never again did I venture to pass upon what contributors of his quality sent me. I took it, and printed it, and praised the gods; and even now I think that with such men it was not my duty to play the censor in the periodical which they had made what it was. They had set it in authority over American literature, and it was not for me to put myself in authority over them. Their fame was in their own keeping, and it was not my part to guard it against them."

At another time, when a choice was accidentally enforced between a poem by Holmes and a poem by Emerson, Mr. Howells had the courage to request Emerson that his poem might be held over for the next number. Emerson wrote back to "return the proofs and break up the forms." "I could not go to this iconoclastic extreme with the electrotypes of the magazine," says Mr. Howells, "but I could return the proofs. I did so, feeling that I had done my possible, and silently grieving that there could be such ire in heavenly minds."

From 1872 until 1880 Mr. Howells was sole editor of _The Atlantic_; and the rich social and literary experience which he gained during that term he has embodied in that most delightful of American bookmen's chronicles, "Literary Friends and Acquaintance."

Mr. Howells's first piece of fiction, "Their Wedding Journey," was published in 1872, the year that he became sole editor of _The Atlantic_. Seven years ago in a newspaper interview, Mr. Howells made this statement in regard to this work: "I wrote 'Their Wedding Journey' without intending to make it a piece of fiction or considering it to be one after I had finished it. It was simply a book of American travel, which I hoped to make attractive by a sugar coating of romance. I was very familiar with the route over which I had taken the bridal couple, and I knew it was beautiful, and, like most American scenery, was not appreciated. The book was more of a success than I expected it to be. I attributed its success to the descriptions of American scenery and places. I gave it to a family friend and asked her to mark those parts of it which she thought real incidents. I was very much astonished and greatly pleased to find, when she returned it, that she had marked some passages which were purely invention. This made me ask myself if I might not hope to write a novel some day."

The question was evidently answered in the affirmative, for after 1872 Mr. Howells's output of fiction became regular and profuse. His novels have all been more or less popular. He is fondest himself of "A Modern Instance," we are told; and he regards "A Hazard of New Fortunes" as his best novel. It may safely be said that the book which it was the greatest pleasure to him to write is "Literary Friends and Acquaintance," published late last year. Altogether his works number about seventy-five. Mr. Howells is a plodder. "I believe," he once said to an interviewer, "in the inspiration of hard work." As a rule all successful authors have held this belief.

Mr. Howells resigned from _The Atlantic_ in 1880 to engage in general literary work. Six years later he formally transferred his allegiance from Boston to New York by accepting charge of "The Editor's Study" in _Harper's_. Afterward, for a time, he was editor of _The Cosmopolitan_. Late in 1900 he resumed his editorial connection with _Harper's_.

Although admired the world over, and dignified with the title of Doctor of Laws, which he got from Yale in 1871, Mr. Howells is hospitable and genial, just as Dr. Holmes was; and many young writers with more or less glittering names owe much to his counsel and his encouragement.

BRET HARTE

Bret Harte has been called the writer of the best short stories in the English language. A literary court of arbitration would doubtless find that the best of his short stories are without superiors. It should not be forgotten that the reading public is still under the magic spell which Mr. Harte wove more than a third of a century ago with "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "Plain Language from Truthful James," "Tennessee's Partner," "Miggles" and the other works which first called attention to the author's still unquestioned genius. "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "Under the Redwoods" mark the present extremes of one of the most romantic chapters in our literary history.

Some years ago, when the popular writer and his wife were spending the summer at Newport, a woman said confidentially to Mrs. Harte, "What is your husband's real name?" It evidently did not seem natural to the inquirer that an author could always have borne such a crisp and striking name; and the same idea, that the name must be simply a happy pseudonym, has, we believe, struck many others. The idea is partly wrong and partly right. Francis Brett Harte was his name originally. That form was changed to Francis Bret Harte, then to F. Bret Harte, and finally to the attractive form which long ago endeared itself to the whole English-reading world. For it is well known, undoubtedly, that the Bret Harte stories are quite as popular in England and in the British colonies as in the United States; that Germany yields to none in her admiration for them; and that one of them, "Gabriel Conroy," has been printed in at least fourteen languages. Indeed, a quarter of a century ago the name of Bret Harte was as powerful the world over as was Mr. Kipling's a few years since. Perhaps the felicitous brevity of the name was one of the elements of that power.

Bret Harte was born in Albany, N. Y., on August 25, 1839. His father was at that time a teacher in the Albany Female Seminary. Bret was still in boyhood when his father died. The boy, who had received an ordinary public school education, went to California with his mother in 1854. The Golden State was then one enormous mining-camp. The laws were largely unwritten. A passion either for gold or for adventure had taken possession of thousands of persons and thrown them together in one of the wildest parts of the world. In this exciting school of life young Harte studied his first lessons of life. For three years he was thrown hither and thither, with his eyes and his ears wide open, and with his mind sponging up the lively incidents which, through his skillful pen, have since become the idyls of the pioneer West, with all its vice and virtue, its heroes and cravens, its showy wealth and its heart-touching poverty. For a year he was an express rider, with a route lying among the ravines and gulches of the northern part of the State; and what he had not learned by his own observation he learned during this period from other observers. This was the time when Yuba Bill and the other heroic road-agents took form in his imagination. At another time he picked up the trade of compositor in a newspaper office in Eureka; and at still another time he went out prospecting, and there was a sign of later days in the fact that before the three years of his uncertainty came to an end he taught school for a short while. It was then that, for the first time, he indulged the literary instincts awakened by his experience in the newspaper office in Eureka. This budding age is outlined in "M'liss."

In 1857 the young man settled down in San Francisco as a compositor in the office of the _Golden Era_, a weekly periodical. A few round-about-town sketches called "A Boy's Dog," "Sidewalkings," and "In a Balcony," submitted most humbly and respectfully to the editor, brought to the ambitious printer the reward of an invitation to join the editorial staff. With the acceptance of the invitation began a most brilliant literary career. We are indebted to a friend of the author's for the statement: "Those were busy days, and much of the matter ground out in that time of probation is as pregnant with genius and wit as any that he has seen fit to retain in his complete edition." But the edition is not yet complete, we may remark.

When, not long afterward, a weekly called _The Californian_ was established in San Francisco, the new writer went over to it enthusiastically. In the columns of this periodical and of some of the daily papers appeared the poems and the sketches which rounded out Mr. Harte's "time of probation." _The Californian_ was the means of acquainting him with Mark Twain, also a new figure on the literary horizon. Indeed, it has been said by men who knew the little group of enthusiasts connected with _The Californian_ that it was Harte who induced the Mississippi pilot first to put to use his genius as a humorist.

This catch-penny work of the days of _The Californian_ was profitable to Harte simply as experience. Like many another story-teller, he came to the conclusion that steady employment, with a few leisure hours in the day, would do more to advance him than anything else, and so he found work, first in the United States Surveyor General's office, then with the United States Marshal, and later in the mint. Shortly before going to the mint he was introduced to Easterners by a sketch in _The Atlantic Monthly_, "The Legend of Monte Diablo," which introduction was due largely to the patronage of Jessie Benton Fremont, one of the most cultivated women in California. His secretaryship at the mint, which began in 1864, led to a very productive period, some of the fruits of which are "John Burns of Gettysburg," "The Pliocene Skull," "The Society on the Stanislow" and the remarkable "Condensed Novels," in the writing of which, as one of the old-time critics remarked "a new set of faculties was required."