Part 2

For He made the world and all that is in it. And He made it with a moral end in view, as we most of us believe. But not the wisest of us pretends that that moral object is clearly visible. It does not disclose itself to us directly; we are aware of it only indirectly; and are influenced by it forevermore. If the world was so made, who are we that think ourselves so much more adroit than Him as to be able to expose boldly what He veils and to reveal what He hath hidden?

There are those, of course, who see no moral explanation of the universe; but they are not always consistent. There is that famous passage of Joseph Conrad’s in which he declines the ethical view and says he would fondly regard the panorama of creation as pure spectacle--the marvellous spectacle being, perchance, a moral end in itself. And yet no man ever wrote with a deeper manifestation and a more perfect concealment of his moral purpose than Conrad; for exactly the thing to which all his tales are passionate witnesses is the sense of fidelity, of loyalty, of endurance--above all, the sense of fidelity--that exists in mankind. Man, in the Conradist view, is a creature of an inexhaustible loyalty to himself and to his fellows. This inner and utter fidelity it is which makes the whole legend of _Lord Jim_, which is the despairing cry that rings out at the last in _Victory_, which reaches lyric heights in _Youth_, which is the profound pathos of _The End of the Tether_, which, in its corruption by an incorruptible metal, the silver of the mine, forms the dreadful tragedy of _Nostromo_. An immortal, Conrad, but not the admiring and passive spectator he diffidently declares himself to be!

10

Have we covered all the cases? Obviously not. It is no more possible to deal with all the authors who go wrong than it is to call all the sinners to repentance. But sin is primarily a question between the sinner and his own conscience, and the errors of authors are invariably questions between the authors and the public. The public is the best conscience many an author has; and the substitution of a private self-justification for a public vindication has seldom been a markedly successful undertaking in human history. Yet there is a class of writers for whom no public vindication is possible; who affect, indeed, to scorn it; who set themselves up as little gods. They are the worshippers of Art. They are the ones who not only do not admit but who deliberately deny a moral purpose in anything; who think that a something they call pure Beauty is the sole end of existence, of work, of life, and is alone to be worshipped. It is a cult of Baal.

For these Artists despise money, and in despising money they cheapen themselves and become creatures of barter. They sneer at morality and reject it; immediately the world disappears: “And the earth was without form, and void.” They demoralize honest people with whom they come in contact by demolishing the possibly imperfect but really workable standards which govern normal lives--and never replacing them. What is their Beauty? It is what each one of them thinks beautiful. What is their Art? It is what each cold little selfish soul among them chooses to call Art. What is their achievement? Self-destruction. They are the spiritual suicides, they are the moral defectives, they are the outcasts of humanity, the lepers among the workers of the world. For them there can be neither pity nor forgiveness; for they deny the beauty of rewarded toil, the sincerity of honest labor, the mystical humanity of man.

Of them no more. Let us go back in a closing moment to the contemplation of the great body of men and women who labor cheerfully and honorably, if rather often somewhat mistakenly, to make their living, to do good work and make the world pay them for it, yet leaving with the world the firm conviction that it has had a little the better of the bargain! These are the authors who “go wrong,” and with whose well-meant errors we have been dealing, not very methodically but perhaps not unhelpfully. Is there, then, no parting word of advice we can give our authors? To be sure there is! When our authors are quite sure they will not go wrong, they may go write!

A BARBARIC YAWP

II

A BARBARIC YAWP

It was the handy phrase to describe Walt Whitman: The “barbaric yawp.” In its elegant inelegance the neatly adjectived noun was felt to be really brilliant. Stump speakers “made the eagle scream”; a chap like Whitman had to be characterized handily too.

The epigrammatic mind is the card index mind. Now the remarkable thing about the card index is its casualty list. People who card index things are people who proceed to forget those things. The same metal rod that transfixes the perforated cards pierces the indexers’ brains. A mechanical device has been called into play. Brains are unnecessary any more. The day of pigeonholes was slightly better; for the pigeonholes were not unlike the human brain in which things are tucked away together, because they really have some association with each other. But the card index alphabetizes ruthlessly. Fancy an alphabetical brain!

Epigrams are like that. A man cannot take the trouble to think; he falls back on an epigram. He cannot take the trouble to remember and so he card indexes. The upshot is that he can find nothing in the card index and of course has no recollection to fall back on. Or he recalls the epigram without having the slightest idea what it was meant to signify.

But this is not to be about card indexes nor even about epigrams. It is to be a barbaric yawp, by which it is to be supposed was once meant the happy consciousness and the proud wonder that struck into the heart of an American poet. Whitman was not so much a poet as the chanteyman of Longfellow’s Ship of State. There was an hour when the chanteyman had an inspiration, when he saw as by an apocalyptic light all the people of these United States linked and joined in a common effort. Every man, woman and child of the millions tailed on the rope; every one of them put his weight and muscle to the task. It was a tremendous hour. It was the hour of a common effort. It was the hour for which, Walt felt, men had risked their lives a century earlier. It was a revealed hour; it had not yet arrived; but it was sure to come. And in the glow of that revelation the singer lifted up his voice and sang.... God grant he may be hearing the mighty chorus!

2

America is not a land, but a people. And a people may have no land and still they will remain a people. There has, for years, been no country of Poland; but there are Poles. There has been a country of Russia for centuries, but there is to-day no Russian people. What makes a people? Not a land certainly. Not political forms nor political sovereignty. Not even political independence. Nor, for that matter, voices that pretend or aspire to speak the thoughts of a nation. Poland has had such voices and Russia has had her artists, musicians, novelists, poets.

The thing that makes a people is a thing over which statesmen have no control. Geography throws no light on the subject. Nor does that study of the races of man which is called anthropology. It is not a psychological secret (psychology covers a multitude of guesses). Philosophy may evolve beautiful systems of thought, but systems of thought have nothing to do with the particular puzzle before us.

The secret must be sought elsewhere. Is it an inherited thing, this thing that makes a people? That can’t be; ours is a mixed inheritance here in America. Is it an abstract idea? Abstract ideas are never more than architectural pencillings and seldom harden into concrete foundations. Is it a common emotion? If it were we should be able to agree on a name for it. Is it an instinct? An instinct might be back of it.

What is left? Can it be a religion? As such it should be easily recognizable. But an element of religion? An act of faith?

Yes, for faith may exist with or without a creed, and the act of faith may be deliberate or involuntary. Willed or unwilled the faith is held; formulated or unformulated the essential creed is there. Let us look at the people of America, men and women of very divergent types and tempers far apart; men and women of inextricable heredities and of confusing beliefs--even, ordinarily, of clashing purposes. Each believes a set of things, but the beliefs of them all can be reduced to a lowest common denominator, a belief in each other; just as the beliefs of them all have a highest common multiple, a willingness to die in defence of America. To some of them America means a past, to some the past has no meaning; to some of them America means a future, to others a future is without significance. But to all of them America means a present to be safeguarded at the cost of their lives, if need be; and the fact that the present is the translation of the past to some and the reading of the future to others is incidental.

3

We would apply these considerations to the affair of literature; and having been tiresomely generalizing we shall get down to cases that every one can understand.

The point we have tried to make condenses to this: The present is supremely important to us all. To some of us it is all important because of the past, and to some of us it is of immense moment because of the future, and to the greatest number (probably) the present is of overshadowing concern because it _is_ the present--the time when they count and make themselves count. It is now or never, as it always is in life, though the urgency of the hour is not always so apparent.

It was now or never with the armies in the field, with the men training in the camps, with the coal miners, the shipbuilders, the food savers in the kitchens. It is just as much now or never with the poets, the novelists, the essayists--with the workers in every line, although they may not see so distinctly the immediacy of the hour. Everybody saw the necessity of doing things to win the war; many can see the necessity of doing things that will constitute a sort of winning after the war. There is always something to be won. If it is not a war it is an after the war. “Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war” is a fine sounding line customarily recited without the slightest recognition of its real meaning. The poet did not mean that the victories of peace were as greatly acclaimed as the victories of war, but that the sum total of their renown was as great or greater because they are more enduring.

4

Now for the cases.

It is the duty, the opportunity and the privilege of America now, in the present hour, to make it impossible hereafter for any one to raise such a question as Bliss Perry brings up in his book _The American Spirit in Literature_, namely, whether there is an independent American literature. Not only does Mr. Perry raise the question, but, stated as baldly as we have stated it, the query was thereupon discussed, with great seriousness, by a well-known American book review! We are happy to say that both Mr. Perry and the book review decided that there _is_ such a thing as an American literature, and that American writing is not a mere adjunct (perhaps a caudal appendage) of English literature. All Americans will feel deeply gratified that they could honorably come to such a conclusion. But not all Americans will feel gratified that the conclusion was reached on the strength of Emerson, Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Whitman, Poe and others of the immortal dead. Some Americans will wish with a faint and timid longing that the conclusion might have been reached, or at least sustained, on the strength of Tarkington, Robert Herrick, Edith Wharton, Mary Johnston, Gertrude Atherton, Mary S. Watts, William Allen White, Edgar Lee Masters, Amy Lowell, Edna Ferber, Joseph Hergesheimer, Owen Wister and a dozen or so other living writers over whose relative importance as witnesses for the affirmative we have no desire to quarrel. Mr. Howells, we believe, was called to the stand.

If we had not seen it we should refuse to credit our senses. The idea of any one holding court to-day to decide the question as to the existence of an independent American literature is incredibly funny. It is the peculiarity of criticism that any one can set up a court anywhere at any time for any purpose and with unlimited jurisdiction. There are no rules of procedure. There are no rules of evidence. There is no jury; the people who read books may sit packed in the court room, but there must be no interruptions. Order in the court! Usually the critic-judge sits alone, but sometimes there are special sessions with a full bench. Writs are issued, subpœnas served, witnesses are called and testimony is taken. An injunction may be applied for, either temporary or permanent. Nothing is easier than to be held in contempt.

5

The most striking peculiarity of procedure in the Critical Court is with regard to what constitutes evidence. You might, in the innocence of your heart, suppose that a man’s writings would constitute the only admissible evidence. Not at all. His writings have really nothing to do with the case. What is his Purpose? If, as a sincere individual, he has anywhere exposed or stated his object in writing books counsel objects to the admission of this Purpose as evidence on the ground that it is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial; and not sound Art. On the other hand if, as an artist, he has embodied his Purpose in his fiction so that every intelligent reader may discover it for himself and feel the glow of a personal discovery, counsel will object to the admission of his books as evidence on the ground that they are incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial; and not the best proof. Counsel will demand that the man himself be examined personally as to his purpose (if he is alive) or will demand a searching examination of his private life (if he be dead). The witness is always a culprit and browbeating the witness is always in order. I am a highbrow and you are a lowbrow; what the devil do you mean by writing a book anyway?

Before the trial begins the critic-judge enunciates certain principles on which the verdict will be based and the verdict is based on those principles whether they find any application in the testimony or not. A favorite principle with the man on the bench is that all that is not obscure is not Art. It isn’t phrased as intelligibly as that, to be sure; a common way to put it is to lay down the rule that the popularity of a book (which means the extent to which it is understood and therefore appreciated) has nothing to do with the case, tra-la, has nothing to do with the case. Another principle is that sound can be greater than sense, which, in the lingo of the Highest Criticism, is the dictum that words and sentences can have a beauty apart from the meaning (if any) that they seek to convey. And there really is something in this idea; for example, what could be lovelier than the old line, “Eeny, meeny, miny-mo”? Shakespeare, a commercial fellow who wrote plays for a living, knew this when he let one of his characters sing:

“When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day.”

And a little earlier in _Twelfth Night_:

“Like a mad lad, Pare thy nails, dad; Adieu, goodman devil.”

Which is not only beautiful as sound, but without the least sense unless it hath the vulgarity to be looked for in the work of a mercenary playwright.

6

But the strangest thing about the proceedings in the Critical Court is their lack of contemporary interest. Rarely, indeed, is anything decided here until it has been decided everywhere else. For the great decisions are the decisions of life and not decisions on the past. A man has written twenty books and he is dead. He is ripe for consideration by the Critical Court. A man has written two novels and has eighteen more ahead of him. The Critical Court will leave him alone until he is past all helping. It seems never to occur to the critic-judge that a young man who has written two novels is more important than a dead man who has written twenty novels. For the young man who has written two novels has some novels yet to be written; he can be helped, strengthened, encouraged, advised, corrected, warned, counselled, rebuked, praised, blamed, presented with bills of particulars, and--heartened. If he has not genius nothing can put it in him, but if he has, many things can be done to help him exploit it. And a man who is dead cannot be affected by anything you say or do; the critic-judge has lost his chance of shaping that writer’s work and can no longer write a decree, only an epitaph.

To be brutally frank: Nobody cares what the Critical Court thinks of Whitman or Poe or Longfellow or Hawthorne. Everybody cares what Tarkington does next, what Mary Johnston tackles, what the developments are in the William Allen White case, what becomes of Joseph Hergesheimer, whether Amy Lowell achieves great work in that contrapuntal poetry she calls polyphonic prose. On these things depend the present era in American literature and the possibilities of the future. And these things are more or less under our control.

The people of America not only believe that there is an independent American literature, but they believe that there will continue to be. Some of them believe in the past of that literature, some of them believe in its future; but all of them believe in its present and its presence. Their voice may be stifled in the Critical Court (silence in the court!) but it is audible everywhere else. It is heard in the bookshops where piles of new fiction melt away, where new verse is in brisk demand, where new biographies and historical works are bought daily and where books on all sorts of weighty subjects flake down from the shelves into the hands of customers.

The voice of the American people is articulate in the offices of newspapers which deal with the news of new books. It makes a seismographic record in the ledgers of publishing houses. It comes to almost every writer in letters of inquiry, comment and commendation. What, do you suppose, a writer like Gene Stratton-Porter cares whether the Critical Court excludes her work or condemns it? She can re-read hundreds and thousands of letters from men and women who tell her how profoundly her books have--tickled their fancy? pleased their love of verbal beauty? taxed their intellectuals to understand? No, merely how profoundly her books have altered their whole lives.

Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! The Critical Court is in session. All who have business with the court draw near and give attention!

IN THE CRITICAL COURT

III

IN THE CRITICAL COURT

_The Critical Court being in session, William Dean Howells, H. W. Boynton, W. C. Brownell, Wilson Follett and William Marion Reedy sitting, the case of Booth Tarkington, novelist, is called._

COUNSEL FOR THE PROSECUTION: If it please the court, this case should go over. The defendant, Mr. Tarkington, is not dead yet.

Mr. HOWELLS: I do not know how my colleagues feel, but I have no objection to considering the work of Mr. Tarkington while he is alive.

Mr. FOLLETT: I think it would be better if we deferred the consideration of Mr. Tarkington until it is a little older.

COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE (_in this case Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday, biographer of Tarkington_): “It”?

Mr. FOLLETT: I mean his work, or works. Perhaps I should have said “them.”

Mr. HOLLIDAY: “They,” not “them.” Exception. And “are” instead of “is.” Gentlemen, I have no wish to prejudice the case for my client, but I must point out that if you wait until he is a little older he may be dead.

Mr. BOYNTON: So much the better. We can then consider his works in their complete state and with reference to his entire life.

Mr. HOLLIDAY: But it would then be impossible to give any assistance to Mr. Tarkington. The chance to influence his work would have passed.

Mr. BROWNELL: That is relatively unimportant.

Mr. HOLLIDAY: I beg pardon but Mr. Tarkington feels it rather important to him.

Mr. BOYNTON: My dear Mr. Holliday, you really must remember that it is not what seems important to Mr. Tarkington that can count with us, but what is important in our eyes.

Mr. HOLLIDAY: Self-importance.

Mr. BOYNTON (_stiffly_): Certainly not. Merely self-confidence. But on my own behalf I may say this: I am unwilling to consider Mr. Tarkington’s works in this place at this time; but I am willing to pass judgment in an article for a newspaper or a monthly magazine or some other purely perishable medium. That should be sufficient for Mr. Tarkington.

Mr. FOLLETT: I think the possibility of considering Mr. Tarkington must be ruled out, anyway, as one or more of his so-called works have first appeared serially in the _Saturday Evening Post_.

Mr. HOLLIDAY (_noting the effect of this revelation on the members of the court_): Very well, I will not insist. Booth, you will have to get along the best you can with newspaper and magazine reviews and with what people write to you or tell you face to face. Be brave, Tark, and do as you aren’t done by. After all, a few million people read you and you make enough to live on. The court will pass on you after you are dead, and if you dictate any books on the ouija board the court’s verdict may be helpful to you then; you might even manage the later Henry James manner.

CLERK OF THE COURT (_Prof. William Lyon Phelps_): Next case! Mrs. Atherton please step forward!

Mrs. ATHERTON (_advancing with composure_): I can find no one to act for me, so I will be my own counsel. I will say at the outset that I do not care for the court, individually or collectively, nor for its verdict, whatever it may be.

Prof. PHELPS: I must warn you that anything you say may, and probably will, be used against you.

Mrs. ATHERTON: Oh, I don’t mind that; it’s the things the members of the court have said against me that I purpose to use against them.

Mr. BROWNELL: Are you, by any chance, referring to me, Madam?

Mrs. ATHERTON: I do not refer to persons, Mr. Brownell. I hit them. No, I had Mr. Boynton particularly in mind. And perhaps Gene Stratton-Porter. Is she here? (_Looks around menacingly_). No. Well, go ahead with your nonsense.

Mr. HOWELLS (_rising_): I think I will withdraw from consideration of this case. Mrs. Atherton has challenged me so often----

Mr. BOYNTON: No, stay. _I_ am going to stick it out----

Mr. FOLLETT: I think there is no question but that we should hold the defendant in contempt.

Mrs. ATHERTON: Mutual, I assure you. (_She sweeps out of the room and a large section of the public quietly follows her._)

CLERK PHELPS: Joseph Hergesheimer to the bar! (_A short, stocky fellow with twinkling eyes steps forward._) Mr. Hergesheimer?

Mr. HERGESHEIMER: Right.

Mr. REEDY: Good boy, Joe!

Mr. FOLLETT: It won’t do, it won’t do at all. There’s only _The Three Black Pennys and Gold and Iron_ and a novel called _Java Head_ to go by. _Saturday Evening Post._ And bewilderingly unlike each other. Seem artistic but are too popular, I fancy, really to be sound.

Mr. HERGESHEIMER: With all respect, I should like to ask whether this is a court of record?

Mr. HOWELLS: It is.

Mr. HERGESHEIMER: In that case I think I shall press for a verdict which may be very helpful to me. I should like also to have the members of the court on record respecting my work.