Part 9

To meet Maurice Hewlett at his home at Broad Chalke, a little English village nearly ten miles from a railroad station, and to walk with him in his garden, one might recognize the author of _The Forest Lovers_; but an afternoon with him at a London club would develop another side which was less himself. Instead of discussing flowers and French memoirs and biography in a delightfully whimsical mood, Hewlett’s slight, wiry figure became tense, his manner alert, his eyes keen and watchful. In the country he was the dreamer, the bohemian, wholly detached from the world outside; in the city he was confident and determined in approaching any subject, his voice became crisp and decisive, his bearing was that of the man of the world.

His early life was more or less unhappy, due partly to his precociousness which prevented him from fitting in with youth of his own age. This encouraged him to reach beyond his strength and thus find disappointment.

“I was never a boy,” he said once, “except possibly after the time when I should have been a man. As I look back on my youth, it was filled with discouragements.”

The classics fascinated him, and he absorbed Dante. Then Shelley and Keats shared the place of the Italian poet in his heart. Even after he married, he continued to gratify his love of Bohemia, and his wife wandered with him through Italy, with equal joy; while in England they camped out together in the New Forest,--the scene of _The Forest Lovers_.

The peculiar style which Hewlett affected in many of his volumes resulted, he told me, from his daily work in the Record Office in London, as Keeper of Land Revenue Records and Enrolments, during which period he studied the old parchments, dating back to William the Conqueror. In this respect his early experience was not unlike that of Austin Dobson’s, and just as the work in the Harbours Department failed to kill Dobson’s poetic _finesse_, so did Hewlett rise above the deadly grind of ancient records and archives. In fact it was during this period that Hewlett produced _Pan and the Young Shepherd_, which contains no traces of its author’s archaic environment.

One point of sympathy that drew us closely together was our mutual love for Italy. My first desire to know Maurice Hewlett better was after reading his _Earthwork Out of Tuscany_, _Little Novels of Italy_, and _The Road in Tuscany_. I have always preferred these volumes to any of his later ones, as to me they have seemed more spontaneous and more genuine expressions of himself. We were talking about Italy, one day, when he made a remark which caused me to suggest that what he said was the expression of a modern humanist. Hewlett was obviously surprised yet pleased by my use of this expression.

“I don’t often meet any one interested in the subject of humanism,” he said. “It is one of my hobbies.”

I explained my association with Doctor Guido Biagi, librarian of the Laurenziana Library at Florence, and the work I had done there in connection with my designs for a special face of type, based upon the beautiful hand letters of the humanistic scribes (see _page 16_). With that introduction we discussed the great importance of the humanistic movement as the forerunner and essence of the Renaissance. We talked of Petrarch, the father of humanism, and of the courageous fight he and his sturdy band of followers made to rescue the classics. We both had recently read Philippe Monnier’s _Le Quattrocento_, which gave additional interest to our discussion.

“Monnier is the only writer I have ever read who has tried to define humanism,” Hewlett continued. “He says it is not only the love of antiquity, but the worship of it,--a worship carried so far that it is not limited to adoration alone, but which forces one to reproduce.”

“And the humanist,” I added, picking up the quotation from Monnier, which I knew by heart, “is not only the man who knows intimately the ancients and is inspired by them; it is he who is so fascinated by their magic spell that he copies them, imitates them, rehearses their lessons, adopts their models and their methods, their examples and their gods, their spirit and their tongue.”

“Well, well!” he laughed; “we _have_ struck the same street, haven’t we! But does that exactly express the idea to you? It isn’t antiquity we worship, but rather the basic worth for which the ancients stand.”

“Monnier refers to the obsession that comes from constant contact with the learning of the past, and the atmosphere thus created,” I replied. “Only last year Biagi and I discussed that very point, sitting together in his luxuriant garden at Castiglioncello, overlooking the Gulf of Leghorn. The ‘basic worth’ you mention is really Truth, and taking this as a starting point, we worked out a modern application of Monnier’s definition:

_“The humanist is one who holds himself open to receive Truth, unprejudiced as to its source, and, after having received Truth, realizes his obligation to give it out again, made richer by his personal interpretation.”_

“There is a definition with a present application,” Hewlett exclaimed heartily. “I like it.--Did you have that in mind when you called me a modern humanist, just now?”

“No one could read _Earthwork Out of Tuscany_ and think otherwise,” I insisted.

Hewlett held out his hand impulsively. “I wish I might accept that compliment with a clear conscience,” he demurred.

* * * * *

Meeting Austin Dobson after he became interpreter-in-chief of the eighteenth century, it was difficult to associate him with his earlier experiences as a clerk in the Board of Trade office, which he entered when he was sixteen years old, and to which service he devoted forty-five useful but uneventful years, rising eventually to be a principal in the Harbours Department. With so quiet and unassuming a personality, it seems incredible that he could have lifted himself bodily from such unimaginative environment, and, through his classic monographs, bring Steele, Goldsmith, Richardson, Fielding, Horace Walpole, Fanny Burney, Bewick, and Hogarth, out of their hazy indefiniteness, and give to them such living reality. Perhaps Dobson’s very nature prevented him from seeing the coarseness and indecency of the period, and enabled him to introduce, or perhaps reintroduce, to England from France the _ballade_ and the _chante royal_, the _rondeau_ and the _rondel_, the _triolet_, the _villanelle_, and other fascinating but obsolete poetical forms in which he first became interested through his French grandmother.

Dobson was the most modest literary man I ever met. I happened to be in London at the time when the English government bestowed upon him an annuity of £1,000, “for distinguished service to the crown.” When I congratulated him upon this honor his response was characteristic:

“I don’t know why in the world they have given me this, unless it is because I am the father of ten children. I have no doubt that would be classified under ‘distinguished service to the crown.’”

One afternoon Austin Dobson and Richard Garnett, then Keeper of the Printed Books at the British Museum, happened to come to my hotel in London for tea at the same time. On a table in the apartment was a two-volume quarto edition in French of _Don Quixote_, a prize I had unearthed at a bookstall on the Quai Voltaire in Paris. It was beautifully printed, the letterpress just biting into the paper, and making itself a part of the leaf, which is so characteristic of the best French presswork. The edition also contained the famous Doré illustrations. Dobson picked up one of the volumes and exclaimed over its beauty.

“This edition,” he said, “is absolutely perfect.”

“Not quite,” I qualified his statement. “It is lacking in one particular. It requires your _Ode to Cervantes_ to make it complete.”

Dobson laughed. “Send the book to me,” he said, “and I will transcribe the lines on the fly leaf.”

When the volume was returned a few days later, a letter of apology came with it. “When I copied out the _Ode_ on the fly leaf,” Dobson wrote, “it looked so lost on the great page that I ventured to add the poem which I composed for the tercentenary. I hope you won’t mind.”

My eleven-year-old son came into the reception room while our guests were drinking their tea. Dobson took him on his lap, and after quite winning his affection by his gentleness, he quietly called his attention to Garnett, who was conversing with my wife in another part of the room.

“Never forget that man, my boy,” Dobson said in a low voice. “We have never had in England, nor shall we ever have again, one who knows so much of English literature. If the record of every date and every fact were to be lost by fire, Garnett could reproduce them with absolute accuracy if his life were spared long enough.”

Within fifteen minutes the youngster found himself on Garnett’s knee. Without knowing what Dobson had said, the old man whispered in the child’s ear, “It is a privilege you will be glad to remember that you have met such a man as Austin Dobson. Except for Salisbury’s desire to demean the post of poet laureate, Dobson would hold that position today. Never forget that you have met Austin Dobson.”

A few months after our return to America, Garnett died, and Dobson sent me the following lines. I have never known of their publication:

_RICHARD GARNETT_

Sit tibi terra levis

_Of him we may say justly: Here was one Who knew of most things more than any other,-- Who loved all Learning underneath the sun, And looked on every Learner as a brother._

_Nor was this all. For those who knew him, knew, However far his love’s domain extended, It held its quiet “poet’s corner,” too, Where Mirth, and Song, and Irony, were blended._

Garnett was a rare spirit, and the British Museum has never seemed the same since he retired in 1899. Entrance to his private office was cleverly concealed by a door made up of shelf-backs of books, but once within the sanctum the genial host placed at the disposal of his guest, in a matter-of-fact way, such consummate knowledge as to stagger comprehension. But, far beyond this, the charm of his personality will always linger in the minds of those who knew him, and genuine affection for the man will rival the admiration for his scholarship.

One afternoon at Ealing, after tennis on the lawn behind the Dobson house, we gathered for tea. Our little party included Hugh Thomson, the artist who so charmingly illustrated much of Dobson’s work, Mr. and Mrs. Dobson, and one of his sons. The poet was in his most genial mood, and the conversation led us into mutually confidential channels.

“I envy you your novel writing,” he said. “Fiction gives one so much wider scope, and prose is so much more satisfactory as a medium than poetry. I have always wanted to write a novel. Mrs. Dobson would never have it. But she is always right,” he added; “had I persisted I should undoubtedly have lost what little reputation I have.”

He was particularly impressed by the fact that I wrote novels as an avocation. It seemed to him such a far cry from the executive responsibility of a large business, and he persisted in questioning me as to my methods. I explained that I devoted a great deal of time to creating mentally the characters who would later demand my pen; that with the general outline of the plot I intended to develop, I approached it exactly as a theatrical manager approaches a play he is about to produce, spending much time in selecting my cast, adding, discarding, changing, just so far as seemed to me necessary to secure the actors best suited to the parts I planned to have them play. He expressed surprise when I told him that I had long since discarded the idea of working out a definite scenario, depending rather upon creating interesting characters, and having them sufficiently alive so that when placed together under interesting circumstances they are bound to produce interesting dialogue and action.

“Of course my problem, writing essays and poetry, is quite different from yours as a novelist,” he said; “but I do try to assume a relation toward my work that is objective and impersonal. In a way, I go farther than you do.”

Then he went on to say that not only did he plan the outline of what he had to write, whether triolet or poem, wholly in his head, but (in the case of the poetry) even composed the lines and made the necessary changes before having recourse to pen and paper.

“When I actually begin to write,” he said, “I can see the lines clearly before me, even to the interlinear corrections, and it is a simple matter for me to copy them out in letter-perfect form.”

Dobson’s handwriting and his signature were absolutely dissimilar. Unless one had actually seen him transcribe the text of a letter or the lines of a poem in that beautiful designed script, he would think it the work of some one other than the writer of the flowing autograph beneath.

* * * * *

Posterity is now deciding whether Mark Twain’s fame will rest upon his humor or his philosophy, yet his continuing popularity would seem to have settled this much-mooted question. Humor is fleeting unless based upon real substance. In life the passing quip that produces a smile serves its purpose, but to bring to the surface such human notes as dominate Mark Twain’s stories, a writer must possess extraordinary powers of observation and a complete understanding of his fellow-man. Neither Tom Sawyer nor Huckleberry Finn is a fictional character, but is rather the personification of that leaven which makes life worth living.

When an author has achieved the dignity of having written “works” rather than books, he has placed himself in the hands of his friends in all his varying moods. A single volume is but the fragment of any writer’s personality. I have laughed over _Innocents Abroad_, and other volumes which helped to make Mark Twain’s reputation, but when I seek a volume to recall the author as I knew him best it is _Joan of Arc_ that I always take down from the shelf. This book really shows the side of Mark Twain, the man, as his friends knew him, yet it was necessary to publish the volume anonymously in order to secure for it consideration from the reading public as a serious story.

“No one will ever accept it seriously, over my signature,” Mark Twain said. “People always want to laugh over what I write. This is a serious book. It means more to me than anything I have ever undertaken.”

Mark Twain was far more the humorist when off guard than when on parade. The originality of what he did, combined with what he said, produced the maximum expression of himself. At one time he and his family occupied the Villa di Quarto in Florence (_page 172_), and while in Italy Mrs. Orcutt and I were invited to have tea with them. The villa is located, as its name suggests, in the four-mile radius from the center of the town. It was a large, unattractive building, perhaps fifty feet wide and four times as long. The location was superb, looking out over Florence toward Vallombrosa and the Chianti hills.

In greeting us, Mark Twain gave the impression of having planned out exactly what he was going to say. I had noticed the same thing on other occasions. He knew that people expected him to say something humorous or unusual, and he tried not to disappoint them.

“Welcome to the barracks,” he exclaimed. “Looks like a hotel, doesn’t it? You’d think with twenty bedrooms on the top floor and only four in my family there would be a chance to put up a friend or two, wouldn’t you? But there isn’t any one I think so little of as to be willing to stuff him into one of those cells.”

We had tea out of doors. Miss Clara Clemens, who later became Mrs. Gabrilowitch, served as hostess, as Mrs. Clemens was confined to her bed by the heart trouble that had brought the family to Italy. As we sipped our tea and nibbled at the delicious Italian cakes, Mark Twain continued his comments on the villa, explaining that it was alleged to have been built by the first Cosimo de’ Medici (“If it was, he had a bum architect,” Mark Twain interjected); later it was occupied by the King of Württemberg (“He was the genius who put in the Pullman staircase”); and still later by a Russian Princess (“She is responsible for that green majolica stove in the hall. When I first saw it I thought it was a church for children”); and then it fell into the hands of his landlady (“Less said about her the better. You never heard such profanity as is expressed by the furniture and the carpets she put in to complete the misery. I’m always thankful when darkness comes on to stop the swearing”).

The garden was beautiful, but oppressive,--due probably to the tall cypresses (always funereal in their aspect), which kept out the sun, and produced a mouldy luxuriance. The marble seats and statues were covered with green moss, and the ivy ran riot over everything. One felt the antiquity unpleasantly, and, in a way, it seemed an unfortunate atmosphere for an invalid. But so far as the garden was concerned, it made little difference to Mrs. Clemens,--the patient, long-suffering “Livy” of Mark Twain’s life,--for she never left her sick chamber, and died three days later.

After tea, Mr. Clemens offered me a cigar and watched me while I lighted it.

“Hard to get good cigars over here,” he remarked. “I’m curious to know what you think of that one.”

I should have been sorry to tell him what my opinion really was, but I continued to smoke it with as cheerful an expression as possible.

“What kind of cigars do you smoke while in Europe?” he inquired.

I told him that I was still smoking a brand I had brought over from America, and at the same time I offered him one, which he promptly accepted, throwing away the one he had just lighted. He puffed with considerable satisfaction, and then asked,

“How do you like that cigar I gave you?”

It seemed a matter of courtesy to express more enthusiasm than I really felt.

“Clara,” he called across to where the ladies were talking, “Mr. Orcutt likes these cigars of mine, and he’s a judge of good cigars.”

Then turning to me he continued, “Clara says they’re rotten!”

He relapsed into silence for a moment.

“How many of those cigars of yours have you on your person at the present time?”

I opened my cigar case, and disclosed four.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said suddenly. “You like my cigars and I like yours. I’ll swap you even!”

In the course of the afternoon Mark Twain told of a dinner that Andrew Carnegie had given in his New York home, at which Mr. Clemens had been a guest. He related with much detail how the various speakers had stammered and halted, and seemed to find themselves almost tongue-tied. His explanation of this was their feeling of embarrassment because of the presence of only one woman, Mrs. Carnegie.

Sir Sidney Lee, who was lecturing on Shakesperian subjects in America at the time, was the guest of honor. When dinner was announced, Carnegie sent for Archie, the piper, an important feature in the Carnegie _ménage_, who appeared in full kilts, and led the procession into the dining-room, playing on the pipes. Carnegie, holding Sir Sidney’s hand, followed directly after, giving an imitation of a Scotch dance, while the other guests fell in behind, matching the steps of their leader as closely as possible. Mark Twain gave John Burroughs credit for being the most successful in this attempt.

Some weeks later, at a dinner which Sir Sidney Lee gave in our honor in London, we heard an echo of this incident. Sir Sidney included the story of Mark Twain’s speech on that occasion, which had been omitted in the earlier narrative. When called upon, Mr. Clemens had said,

“I’m not going to make a speech,--I’m just going to reminisce. I’m going to tell you something about our host here when he didn’t have as much money as he has now. At that time I was the editor of a paper in a small town in Connecticut, and one day, when I was sitting in the editorial sanctum, the door opened and who should come in but Andrew Carnegie. Do you remember that day, Andy?” he inquired, turning to his host; “wasn’t it a scorcher?”

Carnegie nodded, and said he remembered it perfectly.

“Well,” Mark Twain continued, “Andrew took off his hat, mopped his brow, and sat down in a chair, looking most disconsolate.

“‘What’s the matter?’ I inquired. ‘What makes you so melancholy?’--Do you remember that, Andy?” he again appealed to his host.

“Oh, yes,” Carnegie replied, smiling broadly; “I remember it as if it were yesterday.”

“‘I am so sad,’ Andy answered, ‘because I want to found some libraries, and I haven’t any money. I came in to see if you could lend me a million or two.’ I looked in the drawer and found that I could let him have the cash just as well as not, so I gave him a couple of million.--Do you remember that, Andy?”

“No!” Carnegie answered vehemently; “I don’t remember that at all!”

“That’s just the point,” Mark Twain continued, shaking his finger emphatically. “I have never received one cent on that loan, interest or principal!”

I wonder if so extraordinary an assemblage of literary personages was ever before gathered together as at the seventieth anniversary birthday dinner given to Mark Twain by Colonel George Harvey at Delmonico’s in New York! Seated at the various tables were such celebrities as William Dean Howells, George W. Cable, Brander Matthews, Richard Watson Gilder, Kate Douglas Wiggin, F. Hopkinson Smith, Agnes Repplier, Andrew Carnegie, and Hamilton W. Mabie.

It was a long dinner. Every one present would have been glad to express his affection and admiration for America’s greatest man-of-letters, and those who must be heard were so numerous that it was nearly two o’clock in the morning before Mark Twain’s turn arrived to respond. As he rose, the entire company rose with him, each standing on his chair and waving his napkin enthusiastically. Mark Twain was visibly affected by the outburst of enthusiasm. When the excitement subsided, I could see the tears streaming down his cheeks, and all thought of the set speech he had prepared and sent to the press for publication was entirely forgotten. Realizing that the following quotation differs from the official report of the event, I venture to rely upon the notes I personally made during the dinner. Regaining control of himself, Mark Twain began his remarks with words to this effect:

_When I think of my first birthday and compare it with this celebration,--just a bare room; no one present but my mother and one other woman; no flowers, no wine, no cigars, no enthusiasm,--I am filled with indignation!_

* * * * *