Chapter 3

We have seen that his first purely humorous publication of this nature was the one which made him known to the general public. It was speedily followed, however, by one of a somewhat graver character, which became at the time and has since remained a special favorite of cultivated readers. This is the volume entitled "Backlog Studies." The attractiveness of this work is as much due to the suggestive social and literary discussions with which it abounds as to the delicate and refined humor with which the ideas are expressed. Something of the same characteristics was displayed in the two little volumes of short pieces dealing with social topics, which came out later under the respective titles of "As We Were Saying," and "As We Go." But there was a deeper and more serious side of his nature which found utterance in several of his essays, particularly in some which were given in the form of addresses delivered at various institutions of learning. They exhibit the charm which belongs to all his writings; but his feelings were too profoundly interested in the subjects considered to allow him to give more than occasional play to his humor. Essays contained in such a volume, for instance, as "The Relation of Literature to Life" will not appeal to him whose main object in reading is amusement. Into them Warner put his deepest and most earnest convictions. The subject from which the book just mentioned derived its title lay near to his heart. No one felt more strongly than he the importance of art of all kinds, but especially of literary art, for the uplifting of a nation. No one saw more distinctly the absolute necessity of its fullest recognition in a moneymaking age and in a money-making land, if the spread of the dry rot of moral deterioration were to be prevented. The ampler horizon it presented, the loftier ideals it set up, the counteracting agency it supplied to the sordidness of motive and act which, left unchecked, was certain to overwhelm the national spirit--all these were enforced by him again and again with clearness and effectiveness. His essays of this kind will never be popular in the sense in which are his other writings. But no thoughtful man will rise up from reading them without having gained a vivid conception of the part which literature plays in the life of even the humblest, and without a deeper conviction of its necessity to any healthy development of the character of a people.

During the early part of his purely literary career a large proportion of Warner's collected writings, which then appeared, were first published in the Atlantic Monthly. But about fourteen years before his death he became closely connected with Harper's Magazine. From May, 1886, to March, 1892, he conducted the Editor's Drawer of that periodical. The month following this last date he succeeded William Dean Howells as the contributor of the Editor's Study. This position he held until July, 1898. The scope of this department was largely expanded after the death of George William Curtis in the summer of 1892, and the consequent discontinuance of the Editor's Easy Chair. Comments upon other topics than those to which his department was originally devoted, especially upon social questions, were made a distinct feature. His editorial connection with the magazine naturally led to his contributing to it numerous articles besides those which were demanded by the requirements of the position he held. Nearly all these, as well as those which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, are indicated in the bibliographical notes prefixed to the separate works.

There were, however, other literary enterprises in which he was concerned; for the calls upon him were numerous, his own appetite for work was insatiable, and his activity was indefatigable. In 1881 he assumed the editorship of the American Men of Letters series. This he opened with his own biography of Washington Irving, the resemblance between whom and himself has been made the subject of frequent remark. Later he became the editor-in-chief of the thirty odd volumes which make up the collection entitled "The World's Best Literature." To this he contributed several articles of his own and carefully allotted and supervised the preparation of a large number of others. The labor he put upon the editing of this collection occupied him a great deal of the time from 1895 to 1898.

But literature, though in it lay his chief interest, was but one of the subjects which employed his many-sided activity. He was constantly called upon for the discharge of civic duties. The confidence felt by his fellow-citizens in his judgment and taste was almost equal to the absolute trust reposed in his integrity. The man who establishes a reputation for the possession of these qualities can never escape from bearing the burdens which a good character always imposes. If any work of art was ordered by the state, Warner was fairly certain to be chosen a member of the commission selected to decide upon the person who was to do it and upon the way it was to be done. By his fellow-townsmen he was made a member of the Park Commission. Such were some of the duties imposed; there were others voluntarily undertaken. During the latter years of his life he became increasingly interested in social questions, some of which partook of a semi-political character. One of the subjects which engaged his attention was the best method to be adopted for elevating the character and conduct of the negro population of the country. He recognized the gravity of the problem with which the nation had to deal and the difficulties attending its solution. One essay on the subject was prepared for the meeting held at Washington in May, 1900, of the American Social Science Association, of which he was president. He was not able to be there in person. The disease which was ultimately to strike him down had already made its preliminary attack. His address was accordingly read for him. It was a subject of special regret that he could not be present to set forth more fully his views; for the debate, which followed the presentation of his paper, was by no means confined to the meeting, but extended to the press of the whole country. Whether the conclusions he reached were right or wrong, they were in no case adopted hastily nor indeed without the fullest consideration.

But a more special interest of his lay in prison reform. The subject had engaged his attention long before he published anything in connection with it. Later one of the earliest articles he wrote for Harper's Magazine was devoted to it. It was in his thoughts just before his death. He was a member of the Connecticut commission on prisons, of the National Prison Association, and a vice-president of the New York Association for Prison Reform. A strong advocate of the doctrine of the indeterminate sentence, he had little patience with many of the judicial outgivings on that subject. To him they seemed opinions inherited, not formed, and in most cases were nothing more than the result of prejudice working upon ignorance. This particular question was one which he purposed to make the subject of his address as president of the Social Science Association, at its annual meeting in 1901. He never lived to complete what he had in mind.

During his later years the rigor of the Northern winter had been too severe for Warner's health. He had accordingly found it advisable to spend as much of this season as he could in warmer regions. He visited at various times parts of the South, Mexico, and California. He passed the winter of 1892-93 at Florence; but he found the air of the valley of the Arno no perceptible improvement upon that of the valley of the Connecticut. In truth, neither disease nor death entertains a prejudice against any particular locality. This fact he was to learn by personal experience. In the spring of 1899, while at New Orleans, he was stricken by pneumonia which nearly brought him to the grave. He recovered, but it is probable that the strength of his system was permanently impaired, and with it his power of resisting disease. Still his condition was not such as to prevent him from going on with various projects he had been contemplating or from forming new ones. The first distinct warning of the approaching end was the facial paralysis which suddenly attacked him in April, 1900, while on a visit to Norfolk, Va. Yet even from that he seemed to be apparently on the full road to recovery during the following summer.

It was in the second week of October, 1900, that Warner paid me a visit of two or three days. He was purposing to spend the winter in Southern California, coming back to the East in ample time to attend the annual meeting of the Social Science Association. His thoughts were even then busy with the subject of the address which, as president, he was to deliver on that occasion. It seemed to me that I had never seen him when his mind was more active or more vigorous. I was not only struck by the clearness of his views--some of which were distinctly novel, at least to me--but by the felicity and effectiveness with which they were put.

Never, too, had I been more impressed with the suavity, the agreeableness, the general charm of his manner. He had determined during the coming winter to learn to ride the wheel, and we then and there planned to take a bicycle trip during the following summer, as we had previously made excursions together on horseback. When we parted, it was with the agreement that we should meet the next spring in Washington and fix definitely upon the time and region of our intended ride. It was on a Saturday morning that I bade him good-by, apparently in the best of health and spirits. It was on the evening of the following Saturday --October 20th--that the condensed, passionless, relentless message which the telegraph transmits, informed me that he had died that afternoon.

That very day he had lunched at a friend's, where were gathered several of his special associates who had chanced to come together at the same house, and then had gone to the office of the Hartford Courant. There was not the slightest indication apparent of the end that was so near. After the company broke up, he started out to pay a visit to one of the city parks, of which he was a commissioner. On his way thither, feeling a certain faintness, he turned aside into a small house whose occupants he knew, and asked to sit down for a brief rest, and then, as the faintness increased, to lie undisturbed on the lounge for a few minutes. The few minutes passed, and with them his life. In the strictest sense of the words, he had fallen asleep. From one point of view it was an ideal way to die. To the individual, death coming so gently, so suddenly, is shorn of all its terrors. It is only those who live to remember and to lament that the suffering comes which has been spared the victim. Even to them, however, is the consolation that though they may have been fully prepared for the coming of the inevitable event, it would have been none the less painful when it actually came.

Warner as a writer we all know. The various and varying opinions entertained about the quality and value of his work do not require notice here. Future times will assign him his exact position in the roll of American authors, and we need not trouble ourselves to anticipate, as we shall certainly not be able to influence, its verdict. But to only a comparatively few of those who knew him as a writer was it given to know him as a man; to still fewer to know him in that familiarity of intimacy which reveals all that is fine or ignoble in a man's personality. Scanty is the number of those who will come out of that severest of ordeals so successfully as he. The same conclusion would be reached, whether we were to consider him in his private relations or in his career as a man of letters. Among the irritable race of authors no one was freer from petty envy or jealousy. During many years of close intercourse, in which he constantly gave utterance to his views both of men and things with absolute unreserve, I recall no disparaging opinion ever expressed of any writer with whom he had been compared either for praise or blame. He had unquestionably definite and decided opinions. He would point out that such or such a work was above or below its author's ordinary level; but there was never any ill-nature in his comment, no depreciation for depreciation's sake. Never in truth was any one more loyal to his friends. If his literary conscience would not permit him to say anything in favor of something which they had done, he usually contented himself with saying nothing. Whatever failing there was on his critical side was due to this somewhat uncritical attitude; for it is from his particular friends that the writer is apt to get the most dispassionate consideration and sometimes the coldest commendation. It was a part of Warner's generous recognition of others that he was in all sincerity disposed to attribute to those he admired and to whom he was attached an ability of which some of them at least were much inclined to doubt their own possession.

Were I indeed compelled to select any one word which would best give the impression, both social and literary, of Warner's personality, I should be disposed to designate it as urbanity. That seems to indicate best the one trait which most distinguished him either in conversation or writing. Whatever it was, it was innate, not assumed. It was the genuine outcome of the kindliness and broad-mindedness of his nature and led him to sympathize with men of all positions in life and of all kinds of ability. It manifested itself in his attitude towards every one with whom he came in contact. It led him to treat with fullest consideration all who were in the least degree under his direction, and converted in consequence the toil of subordinates into a pleasure. It impelled him to do unsought everything which lay in his power for the success of those in whom he felt interest. Many a young writer will recall his words of encouragement at some period in his own career when the quiet appreciation of one meant more to him than did later the loud applause of many. As it was in public, so it was in private life. The generosity of his spirit, the geniality and high-bred courtesy of his manner, rendered a visit to his home as much a social delight as his wide knowledge of literature and his appreciation of what was best in it made it an intellectual entertainment.

THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE PRELIMINARY

This paper was prepared and delivered at several of our universities as introductory to a course of five lectures which insisted on the value of literature in common life--some hearers thought with an exaggerated emphasis--and attempted to maintain the thesis that all genuine, enduring literature is the outcome of the time that produces it, is responsive to the general sentiment of its time; that this close relation to human life insures its welcome ever after as a true representation of human nature; and that consequently the most remunerative method of studying a literature is to study the people for whom it was produced. Illustrations of this were drawn from the Greek, the French, and the English literatures. This study always throws a flood of light upon the meaning of the text of an old author, the same light that the reader unconsciously has upon contemporary pages dealing with the life with which he is familiar. The reader can test this by taking up his Shakespeare after a thorough investigation of the customs, manners, and popular life of the Elizabethan period. Of course the converse is true that good literature is an open door into the life and mode of thought of the time and place where it originated.

THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

I hade a vision once--you may all have had a like one--of the stream of time flowing through a limitless land. Along its banks sprang up in succession the generations of man. They did not move with the stream-they lived their lives and sank away; and always below them new generations appeared, to play their brief parts in what is called history--the sequence of human actions. The stream flowed on, opening for itself forever a way through the land. I saw that these successive dwellers on the stream were busy in constructing and setting afloat vessels of various size and form and rig--arks, galleys, galleons, sloops, brigs, boats propelled by oars, by sails, by steam. I saw the anxiety with which each builder launched his venture, and watched its performance and progress. The anxiety was to invent and launch something that should float on to the generations to come, and carry the name of the builder and the fame of his generation. It was almost pathetic, these puny efforts, because faith always sprang afresh in the success of each new venture. Many of the vessels could scarcely be said to be launched at all; they sank like lead, close to the shore. Others floated out for a time, and then, struck by a flaw in the wind, heeled over and disappeared. Some, not well put together, broke into fragments in the bufleting of the waves. Others danced on the flood, taking the sun on their sails, and went away with good promise of a long voyage. But only a few floated for any length of time, and still fewer were ever seen by the generation succeeding that which launched them. The shores of the stream were strewn with wrecks; there lay bleaching in the sand the ribs of many a once gallant craft.

Innumerable were the devices of the builders to keep their inventions afloat. Some paid great attention to the form of the hull, others to the kind of cargo and the loading of it, while others--and these seemed the majority--trusted more to some new sort of sail, or new fashion of rudder, or new application of propelling power. And it was wonderful to see what these new ingenuities did for a time, and how each generation was deceived into the belief that its products would sail on forever. But one fate practically came to the most of them. They were too heavy, they were too light, they were built of old material, and they went to the bottom, they went ashore, they broke up and floated in fragments. And especially did the crafts built in imitation of something that had floated down from a previous generation come to quick disaster. I saw only here and there a vessel, beaten by weather and blackened by time --so old, perhaps, that the name of the maker was no longer legible; or some fragments of antique wood that had evidently come from far up the stream. When such a vessel appeared there was sure to arise great dispute about it, and from time to time expeditions were organized to ascend the river and discover the place and circumstances of its origin. Along the banks, at intervals, whole fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore, and were piled up in bays, like the driftwood of a subsided freshet. Efforts were made to dislodge these from time to time and set them afloat again, newly christened, with fresh paint and sails, as if they stood a better chance of the voyage than any new ones. Indeed, I saw that a large part of the commerce of this river was, in fact, the old hulks and stranded wrecks that each generation had set afloat again. As I saw it in this foolish vision, how pathetic this labor was from generation to generation; so many vessels launched; so few making a voyage even for a lifetime; so many builders confident of immortality; so many lives outlasting this coveted reputation! And still the generations, each with touching hopefulness, busied themselves with this child's play on the banks of the stream; and still the river flowed on, whelming and wrecking the most of that so confidently committed to it, and bearing only here and there, on its swift, wide tide, a ship, a boat, a shingle.

These hosts of men whom I saw thus occupied since history began were authors; these vessels were books; these heaps of refuse in the bays were great libraries. The allegory admits of any amount of ingenious parallelism. It is nevertheless misleading; it is the illusion of an idle fancy. I have introduced it because it expresses, with some whimsical exaggeration--not much more than that of "The Vision of Mirza"--the popular notion about literature and its relation to human life. In the popular conception, literature is as much a thing apart from life as these boats on the stream of time were from the existence, the struggle, the decay of the generations along the shore. I say in the popular conception, for literature is wholly different from this, not only in its effect upon individual lives, but upon the procession of lives upon this earth; it is not only an integral part of all of them, but, with its sister arts, it is the one unceasing continuity in history. Literature and art are not only the records and monuments made by the successive races of men, not only the local expressions of thought and emotion, but they are, to change the figure, the streams that flow on, enduring, amid the passing show of men, reviving, transforming, ennobling the fleeting generations. Without this continuity of thought and emotion, history would present us only a succession of meaningless experiments. The experiments fail, the experiments succeed--at any rate, they end--and what remains for transmission, for the sustenance of succeeding peoples? Nothing but the thought and emotion evolved and expressed. It is true that every era, each generation, seems to have its peculiar work to do; it is to subdue the intractable earth, to repel or to civilize the barbarians, to settle society in order, to build cities, to amass wealth in centres, to make deserts bloom, to construct edifices such as were never made before, to bring all men within speaking distance of each other--lucky if they have anything to say when that is accomplished--to extend the information of the few among the many, or to multiply the means of easy and luxurious living. Age after age the world labors for these things with the busy absorption of a colony of ants in its castle of sand. And we must confess that the process, such, for instance, as that now going on here--this onset of many peoples, which is transforming the continent of America--is a spectacle to excite the imagination in the highest degree. If there were any poet capable of putting into an epic the spirit of this achievement, what an epic would be his! Can it be that there is anything of more consequence in life than the great business in hand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say, it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach our destination sooner--getting there quickly being a supreme object. It is well to force the soil to yield a hundred-fold, to congregate men in masses so that all their energies shall be taxed to bring food to themselves, to stimulate industries, drag coal and metal from the bowels of the earth, cover its surface with rails for swift-running carriages, to build ever larger palaces, warehouses, ships. This gigantic achievement strikes the imagination.