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DOROTHY  DUDLEY 


FORGOTTEH 
FRONTI ERS 

DREISER 


AMD  THE 


LAM  D  OF  THE  FREE 

• 


For  many  years  Theodore  Dreiser  has  loomed, 
a  massive  and  enigmatic  mountain,  against 
the  American  literary  scene.  However,  though 
his  novels  and  short  stories  have  been  read 
by  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people,  though 
his  work  and  personality  have  always  caused 
dissent  and  clamor,  there  is  little  actually 
known  to  the  public  of  the  man  himself,  his 
origin,  his  grim  fight  for  freedom  of  expres- 
sion and  thought. 

This  remarkable  book  is  not  only  about 
Dreiser;  it  is  about  America,  beginning  with 
thirty  years  ago  when  restless  and  creative 
men  and  women  were  tearing  themselves, 
and  the  nation  with  them,  away  from  the 
tradition-encrusted  soil  not  only  of  the  Mid- 
dle West  but  of  the  whole  country.  It  recites 
what  Dreiser,  Sherwood  Anderson,  Masters, 
Floyd  Dell,  Lewis,  Mencken,  Sandburg,  and 
a  host  of  other  fighters  against  our  senti- 
mentality and  prudery  said  and  thought  and 
did.  It  records  a  movement  that  has  for  a 
time  liberated  us,  since  it  deals,  sometimes 
caustically,  sometimes  lyrically,  with  the 
things  of  the  spirit,  the  mind,  creation,  and 
with  suffering  and  battle.  Of  the  several 
splendid  books  written  about  America  re- 
cently, this  is  one  of  the  most  stimulating 
and  provocative.  Dreiser  himself  says  of  the 
author,  "I  can  imagine  no  other  American 
I  would  rather  see  undertake  this  book"; 
and  Carl  Sandburg,  after  reading  the  manu- 
script, wrote,  "It  is  a  grand  treatment  of  the 
American  scene,  with  the  analytical  search 
and  the  deliberate  accuracy  of  a  Henry 
Adams — plus  colors  of  style  and  occasional 
sentences  that  send  up  little  red  and  yellow 
balloons." 

$4.00 


From  the  collection  of  the 

n 
•n   «r    m 

o  Prelinger 

library 


San  Francisco,  California 
2006 


TTEN 
FRONTIER 


DREISER  AND  THE  LAND  OF  THE  FREE 


DUDLEY 


YORK  •  1932 
HARRISON  SMITH  AND  ROBERT  HAAS 


COPYRIGHT,  1932,  BY  DOROTHY  DUDLEY 
FIRST  PRINTED,  1932 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


Oh,   the    moon  -  light's  fair   to-night     a -long     the     Wa-bash,  From    the 


9     P    I 


fields    there    comes     the    breath    of    new   mown    hay. 


Thro'  the 


P  Y     "0  P       "'IT      J  = 

-  mores       the   can    -     die    lights     are       gleam  -  Ing, 


On     the 


banks  of       the      Wa    -  bash,      far       a    -    way 


The  Banks  of  the  Wabash  —  Paul  Dresser 


It  was  wonderful  to  find  America,  but  it  would  have  been 
more  wonderful  to  lose  it. 

Mark  Twain  writing  to  a  friend 


years  ago  today  Columbus  discovered  America.  What 
made  him  do  it.  Except  for  Columbus  I  wouldn't  have  been 
born  in  Illinois  or  Kansas. 

Edgar  Lee  Masters  talking  to  a  friend 


One  is  hounded  by  the  thought  that  as  with  individuals  so 
with  nations;  some  are  born  fools,  live  fools,  and  die  fools. 
And  may  not  America  perchance  be  one  such? 
One  hopes  not. 
But  — 

Theodore  Dreiser:  "  Hey-Rub-A-Dub-Dub  " 


PREFACE 

The  more  specific  the  detail  the  more  accurate  the  im- 
mensity it  projects. 

In  relation  to  the  shifting  parts  of  an  undiscovered 
whole  the  one  part  constantly  betrays  meaning. 


".  .  .  and  every  thing  shall  live  whither 
the  river  cometh"       THE  BOOK  OF  EZEKIEL 

".  .  .  /  was  punished  like  all  who  destroy 
the  past  for  the  sake  of  the  future" 

SPOON  RIVER  ANTHOLOGY 


.he  germ  of  this  story  had  origin  in  a  mood 
of  love  of  country  that  would  celebrate  every  Ameri- 
can quickened  by  savagery.  Lacking  this,  people  make 
no  monument  of  their  country.  They  remain  content 
with  provinces.  Somewhat  lacking  this,  Americans  have 
leaned  toward  being  thin  and  shrill,  since  first  they  pushed 
away  the  Indians,  and  built  their  own  safer  homesteads. 
That  is,  until  today,  when,  with  influx  of  strangers,  Jew 
and  Negro,  Mongolian,  Syrian,  Slovak,  Lithuanian,  and 
with  pressure  of  machinery,  we  have  arrived  at  a  jungle 
of  our  own.  If  we  succeed  in  meeting  it  and  creating  out 
of  it  a  human  order,  or  if  it  destroys  us,  depends,  one 
might  guess,  on  the  measure  of  primitive  force  left  in  us. 
In  the  midst  of  a  ruling  tameness,  or  at  least  of  a 
tameness  dictated  by  those  ruling  here  toward  the  last 
third  of  the  last  century,  Dreiser  was  one  of  those  born 
outside  the  convention  and  living  outside  of  it.  His  books, 
made  in  the  face  of  tameness,  are  touched  with  wilder- 
ness —  the  way  a  sudden  rain,  an  ice  storm,  April  thun- 
der shaking  new  small  leaves  in  a  city  square,  can  strike 
a  dingy  nerve-worn  city  with  waywardness.  With  reason 
people  complain  that  not  always  words  and  syntax  follow 
him.  He  has  let  loose  shoals  of  words,  they  say,  some  of 
them  to  remain  in  the  commonplace  of  1880,  1890,  1910, 
1920.  Yet  often  detachments  of  them,  and  an  electric 
wiring  of  the  structure,  have  found  their  way  with  him 
into  speech,  which  is  drama.  They  create  the  shiver  of 
wilderness,  the  holy  ghost  of  the  realist,  the  wind  of 


reality,  which  like  an  aeroplane's  whirr  signals  the  near- 
ness of  its  presence. 

One  could  write  of  Poe,  Whitman,  Thoreau,  Henry 
James,  Herman  Melville,  Ambrose  Bierce,  Henry 
Adams;  one  could  write  of  Stephen  Crane,  Sandburg, 
Masters,  Frost,  Carnevali,  Carlos  Williams,  Charlie 
Chaplin;  and  of  others  named  and  nameless,  if  one  knew 
them;  wherever  and  whenever  the  grace  of  unaccustomed 
intellectual  wildness,  rare  as  radium  in  these  States,  has 
descended  on  them. 

Then  there  is  another  thing  —  the  enterprise  of 
Dreiser.  Enterprise  of  an  engineer  —  no  looking  back- 
wards, no  regrets,  except  where  like  correctives  they  are 
to  be  used  in  the  new  plans.  This  is  tonic.  It  makes  a 
journey  of  inquiry  for  one  more  intimate  with  old  worlds 
than  new,  for  one  less  ready  than  the  true  modern  is,  to 
relinquish  old  loves  until  they  have  receded  irrevocably 
into  distance.  The  speech  of  the  past,  tonal  through 
age,  recalling  ancient  relations,  elaborate  and  seasoned 
through  age  —  these  I  used  to  want  back,  and  not  in 
museums,  and  libraries,  but  by  some  impossible  alembic 
distilled  and  then  fused  into  American  life.  I  could  not 
be  on  with  the  new  for  not  knowing  how  to  forget  the  old. 

Discipline  was  futile.  Years  ago  I  tried  to  face  the 
oncoming  scheme;  I  tried  saying  to  myself:  "  Food,  not 
delectation !  Canned  food,  ham  sandwiches,  hard-boiled 
eggs,  soft  drinks  too  sweet  in  drug  stores,  cup  of  coffee 
counter-slung!  Food  and  ice-water!  .  .  .  Clothing,  not 
elegance!  Cloak  and  suit  trade,  ready-made  novelties, 
smart  fashions !  Clothes,  not  impeccable  fitting  garments ! 
.  .  .  Publicity,  not  privacy!  Electric-lighted  sleeping 
porches,  lawns,  salvia,  gladioli,  roads  and  automobiles, 
no  doors,  no  fences,  just  vistas  forever  from  publicity 
into  publicity!  Not  intrigue,  not  intimacy!  .  .  .  Radio, 
victrolas,  not  music !  Extension,  not  intention !  .  .  .  Sky- 
scrapers, never  arcades!  Men  without  women,  women 
without  anything!  Segregation,  not  relations! 

All  this  —  new  ways,  new  references  —  I  wanted  to 
accept  them;  I  wanted  to  junk  the  old  like  any  other 
native,  to  quit  harking  back.  But  the  lists  became  lamenta- 
tions. Even  yet  I  find  too  little  appetite  for  the  new 


worlds  we  are  making  and  remaking;  except  indeed  as  in 
quest  of  sunlight,  we  may  at  length  be  emerging  from  the 
diseases  generated  by  Christianity.  Yet  with  machinery 
we  appear  to  be  discarding  a  primitive  color  that  the 
Catholics  carried  along  with  them  from  ancient  times  — 
a  ritual  that  was  sensual  and  first  hand.  So  even  this  im- 
provement might  be  another  affliction. 

Dreiser,  on  the  contrary,  has  been  one  of  the  un- 
afflicted :  a  modern  without  the  doctrine  of  modernism.  He 
has  been  one  of  those  engrossed  in  the  new  voyage  that 
science  and  machinery,  enterprise  and  adventure,  are  tak- 
ing us  on.  He  has  been  swayed  by  the  new  uncharted  seas, 
so  swiftly  charted  and  old;  he  has  been  lured  by  the  new 
shores  so  heralded  and  perhaps  never  to  be  reached.  Not 
exactly  dealing  in  terms  of  time  and  place,  he  has  dealt  in 
the  actual  and  recorded  it  and  the  lack  of  it,  when  and 
where  immediately  it  surrounded  him.  Without  doctrine, 
he  is  mineral  and  vegetable  as  well  as  human,  and  so  has 
moved  ensconced  in  the  changes.  This  book  attempts  to 
follow  him  through  to  the  new  frontiers  and  to  define 
them  in  relation  to  the  old. 

People  deeply  in  love  with  tone  find  him  difficult  to 
read;  he  grates  on  them.  Tone  evolves  out  of  intangible 
relations,  gaged  by  a  scrupulous  ear  and  eye  for  detail, 
as  the  tonal  message  of  a  forest  at  a  distance  is  concerned 
with  detail  of  each  pine  needle,  each  leaf.  Dreiser  is 
without  truth  of  language  in  relation  to  surface  tone, 
exactly  the  way  that  our  cities  and  our  streets  and  our 
buildings  are  without  it.  Even  today  the  modern  sky- 
scrapers have  less  intention  of  color,  less  accuracy  of  de- 
tail than  the  unchanging  fagade  of  a  French  boucherie, 
or  the  mud  village  of  a  Pueblo  Indian.  Dreiser  is  some- 
times a  sprawling,  sometimes  a  soaring  block  of  buildings, 
structural  when  seen  as  a  whole;  insensitive  tonally  when 
considered  close  up. 

He  is  an  American  high  water-mark,  capable  of  waves 
that  fall  beyond.  His  story  holds  the  story  of  Americans 
as  they  appear  today  —  big  waves  washing  up  on  the 
shores  of  history,  in  the  years  of  their  stupendous  and 
childlike  success.  We  have  deep  wells,  we  have  freshets 
among  writers,  that  have  leapt  higher  with  slenderer  and 


more  special  jets.  A  few  are  impeccable  mimics,  terser 
poets.  Artists  concerned  with  intimacy;  with  the  fibre  of 
our  language,  the  transmutation  of  it  into  their  own.  But 
Dreiser  has  been  possessed  by  the  circumference  of  our 
life,  eager  to  imagine  it  all,  leaving  nothing  out,  even 
when  there  is  only  time  for  categories.  His  record  more 
largely  than  others  has  the  taste  of  American  waters, 
by  no  means  always  agreeable  —  of  that  medium  in  which 
float  buildings,  railroads,  banks,  soda  fountains,  suicides, 
conquerors,  murderers,  joy-riders,  evangelists,  hypocrites 
—  the  he-men  and  the  victims,  the  jokers  and  the  fakers. 
To  Dreiser  these  men  and  women  are  congenitally  hu- 
man, children  of  nature,  while  to  the  tamer  writers  who 
preceded  him  they  are  pious  and  impious  puppets,  and 
to  the  meaner  writers,  many  of  them  his  followers,  they 
are  toys  of  the  satirist.  Is  it  because  where  the  idealist 
scarcely  thinks  at  all,  and  the  satirist  thinks  with  his 
nerves,  he  is,  and  exotically  so,  one  thinking  organically 
— brain  and  other  vitals  not  divorced? 

The  measure  of  his  work  is  the  measure  of  himself,  as 
good  as  the  best  of  him,  as  bad  as  the  worst.  His  story 
reflects  the  story  of  Americans  —  big  waves  washing 
high  on  the  shores  of  history,  and  washing  away  some  of 
the  old  orchards  and  farms.  The  bulk  of  this  life  is  in  him, 
the  uncouth  rhythms  of  this  flood,  which  carries  in  its 
wake  the  sea-weeds  of  other  days,  and  is  marked  by  hu- 
man eager  points  and  swift  metallic  counterpoints.  He 
suggests  our  hugeness  faceted  with  its  many  faces,  me- 
chanically intricate,  humanly  simpler.  He  is  to  this  day 
a  challenge  to  writers  to  sacrifice  themselves  as  com- 
pletely, and  more  intimately  if  they  can,  to  our  history. 
He  is  large  more  than  intimate.  Yet  he  has  passages,  too, 
of  identity  with  the  mood,  moments  of  penetration,  when 
he  goes  over  from  being  the  historian  into  being  the  poet. 
In  him  our  disorderly  order  gleams  with  its  mysteries. 
He  says  of  himself,  "  The  riddle  remains.  I  have  solved 
nothing." 

More  than  a  generation  ago  he  started  to  excavate  into 
American  life,  singly  and  without  orders,  after  a  while 
against  orders.  "  All  my  life,"  he  says,  "  some  one,  a 
critic,  a  publisher,  a  friend  has  always  been  telling  me  not 
4 


to  go  so  far,  not  to  talk  about  this  or  that,  to  stay  back, 
to  keep  still."  Yet  he  has  managed  to  get  down  to  the 
floods  underlying  dirt  and  rock.  They  well  up  in  his  pages, 
and  reflect  lights.  They  create  that  medium  in  which 
fluctuate  the  structure  and  the  wreckage  known  as 
America  in  this  day  of  her  enormous  and  childlike  success. 


2 

"  They  brought  me  ambrotypes 

Of  the  old  pioneers  to  enlarge  .  .  . 

When  giant  hands  from  the  womb  of  the 

world 

Tore  the  republic. 
What  was  it  in  their  eyes?  — 
That  mystical  pathos  of  drooped  eyelids, 
And  the  serene  sorrow  of  their  eyes?" 

SPOON  RIVER  ANTHOLOGY:  MASTERS 

".  .  .  They  lack  the  passions  that  make 
one  enjoy  life  .  .  .  Crystallization  is  made 
impossible  in  the  United  States.  .  .  .  I 
cherish  far  greater  hopes  for  .  .  .  South 
America."  DE  L' AMOUR:  STENDHAL 


few  people  say  Americans  are  cases  of 
arrested  development.  Machinery  has  shot  ahead  of 
them.  Most  people  are  still  content  to  say,  "  Americans 
are  young,  are  adolescent,  are  children."  Europeans 
say  this  indulgently  —  "Give  them  time."  Chinese  say 
it  less  indulgently.  American  Indians  think  it,  though 
they  have  long  since  learned  not  to  speak.  Surprisingly 
one  of  them  lately  was  heard  to  release  this  much  of 
judgment,  "  The  white  man  must  learn  to  think  with  his 
heart.'* 

Isn't  it  true  that  we  have  not  learned  to  think  with  our 
hearts  or  with  our  loins;  that  we  have  not  learned  to 
think,  and  are  not  grown  up?  To  conceive  of  grown-up 
people  is  to  conceive  of  the  shining  reciprocal  fact,  sex, 
without  which  adults  are  still  children.  To  think  long  of 
anything,  it  is  necessary  to  speak  of  it,  or  to  celebrate  it 
by  symbol  or  image.  Else  the  thought  perishes  in  you, 
becomes  dead  tissue,  to  be  carried  off  if  possible  along 
6 


with  other  waste,  or  to  remain  there  to  become  infection 
later  on  in  life. 

At  the  birth  of  our  nation,  the  parents,  who  were  adult 
British  fanatics,  it  is  written,  middle-aged  people  by 
temperament,  determined  to  give  birth  to  children  who 
should  remain  as  much  as  possible  adolescent.  That  is, 
they  should  cross  over  into  maturity  not  for  their  own 
sake  but  only  to  make  more  children.  So  the  image  became 
not  the  man,  not  the  woman,  but  the  child,  the  pure 
impossible  child,  undefiled  by  its  own  nature.  And  the  men 
and  women  lost  their  heroic  line  and  became  just  parents, 
uncles,  aunts,  servants  for  children.  Then  as  the  years 
went  on,  these  young  people  ungratefully  seemed  to  want 
to  know  more.  They  became  aware  of  their  human  her- 
itage, which  of  course  had  to  do  with  adventures  into 
articulation  as  distinguishing  them  from  other  animals. 
Having  little  speech  among  themselves,  few  songs  or 
symbols  or  dances,  they  asked  for  books.  And  they  were 
given  books,  mostly  English  and  German  books,  a  few 
Latin  and  Greek  books.  Deciphering  these  they  tried 
diligently  to  find  out  about  those  distant  peaks  of  civiliza- 
tion they  suspected  they  had  not  reached.  They  were 
bright  children,  some  of  them,  and  with  these  books  as 
models  soon  began  writing  a  few  adventurous  pages  of 
their  own ;  though  as  yet  they  made  almost  no  attempt  to 
celebrate  with  paint  or  music.  Immediately  the  teachers 
and  governesses  saw  with  sorrow  that  the  children  were 
in  danger  of  growing  up.  So  the  records  from  Europe  had 
to  be  expurgated  or  jailed,  where  only  the  least  daring 
of  the  children  were  allowed  to  look,  a  few  academicians 
and  professors.  The  witches  and  wizards  and  dissenters 
were  burned  and  hung  for  fear  they  might  be  ruth- 
less artists,  people  of  magic.  And  censorship  set  in, 
until  at  last  completely  the  soul  was  separated  from 
the  body,  color  from  line,  taste  from  food,  lust  from 
love.  And  no  one  since  has  quite  been  able  to  bring  these 
sundered  parts  together  again.  Of  course  very  few  have 
tried. 

But  the  children  had  to  have  something  to  do.  So  they 
knew  they  were  allowed  to  work,  and  they  got  to  work. 
And  they  knew  they  were  allowed  to  invent,  and  they  fell 

7 


to  inventing.  And  they  knew  they  were  allowed  to  laugh, 
if  their  jokes  were  "  clean  enough  for  the  kiddies,"  *  as 
they  came  to  be  called;  so  they  fell  to  joking.  And  they 
became  delirious  with  work,  and  delirious  with  inventions, 
and  loud  with  laughter,  even  laughed  in  clubs  and  smok- 
ing-cars at  things  they  were  not  supposed  to  know  about. 
"  Get  to  work,"  "  Get  out  a  patent,"  "  Stop  me  if  youVe 
heard  this  one,"  became  part  of  the  language.  After  a 
while  these  children  invented  objects  much  bigger  than 
they  were  themselves  —  fantastic  exciting  objects,  which 
the  nurses  and  the  teachers  were  too  feeble  to  understand 
or  to  learn  how  to  run.  So  finally  the  young  people  of 
America  were  left  almost  to  themselves,  became  rude  to 
anyone  over  thirty  and  even  to  each  other,  though  still 
secretly  fearful  of  European  ghosts  and  phantoms.  And 
they  proceeded  to  put  up,  tear  down,  build  higher,  tumble 
over,  shoot  along  giant  mechanisms,  mammoth  electric 
toys,  which  have  made  the  United  States  into  one 
vast  sublime  Christmas  toy  department  throughout  the 
year. 

Here  then  is  the  new  world  the  artist  has  had  before 
him  to  record,  unless  he  preferred  to  be  an  exile  or  a 
mystic.  As,  for  example,  Mark  Twain  ran  away  into 
worlds  of  nonsense,  Herman  Melville  to  the  sea,  Poe  to 
islands  of  his  own,  Henry  James  and  Whistler,  T.  S.  Eliot 
recently,  to  England  and  France,  Gertrude  Stein  into  a 
philosophy  of  grammar  and  syntax,  Carl  Sandburg  to 
The  Potato  Face  Blind  Man  saying,  "  Tomorrow  will 
never  catch  up  with  yesterday  because  yesterday  started 
sooner."  And  many  shimmering  artists  escaped  to  cir- 
cuses, comic  strips,  music  halls,  where  they  could  be  in- 
violate performers.  So  performance  came  to  be  honored 
above  theme  in  this  country.  Only  a  few,  a  very  few,  have 
dared  to  be  lonely  enough  to  stay  by  their  theme. 

In  the  meantime  while  the  young  people  worked  and 
invented  and  joked,  sometimes  they  would  talk  with  the 
peddlers  grown-up  people  turned  away  from  the  door. 
Children  always  find  a  way  to  talk  with  peddlers.  So  they 
had  fun  with  Italians  and  Jews  —  wops  and  sheenies  as 

*  As  real  an  artist  as  Ring  Lardner  once  used  this  phrase  to  describe 
to  a  producer  the  kind  of  show  he  would  like  to  make  for  Broadway. 

8 


they  learned  to  call  them.  And  they  showed  them  what 
they  were  making,  and  the  Jews  especially  out  of  the  dust 
of  the  many  roads  that  had  led  them  further  and  further 
from  their  ancient  mountain  said,  "  Nice,  nice,  lend  us 
these  things  and  we  will  sell  them  for  you."  So  money 
set  in  as  never  before,  and  was  deified.  And  finance  be- 
came a  ritual  so  intricate  and  tangled  that  many  of  the 
young  workers  and  inventors  themselves  were  unable  to 
cope  with  it,  and  its  secrets  went  into  the  hands  of  a  few. 
And  sometimes  the  children  talked  with  the  servants 

—  children  may  always  do  that  —  and  among  others  they 
had  fun  with  the  Negroes.  And  the  eyes  of  these  dark 
people  were  dazzled  by  the  shine  and  speed  of  the  things 
the  white  children  were  making.  And  they  said,  "  Give  us 
some  of  this  shine  for  our  songs  and  dances,  and  we  will 
teach  you  how  to  dance,  and  we  will  tell  you  our  jokes." 
So  entertainment  began.  And  everything  went  wildly  well 

—  more  money,  more  toys,  more  music,  more  money. 
Never  was  there  so  untrammeled  a  racket.  And  indeed  it 
should  continue  to  go  as  well,  unless  by  chance,  before 
ever  these  young  people  have  time  to  grow  up,  they  grow 
old  and  nervous  trying  to  take  care  of  this  giant  toy 
civilization  —  the   United   States   of   America  —  which 
today  goes  agreeably  shrieking  and  blaring  and  reeling 
and  plundering  and  killing  for  more,  more,  more  1 

If  you  say  this  is  not  true,  is  not  still  happening,  read 
then  as  official  evidence  President  Hoover  and  his  com- 
mittee of  American  business  leaders  in  their  report  on 
Recent  Economic  Changes,  published  in  May,  1929: 

"The  survey  has  proved  conclusively  .  .  .  that  wants 
are  almost  insatiable.  .  .  .  The  conclusion  is  that  eco- 
nomically we  have  a  boundless  field  before  us;  that  there 
are  new  wants  which  will  make  way  endlessly  for  newer 
wants,  as  fast  as  they  are  satisfied." 

So,  completely  the  market  gospel,  speed  and  change,  sales 
and  produce,  appears  to  spangle  the  banner,  cash  in  place 
of  the  archaic  stars.  What  chance  yet  for  people  who 
would  think  with  their  hearts  and  follow  the  wild  deep 
wants  of  the  heart  ?  Just  a  ghost  of  a  far-off  chance,  maybe, 
where  the  headlong  committee  slightly  falters,  qualifying 
"  insatiable  "  with  "  almost  "  ! 


"  Old  prejudices  must  always  fall,  and  life 
must  always  change ."  DREISER 


.gainst  this  background  of  want  and  change, 
still  clogged  with  European  ghosts,  in  the  early  years 
of  this  race  of  the  new  away  from  the  old,  of  the  young 
away  from  the  elders,  of  the  raw  away  from  the  mellow, 
Dreiser  was  one  of  the  new-born.  In  a  youthful  coun- 
try as  elsewhere  there  are  strong  and  weak  children, 
adrift  in  the  argument  of  the  few  with  the  many  as  to 
which  are  weak  and  which  are  strong.  And  there  are 
always,  fixed  in  the  tradition,  the  good  and  the  bad  — 
those  who  somewhat  conform  to,  and  those  who  nearly 
reject  the  ways  of  their  parents.  So  it  happens  there  are 
the  good  and  the  bad  strong  children,  to  be  praised  and 
denounced  in  accordance  with  the  shifting  conventions  of 
the  years. 

There  are  the  Rockefellers  and  the  Garys  and  the 
Hearsts,  some  of  them  paying  great  fines  of  universities 
and  libraries  and  good  works  to  appease  their  Victorian 
parentage;  some  of  them  not  even  taking  the  trouble  to 
do  this.  There  is  Henry  Ford,  who  in  his  strength  can 
junk  millions  of  dollars  of  machinery  in  favor  of  abler 
machinery,  and  in  his  arrested  virtue  preaches  the  old- 
fashioned  dances,  and  fills  museums  with  the  hoop  skirts 
of  presidents'  wives  and  their  attendant  psychology. 
There  is  Thomas  Edison  in  one  and  the  same  interview 
seeking  to  suggest  the  chemical  physical  nature  of  im- 
mortality and  recommending  Evangeline  as  his  favorite 
poem.  These  are  the  daring,  cautious,  yes-you-can,  no- 
you-can't  Americans.  These  are  the  virtuous  children, 
who  have  opened  doors  on  extravagant  playgrounds, 
where  already  grandchildren  and  their  hoodlum  friends 
have  forgotten  that  this  country  ever  had  a  complacent 
10 


Yankee  past,  and  have  scarcely  heard  of  a  Cavalier  Vir- 
ginian past.  Yet  they  have  been  careful  always  to  observe 
the  signs  put  up  by  their  elders  in  each  new  playground, 
"  These  are  new  playgrounds,  but  you  are  Americans, 
and  you  must  be  true  to  the  past.  You  must  not  have  any 
fun  here.  No  fun  allowed  here."  And  some  of  the  young 
bandits  have  been  vicariously  careful,  too;  they  have  paid 
their  fines  in  support  of  the  churches  and  the  various  pro- 
hibitions —  no  wine,  no  lust,  no  beauty,  no  fun. 

Dreiser,  one  of  these  pioneers,  was  born  to  fit  neither 
the  good  nor  the  bad  tradition.  He  was  born  nearly  un- 
conditioned by  the  past.  If  conditioned  at  all,  it  was  more 
by  the  decrees  of  the  moment,  by  the  American  scene. 
And  if  today  conditioned,  what  prejudices  have  grown 
into  him,  what  unconscious  native  color  has  stained  his 
intellect?  The  story  of  this  is  the  psychic  story  of  recent 
years.  A  man  as  highly  conscious  as  Dreiser,  and  at  the 
same  time  as  interlocked  with  the  world  about  him,  be- 
comes a  cylinder,  a  record  not  only  of  himself  but  of  the 
world  about  him.  Yet,  too,  untouched  by  influences,  he 
has  sometimes  made  his  way  into  solitudes.  It  is  this 
nearly  unconditioned  quality  of  mind,  which  is  live  intel- 
lect, and  rare  the  world  over,  which  is  Dreiser's  pioneer- 
ing gift  to  this  country. 

He  saw  the  signs  put  up  by  the  guardians  in  the  new 
playgrounds.  He  could  read  them.  But  he  saw  also  that 
the  children  were  practicing  fun  in  spite  of  them,  and 
were  almost  forgetting  the  penalty  —  hell-fire.  They 
were  at  any  rate  lying,  stealing,  fornicating,  and  making 
money;  shrieking,  laughing  and  destroying,  which  is  fun 
for  children.  And,  he  wondered,  why  not,  if  they  knew 
how,  or  if  they  didn't,  if  they  were  even  awkward  about 
it,  if  they  had  to  go  to  prison  for  it,  or  even  be  exe- 
cuted for  it?  Why  not  if  their  new  lawlessness  was 
stronger  than  the  old  law?  Then  it  became  fact.  Then  it 
was  interesting.  Then  it  became  law.  Watch  everything 
in  this  shifting,  changing  United  States,  listen  to  every- 
thing; make  out  what  you  can,  what  you  have  time  for; 
you  won't  make  out  much  in  the  hurry.  Forget  the  parents 
and  aunts  and  uncles,  unless  they  still  live  and  won't  die 
in  the  new  child,  unless  perhaps  they  are  younger  than 

ii 


their  own  time,  or  possibly  timeless  —  small  chance  of 
that!  Forget  these  people  as  such;  keep  the  old  photo- 
graphs, give  them  a  tear  or  a  smile  or  even  a  caress,  put 
them  away  in  a  drawer  or  in  storage.  But  don't  confuse 
them  with  the  new,  with  the  moment  as  you  see  it,  which 
is  sure  to  be  different,  to  be  old  tomorrow.  Put  things  and 
people  down  as  you  see  them,  hear  them,  feel  them.  Re- 
member the  new  teachers  science  and  change,  science  that 
made  machinery,  change  that  makes  hurry.  That  way  you 
will  pass  with  high  marks. 

So  this  German-Slav  from  Terre  Haute  was  to  be  one 
to  live  through  this  period  of  transition  from  the  States 
into  America,  from  British  puritanism  into  material  pa- 
ganism ;  to  live  through  it  and  remain  part  of  it.  He  is  at 
best  both  playwright  and  play;  at  worst,  at  least  the 
play,  that  is,  American.  If  we  take  it  from  Barbereau,  a 
philosopher  cited  by  Baudelaire  as  of  his  own  mind: 
'The  great  poets,  the  philosophers,  the  prophets,  are 
beings,  who  by  the  free  and  pure  exercise  of  the  will,  ar- 
rive at  a  state  where  they  are  at  the  same  time  cause  and 
effect,  subject  and  object,  magnetizer  and  somnambulist." 
At  times  Dreiser  fills  the  order.  He  is  then  both  native 
and  stranger.  He  said  one  day,  "  Sometimes  I  see  myself 
as  a  hoop  in  an  arc  reaching  over  from  one  phase  of 
existence  into  another.  What  seemed  unthinkable  when  I 
was  young  is  a  commonplace  now." 

Who  are  some  of  the  other  hoops  in  this  arc  of  articu- 
late Americans?  Where  did  they  start? 


12 


To  understand!  It  is  —  not  to  die! 
You  will  be  in  the  circle  of  joy  forever" 

AUGUSTE  RODIN 


Jin  1871  Dreiser  was  born  in  the  Middle  West, 
in  Indiana.  In  1842  and  1857,  Ambrose  Bierce  and 
Clarence  Darrow  in  Ohio.  In  1833  Robert  Ingersoll 
and  in  1843  Henry  James  in  New  York.  In  1834  and 
1830  and  1836  and  1838  Whistler,  Emily  Dickinson, 
Winslow  Homer,  and  Henry  Adams  in  New  England. 
In  1835  Mark  Twain  in  Missouri.  Three  years  before 
Dreiser,  Edwin  Robinson  in  Maine;  a  year  before, 
Frank  Norris  in  Chicago;  and  in  the  same  year  Stephen 
Crane  in  New  Jersey.  A  few  years  before,  Edgar  Lee 
Masters,  and  a  few  years  after  Carl  Sandburg,  Vachel 
Lindsay,  Sherwood  Anderson  were  born  in  the  Middle 
West;  Robert  Frost  in  California;  and  Gertrude  Stein  in 
Pennsylvania.  Out  of  an  overlapping  background  not  far 
behind,  came  Poe  from  Massachusetts,  Lincoln  from 
Kentucky  in  1809,  Thoreau  from  New  York  in  1817,  and 
Melville  and  Whitman  from  New  York  and  New  Eng- 
land in  1819.  These  are  some  of  the  people  who  have 
taken  something  American  through  and  over  from  a 
previous  era  into  one  that  is  not  yet  characterized;  and, 
for  all  we  know,  what  with  wars  to  come,  and  free  speech 
again  suspect,  may  never  be  deeply  characterized  before 
the  next  change  comes.  A  random  list,  you  will  say,  and 
one  to  disturb  some  of  those  listed,  so  that  if  dead  they 
might  turn  in  their  graves;  if  living,  they  might  claim 
damage  to  find  themselves  in  each  other's  company  even 
for  the  space  of  a  brief  paragraph.  It  is  true  these  names 
are  not  closely  related  to  one  another.  Some  of  them 
scarcely  touch  each  other  in  what  they  would  ask  to 
stand  for.  Some  stand  for  rudeness  more  than  refinement, 

13 


some  for  document  more  than  tone,  some  for  drama  more 
than  analysis,  some  for  behavior  more  than  philosophy. 
And  then  besides,  it  is  the  American  way,  people  bear  rela- 
tion to  things  and  events  more  than  they  do  to  people. 
These,  as  I  see  it,  bear  relation  to  that  flood  of  change  in 
the  United  States,  indeed  in  the  Western  World,  that 
has  carried  us  away  from  the  prophet  to  the  scientist; 
away  from  the  hand  to  the  machine;  from  goods  to 
money,  from  quality  to  quantity,  from  the  fixed  to  the 
shifting.  They  are  cited  here  as  bearing  relation  not  to 
one  another  but  to  a  century  of  terrific  transition.  Some 
of  them  have  been  causes  or  tools  or  symptoms  of  change, 
at  the  same  time  standing  out  against  it  to  crystallize 
and  arrest  it  in  art.  Others  more  simply  have  stood  in  the 
face  of  it  as  you  might  in  a  storm,  not  celebrating  it  or 
ignoring  it.  All  have  won  because  they  have  dealt  in  mo- 
ments of  their  work  with  essential  quality.  They  have  been 
electric  people.  They  are  not  old-fashioned  people. 


5 

The  widest  of  our  valleys 

T 

JLhe  Prairie,  the  Middle  West — if  you  go 
by  in  a  train  or  in  a  car,  and  you  have  never  lived  there, 
you  might  say  in  winter,  "Bleak  monotonous  country! 
I  don't  care  how  many  millions  it  is  said  to  feed," 
or  in  summer,  "  Too  flat,  too  green,  too  dusty,  and 
certainly  trivial!  Why  don't  they  go  through  in  the 
night?  "  But  if  you  have  lived  there,  that  is,  known 
people  you  have  loved  there,  it  is  disturbing  as  you  jog 
through  on  a  train  or  glide  through  in  a  car.  Then  the 
checkered  quilted  plains,  gold,  black,  indigo  and  green, 
each  sow  with  litter  of  pigs,  each  cow,  each  running  horse, 
each  roost  fluttering  with  white  hens,  the  hedge  rows  and 
the  windbreaks,  the  foolish  little  houses  beside  the  wise 
red  barns  and  concrete  silos,  the  lilac  bushes  and  wild 
grape  vines  —  these  few  visible  creatures  breathing  or 
inanimate,  that  play  with  and  slightly  break  the  flatness, 
bring  to  memory  a  series  of  detailed  patterns  that  used 
to  emerge  from  the  flatness  for  you,  and  return  into  it. 
You  remember  in  winter  long  walks  you  have  taken  even 
alone  that  seemed  lonely  and  yet  not  lonely,  over  frozen 
roads  between  frozen  fields,  where  there  was  peremptory 
and  solemn  order  of  the  fields  between  the  windbreaks, 
put  away  by  dogged  patient  arms  for  the  three  months  of 
ice  and  snow.  And  although  you  knew  not  a  friend  for 
miles  to  speak  with,  hardly  a  face  even  in  a  farm  house 
window  —  the  people  seemed  put  away  too  —  yet  be- 
cause of  this  peremptory  and  solemn  order,  a  single  man, 
a  single  dark  figure,  fringe  of  coat  and  trousers  velvety 
with  wear,  going  from  his  back  door  to  the  barnyard  to 
feed  the  pigs,  followed  by  his  collie,  appeared  to  move 
like  a  cipher  of  the  race  of  men.  And  the  sun,  sharp 
sphere  of  fire  in  the  west  would  challenge  the  eye,  until 

15 


looking  into  it  and  into  that  alone,  you  began  to  worship 
not  sunlight  but  the  disc  itself,  which  changed  to  orange 
and  then  rose,  as  reaching  the  horizon  it  leaned  for  mo- 
ments on  the  snow,  and  then  leaving,  chilled  and  deso- 
lated near  and  far.  That  is,  single  facts  like  these,  the 
man,  the  sun,  or  a  tree  full  of  white  leghorns  were  ecstatic 
strokes  on  a  clean  canvas.  They  had  to  count  for  you. 
You  took  them  or  nothing  in  a  country  where  there  was 
nothing  else  to  take.  And  years  afterwards  a  memory  of 
force  and  of  economy  persisted.  The  prairie  laid  away 
for  winter  —  the  railroad  tracks  carrying  people  from 
dirty  raw  cities  east  or  west  to  more  elaborate  landscape 
—  the  little  towns  with  today  the  bank,  the  drug  store, 
the  ice-cream  parlors  and  movie  houses,  with  before  the 
general  store  and  saloons,  the  few  factories  along  the 
rivers,  the  school  house  and  the  churches  —  not  much 
else  to  show,  and  all  too  light  to  disturb  the  sleeping 
prairie. 

Or  memory  is  tapped  back  to  April  on  the  prairie,  to 
summer  months  and  to  the  hazy  opulent  and  nearly  putrid 
autumns,  so  much  has  grown  to  decay  from  lack  of  hands 
to  harvest.  And  the  triple  patterns  of  these  seasons  have 
many  planes  both  intersecting  and  never  meeting,  which 
except  for  the  birds  and  the  clouds  almost  secretly  con- 
tradict the  flatness  —  so  close  to  earth  they  seem.  Not 
much  of  it  is  human;  it  is  from  spring  to  fall  a  parade 
which  human  hands  help  to  make,  but  not  their  hearts  to 
celebrate.  People  are  stage-hands  here  on  the  prairie, 
have  been  since  first  they  got  settled  here.  Sometimes  they 
make  a  rhythmic  part  of  the  scenery  —  rhythm  of  plow- 
ing, harrowing,  sowing,  cultivating,  mowing,  picking, 
harvesting,  feeding,  loading,  unloading  in  railway  sta- 
tions, once  by  hand  and  horse,  now  by  hand  and  machine. 
But  the  big  parts  in  the  play  are  not  taken  by  people.  The 
parts  are  taken  by  frogs  and  leaves,  puddles,  moons, 
thunder  in  the  first  days  of  spring;  and  later  by  the  storm 
of  petals,  magenta  to  white,  that  fruit  trees  throw  around 
each  triplicate  of  farm-house,  barn,  and  silo;  by  the  cob- 
webbed  dew  on  lawns  before  breakfast  time  in  May,  by 
the  feverish  tearing  of  dandelions  over  pasture  and  lawn; 
by  hollyhock,  dahlias,  trumpet-vine,  pumpkins;  and  all 
16 


the  blights,  that  play  the  part  of  villains  to  prairie  fruit 
and  vegetables.  These  gardens  dating  back  eighty  years 
and  more  to  the  days  of  our  wars,  Mexican  and  Civil 
wars,  make  drama  through  the  summers  more  than  peo- 
ple do. 

Then  the  fields,  musical  successions,  theme  on  theme, 
chord  on  chord.  Crescendo  of  waving  surfaces,  emana- 
tions of  bronze  and  gold  dust  into  white  noon  air,  green 
festoons  of  corn  rows  palpably  ascending  from  earth  to 
blue  air  —  the  fields  with  eyes  and  flanks  of  goddesses, 
large,  lazy,  shining,  served  by  the  hands  of  farmers,  to 
keep  them  forever  fertile,  ready,  young.  These  are  both 
actors  and  drama,  these  make  the  fabulous  ballets  of 
this  land. 

Or  to  put  it  this  way:  Those  who  can't  live  without 
play  of  life  to  look  at,  have  to  find  it  on  the  Prairie  in 
classic  drama  of  the  fields,  in  romance  of  gardens;  in 
chamber  music  of  birds,  satire  and  burlesque  going  on 
in  insect  worlds  —  tiny  red  bugs  under  hedges,  spiders, 
locusts,  fireflies,  the  few  ethereal  butterflies;  or  orgies  in 
the  world  of  reptiles  and  weeds  —  toads,  garter  snakes, 
mullen,  burdock,  milkweed. 

Why  should  the  people  take  parts,  or  except  for  a  few 
of  them  be  even  hungry  audience?  The  young,  the  daring 
young,  are  not  going  to  stay  here.  The  fathers  are  not 
going  to  have  their  help  for  long.  They  are  going  away 
to  "  get  on."  The  mothers  for  years  have  been  telling 
their  favorite  sons  to  study  hard,  and  some  day  they  will 
be  something  in  the  great  world.  They  will  succeed;  they 
will  "  get  on."  The  mothers  feed  the  sons  to  the  city.  The 
daughters  jealously  follow. 

Of  course  in  the  shelter  of  little  woods,  or  lost  between 
corn  rows  or  up  in  the  choir  lofts  of  churches,  or  in  some 
darkened  back  room  when  the  rest  of  the  folks  have  gone 
off  for  the  day,  there  have  been  doings  and  plenty  of  them 
in  the  century  of  pioneer  prairie  life  —  adultery,  incest, 
perversions,  and  occasional  murder  and  dark  disposal  of 
the  bodies.  And  when  these  are  brought  to  light  and  rest 
perhaps  for  months  in  the  undertaker's  morgue,  which  is 
apt  to  be  also  the  furniture  store  for  davenports  and  ice- 
boxes and  baby  carriages,  then  the  village  gathers  itself 


into  a  little  morbid  knot  of  drama,  and  yields  intensive 
long-faced  chatter,  a  sympathetic  suicide,  another  murder 
or  two.  But  for  the  most,  all  vile  and  all  delightful  lechery 
rests  beneath  the  surface.  Even  today  when  in  summer 
months  high-school  lust  fulfills  itself,  in  closed  sedans 
along  the  roads  between  the  radio  and  ice-cream  parlors, 
these  pleasures  are  suppressed,  don't  get  into  village 
chronicles.  Nothing  goes  into  speech;  nearly  everything 
warped  by  silence  is  tolerated.  Only  when  some  young 
high-school  teacher  begins  candidly  to  mention  evolution, 
sex-hygiene,  or  comparative  theology,  does  a  cry  escape 
the  elders.  Then  the  teacher  must  pack  his  trunk  and  look 
for  another  job. 

Is  it  any  wonder  then  that  those  born  to  speak  out, 
brilliant  with  the  minerals  of  this  soil,  must  leave  the 
small  town?  Only  a  genius  for  cryptograms  and  elusions 
could  quell  loneliness  with  fulfillment  in  these  unrelated 
provinces.  Carl  Sandburg  in  Illinois  has  been  doing  this, 
changing  open  secrets  over  into  poems.  Robert  Frost  in 
the  narrower  valleys  of  New  Hampshire  has  refined  and 
subtilized  a  set  of  ciphers  that  have  movements  of 
watches  to  tell  infinite  time  with.  Emily  Dickinson,  a 
woman,  in  Amherst  in  the  sixties,  Edwin  Arlington 
Robinson  in  New  York,  the  greatest  of  our  villages  in 
the  nineties,  have  used  this  gift  to  lodge  the  theme  in 
word  masks.  Dreiser  has  none  of  this  magic,  has  had  to 
manage  without  it,  has  not  the  narrow  gift  of  language. 
He  is  wilfully  explicit;  implicit,  when  he  is,  in  spite  of 
himself,  and  by  virtue  of  bringing  into  life  a  world  so 
actual  that  it  in  turn  has  implications  of  its  own  beyond 
his  control. 


18 


"  Many  good  men  come  from  Indiana; 
the  better  they  are  the  quicker  they  come" 

GEORGE  ADE 

T 

JLheodore  Dreiser  in  1871  was  born  in  this 
luxurious  inhuman  cradle,  The  Middle  West;  in  Terre 
Haute,  Indiana,  one  of  whose  sons,  as  quoted  above, 
makes  a  dogmatic  but  famous  axiom  about  men  and 
Hoosiers.  Dreiser  was  born  on  the  2yth  of  August  at 
8.30  in  the  morning,  the  eleventh  of  thirteen  children. 
Terre  Haute  was  well  to  the  south  in  Indiana,  and  so 
was  a  birthplace  tinged  with  the  warmer,  lazier,  more 
indolent  South  of  the  United  States.  And  this  flavor  of 
the  South  spreading  north  in  Indiana,  he  says,  never  met 
the  resistance  that  it  met  spreading  north  in  other  states. 
The  settlers  of  Indiana,  though  they  were  many  of  them 
children  of  New  England,  were  not  like  the  settlers  of 
northern  Illinois,  Michigan,  Wisconsin  —  so  often  stub- 
born and  complacent,  genitally  warped,  intellectually  cal- 
loused. Somehow  the  gentler  people,  he  maintains,  the 
dreamier  more  whimsical  men  and  women  stopped  here. 
Perhaps  they  stopped  in  accordance  with  the  grand  old 
saying  of  pioneer  life  as  it  travelled  from  east  to  west, 
"  The  cowards  never  started  and  the  weak  ones  fell  by 
the  way."  Perhaps  they  were  the  weak.  Dreiser  has  de- 
scribed them  caressingly,  with  a  moving  almost  tearful 
voice,  which  has  affected  me  the  way  delicate  greenish 
plants  embodying  life  have  affected  me  —  those  plants 
strong  and  yet  leisurely  to  grow  with  long  idle  stems 
out  of  shadowy  swamp:  "Indiana  is  different  among 
Western  States,  just  as  people  will  tell  you  Connec- 
ticut is  different  from  other  New  England  States.  It  is 
a  State  apart.  Anything  could  happen  there.  The  people 
are  credulous,  they  like  to  believe  anything,  preposterous 
things.  You  can't  call  them  tolerant,  they  don't  think  in 

19 


terms  of  intolerance;  they  are  just  softer,  dreamier  peo- 
ple. .  .  .  Like  life  in  warm  bottom  lands,  deposits  of 
ancient  rivers.  Many  of  them  failures,  don't  you  know, 
the  kind  that  make  good  mediums  and  fortune  tellers. 
The  successful  people  can't  tell  fortunes,  they  build  walls 
around  themselves  in  order  to  succeed.  They  haven't 
much  imagination  about  the  next  man.  ...  A  criminal 
of  the  worst  kind,  or  a  charlatan  can  get  away  with  it  in 
Indiana.  The  more  irrational  the  story,  the  easier  to  get 
these  people  to  believe  it.  ...  There's  something  fer- 
tile, solacing  in  a  way,  about  the  place." 

To  bear  him  out  were  his  own  father  and  mother,  who 
believed  in  signs  and  auguries.  When  he  was  born,  they 
told  him,  an  apparition  of  three  graces  attended  her  la- 
bors. A  few  evenings  before  her  marriage  she  saw  thir- 
teen will-o'-the-wisps  dancing  over  a  bog  before  her 
house;  they  predicted  the  number  of  her  children.  After 
the  birth  of  the  third  child,  and  her  rebellious  wish  one 
night  to  be  young  and  free  again,  three  lights  appearing 
in  the  meadow  and  abruptly  vanishing  signified  that  her 
wish  would  come  true.  Not  long  after  the  three  children 
died.  Then  she  prayed  to  God  that  if  only  he  would  grant 
her  more  babies,  she  would  never  be  a  rebel  again;  she 
would  dedicate  her  life  to  them.  This  she  did  to  five  sons 
and  five  daughters.  .  .  .  Dreiser  himself  has  carried 
away  from  this  credulous  land  a  leaning  toward  the 
regions  of  the  occult.  It  deeply  colors  his  realism.  He  is 
willing  to  believe  nothing  and  ready  to  believe  anything. 

Other  gifted  Hoosiers,  though  none  so  vigorous  and 
smouldering  as  Dreiser,  none  so  eager  to  carry  the  bur- 
dens of  the  whole  country  by  recording  them,  are  in  them- 
selves testimony  to  this  mood  of  Indiana.  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley  and  Lew  Wallace  come  logically  from  a 
cradle  of  superstition  and  dreamy  romance.  George  Ade, 
Eugene  Field,  Booth  Tarkington,  Dreiser's  own  brother 
Paul  Dresser,  John  T.  McCutcheon,  seem  like  men  who 
would  be  at  ease  with  fortune-tellers  or  story-tellers  or 
magicians  or  vaudeville  sopranos  or  lion-tamers  —  with 
any  of  those  more  irregular,  informal,  looser  products  of 
the  race.  They  can  hypnotize  and  seduce  lightly,  and 
believe  in  airy  hypnotism  and  light  seduction. 
20 


Inescapable  cradles 

nn 


he  human  embryo  living  the  life  of  creation 
over  from  the  moment  of  the  first  cell  to  the  moment 
of  the  complete  child,  knows  how  to  unfold  without  help 
from  the  outside.  The  American  because  of  cleavage 
from  the  parent  has  been  forced  to  unfold  in  this  same 
way  in  going  from  the  child  to  the  man  —  without  help 
from  the  outside.  And  the  Westerner,  the  Middle  West- 
erner, more  than  any  other,  has  had  to  learn  the  lesson 
of  civilization  over  step  by  step  or  not  at  all,  almost 
without  help  from  the  outside.  In  doing  this  the  embryo 
has  the  advantage,  repeating  always  an  innate  lesson 
of  the  ages.  Civilization  is  no  such  racial  habit  and  still 
requires  teachers.  And  we  threw  away  the  teachers  as 
dangerous  or  exotic  or  out  of  key.  So  the  American  from 
the  point  of  view  of  human  subtleties  has  developed  grop- 
ingly or  sometimes  with  a  rush,  skipping  essential  steps. 
He  has  been  like  an  embryo  who  might  forget  to  emerge 
with  eyelashes  or  with  all  five  fingers  on  each  hand,  or 
with  the  sense  of  three  dimensions.  Yet,  to  compensate, 
he  might  have  piercing  eyesight,  four  grasping  fingers 
and  a  linear  drive  beyond  all  ancient  calculations.  In  any 
event  he  has  been  that  United  States  fruit  of  heroism, 
the  self-made  man.  To  begin  at  the  bottom  and  work 
up  all  in  a  brief  lifetime  —  this  together  with  a  stifling 
set  of  inhibitions  and  taboos  preserved  from  the  past, 
has  been  the  boasted  inheritance  of  each  American  child. 
And  the  phrase,  "  Get  on,  get  on,  push  on,"  is  scratched 
deep,  swift  and  sprawling  in  the  various  lingos  of  our 
language. 

Dreiser  is  a  giant  of  this  form  of  growth,  one  of  the 
self-made  titans.  Yet  unlike  many  of  them  he  appears  to 
himself  a  seed  out  of  fertile  soil,  rich  sediment,  dramatic 

21 


with  rocky  deposit.  He  has  faith  in  his  beginning  as  in 
himself.  Out  of  it,  as  he  tells  of  it,  might  logically  develop 
a  fluid  spirit  shot  with  flame  —  a  solitary  temper,  native 
and  yet  new  to  the  United  States.  He  is  a  massive  fluid 
man,  an  intellect  personifying  the  modern  doctrine  of 
nature :  Nothing  fixed,  even  the  rocks,  even  iron  and  steel 
in  a  state  of  flux.  He  is  possibly  a  prophecy  of  what  may 
yet  be  the  American  compensation  —  the  gift  of  being 
large  and  flexible  evolving  out  of  what  was  apparently 
formless  and  vauntingly  untraditional. 

Here  I  am  taking  his  word  for  it,  from  what  he  has 
written  and  told  of  parents  and  childhood.  His  father 
was  born  in  Mayen,  Germany,  a  small  Catholic  walled 
town  set  among  hills  at  the  juncture  of  the  Rhine  and 
the  Moselle.  Though  escaping  into  Alsace,  and  then  to 
America,  when  a  young  man,  in  order  to  avoid  being 
drafted  into  the  Prussian  army,  which  had  seized  this 
hamlet,  only  a  few  years  before  belonging  to  France,  he 
retained  always  a  mediaeval  nature.  His  mind  was  like 
an  ancient  hamlet  encircled  by  German  Catholic  walls 
and  hills.  There  must  be  something  of  the  protestant  in 
every  German  as  in  every  Anglo-Saxon.  The  Latin  Catho- 
lic reconciles  the  drama  of  church  with  ancient  delights. 
The  confessional  allows  him  to  do  this.  The  German 
Catholic  asks  for  no  other  fire  or  excitement  than  that 
which  may  come  out  of  Catholic  lore  and  ritual.  He  is  a 
violent  protestant  against  outside  delights.  He  is  in- 
tensely, darkly  Catholic  and  so  is  ready  when  he  breaks 
away  to  be  as  intense  a  Lutheran,  or  as  intense  a  free 
thinker.  So  Dreiser  describes  his  father,  who  in  no  matter 
what  small  village  of  Indiana,  or  in  Chicago  in  his  last 
days,  was  a  man  filled  with  the  lurid  shapes  of  the  Ger- 
man Catholic  night.  With  the  unreal  world  of  saints  and 
devils  as  the  one  reality  he  fought  to  surround  his  ten  un- 
willing children.  Only  one  of  them  entirely  succumbed, 
Dreiser  says,  though  for  years  each  one  lived  in  the 
shadow  of  this  volcano  —  the  Church.  The  destructive 
lava  of  it  perhaps  first  printed  in  Dreiser  his  enormous 
sense  of  doom. 

His  mother  was  an  opposite  temperament  —  Pennsyl- 
vania-Dutch, that  is  Moravian,  a  Slavic  race.  Her  people 

22 


were  Mennonites  —  a  faith  refusing  oaths,  civic  offices, 
support  of  the  State  in  war,  and  buttons  and  buttonholes, 
hooks  and  eyes  —  everything  must  be  tied.  Largeness  of 
spirit,  mobility  might  easily  have  been  a  gift  from  her. 
She  was,  according  to  Dreiser,  large,  mobile,  fertile.  She 
lives  in  his  story  of  his  childhood,  A  Hoosier  Holiday, 
like  an  embodiment  for  him  of  the  soil  of  Indiana,  just 
as  early  people  have  imagined  for  themselves  presiding 
spirits  of  the  groves  and  fields  and  mountains  where  they 
lived,  and  have  made  shrines  for  these  spirits.  "  An  open, 
uneducated,  wondering,  dreamy  mind,"  he  describes  her, 
"  none  of  the  customary  conscious  principles  with  which 
so  many  conventional  souls  are  afflicted."  "  A  pagan,"  "  a 
poet,"  "  great-hearted,"  who  was  "  taken  over  into  the 
Catholic  Church  at  marriage,  because  she  loved  a  Catho- 
lic and  would  follow  love  anywhere."  She  was  imbued 
with  "  the  trees  and  the  flowers  and  the  clouds  and  the 
sound  of  the  wind  ";  with  "  fables  and  fairies  and  half 
believed  in  them,  and  once  saw  the  Virgin  Mary  standing 
in  our  garden  .  .  .  blue  robes,  crown  and  all,  and  was 
sure  it  was  she!  ";  she  liked  "  the  ne'er  do  well  a  little 
better  than  those  staid  favorites  of  society  who  keep 
laws,"  and  would  laugh  and  cry  with  them.  .  .  . 

One  night  I  heard  Dreiser  speaking  of  his  mother.  It 
was  a  New  York  night  on  the  East  Side,  cold  as  knives. 
Frost-pictures  on  the  plate-glass  window  panes  were 
fabulous  etchings.  Pine-clad  precipices,  deities  above  the 
clouds,  armies  in  conflict,  cities  on  fire,  bridges  crowded 
with  people  intoxicated  for  that  night  the  passerby.  Satin 
quilts,  pink,  gold,  scarlet,  peacock  blue,  hung  under  white 
store  lights,  to  be  bought,  one  knew,  for  the  double  beds 
of  tenements  beside  elevated  tracks.  Every  block  or  so 
men  and  boys  were  warming  nervous  hands  at  street  bon- 
fires, on  to  one  of  which  a  red-bearded  Jew  flung  an  old 
mattress  carried  from  some  room  above  with  a  laugh  and 
a  kind  of  cry,  "  Now  will  we  have  fire,"  and  an  invitation 
to  us  to  come  and  get  warm.  Glass,  satin,  lights  and  the 
gestures  of  people  sharpened  senses  and  memory  through 
Sicilian,  Syrian,  Judean,  Chinese  streets.  The  mind  made 
distant  analogies,  skipped  time  and  space  to  a  variety 

23 


of  scenes  and  legends.  Under  the  oblong  spangles  of 
Chinese  chandeliers  at  the  oblong  table,  it  was  easy  to  go 
sharply  here  and  there  —  Greek  poets,  Egyptian  gods, 
French  women,  Inca  ornaments,  and  whatever  one  spoke 
of  to  seem  to  find  details  and  their  essence.  He  described 
Indiana,  took  it  away  from  the  map,  put  it  into  fable, 
spoke  of  his  beginning,  the  poverty  of  it  and  the  luxuries. 
He  said  of  his  mother  a  thing  which,  if  parents  could  find 
its  secret,  would  mean  more  to  them  than  much  of  the 
learned  advice  that  educators  give  at  parents'  meetings : 
"  She  made  our  house  seem  to  us  like  fairyland.  .  .  .  We 
used  to  complain  of  her  sometimes,  and  yet  none  of  us, 
not  even  those  who  were  grown-up,  could  stay  away  from 
her  long.  We  were  always  coming  back  —  she  was  potent 
and  alive." 

Real  fairy  stories  don't  lie  as  to  the  horror  and  coarse- 
ness of  life.  Only  the  faint  and  too  sweet  expurgated 
echoes  of  fairy  stories  for  modern  children  suppress  the 
truth  in  the  optimist's  ever-rising  tone  of  voice.  So  I 
imagine  this  fairyland  did  not  lie  to  him.  This  first  home, 
changing  from  house  to  house,  five  different  houses  in 
Terre  Haute,  one  in  Sullivan,  one  in  Evansville,  two  in 
Warsaw  did  not  hide  dark  shapes  from  him.  Surrounding 
him  were  dragons  and  giants  and  their  victims.  His 
family  had  to  accept  them.  There  was  the  Catholic  Church 
and  the  father  under  the  spell  of  it.  There  was  failure 
after  success  for  the  father,  and  the  dream  of  a  woolen 
mill  which  should  some  day  be  his,  gone  up  in  flames. 
There  were  debts  and  not  enough  clothes,  not  enough 
food,  and  the  father  under  the  spell  of  this  misery.  The 
mother  not  subdued,  but  worn,  tortured,  by  facing  it,  by 
working  out  in  other  people's  houses  or  washing  for  them 
at  home  —  work  that  countless  women  set  out  to  do,  but 
she  was  meant  to  shine,  and  did,  according  to  his  legend, 
shine  in  spite  of  it. 

"  Was  she  beautiful?  "  —  "I  don't  know  if  she  was 
beautiful,"  Dreiser  said.  u  She  was  plump,  not  very  tall. 
I  remember  one  summer  day  in  Terre  Haute,  I  was  play- 
ing in  our  yard  and  I  saw  her  from  a  little  distance.  She 
was  cooking  in  a  kind  of  shed  near  the  house,  making 
jelly,  I  think.  I  thought,  '  My  mother  is  very  beautiful  I  '  " 
24 


"  Was  she  really  so  alive,  so  '  pagan,'  as  you  call  her? 
Was  your  father  enough  for  her  then,  or  did  she  find 
others?  "  —  "  She  did  if  she  wanted  to,  I'm  certain  of 
that.  She  had  a  way  of  doing  what  she  wanted  to  do 
without  disturbing  the  rest  of  us.  But  I  was  too  young, 
I  don't  know  about  that."  — "  Well,  maybe  she  did. 
Maybe  your  father  was  not  your  father.  How  do  you 
know?"  —  "I  don't  know,  but  there  is  an  access  of 
gloom,  a  brooding  in  me  over  long  periods,  so  like  him 
that  I  feel  a  close  relationship." 

His  answers  to  these  questions,  ready  to  explore  re- 
gions that  to  most  people  are  closed  precincts,  testify 
again  to  a  detached  intellect,  that  un-American  gift.  Even 
his  recent  portraits  of  women  —  This  Madness  —  dia- 
betically  published  in  the  Cosmopolitan  Magazine,  have 
something  of  this.  They  make  romantic  heroines  of  these 
three  ladies,  come  nearer  than  anything  he  has  written  to 
what  Rodin  once  called  the  cream-tart  of  the  bourgeois 
—  the  ideal.  Yet  they  give  you,  as  he  goes  the  rounds  by 
way  of  a  number  of  other  girls  and  women  less  important 
to  him,  an  unashamed  picture  of  himself,  lonely  and  scat- 
tered for  having  to  know  variety  better  than  intimacy. 
Out  of  this  trait  may  have  grown  the  untiring  scope  of 
his  work,  and  the  long  stretches  we  have  to  travel  without 
meeting  intensity.  Then,  suddenly,  to  refute  this,  come 
penetrating  thrifty  moments.  Patience  for  variety,  detail, 
volume,  and  impatience  to  illumine  with  lightning,  com- 
bine his  meaning. 


D 


8 

Terre  Haute:  aura  of  houses  and  yards 

reiser  has  made  two  records  of  Childhood, 
A  Hoosier  Holiday,  1916,  and  Dawn,  1931.  The  first, 
less  literal  than  the  second,  has  the  advantage  of  be- 
ing nearer  to  Indiana,  nearer  to  his  youth,  and  nearer 
to  a  work  of  art.  Dawn  has  the  advantage  of  appear- 
ing when,  partly  due  to  its  author,  prudery  for  the  mo- 
ment has  been  partially  defeated.  It  packs  away  end- 
less unremitting  detail,  some  of  it  agreeably  shocking  to  a 
reader  with  the  patience  to  uncover  it.  It  is  a  breeding 
place  of  innumerable  novels,  undesigned,  inchoate.  A 
Hoosier  Holiday  is  an  annealment  of  these  years  as  they 
came  back  to  him  on  a  visit  to  Indiana  in  1914.  It  is 
charged  with  eager  questioning  and  an  air  of  candor,  if 
not  with  each  shredded  detail.  To  me  it  reveals  more  of 
Dreiser  alive  and  entire  than  does  the  explicit  confes- 
sional, Dawn,  to  which,  notwithstanding,  one  is  indebted 
for  many  revealing  facts. 

He  tells  how  in  addition  to  the  spectre  of  poverty,  they 
lived  under  a  chimera  of  social  disapproval.  "  We  were 
poor  in  the  main,  and  worse  yet  because  of  certain  early 
errors  of  some  of  the  children  (how  many  have  I  com- 
mitted since)  ...  we  considered  we  were  socially  dis- 
credited." After  his  father's  failure  in  Terre  Haute, 
several  of  his  sisters  ran  away  to  escape  the  tyranny  at 
home  and  had  "  gone  to  the  bad,"  so  the  father  said,  and 
gossips  agreed;  though  later  this  decision  was  reversed, 
whenever  "  the  bad  "  turned  into  money  or  position.  And 
the  favorite  son,  Paul,  the  song  writer,  the  prince  of  the 
family  life,  got  into  jail,  "  innocently,"  Dreiser  thinks, 
for  having  forged  his  father's  name,  and  then  for  a  time 
was  exiled  by  the  father. 

They  lived  under  a  cloud  of  poverty  and  disgrace.  Yet 
to  his  later  mind  it  was  like  bright  sun.  With  a  mother 
26 


who  made  out  of  the  home  a  fairyland,  not  to  be  respect- 
able was  to  live  in  the  open,  and  not  in  a  stuffy  room,  of 
now  Catholic,  now  Puritan,  now  Victorian  taboos  and 
decencies.  Even  at  that  time,  life  was  opulent.  It  was  a 
fertile  beginning,  crossed  by  a  father  who  could  not  be 
pliant  nor  yet  quite  impotent,  but  streaked  with  a 
mother's  laughter  and  love.  She  could  laugh,  he  told  me, 
at  very  rough,  ribald  stories;  and,  destitute  as  they  were, 
people  came  to  her  with  their  troubles. 

Not  that  Dreiser's  point  of  view  has  no  traces  of  early 
privation.  From  these  times  of  hardship,  often  repeated 
in  later  life,  might  date  a  hardness  of  mind,  barbaric  in 
its  indifference.  Expect  nothing.  People  owe  you  nothing; 
you  owe  them  nothing.  Give  if  you  like,  take  if  you  like, 
there  is  no  obligation.  Vitality,  strength  alone  counts. 
The  very  doctrine  of  American  finance!  Then  again  I 
have  heard  him  say  as  coldly  and  without  sentiment: 
"  Only  beauty  counts."  Evidently  for  him  beauty  came  to 
be  looked  on  as  the  ultimate  cruelty,  the  oblivious  force 
from  which  there  was  no  appeal,  more  difficult  than 
money,  more  difficult  than  fame!  Hence  his  restless 
searching! 

Again  if  he  has  sentimentality,  it  is  when  he  idealizes 
the  rich  and  worldly,  as  if  from  a  distance  he  saw  them 
shining.  Very  nearly  at  moments  he  accepts  their  stand- 
ards as  desirable.  This  he  does  conspicuously  in  the  case 
of  two  heroes,  Witla  in  The  '  Genius,'  and  Cowperwood 
in  The  Titan.  He  is  large  and  powerful  in  making  them, 
but  not  quite  cold  enough  toward  them  to  attain  always 
the  ruthlessness  of  art.  At  other  moments  he  divests  them 
of  externals,  and  they  are  naked  enough,  whether  spirited 
or  pitiful.  If  there  is  ecstasy,  it  is  concerned  then  with 
the  physical  perfection  of  luxuries  surrounding  the  rich. 
Sometimes,  as  purely  as  a  Frenchman,  he  loves  the  ma- 
quillage  of  wealth ;  and  with  how  much  less  chance  in  the 
United  States,  even  in  New  York,  to  apprehend  its  ele- 
gance of  line  and  surface !  Compared  to  the  European, 
compared  to  the  Oriental,  we  have  been  importers  or 
imitators.  We  have  assembled  the  parts  of  luxury.  Few  of 
us,  millionaires  less  than  any,  have  touched  them  with 
our  own  experience. 

27 


What  he  saw  in  grown-up  life,  what  fascinated  him, 
his  eyes  began  to  pick  out  in  early  years.  .  .  .  When  he 
went  back  to  Terre  Haute,  where  they  lived  until  his 
eighth  year,  he  went  back  to  an  old  red  brick  house,  cor- 
ner of  Eighth  and  Chestnut,  where  his  mother  had  once 
tried  keeping  boarders : 

"  All  I  could  recall  of  it  ...  there  once  was  a  little  girl 
in  blue  velvet,  with  yellow  hair,  the  daughter  of  some 
woman  (it  is  a  guess)  of  means  .  .  .  stopping  with  us,  who 
because  of  her  blue  velvet  dress  and  her  airs,  seemed  a 
creature  out  of  the  skies.  I  remember  standing  at  the  head 
of  the  stairs  and  looking  into  her  room  or  her  mother's,  and 
seeing  a  dresser  loaded  with  silver  bits  and  marvelling  at 
the  excellence  of  such  a  life." 

"  Silver  bits  "  on  dressers  run  seductively  in  Dreiser's 
brain  to  this  moment.  They  recur  in  Dawn  as  symbols 
of  childhood  glamour.  Conversely  another  even  younger 
memory  of  Terre  Haute: 

"  A  hot  day  and  a  house  with  closed  shutters  and  drawn 
blinds,  and  in  the  center  of  a  cool,  still  room,  a  woman 
sitting  in  a  loose  negligee,  and  at  her  feet  the  child  playing 
with  the  loose  worn  slippers  on  her  feet  ...  —  '  See  poor 
Mama's  shoes.  Aren't  you  sorry  for  her?  Think  how  hard 
she  has  to  work.'  —  'Yes,  poor  shoes,  poor  Mummy.'  — 
'  When  you  grow  up  are  you  going  to  get  work  and  buy 
poor  mother  a  good  pair?  '  — '  Yes,  work.  Yes,  I  get 
Mummy  shoes.'  —  Suddenly  something  in  the  mother's 
voice  is  too  moving.  Some  mystic  thread  binding  the  two 
operates  to  convey  and  enlarge  a  mood.  The  child  bursts 
into  tears  over  the  old  pattens.  He  is  gathered  up  close,  wet- 
eyed  and  the  mother  cries,  too." 

Again  another  memory  to  do  with  these  contrasts  and 
the  principal  hotel,  when  he  spent  the  night  there  thirty- 
five  years  later: 

"  Here,  .  .  .  my  brother  Rome,  at  that  time  a  seeking 
boy  like  any  of  those  we  now  saw  pouring  up  and  down 
this  well-lighted  street  .  .  .  was  in  the  habit  of  coming, 
and,  as  my  father  described  it,  in  his  best  suit  of  clothes  and 
his  best  shoes,  a  toothpick  in  his  mouth,  standing  in  the 
doorway  ...  to  give  the  impression  he  had  just  dined 
there.  .  .  .  '  Loafers !  Idle  good-for-nothings ! '  I  can  hear 
my  father  exclaiming  even  now.  Yet  he  was  not  a  loafer 
.  .  .  just  a  hungry,  thirsty,  curious  boy,  all  too  eager  for 
the  little  life  his  limited  experience  would  buy." 
28 


Of  the  ten  children  he  was  the  fourth  eldest,  one  of  the 
most  interesting,  Dreiser  says,  a  railroad  man,  who  fi- 
nally died  of  drunkenness  in  a  South  Clark  Street  dive  in 
Chicago,  about  1905.  Here  is  instance  of  inordinate 
faith  in  the  high  voltage  of  life,  coupled  with  despair  for 
those  too  warped  to  be  instinct  with  it  or  to  let  others  be. 
Anyone,  no  matter  what  they  do  or  leave  undone,  who 
insists  on  living  is  heroic  to  this  writer —  Carrie,  Cowper- 
wood,  Clyde  Griffiths,  his  own  sisters  and  brothers  when 
they  broke  laws  to  escape  suppression.  Tolerance,  not  lazy 
but  electric,  he  offers  as  endowment  to  his  country. 

To  the  hotel  in  Terre  Haute  also  his  mother  once  in 
her  hardest  days  came  to  look  for  work  and  got  it.  And 
years  later  his  brother  Paul  went  to  a  banquet  there  in 
his  honor,  because  of  his  song  "  On  the  Banks  of  the 
Wabash,"  adopted  as  the  State  song.  On  the  night  of  his 
return,  long  after  these  three  were  dead,  he  writes,  "  I 
thought  of  my  mother  —  and  Rome  outside  on  the  corner 
and  Paul  at  his  sentimental  banquet,  and  then  I  felt  very 
1  sad-like,'  as  we  would  say  in  Indiana." 

In  this  way  he  treasures  his  childhood  and  the  houses 
belonging  to  it  in  "  this  lush  Egyptian  river  country." 
And  with  them  his  father's  village,  Mayen,  at  the  junc- 
ture of  two  rivers  and  two  wines,  Rhine  and  Moselle.  To 
have  to  seek  to  go  back,  by  whatever  threads  there  are,  to 
the  roots  of  one's  self  is  a  patrician  pastime.  Communists 
would  call  it  bourgeois;  nationalists  would  call  it  dis- 
tinguished; Dreiser  concerns  himself  with  it. 

What  he  records  as  having  happened  may  every  bit 
of  it  have  happened,  or  may  have  been  selected  to  have 
happened  by  later  years  of  growth.  This  more  likely 
is  the  case;  his  two  records  of  childhood  for  example 
are  not  identical.  They  appear  to  vary  according  to 
the  separate  moods  of  forty  and  of  sixty  years.  But 
both  stories  tell  the  artist's  heritage,  a  genius  for  ex- 
perience. He  remembers  distantly  of  Terre  Haute,  a 
vital  "  seeking  atmosphere."  And  distinctly  he  remembers 
cellars,  one  where  he  was  not  allowed  to  go  or  the  "  Cat- 
man  "  would  get  him,  and  even  his  dog  was  afraid  to  go 
down  there;  and  a  basement  in  another  house  with  a 
swing  in  it,  "  where  I  used  to  swing  all  alone  by  the  hour, 

29 


enjoying  my  own  moods  even  at  that  time."  He  remem- 
bers a  watchman  who  whenever  he  passed  the  house  had  a 
present  for  him,  candy,  peanuts  or  apples;  and  one  day 
being  taken  to  see  him,  "  where  he  was  lying  very  still  in  a 
little  cottage  in  a  black  box  with  nickels  on  his  eyes  "  — 
and  he  wanted  to  take  the  nickels,  too.  He  remembers 
"  old  scenes  and  miseries  "  —  picking  coal  off  the  tracks 
with  his  brothers  Ed  and  Al,  because  there  was  none  at 
home;  losing  the  last  fifty  cents  in  the  house,  which  had 
been  given  him  to  go  for  a  sack  of  cornmeal;  carrying 
dinner  in  a  pail  to  his  father  at  a  woolen  mill,  and  his 
father  explaining  to  him  the  functions  of  a  carder,  a 
blower,  a  spinning  jenny;  of  being  taken  at  five  to  St.  Jo- 
seph's school  (for  which  his  father  in  prosperous  days 
had  donated  the  ground)  :  u  A  nun  in  a  flaring  white  bon- 
net, black  habit,  rattling  string  of  great  beads  pointed 
at  a  blackboard  with  a  stick  and  asked  what  certain  sym- 
bols stood  for/'  and  he  had  trouble  in  giving  the  sounds 
for  the  letters. 

This  perhaps  persisted  in  him.  His  writings  are  acutely 
conscious  of  situation  and  image,  and  of  the  atmosphere 
surrounding  them,  but  less  apparently  conscious  of  the 
words.  Words  appear  to  be  chosen  like  letters  on  a  type- 
writer under  the  touch  system;  incident,  structure  and 
phrasing  to  be  intentional;  words  to  be  ordered  by  re- 
flexes, if  that  be  possible.  Yet  I  remember  an  argument 
with  Gertrude  Stein  who  contended  that  real  art  was 
never  conscious,  that  the  artist  in  creative  moments  was 
in  every  sense  unconscious.  It  may  be  I  am  attempting 
impossible  analysis  of  this  novelist's  style,  which  some- 
times is  an  express  train  in  the  night,  sometimes  freight 
cars  shunting  endlessly  back  and  forth  —  both  ways 
notable  for  being  of  their  own  essence. 

There  was  a  bell  in  the  church  tower  attached  to  the 
school  that  would  get  turned  over  and  wouldn't  ring  until 
some  boy  climbed  up  and  turned  it  back;  to  be  chosen  to 
do  this  was  wonderful.  There  was  boating  on  boards  on 
a  muddy  pool,  and  once  in  a  rowboat  on  the  yellow 
Wabash  River  with  a  brother  who  whipped  him  for 
screaming  when  the  boat  rocked.  There  was  a  summer 
rain  storm  at  Twelfth  and  Walnut,  and  his  mother  un- 
30 


dressing  him  and  telling  him  to  run  out  naked  —  an  ad- 
venture which  seemed  "  splendid  and  quite  to  my  taste." 
His  brothers  Paul  and  Rome  seemed  to  him  like  men 
when  they  were  only  boys,  and  his  elder  sisters,  thirteen, 
fifteen,  seventeen,  were  "  like  great  strong  women."  The 
first  band  he  ever  heard  marched  up  the  streets  in  War- 
saw, "  red  jackets,  white  straps,  black  Russian  shakos  " ; 
he  was  frightened  and  cried. 

Around  these  houses  in  Terre  Haute  is  the  memory 
like  an  aura  of  big  yards  with  trees,  fruit  trees,  bushes, 
gooseberries,  currants  and  flowers.  Near  one  of  them  a 
lumber-yard  and  the  smell  of  it;  and  the  climbing  and 
hiding  and  jumping  from  pile  to  pile.  Beyond,  a  train- 
yard,  where  he  used  to  go  when  most  adventurous,  and 
once  climbed  into  an  engine  and  examined  the  machinery. 
He  felt  around  him  the  voices  and  tang  of  firemen,  brake- 
men,  yardmen,  engineers,  the  clangor  of  an  outside  world. 
These  are  the  common  riches,  if  they  know  how  to  re- 
member, of  children  of  the  old  small-town  America  — 
yards  around  the  houses,  yards  beyond,  leading  children 
away  out  of  the  family,  rather  than  more  deeply  into  it. 
"  Life,"  he  says,  u  was  a  strange,  colorful,  kaleidoscopic 
welter  then.  It  has  remained  so  ever  since." 

Each  of  these  incidents  is  recalled  with  the  enterprise 
he  gives  to  details  of  later  life,  or  to  the  multiple  incident 
of  the  other  lives  he  has  invented  or  recreated.  Dreiser 
moves  from  minuteness  to  vastness,  weaves  and  stitches 
back  and  forth  from  the  point  to  its  extensions  in  the  in- 
finite. A  trait  of  style  with  him.  His  words  follow  back 
and  forth,  now  swiftly,  now  stumbling  and  falling,  to 
keep  up  with  him.  People  complain,  and  yet  go  in  and 
out  of  his  books,  moved  and  ravaged,  sometimes  suddenly 
ravished.  The  balance  of  power  is  with  him. 


Alluvial  lusters 


is  first  years  in  Terre  Haute  had  given 
these  few  flecked  threads  of  memory,  vivid  against  a 
background  of  gloom  —  movings  from  house  to  cheaper 
house,  sickness  of  one  and  another,  quarrels  between 
mother  and  father  for  lack  of  means.  Then,  in  his 
eighth  year,  to  save  expenses,  his  mother  had  taken  the 
three  youngest,  Ed,  Tillie  and  himself,  to  Sullivan, 
twenty-five  miles  to  the  south  of  Terre  Haute,  in  a  wide 
valley  between  two  rivers,  the  White  and  the  Wabash. 
On  the  way  they  had  stopped  in  Vincennes  and  visited  a 
friend,  Sue  Tinby,  a  wild  creature,  he  remembers  her,  a 
French  woman,  who  in  more  prosperous  days  had  sewed 
for  the  family,  and  was  married  to  the  chief  fireman  of 
the  town.  In  the  night  once  they  had  gone  to  a  big  fire, 
and  seen  u  their  host  disappear  into  a  red  glow  and  come 
back  alive."  But  this  exciting  visit  in  rooms  over  the  fire- 
house  had  to  be  broken  off  when  his  mother  discovered 
that  the  firemen's  quarters  were  an  improvised  brothel 
approved  by  their  hostess.  This,  he  says,  brought  about 
"  their  sudden  and  moral  departure."  In  spite  of  poverty 
her  children  were  not  to  be  exposed  to  this.  They  had 
stayed  long  enough  however  to  give  him  a  memory  tran- 
scribed fifty  years  later  in  words  a  little  like  Renoir  paint; 
"  I  myself,  being  a  restless  early-rising  child,  one  morn- 
ing saw  one  of  these  daughters  of  desire,  a  corn-haired 
blond,  her  pink  face  buried  in  a  curled  arm,  and  lying 
on  a  bed  allotted  to  one  of  the  firemen  of  the  night 
shift." 

So  they  took  up  their  bundles  and  went  further  into 
this  "  steaming  land  of  wheat,  corn,  timothy  and  melons," 
where  towns,  crossroads  and  streams  were  of  French 
origin  or  name,  where  autumn  lasted  into  January,  and 
32 


spring  came  early.  Dreiser,  driving  back  these  years  later, 
felt  the  magic  that  had  cradled  him,  "  delicate,  poetic, 
generative."  He  wonders  with  his  friend  and  host,  Frank- 
lin Booth,  if  the  French  temper  had  not  tinged  life  in 
these  valleys.  The  women,  he  says,  were  plumper,  the 
men  more  solid  than  in  the  North,  birds  increased  in 
number  and  kind.  He  came  again  upon  the  u  turtle  doves 
in  beech  and  ash  and  hickory  groves,  the  martins  circling 
in  covies,  the  blue  jay  and  scarlet  tanager,  wrens  in  the 
eaves  of  cottages,  the  humming  bird  in  the  purple  clema- 
tis, buzzards,  hawks,  eagles  high  in  air,  and  the  black- 
birds over  the  fields,"  and  "  could  almost  hear  again  the 
pea  fowls  calling  for  rain  "  on  Mr.  Beach's  opulent  farm 
near  by.  He  is  taken  back  to  "  three  years  of  sensory 
dreams  and  delights  "  —  infancy  gone,  adolescence  with 
its  "  sharp  inquiries  "  not  yet  entered  on.  Outside  the 
house  in  Sullivan  had  been  a  field  of  clover  impeccable  to 
a  boy's  bare  feet  early  summer  mornings.  He  had  the 
luck,  unknown  to  children  brought  up  according  to  pre- 
scribed regime,  to  get  up  when  he  liked  in  the  first  day- 
light, and  spend  long  days  almost  as  he  liked,  ending  in 
"  the  after-supper  grouping  on  the  porch,  the  velvety 
dusk  descending,  the  bats,  mosquitoes,  tales  of  Indians 
and  battle  chiefs,  the  stars,  slumber.  ...  I  can  feel 
my  mother's  hand  as  I  lean  against  her  knee  and  sleep." 
Clocks  were  not  tyrants  over  him,  nor  have  ever  seemed 
to  rule  him;  for  which  perhaps  his  writings  lose  precisions 
and  gain  sometimes  in  freedom. 

His  mother  took  in  washing;  he  and  his  sister  carried 
it  back  and  forth.  They  slept  at  first  on  straw  mattresses 
on  the  floor.  In  winter  they  were  cold,  dismissed  from 
school  for  lack  of  shoes.  With  the  money  from  the  wash- 
ing she  bought  enough  furniture  to  progress  to  boarders 
and  beds.  The  boarders  were  railroad  hands,  traveling 
peddlers,  coal  miners,  one  of  whom  was  arrested  for 
murder  in  their  house  before  their  eyes.  Their  neighbors 
he  describes  mostly  as  miserable  people,  the  kind  known 
in  the  West  as  squatters,  who  quarreled  and  cursed 
each  other,  or  vegetated  and  died,  often  half  demented 
by  squalor  and  ignorance.  Twice  the  children  assisted 
at  grim  death  beds  and  funerals;  it  was  a  country  cus- 

33 


torn  and  their  Samaritan  mother's  code  to  "  help." 
Among  them  she  was  loved  and  honored,  but  his  sisters 
were  called  "  loose  girls  "  and  his  brother  Rome  was  wild 
and  roving.  As  a  family  they  were  shunned;  once  he  heard 
them  called  with  the  rest  of  their  neighborhood  "  no 
good,  just  trash." 

Yet  over  and  over  he  speaks  of  the  sting,  the  mystic 
luxury  of  life  with  his  mother,  brother  and  sister,  and 
sometimes  others  of  the  family,  in  their  frame  house  in 
Sullivan,  painted  white  with  roses,  fruit  trees,  a  truck 
garden;  a  dog  to  run  with,  an  elm  tree  to  climb,  great 
branches  to  play  under ;  a  gate  to  swing  on ;  and  the  Bus- 
seron,  where  he  and  his  brother  used  to  fish,  "  a  shallow 
stream  pooled  in  places,  its  banks  sentinalled  by  tall  trees 
.  .  .  ornamented  by  arrogant  weeds  and  bushes  bloom- 
ing violently." 

Did  his  mother  ever  tell  him  what  he  was  like  in  these 
years?  Was  he  different  from  other  boys?  He  remembers 
her  saying  he  was  always  listening,  could  dream  and 
listen  by  the  hour.  He  remembers  going  a  little  beyond 
the  borders  of  their  place,  to  where  he  could  see  the  rail- 
road yards,  a  turntable  and  a  hay  press,  and  listen  end- 
lessly to  the  switching  and  loading  and  unloading,  for 
the  cadence  of  these  noises.  He  remembers  sitting  by 
streams  and  mud  holes  in  this  same  hypnotic  dreamy  way. 
He  lived  the  life  of  alluvial  things,  felt  their  coming  and 
going. 

If  one  were  to  read  certain  passages  of  this  memory  of 
childhood,  and  knew  nothing  else  of  Dreiser,  American 
chronicler  of  doom,  one  would  think  of  him  as  a  boy  about 
to  deepen  into  a  poet,  a  sensualist;  and  one  endowed  to 
match  sensation  and  mood  with  speech  equally  sensitive. 
One  would  hardly  guess  that  finally  he  was  to  forget  or 
seldom  realize  the  artist's  pursuit  of  the  physical  word, 
the  ritual  of  language;  in  order  to  stalk  like  a  scientist, 
and  record  like  a  scrupulous  interne,  the  restless  human 
story,  the  confusion  of  footsteps  and  voices,  the  wild 
welter  of  symptoms.  In  these  young  years,  in  a  land  where 
human  beings  were  scarcely  more  than  stage-hands,  where 
animals,  plants  and  minerals  took  the  big  parts,  a  child 
in  love  with  living,  he  chose  the  lustier  phases  of  it.  If 

34 


one  extricates  them  from  their  explicit  network,  names 
identifying  the  land  recur  rhythmically  in  his  records  of 
childhood.  They  become  images : 

"  Warm  bottom  lands  —  ancient  rivers  —  warm  sudden 
rains  —  quick  heavy  rains  —  green  fog  —  round  healthy 
trees  —  fat  river  land  —  smooth  green  grass  —  wonders 
and  dreams  —  low  alluvial  soil  —  roundness  of  flesh  and 
body  —  stillness  of  the  woods  —  steely  blue  and  gauze  of 
wing  —  black  and  white  silvery  fish  —  dark  wet  silvery 
cat-fish  lovely  and  lustrous  as  porcelain  —  distant  low  of 
cows  —  grunt  of  pigs ;  deep-bodied  green  painted  wagons 
hauling  melons  —  long  hot  yellow  roads  —  boys  and  their 
hungry  restless  ways;  fat  sheep  —  dams  and  rams  — 
astonishing  hogs  —  sleek  rolling  animals;  sting  of  life  de- 
liriously gay  —  tingle  and  response  of  a  new  body;  bloom 
and  fragrance  of  the  clover  —  mystery  of  flying." 

He  was  a  child  obsessed  with  the  luster  of  earth,  care- 
less of  men  and  women,  unless  like  his  mother  or  the 
French  seamstress  or  the  chief  fireman,  they  too  were 
lustrous.  The  blighted  people  and  things,  "  crazy  Bowles, " 
an  ex-army  man  who  used  to  come  to  their  well  for  water, 
dancing  and  muttering;  Mrs.  Hudson,  a  neighbor  whom 
they  thought  of  as  a  witch;  the  disheveled  butcher, 
Spilky,  "  avid  "  to  kill  and  sell,  and  his  slaughter  house 
not  far  away,  with  "  its  yard  of  whitening  bones  " ;  Tish 
Herndon,  called  a  bad  woman,  who  drank  and  was  in 
love  with  her  father;  his  own  father  who  would  come 
"  brooding  from  Terre  Haute,"  and  talk  of  hell  more 
than  Heaven  —  these  figures  had  not  seemed  to  dominate 
him.  They  are  remembered  more  as  one  would  the  under 
side  of  logs,  degradations  rather  than  the  lighted  facets. 
Other  life  transcended  them  in  the  shape  of  dogs  he 
played  with,  birds  he  envied,  a  comet  that  appeared 
at  this  date  in  summer  skies,  lizards  and  gophers. 
.  .  .  Years  later  many  human  failures  are  to  occupy 
him,  and  he  relegates  to  an  almost  sinister  background 
the  physical  world  surrounding  them.  This  he  has  done 
imperiously  in  An  American  Tragedy,  where  the  gor- 
geous earth  turns  a  sickening  grimace  on  the  mimes  and 
actors. 

A  poem  in  Spoon  River  defines  this  change.  A  letter 
from  Masters  in  1915  tells  him:  "  I  have  you  picked  in 
my  Anthology  as  Theodore  the  Poet  " : 

35 


"  As  a  boy,  Theodore,  you  sat  for  long  hours 
On  the  shore  of  the  turbid  Spoon 
With  deep-set  eye  staring  at  the  door  of  the  crawfish's 

burrow, 
Waiting  for  him  to  appear,  pushing  ahead, 

But  later  your  vision  watched  for  men  and  women 
Hiding  in  burrows  of  fate  amid  great  cities, 
Looking  for  the  souls  of  them  to  come  out, 


10 

"  She    must,   like    the    man,    marry    ma- 
chinery." HENRY  ADAMS 


et,  if  we  believe  Dreiser's  picture  of  him- 
self, it  was  not  until  long  after  he  had  left  these  villages 
at  the  age  of  sixteen,  and,  like  so  many  other  sons 
and  daughters  of  farmers  and  mechanics,  had  begun  to 
wander  from  city  to  city  in  search  of  money,  which  could 
alone  mean  power,  that  the  human  drama  was  to  enter 
in  as  a  wedge,  and  finally  become  the  first  obsession. 
Then,  non-human  nature,  when  kind,  became  scenery, 
when  cruel,  a  destructive  force,  as  it  is  for  most  Ameri- 
cans. That  is,  we  have  not  made  a  marriage  with  our 
portion  of  earth  in  the  United  States,  in  the  way  that 
each  European  country,  France  above  all,  has  reveled  in 
making,  even  in  the  cities ;  in  the  way  that  the  Indians  be- 
fore us  succeeded  in  making,  no  matter  how  hostile  their 
mountains  or  deserts  or  glacial  lands.  In  this  Dreiser  be- 
came true  to  type,  but  with  one  innovation.  Actively  he 
has  refused  the  religions,  catholic,  protestant,  liberal,  on 
the  ground  that  they  betray  human  nature,  that  is,  sexual 
nature  and  the  wholeness  of  living.  He  has  refused  too 
as  insufficient  the  various  compensations  society  offers  and 
religion  permits  in  their  struggle  to  curtail  the  inheritance 
of  nature.  In  this  he  has  not  been  faithless  to  the  teaching 
of  his  senses  in  Indiana  childhood. 

Compensation  through  money  and  power,  for  example, 
has  been  accepted  as  an  American  way  of  life.  Money  can 
do  anything,  power  anything.  By  a  kind  of  hypnotic 
magic,  skyscrapers,  giant  dollar  signs,  numerous  enough 
now  for  one  to  stand  for  at  least  each  rich  man,  have 
become  unintentional  symbols  of  the  American  man  — 
erections  rigid  in  air,  in  emptiness,  in  contact  with  nothing 
fertile.  And  today  almost  consciously  they  cater  to  his 

37 


sense  of  completion.  So  he  may  appear  to  disdain  sex  in 
human  form,  no  need  of  men  even,  or  of  turning  in  upon 
himself,  by  this  holding  of  himself  like  a  high  building 
forever  potent,  fixedly  erect.  If  he  gives  way,  if  he  yields, 
if  he  forgets  this  posture  of  sublimed  rigidity  —  except 
on  a  Saturday  night,  or  on  occasional  trips  to  Paris  or 
Havana,  "  Oh  boy!  "  —  then  all  is  up.  He  may  as  well 
consider  himself  done  for,  a  failure,  take  his  money  off 
to  Europe,  where  there  are  paid  attendants  to  voluptu- 
aries, or  look  around  for  the  nearest  home  for  the  in- 
digent. Or  for  the  rare  and  more  powerful  few,  there 
is,  unintentionally  yet  actually,  a  transcendent  symbol, 
the  wheel,  the  turbine,  the  impeccable  power  plant,  in 
contemplation  of  which  the  industrial  giant  feels  himself 
identical  with  planetary  force,  with  the  physical  solar 
concept  of  wholeness.  Beyond  these  there  is  the  fast 
train  hurling  from  coast  to  coast,  the  perfected  and 
lascivious  elevator  to  the  sixtieth  story  and  down,  the 
one-man  airplane  to  cater  vicariously  to  the  sense  of 
mastery. 

And  for  women  what  has  there  been,  what  compensa- 
tions, wrenched  from  and  permitted  by  society  and  reli- 
gion? Compensations  less  native,  though  possibly  more 
seductive  than  those  discovered  by  men.  No  arcades,  few 
arches,  to  stand  beside  the  indisputable  towers  as  vicari- 
ous emblems  of  their  nature;  few  canopies,  few  fringed 
or  ruffled  curtains  in  window  or  doorway;  or  if  there 
were,  almost  unfrequented  by  men.  Women  long  have  sat 
together  in  the  first  cool,  then  cold  shadow  of  their  sex, 
becoming  clubwomen  or  intimates  or  lonely  women.  Or 
they  have  compensated  these  three  hundred  years,  when 
rich,  with  importations  —  imported  clothes,  imported 
houses,  imported  jewels,  imported  art,  imported  men. 
When  poorer,  with  romantic  magazines,  soft  drinks  and 
candies.  When  very  poor  like  Dreiser's  family,  they  have 
remained  uncounted,  and  like  the  unknown  soldier  have 
become,  some  of  them,  the  unknown  saviors. 

If  this  grotesque  picture  of  a  house  divided  against 
nature  and  practicing  every  subterfuge  to  simulate  union 
is  not  as  true  of  the  United  States  as  it  once  was,  Dreiser 
in  his  refusal  to  celebrate  the  substitute  for  the  real,  in 

38 


his  sense  of  people  as  primitive  beings  before  they  be- 
come social  puppets,  is  one  of  the  first  natives  to  correct 
it.  He  is  a  liberating  factor  as  far  back  as  1900,  and  per- 
haps almost  as  potent  as  the  automobile,  the  beauty  par- 
lor, or  bootlegging,  which  unconsciously  have  followed  in 
his  steps. 

Two  aspects  interest  Dreiser  —  grace  which  is  bloom, 
and  the  falling  away  from  grace,  which  is  withering.  As 
a  child  the  first  more  than  the  second;  as  a  grown  man 
the  second  chiefly.  Yet  even  then  the  fallen  are  not  pic- 
tured as  fallen  until  there  is  nothing  else  to  say  for  them, 
and  then  without  censure.  The  murderer,  the  thief,  the 
drunkard,  the  glutton,  the  lecher,  still  denote  the  grace 
of  life,  still  display  what  he  calls  their  u  high  blood 
moods,"  until  society  in  mask  of  religion  has  finally  pulled 
them  down  and  drained  them  to  the  last  drop  of  sap; 
either  jealously  to  confiscate  it,  or  to  use  it  to  replenish 
their  own  reduced  vitality.  To  victims  like  Hurstwood, 
Clyde  Griffiths,  Isadore  in  The  Hand  of  the  Potter, 
Dreiser  is  true;  he  never  deserts  them.  Such  loyalty  brings 
tears  to  readers,  and  should  bring  compassion,  which  is 
sunlight. 


39 


11 

Venus  on  the  Ohio  and  Catholic  Evansville 


.ouses,  surroundings,  individuals,  ancestry, 
countries  —  what  relation  have  any  of  these  to  the 
other?  Much  or  little?  Not  knowing,  we  have  to  say 
much,  or  else  not  count  values  at  all.  Three  difficult  years 
in  Sullivan,  for  all  she  could  do,  brought  the  mother 
near  despair.  And  then  one  winter  afternoon,  the  minstrel 
brother,  the  one  so  tenderly  thought  of  by  other  Hoosiers 
for  giving  them  their  song  of  gleaming  candle  lights,  the 
fatted  prodigal  son  with  the  sweet  almost  untroubled 
face,  laughter  and  beauty  of  features,  came  with  money 
and  put  an  end  for  a  time  to  their  hard  days.  He  came 
out  of  a  snowstorm  in  a  fur  coat  and  high  silk  hat,  with 
three  years  of  adventures  to  tell  them  since  last  they  had 
seen  him.  Almost  I  think  Dreiser  invented  him,  but  I  hope 
not.  Disowned  by  his  father,  for  forgery  and  jail,  a 
runaway  from  a  Catholic  school  where  they  had  hoped  to 
make  a  priest  of  him,  he  had  joined  a  traveling  troupe 
which  advertised  Hamlin's  Wizard  Oil.  Progressing  from 
show  to  show  he  was  now  a  favorite  song  writer  and 
comedian  in  the  West,  working  at  the  moment  in  Evans- 
ville, a  town  not  far  from  Sullivan  on  the  Kentucky 
border.  He  was  end-man  in  a  black-face  minstrel  com- 
pany, and  ran  a  comic  column  in  the  Evansville  Argus. 
He  went  away,  sending  back  groceries  and  clothes, 
among  them  "  a  complete  outfit  "  for  Tillie,  the  youngest 
sister,  to  accomplish  her  marriage  to  Christ,  the  first 
communion.  Paul  was  a  good  Catholic,  without  practice 
but  without  challenge.  Soon  after  there  came  another 
visitor,  his  mistress,  by  the  name  of  Annie  Brace,  the 
first  worldly  beauty  these  children  had  looked  on.  In 
Evansville  she  was  Sallie  Walker  and  kept  a  house  of 
prostitution.  But  his  mother,  Dreiser  thinks,  never  knew 
40 


it,  and  was  fond  of  her  because  she  was  beautiful  with 
"  clear  incisive  black  eyes  and  exaggerated  whiteness  of 
face  and  hands,"  and  appeared  to  really  love  her  eldest 
son.  By  summer  these  two  had  rented  and  furnished  a 
cottage  for  his  mother,  and  under  their  auspices  the 
family  moved  to  Evansville. 

So  at  length  they  could  leave  their  makeshift  home  in 
Sullivan  with  its  "  seven  or  eight  rooms,  sparely  and 
poorly  furnished,"  Dreiser  supposes,  "  and  yet  with  the 
art  there  is  in  bareness  and  cleanliness."  They  went  away 
with  mingled  feelings.  There  had  not  been  many  friends 
for  these  children  to  play  with.  For  one  thing,  for  which 
they  were  happy,  they  had  had  to  leave  the  Catholic 
school,  and  they  were  not  allowed  to  go  to  another.  Then 
he  remembers  himself  as  put  upon  by  other  boys,  com- 
manded to  fight  and  he  was  afraid  to;  so  he  kept  away  as 
much  as  he  could.  But  to  make  up,  there  were  his  many 
older  brothers  and  sisters,  more  vital  than  the  people 
around  them,  coming  back  to  visit,  and  the  getting  ready 
of  a  room  each  time  and  the  ceremony  of  a  vase  of  flowers 
placed  in  the  guest  room,  and  the  tales  they  told  of  the 
world  outside. 

It  is  impressive,  this  insistence  with  no  matter  how  little 
money  on  the  making  of  a  home,  for  just  a  year  perhaps, 
or  two  or  three;  his  mother's  courage  to  settle,  as  it  is 
called,  as  if  forever,  and  then  pull  up  stakes  and  settle 
again.  For  Dreiser  this  gift  of  hers  appears  to  have  pro- 
vided him  through  years  of  want  and  change,  before  he 
resolved  himself  into  the  necessity  of  being  a  writer,  with 
a  sense  of  background.  Sullivan  made  part  of  it;  he  left 
with  a  pang  and  yet  elated  too.  Now  they  were  going 
to  something  better  under  the  wing  of  their  rich  brother. 

Here  for  a  while  life  brightened.  The  chosen  cottage 
was  in  a  "  good  neighborhood  "  in  the  center  of  a  big, 
fenced-in  yard,  and  the  new  furniture  included  a  piano. 
There  would  be  no  washing  now  for  others,  and  no 
boarders.  His  mother  was  at  ease  at  last;  they  had  a 
chance,  she  thought,  to  be  respected.  Here  they  lived 
for  two  years  before  again  they  packed  their  trunks  and 
boxes  and  this  time  moved  north.  These  are  deep  years 
for  Dreiser.  They  made  more  cavernous  his  hatred  of  the 


Roman  Catholic  Church,  his  last  days  directly  under  its 
influence  —  that  Church  which  like  a  nightmare  he  de- 
nounces hysterically  to  this  moment  as  often  as  he  can. 
And  they  made  deeper  his  passion  for  riches,  riches  of 
earth  and  riches  of  human  relations. 

Since  a  man  is  made  in  youth,  and  is  merely  maintained 
or  destroyed  by  events  that  follow,  these  years  are  im- 
portant in  the  analysis  of  an  American  fashioned  out  of 
our  isolation  and  our  force.  Dreiser  is  called  slow  and 
plodding;  yet  he  walked  swiftly  and  a  long  way  out  of  a 
remote  background  hostile  to  his  intelligence,  sweet  some- 
times to  his  emotions.  He  had  back  of  him  a  father  who 
once  told  him  that  "  if  a  small  bird  were  to  come  once 
every  trillion  years  and  rub  its  bill  on  a  rock  as  big  as  the 
earth,  the  rock  would  be  worn  out  before  a  man  would  see 
the  end  of  hell  once  he  was  in  it.  And  then  he  would  not 
see  the  end  of  it,  but  merely  the  beginning."  He  remem- 
bers his  father's  angry  contempt  when  he  asked  if  God 
might  not  change  his  mind  in  all  those  years  and  let  some- 
one out. 

The  Catholic  church  and  school  in  Evansville  offered 
the  same  tyranny.  He  learned  nothing  from  them,  and  was 
terrorized  by  the  nuns  and  priests,  and  by  the  principal, 
who  had  "  black  hair,  black  eyebrows,  black  beard,  and 
a  dynamic  stride  sufficient  to  shake  the  earth."  Here  boys' 
palms  were  crossed  with  red  welts,  ears  pulled  until  the 
victim  cried,  buttocks  beaten  with  a  short  raw-hide  whip. 
These  cruelties,  I  think,  were  Northern  and  pioneer  rather 
than  Catholic.  In  fact,  Dreiser's  hatred  of  the  Church 
testifies  to  its  failure  when  torn  away  from  Mediterranean 
sources  and  set  down  among  Protestants  in  a  Protestant 
milieu.  Of  what  avail  absolution  in  a  society  ostracizing 
people  for  their  sins? 

For  books  the  school  allowed  only  a  Bible  history  and 
a  geography,  though  Diamond  Dick  or  its  equivalent  was 
read  from  under  the  desk.  But  he  remembers  finding 
somewhere  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  Anderson's  Fairy 
Tales,  the  Life  of  St.  Francis  Assisi  and  other  secular 
books;  and  there  was  a  woman'  magazine  of  his  mother's 
which,  like  so  many  children  brought  up  far  from  the 
centers,  he  cherished  for  the  pictures  of  what  must  be  the 
42 


great  world.  Then  there  was  the  school  yard,  a  place  of 
leap  frog,  snap-the-whip,  fights,  all  of  which  he  says  he 
dreaded  and  had  no  prowess  for.  Once  by  mistake  he  laid 
out  his  opponent  and  was  cheered.  Usually  he  was  the 
loser,  and  grew  to  be  "  shy  and  unpopular,"  and  won- 
dered why  "  life  was  so  fierce." 

Next  to  the  school  was  the  church  which  still  blazes 
in  his  memory  with  gilt  altars,  candles,  statues,  stations 
of  the  cross,  where  wound  the  unending  processions  of 
song,  incense,  banners,  brocade  and  lace,  crimson,  white 
and  gold  —  work  of  master  showmen  whose  road  com- 
panies were  nearly  as  splendid  as  those  in  the  cities.  Here 
a  stern  bishop,  pale  on  a  high  throne  in  golden  robes,  he 
remembers  him  so,  anointed  him  and  received  him  into 
holy  communion.  The  church  was  better  than  the  school, 
yet  it  frightened  him.  He  talks  of  it  thirty  years  after 
with  a  shiver,  as  one  would  of  evil  things : 

"  Think  of  the  dull  functioning  of  dogma  age  after  age. 
How  many  millions  have  been  led  shunted  along  dogmatic 
runways  from  the  dark  into  the  dark  again.  I  am  not  rant- 
ing against  Catholicism  alone.  As  much  may  be  said  of 
(other  religions)  .  .  .  Here  they  come,  endless  billions,  and 
at  the  gates,  dogma,  ignorance,  vice,  cruelty,  seize  them  and 
clamp  this  or  that  band  about  their  brains,  or  their  feet. 
Then  hobbled  or  hamstrung,  they  are  turned  loose,  to  think, 
to  grow  if  possible.  As  well  ask  of  a  eunuch  to  procreate  or 
of  an  ox  to  charge.  The  incentive  to  discover  is  gone." 

Not  strange  that  in  1929  a  Catholic  judge  and  jury  in 
Boston  condemned  a  book  of  Dreiser's.  Not  strange  that 
Catholics  can't  enjoy  this  picture  of  a  lonely  child  striking 
out  from  their  exacting  shore  toward  whatever  wilder 
seas  there  are.  His  story  repeats  the  figure  of  a  man 
who  must  leave  home  for  the  sea,  prefers  the  freedom  of 
hopeless  waves  to  the  prudent  lies  of  the  shore.  The 
myth  of  him  would  be  that  of  a  swimmer  become  al- 
most a  fish  who  can't  breathe  for  long  on  customary 
land. 

But  Evansville  had  other  phases  that  counteracted  the 
gloom  of  Holy  Church.  Fun  of  boys  surrounded  him 
here,  a  gang  of  them,  who  liked  his  brother  Ed  and  "  at 
least  tolerated  him."  Whir  of  industries,  a  chair  fac- 
tory, a  pottery  and  a  foundry,  engaged  him.  He  liked  to 

43 


watch  and  listen  to  what  they  were  doing,  through  their 
windows  or  at  close  range  if  invited  in.  His  brother  Al 
worked  in  a  chair  factory  and  allowed  him  to  help  on 
Saturdays,  lacquering  gold  leaf  designs  on  kitchen  chairs. 
He  loved,  too,  the  levee  district  of  the  Ohio  River  and  the 
darkies  trailing  over  from  Kentucky  with  song  and  dreams 
and  jokes. 

In  the  midst  of  these  initiations  was  one  more  myste- 
rious than  the  rest,  and  more  luminous.  Sent  once  by  his 
mother  to  deliver  a  basket  of  preserves  at  the  door  of 
Annie  Brace,  he  was  told  that  his  brother  would  like  to 
see  him,  and  then  was  conducted  by  a  colored  maid 
through  corridors  to  an  apartment  upstairs  with  big 
windows  and  striped  awnings  on  the  Ohio  River.  Such 
houses  had  a  way  of  selecting,  along  with  darkies,  the 
cool  river  banks  in  small  towns,  while  the  good  citi- 
zens fearing  dampness,  or  was  it  beauty,  dried  to  mum- 
mies in  the  grit  of  their  superior  boulevards.  At  his 
best  as  when  he  sets  down  tragedy,  Dreiser  describes 
his  first  glimpse  of  dalliance,  in  "  this  semi-southern 
world,  hot  and  bright."  Paul  in  light  clothes,  with 
him  "  his  Annie  in  a  pink  and  white  heavily  beflounced 
dressing  gown,  surveying  me  with  an  amused  if  not 
very  much  interested  eye";  the  rooms  —  wicker,  linen, 
flowers,  music,  silver,  mirrors,  glass  —  to  him  a  kind  of 
fairyland : 

"  But  to  reach  this  suite  .  .  .  that  passage  through  the 
house  .  .  .  several  open  doors.  .  .  .  Things  so  strange  and 
to  me  so  exotically  moving  that  I  felt  I  must  not  acknowl- 
edge them  even  to  myself.  .  .  .  Segments  of  beds  .  .  .  odd 
bits  of  furniture  .  .  .  tumbled  bedding  .  .  .  garments 
strewn  about  .  .  .  and  in  one  case  a  yellow-haired  siren 
half  naked  before  her  mirror.  ...  In  a  flash,  and  without 
being  told,  a  full  appreciation  of  the  utility  of  the  male  as 
such  had  come  to  me  ...  I  wished  that  I  might  stay  and 
see  more.  .  .  .  Yet  I  also  knew  .  .  .  that  such  things 
were  still  in  the  dim  distant  future  for  me,  if  at  all.  But 
these  pink-meated  sirens,  however  vulgar  .  .  .  wonderful 
to  me  as  forms  .  .  ." 

So  his  life  in  Evansville  traced  in  him  a  triangle  of  his 
grown  mental  pattern.  Hatred  of  dogma,  love  of  enter- 
prise, faith  in  lust,  however  elementary.  Surrounding 
these  last,  not  excluding  them,  the  mysteries ! 

44 


Paul  apparently  was  unconcerned  over  this  visit  of  an 
eleven  year  old  boy;  but  it  seemed  best  to  the  boy  to  keep 
what  he  had  seen  a  secret,  a  door  opened  especially  for 
him  into  surprising  volume.  He  shared  it  with  no  one,  but 
is  sure  that  he  valued  it  even  at  that  age  as  news  of  some 
center  of  life.  It  was  a  center  news  of  which  in  his  first 
novel  would  be  one  of  the  shocks  to  jar  the  code  of  a 
nation. 

So  the  months  passed  in  this  town  so  remote  and  pro- 
tected in  a  giant  elbow  of  the  Ohio  River  moving  on  its 
way  to  a  greater  river,  where  always  his  own  house  and 
yard,  the  streets  and  the  river  life  were  as  agreeable  to 
him  as  the  church  and  school  were  sinister.  Then  one  day 
Paul  went  away  to  New  York  and  Broadway  fame. 
Without  him  his  mother  decided  to  try  luck  in  Chicago 
where  some  of  the  older  children  had  gone.  In  the  North 
perhaps  she  would  be  allowed  to  give  her  three  young- 
est a  u  sensible  free-school,  non-Catholic  education  "  —  a 
long-time  dream  of  hers.  It  was  their  first  entry  into  a  big 
city,  a  favorite  theme  in  Dreiser  novels.  For  a  summer 
they  tried  it,  long  enough  to  buy  furniture  on  the  instal- 
ment plan ;  long  enough  for  Thee  and  Ed  to  learn  to  be 
newsboys,  and  jump  on  and  off  of  West  Side  cars,  a 
delicious  early  sport  in  the  stories  of  many  self-made 
Americans.  But  the  city  was  too  cold  and  big  for  their 
means,  and  the  perpendicular  noise  of  their  neighbors  up 
and  down  the  air  shafts  seemed  more  vulgar  to  his  father 
and  mother  than  the  wretchedness  they  had  sometimes 
overheard  in  Sullivan.  Forfeiting  their  furniture,  they 
moved  back  to  Indiana,  but  this  time  to  Warsaw  in  the 
north.  There  she  would  be  nearer  her  own  relatives 
and  nearer  the  few  acres  her  father  had  left  her  when 
he  disowned  her  for  marrying  a  Catholic.  In  Warsaw 
they  settled,  and  stayed  there  for  the  final  years  of 
childhood. 

And  Dreiser,  whose  early  intensities  might  have  been 
linked  with  the  shiftless  droning  South,  was  definitely  ex- 
posed now  to  the  money-making  speed  of  the  North.  As 
the  years  went  on,  he  was  to  make  his  fight  against  its 
Protestant  meagerness  and  callouses,  and  find  his  joys 
never  entirely  separate  from  its  smug  vulgarities.  A  few 

45 


hundred  miles  from  southern  border  nearly  to  northern 
would  make  this  difference.  At  this  age,  twelve  years, 
he  joined  forces  with  conquering  America,  and  though 
often  hated  by  it,  and  as  often  hating  it,  has  never  en- 
tirely deserted  it. 


12 

Protestant  Warsaw 
\l  \i  "V 


w,, 


arsaw  was  an  idyllic  town  for  a  youth 
of  my  temperament."  Dreiser's  picture  of  it  in  A 
Hoosier  Holiday  is  an  idyll  of  a  mid-Western  town  in 
the  eighties.  He  is  not  sentimental  over  it  as  other 
Hoosiers,  belonging  to  more  acknowledged  families,  have 
been  over  their  small  town,  not  bitter  as  Masters  is  with 
his  Spoon  River.  Life  was  pleasing  to  him,  more  than  it 
appears  to  have  been  to  the  lonely  implacable  Masters  in 
Illinois.  He  had  loved  the  northwest  corner  of  Center 
and  Buffalo  Streets,  its  bookstore,  oyster  counter,  pool 
and  billiard  room,  where  met  what  he  calls  the  free 
masonry  of  generations.  Here  and  in  the  post  office,  in 
Peter's  Shoe  Repairing  and  Shine  Parlor,  in  Moon's 
and  Thompson's  Grocery  Store,  these  boys  ranging  from 
fourteen  to  seventeen  exchanged  "  the  little  bit  of  money, 
wit,  gayety  and  schooling  they  had,"  which  wonderfully 
to  him  included  secret  talk  of  girls.  Here  he  came,  a 
hanger-on  almost  as  soon  as  they  were  settled  in  Warsaw, 
almost  the  first  night,  in  fact,  and  to  his  intense  joy  came 
finally  to  feel  himself  one  of  a  group  of  youths,  "  if  not 
of  girls."  He  was  "  taken  in."  Here  was  Jud  Morris, 
hunchback  son  of  the  proprietor  of  the  bookshop,  Frank 
Yaisley,  brother  of  Dora,  George  Reed  now  a  circuit 
judge,  Mick  McConnel  who  died  of  lockjaw,  Harry 
Croxton,  later  a  mining  engineer  who  died  in  Mexico, 
George  and  John  Shouf,  sons  of  the  local  miller  and 
grand-nephews  of  his  mother,  Rutger  Miller,  Orren  Skiff. 
.  .  .  Then  in  Dreiser's  unbiased  way,  he  adds,  "  there 
were  still  others  of  an  older  group  who  belonged  to  the 
best  families  and  somehow  seemed  to  exchange  courtesies 
here  "  :  transient  evidence  of  how  boys  rebel  against  class 
hierarchy,  for  depriving  them  of  the  range  of  life.  What 

47 


boy  u  carefully  "  brought  up  has  not  envied  the  sidewalk 
gang,  and  pulled  along  by  nurse  or  parent,  has  not  strained 
back  toward  the  dangers  of  it,  before  finally  he  gives  in  to 
the  vague  rule  of  class ! 

Then  there  were  the  girls  of  the  town  —  Augusta 
Nueweiler,  Maud  Rutter,  Ada  Sanguiat  who  was  killed 
in  a  railroad  wreck,  Loretta  Brown,  Bertha  Stillmeyer, 
Dora  Yaisley,  so  beautiful  and  rich  and  supercilious  that 
he  used  to  dream  about  her.  Their  fathers  were  owners 
of  clothing,  drug  and  drygoods  stores ;  one  was  a  lumber 
merchant.  And  there  were  the  children  of  Harry  Oram 
who  owned  the  wagon  works  and  of  Mr.  Epstein,  whose 
Wool  Hide  and  Tallow  Exchange  stood  across  from  the 
bookstore.  Between  him  and  the  girls  was  always  a  dis- 
tance. He  was  too  shy  to  know  them  well  and  besides  not 
quite  thought  of  as  an  equal  by  those  he  picked  as  beauti- 
ful. Yet  the  public  school,  which  he  said  was  gracious  to 
one  and  all,  "  never  binding  or  driving,"  did  bring  them 
together,  whom  snobbery  even  in  this  village  preferred 
to  separate.  This  is  the  first  group  of  people  in  his  life, 
changing  from  grammar  school  to  high  school.*  Perhaps 
they  are  parents  to  the  many  others  he  has  had  vitality 
to  make  live  in  his  books.  With  them  he  went  to  his  first 
party,  saw  the  girls  in  their  best  dresses,  was  face  to  face 
with  the  shiver  of  that  naive  license  permitted  these  chil- 
dren of  this  period  —  the  kissing  game.  The  morning 
after,  a  Saturday,  he  and  his  brother  went  off  to  a  favorite 
grove  of  ash  trees  to  try  and  tell  each  other  how  wonder- 
ful life  had  been.  It  is  singularly  Dreiser  to  remember 
this  callow  indulgence  and  give  it  its  distinction  of  young 
lips  and  momentous  blood;  how  soon  to  fade  before  less 
vital  games!  His  genius  is  to  see  value  stripped  of  con- 
ventional implications  —  value  here  of  boys  and  girls 
about  to  cross  over  into  maturity.  That  few  ever  really 
cross,  or  how  stingily  they  cross  before  they  die,  makes 
his  refrain,  that  deepens  into  lamentation. 

He  defines  himself  at  this  period  as : 

"  a  dreamer  .  .  .  somewhat  cowardly,  but  still  adventur- 
ous and  willing  to  take  a  reasonable  chance  .  .  .  enthusias- 
tic about  girls  or  beauty  in  the  female  form,  and  what  was 
*  Named  here  as  in  A  Hoosier  Holiday. 


more,  about  beauty  in  all  forms,  natural  and  otherwise. 
...  I  tell  you,  in  those  days  wonderful  amazing  moods 
were  generated  in  my  blood.  I  felt  and  saw  things  which 
have  never  come  true  —  glories,  gaieties,  perfections  —  I 
wanted,  oh!  I  wanted  all  that  nature  can  breed  in  her 
wealth  of  stars  and  universe  —  and  I  found  —  what  have  I 
found—?" 

The  town  had  rivers,  the  Wabash  and  the  Tippecanoe, 
and  was  on  the  main  artery  of  the  Pennsylvania  railroad, 
and  around  it  were  five  small  lakes. 

They  lived  in  two  different  houses.  First,  the  Grant 
house  next  to  the  school,  where  there  was  a  swing  and  a 
hammock  under  a  pine  tree.  There  he  read  Water  Babies, 
Westward  Ho,  The  Scarlet  Letter,  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables,  Irving  and  Goldsmith.  This  was  a  town  of 
books,  a  town  of  the  British  classics,  his  first  town  with  a 
bookstore.  He  was  coming  into  a  heritage  of  books  which 
these  Puritans  allowed  their  children,  as  long  as  they 
would  think  of  them  as  classics  and  read  none  of  their 
own  life  into  them.  It  was  here  in  this  hammock  his  father 
found  him  reading  The  Alhambra,  and  said,  "  What  is 
all  this  trash,  Dorsch?  "  He  was  old  enough  by  then  to 
give  the  jeer  of  child  to  parent.  A  few  days  later  as  if  to 
prove  himself  a  modern,  too,  the  father  bought  the  whole 
set  of  Irving  for  seven  dollars  from  a  traveling  book- 
agent. 

After  a  time  they  moved  to  the  Thralls  Mansion,  red 
brick,  one  of  the  first  in  the  county,  set  back  in  a  grove  of 
pines;  and  there  were  five  chestnut  trees  and  an  orchard, 
and  below  them  a  saw-mill  pond  where  they  used  to  jump 
the  logs  and  skate  in  winter.  They  made  apple  butter  in 
the  yard  over  a  fire  of  pine  cones  in  an  iron  caldron.  One 
knows  the  kind  of  house,  infrequent  and  haunting  in  the 
West,  built  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  spacious  and 
romantic  and  melancholy,  with  windows  like  eyes,  as  if 
its  years  were  numbered  and  it  had  seen  dark  family  joys, 
and  time  were  eating  it  away.  "  Life  in  this  house,"  he 
said,  "  gave  and  promised  me  more  than  it  ever  did 
again."  He  talked  once  of  a  night  he  spent  there,  ap- 
pointed to  sit  up  with  a  sick  sister,  and  give  her  medicine, 
and  go  at  two  in  the  morning  to  get  the  doctor:  "  I  re- 
member it  was  the  night  of  my  first  reading  Macbeth.  To 

49 


this  day  the  eerie  cadences  of  that  play,  mixed  with  the 
sighing  of  the  wind  in  the  pine  grove  and  the  barking  of 
my  dog  are  sounds  stamped  in  my  brain  as  in  metal  or 
hot  wax." 

Here  too  in  Warsaw  girls  became  important  to  him, 
and  with  them  sex  defined  itself.  It  was  in  the  air  under 
the  shady  trees  and  on  the  verandahs.  The  boys  whispered 
and  giggled  and  spilled  little  rumors  of  sex.  One  of  them 
had  paid  fifty  cents  to  go  to  a  lecture  with  stereoptican 
views  of  sex,  and  could  diagram  it  for  him.  There  were 
village  girls  every  so  often  "  going  wrong,"  and  that 
meant  sex.  The  very  night  they  arrived  in  Warsaw  they 
had  nearly  taken  a  house  next  to  a  house  of  bad  name ; 
the  women  who  kept  it  were  friendly  to  them ;  and  they 
were  only  saved  by  the  timely  advice  of  the  hardware 
dealer.  Sex  beckoned  to  you  and  sex  disgraced  you.  Girls 
possessed  him  now  like  a  fever.  He  knew  he  wanted  them 
and  he  knew  that  to  fool  with  them  might  disgrace  his 
family,  almost  free  of  scandal  here.  Besides,  it  seemed 
to  him,  the  delirium  of  it  might  end  him  like  lightning. 
Then  one  day  coming  home  from  school,  the  baker's 
daughter  dared  him  to  chase  her,  and,  before  he  knew  it, 
they  were  down  in  a  backyard  of  big  packing  cases  and 
she  had  initiated  him  into  what  stood  in  their  young 
bodies  for  sex.  But  she  was  too  bold  and  like  an  animal, 
different  from  the  girls  who  ravished  his  senses ;  he  never 
went  back.  Of  the  others  there  was  one  especially,  pale 
and  spiritual,  he  thought,  whom  he  had  to  adore  at  a  dis- 
tance like  an  angel  or  a  saint.  He  frightened  her,  made 
her  faint,  she  told  him ;  it  was  the  same  with  him.  An  un- 
earthly poetic  love  burned  him  for  months.  Strength  of 
passion  made  a  coward  of  him,  he  says,  and  kept  him 
ineffectual  until  nearly  twenty. 

Toward  the  end  of  their  stay  in  Warsaw  he  was  fur- 
ther removed  from  these  village  beauties  by  the  behavior 
of  his  own  sisters,  who  came  home  to  visit  and  began  to 
keep  loose  company.  One  of  them  had  to  go  away  to 
give  birth  to  a  child.  He  and  his  brother  and  sister  were 
not  invited  any  more  to  the  birthdays  and  hay  rides  and 
skating  parties.  Again  they  were  under  the  old  cloud  for 
all  his  mother  had  tried  to  free  them.  So  he  tells  of  these 
So 


beginnings,  typical  of  our  evasive,  careless  civilization  — 
this  half  discovery  of  their  own  nature  that  children  for 
generations  have  been  forced  to  make  alone;  and  then 
have  kept  like  a  secret  the  rest  of  their  lives,  to  be  spilled 
only  to  other  children  as  they  progressed  to  smoking 
rooms  and  petting  parties. 

Yet  these  were  days  of  a  new  freedom;  the  public 
school  was  giving  zest  to  life.  There  were  books,  a  pro- 
fusion of  books  —  Macaulay,  Taine,  Guizot,  Dickens, 
Scott,  Thackeray,  Fielding,  DeFoe,  Cooper,  Lew  Wal- 
lace, Dryden,  Pope,  Herrick.  He  would  learn  and  study 
and  find  out  about  life;  somebody  would  know,  some- 
body must  know,  knowledge  would  be  the  solution.  Here 
was  the  optimism  of  the  nineteenth  century;  knowledge 
was  there  to  solve  everything;  with  industry  it  was  yours. 
Who  knows  today  after  all  the  experiments,  the  pro- 
gressive schools,  the  self-expression,  if  knowledge,  proud 
knowledge,  peddler  of  "  tidbits,"  is  not  the  surer  solace?  * 

To  this  child  it  seemed  like  paradise  to  study  free  of 
Catholic  spectres.  He  could  ask  questions  about  religion 
and  science  here.  There  were  classes  in  natural  history, 
botany  and  astronomy.  He  could  ask  about  Robert  In- 
gersoll,  who  was  not,  it  seemed,  a  fiend  who  would  roast 
in  hell,  as  his  enraged  father  and  the  priest  used  to  say; 
but  a  philosopher,  mistaken  perhaps,  but  brilliant.  To  his 
amazement  this  school  wanted  to  help  him,  not  terrify 
him.  He  was  in  love  with  liberalism,  as  if  it  were  a  girl 
he  had  always  wanted,  met  for  the  first  time.  One  subject 
alone  he  knew  instinctively  was  taboo.  Sex  was  never 
mentioned  except  in  relation  to  plant  life,  not  to  human 
beings.  The  priest  might  perhaps  forgive  his  sister  for 
her  mortal  sin,  but  that  would  not  reestablish  them  with 
the  best  families  of  Protestant  Warsaw  who  directed  this 
school.  That  however  had  to  do  with  equations  yet  beyond 
him,  not  to  be  counted  against  these  generous  teachers. 

There  was  Mae  Calvert  in  the  grammar  school,  nine- 
teen or  twenty,  "  vigorous  and  blond,  entrancing,"  who 
helped  him  and  petted  him,  told  him  he  read  beautifully, 

*  Bertrand  Russell,  asked  if  he  agreed  with  the  induction  of  the  moment 
that  there  is  no  knowledge,  said,  "  No,  not  quite,  I  think  there  are  always 
tidbits." 


and  not  to  mind  if  grammar  was  hard  for  him,  it  would 
come  to  him  in  time  —  in  which  she,  like  her  day,  was 
optimistic.  Without  mastery  of  grammar  she  passed  him 
on  to  the  next  class ;  and  from  there  into  high  school ! 
Here  was  Miss  Fielding,  the  rhetoric  teacher,  an  old 
maid,  with  protruding  teeth  and  no  money  to  straighten 
them  until  it  was  too  late.  She  told  him  not  to  mind  about 
rhetoric  either,  that  he  would  be  someone,  indeed  that  he 
would  go  further  without  rhetoric  than  most  people  went 
with  it  —  an  indulgence  for  which  many  a  critic  in  the 
thirty  years  to  come  would  not  thank  her.  They  gave  him 
faith  in  himself,  these  two  teachers,  or  strengthened  a 
faith  instinctive  in  him  that  somehow  he  was  to  be  part 
of  the  panoply  of  earth.  One  day  in  the  last  term  of  high 
school,  for  a  rhetoric  test  none  of  whose  questions  he 
could  answer,  he  wrote  a  description  of  a  stream  near  the 
town,  pattern  of  sunlight  and  shade,  discord  of  a  Jewish 
peddler  he  and  his  brother  had  found  dead  on  its  banks 
face  down.  The  principal  asked  for  him,  praised  him, 
walked  home  with  him,  and  gave  him  advice :  His  mind 
had  not  formed  itself  yet,  but  it  would;  he  would  be  some- 
thing. "  Take  your  life  seriously.  Don't  listen  to  people 
or  rules.  Read  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  a  history 
of  the  United  States,  Shakespeare,  Keats." 

Fascinated  by  the  miracle  of  this  advice,  both  as  given 
and  taken,  I  asked  him  how  he  had  interpreted  the  idea 
of  being  someone.  Had  he  thought  the  principal  meant  he 
would  be  a  writer.  No,  he  said,  that  had  not  occurred  to 
him,  books  were  written  by  foreigners  or  by  great  people 
in  cities.  He  had  once  read  in  the  Warsaw  paper  an 
anecdote  about  Nietzsche,  and  wondered  at  a  living 
writer  so  great  that  he  could  be  news  in  distant  countries. 
He  could  never  have  fame  like  that.  He  had  thought  that 
he  might  become  a  superintendent  of  schools  perhaps,  the 
head  of  something. 

To  jar  brutally  with  his  picture  of  Warsaw  is  a  re- 
membrance of  Dreiser  in  a  review  of  A  Book  About 
Myself  in  Winder's  Travel  Magazine.  First,  complaining 
that  he  had  written  more  about  himself  than  any  bio- 
grapher had  about  George  Washington,  the  reviewer 
says: 

52 


t(  We  knew  Dreiser  —  it  was  spelled  Dresser  then  —  in 
his  high  school  days  in  Indiana.  He  was  a  gawk  then;  kept 
to  himself,  had  no  dealings  with  the  other  boys;  went  along 
the  street  with  his  head  down  as  if  afraid  to  look  anyone  in 
the  eye.  We  boys  thought  he  was  '  queer/  and  in  the  main 
were  as  ready  to  avoid  him  as  he  was  to  keep  away  from  all 
companionship,  yet  he  is  the  only  one  in  all  the  town  that 
has  succeeded  in  getting  his  name  before  an  admiring  public 
—  even  though  that  public  be  of  a  perverted  mind.  One  of 
the  boys  of  those  days  became  a  great  preacher;  another  a 
millionaire  broker,  others  famous  travellers  and  merchants, 
some  got  into  the  newspaper  business,  but  they  are  all  un- 
known to  the  world  at  large." 

This  jerks  you  back  to  the  human  element  surrounding 
him,  so  nearly  inhuman  in  its  indifference.  In  this  stalks 
the  loneliness  of  a  young  extremist,  a  child  thought  of  as 
"  different  "  and  called  "  queer  "  in  the  incalculable  isola- 
tion of  the  Middle  West.  Lincoln  in  Illinois  was  "  queer  " 
too,  and  then  like  Dreiser  forged  through  to  an  audience. 
Their  kind  of  force  required  an  audience  and  of  their 
own  people  immediately  surrounding  them.  What  of  the 
even  "  queerer  "  ones  who  could  not  be  bent  to  this 
America?  Perhaps  they  have  lived  and  died  in  some 
tragic  desert,  some  devastating  storm  of  the  mind,  which 
when  exciting  enough  as  in  the  case  of  Poe  finally  brought 
fame.  And  some  of  them  have  gone  to  Europe.  Dreiser 
walking  with  his  head  down  as  if  afraid  of  being  hurt, 
must  early  have  made  some  rule  for  himself  which  for- 
bade him  to  be  injured,  forbade  him  to  be  the  under-dog. 
Today  he  says,  "  I  was  always  lucky,  I  always  got  the 
breaks." 

He  left  high  school  before  it  was  over  with  the 
thought  that  he  must  earn  money.  And  his  family  made 
their  last  move  to  Chicago,  where  several  of  the  older  ones 
still  lived.  He  went  first,  alone,  impatient  for  a  job,  and 
after  a  while  the  others  followed.  So  he  left  the  hammock 
and  the  lawn,  the  honeysuckle  and  dark  trees,  dimly  reso- 
nant with  village  kisses  and  wail  of  song  —  "  My  Bonnie 
Lies  over  the  Ocean,"  "  The  Spanish  Cavalier  "  —  and 
went  definitely  into  a  bigger  world  of  preachers  and 
brokers  and  newspapermen.  Not  many  of  them  would  be 
very  different  from  those  who  as  boys  had  thought  of  him 
as  "  queer."  He  went,  he  tells  us,  without  saying  goodbye 

53 


to  his  brother  and  sister,  only  to  his  mother  —  a  detail 
of  a  piece  with  genius,  whose  sudden,  ruthless  decisions 
amaze  the  rest  of  us.  We  never  get  used  to  them.  He 
went  with  high  hopes.  Perhaps  he  remembered  a  prophecy 
of  his  Aunt  Susan's.  Like  his  mother,  a  Mennonite,  she 
lived  up  on  Silver  Lake  with  her  "  vagrom  "  husband  and 
children  "  in  company  with  a  few  cows  and  pigs."  Silver 
Lake  was  "  set  in  high  green  hills,"  yellow-gold  grain  and 
black  woods.  When  he  and  his  brother  went  to  visit  there 
they  slept  with  the  others  in  one  room,  in  tiers  of  beds  in 
each  corner,  scarcely  curtained;  where  married  daughter 
and  niece  undressed,  and  they  heard  the  muffled  blandish- 
ments of  the  ungainly  husbands.  These  relatives  both 
shocked  and  fascinated  him;  the  uncle  a  fiddler  for  the 
local  dances  and  a  drunkard;  the  talk  in  the  house  loose 
and  coarse,  trivial  but  wild  compared  to  what  he  heard 
in  his  own  reverent  hard-working  family.  And  it  was  all 
braided  in  with  the  noises  and  smells  of  barnyard  and 
near  fields,  pigs  and  crickets,  whirr  of  reapers,  calls  to 
horses  —  the  bright  dust  and  dew  and  night  silence  of  a 
farm.  So  he  describes  the  visit  —  one  of  the  hypnotic 
passages  in  that  book  of  too  confiding  title,  Dawn. 

"  It  was  the  time  for  taking  in  the  grain;  hot,  clear 
August  weather."  His  Aunt  Susan,  who  always  "  ap- 
pealed "  to  him,  "  soft-spoken,  dreamy,  wistful,"  was  tell- 
ing his  fortune  in  coffee  grounds  in  the  trumpet-vine  shade 
of  the  east  porch : 

" '  Now  let's  see  what  it  says  about  you  in  your  cup.  .  .  . 
Oh,  I  see  cities,  cities,  cities,  and  great  crowds,  and  bridges, 
and  chimneys.  You  are  going  to  travel  a  long  way  —  all 
over  the  world  perhaps.  And  there  are  girls  in  your  cup! 
I  see  their  faces ! '  (I  thrilled  at  that)  (  You  won't  stay  here 
long.  You  will  be  going  soon,  out  into  the  world.'  .  .  .  Her 
face  was  grave  .  .  .  wrinkled,  distant.  ...  I  thought 
nothing  of  her  at  the  time,  only  of  myself.  How  beautiful 
would  be  that  outside  world!  And  I  would  be  going  to  it 
soon !  Walking  up  and  down  in  it !  " 


54 


15 

Chicago:  The  Windy  City:  The  Prairie 
Skunk:  Independent  as  a  hog  on  ice. 


C 


'hicago  in  1887  was  a  mammoth  village, 
whose  emigrants  were  profusely  Irish  and  German, 
and  incipiently  Italian,  Jewish,  Swedish,  Negro,  Chinese, 
whose  ruling  class,  naively  called  "  best  families/'  was 
chiefly  New  England,  tough,  shrewd  Yankees — young 
men  who  had  once  been  told  to  go  West,  so  they 
did,  taking  with  them  their  virtuous  wives.  Here  in 
Chicago  they  kept  a  British  passion  for  class,  or  their 
wives  did,  and  out  of  the  raw  lake  winds,  they  caught  a 
racy  contempt  for  form  of  any  kind.  They  loved  to  be 
respectable  and  they  loved  to  be  shambling,  what  they 
called  "  plain."  They  were  complacent  and  brash;  their 
wives  were  snobbish  even  way  out  there.  They  loved  to 
have  a  European  prince  visit  them,  and  equally  they 
relished  telling  how  his  millionaire  host,  Long  John 
Wentworth  —  they  reveled  in  nicknames,  they  invented 
lingo  —  made  him  feel  at  home  in  his  "  palatial  resi- 
dence " :  "  All  right,  Prince,  when  you've  finished  your 
drink,  we'll  go  on  upstairs  and  wash  up  for  supper."  As 
quick  as  they  could  they  got  to  be  millionaires  and  built 
"  palatial  residences."  Often  their  wives  were  ashamed 
of  them,  but  they  didn't  care,  they  were  going  to  make 
Chicago  the  greatest  city  in  the  world,  second  to  none. 
Already  they  called  it  "  independent  as  a  hog  on  ice !  "  * 
I  don't  know  how  Chicago  looked  in  1887,  but  I  am  not 
far  from  being  a  witness.  Miles  and  miles  of  homes,  never 
a  wall,  sometimes  picket  fences,  occasionally  hedges,  most 
often  low  stone  beveled  copings  between  yard  and  side- 
walk; flowerbeds  beginning  in  the  front  yard  and  running 
back  past  chickens  and  a  cow  perhaps,  or  hammocks  and 

*  Recorded  by  Carl  Sandburg  in  The  Windy  City. 

55 


a  tennis  court,  to  the  back  yard  and  sheds  of  the  poorer 
houses,  to  the  stables  of  the  richer  homes,  and  to  the 
alleys  which  I  used  to  think  were  especially  for  burglars 
to  escape  through  and  for  dark  deeds  to  happen  in.  Some- 
times there  were  half  blocks  of  white  stone  or  brown 
stone  houses,  like  New  York,  people  said,  which  estab- 
lished meager  form  and  color;  but  more  often  the  lawn 
divided  houses  each  different  in  shape,  in  color,  in  ma- 
terial. Miles  and  miles  of  toneless  Eastlake  fantasies, 
north,  south  and  west,  lived  happily  together  with  the 
older  wooden  shanties  interspersed.  These  shanties  were 
like  cottages  in  German  fairy  tales  with  ornate  Victorian 
detail  around  door  and  window  and  sometimes  even  bal- 
conies. Some  of  them  were  painted  white,  but  most  of 
them  were  painted  grey  or  not  painted  at  all,  and  grew  to 
be  with  the  cinders  of  the  railroad  a  rich  disturbing  black. 
Some  of  them  had  no  detail,  were  plain  and  dark  and 
clapboarded  as  houses  could  be,  as  if  witches  lived  in 
them. 

All  the  houses  had  steps  going  up  past  the  basement  to 
the  parlor  floor,  and  usually  a  porch,  where  people  sat 
summer  afternoons.  But  in  the  evenings  they  sat  — 
mother,  father,  grandparents,  children,  aunts,  uncles, 
callers,  on  rugs  and  cushions  on  the  steps,  with  two  in 
chairs  on  the  wide  top  step  before  the  door.  Here  they 
watched  the  city  growing  in  the  night,  smelled  the  stock- 
yards, waited  for  a  lake  breeze,  bought  extras,  and  on 
the  Fourth  of  July  felt  the  shiver  and  flight  of  Chinese 
fireworks.  Rich  and  poor  seemed  to  improvise  their  sum- 
mer evenings  in  this  way.  Behind  them  was  forever  the 
mystery  of  Lake  Michigan,  impeccable  and  vast,  but  that 
was  given  over  to  the  birds  and  the  railroads,  the  waste- 
lands and  the  kitchens  and  stables,  the  hoboes  and  fisher- 
men. They  were  afraid  of  the  northeast  winds  in  winter, 
these  people,  afraid  of  the  storms  and  the  shifting  sands; 
afraid  of  mosquitoes  and  dampness  in  summer;  they  were 
afraid  of  beauty.  It  was  cozier,  it  was  wiser  for  their 
porches  and  their  front  steps  and  front  yards  to  face  the 
smug,  leafy  streets  of  their  booming  city. 

Like  a  heart  of  these  homes  was  what  they  called 
Downtown,  later  known  as  the  Loop,  because  of  the 
56 


elevated  roads.  There  was  the  Board  of  Trade,  Marshall 
Field  and  Company,  the  Fair,  the  Palmer  House,  where 
old-timers  from  the  Far  West,  cow-boys,  Mormons, 
miners,  and  supercilious  Easterners  at  least  passed  each 
other  in  the  majestic,  marble  lobbies,  or  sat  on  the  same 
red  velvet  divans;  and  where  silver  dollars  intercepted 
the  white  flags  of  the  floor  of  the  barber  shop.  And  there 
were  innumerable  stores  and  offices  where  hundreds  of 
young  men  were  doing  well,  and  a  few  were  boosting  the 
city  into  being  "  the  greatest  commercial  center  the  world 
has  ever  known,  second  to  none."  Wasn't  this  the  corn 
market,  the  meat  market,  the  railroad  center,  the  lake 
port  of  a  great  continent?  If  you  woke  up  at  night  you 
could  hear  the  trains  coming  in  from  east,  south,  west, 
north,  and  going  out  again.  You  could  hear  the  foghorns 
on  the  lakes  and  the  whistles  from  the  river.  To  a  child, 
to  a  boy  or  girl,  maybe  even  to  older  people  this  was 
wide,  mournful,  adventurous  music  —  mingled  whistles 
of  trains  and  boats  and  foghorns.  The  Thomas  Concerts, 
established  about  this  time  in  the  Armory  on  the  lake 
front,  with  its  European  symphonies  never  gave  the  city 
wilder  fugues  than  these  trains  of  a  continent  and  boats 
of  the  Great  Lakes. 

The  river  cut  in  from  the  lake  between  the  South  and 
North  Side,  and  then  turning  divided  again  the  South 
and  the  West  Side  which  straggled  far  toward  the  prairie. 
Murky  warehouses  and  wholesale  houses  were  shadowed 
in  its  dirty  waters,  rose  out  of  them,  entered  into  them 
in  a  marriage  of  brick  and  smoke  and  river.  The  bridges 
and  the  rigging,  the  tugs  and  scows  were  vaguely  ani- 
mated at  night  by  gas  lamps  and  oil  flames,  and  in  the 
day  by  seagulls  dipping,  rising  with  their  potent  serrated 
wings,  black  and  white  like  the  city.  To  walk  in  those 
dim  uncertain  days  of  Chicago  across  the  Rush  Street 
bridge  or  the  Kinzie  bridge,  was  to  walk  through  air  that 
stabbed  you  with  wings  and  lights  and  the  loom  of  shapes. 
There  was  a  pledge  in  the  air;  older  people  told  us  so,  we 
believed  them.  A  far  off  adventure  was  making  itself,  we 
were  part  of  something  being  made.  If  they  lied  to  us,  if 
the  promise  has  not  yet  come  true,  has  even  receded,  they 
were  not  quite  to  blame;  there  was  something  in  the  air 

57 


which  the  wet  lake  winds  and  the  prairie  winds  wafted 
about  the  street  corners  and  river  ways  along  with  the 
cinders  and  soot. 

Out  to  the  north  on  the  Lake  Shore  Drive,  looking  like 
something  to  eat  was  the  German  Castle-on-the-Rhine  of 
Mrs.  Potter  Palmer,  the  city's  queen.  And  not  far  from 
it  a  replica  of  Desdemona's  palace  and  some  isolated 
French  chateaux  and  Tudor  mansions.  To  the  south  you 
found  them,  too,  on  Michigan  Avenue  and  Prairie  Ave- 
nue, correct  in  grey  stone  or  shameless  in  green  stone,  or 
brown  with  turquoise  trimmings  and  Eastlake  ornaments, 
turrets,  bay  windows,  cupolas.  Often  they  looked  like 
something  to  eat,  cake  or  ice  cream,  or  they  had  faces, 
they  looked  like  the  people.  English  butlers  answered 
doors,  two  men  sat  on  the  box  of  broughams  and  victorias, 
tallyhos  blew  their  way  to  the  races  in  Washington  Park, 
and  pleasant  people  drove  about  in  their  buggies  and 
phaetons.  As  often  the  sidewalks  were  of  wood  as  of 
stone,  and  you  had  to  go  up  and  down  wooden  steps  be- 
cause of  the  fast  rising  levels  of  the  streets. 

In  wide  patches  over  the  city,  especially  along  the  west 
branch  of  the  river,  a  desolate  seductive  scenery  was 
evolving  out  of  factories  and  railroad  yards  —  out  of 
lonely  wooden  viaducts,  drums  of  gas  tanks,  grain  ele- 
vators, chimneys,  furnaces,  derricks,  grim  board  fences, 
dredges  and  wagons,  and  always  the  scattered  grey  shan- 
ties and  the  corner  saloons  on  the  corners  of  nothing.  To 
the  southwest  and  northwest  this  giant  village  trailed  the 
flat  borders  of  its  skirts.  And  they  were  trimmed  with  row 
on  row  of  freight  cars,  empty  lots,  junk  yards  —  from 
the  first  there  was  passion  for  junking.  Here  and  there  a 
goat  rummaged,  pigs  wallowed  in  pools  of  mud;  wooden 
sidewalks  led  past  the  sparse  wooden  huts  and  the  infre- 
quent street  lamps.  In  winter  marvelous  tonality  bathed 
these  different  districts.  A  stark  gamut  of  blacks  and 
whites,  hulking  mysteries  penetrated  like  lust  and  love. 
It  was  aphrodisiac  scenery.  Near  the  center  of  the  town 
Custom  House  Place  blazed  with  more  literal  venereal 
meaning  in  the  half-naked  women  of  the  red-light  district. 
Their  rouge  and  peroxide,  their  satin  and  spangled 
chemises,  their  frontier  eyes,  their  assertive  bodies  tore 
58 


the  air  for  a  few  blocks.  Flaunting  inept  Venuses,  they 
challenged  the  smoke  and  purity. 

In  the  summer  the  city  grew  in  the  dusty  green  light  of 
cotton-wood  trees  and  willows.  In  the  winter  perhaps  no- 
where has  there  been  such  haunting  velvet  of  black  shapes 
and  white  snow  and  drifting  white  vapor  under  the  cano- 
pies of  smoke,  shot  with  flame  whenever  the  sky  darkened 
into  daytime  fog  or  into  night.  It  is  gone  now,  that  first 
low-flung  improvised  Chicago,  with  not  one  painter  out 
of  it,  shaken  by  its  bleakness,  to  change  it  over  into  pig- 
ment. But  it  did,  I  think,  communicate  its  unintentional 
magic  to  certain  writers;  to  Frank  Norris  and  to  Dreiser, 
to  Masters  and  Sherwood  Anderson;  the  tissue  of  whose 
work  at  times,  even  when  of  other  places,  presents  the 
mournful  racy  haphazard  lineaments  of  this  city  of  smoke 
and  puddles;  and  directly  to  Carl  Sandburg,  who  has 
made  poems  identical  with  Chicago. 


Fresh  water  learning 


D 


reiser  in  story  and  biography  has  told  over 
the  mood  of  a  boy  or  girl  from  the  country  entering  a 
big  city  alone,  as  if  acutely  he  remembered  this  coming 
to  Chicago  when  he  was  sixteen.  They  went  to  live  on 
the  West  Side,  on  the  corner  of  Ogden  Avenue  and 
Robey  Street,  that  West  Side  which  before  the  fire  was 
sanctioned  as  a  place  to  live  in,  and  then  gradually  came 
to  give  low  visibility  to  the  people  who  lived  there.  So, 
dangerous  labor  leaders  and  specious  cult  leaders  and 
illicit  lovers  and  self-effacing  people  went  to  live  there. 
If  to  any  of  them  life  was  unendurable  without  attention, 
they  almost  had  to  move  far  away  to  other  cities.  In 
Chicago  the  taint  of  the  West  Side  would  follow  them ; 
for  all  its  frontier  pretense  the  town  was  inflexible,  in- 
human as  that.  Unconsciously  for  this  reason  Dreiser 
may  have  left  the  place  and  not  rested  until  finally  he 
reached  New  York.  Yet  traits  of  Chicago  remain  with 
him. 

He  found  a  job  as  dishwasher  in  a  dirty  Greek  restau- 
rant. He  was  helper  to  a  scene  painter  in  love  with  his 
sister.  And  then  he  went  to  work  in  the  shipping  depart- 
ment of  a  big  wholesale  hardware  house,  Hibbard,  Spen- 
cer, Bartlett  and  Company,  that  backed  on  the  river  and 
shipped  goods  from  its  docks  into  lake  freight  boats. 
He  hoped  to  become  rapidly  a  successful  merchant. 
Mr.  Hibbard  is  an  item  of  this  background  known  to 
me.  We  used  to  play  with  his  grandchildren  in  the  open 
yard  of  his  enormous  red  brick  house,  which  had  a 
stone  fountain  always  dry  and  nice  to  play  in.  He  was  a 
millionaire,  and  he  and  his  wife  were  so  good  and  pious 
we  felt  sorry  for  his  grandchildren  for  fear  they  would 
have  to  be  good  and  pious,  too.  They  gave  their  money 
60 


to  the  Episcopal  Church  and  St.  Luke's  Hospital  near  by, 
situated  in  a  block  called  "  the  patch,"  so  dissolute  we 
were  told  never  to  walk  there.  We  used  to  go  into  their 
house  for  birthday  parties  or  to  get  warm.  Sometimes  it 
smelled  of  baking,  but  usually  it  was  big  and  silent,  and 
nearly,  but  not  quite  —  something  was  lacking,  maybe 
greed  —  gave  the  shiver  of  riches.  The  drawing  room 
was  dressed  in  pale  green  and  gold  brocade,  and  there 
were  marble  statues  and  black  teakwood  cabinets ;  it  was 
always  dark.  The  dining  room  was  baronial  and  had  elk 
heads  with  branching  antlers  and  mounted  trout  on  the 
walls.  There  were  dark  oil  paintings  everywhere  —  fruit 
pieces,  religious  pieces,  marshes,  meadows  and  game;  we 
rarely  saw  anyone  downstairs.  Mr.  Hibbard  had  a  short, 
white  beard  and  no  moustache  which  made  him  look  espe- 
cially good  and  kind.  People  said  he  was  a  man  of  ster- 
ling character;  his  middle  name  was  Gold.  His  one  in- 
congruous passion  was  fast  and  thoroughbred  horses. 
Though  he  and  his  partners,  Mr.  Bartlett  and  Mr. 
Spencer,  belonged  among  the  self-made  merchants 
and  club-men  whom  Dreiser  later  characterized  skil- 
fully in  The  Titan  as  respectable  hypocrites,  I  think 
he  was  not  a  hypocrite.  I  think  he  never  wanted  to 
be,  nor  for  his  children  or  his  grandchildren  to  be, 
anything  but  God-fearing  and  charitable  and  solid  and 
prosperous;  nor  for  his  knives  and  scissors  and  fishing- 
tackle  and  guns  and  saucepans  to  be  anything  but 
solid  and  irreproachable.  "  O.  V.  B."  — "Our  Very 
Best." 

To  his  store  on  the  river  his  shipping  clerks,  the  War- 
saw boy  among  them,  came  at  seven  in  the  morning  and 
worked  till  six  at  night,  for  $5  a  week,  unpacking  and 
storing  and  packing  in  a  crowded  loft  under  an  Irish  boss, 
who  quite  rightly,  Dreiser  says,  despised  him.  And  he 
dejectedly  despised  the  work,  felt  like  a  "  pointless  un- 
important bond  slave."  The  one  stimulant  was  "  an  ac- 
quaintance there  who  exercised  a  great  influence  over 
me  ...  a  Dane,  a  drunkard  and  a  lecher  .  .  .  but  with 
marvelous  brains  I  thought.  .  .  .  He  laughed  Chris- 
tianity off  the  boards,"  and  made  fun  of  high  society  in 
Chicago,  in  fact  in  all  of  the  United  States.  He  gave  him 

61 


his  first  lesson  in  sophistication.  He  would  borrow  money 
and  calmly  not  pay  it  back.  "  But  I  forgave  him  because 
he  was  so  valuable  to  me."  * 

One  day  the  young  shipping  clerk  was  told  to  go  down 
to  the  office,  someone  wanted  to  see  him.  It  was  Miss 
Fielding,  his  teacher  from  Warsaw,  the  old  maid  with  the 
upper  false  teeth  and  "  a  whimsical  emotional  smile." 
She  was  now  a  school  principal  in  Chicago.  u  Theodore," 
she  said,  "  work  of  this  kind  isn't  meant  for  you,  really. 
It  will  injure  your  spirit.  I  want  you  to  let  me  help  you 
go  to  school  again."  He  protested  that  his  father  would 
never  allow  him  to  borrow  money.  He  remembered  how 
any  debt  was  to  keep  them  all  in  purgatory,  as  they  died. 
She  said  she  had  kept  track  of  him,  that  she  had  heard 
he  was  not  well,  would  break  down  in  the  city,  that  she 
wanted  to  help  him  go  to  the  State  University  in  Bloom- 
ington,  Indiana,  had  even  spoken  to  the  president,  David 
Starr  Jordan,  about  him.  It  was  true,  he  said,  that  he  was 
sick,  his  lungs  and  stomach  had  gone  back  on  him,  but 
there  was  no  way  for  him  to  live  in  the  country.  She  told 
him  she  had  some  savings  and  she  would  rather  he  would 
use  them  than  use  them  herself;  more  would  come  of 
it.  She  said  she  would  talk  to  Mr.  Hibbard  whom  she 
seemed  to  know.  As  Dreiser  told  the  incident,  though  his 
memory  differs  in  Dawn,  the  merchant's  advice  was  like 
hers :  "  You  must  listen  to  Miss  Fielding  and  get  an  edu- 
cation. It  is  best  for  you,"  he  added,  "  you  will  never 
make  a  business  man."  This  seemed  final.  In  a  few 
weeks,  with  his  mother's  consent  he  was  back  in  the 
warm  hills  of  Indiana,  entering  his  first  and  only  year 
of  college,  and  getting  well  again.  Life  outdoors  and 
clean  air  saved  him,  he  is  sure,  from  perhaps  a  fatal 
illness.  The  hardware  job  would  have  been  the  end  of 
him. 

I  like  to  believe  the  story  as  I  heard  it.  A  flash  of  how, 
by  such  distant  and  indirect  ties,  people  are  joined  some- 
times for  a  second  out  of  their  lives !  The  teacher  and  the 
hardware  merchant  by  good  works,  the  high-school  boy 
and  the  teacher  by  some  cry  of  the  intellect,  all  three  of 
them  by  a  second  in  fate.  It  is  amusing,  if  true,  that  this 

*  Recorded  by  Frank  Harris,  Contemporary  Portraits. 
62 


churchman  had  a  slight  hand  in  saving  for  future  years 
an  enemy  of  the  code  he  lived  by  —  a  writer  of  books 
that  were  to  challenge  a  religion  where  chastity  and  hon- 
esty and  prosperity  and  charity  attempted  to  go  lovingly 
arm  in  arm. 

His  version  of  his  two  semesters  of  college  life  is  un- 
sparing of  himself.  He  went,  he  says,  too  unprepared  for 
academic  learning  to  know  how  to  learn.  He  failed,  he 
thinks,  for  lack  of  mathematics  and  grammar.  What  he 
got  out  of  it  was  a  sense  of  how  bewildering  knowledge 
stored  in  books  could  be,  not  much  of  the  actual  knowl- 
edge. The  fact  of  so  many  branches  of  learning,  and  so 
many  men  and  women  living  and  dying  at  ease  within 
them,  awed  him  and  confused  him.  Though  he  almost 
wanted  to,  it  was  not  given  him  to  make  them  intrinsic 
with  his  life.  None  of  the  professors  happened  chemi- 
cally to  communicate  a  sense  of  life  through  learning 
to  him,  as  the  Warsaw  teachers  had  done  a  few  years 
before.  Yet  he  says  they  were  able  and  brainy  and  some 
of  them  focally  important  to  this  fresh  water  culture  — 
David  Starr  Jordan,  Rufus  L.  Green,  Jeremiah  Jenks, 
Edward  Howard  Griggs,  stark  dissenters'  names.  .  .  . 
None  of  them  apparently  had  for  him  the  warmth 
of  Miss  Fielding,  "  her  heavenly,  irradiating  smile " 
urging  him  to  go  to  college:  "You  may  never  learn 
anything  directly  there,  Theodore,  but  something  will 
come  to  you  indirectly.  You  will  see  what  education 
means,  what  its  aim  is  and  that  will  be  worth  a  great 
deal." 

What  education  did  mean  to  him  was  just  this  —  it 
challenged  him,  made  him  jealous,  perhaps  as  his  father 
had  been  when  he  bought  the  set  of  Irving  for  seven 
dollars.  In  the  midst  of  it  he  was  not  willing  to  admit  he 
was  hopeless.  "  There  must  be  some  avenue  of  approach/' 
he  said,  "  to  the  intellectual  life  for  me,  too."  He  made 
several  friends,  one  of  them  a  serious  scholar,  a  mental 
compass  like  Miss  Fielding. 

Another  thing  cheered  him  —  he  roomed  by  chance 
with  the  most  popular  boy  in  his  class,  a  football  star. 
They  liked  each  other,  shared  the  same  bed,  which 
appeared  natural  to  him  —  he  had  often  slept  with  a 


brother  at  home.  Their  room  was  filled  with  college  life, 
and  although  he  never  made  a  fraternity  nor  was  thought 
of  as  "popular,"  he  "  got  on  "  well  enough  with  the  typi- 
cal athlete  and  card  player,  and  that  pleased  him.  They 
even  included  him  in  their  parties  with  girls,  but  here  as  in 
the  studies  he  felt  awkward,  ill  at  ease.  Two  types  again 
emerged  as  in  Warsaw,  the  one  who  scared  him  by  pur- 
suit and  the  one  too  rare  to  be  pursued.  They  made  him 
miserable,  he  was  a  failure.  He  would  never  know  what 
life  was,  and  he  alone  was  to  blame.  Another  friend,  "  a 
kind  of  fox  or  wolf  in  his  way,"  a  card  shark  and  a  gam- 
bler, took  him  on  a  holiday  to  Louisville  with  two  girls, 
one  of  whom  was  to  be  his.  They  took  separate  double 
rooms  for  an  afternoon  and  evening  at  a  hotel,  but  he  was 
too  shy  or  too  self-conscious  to  make  the  expected  use  of 
his,  and  said  bitterly  to  himself  when  it  was  over:  "  No 
girl  will  ever  look  at  me.  I  am  a  fool,  a  dunce,  homely, 
pathetic,  inadequate."  And  though  technically  he  some- 
how passed  in  his  studies  and  could  have  gone  back  the 
next  year,  he  left  in  June  not  to  return,  "  unhappy,  dis- 
trait, scarcely  knowing  which  way  to  turn,  but  resolved  to 
be  something  more  than  a  cog  in  a  commercial  machine." 
He  went  away,  bitter  over  u  these  youths  and  girls,"  the 
most  of  whom  "  had  ignored  him."  And  yet  he  said  to 
himself,  "  They  can  all  go  to  hell !  I  will  get  along  and  be 
somebody  in  spite  of  them." 

Here  in  Bloomington  must  have  become  fixed  two  of 
the  outside  whips  to  Dreiser's  life.  He  must  succeed  ex- 
travagantly. It  was  not  success  in  the  extreme  to  succeed 
commercially.  Beyond  glitter  of  money  and  things  there 
were  the  keys  to  wisdom  and  sophistication.  Without 
these  you  were  on  the  outside,  money  could  not  get  you 
in.  Then  he  must  have  love,  he  must  have  beauty,  he 
must  have  women  or  at  least  one  of  them.  Without  that, 
he  was  only  half  alive,  he  was  beginning  to  be  dead.  Life 
told  him  this  and  there  was  no  time  to  lose.  What  he  had 
within  him  to  meet  these  spurs  was  that  intangible  force, 
sometimes  called  genius,  though  it  might  as  well  be  called 
appetite,  curiosity,  hard  work,  zest,  concentration,  en- 
durance to  an  infinite  degree.  When  a  man  has  it,  he  is, 
for  all  his  drawbacks,  a  mountain  that  people  have  to 


watch  and  talk  about  as  it  changes  with  the  changing  light 
of  day.  A  country  without  such  monuments,  whether,  ac- 
cording to  the  lay  of  the  land,  they  are  crude  or  subtle 
or  both,  is  almost  not  a  country.  We  could  do  with  a 
greater  number  of  them. 


15 

"  They  don't  know  me  yet,  but  they  will!  " 

AMERICAN  FOLK  TALE 

V  v  hen  this  college  student  of  nineteen  got 
back  to  Chicago  he  was  careful  to  find  outdoor  jobs, 
out  of  a  talent  he  had  for  hygiene,  out  of  a  terrific 
will  to  live.  He  drove  a  laundry  wagon;  looked  up  prop- 
erty for  a  real  estate  agent;  collected  for  easy-payment 
instalment  houses.  In  the  first  of  these  he  tells  in  his  ac- 
count of  his  newspaper  days,  published  in  1922,  how  he 
held  out  twenty-five  dollars  of  the  company's  money  to 
get  a  winter  overcoat,  and  was  caught  unable  to  pay  it 
back.  He  tells  of  his  terror  because  of  the  difficulty  of 
burying  the  disgrace  and  getting  another  job.  It  was  his 
first  and  last  offense  of  the  kind,  out  of  fear,  he  explained, 
more  than  out  of  remorse.  It  is  typical  of  American 
criticism  of  even  eight  years  ago  that  so  many  reviews  of 
that  book,  especially  those  condemning  him  for  lack  of 
style,  condemn  him  for  shamelessness  in  recalling  a  theft. 
They-  call  it  bravado  or  egotism,  rather  than  the  wish  of 
the  scientist  to  present  the  facts  even  if  they  spoil  the 
picture  or  bore  the  reader.  To  confuse  the  issue  and  so 
invalidate  the  criticism  is  still  a  favorite  sport  of  ours  — 
an  Anglo-Saxon  inheritance.  Whatever  his  vices  of  style, 
Dreiser  has  among  writers  an  enviable  distinction  which 
in  itself  makes  style  —  the  enterprise  to  keep  the  issue 
clear,  and  carry  it  to  ultimates  if  he  can,  if  not,  into  the 
unknown. 

The  job  of  collecting  was  not  unpleasant,  he  says.  His 
health  was  good;  he  worked  and  walked  with  such  speed 
that  his  afternoons  were  free,  and  he  had  a  fierce  love  of 
life  in  this  raw  lively  city,  said  to  be  named  by  the  Indians 
after  the  prairie  skunk,  or  some  say  the  wild  onion.  He 
loved  the  poor  and  rich  districts,  the  scenery  of  manu- 
66 


facturing,  the  saloons,  the  churches,  the  wooden  shanties, 
and  the  quick  contrasts  of  one  to  the  other.  He  collected 
payments  for  yellow  plush  albums  and  silk-shaded  lamps 
from  women  whose  husbands  on  the  bleak  fringes  of  the 
town  were  tanning  hides.  In  the  vice  districts  he  was  paid 
for  shoddy  rugs  by  "  plump  naked  girls  striding  from  bed 
to  dresser  to  get  a  purse  "  and  "  offering  certain  favors  for 
a  dollar  "  to  be  deducted  from  the  contract  slip.  "  Black 
negresses  leered  at  me  from  behind  shuttered  windows  at 
noon;  plump  wives  drew  me  into  risque  situations;  death- 
bereaved  weepers  mourned  over  their  late  loss,  and  post- 
poned paying  me.  But  I  liked  the  life.  I  was  crazy  about  it. 
Chicago  was  like  a  great  orchestra  in  a  tumult  of  noble 
harmonies.  I  was  like  a  guest  at  a  feast  eating  and  drinking 
in  a  delirium  of  ecstasy."  He  was  crazy  about  it,  and  not 
because  often  he  accepted  the  adventures  proffered  — 
they  were  yet  too  strange  —  but  because  he  loved  the  dis- 
play of  life.  He  is,  I  think,  a  man  of  an  unrivalled  appetite 
for  display,  which  is  expression. 

In  this  extravagance  of  living  at  nineteen  and  twenty, 
this  drunkenness  at  just  the  spectacle  of  life,  he  conceived 
the  idea  that  intoxicating  to  the  senses  as  were  these 
rambles  of  a  collector,  he  was  meant  for  something  more 
related  to  the  show.  Always  he  was  improvising  his  im- 
pressions, humming  them  over  to  himself  as  he  walked 
and  collected.  He  decided  he  would  write  them  down,  he 
would  write  about  life.  Eugene  Field  wrote  about  life;  he 
was  a  newspaper  man.  He  must  do  and  be  the  same. 
Once  on  a  newspaper  you  climbed  to  u  the  top  of  fame 
and  wealth."  So  he  began  writing  and  in  "  a  fever  of  self 
advancement  "  sent  a  bundle  of  rhapsodies  to  the  lank, 
savage  Eugene,  a  Hoosier  of  the  vintage  before.  When 
nothing  came  of  that,  undaunted  he  answered  an  ad  in 
the  Chicago  Tribune  which  read,  "  Wanted  —  a  number 
of  bright  young  men  to  assist  in  the  business  department 
Christmas  holidays.  Promotion  possible."  But  though  he 
got  the  job  of  doling  out  cheap  toys  for  ten  days  to  the 
poor  "  who  had  hoped  for  food  and  clothing,"  promotion 
proved  as  intangible.  Returning  after  Christmas  he  was 
told  there  were  no  vacancies. 

In  the  meantime  for  prestige  with  a  girl,  a  friend  of 

67 


his  sister's,  who  had  come  to  visit  them  on  this  Christmas 
eve,  he  had  called  himself  a  newspaper  man.  There  was 
but  one  thing  to  do,  if  he  was  ever  to  succeed,  become  a 
newspaper  man.  Besides  in  this  year  his  mother  had  died, 
she  who  alone  seemed  to  understand  his  moods  and  am- 
bitions. At  birth,  a  child  displays  his  special  quality  to  a 
mother  like  his.  She  had  surely  seen  and  felt  it.  And  now 
she  was  gone.  Now  the  home  was  falling  to  pieces  in 
endless  bickerings  for  lack  of  her  presence,  which  had 
made  of  it  "  a  thing  as  sweet  as  dreams."  He  must,  he 
felt,  strike  out  on  his  own,  make  a  life  outside  for  himself. 

He  had  begun  already  to  apprehend  the  culture  evolv- 
ing in  Chicago  —  the  Art  Institute,  the  Thomas  Con- 
certs, the  Ethical  Societies.  He  went  on  Sundays  to  hear 
Gunsaulus  and  Jenkin  Lloyd  Jones,  and  sometimes  to  see 
visiting  actors,  Booth,  Modjeska,  Fanny  Davenport, 
Mary  Anderson,  Jefferson.  He  wanted  to  be  part  of  it, 
felt  already  he  was  "  a  man  with  a  future  "  who  belonged 
among  sophistications.  He  was  too  young  to  know  how 
imported,  how  little  native,  most  of  this  culture  was,  and 
therefore  how  foreign  to  him,  whose  force  consisted  in 
part  of  being  artlessly  native;  in  other  part  of  being 
elemental.  Also  the  world  outside  of  Chicago  began  to 
dawn  on  him,  the  fact  of  "  five  related  and  unrelated 
hemispheres."  He  read  Emerson,  Carlyle,  Froude,  John 
Stuart  Mill,  and  he  had  heard  of  Nietzsche,  Darwin, 
Spencer,  Wallace  and  Tyndall,  and  intended  to  explore 
them.  And  at  this  age,  he  says,  already  the  meaning  be- 
hind Washington,  Jefferson,  Jackson,  Lincoln,  and  behind 
the  Civil  War,  was  apparent  to  him,  and  "  the  drift  of 
the  nation  to  monopoly  and  so  to  oligarchy."  This  is  hard 
to  believe,  and  yet  who  knows  ?  A  man  is  made  in  his  first 
years;  a  man  who  was  to  have  a  giant's  eye  with  which 
to  get  a  view  of  the  world  must  have  had  that  eye  at 
twenty,  and  may  have  made  this  use  of  it. 

In  any  event  he  lunged  toward  the  newspapers,  feeling 
that  they  by  their  nature  encompassed  the  world. 


68 


16 

"A  mighty  good  Sausage  Stuff er  was 
Spoiled  when  the  Man  became  a  Poet.  He 
would  Look  well  Standing  under  a  De- 
scending Pile-driver."  EUGENE  FIELD 

np 

JLhere  was  in  Chicago  at  this  time  an  incipient 
reflection  of  London  and  Paris  sophistication,  nearer 
than  the  newspapers  to  the  air  of  culture  this  Indiana 
boy  was  eager  for.  There  was  beginning  to  be  a  timid 
echo  of  various  English  art  circles  centered  by  Ros- 
setti,  William  Morris,  Oscar  Wilde,  Meredith,  Whis- 
tler, George  Moore,  Yeats  and  others,  and  of  French 
circles  created  by  Verlaine,  Mallarme,  Rimbaud,  Manet, 
Monet,  Degas,  Renoir,  Courbet,  Rodin.  These  various 
intersecting  spheres  abroad  made  but  one  faint  exotic 
band  in  the  Windy  City.  Yet  it  had  a  distinct  personnel 
of  aesthetes  —  book-binders,  jewellers,  polite  pederasts, 
spinsters,  professors'  wives  with  jonquils  in  their  bosoms. 
And,  to  give  reality,  there  were  even  a  few  hard-headed 
poets,  satirists  and  artists,  who  were  indulged  by  their 
prosperous  conservative  families  and  friends,  and  were 
said  to  be  making  culture  hum  in  this  virgin  city.  Out  of 
its  stir  and  friendliness  came  Hamlin  Garland  with  his 
Main  Travelled  Roads,  William  Vaughan  Moody  with 
rebellious  verse,  Robert  Herrick  with  what  were  called 
sex-novels,  John  Dewey  with  his  new  program  of  educa- 
tion, Sullivan  and  Frank  Lloyd  Wright  with  a  native 
architecture;  and  more  coldly  authentic  and  ironic  than 
any  of  the  others,  Henry  Fuller  with  tenuous  intricate 
realism.  At  about  this  time  Altgeld  and  Henry  Lloyd 
(whose  father-in-law  was  part  owner  and  editor  of  the 
Chicago  Tribune)  and  the  young  Clarence  Darrow  were 
making  a  stand  for  freedom  of  political  thought.  The 
city  had  creative  life,  and  with  it  a  shy  naive  faith  that 


they  would  catch  up  in  art  and  in  intellect  as  well  as  in 
commerce. 

It  was  an  odd  circle  of  aesthetes  on  this  strip  between 
lake  and  prairie,  joining  hands  more  out  of  isolation  than 
out  of  personal  coherence.  They  had  their  clubs,  The 
Whitechapel  and  The  Little  Room;  they  edited  art 
magazines.  Eugene  Klapp,  later  an  engineer  of  impor- 
tance, started  The  House  Beautiful  at  about  this  time, 
the  first  American  magazine  to  deal  specifically  with 
decoration  as  an  art.  Herbert  Stone  and  Harrison  Rhodes 
edited  for  a  few  years  a  journal  called  The  Chap  Book, 
which  published  Bliss  Carman,  Charles  Lummis,  Yone 
Noguchi,  George  Ade,  Eugene  Field,  Stephen  Crane, 
Le  Gallienne,  Clyde  Fitch,  Henry  James  and  other  Ameri- 
cans who  looked  promising;  and  imported  Henley,  Wil- 
liam Sharp,  Edmund  Gosse,  Zangwill,  H.  G.  Wells, 
Hardy,  Max  Beerbohm,  Stevenson,  Barrie,  Mallarme, 
Verlaine,  Rimbaud.  Chicagoans  were  vaccinated  in  their 
own  town  with  these  many  names  that  stood  for  art  or 
near  art  in  the  nineties.  But  sadly  enough  Fitch,  Le  Galli- 
enne, Stevenson  and  Barrie  took  better  than  the  livelier 
names  in  a  frontier  land  doomed  already  to  breed  a  race 
of  men  which  was  to  be  shrewd  about  business  and  senti- 
mental about  everything  else.  Though  wistfully  these 
devotees  stained  their  walls  a  Morris  brown  or  painted 
them  a  Whistler  grey,  and  made  mission  furniture  and 
green  pottery,  the  intimacy  of  the  life  they  read  about, 
in  the  fragile  speech  of  Mallarme,  in  the  fantastic  satires 
of  Max  Beerbohm,  never  came  to  play  within  their 
houses.  Culture,  they  came  one  by  one  to  face  it,  was 
something  that  could  not  be  imported  ready-made,  or 
filtered  in  from  the  top  down.  After  this  false  dawn  of 
the  Nineties,  which  broke  into  something  nearer  reality 
twenty  years  later  in  the  Poetry  Magazine,  in  the  Little 
Theatre  and  the  Arts  Club  perhaps,  the  movement  died 
of  malnutrition.  Its  creative  members  broke  away  to  the 
East  or  the  Far  West  for  a  breath  of  life  before  they 
died.  Two  survivors,  Carl  Sandburg  and  Frank  Lloyd 
Wright,  are  scarcely  natives;  fame  reached  them  from 
abroad,  not  from  Chicago.  The  real  rebels  today  are 
the  gunmen,  the  gangsters  and  politicians.  Art,  another 
70 


word  for  expression,  if  ever  it  comes  to  Chicago,  will 
have  to  come  through  them  among  other  elements; 
through  the  people,  high,  low  and  mediocre,  and  because 
their  life  is  stained  with  it  and  requires  it;  will  have  to 
come  its  own  slow  way  up  out  of  the  dirt  into  the  air. 
Norris,  Dreiser,  Masters,  Anderson,  Darrow  and  Sand- 
burg are  prophets  to  this. 

To  Dreiser  at  twenty  these  doors  of  Chicago  aesthetes 
were  not  known.  Had  he  been  aware  of  them,  it  is  not 
likely  they  would  have  opened  to  him.  He  was  green  and 
uncouth;  he  was  a  native,  just  what  they  were  hoping  to 
escape  from.  A  right  instinct  took  him  to  the  newspapers 
in  his  search  for  a  living  and  a  training.  The  conquering 
American,  the  genius  for  enterprise  rather  than  art,  was 
helping  to  make  Chicago  through  the  daily  press.  Joseph 
Medill  of  the  Tribune,  Victor  F.  Lawson  of  the  Daily 
News,  Melville  E.  Stone,  of  the  Associated  Press,  were 
forecasting  the  Chicago  of  today.  Theodore  Dreiser,  "  a 
dreamy  cub  of  twenty-one,"  he  describes  himself,  "long, 
spindling,  a  pair  of  gold-framed  spectacles  on  his  nose, 
his  hair  combed  a  la  pompadour,"  having  decided  to  be 
a  newspaper  man,  made  straight  for  their  various  offices. 

It  was  April,  1892;  "  in  a  new  spring  suit,"  he  says, 
.  .  .  "  light  check  trousers,  bright  blue  coat  and  vest, 
brown  fedora  hat,  new  yellow  shoes,"  he  started  out  to 
force  his  way.  He  went  the  rounds,  to  be  told  each  time 
by  the  city  editor  that  there  was  nothing.  Finally  he 
decided  that  a  small  struggling  paper  might  receive  him. 
He  picked  the  Daily  Globe.  He  planned  to  sit  in  the 
outer  office  of  that  paper  until  someone  noticed  him.  In 
this,  too,  instinct  was  with  him.  In  Chicago  in  those  days 
it  was  useful  to  be  insistent  like  the  Grand  Canyon  or 
Niagara  Falls.  Bold  initiative  in  boys,  in  the  face  of 
rough  repulses  from  their  elders,  was  a  virtue  held  high 
above  others  in  this  job-hunting,  career-mad  country. 
Stories  of  how  the  poor  boy  broke  in  and  made  good  are 
favorite  folk  tales.  It  is  told  of  a  boy  who  later  became 
a  great  financier,  how,  starting  in  one  of  the  big  packers' 
offices  and  tired  of  obscurity,  he  wore  a  purple  and  yellow 
striped  sweater  to  business,  until  he  was  noticed  and 
scolded  and  promoted.  Dreiser  used  patience  to  break 


in.  From  twelve  to  two  he  sat  in  the  outer  office  of  the 
Daily  Globe,  waiting  for  the  city  editor  to  go  to  lunch, 
sometimes  accosting  him  to  hear  the  same  words,  "  Noth- 
ing today,  not  a  thing  in  sight."  Finally,  the  copy  reader, 
John  Maxwell,  with  "  hard,  cynical  and  yet  warm,  grey 
eyes  "  got  curious  about  him.  What  was  he  there  for? 
How  did  he  know  he  could  write?  Why  did  he  pick  the 
Globe,  it  was  the  poorest  paper  in  town?  Yes,  that  was 
why  he  had  picked  it.  This  got  a  laugh;  he  was  told  to 
stay  around,  the  Democratic  convention  was  coming  soon, 
they  might  be  able  to  use  him.  But  it  was  a  hell  of  a  busi- 
ness to  be  wanting  to  get  into. 

So  he  entered  that  most  American  school  of  writing  — 
the  newspaper  world.  And  Maxwell,  because  for  some 
reason  he  liked  him,  took  the  trouble  to  be  his  first 
teacher,  and  his  first  cynic,  being  really  in  that  day  our 
one  accredited  native  brand  of  cynic,  the  newspaper  man. 
He  cut  and  hacked  to  pieces  his  efforts  with  apparent  glee, 
and  yet,  as  he  explained,  to  be  good  to  him.  "  News  is 
information,"  he  would  say,  "  people  want  it  quick,  sharp, 
clear,  do  you  hear?"  Or,  "  This  is  awful  stuff,  might  be 
good  for  a  book  or  something,  but  it's  not  news.  You're 
a  reporter,  not  an  editor,  don't  forget  it.  ...  Who  — 
What  —  How  —  When  —  Where  —  that's  what  they 
want!"  Or  he  would  grumble,  "Life's  a  god-damned 
stinking  treacherous  game  and  ninety-nine  men  out  of 
every  hundred  are  bastards.  I  don't  know  why  I  do  this 
for  you  ...  I  don't  expect  to  get  anything  back.  .  .  . 
Nobody  home  when  I'm  knocking.  But  I'm  such  a  god- 
damned fool  that  I  like  to  do  it.  .  .  ."  At  this  the  wistful 
student  would  feel  sad  and  uneasy,  and  yet  tried  with  all 
courage  to  adjust  himself  to  this  life  of  his  choice.  "  If 
I  had  a  real  chance,"  he  told  him,  "  I  would  soon  show 
you." 

The  hazard  came  with  the  Democratic  convention  of 
1892,  and  he  slid  through  into  a  kind  of  success,  an 
acknowledged  newspaper  man  at  $15  a  week.  Wandering 
"  wretchedly  "  about  the  lobby  of  the  Auditorium  Hotel, 
loafing  at  the  bar,  looking  for  news,  by  chance  he  hap- 
pened to  flatter  a  senator  from  South  Carolina  into  tak- 
ing a  fancy  to  him,  into  handing  him  a  tip  by  which  he 
72 


made  a  scoop  for  his  paper  —  the  name  of  Cleveland, 
to  be  nominated  for  president.  "  In  a  day,"  he  says,  "  by 
this  small  piece  of  news  my  stock  had  risen  so  that  I  was 
looked  upon  as  an  extraordinarily  bright  boy  sure  to 
carve  out  a  future  for  himself,  one  to  be  made  friends 
with  and  helped."  And  the  senator  had  added  to  his 
sense  of  well-being  by  inviting  him  to  drink  a  cocktail 
with  him  at  a  small  table  on  the  balcony  of  the  hotel, 
grandly  surveying  the  lake  and  the  Michigan  Avenue 
crowds.  The  convention  itself  thrilled  him,  a  "  vortex  of 
national  politics,"  and  he  was  part  of  it,  sitting  in  among 
famous  reporters,  George  Ade,  Peter  Dunne,  Charlie 
Seymour,  Charles  d'Almy.  And  soon  he  would  be  the 
equal  of  any  of  them,  might  even  surpass  them,  now  that 
he  had  gotten  this  far,  why  not? 


73 


I 


17 

"  Here  we  have  a  Knife.  It  looks  like  a 
Saw,  but  it  is  a  knife.  .  .  .  It  belongs  to 
an  Editor.  .  .  .  There  is  Blood  on  the 
Blade  of  the  Knife,  but  the  Editor  will 
Calmly  Lick  it  off,  and  then  the  Blade  will 
be  as  clean  and  Bright  as  ever.'' 

EUGENE  FIELD 


.n  A  Book  About  Myself  and  in  Twelve  Men, 
Dreiser  has  made  portraits  of  the  friends  and  encoun- 
ters of  his  newspaper  years,  first  in  Chicago,  then  in  St. 
Louis,  Toledo,  Cleveland,  Pittsburgh  and  New  York. 
Freed  from  the  text  they  would  place  him  as  a  skilled 
cartoonist,  quite  as  his  memories  of  childhood  suggest 
the  poet  in  him.  They  make  his  third  series  of  groups 
since  Warsaw  and  college  days,  more  shifting  than  the 
others,  but  marked  too  by  distinctive  traits.  These  men 
had  the  tang  of  newspaper  ink.  They  made  a  kind  of 
brotherhood  in  the  United  States,  with  the  same  pass- 
words, the  same  stories,  the  same  code,  the  same  pessi- 
mism; lovers  of  the  low-down,  the  dirt,  printers  of  what 
the  public  wants,  what  is  fit  to  print;  men  leading  double 
mental  lives;  men  laughing,  jeering  inwardly  at  what  out- 
wardly they  gave,  and  most  often  anonymously,  to  a 
world  of  breakfast  eaters,  and  a  world  of  families  getting 
through  the  long  dull  evenings  by  drug  of  the  afternoon 
papers. 

A  brotherhood  and  a  double  life,  being  marked  with 
the  same  mark  of  duplicate  ink,  as  cowboys  were  marked 
by  life  away  from  women,  as  labor  leaders  have  been 
marked  by  a  look  of  exalted  failure,  and  quite  as  men  in 
the  trenches  of  the  Great  War  feel  the  kinship  of  days 
when  they  were  ordered  over  the  top  and  never  knew 
exactly  why.  These  men  were  ordered  out  daily  to  get 
their  story  at  any  cost,  every  cost  sometimes,  and  over 

74 


the  tears  and  frantic  prayers  of  ravaged  souls;  ordered 
to  pry,  detect,  bribe,  go  to  any  length  to  get  their  story 
before  the  other  paper  got  it.  Then  when  breathless  they 
brought  it  in,  they  were  ordered  to  make  it  over  into 
what  was  fit  to  print;  which  in  the  case  of  the  respectable 
papers  was  to  tame  it  or  at  least  to  twist  it,  so  the  nice 
people  might  be  still  the  heroes,  and  the  rebels  and  profli- 
gates might  be  still  the  villains;  or  in  the  case  of  the 
yellow  papers,  to  inflate  it  so  that  everyone  might  be 
equally  sensational.  In  either  case  it  was  surely  to  confuse 
or  deaden  the  issue  so  that  the  world  might  go  along 
about  as  it  had  gone  before,  or  anyway  without  detecting 
change,  according  to  the  politics,  religion  or  commerce 
of  the  capital  behind  the  paper. 

So  the  hunters  brought  in  their  bags  of  warm  lively 
stories,  still  breathing,  wriggling,  bodies  not  yet  cold; 
saw  them  skinned  and  quartered  and  served  up  to  the 
public  as  stews,  the  flavor  cooked  away  under  stereotype 
sauce  No.  i  or  No.  2.  Yet  they  were  privileged  —  indeed 
how  prevent  it — to  save  the  blood  and  guts  for  them- 
selves—  who  else  wanted  it?  This,  then,  could  be  their 
visceral  diet  in  hours  off.  Give  so  much  as  a  morsel  of  it 
to  the  public,  and  they  risked  losing  their  jobs.  They  were 
cooks,  these  newspaper  men,  serving  the  public  with  taste- 
less meals,  too  watery,  too  sweet,  too  dry,  too  soggy; 
and  yet  what  the  readers  liked;  while  they  lived  off  the 
raw  of  what  was  left,  no  time  to  cook  it,  no  time  to  make 
a  ceremony  of  these  vital  bits. 

Some  of  them  unable  to  stomach  a  life  of  double  nour- 
ishment, took  to  drink  or  dope,  almost  stopped  eating. 
Others  came  around  to  finding  the  public  fare  easier  to 
digest,  cooked  and  served  as  it  was  after  a  fashion;  and 
they  succeeded  in  becoming  managing  editors,  or  pub- 
lishers perhaps.  Some  spent  spare  hours  with  the  heart, 
the  kidneys,  the  nerves,  the  penis  of  these  revelations  of 
their  daily  work,  trying  to  become  poets  or  satirists  of 
a  high  order.  But  there  were  snags.  Forced  to  fool  their 
readers,  it  was  hard  to  keep  the  magnet  needle  of  judg- 
ment and  not  to  fool  themselves.  Then  forced  to  speed 
things  up,  to  deliver  bleeding,  to  cut  and  hack,  or  cover 
up;  no  time  to  ripen  impression  or  expression,  they  gained 

75 


in  speed,  and  lost  in  quality.  At  that,  in  the  Nineties  the 
newspapers  beat  the  magazines  for  daring;  adventurous 
brains  went  into  the  making  of  them.  But  for  lack  of  time 
too  much  passed  through  them  unresolved,  putrefactive. 
Possessed  of  the  facts  of  life  more  than  others,  they  were 
yet  prey  to  a  miasma  of  class  and  mass  opinion  that 
veiled  the  facts.  It  was  seldom  that  the  cliches  of  the 
press  did  not  block  in  their  brains  as  definitely  as  they 
did  in  the  printing  room,  defeating  tough  flexible  intel- 
lect. They  were  men  of  irregular  hours,  irregular  habits, 
belonging  not  to  them  but  to  the  city  editors.  They  lived 
and  thought  apart  from  others;  more  perceptive  and 
more  shocking.  They  were  vagabonds,  nearly  shunned  by 
others. 

For  one  thing  there  was  in  each  of  these  Western  cities 
a  vague  quantity  already  known  as  society,  with  its  so- 
ciety editors  (the  one  woman  on  the  staff  except  for 
an  old  maid  or  two  who  supplied  a  few  dead  words  on 
literature  and  art).  People  struggled  to  be  part  of  this 
vague  myth,  society,  yet  always  furtively.  The  desire  to 
enter,  if  revealed,  would  disqualify  them,  and  the  society 
editor  was  the  alternate  victim  of  insults  and  favors. 
So  it  was  a  joke  among  the  irreverent  reporters,  this 
"  soc-ed-stuff,"  as  they  called  it.  They  jeered  at  it  and 
yet  it  teased  them  too.  It  rankled.  Who  were  these  people 
to  put  on  airs  ?  The  women  dull  beyond  the  dullest  chorus 
girl,  the  men  big  stiffs !  And  yet  they  had  something  too ; 
they  had  power,  if  nothing  more  than  the  right  to  be 
dull,  the  power  to  be  mean,  maybe  even  meaner  than 
they  themselves  knew  how  to  be.  Christ !  A  good  reporter 
could  get  in  anywhere,  into  a  hanging,  a  police  court, 
an  accident,  a  death  chamber,  a  president's  private  office, 
an  opera  diva's  dressing  room;  yet  he  couldn't  get  in 
here,  often  not  even  on  business!  He  had  the  brains, 
the  experience;  he  knew  about  life.  What  did  these  people 
have,  so  inane,  so  ignorant,  really?  Money,  of  course, 
but  it  was  not  only  money.  It  was  some  divine  right  im- 
ported from  the  East.  When  you  came  down  to  it,  it  was 
cheek,  nothing  but  cheek,  the  one  thing  these  parents 
taught  their  children  that  seemed  sweet  and  enticing.  And 
it  worked,  they  got  away  with  it. 
76 


As  they  came  in  contact  with  this  miracle,  the  news- 
paper men,  crusaders  of  the  Fact,  were  first  puzzled,  then 
irritated,  then  outwardly  bored.  What  of  it  anyhow? 
Yet  toward  it  they  remained  always  slightly  curious  and 
resentful.  Like  education,  like  art,  like  the  theatre,  like 
men  and  women  in  these  new  cities,  the  mirage  of  "  high 
society  "  by  some  puritan  ineptness  was  doomed  to  segre- 
gation and  suspicion,  and  the  newspaper  men  developed 
a  defensive  mask  toward  it  at  the  outset.  They  intensified 
rudeness,  bad  manners,  feet  on  the  desk,  spitting,  chew- 
ing, usually  gum,  going  unshaven,  wearing  dirty  clothes, 
and  not  first  because  they  had  to,  but  because  they  liked 
to.  They  gloried  in  it.  Hell,  it  was  a  challenge  to  the 
whole  god-damn  stinking  hypocritical  disorder  of  society, 
with  the  nice  pretty  people  at  the  top  distilling  the  poison 
of  cleanliness,  respectability,  down  through  the  rest  of  it. 

Some  of  them  got  to  be  radicals,  famous  radicals; 
some  of  them  deepened  into  bums,  tramps,  hoboes,  from 
city  to  city,  paper  to  paper,  no  town  worth  devotion, 
suicide  the  best  bet.  There  were  those  who  had  hobbies 
of  books,  pornography  or  the  classics  —  a  sporting  edi- 
tor in  Chicago  collected  and  read  avidly  the  more  ob- 
scene and  obscure  of  the  classics  in  Greek  and  Latin.  But 
if  any  gentle  scholar  of  the  town  thought  that  might 
make  a  bond  between  them,  he  could  get  to  hell  out  of  it 
with  his  nice  English  tepid  ways.  The  same  John  Max- 
well who  initiated  Dreiser  into  journalism  became  a 
student  of  the  alleged  Shakespeare  ciphers.  Years  later 
he  had  completed  a  learned  treatise  about  them,  for 
which  Dreiser,  out  of  gratitude  or  out  of  interest,  tried 
to  help  him  find  a  publisher. 

Yet  others  traveled  in  the  wake  of  whatever  war  there 
was  to  far  countries,  and  came  back  to  their  city  editor, 
the  brighter  for  unprintable  exotic  stories,  and  yet  in 
slant  and  lingo  unchanged.  Some  of  them  capitulated, 
and  with  their  picturesque  background  as  a  lure  "  made 
good  "  with  fashionable  short  stories  and  fashionable 
novels,  to  please  the  very  world  which  in  their  newspaper 
days  they  loved  to  spit  on.  They  graduated  to  that  classier 
sphere,  the  magazine  world,  and  got  rich  and  fashion- 
able themselves  —  a  long  list  of  them  —  the  Irwins, 

77 


Irvin  Cobb,  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  David  Graham  Phil- 
lips, are  samples.  Others,  graduated  through  delicate 
native  invention  into  the  feature  columns,  the  condiments 
of  news  —  Eugene  Field,  George  Ade,  Peter  Dunne, 
John  McCutcheon,  R.  H.  Little,  Percy  Hammond, 
among  them.  A  few,  a  very  few,  have  come  all  the  way 
out  into  real  letters,  have  gone  into  our  speech,  so  bent 
they  were  on  mulling  over  the  heart,  the  nerves,  the 
kidneys,  the  liver,  the  spawn  of  their  storied  days.  One 
might  say  O.  Henry  has  done  this,  and  that  Sinclair 
Lewis  has  done  this.  Above  others  and  for  years  to  come, 
I  would  say  that  Ring  Lardner,  Stephen  Crane  and  Carl 
Sandburg  have  done  this;  one  with  an  ear  for  human 
speech  which  is  near  to  poetry;  the  other  two  with  an  ear 
for  the  elemental,  with  the  springs  of  language  at  the 
source  of  their  work. 

Dreiser  with  an  imperfect  ear,  imperfect  sense  of 
touch,  with  a  marvelous  eye,  and  a  patient  impatience  has 
done  this,  come  out  into  the  world  of  letters,  where  not 
the  story  but  the  passion  counts.  There  are  those  who 
say  that  he  has  not  really  left  off  chronicling,  that  he  is 
in  fact  a  "  super-journalist,"  but  one  who  has  had  to 
make  and  be  his  own  newspaper  in  every  department. 
This  is  stretching  the  simile;  he  never  was  quite  one  of 
them,  his  newspaper  days  amounting  to  but  four  years 
of  his  life.  In  that  time  he  outstripped  them  in  distrust 
of  conventional  morals ;  and  none  of  their  violent  preju- 
dices clung  to  him  —  their  bashful  scorn  of  art  and 
learning  as  high-brow,  and  of  fashionable  society  as  the 
bunk.  In  a  most  un-American  way  he  has  not  been  ashamed 
of  an  interest  in  the  fact  of  either  realm,  and  has  done 
his  utmost  to  fit  them  as  they  changed  into  the  changing 
puzzle  of  life.  Perhaps  he  failed  finally  as  a  newspaper 
man  just  for  a  lack  of  these  bitter  prejudices;  or  else  in 
order  not  to  be  hurried  or  directed;  or  because  he  was 
told  to  be  funny  or  cheerful  or  diplomatic,  when  he 
wanted,  or  had  to  be,  faithful.  None  the  less  he  has 
traits  of  this  Mid-West  schooling,  not  in  its  love  of 
brevity,  but  just  in  the  way  of  a  tang  it  gives  of  Ameri- 
can newspaper  ink. 

Journalism  had  meaning  a  generation  ago,  and  not 

78 


a  trivial  one :  more  than  any  other  class  its  workmen 
stimulated  opposite  tendencies  in  this  country.  On  the 
one  hand  they  sidetracked  readers  to  provincial  sidings 
of  thought,  encouraged  them  to  be  backward  and  senti- 
mental. On  the  other  they  kept  alive  among  themselves 
the  legendry  of  these  states,  low-down,  dirty,  sneering, 
lighted  with  the  masculine  horse-laugh  —  poetry  stripped 
of  sweetness,  the  meat  and  salt.  It  was  a  wild  ferment 
of  song  and  story  out  of  prisons,  whore  houses,  political 
rallies,  salesmen's  conferences,  lonely  ranches,  lumber 
camps,  mining  towns,  sporting  events.  And  this  loose  Iliad, 
coarse  in  purpose,  though  often  delicate  in  manner,  was 
extravagant  beyond  the  invention  of  other  countries,  be- 
cause outstripping  them  in  the  need  to  compensate  for 
repressions.  It  has  been  the  undercurrent  of  comment, 
racing  beneath  the  respectable  crust,  thrust  slyly  above 
in  burlesque  and  vaudeville.  It  has  kept  the  people  alive. 
But  for  this  elixir  of  ribaldry  passing  from  one  to  an- 
other, I  imagine  that  husbands  and  wives  and  business 
partners  as  well,  dreaming  apart,  yet  chained  together, 
would  long  since  have  destroyed  each  other.  Today  a 
mild  hint  of  it  appears  in  the  daily  papers  and  in  the 
books  of  the  hour.  When  the  last  prude  is  dead,  when 
it  is  time  for  another  birth  of  giants  to  remind  us  of 
pioneers  nearly  gone,  someone  will  piece  these  legends 
together  and  we  will  have  our  own  archaic  epic.  It  will 
not  be  a  romance  of  the  rose.  It  will  be  funny  for  dealing 
with  a  vast  hypocrisy;  it  will  be  tragic  for  carving  out 
chasms  more  lonely  and  immense  than  the  canyon  of  the 
Colorado.  Already  Dreiser  has  approached  it  on  the  side 
of  the  horror  involved,  and  Mark  Twain  on  the  side  of 
the  absurdity,  but  Mark  Twain  with  the  help  of  many 
more  asterisks  and  blanks.  Dreiser  was  the  first,  the  pub- 
lishers will  tell  you,  to  force  them  into  the  open.* 

*  A  member  of  the  firm  of  Harpers  offered  this  as  a  fact:  "  Dreiser  has 
historical  meaning.  He  is  the  one  man  to  have  first  created  an  audience  for 
daring  books." 


79 


18 

The  Chicago  Globe:  Maxwell,  McEnnis, 
and  Alice. 


e  had  not  been  long  on  the  Globe  before 
he  began  to  think  of  some  quicker  path  to  fame  than 
that  of  reporter.  He  had  found  himself  a  room  on  the 
West  Side  in  Ogden  Place  overlooking  Union  Square. 
His  walk  from  there  to  the  office  took  him  through  a 
district  cheerfully  known  as  slums.  It  occurred  to  him  that 
these  neglected  patches  might  be  as  novel  from  the  point 
of  view  of  news  as  any  foreign  land  where  a  star  reporter 
might  be  sent  for  stories.  He  submitted  articles,  and  they 
were  run  as  Sunday  specials  under  his  name,  with  Theo- 
dore changed  to  Carl  —  a  disappointment  to  him,  but  it 
was  Maxwell's  nickname  for  him. 

"  You  know,  Carl/'  at  length  Maxwell  was  praising 
him,  "  you  have  your  faults,  but  you  do  know  how  to 
observe.  .  .  .  Maybe  you're  cut  out  to  be  a  writer  after 
all.  ...  I  think  you're  nutty,  but  I  believe  you're  a 
writer."  Then  discussing  further  the  aspects  of  the  slums 
of  different  cities :  "  Jesus  Christ,  a  hell  of  a  fine  novel  is 
going  to  be  written  about  these  things  one  of  these  days." 
After  that,  Dreiser  said,  "  he  treated  me  with  equality, 
and  I  thought  I  must  indeed  be  a  very  remarkable  man." 
While  they  talked,  Stephen  Crane,  in  New  York,  might 
have  been  writing  Maggie  A  Girl  of  The  Streets,  and 
Frank  Norris,  in  San  Francisco,  McTeague,  both  hell 
enough  —  young  men  of  about  Dreiser's  age,  but  des- 
tined to  shorter  journeys,  which  today  have  more  of 
value  than  of  fame. 

Carl  Dreiser's  Sunday  specials  featuring  the  Chicago 
slums  were  prophetic  of  Theodore  Dreiser's  volumes. 
They  carried  one  of  his  burdens : 
80 


"Chicago's  wretchedness,"  he  explains,  "was  never 
utterly  tame  ...  or  hang-dog  .  .  .  rather  it  was  savage, 
bitter  and  at  times  larkish  and  impish.  .  .  .  Saloon  lights 
and  smells  and  lamps  gleaming  smokily  from  behind  broken 
lattices  and  from  below  wooden  sidewalk  levels,  gave  it  a 
shameless  and  dangerous  color.  Accordions,  harmonicas, 
Jew's  harps,  clattering  tin-pan  pianos  and  stringy  violins 
were  forever  going;  paintless  rotting  shacks  resounded  with 
a  noisy  blasphemous  life  between  twelve  and  four;  oaths, 
foul  phrases.  ...  In  the  face  of  such  a  scene,  my  mind, 
reared  on  dogmatic  religious  and  moral  theory,  invariably 
paused  in  a  question.  .  .  .  Why  did  nature,  when  left  to 
itself,  devise  such  astounding  .  .  .  human  muck-heaps? 
.  .  .  What  had  brought  that  about  so  soon  in  a  new  rich 
healthy  forceful  land?  God  or  devil  or  both  working  together 
toward  a  common  end?  ...  I  could  not  solve  it.  This 
matter  of  being  with  its  differences  .  .  ." 

The  query  that  perhaps  this  was  not  nature  left  to 
herself  doing  all  this,  but  nature  under  the  influence  of 
St.  Paul,  Luther,  Calvin,  favoring  passionless  people,  he 
makes  at  other  moments,  but  not  here. 

In  his  second  month  of  work  on  the  Globe,  he  came 
under  the  influence  of  John  T.  McEnnis,  managing  editor : 
".  .  .  truly  your  Bret  Harte  gold-miner  type,  sloven,  red- 
eyed  at  times,  reminding  me  not  a  little  of  my  brother 
Rome  in  his  best  hours  ...  a  man  of  great  sweetness 
and  sympathy  ...  his  nose  and  cheeks  tinted  a  fiery  red 
by  much  drinking  .  .  .  thought  of  as  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  newspaper  editors  in  St.  Louis  .  .  .  whose  wife, 
homely  and  pathetic,  suffered  anything  to  be  allowed  to 
live  with  him."  A  story  that  Dreiser  made  of  a  girl  who 
had  been  kidnaped  or  had  run  away  from  the  dreariest 
home  he  had  yet  seen  was  too  romantic  for  Maxwell: 
"  This  will  never  do,  Carl;  read  Schopenhauer,  my  boy, 
read  Schopenhauer."  But  McEnnis  praised  it:  "...  I 
don't  go  much  on  this  sort  of  thing  .  .  .  for  a  daily 
paper,  but  the  way  you  have  handled  it  is  fine.  ...  If 
you  just  keep  yourself  well  in  hand  you  have  a  future." 

After  that  he  was  given  more  important  assignments 
—  among  them,  the  showing  up  of  a  chain  of  fake  auction 
shops  —  a  political  move,  though  he  didn't  know  it,  on 
behalf  of  the  Irish  politician  and  horse-racer  back  of  the 
Globe.  He  describes  himself  as  "  open-mouthed  "  in  these 
joints  before  the  conspiracies  of  the  auctioneers  and  their 

81 


accomplices,  thieves,  policemen  and  detectives.  To  be  for 
long  periods  an  "  open-mouthed  "  spectator,  almost  hum- 
ble, and  then  suddenly  to  have  to  hit  on  some  scheme  that 
would  bring  him  into  the  action  —  this  appears  to  have 
made  the  repeated  pattern  of  his  history.  In  the  handling 
of  this  campaign  he  became  a  small  hero,  he  says,  "  the 
center  of  a  hubbub  of  reform."  He  seemed  to  himself  to 
be  "  swimming  in  a  delicious  sea  of  life."  Already  at 
twenty-one  he  could  write;  he  would  be  famous. 

The  days  of  bickering  with  his  father  and  sisters  and 
brothers  had  been  pushed  behind  him.  Sometimes  he  went 
back  to  see  them,  but  not  often.  Sometimes  he  remem- 
bered his  father's  words  the  night  he  had  broken  with 
the  family  home :  "  You're  going,  are  you  ?  I'm  sorry, 
Dorsch.  I  done  the  best  I  could  ...  I  try,  but  it  don't 
seem  to  do  any  good.  I've  prayed  these  last  few  days 
...  I  hope  you  don't  ever  feel  sorry."  The  tone  of  the 
old  German's  voice,  broken  and  with  a  kind  of  charm, 
haunted  him,  but  not  acutely  then.  In  later  years  it  must 
have  recurred  to  him,  when  he  was  making  the  father  of 
Jennie,  the  father  of  Aileen  and  the  father  of  Isadore. 

At  this  time  he  was  engaged  in  the  prime  American 
pursuit,  "  getting  on,"  and  too  in  another  quest,  finding 
a  girl  to  love,  perhaps  to  marry.  With  us,  rich  or  poor, 
distinguished  or  obscure,  this  creature  a  man  finds  for 
himself.  Neither  parents,  nor  priest,  nor  guardian  will 
help  him.  Loveliness,  then,  is  more  often  than  not  the 
test.  With  surprising  care  through  many  pages  of  A  Book 
About  Myself,  Dreiser  traces  his  first  romance.  It  was 
not  that  by  this  time,  that  trivial  deed  so  simple  in  fact, 
so  direful  in  theory,  that  brief  orgiastic  moment  for 
which  or  lack  of  which  men  and  women  have  been  made 
to  pay  with  whole  lives  of  ruin,  had  not  already  become 
fact  to  him.  That  small  ingenuous  delightful  act  was 
already  among  his  memories.  At  fifteen,  back  in  Warsaw 
with  the  insistent  baker's  daughter  it  had  happened;  and 
then  afterwards  in  Bloomington  and  in  Chicago  with 
girls  who  made  it  easy  for  him.  But  he  had  not  gone 
back  to  any  of  them,  he  had  not  "  really  cared  for  them." 
If  asked,  he  answers  carefully:  "  People  might  not  be- 
lieve it,  and  it  is  strange,  considering  the  name  I  have 
82 


when  it  comes  to  women;  but  I  tell  you,  it's  the  truth, 
there  always  had  to  be  some  romance  about  it,  or  it 
meant  nothing  to  me,  some  mental  or  chemic  flare,  some- 
thing personal,  spiritual  you  might  say."  —  "  And  that 
is  hard  to  find,"  I  said.  —  "  I  have  never  really  found 
it,  nothing  lasts,  nothing  is  perfect." 

At  twenty-one  he  found  romance  in  Alice,  the  girl  of  the 
Christmas  Eve  party  of  the  year  before.  She  lived  with  a 
foster  father,  a  railroad  watchman,  in  a  second  story  flat 
in  a  small  cottage  on  the  southwest  fringe  of  the  city.  He 
remembers  the  furnishings:  red  plush  hangings  in  the 
folding  doors  between  the  two  rooms,  lace  curtains  and 
white  shades  at  the  windows,  a  piano,  "  a  most  soothing 
luxury  for  me  to  contemplate,"  a  red  velvet  settee,  a 
red  plush  rocker,  and  though  not  mentioned,  it  seems  as 
if  there  must  have  been  a  vase  of  bright  paper  flowers  on 
a  painted  stand  —  all  out  of  the  watchman's  savings  and 
her  taste.  Beside  the  green  and  brown  corduroys  and 
denims  of  the  correct  houses  of  the  Nineties,  lace,  red 
plush  and  velvet,  Latin  bequeathals,  however  degener- 
ated, still  lived  among  the  middle  classes  and  in  sporting 
houses  —  a  faint  perverted  hint  of  Venus  not  prized  in 
the  United  States. 

In  Alice's  flat  on  South  4yth  Street,  she  used  to  play 
the  piano  for  her  Hoosier  lover,  and  on  the  red  velvet 
settee  he  held  her  and  caressed  her.  Sometimes  she 
danced  for  him  "  a  running  overstep  clog,  sidewise  to 
and  fro,  her  skirts  lifted  to  her  shoe  tops."  Or  they  met 
for  dinner  in  the  downtown  crowds.  Or  Sundays  they 
would  go  to  a  concert,  or  an  Ethical  Culture  sermon, 
and  later  to  Jackson  Park,  where  she  would  plan  what 
her  wedding  dress  and  slippers  and  veil  were  going  to  be, 
and  he  would  half  wonder  whether  they  would  ever  be 
married.  Once,  he  says,  they  threw  some  pillows  on  the 
floor  and  she  begged  him  to  love  her  recklessly,  almost 
hoping  perhaps  that  if  a  child  came  of  it,  that  would  bind 
him ;  but  he  thought  it  was  wrong  .  .  .  "  not  quite  fair." 
Twenty-five  years  later  he  troubles  to  reason  this  back 
and  forth  as  if  talking  to  himself.  He  supposes  that  had 
he  been  "  desperately  in  love,"  he  would  have  been  "  will- 
ing to  starve  her  on  twenty  dollars  a  week."  He  never 

83 


saw  her,  he  says  among  these  recollections  of  editors, 
politicians  and  reporters,  "  as  anything  but  ...  a  deli- 
cate almost  perfect  creature  to  love  and  cherish."  It  was 
not  that  he  thought  less  of  Alice,  but  more  of  himself. 
He  was  beginning  to  be  fortunate.  There  was  his  victory 
of  the  fake  auctioneer  war.  And  there  was  another  girl, 
of  one  of  the  "  best  "  or  anyway  "better"  families,  he 
had  met  on  his  reporter's  rounds  —  "  A  little  blonde,  very 
sleek  and  dreamy,"  not  too  snobbish  to  "  go  with  him." 
She  was  less  compelling  than  Alice,  "  too  lymphatic  and 
carefully  reared,"  but  she  was  "  better  dressed  and  better 
placed."  She  was  a  hint  of  a  world  he  might  sometime 
join  if  he  kept  himself  unentangled  —  a  world  he  had 
so  often  envied  from  the  outside,  as  he  passed  its  pros- 
perous lawns  and  houses,  its  "  strutting  youth  in  Eng- 
lish suits,"  its  "  high-headed  girls  in  flouncy  lacy  dresses," 
at  their  croquet  and  tennis  games.  "  To  me,  in  my  life- 
hungry,  love-hungry  state,  this  new  rich  prosperity  with 
its  ease,  its  pretty  women  and  its  efforts  at  refinement 
...  set  me  to  riotous  dreaming  and  longing.  .  .  ."  To 
this  extent  the  young  man  of  An  American  Tragedy  is 
Dreiser  of  the  Nineties,  just  as,  one  imagines,  Balzac  re- 
members himself  in  the  hero  of  La  Peau  de  Chagrin. 

Many  reviewers  of  A  Book  About  Myself  have  cen- 
sored him  for  "  shameless  confession,"  or  laughed  at 
him  for  thinking  that  readers  would  be  interested  in 
a  boy  and  girl  of  so  long  before  in  so  drab  a  setting.  In 
this  they  were  ignoring  his  belief  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  common  place  or  common  time  or  common  peo- 
ple, if  and  when  wired  by  drama.  With  the  picture  of  Alice 
herself,  one  imagines,  this  type  of  reviewer  had  no  quarrel. 
She  is  that  forebearing,  delicious,  dependent  creature  that 
has  made  The  Saturday  Evening  Post  a  king  of  maga- 
zines ;  and  a  great  nation  of  he-men,  young  and  old,  hurries 
of  a  Thursday  to  the  stands  to  get  repeated  news  of  her. 
She  is,  as  are  variations  of  her  in  other  stories  of  his,  very 
like  the  eternal  nymph,  whom  movie  favorites  are  yet  reg- 
istering for  a  public  of  tired  business  men.  The  shocking 
difference  is  that  Dreiser  himself  was  not  the  one-hun- 
dred-per-cent  hero  that  would  yield  the  happy  ending  for 
Alice,  and  create  the  ideal  story  for  a  candy-eating  public. 
84 


19 

Going,  with  the  go-getters. 


I 


.n  November,  five  months  after  he  had  started 
his  newspaper  training,  McEnnis  advised  him  to  leave  the 
Globe.  It  was  not  a  big  enough  field  for  him :  "  A  great 
paper  like  the  St.  Louis  Globe  Democrat  or  the  New 
York  Sun  starts  a  boy  off  right.  I  would  like  to  see  you 
go  first  to  St.  Louis  and  then  to  New  York."  So  the  story 
runs  true  to  the  fable  of  those  picked  for  a  race  and  a 
fight.  He  was  never  quite  without  someone  who  cared 
what  happened  to  him.  And,  too,  he  worked  fabulously. 
These  five  months  read  like  a  year  or  more  in  compressed 
achievement.  McEnnis  was  true  to  his  scheme.  On  a 
Tuesday  a  telegram  arrived  from  St.  Louis:  uYou  may 
have  reportorial  position  on  this  paper  at  twenty  dollars 
a  week,  beginning  next  Monday.  Wire  reply." 

What  to  do?  There  was  Alice,  there  was  Chicago  now 
familiar  and  dear  to  him.  He  asked  McEnnis,  whose 
advice  was :  "  Go?  Of  course  go !  ...  You  will  be  work- 
ing on  one  of  the  greatest  papers  and  under  one  of  the 
greatest  editors  that  ever  lived.  .  .  .  Hand  in  your 
resignation  now.  .  .  .  And  go  Sunday.  .  .  .  I'll  give 
you  some  letters  that  will  help  you." 

They  called  themselves  sons-of-guns,  these  self-made 
men.  (The  slogan  was  "  Go  "!)  When  they  were  young 
they  went;  when  they  were  older  they  coached  others  to 
go.  They  were  shot  out  to  new  jobs,  new  horizons,  more 
pay,  more  life.  Or  they  shot  out  to  new  countries,  new 
victories,  new  deaths,  like  the  last  of  these  zealots,  the 
doughboys  in  the  Great  War,  and  Lindbergh  and  his  fol- 
lowers encircling  the  earth.  Dreiser  obeyed  the  contagion 
of  the  time.  He  went.  He  wondered  what  to  do  about 
Alice,  left  it  till  Saturday  to  say  goodbye.  Then  after 
dinner  with  McEnnis,  he  hurried  to  her  house;  she  was 

85 


not  there.  The  next  morning  speeding  south  toward  St. 
Louis  through  the  "  wide  flat  yards  adjacent  to  her 
home  ...  a  driving  rain  outside  ...  I  could  see  the 
very  windows  and  steps  by  which  we  had  so  often  sat." 
He  thought  he  couldn't  stand  it.  He  would  write  to  her 
and  beg  her  to  come,  "  to  be  his  mistress  perhaps,  if  not 
his  wife."  But  he  didn't  write.  Once  in  St.  Louis,  new 
problems  annihilated  loneliness. 

"  One  gloomy  December  afternoon,"  he  records,  "  in 
the  reportorial  room  of  the  St.  Louis  Globe  Democrat," 
a  letter  came  from  Alice  asking  for  her  letters  back;  he 
wouldn't  want  them  now.  Then,  a  postscript :  "  I  stood 
by  the  window  last  night  and  looked  out  on  the  street. 
The  moon  was  shining  and  those  dead  trees  over  the  way 
were  waving  in  the  wind.  I  saw  the  moon  on  that  little 
pool  of  water  in  the  field.  It  looked  like  silver.  Oh,  Theo, 
I  wish  I  were  dead."  Again,  he  says,  he  found  himself  on 
the  two  horns  of  his  ever  recurring  dilemma.  To  think  he 
could  have  left  her.  Of  course  she  wished  she  were  dead. 
But  could  he  support  her  and  himself  too  as  he  must 
now  in  his  new  position  and  with  his  new  friends?  Did  he 
love  her  enough  to  make  the  sacrifice?  He  wasn't  sure. 
And  yet  "  this  loss  of  honor  and  happiness!  " 

"  I  sat  looking  into  the  face  of  the  tangle  as  one  might 
into  the  gathering  front  of  a  storm.  Words  moved  in  my 
brain  and  then  marshalled  themselves  into  curious  lines 
and  rhythms.  .  .  .  Presently  I  saw  that  I  was  writing  a 
poem  but  that  it  was  rough.  ...  I  was  in  a  great  fever 
to  change  it  ...  but  more  eager  to  go  on  with  my  idea, 
which  was  about  this  tangle  of  life."  Could  anyone  de- 
scribe better  the  drift  and  mood  of  Dreiser  in  relation  to 
language?  He  would  like  it  to  be  perfectly  related  to  the 
thought,  and  yet  is  even  more  eager  to  be  on  with  his 
ideas,  which  are  forever  about  this  baffling  and  irresistible 
tangle  of  life. 

While  he  was  writing,  Bob  Hazard,  one  of  his  new 
friends,  looked  over  his  shoulder:  "What  you  doing, 
Dreiser,  writing  poetry?  .  .  .  There's  no  money  in  it. 
.  .  .  You  can't  sell  'em.  I've  written  tons  of  'em,  but  it 
don't  do  any  good.  You'd  better  be  putting  your  time  on 
a  book  or  a  play."  —  "I  know  it  isn't  profitable,"  Dreiser 
86 


persisted.  "  Still  it  might  be  if  I  wrote  them  well  enough." 
Hazard  smiled.  Yet  newspaper  men  did  write  poetry. 
Sullivan,  the  first  managing  editor  on  the  Globe,  had 
showed  him  poems  of  his  in  the  "  Whittier-Longfellow 
manner,"  and  he  had  been  sure  he  could  do  better  and 
would  some  day.  But  now  the  thought  of  a  novel  or  play, 
and  for  Hazard  to  suggest  them  as  within  his  power, 
was  tonic.  In  this  creative  mood  he  had  nearly  forgotten 
Alice.  Finally  he  wrote  her  he  still  loved  her  and  wanted 
to  keep  her  letters,  and  if  later  he  was  "  better  placed 
financially,"  he  would  come  back,  but  as  he  wrote  the 
fear  haunted  him  that  he  would  not  keep  his  word.  Some 
months  later  a  final  letter  came  from  Alice,  saying  she 
would  be  married  the  next  day  at  noon,  "  unless  —  unless 
something  happened."  He  let  nothing  happen.  He  knew, 
he  writes,  that  "  Alice  in  spite  of  my  great  sadness  and 
affection  for  her  was  nothing  more  than  a  passing  bit  of 
beauty.  ...  I  was  sad  for  her  and  for  myself,  saddest 
because  of  that  chief  characteristic  of  mine  and  of  life 
which  will  not  let  anything  endure  permanently.  ...  I 
was  too  restless,  too  changeful."  So  he  was  far  from 
being  the  ideal  hero  and  has  as  ruthlessly  confessed  it  for 
himself  as  for  other  heroes  of  his  stories.  Ring  Lardner, 
alone,  has  managed  to  circulate  in  the  popular  maga- 
zines as  slippery  a  brand  of  hero,  to  disappoint  and  pique 
a  hard-drink,  soft-drink  public.  But  Lardner's  salesmen, 
prize  fighters,  base  ball  players  and  song  writers,  are  less 
crucial,  being  less  conscious  of  themselves  than  was  this 
young  reporter  of  A  Book  About  Myself. 

Dreiser,  undoubtedly,  would  have  it  understood  that 
he  for  one  is  a  savage,  tenderly  reminiscent,  but  with  the 
need  to  junk  romance,  or  anyway  to  sacrifice  one  reality 
to  another  in  pursuit  of  power,  and  sometimes  of  mere 
variety.  Take  it  or  leave  it,  this  was  his  nature,  and  he 
felt  that  he  was  not  alone  in  it;  there  had  always  been 
and  always  would  be  men  and  women  of  this  necessity. 
For  himself  he  appears  to  have  appeased  tenderness 
through  tearful  pity  of  the  suffering  around  him  and 
through  little  souvenirs,  like  Alice's  postscript,  of  the 
quieter  people  he  had  felt  forced  to  break  with.  His  early 
scribbled  poems  he  has  since  destroyed,  but  has  twice 

87 


preserved  the  memento  of  Alice  standing  by  the  window 
and  wishing  she  were  dead.  It  is  quoted  in  A  Book  About 
Myself  and  before  that  it  is  used  in  The  '  Genius  '  at  the 
close  of  an  incident  in  the  life  of  Witla,  similar  in  its 
beginning  to  Dreiser's  life. 


88 


20 

"  St  Louis:  A  diamond  in  a  dirty  shirt " 

ROBERT  INGERSOLL 

T 

-ILhe  managing  editor  of  the  St.  Louis  Globe 
Democrat,  John  B.  McCullagh,  was  for  his  new  reporter 
all  that  McEnnis  had  said  —  "  a  real  force,  a  great  man." 
Through  him  he  learned  to  feel  the  meaning  of  journal- 
ism for  good  or  evil  in  the  life  of  the  nation.  He  had 
built  up  a  paper  in  the  easy-going  indolent  Southwest 
that  had  significance  both  here  and  abroad.  He  was  "  a 
kind  of  god  "  to  his  readers,  natives  of  Texas,  Iowa,  Mis- 
souri, Arkansas,  Southern  Illinois,  as  he  was  to  his  own 
staff  —  a  man  to  work  for  and  up  to.  Dreiser  makes  a 
vivid  portrait  of  him  in  his  book  of  newspaper  days,  which 
revels  in  detail  and  moves  like  a  novel : 

".  .  .  In  that  small  office  .  .  .  waist-deep  among  his  pa- 
pers, his  heavy  head  sunk  on  his  pouter-like  chest,  his  feet 
encased  in  white  socks  and  low  slipper-like  shoes.  ...  A 
solitary  or  eccentric  ...  a  few  years  later  he  leaped  to  his 
death  from  the  second  story  window  of  his  home  .  .  .  out 
of  sheer  weariness,  I  assume,  tired  of  an  inane  world." 
His   paper   was    of    necessity   conventional  —  he    liked 
to  have  it  referred  to  as  "  the  great  religious  daily  "  — 
and  yet  it  had  thrust  and  character.  His  own  sentences 
"  cracked  like  a  whip ;  the  paragraphs  exploded  at  times, 
burst  like  a  torpedo."  He  reads  like  one  of  those  com- 
pensating tempers,  who  can  make  acceptable  fairy  stories, 
that  yet  convey  the  sense  of  life.  Indeed  if  ever  the  human 
race  struggles  out  into  sunlight  —  no  taboos,  no  supersti- 
tions —  the  loss  will  be  in  the  old  cleverness  of  ciphers, 
in  the  polite  forms  of  whatever  etiquette  is  in  fashion  to 
veil  the  truth.  We  may  then  be  homesick  for  the  mas- 
querades of  the  past.  Yet  this  editor  was  bored  enough 
with  them  all  to  commit  suicide.  "  Ursine  rather  than 
leonine,"  Dreiser  describes  him,  "  with  keen  grey  eyes 

89 


under  bushy  brows,"  and  he  had  been  a  war  correspondent 
with  Farragut  on  the  Mississippi,  with  Sherman  in  the 
Civil  War. 

Under  his  spell,  which  was  the  spell  of  American  en- 
terprise —  the  magic  of  new  fantastic  playgrounds  of 
commerce  —  Dreiser  "  made  good  "  for  a  time,  and 
joined  in  the  antics.  At  first,  it  was  routine  reporting,  the 
covering  of  "  a  murder,  a  failure,  a  defalcation,  a  wed- 
ding, a  banquet,  a  ball."  Soon  in  addition  he  was  given  a 
column  to  write,  "  Heard  in  the  Corridors."  The  work 
took  him  the  rounds  of  the  hotels  and  stations,  gave  him 
license  to  write  more  as  he  liked,  to  invent  interviews  with 
imaginary  guests;  and,  too,  it  brought  him  in  contact 
with  a  range  of  celebrities  and  charlatans.  To  each 
one,  theosophists,  spiritualists,  mind  readers,  evangelists, 
"  quack  novelists,"  statesmen,  scientists  or  musicians  he 
would  ask  his  favorite  question  —  what  did  they  think 
about  life?  Often  he  knew  little  of  their  import,  but  then 
Mitchell,  the  city  editor,  seemed  to  know  less.  With  a 
"  height  of  six  feet,  one  and  one-half  inches,"  weighing 
only  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  pounds  "  with  no  par- 
ticular blemish  "  except  for  "  one  eye  turned  slightly  out- 
ward," and  crowded  upper  teeth  and  "  a  general  home- 
liness of  feature";  his  body  "blazing  with  sex"  and 
desire  for  "  supremacy,"  Dreiser  describes  himself  at 
twenty-one.  This  was  the  boy  who  made  his  way  as  best 
he  could  to  audiences  with  Annie  Besant,  the  Reverend 
Sam  Jones,  Eva  Fay,  John  L.  Sullivan,  Hall  Caine, 
Henry  Watterson,  Paderewski,  Nikola  Tesla,  asking  al- 
ways the  same  question  —  what  do  you  think  about  life? 

What  fixed  his  standing  on  the  paper,  and  not  long 
after  he  had  come  to  it,  was  again  as  in  Chicago  a  matter 
of  luck.  Though  dealing  so  often  with  the  tragedy  of 
others,  always  he  insists  on  his  own  good  luck :  "  I  al- 
ways got  the  breaks."  The  breaks  this  time  lay  in  the  fact 
of  a  big  wreck  on  the  road  near  Alton,  reported  to  him 
one  morning  before  anyone  else  had  come  to  the  office : 
"  If  you  people  get  up  there  right  away  you  can  get  a 
big  lead  on  this."  With  a  note  to  the  city  editor  and  ad- 
vice to  send  an  artist  after  him,  he  went  without  waiting 
for  orders.  He  "  had  never  seen  a  big  wreck,  it  must  be 
90 


wonderful."  It  did  surpass  all  concepts  of  frightfulness. 
It  engulfed  him  in  horror  and  yet  it  was  his  big  chance 
and  he  took  it.  McCullagh  acknowledged  the  scoop  with 
a  raise  of  five  dollars  and  a  twenty-dollar  bill  and  the 
words,  "  You  have  done  a  fine  piece  of  work."  He  was  a 
real  newspaper  man  at  last,  his  Napoleonic  dreams  might 
in  fact  come  true.  Soon  after  in  the  event  of  a  vacancy  he 
asked  boldly  to  be  made  dramatic  editor,  and  McCullagh 
said,  "You're  dramatic  editor.  Tell  Mr.  Mitchell  (the 
city  editor)  to  let  you  be  it."  More  than  any  other  chroni- 
cle of  Dreiser's,  this  newspaper  epic  breathes  the  ro- 
mance, nearly  finished  now,  that  went  on  for  so  many 
years  in  this  country,  between  older  and  younger  men, 
outstripping  the  romance  that  has  gone  on  between  men 
and  women  here,  because  more  sanctioned  and  better 
understood. 

In  addition  to  being  an  apprentice  in  the  business  of 
learning  about  life  through  the  ludicrous,  cruel,  and  yet 
immediate  method  of  journalism,  he  became  too  for  the 
first  time  an  apprentice  in  Bohemia,  or  in  such  would-be 
Bohemia  as  St.  Louis  afforded.  This  paper,  unlike  the 
Chicago  Globe,  had  an  art  department.  The  mere  word 
"  art  "  had  always  beguiled  him.  The  men  here  seemed  to 
him  distinctive  and  unconventional,  two  of  them  espe- 
cially—  Dick  Wood,  with  wrist  watch,  cabalistic  scarf 
pin,  boutonniere  of  violets;  and  P.  B.  McCord,  the 
"  Peter "  of  Twelve  Men,  cordial  and  virile,  with 
"  tramp-like  hair  and  whiskers."  They  had  a  studio  to- 
gether in  an  old  quarter  of  the  town  into  which  exclusive 
aura  they  admitted  Dreiser,  Wood  indulgently,  McCord 
at  once  on  equal  terms.  Their  friendship,  he  says,  lasted 
for  years  until  Peter's  death  and  to  him  he  owes  u  some 
of  his  sanest  views  of  life." 

With  these  two  and  their  circle  of  wayward  souls,  ad- 
mitted because  they  burned  with  some  fever  of  living  dis- 
reputably or  creatively,  he  felt  that  he  had  entered  on  a 
plane  above  poverty  or  wealth.  They  chattered  till  morn- 
ing about  art  and  artists,  read  their  manuscripts  to  each 
other,  strolled  about  the  dark  quarters  of  the  town  with 
mandolin,  banjo  and  flute,  or  frequented  the  dives  of 
Chinatown  and  the  underworld.  Wood  delighted  in  their 


lingo  and  color,  and  was  gathering  notes  to  be  made  into 
tales  that  would  recreate  the  lilt  of  life  among  such  out- 
laws as  thieves,  pimps,  dope  fiends,  murderers,  and  immi- 
grants from  the  Orient.  He  had  an  eerie  gift  for  making 
friends  with  these  strangers  and  could  retell  whole  pas- 
sages out  of  their  lives.  With  more  stability  Dreiser 
thinks  he  might  have  succeeded.  I  would  almost  say  in 
a  different  land  he  might  have  succeeded.  In  a  land  where 
any  race  of  another  color  becomes  associated  with  u  evil  " 
and  "  filth,"  as  it  is  called,  what  chance  is  there  to  give 
strangeness  and  dissolution  their  separate  values?  How- 
ever silly  and  abortive  Wood  was,  Dreiser  records  that 
he  owed  to  him  "  poignant  moods  "  that  revealed  "  the 
beauty  and  romance  of  many  strange  places." 

Then  there  were  others  on  the  paper,  Jock  Bellairs, 
posted  at  the  Four  Courts  with  other  reporters  to  give 
first  news  of  crime  or  accident  —  a  bottle  of  whiskey  in 
his  pocket,  a  game  of  cards  going  on;  a  girl  or  two  of  one 
or  the  other  reporters.  And  Rodenberger,  whom  Dreiser 
virtuously  saved  one  day  from  suicide  by  dope,  after  al- 
cohol, and  was  not  thanked  for  it. 

And  then  Bob  Hazard,  who  with  another  man  had  al- 
ready completed  a  novel  which  "  could  never  be  pub- 
lished in  the  United  States  "  —  "a  direct  outcome  of 
Zola  and  Balzac,  the  scene  laid  in  France  even,"  since 
"  such  things  as  interested  these  two  occurred  only  in 
France  ...  or  if  done  here  were  never  spoken  of." 
Dreiser  calls  this  first  novel  he  ever  read  in  manuscript 
"  the  opening  wedge  for  him  into  the  realm  of  realism." 
It  went  deep  in  him,  both  because  of  the  freshness  of 
these  boys  who  "  burned  to  present  life  as  they  saw  it," 
and  because  of  their  certainty  that  it  was  useless  in  1892 
to  send  the  story  to  an  American  publisher.  That  struck 
him  as  curious  at  the  time,  but  as  the  years  went  on  he 
was  to  remember  it  as  a  tragic  American  fact.  The  book 
was  never  published.  Ten  years  later  the  gay  irresistible 
Hazard  blew  his  brains  out,  leaving  a  brilliant  newspaper 
job  and  a  wife  and  child  in  Washington.  "  The  other 
man,"  a  friend  writes  him  years  later,  "  was  killed  in  an 
opium  joint  (his  baby  died  the  same  night) ."  So  Dreiser's 
pages  gleam  with  fateful  rockets. 
92 


His  own  desire  to  write  something  real,  he  says,  was 
fixed  from  this  hour.  He  decided  on  a  play  as  a  form  that 
seemed  easier  to  him  ("  and  still  did  after  thirty  years  ") 
than  a  novel.  His  work  as  dramatic  critic  encouraged  him 
in  this ;  also  his  ever  increasing  desire  for  riches  and  lux- 
ury, every  trace  of  which  he  envied  as  he  went  on  his 
rounds  and  compared  the  grandeur  of  hotels  and  clubs 
and  mansions  and  commercial  offices  to  the  squalor  of 
districts  where  "  the  unsuccessful  "  lived.  The  plays  that 
came  to  St.  Louis,  the  best  of  them  from  Jones,  Pinero, 
Augustus  Thomas,  were  most  of  them  saccharine  and  un- 
real, filled  with  the  cruel  rich,  honest  working  men,  be- 
trayed daughters,  splendid  reforms,  happy  moral  endings. 
But  for  him  he  confesses  they  had  glamour  —  love  made 
insidiously  romantic  by  boudoirs  and  drawing  rooms  and 
expensively  beautiful  actresses.  And  he  felt  too  that  none 
of  this  was  to  be  had  in  St.  Louis;  the  home  of  it  was 
New  York  or  Paris  or  London.  With  McCord  and  Wood 
he  discussed  his  dreams.  Comic  opera  was  probably  the 
quickest  and  most  gaudy  path  to  success.  He  mapped  out 
a  scenario  —  a  cranky  Indiana  farmer  by  magic  trans- 
ported back  among  the  Aztecs  of  Mexico,  and  becoming 
a  despot  there.  He  wrote  a  rough  draft  of  it,  Peter  made 
designs  for  scenes  and  costumes,  and  acted  out  some  of 
the  comedy  for  the  other  two.  Dreiser  was  delirious  with 
imagined  success.  And  yet  too  the  thing  seemed  not  quite 
real  to  him.  Others  arrived  by  fantastic  easy  roads,  but 
more  than  likely  nothing  so  sweet  was  meant  for  him. 


93 


21 

Last  years   of  apprenticeship:  new  alli- 
ances. 


he  days  passed  now  in  bigger  responsibili- 
ties —  the  covering  of  an  important  murder  trial,  a  flood, 
a  train  robbery,  and  then  the  hurrying  to  his  duties  as 
dramatic  editor.  McCullagh  liked  him  and  still  fascinated 
him.  He  was  being  sent  out  of  town  now,  and  might  in 
time,  he  believes,  have  become  a  star  correspondent,  once, 
he  had  thought,  a  pinnacle  of  achievement.  But  newspaper 
work  began  to  seem  insufficient.  For  one  thing,  what  did  it 
have  to  do  with  art  or  with  the  kind  of  life  he  hoped  some 
time  to  lead?  Take  the  mere  matter  of  dramatic  criticism. 
McCullagh  had  small  interest  in  it  or  he  would  not  have 
trusted  it  to  a  young  reporter,  and  coupled  it  with  other 
work  at  that.  Here  Dreiser  was  the  non-conformist;  few 
Americans  would  have  put  criticism  ahead  of  news  in  im- 
portance. It  seemed  to  him,  too,  that  Mitchell,  the  city 
editor,  resented  him  and  purposely  gave  him  assignments 
that  made  the  theatre  work  nearly  impossible.  One  night 
in  April,  sent  out  of  town  to  cover  a  hold-up,  he  had 
taken  a  chance  and  written  notices  beforehand  of  three 
plays  scheduled  to  open  in  St.  Louis  that  night.  But  be- 
cause of  washouts  on  the  road  none  of  them  had  arrived. 
The  morning  Globe  printed  his  profuse  praise  of  nothing, 
and  the  afternoon  papers  delighted  in  laughing  at  their 
eminent  competitor. 

The  new  dramatic  critic,  ashamed  to  face  anyone,  left 
a  note  on  McCullagh's  desk  of  gratitude  and  regret,  try- 
ing to  explain  how  it  had  happened,  but  taking  the  blame, 
he  says ;  and  then  fled  jobless  to  his  rooms  rather  than  wait 
to  be  fired.  Disgraced  in  St.  Louis,  he  must,  he  supposed, 
try  his  luck  in  another  city,  but  first  he  had  to  make  enough 
money  to  go.  This  need  landed  him  a  job  on  the  Republic 

94 


at  eighteen  dollars  a  week  under  another  forceful  editor, 
H.  B.  Wandell,  without  the  greatness  of  McCullagh,  but 
with  a  mania  for  the  story,  especially  when  it  involved 
horror  or  scandal.  Zola  first  and  Balzac  and  then  Loti 
were  his  models.  Hugo  and  Dickens  were  invoked  at 
times.  No  commonplace  rendering  was  permitted.  The 
paper  must  throb  with  human  interest  or  with  "  cold  hard 
pictures."  He  exhorted  his  reporters  to  read  Zola  and 
make  "  the  drab  and  the  gross  and  the  horrible  "  drip 
with  life.  It  is  interesting  that  Dreiser,  who  is  often  al- 
leged to  have  derived  from  Zola,  says  here  that  he  never 
read  him,  not  until  after  his  own  first  novel,  Sister  Carrie. 
But  in  WandelPs  presence  he  dared  not  admit  it.  He  be- 
lieves the  Republic  was  a  better  place  for  him  than  the 
Globe  Democrat.  It  gave  him  more  scope  for  writing,  in 
fact  taught  him  how  to  write.  On  this  paper  he  became 
important;  Wandell  often  asked  his  advice  as  to  engag- 
ing new  men,  and  would  take  him  away  from  work  just  to 
eat  and  drink  and  gossip  about  great  literature,  for  which 
he  had  "  the  strangest,  fussiest,  bossiest  love." 

In  these  days  he  obeyed  orders.  He  was  told  to  write 
comedy  for  a  summer  charity  drive  which  involved  a  fat- 
lean  baseball  series  —  he,  who  had  never  written  any- 
thing funny  in  his  life,  nor  even  cared  to  make  people 
laugh.  He  managed  to  get  away  with  it;  for  five  weeks 
or  more  he  was  a  comic  hit  in  the  minds  of  Republic 
readers.  His  stock  rose  to  the  point  of  his  being  sent  to 
Chicago  as  the  paper's  correspondent,  with  a  party  of 
school  teachers  selected  by  a  state  voting  contest  to  visit 
the  World's  Fair  of  1893  at  tne  Republic's  expense. 

For  all  his  subversive  power,  Dreiser  has  not  been 
fatally  disturbed  by  the  flatulence  of  American  methods 
of  money  making  —  to  which  fact  undoubtedly  he  owes 
his  chance  of  survival  within  it.  Sensitive  to  its  hypocrisy 
and  banality,  but  not  quite  to  the  vulgarity  of  it,  even 
in  his  proudest  later  days,  he  has  not  been  a  complete 
exile.  Often  he  has  joined  in,  and  for  that  knows  our 
commercial  life  from  the  inside  more  fairly  than  those 
who  have  been  defeated  by  it.  He  went  off  with  the  school 
teachers  in  a  holiday  spirit,  a  trifle  dampened  by  the 
Methodist  look  of  the  agent  who  was  to  direct  the  party, 

95 


but  rather  fancying  the  superintendent  of  schools,  acting 
as  chaperon,  who  had  "  big  soft  ruddy  hands  decorated 
with  several  rings,"  and  helped  to  put  him  at  his  ease 
among  the  girls.  Before  they  were  far  out  in  their  special 
Pullman,  alive  with  "  young  buxom  Missouri  school 
teachers  ...  as  attractive  as  their  profession  would 
permit,"  he  had  lost  shyness  and  was  captivated  by  so 
many  prize  winners.  "  Look  where  I  would  I  seemed 
to  find  a  new  type  of  prettiness  confronting  me."  And 
why  not?  Here  they  were,  sacrificed  to  making  more 
inane  and  more  popular  the  columns  of  the  Republic; 
and  yet  how  young,  how  blooming,  not  a  wrinkle,  gig- 
gling, blushing,  exuberant  in  their  prettiest  clothes  on  a 
paid-f or  vacation  —  and  he  the  one  young  man  among 
them.  A  Greek  goatherd  never  wrote  of  satyric  dreams 
more  lustfully  than  Dreiser  remembers  his  school  teach- 
ers in  their  plush  and  polished  Pullman.  A  leading  man 
caught  archly  among  chorus  girls  is  not  his  equal  in  zest. 
You  may  say  his  memory  is  gawky  and  ingenuous,  but  it 
has  a  touch  of  Stravinsky's  Sacre  du  Printemps,  before  the 
dancers  turn  their  black  garments  of  grief  to  the  audience. 
Out  of  the  bouquet  he  picked  five  or  six  incidentally, 
and  two  especially,  Miss  Ginnity  and  Miss  W.  to  see  the 
Fair  with  by  turns  —  again  the  reckless  brunette  and  the 
more  aloof  blonde,  this  time  red-headed.  Out  of  these, 
the  blonde  remained  with  him  through  years  of  excita- 
tion and  then  of  marriage.  She  was  his  second  romance, 
more  skilful  and  less  forbearing  than  Alice.  If  in  the  end 
she  never  turned  the  black  coat  of  tragedy  on  him,  it  was 
a  grey  drab  mantle  anyway  that  amounted  to  gloom  — 
a  thing  to  escape  from.  Yet  it  was  not  really  this  dainty 
creature  with  "  stark  red  braids  "  to  crown  "  a  flower- 
like  face  and  almond  eyes,"  whom  in  later  years  he  came 
to  resent;  it  was  what  she  stood  for  with  rigid  strength 
—  monotony,  conformity,  routine  —  when  he  had  imag- 
ined she  stood  only  for  something  above  him,  more  frag- 
ile and  exquisite  than  he  was,  and  entirely  personal.  In 
the  Wooded  Island  of  the  exotic  World's  Fair,  in  the 
light  of  fireworks  around  the  Court  of  Honor,  which  cre- 
ated, it  is  said,  the  splendor  and  elegance  of  older  places 
than  Chicago,  the  young  man  dallied  with  his  school 

96 


teachers,  one  so  ardent  and  primitive,  the  other  entan- 
gling and  difficult  to  reach.  Being  difficult  enhanced  her 
value ;  he  must  reach  her,  even  marry  her  if  possible.  Then, 
too,  there  was  her  sister  Rose,  who  came  to  join  them, 
more  lively  than  Sarah.  She  might  suit  him  better.  Cer- 
tainly he  must  not  lose  track  of  these  two. 

The  weight  of  deciphering,  however,  was  not  yet 
heavy  on  him.  Back  in  St.  Louis  he  entered  the  race  again 
—  getting  ahead  of  the  other  reporter  when  he  could, 
desolate  when  he  couldn't,*  ferreting  out  secrets  of  lives 
even  to  the  ruin  of  them,  when  the  news  exacted  it.  And 
he  grew  in  prestige.  In  these  days  once  out  of  the  office 
he  wore,  he  says,  to  please  romance,  a  long  military  coat, 
a  Stetson  hat,  gloves,  a  cane,  soft  pleated  shirts;  and 
would  go  thus  to  court  Sarah  of  the  World's  Fair,  when 
she  came  to  visit  her  aunt  from  the  place  where  she  taught 
in  the  country.  He  says  of  her : 

"  There  was  something  of  the  wood  or  water  nymph 
about  her,  a  seeking  in  her  eyes,  a  breath  of  wild  winds  in 
her  hair,  a  scarlet  glory  to  her  mouth.  ...  St.  Louis  took 
on  a  glamor  which  it  had  never  before  possessed.  ...  If 
only  this  love  affair  could  have  gone  on  to  a  swift  fruition 
it  would  have  been  perfect,  blinding.  .  .  .  But  love  as  it 
is  in  most  places  was  a  slow  process.  .  .  .  There  must  be 
many  visits  before  I  could  even  place  an  arm  on  her.  .  .  . 
Well,  I  reached  the  place  where  I  could  hold  her  hand,  put 
my  arms  about  her,  kiss  her,  but  never  could  I  induce  her 
to  sit  in  my  lap." 

Instead  she  fanned  in  him  an  idolatrous  passion,  and 
like  a  staunch  servant  of  society  held  him  off,  secured 
with  the  ring  he  had  bought  her.  Over  long  months  she 
held  him  thus,  straining  toward  an  income  sufficient  to 
pay  for  the  hour  when  lust  and  love  might  be  legally  one. 
In  these  days  too  there  came  to  St.  Louis  other  visitors, 
his  brothers  E.  and  A.  as  he  calls  them,  because  he  thought 
that  they  should  by  now  graduate  from  driving  laundry 
wagons  and  working  in  shoe  stores.  With  his  new  prestige 
he  would  find  jobs  for  them  in  St.  Louis.  But  they  came 
and  had  to  go  back  to  Chicago  without  jobs,  tired,  as  they 
said,  of  St.  Louis,  a  "  hell  of  a  place,  a  third  rate  city." 

*  Chapter  64  of  A  Book  About  Myself  and  a  Story  of  Stories  in  Free 
and  Other  Stories  repeat  one  climax  of  this. 

97 


And  there  came  also  his  favorite  brother  Paul,  the  ballad 
maker,  "  stout,  gross,  sensual,"  and  yet  a  fountain  of 
delicacy;  the  one  member  of  his  family  who,  not  under- 
standing him,  yet  caught  the  drift  of  his  aims.  He  saw 
his  face  one  day  on  a  billboard,  starring  in  a  clap-trap 
melodrama,  The  Danger  Signal.  Now  after  years  of 
absence  he  loved  him  anew  not  because  he  had  to,  not 
because  Paul  knew  more  of  life  than  he  did  —  in  fact  he 
decided  rather  less  —  but  because  "  he  reminded  me  a 
great  deal  of  my  mother,"  like  her,  "  wonderful  and 
tender."  Speaking  of  him  Dreiser  reveals  a  novel  basis 
of  values :  ".  .  .  he  was  full  of  simple  middle  class  ten- 
derness, and  middle  class  grossness  —  all  of  which  I  am 
free  to  say  I  admire.  .  .  .  After  all,  we  cannot  all  be 
artists,  statesmen,  generals,  thieves  or  financiers." 

It  was  a  delight  to  have  this  brother  to  show  off  to 
Wood,  McCord,  Hazard,  and  the  others,  and  he  took  his 
fiancee  to  meet  him.  Paul  gave  him  a  box  for  the  show, 
in  which  he  was  a  comic  switchman,  and  sang  one  of  his 
own  songs,  The  Bowery,  for  which  unquestionably  he  was 
famous.  He  came  back  with  the  party  to  the  younger 
brother's  rooms  for  supper,  by  now  as  much  a  center  of 
life  as  McCord's  and  Wood's.  The  week  ended  in  what 
he  hoped  would  be  a  "  glorious  dinner  at  Faust's,"  in 
honor  of  Paul,  to  which  he  had  invited  not  only  his  more 
Bohemian  friends,  but  the  executives  of  his  office,  Wan- 
dell,  Williams,  indeed  everyone  he  liked.  He  was  bitterly 
disappointed  when  these  diverse  elements,  dear  to  him, 
refused  to  blend;  "it  was  all  such  a  fizzle  that  I  could 
have  wept,"  he  remembers.  That  one's  picked  friends 
should  not  be  friends  is  one  of  the  dreary  discords  on  the 
way  up  the  ladder  of  sophistication. 

During  a  week  of  breakfasts  with  the  comedian,  he 
was  to  hear  constantly  of  New  York,  the  place  for  him 
to  go  if  he  was  to  compete  with  equals.  Chicago  would 
never  do.  Journalists  from  the  East  had  told  him  the 
same  thing,  but  he  like  a  true  mid-Westerner  had  been 
loyal  to  Chicago.  Now  his  brother  was  weaving  the 
spell  of  New  York.  He  began  to  believe.  But  what  of 
his  fiancee?  What  did  Paul  think  of  her?  "  Well,  she  is 
charming,  but  if  I  were  in  your  place  I  wouldn't  marry 
98 


anyone  yet."  At  this  time  John  Maxwell  came  from 
Chicago  looking  for  a  job,  and  gave  him  rougher  advice. 
Looking  at  her  picture  he  said :  "  '  Have  you  any  idea  how 
old  she  is  ?  '  —  4  Oh,  about  my  age.'  —  '  Oh  hell,  she's 
older  than  that.  .  .  .  Along  with  this,  she's  one  of  these 
mid- Western  girls,  all  right  for  life  out  here,  but  no  good 
for  the  newspaper  game  or  you.  I've  been  through  that 
myself.  .  .  .  She  belongs  to  some  church,  I  suppose?' 
— '  Methodist,'  I  replied  ruefully — 'I  knew  it!  But 
I'm  not  knocking  her;  I'm  not  saying  she  isn't  pretty  and 
virtuous,  but  .  .  .  she's  older  and  narrower.  ...  In 
three  or  four  years  you  will  have  children,  and  you'll  get 
a  worried,  irritated  point  of  view.  Take  my  advice.  Run 
with  girls  if  you  want  to,  but  don't  marry.  .  .  .'  "  Drei- 
ser for  a  second  almost  believed  this  rude  tutor,  and  "  yet 
the  delirious  meetings  went  on  and  on."  And  the  days 
went  on,  crying  to  him  the  need  of  hurry,  if  he  was  to 
count. 

Marriage  or  not,  he  must  make  more  money.  With  all 
his  progress  he  was  getting  only  twenty-three  dollars  a 
week  and  The  Republic  seemed  in  no  mood  to  give  more. 
And  then  somehow  he  must  be  on  to  New  York.  At  this 
point  there  came  a  proposal  from  a  young  man  for  whom 
he  had  little  respect,  to  start  with  him  a  country  weekly 
in  his  town,  Grand  Rapids,  Ohio ;  there  would  be  money 
in  it.  Without  confidence  in  the  scheme,  at  least  it  would 
be  an  escape  for  him.  He  would  look  the  ground  over,  and 
if  there  was  nothing  to  it,  push  on  from  there,  not  back 
to  St.  Louis.  He  gave  up  his  position  on  the  Republic, 
finally  to  be  offered  a  raise.  But  it  was  too  late,  he  was 
booked  for  a  change.  In  a  farewell  meeting  with  Miss  W. 
he  gave  desperate  pledges,  that  as  soon  as  he  could  he 
would  live  with  her  the  life  she  dreamed  of,  "  in  a  modest 
home  with  children  and  money  enough  for  a  few  needs 
.  .  .  eventually  to  die  and  to  be  buried  respectably." 
And  yet  at  that  moment  a  voice  said  to  him  that  his 
destiny  would  be  different  from  that  —  not  so  sad  maybe ; 
and  "  that  any  beautiful  woman  would  satisfy  "  him. 
With  a  letter  of  endorsement  from  Wandell  which,  how- 
ever, in  the  next  years  of  wandering,  quixotically  he  never 
used  —  he  was  afraid  he  could  not  live  up  to  it  —  he 

99 


packed  his  bags  and  said  goodbye  to  what  he  thinks  of 
now  as  his  years  of  apprenticeship. 

He  discusses  their  influence.  When  he  came  to  St. 
Louis  already  he  was  "  not  an  ethically  correct  and  moral 
youth."  Perhaps  he  would  not  have  lied,  at  least  in  big 
matters,  or  have  stolen  after  his  one  experience  in 
Chicago,  and  would  not  today  "  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances do  this."  But  already  he  felt  that  there  was  and 
could  be  no  strict  justice  as  between  men  and  women. 
He  had  noticed  that  the  women  often  did  not  want  it, 
and  that  the  world  of  youths  at  least  was  busy  with 
"  libertinage."  They  boasted  of  it  and  got  away  with  it. 
He  had  no  thought  yet  that  he  might  be  punished  for  it 
or  even  censored;  others  were  not.  And  yet  from  his 
bringing  up  he  was  still  "  swashing  around  among  the 
idealistic  maxims  of  Christ  and  .  .  .  the  religionists 
generally,  and  contrasting  them  hourly  .  .  .  with  the 
selfish  materialism  of  the  day  as  [he]  saw  it."  He 
watched  the  poor  and  he  watched  the  rich,  and  couldn't 
help  indicting  society  for  the  fierce  differences  between 
them,  and  wishing  he  could  "  flail"  the  strong  and  com- 
fort the  weak  with  the  Beatitudes  and  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount.  He  calls  himself  at  twenty-one  u  a  poetic  melan- 
cholic crossed  with  a  vivid  materialistic  lust  for  life." 
When  he  left  St.  Louis  a  year  and  three  months  later, 
hardened  by  a  more  factual  philosophy,  he  was  beginning 
to  think  that  there  was  a  law  of  life  which  was  never 
to  agree  with  the  beautiful  and  "  helpless  "  poetry  of 
Christ.  The  realism  out  of  his  newspaper  schooling  was 
returning  him  this  verdict,  at  variance  with  Christian 
dogma,  which  had  divided  the  world  into  enemy  groups, 
and  had  nicknamed  them  idealists  and  cynics,  ignoring 
the  original  Greek  meaning  of  these  terms.  Dreiser  be- 
came accurately  neither  one  nor  the  other,  but  rather 
a  believer  in  what  his  eyes  dictated  —  belief  in  the  irre- 
pressible spring  of  life,  which  by  moments  lifted  some 
people  and  broke  others. 


100 


The  outside  world:  walking  up  and  down 
in  it. 


few  days  in  the  wintry  triviality  of  an 
Ohio  village  cured  him  of  running  a  country  paper. 
He  was  not  fitted  for  it.  They  told  him  that  these  small 
towns  were  soon  going  to  be  lively  manufacturing  centers. 
Many  people  would  come,  and  they  would  get  rich  there. 
He  knew  enough  of  the  trend  of  industry  to  believe  it; 
America  was  on  its  way  to  "  material  triumphs."  But  then 
as  always  the  thought  was  like  lead  to  him.  What  use  in 
these  riches  unless  they  could  be  translated  into  the 
splendors  of  art  and  the  wisdom  of  artists,  as  a  way  of 
life?  That  might  happen  in  New  York,  his  brother  had 
said  it  was  happening,  but  perhaps  never  in  Ohio.  Besides, 
they  told  him,  "  We  are  a  religious  and  hard  working 
people  —  any  newspaper  here  has  got  to  take  that  into 
account."  He  was  not  the  one  to  do  it. 

Here  by  "  a  charming  river,"  he  says,  "  I  paused  for  a 
few  days,  and  took  stock  of  my  life."  His  youth  was  be- 
hind him,  and  he  could  think  of  nothing  ahead  of  him 
more  definite  than  the  same  vague  poignant  ambitions 
that  had  always  driven  him.  He  then  took  his  "  first,  free 
and  unaided  flight  into  the  unknown,"  which  landed  him  in 
Toledo.  Strolling  about  this  city,  again  he  was  stung  by  the 
contrast  between  rich  and  poor  districts  —  "  The  spacious 
lawns,  the  shuttered  and  laced  windows !  The  wonder  of 
evening  fires  in  winter!  The  open  cool  and  shadowed 
doors  in  summer!  Swings  and  hammocks  ...  !  " 

Children  brought  up  in  the  smugness  of  such  houses 
with  their  shameless  yards  open  to  the  world,  with  their 
cruel  plate-glass  windows,  their  flaccid  family  life,  or  at 
least  those  sensitive  enough  to  curse  these  dwellings  as 
if  they  were  prisons,  will  find  it  hard  to  understand  the 

101 


part  they  had  in  the  dreams  of  a  boy  shut  out  from  it 
all.  He  sings  poems  over  the  polish  of  the  brass,  the 
cleanliness  of  the  lace,  the  accuracy  of  each  monstrous 
cream-colored  window  shade  pulled  half  way  down,  the 
fragrance  of  sidewalks  and  stone  steps  hosed  by  gardeners 
in  June.  He  is  the  reminiscent  poet  of  the  "  residences  " 
of  the  Nineties. 

But  it  is  not  to  laugh.  They  are  lyrics  that  half  tell 
the  story  of  the  failure  of  our  country  to  delight  the  soul, 
psyche  of  the  five  senses.  The  rich  achieved  these  pros- 
perous shells.  The  poor,  permitted  nothing  except  a  few 
parks,  where  they  had  to  keep  off  the  grass,  and  saloons 
for  men  and  "  bad  women,"  too  tough  to  give  a  sense  of 
ease,  worked  and  slaved  and  schemed  for  what?  For 
these  very  mausoleums,  brass,  lace,  glass,  bushes,  grass, 
molasses-oaken  doors  and  all,  which  they  knew  from  the 
outside  alone.  And  if  they  had  gotten  in,  there  was  noth- 
ing more  mysterious  to  know  except  further  evidences  of 
prosperity.  From  that  day  to  this,  when  a  president  was 
hailed  into  office  on  the  shoulders  of  that  one  word,  Pros- 
perity; exteriority  of  ever  more  shining  surfaces  has  been 
the  Grail.  Dreiser  with  his  usual  candor  admits  the  lure 
it  had  for  him.  Indeed,  it  was  not  until  he  had  traveled 
to  Europe  at  forty  and  had  seen  for  himself  the  scheme 
of  life  in  France  and  Italy,  that  he  could  be  a  colder 
critic  of  our  code.  Then  he  noticed  the  open  voids  al- 
most obscenely  public  beyond  these  exclusive  doors.* 

In  Latin  countries  a  beguiling  program  motivated  all 
grades  of  living,  half  mystic,  half  sensual,  deriving  from 
the  Virgin  and  Venus,  tempered  in  France  by  a  spirit 
wrung  from  the  revolution  —  every  one  Monsieur,  Ma- 
dame, Mademoiselle.  And  it  varied  not  so  much  in  de- 
sign, chiefly  in  price.  In  houses  humble  and  rich  the  same 
form  of  dinner,  accompanied  by  wine,  from  soup  to  black 

*  "(Ma!  Ma!  Have  you  got  an  undershirt  in  there  for  me?  '  —  I 
looked  out  to  see  ...  a  man  of  sixty  .  .  .  intelligent  and  forceful  look- 
ing, a  real  American  business  chief.  *  Yes,'  came  the  answer,  f  wait  a 
minute.  I  think  there's  one  in  Ida's  satchel.  Is  Harry  up  yet '  —  <  Yes,  he's 
gone  out.'  This  was  six  A.M.  Here  stood  the  American  in  the  pretentious 
hall,  suspenders  down,  meekly  importuning  his  wife  through  the  closed 
door."  From  a  chapter  called  An  American  Summer  Resort  in  A  Hoosier 
Holiday. 

102 


coffee  and  liqueur,  was  understood.  Restaurants  and  cafes 
served  the  different  classes  with  nearly  equal  form  and 
mystery.  This  was  balm  to  mind  and  body.  There  was  an 
order  out  of  it  animated  by  wit.  But  in  the  United  States 
we  were  forced  to  get  prosperous  or  be  damned.  Ease 
and  enjoyment  have  been  their  virtues;  ambition  and 
activity  have  had  to  be  ours. 

Dreiser,  the  native,  instinctively  knew  them  as  required 
virtues,  and  felt  the  dark  bleak  passageways  where  the 
shuttle  of  ambition  worked  ceaselessly  back  and  forth.  I 
think  one  can't  understand  the  racial  drift  of  his  writ- 
ings, without  realizing  how  these  "  exclusive  "  districts 
have  affected  the  excluded.  Nor  understand  intolerants 
like  Poe  and  Ambrose  Bierce,  without  being  faced  with 
these  facts  of  cleavage  of  the  high  from  the  low,  and 
emptiness  above.  Now  one  hears  it  like  a  hymn  of  praise 
—  native  radio,  automobile,  movie,  frigidaire,  clothes, 
bungalows  and  apartments  open  at  all  prices  to  all 
classes!  But  as  in  Toledo,  Ohio,  in  1894,  isn't  it  the 
same  Divinity  dictating  this;  and  not  Sex,  not  Art,*  not 
Learning,  as  the  young  wanderer  from  St.  Louis  was 
hoping;  not  primarily  Speed  or  Daring,  as  for  a  while  it 
promised  to  be ;  but  more  and  more  firmly  Respectability 
measured  by  Money,  ruling  through  Comfort?  The  whir 
of  life  has  not  yet  come  to  inhabit  the  "  ideal  home  "  fur- 
nished with  these  products.  It  remains  back  in  the  offices, 
and  factories  and  power  plants  that  produce  them,  and 
will  remain  there  until  Americans  frayed  and  jaded  turn 
from  relations  of  people  to  things,  to  cultivate  relations 
with  one  another.  An  American  Tragedy  is  a  summary  of 
this. 

Yet  in  these  years  Dreiser  was  still  hopeful  of  a  so- 
ciety held  together  by  pleasures  of  body  and  mind.  And 
in  Toledo,  applying  for  a  job  on  the  leading  morning 
paper,  he  found  in  the  city  editor  who  engaged  him,  one 
of  the  "  intellectual  experiences  "  of  his  life  —  Arthur 
Henry:  "  A  small  cherubic  individual,  with  a  complexion 
of  milk  and  cream,  light  brown  hair  and  a  serene  blue 
eye."  At  once  they  gossiped  about  Chicago  of  the  White- 

*  Except  as  in  native  music,  women's  underwear,  and  machinery, 
especially  automobiles;  hastily  sex  begins  to  rule  in  the  first  two,  and  art 
in  machinery. 

103 


chapel  Club  Days,  where  one  had  known  and  the  other 
known  of  Eugene  Field,  Peter  Dunne,  Ben  King.  They 
were  at  the  moment  linked  spiritually,  would  have  mar- 
ried, Dreiser  says,  if  Henry  had  been  a  girl.  Their  friend- 
ship lasted  for  years  "  through  storm  and  disillusion- 
ment." Arthur  Henry  was  the  spur  to  his  first  short 
story,  and  then  to  his  first  novel,  Sister  Carrie.  Today 
Henry  remembers  their  first  meeting  as  vividly  as  he  is 
remembered : 

"  I  am  vague  as  to  dates  —  but  I  was  city  editor  of  the 
Toledo  Blade  when  I  first  met  Dreiser.  I  looked  up  from 
my  desk  one  hectic  day  and  saw  him  beside  me.  He  was 
lank  and  tall.  Nothing  satirical  in  his  eyes  then  —  just  a 
burning  eagerness.  We  were  in  the  midst  of  violent  street 
car  strikes.  I  had  just  received  word  that  the  company  was 
about  to  start  a  strike-breaking  car  over  the  route  and  I 
had  no  one  to  send  at  the  moment  for  so  dangerous  a  con- 
signment. The  young  man  —  gaunt,  rugged,  a  little  di- 
shevelled and  dusty  from  his  travels,  was  asking  for  a  job 
and  I  dispatched  him  five  minutes  after  his  entrance.  He 
rode  with  the  car  and  returned  with  a  story.  I  read  it, 
rushed  it  to  the  composing  room,  hovered  over  it  and  read 
the  proof  myself  so  that  no  loyal  proof-reader  could  carry 
it  to  the  Owners  of  the  paper  and  have  it  killed  or  changed. 
It  was  a  great  story  and  nearly  lost  me  my  job.  Dreiser 
and  I  were  about  the  same  age  —  both  young  —  all  en- 
quiring and  fearless.  What  did  the  loss  of  a  job  amount  to 
compared  to  the  birth  of  a  great  story  and  the  finding  of  a 
perfect  friend?" 

For  a  while,  after  long  lunches  and  dinners  together, 
they  were  forced  to  separate,  since  there  was  no  perma- 
nent place  to  be  had  on  the  paper.  Dreiser  went  on  to 
Cleveland,  where  again  he  was  struck  by  the  residences  of 
the  rich  —  "  wide  lawns  and  iron  or  stone  statues  of  stags 
and  dogs  and  deer."  Here  these  were  the  homes  of  multi- 
millionaires, John  D.  Rockefeller,  Tom  Johnson,  Henry 
M.  Flagler.  He  got  work  on  the  Cleveland  Leader  doing 
Sunday  stories,  about  a  new  style  of  grain  boat,  turtle- 
back,  about  a  model  chicken  farm  near  the  city.  But  at 
three  dollars  a  column  this  was  inadequate.  So  on  again, 
this  time  to  Buffalo,  to  find  nothing  to  that  except  a  trip 
to  Niagara.  James  Oppenheim  tells  in  one  of  his  poems 
how  he  and  Dreiser  were  looking  one  evening  at  an  amaz- 
ing sunset  over  the  Hudson  River,  and  Oppenheim  said, 
104 


"  Could  you  describe  that,  Dreiser?  "  The  answer  was, 
"  Yes,  that  or  anything."  Niagara  here  comes  in  for  a 
slight  sketch,  one  paragraph,  and  it  has  with  all  his  pic- 
tures a  quality  of  discovery,  of  news  about  it  —  a  trait 
of  style  with  him. 

After  these  weeks  of  wandering,  finally  Pittsburgh  be- 
came a  home  again  for  six  months.  The  town  excited  him. 
Set  among  mountains,  which  he  saw  for  the  first  time, 
threaded  by  three  rivers  of  beautiful  names,  the  Monon- 
gahela,  the  Allegheny  and  the  Ohio,  under  a  mantle  of 
fiery  smoke  and  cinders,  it  was  the  setting  for  a  drama 
going  on  between  multimillionaire  and  wage  earner,  be- 
tween success  and  failure  —  a  theme  he  must  have  mulled 
over  from  then  on  until  he  had  to  write  The  Financier 
and  The  Titan,  in  which  he  decides  upon  the  conqueror  as 
hero.  The  picture  he  makes  of  Pittsburgh  in  A  Book 
About  Myself  is  among  his  best  canvases  —  its  steel 
works,  its  hovels  of  anaemic  laborers'  families,  its  rolling 
mills  and  power  plants,  and  again  its  millionaires'  houses. 
It  was  likewise  the  setting  for  a  drama  that  took  place  in 
his  own  mind. 

Pittsburgh  in  1894  had  come  through  two  years  of 
bloody  strikes.  Carnegie  and  Phipps  were  still  protecting 
their  properties  with  live-wire  fences  and  an  army  of 
Pinkerton  detectives.  It  was  a  war  to  combine  Carnegie 
and  Amalgamated  Steel,  to  break  the  power  of  the  single 
laborer,  to  fix  prices  so  that  multimillionaires  should  go 
over  into  the  billionaire  class.  It  was  the  first  era  of  mam- 
moth fortune-making  in  the  United  States,  to  be  repeated 
on  the  heels  of  the  Great  War.  "  Like  huge  ribbons  of 
fire  these  and  other  names  of  powerful  steel  men  —  the 
Olivers,  Thaws,  Pricks,  Thompsons  —  seemed  to  rise 
and  band  the  city."  The  least  protest  on  the  part  of  the 
people,  like  the  March  of  "  General  "  Coxey's  hobo  army 
on  Washington,  was  played  up  by  the  press  as  a  menace 
to  the  nation,  just  as  in  1930  similar  disturbances  in  New 
York  have  been  treated.  But  nothing  of  the  gigantic 
schemes  of  the  magnates  to  pervert  democracy  into  plu- 
tocracy, to  take  the  country  from  the  people  without  their 
knowing  it,  was  allowed  to  appear  in  the  two  Pittsburgh 
papers  —  only  the  weddings  and  amusements  of  these 

105 


families.  What  the  Dispatch,  where  Dreiser  had  found 
a  job  at  twenty-five  dollars  a  week,  valued  most,  aside 
from  ordinary  reporting,  were  leisurely  idle  stories,  the 
lighter  the  better,  nonsense  if  possible;  since  the  real 
news  was  too  subversive  to  print.  These  he  found  he 
could  write  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  editor  —  his  first 
actual  "  excursion  into  creative  work."  He  became  an 
accredited  feature  man,  taken  up  as  an  original  by  the 
editors  of  the  paper;  and  the  fashionable  son  of  the  pub- 
lisher told  him  he  "  wished  he  could  write  like  that,"  and 
asked  him  to  dine  at  his  house.  But  he  never  went,  though 
it  was  one  of  the  very  houses  he  had  so  often  envied  from 
the  outside.  Perhaps  the  difference  in  their  clothes  and 
manners  made  him  shy.  He  speaks  of  him  as  back  from 
Europe  in  "  fine  clothes." 

Through  this  success  he  came  to  be  an  out  of  town  cor- 
respondent. His  work  was  easy,  gave  him  time  to  wander 
about  these  precipitous  terraces,  to  watch  the  city  at  all 
times  of  day  and  night,  from  all  angles,  dominated  al- 
ways by  its  furnaces  and  their  "  enormous  group  of 
stacks  with  red  tongues  waving  in  the  wind."  With  a  la- 
bor agitator,  a  reporter  on  the  paper,  as  friend,  he  went 
among  the  families  of  the  working  men  getting  from 
$1.65  to  at  most  $4.00  a  day.  In  Allegheny,  across  the 
river,  where  he  lived  high  up  in  a  kind  of  cabin  from 
which  the  rivers  and  the  lights  of  Pittsburgh  were  in- 
spiration, he  used  to  read  in  the  Carnegie  library,  paid 
for  by  the  sweat  and  blood  of  the  steel  workers.  He  read 
Flaubert's  Madame  Bovary  and  Thomas  Hardy.  And 
especially  he  read  Balzac,  one  novel  after  another,  until 
he  came  to  confusing  Pittsburgh  and  Paris,  seemed  really 
to  be  living  in  the  French  city  among  the  people  of  the 
Human  Comedy.  And  he  thought,  why  shouldn't  he  learn 
to  make  novels  out  of  Pittsburgh  as  compelling  and  in- 
volved as  Balzac's?  Surely  life  ran  high  among  these 
rivers  and  cliffs,  veiled  in  cinders.  And  yet  there  was  al- 
ways New  York.  Perhaps  that  was  the  real  city  for  him. 
His  brother  Paul  had  told  him  so,  had  recently  written 
him  to  come  for  a  visit,  that  their  sister  E.  who  had  a 
house  in  Fifteenth  Street  would  be  delighted  if  he  came. 
In  July  he  induced  the  Dispatch  to  give  him  a  vacation 
106 


and  planned  to  see  for  himself.  First,  however,  he  felt 
that  he  must  go  back  to  his  fiancee  waiting  for  him  in 
Missouri. 

He  went  just  as  Eugene  Witla,  the  "  Genius,"  goes 
back  to  his  mid-Western  sweetheart,  and  found  her  more 
inflaming  than  ever,  among  the  cool  shadows,  and  wild 
roses  and  crickets'  chatter  of  her  father's  spacious  farm. 
His  memory  of  this  visit  recalls  the  house,  "  old  French 
windows  to  the  grass,  graceful  long  rooms,  verandahs 
before  it,  so  Southern  in  quality " ;  and  the  other  old 
houses,  scarcely  a  village  "  in  a  sea  of  corn  " ;  the  dis- 
tinction of  the  father  and  mother  and  brothers,  all  of 
them  living  within  American  ideals.  He  felt  there  "  the 
spirit  of  rural  America,"  the  sentiment  that  made  our 
songs  —  Old  Kentucky  Home,  Swanee  River  —  and  that 
had  made  "  the  passion  of  a  Brown,  the  patience  and  sad- 
ness of  a  Lincoln,  the  dreams  and  courage  of  a  Lee  or  a 
Jackson."  And  yet  he  had  seen  the  ferment  in  Pittsburgh 
of  Poles  and  Lithuanians  struggling  to  be  Americans  too 
against  odds,  and  "  had  seen  the  girls  of  that  city  walk- 
ing the  streets  at  night."  This  gracious  family  with  "  their 
profound  faith  in  God  ...  in  marriage  ...  in  no  wise 
squared  with  the  craft,  the  cruelty,  the  brutality,  the  envy 
.  .  .  everywhere  else." 

They  seemed  to  him  like  people  asleep.  He  longed  to 
wake  their  daughter  up  out  of  this,  to  seize  her  then  and 
there.  She  was  delicious,  they  were  both  in  a  torment  of 
desire  identified  with  the  odors  and  noises  of  the  fecund 
fields  around  them;  but  they  let  the  hour  go  by  without 
making  it  theirs.  He  went  away,  he  says,  the  romance 
ended.  Though  three  years  later  he  married  her,  desire 
was  gone;  back  in  Missouri  they  had  cheated  life  by  hold- 
ing it  off.  When  he  left  on  the  train  the  world  was  already 
greyer.  This  experience  is  enough  to  account  for  his  life- 
long exhortations  to  men  and  women  to  drink  deep,  and 
instantly,  not  to  wait  and  sip.  All  then  would  be  better? 
Perhaps  and  perhaps  not.  But  he  would  like  people  to 
try  living  that  way.  If  he  and  his  girl  had  at  that  moment 
struck  fire  together,  he  believes  an  annealment  of  temper 
between  them  would  have  taken  place,  and  made  a  more 
enduring  bond. 

107 


25 

"  New  York  is  a  city  of  many  cats.  Some 
say  New  York  is  Babylon.  There  is  a  rose 
and  gold  mist  New  York." 

CARL  SANDBURG 

A.  N  ew  York  in  1894 :  I  know  the  things  it  did 
not  have.  Not  automobiles,  but  broughams,  victorias, 
hansoms  and  tallyhos;  not  electric  lights,  but  gas  and  oil 
flames.  No  skyscrapers,  unless  the  Tower  Building,  tech- 
nically so  because  of  steel  construction.  And  it  was  still 
an  island  as  approached  from  Pittsburgh.  Travelers  got 
out  at  Jersey  City  in  a  glass  train-shed  of  a  station,  an 
achievement  of  Victorian  America,  more  truly  aesthetic, 
according  to  one  difficult  New  York  architect,  John  Oak- 
man,  than  any  modern  skyscraper.  And  then  by  shambling 
ferry-boats  they  arrived  in  New  York.  It  had  no  radios, 
no  speakeasies,  no  jazz,  no  lighted  billboards.  But  it  had 
the  social  climate  out  of  which  the  creation  which  is  to- 
day New  York  and  the  decadence  which  is  today  New 
York  were  to  emanate.  It  had  achieved  in  the  Nineties 
one  phase  of  its  exciting  originality. 

And  these  are  the  things  it  had  that  made  this  siren 
atmosphere  —  the  sea  and  boats  drawn  to  it  as  by  a  mag- 
net. The  rivers  and  estuaries,  the  sea  lagoons,  have  made 
among  three  rocky  islands  an  irresistible  harbor  through 
which  have  come  the  importations  of  the  human  world. 
Fabulous  works  of  art,  silks,  foods,  furs,  laces,  linens  and 
jewels,  unexcelled,  and  the  toys  of  the  peasants  of  the 
earth  have  docked  through  New  York.  And  before  they 
have  spread  to  blunted  cities  and  country  places,  and  their 
flavor  has  vanished  in  houses  half  afraid  of  their  sharp- 
ness, and  they  have  got  lost  in  a  seasick  nightmare  of  im- 
ported ineptitude  —  house  decoration,  exotic  food  and 
clothes  —  these  products,  as  they  were  taken  off  the  ships 
108 


and  stored  in  wholesale  houses  for  a  time,  or  displayed 
in  stores,  at  least  as  they  passed  through  the  city,  gave  it 
an  aroma  that  no  other  city  has  had.  New  York  is  the 
port  that  has  had  to  take  care  of  a  country  making  few 
luxuries  of  its  own.  Then,  too,  strange  people  came  with 
these  things,  to  sell  or  manufacture  them  —  Jews  and 
Syrians,  Italians  and  Armenians,  Chinese,  Spaniards,  and 
Portuguese  who  were  not  forced  to  become  native  at 
once.  They  settled  in  the  southeast  portions  of  the  city, 
in  neglected  streets  or  along  the  waterways,  and  scarcely 
changed  their  customs  or  language.  Their  life  was  like 
music  or  perfume  or  love  to  Westerners  after  the  sani- 
tary and  conforming  Middle  West.  In  spite  of  smells, 
fleas  and  garbage  heaps,  these  quarters  have  intoxicated 
susceptible  Americans  until  today,  when  now  the  immi- 
grants begin  to  cater  to  the  rule  of  cleanliness  and  cold- 
ness, which  is  a  matter  of  pride  with  New  Yorkers. 

Jean  Cocteau  was  once  quoted  as  citing  in  talk  an 
advantage  that  France  had  over  more  antiseptic  coun- 
tries: "  C'est  encore  un  fumier"  (a  dunghill).  New 
York  in  the  Nineties,  and  for  years  after  machinery  ruled 
it,  had  quarters  that  fertilized  the  rest  of  the  city.  They 
were  segregated  districts;  no  proper  person  crossed  into 
them  except  a  few  "  damn-fool "  or  would-be  "  damn- 
fool  artists."  Yet  a  flavor  of  Eastern,  Latin  and  Balkan 
races  hung  over  the  city,  however  assimilated.  Today, 
tempered  by  British-Dutch  precedent,  it  triumphs  in  Gug- 
genheims,  Lewisohns,  Kahns,  Roxys,  Koblers,  Ziegfelds, 
Zukors,  Liverights,  if  I  may  be  allowed  to  pluralize  these 
names,  now  traditional.  Some  came  from  cultivated  but 
unloved  families  in  Europe,  some  will  tell  you  how  it  is 
just  "  seventeen  years  from  push-cart  to  Park  avenue." 

And  then  beyond  the  fact  that  in  Avenue  A  large- 
bodied  and  coarse-pored  Jewesses  with  rich  undulated 
chevelures  (who  have  produced  a  generation  or  more  of 
acceptable  chorus  girls  and  light-weight  champions  and 
song-writers),  have  made  street-counters  of  fresh  eggs 
look  by  contrast  more  fragile  than  French  glassware, 
and  have  made  platters  of  exotic  fish  and  pickles  as  in- 
viting as  Korean  ornaments;  and  beyond  the  fact  that 
already  Sicilians  and  Florentines  and  Bolognese  had  hung 

109 


their  long  sausages  in  pink,  green,  cobalt  and  lemon- 
yellow  tinsel  in  the  windows  of  condiment  shops,  and  had 
placed  their  impeccable  sugar  tanagras  on  fete  days  in 
the  windows  of  their  cake  shops;  and  beyond  the  fact 
that  already  in  1894  samovars  and  seven-branched  candle- 
sticks had  undoubtedly  given  brass  and  copper  orgasms 
to  Murray  Hill  old  maids  and  bachelors  —  beyond  all  this, 
illumined  by  the  threadlike  oil  flames  of  innumerable  push- 
carts, beyond  and  slightly  flavored  by  it,  was  New  York 
the  gawdy  respectable  descendant  of  British-Dutch  mer- 
chants and  trappers.  It  had  like  no  other  American 
town  a  background  of  luxury.  Engravings  of  the  streets 
of  1800  are  as  elegant  as  London  streets  of  the  same 
period  with  painted  coaches  and  rearing  horses  and 
silver-trimmed  harnesses.  It  was  a  town  meant  for 
extravagance. 

In  1894  under  a  corrupt  political  rule  Dreiser  de- 
scribes it  as  badly  cleaned  and  lighted  compared  to  West- 
ern cities,  and  then  as  bewildering  to  him  in  the  sense  of 
social  splendor.  Already  his  brother  had  given  him  a  hint 
of  this;  and  journals  like  Town  Topics  and  The  Stand- 
ard, a  pornographic  theatre  weekly;  and  the  Pittsburgh 
papers  themselves,  who  catered  to  their  steel  colony  in 
its  effort  to  connect  with  the  Four  Hundred  and  with 
the  peerage  of  Europe.  The  names  of  Astor,  Goelet, 
McAllister,  Vanderbilt,  Gould  —  at  least  Dreiser  re- 
members these  as  names,  though  a  classicist  might  say 
Astor,  Stuyvesant,  Lorillard,  Spencer,  Harriman,  Wilson 
—  these  appeared  to  him  to  be  those  of  men  and  women 
who  held  the  city  in  their  laps. 

This  German-Slavic  Hoosier  of  twenty-three  is  like 
one  who  in  a  dream  has  concentrically  climbed  a  moun- 
tain, on  his  way  from  city  to  city;  and  always  at  one 
point  on  each  plane  finds  this  spot  of  gilt  and  glitter  with 
its  antithesis  of  darkness  and  misery.  Finally,  at  the  top 
of  the  table-land  there  is  New  York,  where  splendor  is 
beyond  calculation,  and  squalor,  too.  "  Nowhere  before 
had  I  seen  such  a  lavish  show  of  wealth  and  such  bitter 
poverty."  It  is  said  to  be  true  by  those  who  were  part 
of  it,  that  New  York  in  the  nineties  had  reached,  through 
Yankee  shrewdness  and  British  snobbery,  to  a  shallow 
no 


social  brilliance  not  since  equaled.  For  a  few  years  it 
maintained  this  equation.  People  talked  of  the  menace  of 
the  nouveaux-riches  from  the  West,  of  the  dangers  of  the 
great  melting-pot,  of  the  submerged  tenth  and  the  army 
of  the  unwashed,  but  they  were  not  frightened  yet.  They 
had  managed  a  brittle  aristocracy  that  extended  to  Phila- 
delphia, Baltimore  and  Washington,  and  slightly  to  Bos- 
ton, and  met  at  Newport  in  summer.  Edith  Wharton  was 
their  novelist,  Stanford  White  their  architect. 

Yet  Mrs.  Wharton  never  apprehended  them  from  the 
inside  as  acutely  as  does  Dreiser  briefly  from  the  outside. 
For  one  thing  she  is  Puritan,  indicting  them  for  the  loos- 
ening of  their  standards  that  came  with  power.  In  her 
books  the  reader  is  not  so  much  dazzled  by  the  display 
or  effrontery  of  the  Nineties,  as  irritated  by  a  coldness 
and  cruelty  this  novelist  is  unable  to  analyze.  One  does 
not  meet  there  the  Texan  dandy  from  the  East  who, 
naked,  puts  on  his  silk  hat  on  New  Year's  day  and  steps 
into  a  cab  to  make  his  rounds  of  the  houses  of  pleasure,  and 
maybe  ends  life  in  one.  One  meets  there  the  bewildered 
lost  lady,  declassed  and  unloved,  no  one  quite  knows  why, 
on  her  way  down  to  being  governess  in  the  very  homes 
where  once  she  was  a  favorite.  I  supposed  what  happened 
to  this  society  was  that  cautious  rather  than  adventurous 
historians  were  integral  to  it.  Mrs.  Wharton  (and  later 
Mrs.  Atherton  and  Willa  Gather)  too  often  reads  like 
high-class  society  editors  or  feature  writers  for  women. 
And  when  geniuses  were  born  within  it  they  divorced 
themselves  as  quick  as  they  could  and  lent  it  none  of  their 
strength.  That  is,  although  this  class  grew  away  from 
Europe  materially,  intellectually  it  never  grew  at  all;  it 
remained  Colonial.  Mrs.  John  Jacob  Astor,  queen  of  it, 
was  displeased  with  her  son-in-law  for  dining  with  Mark 
Twain,  and  is  quoted  as  saying  that  to  have  friends  among 
artists  and  writers  must  be  very  unpleasant.*  Ideas  were 
noxious  to  them  as  a  class,  and  the  people  who  had  them 
were  shabby,  untidy,  impossible.  The  period  died  of  the 
Colonial  germ.  When  Jews,  cultivated  or  merely  emi- 
grant, when  unpedigreed  "  poor  whites  "  came  out  of  the 
melting-pot  with  their  quick  fortunes,  the  aristocrats  had 

*  Thomas  Beer:  Stephen  Crane. 

Ill 


nothing  to  fight  them  with  that  money  could  not  buy, 
except  brief  right  of  birth.  With  no  program  of  the 
spirit  to  justify  this  prerogative,  it  fell  before  the  promis- 
cuous billionaire.  Today  the  story  called  The  Four  Hun- 
dred is  a  dead  romance,  never  recorded  by  a  master. 

In  1894  Dreiser  saw  a  corner  of  its  entertainment 
world  under  the  chaperonage  of  Paul  Dresser.  He  tells 
how  his  brother  met  him  at  seven  in  the  morning  in  Jer- 
sey City,  and  they  made  their  way  by  ferry  to  Christopher 
Street,  and  past  houses  which  seemed  to  him  of  "  an  aged 
and  contemptible  appearance,"  but  Paul  told  him  to  wait, 
that  the  charm  of  New  York  was  its  mingling  of  new  and 
old.  In  a  narrow  brown-stone  house  in  Fifteenth  Street, 
they  found  his  sister  waiting.  Once  she  had  been  the  bad 
heroine  of  the  family,  having  eloped  many  years  before 
with  a  Chicago  business  man,  who  had  left  wife  and  chil- 
dren and  a  good  position  to  go  with  her.  She  was  matronly 
now,  no  longer  "  trim  and  beautiful,"  and  the  husband 
somewhat  fallen  in  fortune,  but  she  welcomed  him  with 
"  much  talking  and  laughing,"  and  the  breakfast  of  steak, 
brown  gravy  and  "  creamy  "  biscuit  was  all  that  break- 
fast should  be  to  a  member  of  this  family.  As  he  sat  with 
them,  wondering  if  New  York  was  going  to  be  glamor- 
ous after  all,  or  only  huge  and  cold,  he  heard  "  strange 
moanings  and  blowings,"  and  asked  what  they  were: 
"  Boats,  tugs,  and  vessels  in  the  harbor.  There's  a  fog  on." 
—  "  How  far  away  are  they?  "  —  u  Anywhere  from  one 
to  ten  miles."  Then  he  says,  "  Suddenly  the  full  majesty 
of  the  sea  sweeping  about  this  island  at  this  point  caught 
me.  ...  Its  great  buildings  and  streets  were  all  washed 
about  by  that  sea-green  salty  food.  .  .  .  And  beyond 
[was]  the  silence  .  .  .  the  deadly  earnestness  of  the  sea." 
Did  they  ever  think,  he  asked  them,  how  wonderful  it  was 
to  have  the  sea  so  close?  No,  his  sister  and  husband  said, 
they  couldn't  say  that  they  did.  It  seemed  to  him  now  that 
he  would  like  to  live  in  New  York.  Paul  agreed,  "  It's 
wonderful,  my  boy,  .  .  .  Great  subject,  the  sea.  .  .  . 
Didn't  I  tell  you  they  all  fall  for  it !  Now  it's  the  ocean 
vessels  that  get  him.  You  take  my  advice  .  .  .  and  move 
down  here.  The  quicker  the  better.  .  .  ." 

Then  they  went  out  to  see  the  city.  First  his  brother 
112 


took  him  to  his  office  in  Twentieth  Street  and  Fifth  Ave- 
nue, Howley  Haviland  and  Company  —  a  song-publishing 
house,  which  through  Paul's  prestige,  and  the  shrewdness 
of  the  two  partners  (one  a  hunchback,  a  luck-sign  in  In- 
diana) was  to  make  a  small  fortune  for  him  and  a  year 
or  so  later  to  give  an  opening  to  Theodore  as  an  editor. 
Then  in  a  hansom  cab  he  pointed  out  the  stores,  Lord  and 
Taylor,  Altaian's  at  Eighteenth,  Tiffany's  at  Fifteenth 
and  Broadway,  Brentano's  in  Union  Square;  and  very 
lovingly  the  theatres,  The  Old  Star,  once  Lester  Wai- 
lack's,  and  further  uptown,  Palmer's,  Augustin  Daly's, 
The  Manhattan,  The  Casino,  and  Koster  and  Bial's 
Music  Hall,  managed  by  Oscar  Hammerstein  and  pat- 
ronized by  the  arrived  originals  of  the  town.  His  brother 
went  back  to  twenty  years  before,  when  the  great  theatres 
were  down  below  Union  Square,  Niblo's  and  The  London 
on  The  Bowery,  and  sighed  for  the  talent  of  a  day  gone  by. 
Dreiser  listened  impatiently:  "  What  had  been  had  been. 
...  I  was  new  and  strange  and  wished  to  see  only  what 
was  new  and  wonderful." 

So  the  brothers  ambled  and  talked,  slightly  at  odds, 
one  the  future  author  of  My  Gal  Sal,  the  other  of  Sister 
Carrie,  Paul  gossiping  about  the  big  hotels,  just  which 
kind  of  people  went  to  this  or  that,  and  explaining  that 
the  Waldorf  and  Delmonico's  were  "  the  last  word  for 
the  rich  or  fashionable."  At  Forty-second  Street  the  limit 
of  the  Rialto,  they  stopped,  Paul  saying,  u  Well  here's 
the  end,"  and  went  into  the  Metropole  for  a  drink.  Here, 
he  says,  his  brother  was  at  his  best;  everyone  seemed  to 
know  him  —  prize-fighters,  thespians,  vaudeville  upstarts, 
retired  miners,  and  ranchmen.  Both  here  and  on  their 
way  back  along  Broadway,  there  was  much  slapping  of 
backs,  plucking  of  lapels,  exchange  of  scandals  and  side- 
splitting stories.  That  evening  it  was  the  same,  when  the 
brothers  met  again,  at  the  end  of  an  afternoon  in  which 
Theodore  had  explored  the  upper  fifties  and  sixties,  agog 
as  always  before  the  "  residences  of  the  great."  At  a  ren- 
dezvous for  players  and  singers,  the  Hotel  Aulic,  in  a 
"  world  of  glittering  spinning  flies  ...  in  showy  clothes 
.  .  .  laughing,  jesting,  expectorating,"  his  brother  was  a 
favorite.  One  can  see  these  men  and  women  —  enormous 


sleeves  that  made  their  throats  seem  small  and  fragile, 
moulded  bosoms,  tiny  waists,  spreading  skirts  and  petti- 
coats that  diminished  feet  and  ankles.  One  can  see  the 
ruffles,  flowers,  plumes,  curls  and  transformations;  and 
then  the  pompous  side-burns  of  the  generation  before, 
waistcoats,  gold  watch  chains ;  and  the  cutaways,  slender 
canes,  striped  and  checkered  trousers,  derbies  and  long 
curling  moustaches  of  the  younger  dandies. 

He  basked  in  the  sense  it  gave  him  of  being  actually 
related  for  the  moment  to  New  York,  through  this  mag- 
net, who  was  not  a  power  in  the  town,  and  yet  was  so 
endearing  and  successful  a  play-boy. 

Paul  was  thoughtful  too  of  his  younger  brother;  and 
that  first  morning  on  their  way  from  Union  Square  to 
Forty-second  Street,  pointed  out  the  Century  Company, 
and  suggested  that  some  day  he  might  be  connected  with 
it.  He  guessed  that  "  Thee  "  was  destined  for  an  intel- 
lectual field,  without  having  to  know  what  intellect  is. 
Like  Maxwell  and  the  newspaper  men  he  inculcated  a 
germ :  "  Sometime  you  ought  to  write  about  these  things, 
Thee.  They're  the  limit  for  extravagance  and  show.  The 
people  out  West  don't  know  yet  what's  going  on,  but  the 
rich  are  getting  control.  They'll  own  the  country  pretty 
soon.  A  writer  like  you  could  make  'em  see  that."  Not  ex- 
perienced in  literature,  which  along  with  all  art  was  to  be 
called  "  high-brow  "  by  the  run  of  readers  for  years  to 
come,  he  could  say  this  nai've  thing,  that  his  brother  ought 
to  write  about  these  extremes  and  that  the  Century  Com- 
pany—  might  print  and  sell  the  work.  Had  he  read  Scrib- 
ner's,  Century,  Harper's  and  The  Atlantic  Monthly  for 
the  year  1894,  he  might  have  known  better. 


114 


"  Change  '  breech-clout.'  It's  a  word  that 
you  love  and  I  abominate.  I  would  take 
that  and  '  offal '  out  of  the  language."  — 
"  You  are  steadily  weakening  the  English 
tongue,  Livy."  FROM  A  DIALOGUE  BETWEEN 
MARK  TWAIN  AND  His  WIFE 

"  Frankness  is  a  jewel;  only  the  young  can 
afford  it."  MARK  TWAIN 


owells  was  the  arbiter,  also  from  the  Mid- 
dle West,  Ohio,  but  out  of  New  England  parents.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  endurance  and  of  nicety  to  native 
fact  —  or  was  it  incident?  —  I  suppose  Howells  was  a 
writer.  I  am  a  reader  who  will  never  know.  Try  as  I 
will,  I  can't  read  him,  neither  his  Easy  Chair  for  Harper's 
Magazine,  nor  his  endless  novels.  He  wrote  for  the  gentry 
of  his  times,  and  must  have  put  to  sleep  the  more  restless 
members,  such  as  made  the  financial  panics  of  the  day  and 
conceived  the  trusts  and  railroads,  or  died  disreputably, 
or  gave  their  fathers'  money  for  European  titles  or 
to  the  Prince  of  Monaco.  He  and  his  associates  derived 
from  Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Lowell,  Longfellow,  Holmes, 
Whittier  and  Bryant.  They  never  had  taken  much  into 
account  the  unlimited  Americans,  Poe,  or  Melville,  Whit- 
man, or  even  Thoreau,  except  as  he  belonged  to  the  Con- 
cord school.  Emerson,  a  philosophic  architect  with  a  lucid 
brain,  at  eighty  confided  to  a  friend  that  "  pink  ribbons  " 
were  of  greater  importance  than  he  had  ever  known  how 
to  make  them.  That  is,  he  hankered  after  something  he 
had  been  ashamed  to  take.  And  beyond  that,  though  he 
is  praised  as  a  champion  of  Walt  Whitman,  he  wrote  a 
letter  to  Carlyle,  in  which  he  tells  him  he  is  sending  him 
poems  of  a  crazy  protege  of  his;  possibly  they  will  in- 


terest  him;  if  not  he  can  use  them  "  to  light  his  pipe 
with."  His  lucid  brain  was  blocked  with  puritanism,  and 
so  blocked  the  softening  American  critics  immediately  to 
follow  him.  Hawthorne  was  a  New  England  gentleman, 
too,  with  neurotic  fears.  When  Melville  sought  him  out 
in  Liverpool  after  years  of  intimacy  and  then  of  separa- 
tion, they  walked  together  along  the  strand  in  Southport. 
Melville  told  him  he  could  not  believe  in  Christianity; 
that  "  there  was  no  place  for  him  in  America,  his  best  and 
deepest  work  .  .  .  was  lightly  tossed  aside  [there]  ; 
.  .  .  [he]  would  not  commit  suicide;  that  was  a  weak 
way  out;  but  he  might  withdraw."  *  To  this  confession  of 
loneliness,  and  outcry  for  understanding,  Mumford  re- 
cords that  Hawthorne  had  nothing  to  say.  Already  he  had 
written  into  Ethan  Brand  a  portrait  of  Melville  where  he 
endowed  him  with  intellect  and  no  heart,  thus  like  a 
Christian  dividing  the  two. 

These  sedate  New  Yorkers  of  the  Nineties,  William 
Dean  Howells,  George  William  Curtis,  Brander  Mat- 
thews, Robert  Underwood  Johnson,  and  their  Boston 
confreres,  Barrett  Wendell,  George  Woodberry,  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich  —  a  lyricist,  nearly  a  poet  —  Charles 
Dudley  Warner,  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  were  surely  sons 
of  the  New  England  legend  where  tameness  triumphed 
over  origin  and  etiquette  over  meaning  and  three  names 
over  two.  Although  the  critical  reviews  of  this  decade  made 
references  to  foreign  art —  to  Zola,  Flaubert,  Turgenieff, 
Tolstoi,  Hardy,  Meredith;  the  issues  they  stood  for  are 
evaded  as  French  or  Russian,  peasant  or  perverse,  never 
faced  as  universal.  And  one  looks  in  vain  in  these  polite 
literary  columns  for  news  of  the  more  fragile  prodigies 
of  that  day  —  Yeats,  Beerbohm,  Rimbaud,  Mallarme, 
Verlaine,  Adam,  Baudelaire.  And  Anatole  France,  the 
modern  youth  of  them,  was  unknown  to  Americans.  It 
was  a  genteel  record  of  life  and  letters,  less  fiercely  ascetic 
and  therefore  less  dramatic  than  with  its  Concord  parents, 
but  never  quarreling  with  them;  and  in  no  way  squaring 
with  the  new  greedy  material  splendor  New  York  was 
building  for  the  country.  Henry  James  alone  apprehended 
its  advent;  and  he  took  it  off  to  England  to  extract  its 

*  Lewis  Mumford :  Herman  Melville. 

116 


fangs,  as  far  as  he  was  concerned,  by  exposing  it  to 
European  worldliness. 

At  the  same  moment  there  was  as  compensation  and 
as  panderer,  Mark  Twain,  lively  as  the  human  race,  indis- 
putable as  the  Mississippi.  To  read  him  gives  unmitigated 
joy  to  one  prepared  for  cold  laughter  and  almost  never 
for  tears.  Toward  the  end  he  says  to  a  friend,  "  At  last  the 
luxury  of  writing  for  myself,"  and  wrote  The  Mysterious 
Stranger,  not  to  be  published  until  after  his  death;  in 
which  he  gives  himself  the  luxury  of  sweeping  away  the 
human  race,  as  if  too  unreal  and  ephemeral  to  conserve 
itself  —  a  thing  of  pain  and  defeat.  Mark  Twain,  the 
great  nihilist!  And  yet  impotent  to  annihilate  either  his 
wife  or  Howells  as  arbiters  of  what  he  should  commit  to 
writing !  *  Secretly  and  anonymously  he  at  one  time 
printed  a  conversation  between  Queen  Elizabeth,  Raleigh, 
Shakespeare,  and  others  of  an  era  he  must  have  coveted, 
where  much  is  made  of  "f  —  ks  "  and  "f  —  ts."  t  It 
reads  as  if  to  Mark  Twain,  as  to  any  good  Christian, 
sex  was  dirt,  not  that  excrement  was  a  perverse  mystery. 
It  is  probable  that  he  never  showed  it  to  his  wife  or  to 
Howells. 

There  were  others  in  his  wake  as  in  the  wake  of 
Howells  —  Cable,  Stockton,  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin,  Joel 
Chandler  Harris,  who  filled  the  magazines  with  very 
charming  stories  of  humor  and  adventure  and  local  color, 
as  influenced  by  Twain.  They  were  lightly  seductive  sto- 
ries, bringing  gentle  tears,  and  in  no  sense  confronting 
their  readers  with  fierce  storms,  or  grey  eternities  or  fatal 
ecstasies.  Yet  Twain  himself  never  wrote  for  humor  or 
color,  but  irresistibly  for  the  meaning  that  was  in  him, 
which  was  crossed  by  but  one  foreign  element  —  diplo- 
macy. 

Although  already  Dreiser  planned  to  be  a  writer,  ap- 
parently he  asked  little  about  the  writers  of  the  day. 

*  "  Mrs.  Clemens  was  the  making  of  Mr.  Clemens.  He  really  had  a 
very  vulgar  streak.  She  went  over  everything  he  wrote  and  took  out 
everything  he  would  not  like  to  see  published.  He  relied  absolutely  on  her 
judgement."  Related  to  me  by  a  friend  of  Mrs.  Clemens,  a  lady  of  the 
Nineties,  type  of  the  American  dowager,  now  extinct. 

f  American  wholesale  distributors  as  late  as  1931  still  require  the  head 
in  the  sand  for  a  number  of  such  words. 

II/ 


It  was  not  that  aspect  of  the  place  that  occupied  him;  it 
was  the  spectacle  of  living  in  New  York,  which  meant  to 
him  American  life  at  its  highest  voltage.  And  even  if  his 
guide  had  taken  him  among  writers  and  painters  rather 
than  players  and  spendthrifts,  he  might  have  been  dis- 
appointed, puzzled  by  the  way  that  life  was  Balzacian  and 
literature  was  moral.  Even  suppose  he  had  had  the  luck 
to  talk  with  the  masterly  Mark  Twain,  perhaps  he  would 
have  met  the  mysterious  stranger  in  a  less  generous  mood 
than  when  he  disillusioned  the  two  boys  in  the  forest.  Or 
had  he  happened  to  fall  among  the  rebels  of  his  own  age 
at  Allaire's  in  Seventeenth  Street,  at  Koster  and  Dial's, 
or  the  Lantern  Club,  or  Mouquin's,  where  tradition  says 
they  met  in  the  Nineties,  it  might  possibly  have  been  that 
he  and  Stephen  Crane  would  have  sparked  as  against 
tameness.  But  more  likely  Crane,  with  less  patience  than 
Dreiser  and  more  prejudices,  and  with  a  head-start  in 
awareness,  was  already  tired  of  trying  to  "  make  out  "  in 
a  raw  and  moral  country,  and  was  turned  away  from 
natives  and  toward  England,  where,  he  said,  "  You  can 
have  an  idea  without  being  sent  to  court  for  it."  ...  At 
least  in  the  company  of  Paul  and  his  Rialto  friends  the 
young  pilgrim  had  the  fun  of  jokes  and  comments  as 
ribald  as  Twain's  Elizabethan  dialogue,  and  more  up-to- 
date.  Unselfconscious,  not  critical,  life  was  and  has  been 
Dreiser's  chief  medium  of  experience. 

New  York,  he  said  to  himself,  was  not  beautiful,  but 
it  had  "  the  magnetism  of  large  bodies  over  small  ones, 
..."  a  quality  of  zest  and  security  and  ease,  cheek  by 
jowl  with  poverty  and  longing  and  sacrifice,  which  gives 
to  life  everywhere  its  keenest  most  pathetic  edge.  .  .  . 
It  had  the  feeling  of  gross  and  blissful  and  parading  self- 
indulgence."  He  looked  at  the  surfaces  of  everything,  and 
tried  to  guess  the  meanings.  He  crossed  the  Brooklyn 
Bridge,  walked  in  the  Wall  Street  districts  and  through 
the  areas  between  them  and  Union  Square,  less  haunted 
by  their  miseries  than  a  few  months  later  when  he  came 
back  to  stay  —  alone.  The  city  had  worked  its  enchant- 
ment. But  he  needed  money  to  enter.  He  would  go  back 
to  Pittsburgh  and  see  if  he  could  save  enough  dollars  to 
dare  force  an  entrance. 
118 


25 

Huxley,    Tyndall,   Spencer,   Balzac,    and 
Pulitzer. 


our  months  more  on  the  Pittsburgh  Dispatch, 
and  Dreiser  had  managed  to  save  two  hundred  and  forty 
dollars,  but  only  by  living  on  so  little  that  he  believes  his 
health  suffered,  and  handicapped  him  when  he  did  get 
back  to  the  "  great  city."  In  these  four  months  he  em- 
barked on  another  drama  of  the  mind.  He  came  upon 
Huxley,  Tyndall  and  Spencer,  read  First  Principles,  Sci- 
ence and  Hebrew  Tradition,  Science  and  Christian  Tradi- 
tion, and  they  "  blew  me  intellectually  to  bits."  Now  "  the 
last  lingering  filaments  of  Catholicism  "  were  gone.  And 
more  than  that  with  them  he  says  went  his  personal  at- 
titude toward  life,  his  "  blazing  ambition  to  get  on." 
And  he  cut  with  old  anchors  completely  like  a  disillu- 
sioned Catholic;  not  like  his  British  teachers,  who  trans- 
ferred divinity  to  themselves  and  inaugurated  the  era 
of  the  progressive  individual,  the  age  of  the  substantive: 
"  I  am  the  master  of  my  fate,  I  am  the  captain  of  my 
soul." 

Suddenly  for  this  Catholic  boy  if  man  were  but  an 
infinitesimal  speck  in  the  solar  system,  and  that  in  turn 
but  a  speck  in  the  infinite  universe,  really  there  was  no 
place  to  go.  "  One  lived  and  had  his  being  because  he  had 
to,  and  ...  it  was  of  no  importance."  He  ceased  think- 
ing of  himself  as  a  creature  who  must  push  up  and  on  and 
at  the  top  of  the  ladder  would  receive  rewards.  Out  of 
this  nightmare  of  magnitude  and  littleness  that  the  scien- 
tists gave  him,  perhaps  Dreiser  has  never  entirely  awak- 
ened. It  colors  him  with  nineteenth  century  radicalism,  as 
science  forced  thought  away  from  the  intimate  miracles 
of  Jesus  and  Mary;  and  if  it  retained  a  shade  of  Biblical 

119 


teaching,  it  was  in  harmony  with  the  bleakness  of  the  Old 
Testament  —  "  Vanity  of  vanities;  all  is  vanity." 

Moreover,  to  measure  by  extensions  in  time  and  space 
was  native  to  him;  his  dream  of  success  had  been  meas- 
ured this  way.  A  more  sensuous  artist,  a  less  American 
soul,  would  have  been  held  within  the  seduction  of  inner 
relations;  haunted  by  quality  to  the  ignoring  of  quantity; 
infatuated  with  material  for  the  particular  crisis  he  could 
bring  out  of  it ;  and  would  feel  more  kinship  with  the  un- 
hopeful inquirers  of  today  than  with  these  mastodons  of 
the  last  century.  By  the  echo  of  recent  science  —  con- 
cerned with  intricate  arrangement  —  Dreiser,  always 
courting  the  scientists,  is  not  yet  beguiled.  In  the  Forum, 
November,  1930,  he  chants  the  aeons  and  the  vastnesses 
of  the  universe,  and  the  insignificance  of  the  human  being, 
to  whom  no  answer  at  all  is  given. 

Yet  the  change  in  thought  that  is  called  the  present 
has  seeds  in  the  change  of  thought  which  is  called  the 
immediate  past.  And  the  giant  of  one  mode  of  thought  is 
related  more  actually  to  giants  of  another,  than  he  is  to 
the  smaller  people  of  his  own  mode.  Labels  are  lost  as 
intensity  increases.  Dreiser  has  reached  through  his  years 
of  achievement  into  a  class  where  labels  are  indicative  and 
yet  contradictory.  The  metaphysician  in  him,  still  seeking 
a  complete  answer,  presents  a  sea  of  data  out  of  which 
relations  take  form.  And  the  artist  in  him  in  pursuit  of 
crisis  recreates  the  data. 

Alone  in  Pittsburgh  at  the  age  of  twenty-three  he  was 
however  for  the  time  being  that  new  thing  —  an  infinitesi- 
mal atom,  and  so  was  everyone  else.  What  to  do  about  it? 
Nothing,  except  to  live  the  patient  life  of  an  atom  accord- 
ing to  its  properties.  And  what  were  his  gifts  as  atom?  To 
observe  and  record,  he  hoped,  as  Balzac  in  France  ob- 
served and  recorded  and  in  ant  fashion  built  a  monument. 
Yet  his  old  dreams  of  individual  splendor  still  begged  not 
to  be  forgotten.  It  might  be,  in  fact  now  he  was  certain  of 
it,  that  New  York  would  be  the  city  where  he  could  enter 
into  a  combination  more  proper  to  him  as  atom.  In  No- 
vember he  resigned  from  the  Dispatch,  and  with  his  two 
hundred  and  forty  dollars  proceeded  to  his  sister's  house 
in  Fifteenth  Street. 
120 


Again  as  four  years  before  in  Chicago,  he  went  the 
rounds  of  the  great  papers  of  the  town,  first  the  World, 
then  the  Sun,  then  the  Herald,  and  again  met  the  answer 
just  as  if  he  had  entered  into  a  new  planet,  "  No  vacan- 
cies." Only  here  in  this  more  elaborate  city  a  company 
of  office  boys,  "  supercilious,  scoffing  and  ribald,"  pro- 
tecting the  city  editor,  would  fling  the  news  at  him,  "  He 
says  to  say  no  vacancies."  If  he  asked  to  see  him  any- 
way, "  No,  he  don't  want  to  see  anybody,  no  vacancies." 
At  the  end  of  the  second  day,  he  says,  he  looked  at  the 
cold  buildings  fronting  on  City  Hall  Park  and  at  the 
loafers  and  bums  and  tramps  on  the  benches  chilled  by 
December  weather,  and  then  walking  up  Broadway  to 
Union  Square  past  the  Christmas  throng  at  Tiffany's,  com- 
paring the  excluded  and  the  excluders,  the  idea  of  Hurst- 
wood  was  born  — that  oblong  triumph  of  the  portrait  of 
a  failure  in  Sister  Carrie. 

The  next  day  he  determined  to  break  in  past  the  boys, 
and  did,  "  brushed  them  off  like  flies,"  opened  the  "  much- 
guarded  door  "  and  stepped  into  the  editorial  room  of 
The  New  York  World.  Even  then,  he  thinks  he  might 
have  been  thrown  out,  had  it  not  been  for  a  quick  young 
man  whom  evidently  curiosity  led  to  ask  what  it  was 
he  wanted.  "  I  want  a  job."  —  "  Where  do  you  come 
from?  "  —  "  The  West."  It  was,  as  if  in  a  modern  fable, 
Arthur  Brisbane,  inviting  him  to  wait,  stepping  over  to 
the  city  editor,  pointing  to  him  and  saying,  "  This  young 
man  wants  a  job.  I  wish  you  would  give  him  one."  So 
these  two,  not  much  associated  afterwards,  were  joined 
for  a  second  in  fate,  undoubtedly  by  their  fantastic  na- 
tive force,  Brisbane  recognizing  this  much  of  himself  in 
Dreiser. 

He  got  the  job  on  the  World  under  Joseph  Pulitzer, 
"  the  Magyar  Jew,  a  disease-demonized  soul  .  .  ." 
he  labels  him,  "  who  had  taken  the  championship  of  jour- 
nalism away  from  Dana  and  Bennett,  as  Hearst  was  later 
to  take  it  from  him."  Though  on  his  yacht  or  in  Europe 
or  Bar  Harbor  at  the  time,  not  often  in  New  York  these 
days,  Dreiser  says  the  air  "  sizzled  with  the  ionic  rays 
of  this  black  star."  His  road  to  success  lay  through  at- 
tacking everything,  social,  political,  financial,  that  he 

121 


could  control.  He  had  submitted  to  horse-whipping  once 
by  a  citizen  he  had  libeled,  and  then  had  rushed  to  his 
paper  to  use  it  as  news  for  an  extra.  A  managing  editor, 
without  arrest  or  punishment,  had  shot  and  killed  a  man 
come  to  his  office  to  protest  against  exposure.  Five  secre- 
taries and  seven  managing  editors  maintained  a  spy  sys- 
tem, one  against  the  other  and  over  all  their  subordinates, 
and  carried  the  news  to  Pulitzer.  Everyone,  Dreiser  came 
to  think,  had  a  "  nervous,  resentful  terror  in  their  eyes, 
as  have  animals  when  they  are  tortured/'  *  To  him,  the 
air  of  the  place  was  vibrant  as  generated  by  a  man  who 
had  the  unbridled  ambition  of  his  own  dreams,  and 
was  terrifying  as  if  disaster  hung  in  it.  One  wonders  as 
one  reads  if  the  cruel  vitality  of  this  atmosphere  arose  out 
of  something  native  to  Manhattan,  or  if  the  Pulitzer 
policy  has  not  actually  helped  to  lend1  these  qualities  to 
the  town,  since  then  become  native  to  it.  Many  West- 
erners, like  this  reporter,  have  been  stabbed  by  what  they 
call  the  heartlessness  of  New  York,  and  what  Europeans 
call  its  frigidity.  Anglo  Saxons  suffer  from  it;  Latins  de- 
ride it;  the  Irish  enjoy  it;  Jews  thrive  on  it. 

To  Dreiser  it  meant  failure  for  a  time  —  his  first 
since  he  left  the  hardware  business.  He  was  given  only 
minor  assignments  and  what  was  worse  never  permitted 
to  write  them  up.  He  was  told  he  "  couldn't  write  "  — 
a  thing  said  to  him  by  New  Yorkers  ever  since.  There 
were  men  from  St.  Louis  and  their  friends,  reporters  on 
the  World  —  "  completely  disillusioned,"  with  whom  he 
used  to  sit  about  and  talk.  They  came  all  of  them  to 
the  same  conclusion:  "  New  York  was  difficult  and  re- 
volting," and  yet  challenging  too.  He  would  not  go  back 
to  the  West,  a  failure  —  "  not  yet."  He  puzzles  over  his 
defeat:  Perhaps  he  was  too  green,  callow,  to  be  of  use  in 
so  "  ruthless  "  and  "  subtle  "  a  town:  perhaps  he  was  too 
much  in  awe  of  the  social  brilliance  of  the  place.  Once  by 
chance  a  story  of  his  appeared  as  he  wrote  it  on  the 
first  page,  and  the  city  editor  had  noticed  it  enough  to 
trust  him  with  more  important  work.  But  unhappily  the 
assignment  involved  interviewing  "  a  well-known  youth 
of  great  wealth,"  probably  a  scion  of  that  so  formidable 

*  From  A  Book  About  Myself. 
122 


"  four  hundred.'*  His  courage  failed  him,  though  if  he 
had  been  sent  among  thieves  and  cutthroats,  he  would 
have  gone  and  come  back  with  a  story.  After  that  there 
were  no  more  favors.  Yet  he  was  only  five  years,  he 
reasons,  from  writing  Sister  Carrie;  he  should  have  been 
worth  something  to  these  editors.  But  more  and  more 
he  came  to  feel  their  sense  of  his  unimportance.  One 
day  complaining  of  neglect,  he  resigned,  and  the  city 
editor  said  it  was  just  as  well,  that  he  had  not  been  of 
much  use  to  them.  He  had  better  try  the  Sun. 


123 


26 

The  cleavage  from  ancestry:  Fuller,  Gar- 
land, Crane,  N orris. 


o  ended  his  newspaper  days  in  a  swamp  of 
depression,  out  of  which  he  says  has  come  much  of  his 
understanding  of  lonely  destitute  people.  He  tried  half- 
heartedly to  get  a  job  on  another  paper  but  no  one 
wanted  him.  By  this  time  he  had  left  his  sister's  house, 
unable  to  pay  for  so  good  a  room.  He  took  a  hall  bedroom 
on  Fourth  Street  east  of  the  Bowery  at  $1.50  a  week  in 
what  was  called  a  bed  house.  The  landlady  was  good  to 
him,  gave  him  the  room,  he  thought,  as  a  screen  against 
the  police.  He  ate  at  Childs'  restaurants.  For  the  rest,  he 
decided  that  though  he  had  failed  as  a  journalist,  now  was 
the  time  to  succeed  as  a  fiction  writer.  Reports  of  how 
Rudyard  Kipling,  R.  H.  Davis,  David  Graham  Phillips, 
Stephen  Crane,  like  him  starting  on  newspapers,  were 
now  brilliant  writers  of  fiction,  embittered  and  spurred 
him.  His  money  was  not  gone,  he  was  not  done  for 
yet.  He  stalked  the  town  to  find  stories  to  write  about, 
and  was  diligent  in  reading  the  important  magazines 
to  see  what  kind  of  fiction  sold  best,  or  at  all.  He  studied 
Munsey's,  Harper's,  Century,  Atlantic  Monthly,  dis- 
couraged by  the  fact  that  "  all  their  stories  had  the  puri- 
tan complex;  the  hero  and  heroine  were  always  saved, 
they  ended  just  right  in  peace  and  sweetness."  Yet  back 
in  St.  Louis  days  he  had  read  Henry  B.  Fuller's  With 
the  Procession  and  had  felt  in  him  a  man  seriously  doing 
what  he  would  like  to  do  —  write  about  life  as  he  saw 
it.  And  he  had  read  Hamlin  Garland's  Main  Travelled 
Roads,  clumsier  than  Fuller  and  yet  true  to  the  Middle 
West.  The  scene-painter  he  worked  for  in  Chicago  had 
told  him  that  Whitman's  Leaves  of  Grass  tallied  with  his 
own  talk  and  was  great  writing.  The  book  was  hard  to 
124 


find,  he  was  still  looking  for  it.  Now  apparently  none  of 
these  men  he  had  faith  in  were  to  be  read  in  the  journals 
out  of  which  a  writer  might  make  a  living.  True,  Crane's 
The  Red  Badge  of  Courage  had  been  bought  by  Irving 
Bacheller's  syndicate  in  1894,  and  sold  serially  to  the 
Philadelphia  Press.  But  he  felt  that  the  book  succeeded 
not  as  realism  but  as  a  sensational  story  about  war.  Had  it 
been  about  everyday  America,  he  questioned  if  its  tragedy 
would  have  suited  the  journals  of  that  year. 

In  1928  in  an  introduction  to  Frank  Norris's  McTeague 
he  dismisses  Crane  after  this  fashion: 

"  I  find  .  .  .  H.  G.  Wells  speaking  of  Crane  as  not  only 
the  pioneer  but  the  most  brilliant  of  all  of  the  early  realists 
of  this  generation.  Stuff  and  nonsense !  Crane  was  not  the 
pioneer  nor  even  the  equal  in  any  sense  of  the  man  who  led 
the  van  of  realism  in  America.  That  honor  .  .  .  goes  to 
Henry  B.  Fuller  of  Chicago,  who  as  early  as  1886  published 
With  the  Procession*  as  sound  and  agreeable  a  piece  of 
realism  as  that  decade  or  any  since  produced.  And  in  1891 
he  wrote  .  .  .  The  Cliff  Dwellers  which  preceded  by  three 
years  Crane's  The  Red  Badge  of  Courage  .  .  .  as  did  Main 
Travelled  Roads,  by  Hamlin  Garland.  .  .  ." 

Crane  has  meant  as  little  to  him  as  that;  something 
rankled.  Perhaps  it  was  jealousy  dating  from  that  lonely 
day,  when  he  was  an  outcast  from  the  World,  and 
Crane  was  known  as  a  favorite  of  Howells  and  Garland, 
and  was  being  sent  here  and  there  on  exciting  assignments. 
Yet  that  poet  reads  like  the  one  man  in  New  York  at 
that  time  with  whom  the  potential  author  of  The  Girl  in 
the  Coffin,  In  the  Dark,  The  Hand  of  the  Potter,  might 
logically  have  felt  kinship.  His  struggle  was  fierce  too, 
and  swifter;  it  killed  him.  His  first  novel,  Maggie,  A  Girl 
of  the  Streets,  an  attempt  to  record  life  as  he  saw  it  in  the 
Bowery  district,  was  for  years  only  obscurely  published. 
Though  Howells  admired  it  as  "  Crane's  little  tragedy," 
he  could  not  sell  it;  Gilder  disdained  it;  no  one  wanted 
it.  He  got  less  than  one  hundred  dollars  from  Bacheller 
for  The  Red  Badge  of  Courage,  and  when  he  published 
Black  Riders  in  1894,  the  critics,  except  for  two  of  them, 
told  the  reading  country  Crane  was  mad,  and  that  the 
poems  were  "  obscene  drivel."  Like  Dreiser  he  saw  the 

*  A  too  zealous  statement:   1895   is  the  date  of  its  publication;  and 
1893  of  The  Cliff  Dwellers. 

125 


world  as  a  rudderless  ship  "  going  ridiculous  voyages, 
making  quaint  progress,  turning  as  with  serious  purpose 
before  stupid  winds  " ;  marriage,  he  thought,  was  a  base 
trick  on  women,  and  there  was  no  such  thing  as  sin  ex- 
cept in  Sunday  schools.  Little  Lord  Fauntleroy  was 
a  crime  against  children;  Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward  an 
idiot,  and  Stevenson  insincere;  sincerity  was  the  first 
requisite  of  an  artist.*  In  fact,  aside  from  Ambrose 
Bierce,  who  does  not  figure  to  Dreiser  at  this  time,  and 
Dreiser  not  to  Bierce  at  any  time  —  "he  was  too  much 
the  pedant,"  Mencken  says,  "to  like  him"  —  Crane 
was  the  one  published  intellect  resembling  his  in  its 
ruthlessness,  a  thinker,  one  would  say,  after  his  own 
heart;  and  Crane  thought  more  with  his  heart  than 
Bierce. 

This  might  be  a  trifling  point  to  dwell  on,  were  it  not 
for  the  long  loneliness  of  American  artists,  so  that  the 
maps  of  their  histories  have  been  those  of  scarcely 
intersecting  roads.  Yet  since  there  are  records  of  bitter 
enmities  of  man  against  man  even  in  the  wilderness  in  the 
face  of  a  common  danger,  it  is  illogical  to  ask  for  under- 
standing among  the  susceptible  few  in  this  wide  land. 
Emily  Dickinson  in  Amherst  understood  the  need  and  the 
lack  when  she  wrote,  ".  .  .  Just  the  miles  of  stare  — 
That  signalize  a  show's  retreat  —  In  North  America." 
If,  however,  nature  had  decreed  an  alliance  of  great  tem- 
peraments in  North  America,  perhaps  rotarians  would 
not  have  had  their  undisputed  way. 

What  kept  Dreiser  from  valuing  Crane  might  be  a 
difference  of  temperament  outside  of  intellect.  Crane  had 
a  gift  that  led  him  hastily  into  sharp-shooting  metaphors 
—  "  The  sun  was  pasted  on  the  sky  like  a  red  wafer  "  — 
into  parabolic  metaphors,  joy-riding  jokes  and  slang; 
and  so  away  from  what  Dreiser  would  call  the  issue.  And 
he  had  a  gift  for  excitement  that  took  him  running 
into  it  as  if  on  a  spree  —  to  New  Mexico,  Texas, 
Nevada,  where  a  whole  story  could  be  made  out  of  a 
hotel  because  it  was  painted  a  strange  blue;  took  him 
back  to  New  York  to  surround  himself  with  what  kindred 

*  As  reported  by  Thomas  Beer  in  his  life  of  Crane,  and  proved  by 
reading  Crane. 

126 


people  there  were  —  the  showman,  Elbert  Hubbard,  the 
pioneer,  Hamlin  Garland,  the  charming  Richard  Harding 
Davis,  the  looser  Huneker  and  Clyde  Fitch,  the  deep 
Albert  Ryder;  and  with  others  who  jealously  made  him  a 
victim,  and  tarred  him  with  the  name  of  dope-fiend, 
drunkard,  sex-degenerate.  Though  he  was  none  of  this, 
it  is  agreed,  New  York  had  no  use  for  a  man  with  that 
legend;  and  he  no  use  for  New  York,  and  he  went  to  Eng- 
land, again  as  if  on  a  spree;  and  it  was  a  spree,  what  with 
Conrad,  Henry  James,  Yeats,  H.  G.  Wells,  Harold 
Frederic,  and  many  other  live  men  and  women  in  his 
house  and  he  in  theirs.  In  this  spirit,  it  is  said,  as  much  as 
to  verify  The  Red  Badge  of  Courage  he  went  to  the 
Spanish-American  War.  He  was  a  runaway,  and  Dreiser, 
though  likewise  a  stranger  to  the  code  of  the  day,  and 
likewise  victimized  through  three  times  as  many  years, 
has  remained  a  native. 

Crane  was  a  snob,  too,  slightly;  delighted  in  talking  of 
the  peasantry  of  America  to  describe  such  a  family  as 
Dreiser  came  from.  And  Dreiser  also  is  snobbish  enough 
or  else  accurate  enough  for  that  to  have  prejudiced  him, 
if  he  has  heard  of  it.  He,  not  Crane,  is  right  —  there  are 
boobs,  hicks,  rubes  and  hayseeds  as  in  no  other  country, 
but  not  a  peasantry.  Jefferson  more  than  Lincoln  has  had 
his  wish ;  socially,  not  politically,  democracy  has  succeeded 
in  the  United  States. 

So  this  young  poet  among  realists  ran  through  twenty- 
nine  years  on  a  brilliant  spree  of  life  and  work,  and 
ended  it  just  as  the  author  of  Sister  Carrie,  with  more 
patience  and  no  more  resignation,  was  beginning  that 
epochal  novel.  They  are  the  two  writers  of  that  date,  as 
I  read  intellect,  least  hampered  by  puritan  prejudice,  and 
most  impregnated  with  life.  Henry  Fuller  was  less  im- 
petuous; Hamlin  Garland  was  "  corn-fed  " ;  Frank  Norris 
had  a  flaw  that  could  give  birth  to  romance  for  money; 
O.  Henry  reveled  in  the  color  of  life  but  gave  no  thought 
to  its  structure;  Jack  London  was  a  propagandist  for 
the  under-dog,  and  later  a  magazine  prostitute.  Out  of 
this  group  Crane  and  Dreiser  are  the  ruthless  youth  and 
the  ruthless  adult  of  the  country.  Crane's  first  product, 
Maggie,  has  the  youthful  trait  of  marching  adjectives; 

127 


Sister  Carrie  was  delivered  mature  without  adolescent 
blemish.  I  think  they  are  comparable,  one  to  fireworks, 
the  other  to  a  powerful  car,  taking  its  time,  and  the  whirr 
of  the  motor  is  low.  What  Dreiser  accurately  valued  in 
Fuller  and  later  in  Norris  was  the  measure  and  restraint 
not  to  explode,  but  to  store  their  energy  for  a  long  journey 
and  a  long  residence  in  a  land  that  often  seemed  all  too 
alien  —  a  policy  akin  to  his  own. 

And  for  the  most  part  he  was  right  in  his  survey  of 
the  fiction  market.  The  magazines  made  a  dull  small  mir- 
ror to  look  into,  to  find  the  reflection  of  a  life  which  he 
knew  was  terrific  and  changing  throughout  the  western 
world.  There  was  a  journal  of  the  day  by  the  inconse- 
quent name  of  Mile.  New  York,  written  mostly  by  James 
Huneker  and  Vance  Thompson,  which  was  flashing  the 
same  indictment.  If  he  read  it  he  found  there  his  own 
verdict  on  nearly  every  page,  in  Thompson's  fine  critical 
editorials,  forgotten  today  and  yet  more  potent  and  shaft- 
like  than  the  remembered  Huneker : 

"I  do  not  wish  to  rage  against  [Howells]  as  though  he 
were  the  beast  of  the  Apocalypse,  but  he  and  Gilder  and 
that  ilk  are  the  chief  defect  of  American  literature.  While 
Mr.  Howells  merits  one's  habitual  indignation,  Mr.  Gilder 
is  undoubtedly  the  worse  of  the  two.  I  have  never  known  a 
man  so  uniformly  mil." 

And:  "The  painters,  since  they  have  begun  to  live  like 
other  folk  and  love  their  own  wives  to  the  neglect  of  their 
neighbors'  wives,  have  given  up  all  concern  for  art." 

And:  "  New  York,  this  malignantly  respectable  city." 

And  bitterly,  but  fairly  then  and  perhaps  even  now: 
"The  man  who  lives  in  America  and  pretends  to  be  any- 
thing but  a  philistine  is  also  ridiculous.  We  are  all  philis- 
tines.  We  may  be  incoherent  philistines.  That  is  the  best 
we  can  be." 

On  the  other  hand  Thompson  was  the  older  American, 
tired  of  being  called  the  new  raw  child.  He  was  less  of  a 
child,  I  should  think,  than  whatever  spirit  guides  a  de- 
scendant of  Mile.  New  York  —  The  New  Yorker  of  to- 
day. He  had  known  in  Paris  Verlaine,  Mallarme,  Rim- 
baud, Paul  Fort,  Villiers  de  L'Isle  Adam,  La  Forge, 
Charles  Cros,  Heredia  —  the  last  two,  Negro  poets  — 
then  an  undreamed  of  luxury  in  New  York.  He  had  heard 
the  music  of  the  modern  Russians,  already  established  in 
128 


Europe,  but  "  the  impossible  Damrosch "  never  gave  it 
to  New  York.  He  had  a  theory  that  the  incentive  to 
modern  art  would  come  from  America;  in  fact  that  al- 
ready from  Poe  and  Whitman  had  stemmed  the  two 
streams  of  new  French  poetry.*  And  yet  this  connoisseur 
in  perfections  strained  toward  France,  more  homesick  for 
it  than  the  Chicago  aesthetes  were  for  London  with  its 
reflections  of  Paris.  It  was  time  after  all  these  years  for 
Americans  to  be  grown-up,  and,  I  imagine,  he  despaired 
of  its  happening.  He  was  impatient  of  the  very  men 
and  women  who  were  trying  to  make  their  country  less 
respectable  and  more  real  in  art:  "  Dull  melancholiacs  in 
the  grey  provinces,  lean  pessimists  of  Kansas  and  the 
West,  neurotic  criminals  of  the  New  England  country 
side."  He  diagnosed  the  disease,  but  had  no  systemic 
cure  for  it,  unless  a  European  tonic  beyond  the  capacity 
of  the  patient.  Dreiser,  had  he  read  him,  would  have  been 
alternately  excited  by  his  destructive  disdain  and  dis- 
heartened by  his  flaunting  of  the  superiority  of  European 
art.  More  visionary  than  satirist,  though  he  has  made 
labels  and  pronounced  judgments  on  American  life,  they 
are  loose  and  easy-going.  Often  he  dismisses  them  with 
an  "  Or  so  it  seems  "  or  "  Or  nearly  so."  He  appears  to 
revel  in  uncertainty  and  therefore  is  at  times  purposely 
diffuse. 

It  is  right  here  in  the  middle  Nineties,  from  the  end  of 
which  decade  Dreiser  was  to  take  off  as  a  writer  com- 
elling  attention,  that  the  cleavage  between  an  art  of 
ritish  parentage  and  a  native  art  might  first  have  been 
apparent,  had  there  been  analysts  to  make  note  of  it.  It  is 
here  that  a  prediction  made  by  John  Quincy  Adams,  and 
an  aesthetic-democratic  dream  of  Thomas  Jefferson  began 
to  come  intellectually  true,  as  for  years  it  had  been  politi- 
cally true.  Adams  felt  that  with  Jackson's  election  in 
1828  the  country  would  go  down  grade  from  all  the 
culture  it  had  known,  which  meant  imported  European 
culture,  and  that  barbarism  would  definitely  set  in.  To 

*  I  have  lately  heard  Fernand  Leger  and  Constantin  Brancusi  suggest 
the  same  debt:  Out  of  the  newness  of  the  United  States  France  has  drawn 
new  aesthetic  life. 

129 


Jefferson  on  the  other  hand,  up  through  the  people  out 
of  the  soil,  the  art  of  civilization  would  have  to  bloom  in 
pioneer  America,  or  not  bloom  at  all.  In  a  sense  the 
change  was  imported  from  Europe  and  the  Orient, 
though  not  in  the  way  Adams  craved,  through  their 
philosophy  and  their  art,  but  more  as  Jefferson  had 
pledged  himself  to  welcome  it  through  the  "irresponsi- 
ble "  blood  of  emigrants  streaming  for  more  than 
a  century  into  these  states  under  democratic  protec- 
tion. Whitman  had  been  the  wedge  among  poets  —  the 
first  poet  on  the  reception  committee  for  "  the  new 
people;  the  young  strangers,  coming,  always  coming."  * 
And  now  they  had  come.  No  use  any  more  for  the 
aesthetes  of  the  Chap  Book  or  Mile.  New  York,  or 
for  any  one  of  us  in  love  with  elaborate  far-off  back- 
grounds, to  think  they  might,  if  we  advertised  them 
enough,  become  our  own  foregrounds.  Mark  Twain  had 
popularly  sneered  Europe  in  The  Court  of  King  Arthur 
and  Innocents  Abroad,  and  had  given  confidence  to 
"  philistines." 

The  Yankees  were  getting  their  way  in  language,  man- 
ners, buildings,  clothes,  food  —  every  form  of  expression. 
And  the  real  artist  knew  that  he  now  had  to  vaccinate 
himself  and  his  audience  with  this  cleavage  from  ancestry, 
if  he  were  to  stay  at  home.  The  young  Stephen  Crane  felt 
this ;  seduced  by  England,  he  kept  there  American  slang 
and  a  native's  sense  of  his  country.  He  was  according  to 
Beer  "  vastly  pleased  by  the  startling  McTeague  of 
Frank  Norris  [though  he]  pronounced  the  book  "  too 
moral,"  at  the  distance  he  kept  from  the  elders  on  the  one 
hand  and  the  money  makers  on  the  other  of  his  United 
States,  who  were  enough  to  make  an  evangelist  out  of  a 
serious  poet.  He  begged  William  Heineman  to  buy  the 
next  novel  of  Norris.  That  author  at  the  time  was  plan- 
ning a  long  work  of  vital  interest,  and  it  was  morally 
to  be  about  the  people,  for  the  people,  "  who  caricatured 
and  villified,  are  after  all  and  in  the  main,  the  real  seekers 
after  truth."  So,  already  fine  intellects  were  beginning  to 
sentimentalize  over  the  importance  of  the  common  people 
as  common,  rather  than  as  people. 

*  Carl  Sandburg:  Broken-Face  Gargoyles. 
130 


This  period  of  cleavage,  the  mid-years  of  the  American 
Nineties  corresponds  culturally  to  one  phase  of  the  mid- 
years of  the  British  nineteenth  century.  That  is,  excluding 
always  individual  rebels,  and  the  definite  and  spontaneous 
popular  arts  —  vaudeville,  comic  papers,  horse-racing, 
minstrel  shows,  which  in  any  one  time  are  often  ahead  in 
freedom  of  the  esoteric  arts.  But  it  corresponds  to  only 
one  phase  —  since  in  England,  though  the  genteel  ruled 
in  the  person  of  Victoria,  the  libertine,  antedating  Crom- 
well, ruled  out  of  older  roots.  Shakespeare,  Elizabeth, 
Dryden,  Pope,  Charles  I,  Swift,  Fielding,  Blake,  Ho- 
garth, Keats,  Shelley,  Byron  had  not  lived  for  nothing. 
Not  all  of  the  English  peerage,  not  all  of  the  rich  com- 
post of  the  lower  classes  could  be  turned  away  from 
extravagance  into  prudes  and  puritans.  The  middle  classes 
alone  succumbed  completely  to  Protestant  supremacy.  In 
the  United  States,  however,  the  middle  classes  inundat- 
ing high  and  low,  one  psychology  had  by  now  prevailed 
—  that  of  respectability.  Any  other  code  was  looked 
upon  as  evil  or  foreign.  And  few  could  have  seen  that  a 
hidden  ferment  was  at  work  to  turn  the  country  away 
from  its  decorums  toward  unimagined  excesses.  It  is  like 
a  platform,  this  mid-year  of  the  Nineties,  from  which  to 
look  backward  and  forward.  Looking  back,  we  see  a  quilt 
pieced  out  of  Puritanism,  not  without  warmth  and  quality, 
strength  and  sensibility,  which  might  be  typified  by  a  verse 
of  Emerson's,  commemorating  James  Russell  Lowell,  in 
the  January  number  of  Harper's,  1 894 :  u  Man  of  sorrow, 
man  of  mark  —  Virtue  lodged  in  sinew  stark  .  .  ."  and 
the  word  noble  appears  in  the  poem. 

The  imperishable  artists  of  that  early  mark  were  not 
Emerson,  not  Hawthorne,  not  Lowell,  but  Lincoln, 
Thoreau  and  Emily  Dickinson.  As  artists  one  cannot  dis- 
pute them.  Then  looking  forward  through  the  native 
channels  of  Walt  Whitman  and  Mark  Twain,  and  the 
lesser  more  local  channels  of  writers  like  James  Whitcomb 
Riley  and  Bret  Harte,*  we  come  upon  a  lessening  of  stark- 

*  Twain,  it  is  known,  resented  the  linking  of  his  name  with  Harte's  as 
kindred  writers.  As  new  and  limber  a  judge  as  Scott  Fitzgerald  disputes 
Harte  as  a  native.  "  Pure  Dickens,"  he  says.  But  to  me  he  reads  like  an 
old-timer,  one  of  the  homesteaders,  who  has  turned  countless  others  toward 
the  staking  of  literary  claims  in  these  unsettled  states. 


ness  and  an  increase  of  response  to  the  immediate  scene. 
And  finally  by  the  turn  of  the  century  there  arrives  that 
period  marked  by  naturalness  and  curiosity  rather  than 
by  antique  background,  for  which  many  have  made  Theo- 
dore Dreiser  sponsor. 


132 


"  The  school  of  literature  to  which  Poe 
belongs  .  .  .  is  one  we  thoroughly  dis- 
like. .  .  .  It  mercilessly  exposes  the  se- 
crets of  the  heart.  .  .  .  What  we  want  is 
not  darkness  but  light;  not  thorns  in  our 
path,  but  roses  and  everywhere  dew  and 
freshness.  The  literature  which  .  .  .  does 
not  make  us  happier  and  better  is  not  true 
and  good"  R.  H.  STODDARD 


,t  this  date  in  the  winter  of  1895  in  his 
twenty-fourth  year  this  sponsoring  giant  cut  a  sorry 
figure,  or  so  he  says.  His  great  schemes  were  checked 
for  the  moment  —  a  long,  fearful  moment  of  walking 
the  unwelcoming  streets  of  Manhattan,  money  decreas- 
ing, hopes  not  rising.  As  I  hear  him  tell  his  history,  he 
seems  to  this  date  like  a  boy  who,  since  his  mother's  death, 
has  always  been  walking  from  city  to  city,  west  and  east, 
to  find  another  home.  But  these  wanderings  about  New 
York  in  the  winter  of  '95  sound  like  the  loneliest  he  had 
yet  known.  Kicked  out  of  the  one  profession  he  had 
learned — journalism,  he  wanted,  if  possible,  to  enter 
upon  another  —  fiction.  In  a  way  he  was  glad  to  be 
forced  out  of  the  newspaper  world,  "  since  as  I  even  then 
saw  it,  it  was  a  boy's  game,  and  I  was  slowly  but  surely 
passing  out  of  the  boy-stage." 

Like  Rousseau,  who  hoped  to  paint  in  the  accepted  way 
to  suit  the  Paris  Salon,  and  was  too  real  to  know  how, 
he  made  his  effort  to  suit  the  editors  of  the  day,  and 
failed.  On  his  walks  he  passed  plenty  of  stories  to  write, 
plenty  of  rude  teeming  life  of  slums  and  business  dis- 
tricts, and  cold  enviable  life  of  the  rich  streets.  He  should 
be  able  to  take  these  and  with  them  make  a  flying 

133 


machine,  and  go  up  a  space  above  the  earth  into  mastery 
of  it  through  understanding.  Balzac  did  this,  and  went 
above  the  Paris  streets  and  houses;  why  not  he  above 
Manhattan  sidewalks.  But  try  as  he  would  he  could  not 
make  his  material  fit  into  any  of  the  several  moulds 
of  the  stories  accepted  by  the  magazines.  There  were  no 
"  magazines  to  represent  the  realistic  grip  on  life.  How- 
ells  and  Twain  were  the  outermost  outposts  of  a  new 
era."  As  he  studied  the  idylls  of  the  sons  of  biblical  stark- 
ness  and  marrow,  he  felt  a  weakening  of  the  old  fibre,  and 
no  new  hardness  in  keeping  with  new  orders  of  living. 
He  wrote  many  stories  in  the  hall  bedroom,  after  the 
recipes  he  had  studied.  They  must,  he  saw,  be  "  all  sweet- 
ness and  gaiety  and  humor.  We  must  discuss  only  our 
better  selves  and  arrive  at  a  happy  ending.  Marriage  was 
a  serene  and  delicate  affair.  Love  was  made  in  heaven  and 
lasted  forever.  ...  If  a  man  did  an  evil  thing  it  was  due 
to  his  low^r  nature,  which  really  had  nothing  to  do  with 
his  higher.  .  .  ." 

But  these  precepts  were  useless;  life  was  not  like  that; 
he  found  it  impossible  to  go  so  far  afield.  Always  his 
stories  came  back  to  him  —  failures,  he  knew  it  himself, 
being  neither  insipid,  charming  romances,  nor  studies  of 
the  life  he  was  miserably  immersed  in.*  150,000  people, 
as  he  tells  it,  were  in  the  depths  of  poverty  in  New  York 
that  winter,  many  of  them  with  no  work  at  all,  no  place  to 
sleep  but  over  gratings  or  in  doorways.  They  wandered  in 
the  Bowery  and  the  streets  off  of  it  "  in  the  depths  of 
poverty  "  "  a  whorl  of  bums  and  failures,"  and  he  with 
them.  More  than  ever  he  was  haunted  by  the  giant  de- 
ductions of  the  scientists  he  had  read  in  Pittsburgh :  "  Man 
was  a  mechanism,  undevised  and  uncreated,  and  a  badly 
and  carelessly  driven  one  at  that.  Then  to  embitter  him 
there  was  always  like  an  evil  and  enviable  presence  Ward 
McAllister  and  his  gilded  Four  Hundred.  "  Life  was 

*  In  the  field  of  verse  sometimes,  it  seems,  he  was  able  to  suit  conven- 
tional taste.  Spanish- American  War  Songs  contains  a  poem  signed  Theodore 
Dreiser.  The  pathetic  theme  may  well  have  been  his,  but  the  format  betrays 
a  need  of  acceptance :  "  Lo,  no  pain  can  thwart  the  holy  —  Nor  yet  fear 
retard  the  free  j  —  Right  makes  giants  of  the  lowly,  .  .  .  Losing  fury  to 
their  plea.  .  .  ."  Occasional  acceptable  verse,  however,  was  not  enough 
to  support  him. 

134 


desolate,  inexplicable,  unbelievably  accidental  —  luck  or 
disaster."  None  the  less,  perhaps  because  of  its  desperate 
balance  sheets,  there  was  "  zest  "  to  the  city,  "something 
secret  and  thrilling."  Four  years  later  out  of  the  ledger 
of  these  days  came  the  setting  and  the  figure  of  Hurst- 
wood  in  Sister  Carrie,  going  down  out  of  prosperous 
glitter  into  the  whorl  of  disaster  and  silence  of  suicide. 
And  sketches  now  collected  in  The  Color  of  a  Great  City 
—  The  Bowery  Mission,  The  Water  Front,  The  Cradle 
of  Tears  —  were  tapped  from  these  memories.  Often 
he  has  drawn  on  the  mood  that  shrouded  him  then.  It  be- 
came part  of  him,  a  new  base.  In  adversity  his  father  was 
growing  into  him,  superseding,  undermining  the  u  pagan  " 
mother,  so  much  adored.  But  at  the  time  he  never  thought 
that  melancholy  could  be  changed  over  into  words  that 
readers  would  thank  him  for.  Instead,  he  says,  as  the 
weeks  went  by  offering  nothing,  "  I  got  terribly  depressed. 
My  money  was  dwindling,  I  thought,  my  gosh,  I  would 
have  to  go  back  to  newspaper  work." 

Today  Dreiser  is  known  and  described  as  three  differ- 
ent men  contradicting  one  another.  One  is  a  brusque 
churlish  fellow,  who  frightens  people  when  he  answers 
them  on  the  telephone,  and  appears  hard  when  accused  of 
unfairness  or  indifference,  who  frequently  is  accused  with- 
out troubling  to  defend  himself.  "  The  most  disagreeable 
man  I  ever  met,  no  manners  at  all !  "  "  Utterly  unscrupu- 
lous, an  S-of-a-B !  "  they  say  of  him  and  shudder.  "  A 
handsome  dog,  but  the  manners  of  a  railway  boarding 
house,"  Mencken  writes  him  was  the  impression  of  a  lady 
he  had  asked  him  to  call  on.  Then  there  is  the  man  people 
love  to  be  with.  They  say  that  no  one  is  better  company 
than  Dreiser  to  walk  with,  drink  with,  eat  with,  talk 
with  (and  there  are  women  who  have  said  to  live  with). 
His  appetite  is  boundless  for  the  human  and  the  non- 
human,  his  five  senses  alert.  Before  joys  and  sorrows  he  is 
humble  not  arrogant.  He  tells  fabulous  stories  and  listens 
to  them;  laughs  until  he  cries  at  funny  things  and  prepos- 
terous things,  and  when  the  joke  is  on  himself.  He  will 
go  anywhere  in  talk,  asking  where  he  can't  tell.  He  will  go 
anywhere  on  walks ;  no  limit  placed  on  adventures,  except 
time  and  the  need  to  achieve.  His  books  which  are  a 

135 


weave  of  monotony  shot  with  extravagance,  offering  im- 
moderate and  homely  characters,  and  rare  men  and 
women  as  well,  bear  witness  to  the  second  man. 

Then  there  is  the  solitary  man,  loose-jointed,  wonder- 
ing and  wandering;  eyes  with  worlds  in  them,  aristocrat's 
nose,  voluptuous  mouth,  and  yet  scornful,  not  snarling  or 
jeering,  but  nearly  ready  to  snarl  or  jeer  if  a  heart  full  of 
tears  and  struggle  would  let  him.  This  is  the  lonely  intel- 
lect, the  spontaneously  conscious  man,  who  over  a  period  is 
spectator,  and  then  suddenly  is  actor,  good  for  the  center 
of  the  stage.  At  times  he  has  the  look  of  a  tough  careless 
weed,  burdock  or  mullen  or  of  a  giant  radish  —  the 
Hoosier  look  magnified.  Sometimes  he  has  the  magnitude 
of  a  river  image,  moulded  out  of  clay,  not  yet  in  bronze, 
what  with  a  potentate's  hands,  and  a  look  of  distances 
between  the  parts  of  him,  as  if  it  might  be  dogmatic,  not 
leisurely  enough,  to  bring  them  together  into  single  pur- 
pose, unless  that  action  were  crucial  —  a  birth  out  of 
headwaters,  the  descent  over  rapids,  the  fall  over  preci- 
pices, the  wide  delivery  to  the  sea.  Dreiser,  the  creator  of 
disturbing  chronicles  and  inquiries,  is  this  man  of  the 
earth,  mineral  and  vegetable  as  well  as  animal.  He  is  a 
logical  derivative  out  of  the  little  boy  who  was  looked  on 
as  "  queer  "  in  Warsaw.  Today  in  New  York,  acknowl- 
edged and  successful,  in  a  crowd  as  at  one  of  his  own  cock- 
tail parties  of  editors,  agents,  celebrities  and  hangers-on, 
and  their  many  preening  girls,  he  has  the  look  of  ancient 
river-lands,  of  the  clay  and  flow  of  rivers,  remembering 
equally  canyons  and  lowlands  and  cities,  pine  forests  and 
weeds  and  tin  cans.  He  looks  solitary  more  than  he  does 
metropolitan. 

I  have  met  with  no  one  but  himself  to  describe  him  at 
this  period,  but  I  imagine  Dreiser  at  twenty-four  to  have 
been  solely  this  third  man,  the  creative  dreamer,  luck- 
less and  puzzled  as  to  how  to  get  on.  I  imagine  him 
to  have  been  stained  by  the  sea-voices  and  sea-odors  of 
Manhattan  and  by  the  lurid  extremes  of  life  in  that  city, 
just  as  inoculated  with  beauty  at  birth  by  his  mother, 
he  had  been  drenched  in  the  seduction  of  Indiana  valleys 
up  to  the  age  of  sixteen.  I  think  he  was  not  yet  the  wary 
ungracious  Dreiser,  nor  for  the  moment  the  gregarious 

136 


high-spirited  Dreiser  of  five  years  before  or  even  a  year 
before,  who  alone  but  not  lonely  had  found  friends  and 
patrons  to  be  linked  with  —  Maxwell,  McEnnis,  McCul- 
lagh,  McCord,  Hazard,  Alice,  Arthur  Henry,  his  fiancee, 
Paul  and  others.  I  imagine  that  here  in  New  York  he 
was  sharply  alone,  walking  among  these  ghosts  of  the 
great  city  in  a  mournful  luxury  of  contemplating  them  — 
phantoms  of  greed  and  failure. 

Already  he  knew  that  when  a  man  asked  to  succeed, 
the  implicit  questions  were :  "  Are  you  a  mixer,  a  good  fel- 
low? Are  you  a  red-blooded  he-man,  rude  and  shrewd? 
Can  you  wear  these  clothes?  No  promotion  for  a  man 
who  can't  wear  American  business  clothes."  And  what  was 
their  purpose?  To  pander  and  to  fight,  to  cheat  and  to 
pander,  these  business  clothes  were  planned.  To  mix, 
to  smirk,  to  join  in  with  the  right  crowd  —  meet  the  wife, 
have  another  drink,  send  for  a  couple  of  floozies;  and, 
of  equal  importance,  to  intimidate,  to  sneer,  to  snarl  at 
the  wrong  crowd  —  to  put  something  over,  let  someone 
out,  give  someone  the  merry  ha-ha :  these  were  the  ways 
to  come  home  with  the  goods.  If  a  man  knew  how,  the 
job  was  his;  if  not,  he  was  the  under-dog,  the  humble 
clerk  or  the  derelict.  Already  he  had  learned  this  from 
the  New  York  World,  where  he  had  been  told  he  did  not 
fit  the  clothes,  which  had  to  be  smarter  and  slicker  than 
what  men  wore  with  success  in  the  Middle  West.  In  a 
way  he  was  glad;  the  artist  in  him  disdained  these  juvenile 
uniforms.  But  now  that  he  was  nearing  his  last  cent 
and  getting  nowhere,  he  would  have  to  wake  up  and  join 
in  the  fight;  get  in  or  go  under;  there  was  no  middle  way. 
To  go  under  apparently  was  not  to  be  his  role.  Mark 
Twain  must  have  set  himself  the  same  problem  —  how 
to  succeed  in  his  own  country.  He  solved  it  by  posing 
as  the  respectable  mixer,  as  least  alien  to  his  gift  of 
genius;  the  merciless  but  ingratiating  "king  of  humor- 
ists." Dreiser  met  it  by  wrapping  himself,  how  consciously 
one  can't  know,  in  a  kind  of  cave-man  legend,  cousin  to  the 
mammoth,  as  least  alien  to  him,  and  became  the  fearful 
"  realist."  It  may  have  been  exactly  in  these  months  of 
lonely  poverty  that  he  began  to  evolve  the  formidable 
front  of  a  conquering  American,  at  variance  with  the  poet 

137 


in  him,  and  yet  well  known  now  to  those  who  stand  in 
his  way  or  try  his  patience  or  cut  into  his  time. 

Emily  Dickinson  wrote :  "  I  took  my  power  in  my  hand 
—  And  went  against  the  world.  ...  I  aimed  my  pebble, 
but  myself  —  was  all  the  one  that  fell.  .  .  ."  Dreiser 
took  his  power  in  his  hand  too,  but  with  it  at  this  date, 
or  another,  he  learned  to  couple  some  of  the  world's 
power.  If  he  could  help  it,  he  would  not  be  the  only  one 
to  fall.  For  this  undoubtedly  he  has  allowed  his  texture  to 
be  loose.  Having  found  the  world's  weapons  useful  to 
fight  with,  he  has  let  the  world  into  his  weave  of  words 
too ;  takes  from  the  outside  where  it  suits  him,  yet  without 
enough  respect  for  it  to  acknowledge  the  debt ;  and  with- 
out the  agony  that  such  help  would  cause  a  scrupulously 
intrinsic  artist.  The  three  men  in  him,  competitor,  com- 
panion, recluse,  grow  together  and  overlap  in  the  artist. 
He  is  gold  to  be  assayed  and  washed  into  purity  by  each 
new  admirer,  not  found  in  sheer  nuggets.  He  is  an  iron 
vein,  not  often  tempered  steel. 

Like  an  iron  prospect,  he  is  impressive  at  twenty-four, 
immersed  in  a  dream  of  realism,  postponing  the  hour  of 
expediency  nearly  to  the  moment  of  starving.  A  story  he 
told  me  in  another  connection  recreates  these  days.  Once 
while  planning  this  book,  I  had  said  that  it  would  be  one- 
sided unless  it  suggested  the  scope  of  his  life  with  women. 
They  were  half  of  the  legend  surrounding  him.  To  ex- 
clude them  would  make  but  another  evasion,  like  most 
biographies.  I  wished  he  would  catalogue  them  —  the 
different  blondes,  brunettes,  redheads,  towheads,  large 
ones  and  slim  ones,  susceptible  and  cold.  .  .  .  Their 
differences  would  help  to  paint  his  changing  life.  He  said 
he  didn't  know;  it  was  true  there  was  no  real  story  with- 
out them.  He  would  have  to  think  about  it,  perhaps  he 
had  told  enough  already.  I  would  find  them  in  A  Book 
About  Myself,  in  some  of  his  short  stories,  A  Gallery  of 
Women,  This  Madness,  The  '  Genius/  which  was  not  a 
portrait  of  himself  but  a  composite  picture,  and  yet  he  had 
drawn  on  his  own  life  to  make  it.  ...  Then  an  idea  oc- 
curred to  me :  Why  not  tell  of  the  days  and  nights  he  had 
lived  alone,  and  leave  the  rest  to  the  indiscretion  of  the 
reader?  That  way  my  book  would  not  grow  too  long.  His 
138 


answer  was  simple  and  serious :  "  But  that  would  be  only 
the  first  year  in  New  York  when  I  was  thrown  off  the 
World.  I  was  down  and  out.  Sometimes  I  had  hardly 
enough  to  eat.  The  rest  of  my  life  I  have  been  pretty  well 
taken  care  of.  ...  And  even  then  .  .  ." 

He  had  pawned  his  watch,  that  last  talisman  of  a  man's 
distinction;  the  imprint  of  spirit  on  eyes,  nose,  mouth 
never  having  yet  constituted  a  passport  recognized  by 
hotel  clerks  or  policemen.  It  was  a  twenty-five-dollar 
watch,  he  had  had  ten  dollars  for  it,  and  they  were  nearly 
gone.  .  .  .  He  was  walking  in  Carmine  Street  or  Houston 
Street.  A  young  Italian  girl  stopped  him  and  asked  him  if 
he  wouldn't  come  with  her.  He  said  he  had  no  money.  She 
insisted  money  made  no  difference,  she  liked  him.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  a  restaurant  keeper,  who  rented  rooms 
above  the  restaurant.  They  went  to  hers.  Afterwards  she 
told  him  that  her  parents  would  like  to  give  him  a  room 
for  nothing  next  to  hers ;  they  liked  him  too.  He  imagined 
they  hoped  he  would  marry  her.  She  was  pretty  and 
gracious  and  direct  like  a  Latin  of  any  class,  though  at 
the  time  he  did  not  know  how  to  account  for  her  charm. 
But,  he  said,  after  he  had  left  her,  undecided  whether 
to  accept  her  offer  and  thus  escape  from  misery  and  soli- 
tude :  "  I  began  thinking  of  that  grand  destiny  of  mine. 
Bad  as  things  were,  I  could  not  get  it  out  of  my  mind,  and 
I  never  went  back.  For  one  thing  these  people  were  Catho- 
lics; already  the  Church  had  about  done  for  me.  I  knew  I 
must  keep  away  from  it.  ...  Then  they  were  too  simple, 
too  far  from  life."  —  "  Too  much  out  of  the  fight,  you 
mean,  too  foreign?  "  I  suggested. —  "  Well,  perhaps." 

As  we  talked  I  wondered  how  this  story  would  have 
differed,  had  it  been  natural  to  him  to  apprentice  himself 
to  these  frankly  sensuous  strangers,  less  simple,  more 
highly  seasoned  probably  than  his  fiancee's  people  in 
Missouri.  Almost  any  Italian  would  understand  better 
than  a  Methodist  in  Missouri  the  quest  of  a  "  grand 
destiny."  But  such  an  alliance  was  not  for  him.  Always 
this  writer  has  flirted  with  the  exotic  in  himself :  always 
curious,  never  for  a  moment  scornful  of  it  like  Whitman 
and  Twain  and  Sandburg,  and  even  the  melancholy  Mas- 
ters and  the  pliant  Robert  Frost.  But  for  deepest  penetra- 

139 


tion  he  has  kept  to  the  image  of  the  native  in  himself,  the 
Nordic  American.  What  he  knows  of  the  universal,  so 
often  profoundly  gauged,  he  knows  first  in  native  garb. 
What  he  has  revealed  of  it  is  revealed  because  he  has  been 
tempted  to  strip  it  of  its  Butterick  patterns,  seduced  first 
in  spite  of  these  patterns ;  and  so  has  known  the  creature 
naked;  and  has  attained  to  centers. 


140 


".  .  .  /  do  count  my  syllables.  But  ob- 
serve: my  left  hand  lacks  a  finger  —  bitten 
off  by  a  critic"  " .  .  .  Unfortunate  man!  " 
exclaimed  the  sympathetic  monarch.  "  We 
must  make  your  limitations  and  disabilities 
immaterial.  You  shall  write  for  the  maga- 
zines." AMBROSE  BIERCE 


I, 


.n  May  or  June  of  this  forlorn  winter  his 
brother  Paul  came  back  from  the  road.  In  the  meantime 
he  had  been  noticing  on  the  stands  a  musical  magazine 
published  by  Ditson,  made  up  of  popular  songs,  "  semi- 
classical  stories  and  pictures."  At  the  same  time  he  used 
to  look  at  the  foreign  magazines  —  more  "  snappy,"  he 
thought,  than  any  published  in  New  York.  The  English 
Sketch,  for  instance,  printed  "  really  intelligent  comments 
beneath  the  pictures."  He  told  Paul  that  if  Howley  Havi- 
land  would  let  him  edit  a  magazine,  he  could  make  an 
improvement  on  Ditson's.  They  agreed  that  he  should 
try  it  at  ten  dollars  a  week  to  begin  with,  but  not  until 
autumn.  He  wonders  now  how  he  got  through  the  sum- 
mer, but  October  came  and  found  him  alive,  ready  to  edit 
Every  Month,  ready  to  compete  once  more  in  the  battle 
for  food.  So  he  went  running  like  a  fish  from  dark  pools 
to  pleasanter  shallows,  in  search  of  a  small  living.  He  ran 
the  paper  for  a  year  and  a  half,  and  made  it  a  paying  en- 
terprise for  new  popular  ideas.  He  remembers  feature 
articles,  suggested  by  his  newspaper  experience,  about 
compositors,  electrotypers  and  printers.  He  became  at 
once  an  "  idea-man."  "  Curiously  enough,"  he  says  with 
pride,  almost  more  than  he  shows  at  the  vast  response  to 
his  books :  u  I  had  numerous  letters  and  contributions 
from  all  kinds  of  people."  Then,  gratefully:  "  I  never 

141 


made  much  money  out  of  it,  stayed  on  in  my  hall  bed- 
room, but  I  got  it  through  my  skull  what  a  magazine  was." 

One  day  it  occurred  to  him  that  he  was  wasting  his 
time  "  fixing  up  other  fellows*  articles."  Why  not  market 
his  own?  He  could  see  that  magazine  readers  were  ask- 
ing for  lively  stories  about  real  people  and  things.  They 
would  take  him  nearer  to  his  heart's  desire  —  to  write 
about  life  as  he  saw  it.  Or  at  least  it  seemed  to  him 
that  such  articles  would  in  a  literal  sense  be  true,  while 
the  fiction  of  the  day  must  be  false  in  every  sense.  He 
chose  as  his  first  subject  American  women  harpists,  of 
the  sort  eminent  enough  to  play  in  Carnegie  Hall.  He 
interviewed  them  and  made  the  article  "  a  study  in  per- 
sonalities." The  editor  of  Munsey's  bought  it  for  $75  for 
the  pictures  and  the  idea;  the  writing,  he  was  told,  was 
worth  nothing.  His  next  article  was  a  picture  of  New 
England  society  women,  inspired  by  pictures  he  found 
of  them  at  Sarony's,  a  fashionable  New  York  photogra- 
pher of  the  Nineties. 

It  is  probable  that  they  fascinated  Dreiser.  Though 
known  as  a  literary  roughneck,  what  is  delicate  and  re- 
fined exercises  fascination  over  him.  Some  of  them  were 
doubtless  rational  Unitarian  matrons,  proud  to  be  "  sen- 
sible," but  others  may  have  been  quite  exquisite  flowers  — 
sumptuous  hair,  billowy  sleeves,  suppressed  bosoms,  frag- 
ile waists,  dainty  hands;  and  all  had  an  air  of  meticulous 
breeding,  or  else  they  would  not  have  been  listed  as  New 
England  society  women.  One  could  know  that  their 
handkerchiefs  were  sheerest  linen  hemstitched  with  in- 
finitesimal stitches,  indeed  that  all  their  apparel  was 
sewed  with  scrupulous  stitches  and  faintly  scented  with 
lavender.  When  they  traveled  they  wore  at  their  waists 
silver  chatelaines,  which  included  little  bottles  of  smelling 
salts.  They  were  still  such  ladies,  such  yield  of  "  virtue 
lodged  in  sinew  stark,"  these  leaders  of  New  England 
propriety  —  one  could  not  say  fashion  —  since  with  them 
it  was  vulgar  to  be  fashionable !  The  mystery  of  their  re- 
finement may  have  even  gone  like  an  arrow  to  the  young 
journalist's  sense  of  the  exquisite  and  the  unattainable. 
It  was  something  of  this  he  hoped  he  had  found  in  his 
Missouri  school  teacher,  and  something  of  this  he  has 
142 


cultivated  in  his  way  of  living,  which  has  a  puritan  order 
and  precision,  contradicting  other  phases  of  him. 

He  sold  the  article  to  the  New  York  Sunday  Journal 
at  $125.  The  modern  "  idea-man  "  was  developing  in 
him.  To  various  magazines  he  served  articles  about 
painters,  sculptors,  musicians,  writers,  financiers,  inven- 
tors, always  with  photographs,  etchings  or  drawings. 
Howells  furnished  him  with  material  for  a  portrait,  and 
liked  it  so  well  that  he  invited  him  to  come  and  see  him. 
After  the  visit  he  wrote  a  second  article,  calling  him  a 
"  nobleman  of  literature."  Today  he  says  of  him:  "  Yes, 
I  know  his  books  are  pewky  and  damn-fool  enough,  but  he 
did  one  fine  piece  of  work,  Their  Wedding  Journey,  not 
a  sentimental  passage  in  it,  quarrels  from  beginning  to 
end,  just  the  way  it  would  be,  don't  you  know,  really 
beautiful  and  true."  They  drank  tea  together  quietly  this 
afternoon  in  1897,  a  servant  or  so  around,  no  one  else. 
Howells  was  never  to  make  much  of  him,  nor  invite  him 
to  a  literary  evening  and  read  the  poets  to  him,  as  he  did 
for  the  more  aesthetic  "  new  people  coming,  coming." 
A  boundless  curiosity  in  the  eyes  of  this  boy  coupled 
with  a  looseness  of  manner  and  ignorance  of  etiquette 
were  doubtless  alarming  to  the  older  Westerner,  who 
cared  so  little  for  life  and  so  much  for  New  England 
deportment  in  the  guise  of  letters.  They  talked  agree- 
ably without  much  in  common.  Dreiser  remembers  him 
as  kindly. 

These  articles,  between  1897  and  1901  covered  ground, 
went  out  of  New  York,  now  and  then  out  of  the  coun- 
try. Musicians  first,  especially  women,  were  served  up, 
the  step  nearest  to  the  musical  Every  Month.  Then 
artists,  financiers,  inventors  and  statesmen  —  Anthony 
Hope,  the  real  Zangwill,  MacMonnies,  Bayard  Taylor, 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  William  Dean  Howells  twice, 
Frank  W.  Gunsaulus,  Paul  Bartlett,  Theodore  Thomas, 
John  Burroughs  twice,  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  asso- 
ciate of  Mark  Twain,  Alfred  Stieglitz,  Mrs.  Kenyon  Cox, 
Philip  D.  Armour,  Marshall  Field,  Andrew  Carnegie, 
Chauncey  M.  Depew,  John  H.  Patterson,  cash  register 
magnate,  Thomas  Edison,  Joseph  Choate,  Champ  Clark, 
"  so  crooked,"  the  wise-crack  went,  "  he  could  not  lie 

H3 


straight  in  bed  " ;  and  a  quantity  of  painters  and  sculptors, 
now  forgotten.  Dreiser  in  picking  essential  names  seems 
not  to  have  made  a  mistake  in  the  future  eminence  of  a 
writer  or  financier,  while  today  among  painters  and  sculp- 
tors only  Stieglitz  and  Paul  Bartlett  remain  as  names. 
His  eye  for  the  visual  arts  was  more  optimistic  than  it 
was  educated.  He  lets  his  wish  for  them  in  American  life 
stand  for  the  deed.  It  is  none  the  less  a  sign  of  a  more 
eager  world,  that  young  and  obscure  artists  could  interest 
readers  of  Truth  Magazine,  Metropolitan,  Cosmopoli- 
tan, Demorest's,  The  Family  Magazine,  Everybody's, 
Ainslee's,  Pearson's.  The  American  magazine  was  enter- 
ing its  last  innocent  decade,  1900  to  1910. 

Further  articles  of  his  suggest  the  palate  of  that  day: 
The  Museum  of  Natural  History,  The  Packing  Indus- 
try,  Craze  for  a  New  Disease,  Brandywine  the  Pic- 
turesque, The  Making  of  Small  Arms,  Carrier  Pigeons 
in  War  Time,  Historic  Tarry  town,  Artistic  Studios,  The 
Making  of  Stained  Glass  Windows,  The  Home  of 
William  Cullen  Bryant,  Our  Government  and  Our  Food, 
Human  Documents  from  Old  Rome,  New  York's  Un- 
derground Railroad,  The  Railroad  and  The  People,  The 
History  of  the  Horse,  The  Trade  of  the  Mississippi,  The 
Apple  Industry,  The  Rural  Free  Delivery,  Plant  Life 
Underground,  Why  the  Indian  Paints  his  Face.  Sight- 
seeing for  others  was  very  soon  for  Dreiser  profitable 
and  unpalatable.  In  a  year  he  had  written  some  fifty 
articles  at  $100  to  $150  a  piece,  and  was  not  any  more 
a  dreaming  pauper.  But  not  one  of  them  could  be  intensive 
or  crucial.  He  could  only  skim  the  surfaces  for  magazine 
display.  The  deep  reactions  he  got  from  these  excursions 
he  had  to  check  for  later  use. 

In  the  meantime  he  worked  at  terrific  speed  spurred  on 
by  new  money,  new  friends,  new  prestige.  There  is  a 
solemn  fashion  among  critics  to  deplore  worldly  success 
for  geniuses,  to  applaud  them  most  when  starved  and 
persecuted.  Van  Wyck  Brooks,  for  example,  scolds  Mark 
Twain  incessantly  through  267  pages,  because  he  liked 
money  and  fame.  He  scolds  him  for  his  jokes  even,  about 
as  Aunt  Polly  scolds  Tom  Sullivan,  only  in  radical  rather 
than  Methodist  language:  "  Can  Mark  Twain  keep  the 
144 


golden  thread  in  his  hands  long  enough?  .  .  .  No,  and 
the  time  is  up.  Circumstance  steps  in  and  cuts  the  golden 
thread,  and  all  is  lost."  *  And  yet  is  it  true  that  all  was 
lost?  Take  a  plunge  into  the  wide  promiscuous  river, 
Mark  Twain,  and  you  will  bathe  in  living  language  of 
which  his  virtuous  critic  is  incapable.  Sad  of  course  that 
this  giant  of  earlier  days  could  not  have  coupled  with  his 
splendor  the  faith  of  Whitman,  the  purity  of  Poe  or 
Jesus  or  Modigliani,  but  not  quite  so  tearful  as  Mr. 
Brooks  would  have  us  think. 

Dreiser  too  has  been  invoked  as  a  paragon,  and  then 
assailed  by  earnest  critics  for  lapses  into  money  making 
which  have  lost  him  integrity  of  style,  as  they  lost  Twain 
integrity  of  theme.  Yet  those  who  blame  him  lack  his 
talent  for  extremes  —  his  appetite  for  glory,  his  compas- 
sion in  the  face  of  misery.  To  look  at  it  quite  simply,  it  is 
not  in  them  to  imagine  the  sheer  delight  of  changing  from 
a  hall  bedroom  to  a  writer's  u  studio,"  of  buying  a  whole 
meal  and  paying  for  it  —  the  intoxication  of  being  sought, 
not  always  seeking.  Within  a  year  these  refreshments 
came  to  Dreiser  and  he  had  two  years  of  comfort  before 
again  he  forsook  it  for  the  unknown  dangers  of  Sister 
Carrie. 

His  work  for  Every  Month  had  already  taken  him 
among  young  people  of  his  own  interests,  as  in  St.  Louis, 
with  the  difference  that  here  there  were  as  many  girls  as 
men.  Some  of  them  had  come  away  to  escape  the  mo- 
notony of  Western  homes;  some  had  already  been  to 
Paris  and  Munich,  as  much  to  learn  how  to  live  like 
artists,  Dreiser  noticed,  as  to  be  artists.  Bohemian  New 
York  was  in  full  swing.  Once  he  had  gone  to  solicit  a 
double  page  center  from  a  young  painter  later  known 
for  his  Spanish-American  war  pictures,  Louis  Sontag, 
W.  L.  S.  of  Twelve  Men.  He  was  an  inventor  as  well, 
made  and  played  with  models  of  war  ships  and  railroad 
trains.  His  toy  engine  was  "  strong,  heavy,  silent  running, 
with  the  fineness  and  grace  of  the  perfect  sewing  ma- 
chine," so  Dreiser  describes  it.  He  devised  a  scheme  that 
was  a  forerunner  of  moving  pictures;  was  an  expert 

*  The  Ordeal  of  Mark  Twain:  A  shrewd  analysis  of  the  great  humorist, 
wherein  it  is  forbidden  to  laugh. 

145 


fencer,  bicyclist,  trick-rider,  photographer,  and  tenor. 
Dreiser  who  venerates  skill  and  versatility  in  another 
became  one  of  his  friends  and  audience.  He  was  equipped 
to  do  rapidly  just  what  he  himself  in  the  old  days  had 
dreamed  he  must  do  — "  succeed."  Soon  Sontag  was 
illustrating  Kipling!  He  reminded  him  of  Kipling,  facile 
and  brilliant.  And  he  had  business  sense;  used  to  explain 
how  he  always  put  "  a  good  stiff  price  on  his  drawings; 
it  encouraged  respect  for  them."  Of  course  the  studio, 
with  Turkish  corners,  of  so  tense  and  volatile  a  creature 
was  filled  with  friends.  He  "  lived  close  "  to  them,  Drei- 
ser says,  and  u  never  neglected  "  them.  One  feels  that 
this  man  was  tonic  to  him,  gave  him  a  sense  of  aptitude 
and  fitness  he  had  not  met  before,  that  went  almost  for 
absolute  values.  Then  one  day  he  died  of  fever  at  Tampa ; 
and  left  him  with  the  feeling  that  he  "  had  been  looking 
at  a  beautiful  lamp,  lighted  and  warm  .  .  .  and  then 
suddenly  it  had  been  puffed  out  before  my  eyes,  as  if  a 
hundred  bubbles  of  irridescent  hues  had  been  shattered 
by  a  breath.  We  toil  so  much,  we  dream  so  richly,  we 
hasten  so  fast,  and  lo !  the  green  door  is  opened.  We  are 
through  it,  and  its  grassy  surface  has  sealed  us  forever 
from  all  which  .  .  .  we  .  .  .  crave  —  even  as,  breath- 
lessly, we  are  still  running."  * 

There  were  others  too,  who  did  not  go  through  the 
green  door  —  an  alluring  group  to  him,  avid  for  a 
nascence  of  the  arts  and  of  the  libertine  ways  of  artists. 
He  was  in  and  out  of  their  studios.  They  made  a  fourth 
group  to  bring  later  into  his  storied  world.  Some  of 
them  already  were  going  through  the  swinging  door  of 
the  saloon  into  disaster,  and  some  of  them  through 
seductive  doors  of  social  prestige  into  worldliness.  But 
they  were  young  and  hopeful  then,  and  had  before  them 
the  democratic  ideal,  the  cream  tart  —  Success.  His  ac- 
quaintance with  Crowninshield,  that  American  priest  of 
the  arts  and  of  fashion,  dates  from  this  time.  He  admired 
him  then  and  now,  for  talents  important  to  the  health  and 
bloom  of  a  city.  Dreiser  is  the  one  American  radical 
frankly  obsessed  with  the  need  of  social  gaiety  and  luster. 
He  loves  New  York  for  being  Babylon,  wishes  it  might 

*   Twelve  Men. 

146 


be  even  more  so;  not  for  himself  personally  but  for  the 
splendor  of  the  town.  If  unwittingly  Emerson  has  helped 
to  make  and  dessicate  old  Boston,  Dreiser  has  helped  to 
make  and  infect  modern  New  York;  by  giving  it  his  carnal 
blessing. 

Three  years  now  since  his  last  delirious  thwarted  week 
with  his  fiancee.  It  was  getting  harder  and  harder  to  write 
to  her.  Her  image  was  fading  with  time  and  distance. 
There  were  other  intimacies.  One  of  these,  a  beautiful 
creature  with  a  voice  and  a  career  before  her  surprised 
him  with  the  gift  of  a  summer  of  romance  in  Virginia 
mountains.  She  was  the  first  girl  of  distinction  he  had 
ever  met,  who  unlike  the  Missouri  school  teacher, 
wanted  to  give  and  take  freely;  indeed  who  arranged  it 
as  one  would  a  sumptuous  party,  and  then  withdrew 
to  the  pursuit  of  her  career,  explaining  that  they  had 
known  the  best  of  each  other,  that  the  rest  would  be 
commonplace.  She  appears  in  The  "  Genius"  the  image 
of  a  peony. 

Another  in  this  year  1897  to  1898  seemed  so  essential 
to  him  that  he  would  have  broken  his  engagement  in 
Missouri,  if  only  she  had  relinquished  her  ambition  to  be 
a  writer.  She  came  from  a  family  of  importance  in  Wash- 
ington and  was  already  engaged  to  be  married,  but  felt 
that  she  belonged  to  Dreiser.  Together  as  writers  they 
would  reach  the  promised  land  of  fame.  They  needed 
each  other,  she  told  him.  But  he  "  couldn't  see  it  that 
way."  No  household  could  succeed  with  more  than  one 
egotist  in  it.  Perhaps  he  had  learned  to  believe  this  from 
the  Blue  Ridge  peony.  Anyway  again  he  thought  of  "  his 
grand  destiny  "  and  again  regretfully  broke  with  proffered 
and  accepted  love. 

Soon  his  means  of  earning  a  living  became  like  saw- 
dust to  him.  "  There  was  nothing  to  it."  If  he  had  had  an 
intellectual  Aunt  Polly  to  admonish  him,  he  would  have 
been  quick  to  agree.  The  affluent  magazine  world,  he  felt, 
was  "  a  closed  door  "  to  live  work,  to  "  art,"  which  had 
been  his  unfound  bride.  "  I  did  not  want  to  fritter  life 
away  over  magazine  articles.  The  best  a  publicist  could 
hope  to  become  would  be  an  Ida  Tarbell,  a  Ray  Stannard 
Baker,  a  Lincoln  Steffens,"  he  explains,  looking  back  on 

H7 


that  time;  whereas  he  had  pledged  himself  to  intensive 
freedom  of  the  mind.  But  how  to  live  outside  of  maga- 
zines? How  to  use  his  own  temperament  and  make  it 
count  ? 

Again  he  thought  of  his  first  ambition  —  a  play.  Today 
he  says  wistfully:  "  That  form  has  always  seemed  most 
natural  to  me.  Shakespeare  was  right,  u  the  play's  the 
thing."  He  wishes  now  he  had  kept  to  it.  "  A  man  is 
gloriously  articulate  in  a  great  play;  he  is  a  voice;  his 
words  are  no  longer  thoughts,  they  are  acts,  a  challenge 
direct  to  an  audience."  I  spoke  of  Frost's  definition  of 
poetry:  "Words  that  have  become  deeds."  "Yes,"  he 
said,  "  a  poem  is  a  play,  it  moves  and  speaks."  He  thinks 
it  was  chance,  not  preference  that  made  a  novelist  of 
him. 

Perhaps  it  was  pioneer  instinct  that  has  kept  him  a 
novelist.  Masters,  Frost  and  Ring  Lardner,*  have  like- 
wise written  plays  and  hoped  for  production.  But  what 
chance  for  any  one  of  quick  vision  when  Protestant  code 
had  for  some  centuries  destroyed  drama  by  prohibiting 
passion.  We  have  had  leading  men  and  leading  ladies  and 
their  able  troupes  all  in  the  English  tradition.  But  how 
could  we  have  a  vital  theatre  out  of  a  people,  the  action  of 
whose  bodies  had  been  locked  by  two  centuries  of  pro- 
testing, until  negation  had  been  reached.  Mitchio  Ito, 
the  Japanese  dancer  once  said:  "  You  will  notice  that 
your  actors  act  with  their  faces ;  the  Latin  races  act  with 
face  and  body;  the  Japanese  wear  masks,  they  express  the 
meaning  with  bodies  only,  like  acrobats,  like  dancers,  like 
soldiers." 

If  now  we  are  about  to  become  a  dramatic  people  it 
will  be  as  adopted  children  of  the  Negro  music-hall  and 
the  Jewish  theatre,  set  free  by  a  lawlessness,  which,  fol- 
lowing the  law  of  change,  will  begin  to  seek  a  new  order 
more  in  keeping  with  freedom  of  body  and  mind.  The 
Nineties  yielded  a  few  stars  and  a  nation  of  spectators 
and  story-tellers;  among  them  flawless  mimics.  There 
have  always  been  clowns,  and  there  begin  to  be  dancers 
and  athletes  who  might  make  actors  for  a  playwright  able 

*  Ring  Lardner  has  appeared  twice  as  playwright  on  Broadway  but 
both  times  propped  by  collaborators  alien  to  his  genius. 

148 


to  galvanize  us  into  native  speech.  If  ever  this  hero  ap- 
pears, I  think  it  will  not  be  fantastic  to  say  that  first 
Whitman,  then  Dreiser,  then  Masters  among  writers  will 
have  opened  the  way  for  him  into  the  jungle  of  human 
passions. 


149 


9.9 

"  Arthur  Henry  blew  in." 

T 

JLoward  the  spring  of  1897  there  came  to 
New  York  the  chance  which  according  to  Dreiser  made  a 
novelist  of  him.  He  came  as  advance  agent  for  Hermann, 
the  magician,  bent  on  a  career  of  fiction  and  pleasure. 
Their  friendship,  begun  in  Toledo  days,  put  to  sea  again. 
They  complemented  each  other,  the  light  and  the  heavy, 
ballast  and  sails.  Henry  was  certain  that  they  could 
write  fiction,  and  that  he  himself  could  write  it  only  in 
company  with  Dreiser.  In  the  same  room,  at  the  same 
time,  at  the  same  table  they  were  to  work  out  their  sepa- 
rate short  stories,  advising  and  encouraging  each  other. 
Henry  had  what  he  called  u  a  doctrine  of  happiness," 
hypnotic  to  the  heavier  more  sceptical  realist:  "  Money? 
Pooh !  It  was  for  those  who  no  longer  had  the  capacity 
to  enjoy  life.  Mind  was  the  key  to  every  secret  and  every 
delight."  *  He  appears  to  have  administered  just  the 
elixir  necessary  to  start  this  gloomy  uncertain  young  man 
on  the  road  to  being  what  is  now  called  both  in  and  out  of 
the  market  "  our  foremost  novelist."  He  was  his  second 
teacher  in  aesthetics;  McCord  the  first  one,  to  whose  flute 
the  black  girls  in  the  St.  Louis  bagnio  used  to  "  dance  in 
some  weird  savage  way  that  took  one  instanter  to  the 
wilds  of  Central  Africa."  t  Henry  taught  him  to  trust 
himself  and  go  the  limit  without  thought  of  censor.  And 
I  imagine  he  awoke  in  him  too  a  sense  of  style  for  the 
sake  of  style,  most  apparent  in  his  early  writings.  He  was 
a  messenger  from  the  gods  to  guarantee  the  way.  Too 
bad  that  the  lonely  Melville  found  no  friend  like  this;  but 
only  the  morbid  illustrious  Hawthorne  who  grew  to  fear 
more  than  love  the  gist  of  Melville.  A  pity  too  that 
Clemens  had  no  one  to  advise  him  more  kindred  than  the 

*  Rhona  in  A  Gallery  of  Women.  f  Peter  in  Twelve  Men. 

ISO 


eminent  Howells,  who  was  forever  coaching  him  to  be  fit 
for  the  company  of  Emerson,  Whittier,  Holmes,  etc., 
where  he  felt,  he  said,  like  a  "  bar-keeper  in  heaven." 
Whitman  according  to  biography  was  luckier  than  these 
two,  and  like  Dreiser,  had  a  gift  for  friendships  with  men. 
When  Emerson  "  saluted  him  on  the  threshold  of  a  great 
career,"  and  Whitman  in  modern  style  used  the  words  to 
advertise  his  censured  Leaves  of  Grass,  Emerson  was 
scandalized,  and  when  they  met,  did  his  utmost  to  get  him 
to  suppress  "  offensive  passages."  But  Walt  with  his  sea- 
captains  and  bus-drivers,  and  intellectual  cronies  at  Pf aff's 
on  Bleeker  Street,  found  it  easy  to  do  without  famous 
patronage.*  The  ingredients  of  achievement  defy  analysis. 
But  perhaps  lucky  friendships  and  fortunate  love,  when 
changed  often  enough,  contribute  to  a  hero's  fidelity  to 
theme. 

Of  Henry,  Dreiser  writes :  "  Because  I  liked  him  much 
...  I  was  inclined  to  let  him  have  his  way.  He  was  too 
delightful  and  interesting  not  to  humor.  .  .  .  Every- 
thing he  did  and  said  and  thought  was  right  with  me, 
even  though  I  knew  at  times  it  was  really  quite  wrong." 
And  so,  certain  that  no  story  of  his  could  sell,  he  was 
swept  into  this  literary  partnership,  which  kept  the  two 
for  a  time  inseparable.  Then,  he  says,  Henry  became  more 
sybarite  than  artist  and  gradually  they  drifted  to  their 
separate  roads.  Also,  he  complains,  the  sybarite  had  a 
"  vaulting  egotism  "  and  "  loved  to  direct  and  control  as 
well  as  argue,"  which  may  have  had  more  to  do  with  the 
case.  Knowing  that  Dreiser  has  a  gift  for  estrangement 
nearly  equal  to  the  gift  for  engagement,  I  wondered  what 
would  be  Henry's  version  of  their  friendship.  Without 
it  the  history  of  the  author  of  Sister  Carrie  was  incom- 
plete. I  wrote  him,  saying  that  Dreiser  had  sanctioned 
the  book  I  was  making,  indeed  that  he  appeared  to  pre- 
fer pre-mortems  to  post-mortems,  out  of  egotism  some 
people  said,  but  I  thought  more  out  of  the  wish  of  the 
scientist  to  establish  facts;  and  that  I  hoped  for  his  story. 
After  some  months  in  which  he  maintained  a  silence  per- 
haps in  Hollywood,  perhaps  in  heaven  —  no  one  seemed 
to  know  —  an  answer  came  from  Rhode  Island,  of  which 

*  Walt  Whitman:  Le  Grand  Flaneur,  by  Cameron  Rogers. 


already  I  have  quoted  passages.  It  is  so  refreshing  a  tri- 
bute to  a  man  as  much  defamed  as  he  is  exalted,  that  I 
give  the  rest  of  it  here : 

"  Dreiser's  chronicle  of  our  association  is  correct.  He  is 
generous  toward  me  but  I  who  know  him  better  than  any- 
one know  that  he  is  the  most  generous  —  the  least  self 
interested  of  men.  You  are  right  as  to  his  impelling  desire 
of  analysis  and  corresponding  lack  of  egotism.  .  .  .  Unlike 
the  scientist,  however,  his  vision  is  obscured  or  rather 
colored  by  a  profound  tenderness  which  unfortunately  he 
has  learned  to  mistrust  —  by  a  compassion  that  torments 
him  with  a  magnified  idea  of  the  misfortunes  of  others.  He 
gives  his  coat  to  a  beggar  in  rags,  just  as  he  seeks  to  clothe 
in  virtue  all  the  tattered  characters  of  the  world.  I  know 
no  one  more  sensitive  to  beauty  or  ...  luxury  and  con- 
venience, but  he  is  at  the  same  time  more  conscious  than 
anyone  I  know,  of  the  multitude  who  are  deprived  of  these. 
He  seems  to  feel  responsible  for  all  the  misery  of  the  world 
and  for  every  unqualified  wretch  or  abortive  scoundrel  born 
into  it.  ... 

"  For  many  years  I  fished  and  hunted  and  played  with 
Dreiser  in  a  World  of  Thought  and  found  him  always  a  true 
sportsman.  The  ideas  I  caught  seemed  to  him  larger  than 
his  own.  ...  If  I  inspired  him  it  was  because  I  insisted  on 
his  looking  at  and  appreciating  His  Own.  Dreiser  will  not 
have  fulfilled  his  mission  in  the  world  until  he  sits  down  to 
a  novel  in  the  mood  in  which  he  composes  a  poem  —  and 
sustains  that  mood  with  all  his  people,  rich  and  powerful 
and  poor  and  weak,  until  he  finishes  it." 

"  When  I  cast  off  all  restraints  and  went  to  New  York 
with  nothing  but  a  pad  and  a  pencil,  I  found  Dreiser  editor 
of  a  magazine.  We  lived  and  worked  together  —  often 
finishing  each  other's  articles.  If  I  read  them  today  I  could 
not  tell  what  was  his  or  mine.  Our  stories  were  more  our 
own.  We  talked  them  over  together  but  wrote  them  with 
less  collaboration.  He  helped  me  most  with  The  Unwritten 
Law  —  picking  me  up  when  it  had  me  down. 

"  Wonderful  years  —  a  forecast  I  hope  of  an  eternal  re- 
lationship in  the  spiritual  life  hereafter." 

And  finally  the  version  of  their  separations,  more  deli- 
cate than  Dreiser's;  possibly  less  honest,  as  if  being  a 
negative  matter,  it  were  of  small  importance  thirty  years 
after,  beside  the  reality  of  their  life  together : 

"  In  answer  to  your  question. 

We  drifted  apart  and  drifted  together  again  as  the  tide 
comes  and  goes.  The  moon  controls  such  things  —  and  must 
be  held  responsible." 
152 


At  first  reading,  one  would  say  that  Henry  remem- 
bered his  friend  only  at  his  best,  but  the  tribute  contains 
two  reservations  —  "  His  vision  is  colored  by  profound 
tenderness,  which  unfortunately  he  has  learned  to  mis- 
trust." And:  "  Dreiser  will  not  have  fulfilled  his  mission 
in  the  world  until  he  sits  down  to  a  novel  in  the  mood  in 
which  he  composes  a  poem  .  .  ."  Perhaps  more  sensi- 
tive than  creative,  he  hoped  for  his  stronger  partner 
to  create  for  him  according  to  his  program,  like  a  wife 
who  is  ambitious  for  her  husband  and  alienates  him  that 
way. 

Impossible  to  know  the  exact  nature  of  the  bond  and 
the  break  between  the  two,  only  that  success  came  to  them 
together.  The  first  story  of  Dreiser's  to  issue  from  their 
workroom  he  called  The  Shining  Slave  Makers.  It  is 
published  now  unchanged  except  for  title,  in  Free  and 
Other  Stories  *  A  man  goes  to  sleep  in  the  grass  under  a 
shady  tree  among  ant-hills;  he  dreams  of  joining  ant 
life  in  a  time  of  famine  and  war  between  black  and  red 
ants.  The  irony  of  Dreiser's  own  struggle  of  the  last 
ten  years  is  in  this  allegory.  The  cruelty  of  enemy  against 
enemy  fighting  for  bread,  fighting  for  life,  blindly  fight- 
ing, and  the  satirical  tenderness  of  ally  for  ally  aligned 
against  an  arbitrary  enemy,  is  here  —  a  full-fledged  Drei- 
serian  equation :  A  and  B  and  C,  which  we  know,  equal  X, 
the  unknown.  He  seems  to  be  thinking  aloud,  exposing 
what  he  had  heard  for  many  a  year:  Join  the  tribe,  fight 
for  the  tribe,  die  for  the  tribe;  that  way  alone  lies  safety. 
Death  alone  is  safe. 

Robert  Frost,  the  most  astute  of  our  critics,  though 
with  him  criticism  is  implicit  in  his  poems  or  revealed  in 
talk,  once  said  in  a  lecture,  that  a  man  would  strike  his 
gait  in  poem  or  story  or  any  other  work  of  art  in  his 
early  twenties,  if  he  were  ever  to  do  it;  that  then  there 
might  be  years  of  falling  short  of  it,  but  once  there  in  his 
youth,  he  had  a  chance  to  come  back.  I  have  read  none  of 
Dreiser's  earlier  writings,  but  I  imagine  that  sometimes 
they  held  promise  of  this  mature  story  written  in  his 
twenty-seventh  year.  It  has  in  it  the  iron  of  his  special 
temperament  and  little  of  the  slag : 

*  McEwen  of  the  Shining  Slave  Makers. 

153 


"  McEwen,  in  a  strange  daze  and  lust  of  death  seemed 
to  think  nothing  of  it.  He  was  alone  now  —  lost  in  a  tossing 
sea  of  war,  and  terror  seemed  to  have  forsaken  him.  It  was 
wonderful,  he  thought,  mysterious  — .  .  .  Enemy  after 
enemy  assailed  him,  he  fought  as  he  best  knew,  an  old 
method  to  him,  apparently,  and  as  they  died,  he  wished 
them  to  die  —  broken,  poisoned,  sawed  in  two.  He  began 
to  count  and  exult  in  the  number  he  had  slain.  It  was  at 
last  as  though  he  were  dreaming,  and  all  around  was  a  vain, 
dark,  surging  mass  of  enemies." 

Their  separate  stories  finished,  he  sent  his  to  the 
Century  Magazine.  He  had  written  the  fable  lightly 
enough,  and  he  insists,  chiefly  because  whenever  he 
stopped,  Henry  stopped  too,  unable  to  go  on.  It  is  in 
keeping  with  his  drama  that  with  these  first  few  pages, 
and  unintentionally,  he  had  then  and  there  challenged  the 
enemy  he  was  destined  to  fight  through  so  many  years  — 
Orthodoxy.  The  way  a  ring  follows  the  pressing  of  a 
button,  the  emissary  stepped  out  in  the  person  of  Robert 
Underwood  Johnson,  understudy  to  Howells,  editor  of 
the  august  Century,  and  resident  then  and  now  of  Murray 
Hill. 


50 

"  We  like  Boston.  .  .  .  Their  hotels  are 
bad.  Their  pumpkin  pies  are  delicious. 
Their  poetry  is  not  so  good.  .  .  .  Their 
Common  is  no  common  thing  —  and  the 
duck  pond  might  answer  —  if  its  answer 
could  be  heard  for  the  frogs.  .  .  .  But 
with  all  these  good  qualities  the  Bostonians 
have  no  soul."  EDGAR  ALLAN  POE 

HP 

JLo  understand  this  emissary  it  is  necessary 
to  go  back  again  a  generation.  When  the  young  pilgrim, 
William  Dean  Howells  (who  appears  to  be  one  of  the 
subordinate  villains  in  this  narrative  of  facts)  came  East 
in  1 86 1  from  his  Ohio  village  to  find  the  great  world,  he 
went  first  to  Boston  and  Concord.  There  he  talked  in  the 
Parker  House  over  a  bottle  of  Medoc  with  Holmes  and 
Lowell,  on  the  hillside  with  Hawthorne,  in  his  garden 
with  Thoreau,  in  their  studies  with  Emerson  and  Long- 
fellow. They  welcomed  him  as  a  messenger  out  of  the 
West,  romantic  to  their  cultivated  nerves  much  as  the 
United  States  has  recently  been  to  cerebral  Europeans. 
They  were  disappointed  to  hear  that  he  did  not  want  to  be 
a  Lochinvar,  that  the  West  was  cold  and  hostile  to  the 
Arts,  that  he  had  come  to  learn  from  them  to  be  an  East- 
erner. At  the  same  time  they  were  grateful  for  his  faith 
in  their  culture  made  of  their  life's  blood  and  juices.  Truth 
was,  with  their  sages'  minds  and  spinsters'  bodies,  as  the 
years  piled  up,  secretly  they  began  to  be  assailed  by 
doubts.  A  tiny  fear  was  creeping  in  that  perhaps  not 
they,  but  their  victims,  some  of  whom  had  asked  to  be 
their  friends  —  the  lost  Melville,  the  erotic  Margaret 
Fuller,  "  Poor  Margaret  "  they  called  her,  or  even  the 
drunken  Poe,  "that  jingler"  *  —  all  successfully  disposed 

*  Emerson  to  the  young  Howells  in  their  first  talk. 

155 


of,  might  return  and  be  the  heroes  in  their  stead  in  the 
days  to  come.  Whitman's  "  barbaric  yawp  "  impervious 
and  mocking  had  unsettled  these  gentle  intellects,  gossip- 
ing over  the  hedges  between  their  yards  around  supper- 
time.  The  young  Ohian's  praise  came  as  balm  to  them. 
Howells  on  his  side  venerated  them  as  high  priests  dis- 
pensing culture  with  which  he  might  help  to  civilize  the 
rest  of  the  country,  perhaps  even,  given  time,  the  Middle 
West.  He  pledged  himself  to  follow  in  their  ways.  Then 
he  journeyed  on  to  mundane  New  York,  whose  literary 
figures,  Artemus  Ward  and  others,  seemed  rough  and 
cynical  compared  to  the  exquisite  New  Englanders.  Ac- 
cording to  his  memoirs  they  drank  too  much,  told  "  ob- 
jectionable "  stories,  swore  and  laughed  and  were  venal 
about  literature.  Really  in  these  memoirs  Howells  in- 
dicts himself  —  academician  and  parson.  He  is  ring- 
leader, self-confessed,  of  henchmen,  who  dedicated  them- 
selves to  the  task  of  diluting  native  expression  in  the  name 
of  "  ennobling  "  it.  Without  their  set-back,  verbal  Am- 
erica, already  vivid  with  Melville,  Poe  and  Whitman, 
might  have  come  into  its  own  a  generation  sooner.  And  its 
products  would  have  been  richer,  because  less  hampered, 
and  more  coherent  with  the  tragedies  and  victories  of 
the  centuries. 

Howells  fancied  himself  a  realist  and  a  native,  but 
beneath  surfaces  certainly  he  and  his  friends  were  agents 
of  Royalist  ghosts  who  still  knew  how  to  make  Yankees 
feel  inferior  for  having  cut  loose  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. They  catered  to  a  reactionary  mood  constant  in  us, 
and  periodically  ascendant.  Our  rhythm  has  been  in  re- 
curring overlapping  waves  of  independence  and  humility. 
Always  we  have  been  breaking  with  the  old  countries  and 
always  straining  back  toward  them  hoping  for  a  kind 
word,  which  they  never  give.  No  people  so  brash  and  none 
so  deprecating  as  we  are!  In  1861  Howells  shuddered  at 
our  vulgarity.  He  had  not  left  Ohio  to  brook  so  shallow 
an  attitude  toward  the  arts.  He  established  himself  in  the 
Murray  Hill  district  of  New  York  which  connected  with 
Beacon  Hill  if  not  with  Concord.  He  accepted  a  position 
on  the  Atlantic  Monthly  which  took  him  in  person  to 
Boston;  and  later  another  as  consul  to  Venice,  which  was 
156 


quite  as  proper,  since  it  was  correct  for  these  bachelors 
to  "  transfer  "  to  Italy.  He  wanted  the  impossible  to  hap- 
pen —  he  wanted  experienced  artists,  living  without  ex- 
perience. His  code  triumphed  into  the  new  century,  and 
then  when  the  intellectual  revolution  came,  out  of  pro- 
miscuous America,  drenched  in  all  races,  all  classes,  it 
was  a  good  one,  a  brute  for  a  time,  like  drinking  after 
prohibition,  like  machine  guns  in  an  atrophied  city. 

And  always  the  arch-enemies,  hidden  and  outspoken,  of 
this  new  culture  were  bred  in  the  Howells-Harpers-Cen- 
tury-Murray  Hill  tradition.  Though  for  money  they  often 
had  to  let  the  newly  rich  into  their  offices  and  drawing- 
rooms,  the  newly  intellectual  they  vowed  to  fight  to  the 
last  ditch,  and  much  as  if  they  were  gangsters,  for  daring 
to  trespass  on  their  ground,  that  of  the  spirit.  The  some- 
times awkward,  sometimes  crucial  Dreiser  was  among 
the  first  to  suffer.  Repeatedly  he  has  taken  punishment  at 
their  gentlemanly  hands,  perhaps  more  than  anyone  else. 
Fighting  his  way  to  their  sacred  printing  presses,  it  is 
now  traditional  that  he  cleared  the  passage  for  the  rebels 
who  were  to  follow.  After  a  while  they  came  to  be  wel- 
comed. Today  they  are  treated  as  equals;  some  of  them 
like  it.  One  of  them  receives  the  Nobel  prize.  In  fact  for 
the  time  being  genteel  America  persists  in  little  more 
than  politics;  and  yet  has  been  strong  enough  to  give 
distinguished  sanction  to  the  murder  of  Sacco  and  Van- 
zetti  and  to  the  entombment  of  Mooney  and  Billings. 

Robert  Underwood  Johnson  was  made  in  this  dignified 
mould,  and  has  been  true  to  it,  having  later  been  ap- 
pointed ambassador  to  Italy.  .  .  .  When  in  1897  he  had 
read  the  few  pages  of  Dreiser's  fable  of  war,  faithfully 
he  returned  the  manuscript  to  its  author  with  a  "  per- 
sonal "  letter  protesting  its  "  despicable  philosophy."  If 
that  was  the  way  this  young  man  thought  about  life,  the 
less  he  said  about  it  the  better.  The  young  man  wrote 
back  defending  himself.  Again  the  answer  came  that  Mr. 
Johnson  seriously  argued  the  right  to  express  such  ideas 
in  print;  he  could  not  agree  with  them. 

So  now  with  this  encounter  the  lonely  changing  back- 
grounds in  which  Dreiser  had  been  merged  recede  slightly, 
and  he  begins  to  loom.  Soon  they  will  disappear  placenta- 

157 


wise.  And  in  various  shifting  foregrounds  of  the  next 
thirty  years  the  detached  child,  delivered  now  to  the 
scene,  will  engage  with  its  actors.  Among  them  will  be 
friends  and  champions,  jealous  followers,  and  enemies 
bitterly  despising  him.  From  time  to  time  there  will  re- 
appear the  type  of  the  editor  of  the  Century  to  protest 
his  philosophy.  He  will  be  the  purveyor  of  one-hundred- 
per-cent-literature,  the  kind  allowed  presidents  and 
school  children.  He  comes  in  the  guise  of  the  Vigilantes 
at  the  time  of  the  Great  War.  He  reappears  at  this 
very  moment  along  with  the  lengthening  of  skirts,  the 
"  Humanist  "  of  1929  to  1930.  Always  his  attempt  has 
been  to  be  a  detractor  of  the  sun. 

I  wonder  at  this  type  of  mind.  What  is  it  that  frightens 
these  people?  Take  for  example  this  allegory:  The 
Shining  Slave  Makers.  It  was  not,  I  think,  that  the 
editor  was  disputing  the  truth  of  it,  convinced  that  war 
is  kind  and  kindness  always  disinterested.  It  must  be 
that  he  and  his  sort  deny  the  right  to  perceive  outside  of 
strict  limits.  And  invariably  they  confuse  the  one  per- 
ceiving with  his  perceptions.  "  Aha !  "  they  say,  "  this 
writer  tells  us  men  are  cruel  and  deceptive  just  as  nature 
is.  That  proves  he  enjoys  these  qualities  —  the  brute, 
the  liar,  traitor  to  the  human  race,  social  menace,  dan- 
gerous citizen !  "  And  they  hound  him  for  telling  tales 
on  them  —  and  on  himself,  it  may  be,  or  it  may  not  be. 
So  all  at  once  and  suddenly  Dreiser,  who  has  a  consuming 
passion  for  society,  was  yet  lined  up  against  it,  for  having 
shocked  one  of  its  timid  ambassadors.  Soon  he  will  be 
forced  to  learn  the  role  of  enemy. 

In  the  meantime,  having  sold  his  wicked  fable  for 
$125  to  the  unsophisticated  Ainslee's,  a  ten-cent  maga- 
zine already  pleased  with  his  wares,  he  wrote  five  or 
six  new  stories  to  Henry's  five  or  six,  and  sold  them  to 
the  popular  magazines.  Among  them  are  Nigger  Jeff  and 
The  Butcher  Rogaum  and  His  Door,  now  collected  in 
Free  and  Other  Stories.  These  perhaps  were  never  ex- 
posed to  the  frown  of  any  pillar  of  society,  and  if  they 
had  been,  might  have  passed.  Their  only  possible  offense 
could  have  been  an  inborn  interest  in  low  life  —  a  tender- 
ness toward  the  mother  of  a  negro  lynched  for  assault, 
158 


and  toward  a  too  Calvin-like  German  butcher  who  suf- 
fered tortures  for  locking  the  door  on  his  wayward 
daughter  one  night.  He  was  writing  as  if  the  characters 
were  himself.  He  was  writing  about  the  life  of  men  and 
women  and  boys  and  girls  and  babies,  quite  nonchalantly 
now,  as  one  might  write  about  the  life  of  bees  or  ants 
or  mosquitoes,  if  one  knew  it.  He  was  recording  the 
buzzing  and  the  humming,  now  loud,  now  low,  now  joy- 
ful, now  frantic,  and  then  silenced,  as  he  heard  it.  And  he 
might  have  continued  to  write  like  this  for  some  years, 
peacefully  and  reflectively,  recording  both  detail  and 
structure  of  life,  and  selling  his  wares  to  the  less  carping 
magazines  —  for  to  his  surprise  he  was  selling  them,  and 
even  his  feature  articles  could  be  more  like  himself  now 
—  except  that  again  the  effervescent  Henry  interfered. 
They  had  written  short  stories  and  succeeded  —  some 
of  them  out  in  Ohio  under  the  trees  on  the  lawn  of 
Henry's  village  home.  They  were  both  in  a  fever  of  crea- 
tion from  delight  in  the  country  and  each  other.  Henry  in- 
sisted, they  must  embark  at  once,  each  one  of  them,  on  a 
novel.  Dreiser  protested;  the  struggle  for  life  was  too 
fierce;  he  couldn't  afford  a  novel  yet;  no  novel  of  his 
would  be  accepted.  But  the  sybarite  prevailed.  They  were 
back  in  New  York  now.  One  day  in  October,  1899,  Drei- 
ser, according  to  legend,  found  himself  writing  two  words 
on  a  clean  sheet  of  paper  out  of  a  detached  brain.  Two 
words  that  have  become  a  part  of  his  history  and  ours : 
Sister  Carrie.  They  rank  in  prevalence  with  The  Scarlet 
Letter,  Moby  Dick,  The  Raven,  Leaves  of  Grass, 
Huckleberry  Finn,  Ethan  Frame,  Spoon  River  Anthol- 
ogy, Winesburg  Ohio,  Babbitt,  etc. 


159 


I 


51 

"  Our  civilization  is  still  in  a  middle  stage, 
scarcely  beast,  in  that  it  is  no  longer  wholly 
guided  by  instinct,  scarcely  human,  in  that 
it  is  not  yet  wholly  guided  by  reason" 

DREISER:  SISTER  CARRIE 


asked  Dreiser  if  really  it  were  true  that  the 
name  came  first  and  the  characters  and  theme  afterwards. 
"  Yes,  actually !  My  mind  was  a  blank  except  for  the 
name.  I  had  no  idea  who  or  what  she  was  to  be.  I  have 
often  thought  there  was  something  mystic  about  it,  as  if 
I  were  being  used,  like  a  medium."  Curiously  I  remember 
hearing  Masters  speak  of  his  Spoon  River  in  the  same 
way:  "Sometimes  I  think  I  didn't  write  it.  It  passed 
through  me,  I  was  only  the  medium  for  it."  So  the  two 
first  imageries  of  the  two  Americans  most  native  and 
subversive  to  their  period  were  conceived  mysteriously, 
out  of  the  unknown,  if  we  take  their  word  for  it.  Though 
labeled  realism,  they  bear  in  truth  the  footprints  of  the 
inevitable,  the  signature  of  Nature. 

With  Dreiser,  the  identity  of  Sister  Carrie  coming 
alone  from  her  small  country  town  to  Chicago,  to  sink  or 
swim  in  that  "  sea  of  life,"  and  the  identity  of  the  other 
lives  as  they  were  linked  with  hers  and  unlinked  —  these, 
he  said,  followed  as  if  out  of  a  dream,  whole  and  alive. 
He  began  at  once  to  weave  them  into  their  story  in  Oc- 
tober, 1899.  He  worked  with  ease  until  some  time  in 
December.  Then  something  interfered,  he  doesn't  know 
what,  but  he  had  to  quit  for  a  while.  He  and  Henry 
were  at  work  separately  now,  although  they  still  advised 
and  consulted. 

Henry  was  writing  a  romance,  The  Princess  of  Arcady, 
and  at  the  same  time  was  engaged  in  Arcadian  pursuits. 
A  young  woman  whom  Dreiser  had  found  to  copy 
160 


their  manuscripts,  the  owner  of  a  successful  typing 
office,  had  fallen  in  love  with  this  blue-eyed,  fair-skinned 
friend.  She  was  ready  to  pay  for  his  time  by  catering  to 
every  whim,  chief  of  which  was  that  the  close  partnership 
of  these  two  men  should  not  dissolve.  She  was  generous 
and  self-effacing  to  the  proverbial  fault.  When  summer 
came,  she  even  rented  an  island  near  Nantucket  and  a  sail- 
boat, where  they  used  to  go  luxuriously  to  play  and  work.* 
But  none  the  less  her  entry  broke  the  spell  of  friendship 
for  Dreiser.  Besides,  so  much  romance  and  dalliance  did 
not  mix  with  his  more  desperate  plans.  Henry  had  pro- 
vided the  spark;  he  was  beginning  not  to  feed  the  flame. 
A  year  before,  another  complication  had  entered  in.  He 
was  called  upon  to  face  an  almost  forgotten  bond  —  his 
engagement  in  Missouri.  The  note  had  come  due,  and 
must  be  paid  now  or  never.  If  never,  the  flower-like  face, 
the  stark  red  braids,  the  passionate  body  not  yet  his, 
might  not  be  alive  to  him  or  another.  So  he  read  in  a 
letter  from  her  sister,  who  feared  for  her  health  and 

¥jrhaps  for  her  life  if  this  long  waiting  had  to  go  on. 
he  bond  between  them  was  tougher  than  with  Alice 
of  his  first  romance,  or  else  the  need  for  marriage  was 
greater.  And  then,  too,  he  loved  the  sister,  he  remem- 
bers in  a  kind  of  guilty  after-thought.  But  what  more 
natural?  Sisters  have  often  been  loved  in  pairs,  trios 
or  even  quartets.  .  .  .  On  Christmas  day  the  two 
daughters  of  the  Missouri  patriarch,  bringing  with  them 
the  fragrance  of  fields  and  hedges,  met  him  in  Washing- 
ton. And  Sarah  White  and  Theodore  Dreiser  were  joined 
in  what  she  believed  to  be  holy  wedlock. 

The  book  of  newspaper  days  ends  with  an  elegy 
and  no  song  of  praise  to  this  event,  which  took 
place  "  after  the  first  flare  of  love  had  thinned  down 
to  the  pale  flame  of  duty."  Yet  there  are  chapters  in  The 
"  Genius  "  given  over  to  the  hero's  early  days  of  marriage, 
drawn  from  his  own  marriage,  he  says,  which  give  a  less 
dreary  account  of  it.  There  are  oblivious  nights,  fol- 
lowed by  breakfasts  which,  besides  making  the  mouth 
water,  read  like  flawless  erotic  favors,  hand-made  and 
hand-served  by  his  wife.  Yet  too  there  is  a  sense  of 

*  Rhona:  A  Gallery  of  Women. 

161 


defeat,  of  being  cheated,  as  if  he  were  saying,  "  Is  this 
all,  wasn't  there  to  be  more?  "  Possibly  this  half-way 
exciting,  half-way  disappointing  marriage  interfered  with 
the  progress  of  Sister  Carrie.  Or  it  may  have  been  the 
temporary  loss  of  the  magical  Henry,  by  temperament  a 
magician's  advance-agent.  Or  else  the  enterprise  itself 
was  carrying  him  into  problems  yet  beyond  him  —  this 
lonely  making  of  a  novel  without  American  precedent  in 
theme  or  treatment. 

Something  blocked  the  way.  He  says  of  these  months, 
December  and  January:  "  I  had  to  quit,  it  seemed  to  me 
the  thing  was  a  failure,  a  total  frost.  ...  I  think  I  ex- 
perienced a  defeat  in  the  face  of  Hurstwood's  defeat  as 
to  Carrie.  I  took  it  up  again  once  or  twice  but  had  to  quit. 
I  tried  writing  stories;  thought  I  had  better  go  back  to 
articles.  ...  I  had  reached  the  place  where  Hurstwood 
robs  the  safe.  I  didn't  know  where  I  was  going;  I  had 
lost  the  thread.  .  .  .  Then  in  February,  Arthur  Henry, 
off  flirting  with  some  girl,  came  back  and  read  it.  He 
thought  there  was  nothing  wrong  with  it,  told  me  I  must 
go  on.  ...  I  managed  to  solve  the  problem  and  for  a 
while  it  went  pretty  good,  until  I  came  to  the  question  of 
Hurstwood's  decline,  which  took  me  back  to  the  World 
days.  Then  I  had  to  stop  again.  Somehow  I  felt  unworthy 
to  write  all  that.  It  seemed  too  big,  too  baffling,  don't  you 
know?  .  .  .  But  after  a  month  I  managed  to  get  the 
thread,  and  finished  it  up  in  May.  .  .  .  Henry  read  it 
and  said  '  Don't  change  a  word.'  But  I  spent  some  weeks 
revising  it;  he  helped  me.  In  May  or  June  1900  I  sent  it 
to  Harper's.  I  knew  one  of  the  editors.  They  refused  it. 
Then  I  took  it  down  to  Doubleday's.  In  November  it 


was  out." 


I  quote  this  as  he  told  it  to  me  in  July  1930,  wishing 
I  could  get  his  tone  of  voice  into  the  words,  like  loose 
earth,  and  into  the  memory  like  roots  of  trees,  as  if  he 
were  digging  them  up  to  transplant  them.  "  I  felt  un- 
worthy to  write  all  that,  you  know,"  came  like  a  surprise. 
I  did  not  know.  I  think  that  I  have  not  heard  elsewhere 
such  abject  reverence  in  the  face  of  misery  as  suddenly 
sounded  in  this  man's  voice.  If  genius  is  caring  for  human 
beings  more  than  others  know  how  to  care,  then  Dreiser 
162 


has  genius.  Or  if  it  is  true  that  the  great  Don  Juans  are 
also  the  greatly  religious  men,  then  Dreiser  is  proved  to 
be  a  voluptuary.* 

So  in  November  1900  Sister  Carrie  was  out.  Not  easily 
or  happily,  though  in  a  sense  gloriously,  a  new  birth  in 
the  history  of  our  books,  and  a  perilous  delivery.  The  two 
friends  believed  they  had  stripped  it  to  form  by  cuts 
amounting  to  about  40,000  words.  Henry,  the  acknowl- 
edged stylist  of  the  two,  was  sure  that  now  there  was 
nothing  to  be  changed.  There  is  a  story  that  Mrs.  Dreiser 
helped  with  the  revision,  in  fact  that  with  her  school- 
teacher's training  he  studied  English  under  her,  but  this 
he  denies  emphatically:  "  Oh,  no,  all  she  ever  wanted  to 
do  was  to  cut  out  what  she  called  *  the  bad  parts/  and  she 
hadn't  a  chance  at  that.  If  I  learned  anything  about  style 
from  another  at  this  time,  I  owe  it  to  Henry."  The  legend 
is  that  he  has  learned  nothing  about  style  at  this  time  or 
another,  generated  at  the  outset  by  the  jeers  of  the  coun- 
try's critics,  that  followed  like  so  many  pebbles  and  rotten 
eggs  on  the  heels  of  publication. 

As  usual,  the  critics  were  wrong.  A  man's  style  is  a 
man's  self.  As  much  as  he  had  learned  about  himself,  he 
had  learned  about  style.  In  reality,  Sister  Carrie  is  flexible 
prose  suited  to  subtle  and  trenchant  meanings,  passing  at 
charged  moments  over  into  poetry,  in  the  manner  of  all 
prose  designed  to  the  pulse  of  life.  More  than  that, 
the  book  has  few  of  the  archaic  trimmings  and  no  trace 
of  the  diffuseness  which  Dreiser  seems  to  have  wished  to 
make  part  of  his  style  in  later  years.  In  fact  it  was  a 
skilful  package,  made  in  America  with  a  key  to  the  uni- 
versal, that  went  to  the  house  of  Harpers  asking  to  be 
published. 

They  sent  it  back  without  a  word  —  no  flattering  pro- 
test, this  time,  no  invitation  to  try  again.  Ten  years  later, 
after  British  approval,  it  was  offered  once  more  and  they 
accepted  it.  Dreiser  says  they  were  ethically  shocked.  I 
think  perhaps  also  they  were  verbally  and  syntactically 
scandalized.  It  was  one  thing,  though  tough,  to  accept  the 
conscious  lingo  of  Whitman,  Crane,  and  certain  famous 
humorists.  But  for  gentlemen  of  the  Harvard  Club  and 

*  Don  Juan:  Joseph  Delteil. 

163 


Century  Club  to  fall  for  the  guileless  vernacular  in  which 
Sister  Carrie  often  progresses,  was  another  thing.  For 
their  eyes  to  encounter,  outside  of  any  quotation  marks, 
spiritual  or  actual,  nice,  swell,  palavering,  vest,  grip, 
valise,  flashy,  influential,  showy,  nobby,  fancy,  truly  swell 
saloon,  exclusive  circles,  lovely  home  atmosphere,  elegant 
mansions,  dress-suit  affair,  laced  in  and  out  of  the  uncere- 
monial  speech  of  the  Middle  West  and  classes  —  this  was 
hard  on  their  eyes.  Useless  to  have  reminded  them  that 
Shakespeare  did  it  and  Chaucer  and  Villon,  and  Mistral 
would!  They  liked  the  pure  welded  speeches  of  those 
countries  and  those  times  better  than  they  did  poly- 
glot American  derived  from  many  incongruous  floating 
sources.  But  this  author  did  not;  he  liked  his  own  speech 
and  country  as  well  or  well  enough.  He  wrote  apparently 
as  he  talked  and  thought.  When  the  idiom  he  had  always 
heard  and  used  seemed  too  meager  to  convey  his  mean- 
ing, he  trimmed  it  sometimes  with  grace-notes  from  high- 
school  days :  lightsome,  halcyon,  prancing  pair  of  bays, 
airy  grace,  fine  feather.  These  too  were  part  of  that 
Prairie  language;  the  girls  sang  them  to  sweet  tunes 
and  people  used  them  for  special  occasions,  letters  and 
speeches.  Perhaps  they  seemed  ultra-innocent  to  the  in- 
nocent editors  who  first  refused  Sister  Carrie.  It  is  true, 
they  make  a  curious  blend  with  the  text  book  language  — 
formative,  afectional,  actualities  —  in  which  the  story 
also  moves,  just  as  American  talk  moves  in  impersonali- 
ties, so  as  not  to  feel  the  accusation  of  neglected  personal 
values. 

But,  as  they  must  have  read  early  in  the  book,  if  they 
read  it  at  all :  ".  .  .  words  are  but  the  vague  shadows  of 
the  volumes  we  mean.  Little  audible  links  .  .  .  chaining 
together  great  inaudible  feelings  and  purposes."  Here 
Dreiser  detects  a  secret  of  language.  It  must  be  that  not 
the  words  but  the  current  connecting  them,  dictated  not 
by  the  theme  even,  but  by  something  more  intangible,  is 
what  counts.  Whitman  and  his  disciple  Traubel  used  the 
same  words  and  the  same  theme,  and  yet  Whitman  re- 
sembles Homer  more  than  he  does  Traubel  and  Traubel 
Whittier  more  than  he  does  Whitman.  And  so  with 
Sister  Carrie.  With  commonplace  humdrum  words  and 


phrases,  as  well  as  choice  ones,  the  life  of  the  delicious 
Carrie  and  the  lusterless  death  of  Hurstwood,  like  two 
crossed  sails  in  a  boat,  reared  themselves  out  of  the  com- 
monplace of  middle-class  Chicago  and  transient  New 
York  —  a  sudden  creation,  an  event  like  April  weather. 
That  the  Harper  editors  could  not  feel  the  rain  in  their 
faces  was  a  pity  for  them.  Probably  Dreiser  was  right, 
the  "  shameless  "  theme,  rendered  electrically  so  that  it 
shocked  them,  was  too  much  for  them,  and  the  shameless 
diction  gave  them  their  alibi. 


52 

"  He  was  a  quivering  personality." 

HENRY  LANIER  OF  FRANK  NORRIS 

A.  N  ow  the  novel  becomes  a  hinge  on  which 
hangs  an  incident  like  luck  in  an  Homeric  legend.  In  the 
publishing  company  of  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.  there 
worked  as  proof-reader  and  adviser,  when  he  was  not  off 
bass-fishing  with  his  blonde,  the  one  man  to  whom  Sister 
Carrie  would  be  like  sudden  rain,  like  frogs  in  March,  a 
matter  for  elation.  The  man  was  Frank  Norris,  a  young 
San  Franciscan,  already  heroic  as  a  novelist.  He  came 
from  a  more  sophisticated  family  than  Dreiser's.  He  had 
been  educated  in  the  University  of  California,  and  then 
had  gone  to  Harvard  to  study  writing,  and  then  back  to 
the  Golden  Gate.  There  he  had  been  one  of  the  editors  of 
The  Wave,  a  magazine  of  strugglers  for  art  in  the  Far 
West,  akin  to  the  Chicago  Chap  Book,  but  fanned  by 
winds  from  both  East  and  West,  France,  England,  and 
the  Orient  too.  Water  is  a  carrier  of  atmosphere.  Land 
stops  it.  Though  three  times  as  far  from  Japan  to  San 
Francisco  as  from  Paris  to  New  York,  the  flavor  of  the 
Far  East  reached  that  coast  as  actually  as  Europe  ever 
reached  New  York.  Perhaps  the  California  Indians  with 
their  excessively  bright  feather-masked  ceremonies  helped 
to  intensify  their  ancestral  spirit  wafted  across  the  Pacific 
from  an  ancient  home,  and  kept  it  doubly  floating  for  the 
sons  of  gold-seekers  and  fruit-growers  who  had  come 
upon  them.  And  there  were  other  riches  out  there  — 
long  summers,  phosphorescent  ocean,  redwood  forest 
and  a  background  of  Spain  and  Mexico  to  fertilize  the 
spirit.  However  it  happened,  these  Westerners  were  at 
this  date  more  untrammeled  and  inventive  than  the  other 
groups  back  East,  preoccupied  with  making  America  real, 
that  is,  a  land  of  the  spirit.  An  eight  year  old  child  learns 
166 


in  a  public  school  that  Greece  had  something  Phoenicia 
lacked.  A  halo  attaches  to  Athens  and  an  infamy  of  trade 
to  Carthage  in  the  child's  mind,  for  all  of  Dido's  beauty. 
And  so  why  not  to  his  own  United  States,  unless  heroes 
joined  together  to  change  all  that?  .  .  .  That  they 
failed  in  California,  was  surely  not  Frank  Norris's  fault, 
nor  George  Sterling's,  nor  the  fault  of  Charles  Lummis 
nor  of  Ambrose  Bierce,  nor  of  Edward  Sills.  They  were 
a  halcyon  lot,  witty  and  enraptured,  worthy  of  the  men 
and  women  who  crossed  Death  Valley  on  foot  to  get 
there.  They  called  themselves  Bohemians,  and  they  called 
San  Francisco  "  the  cool  grey  city  of  love."  They  made 
one  more  adventure  with  their  various  journals  and  festi- 
vals, perhaps  the  most  resourceful  one,  to  fall  before  the 
wheels  of  finance,  as  each  adventure  of  the  kind  has  fallen 
in  the  history  of  our  culture,  that  is  up  to  date  —  before 
the  wheels  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Railway  in  their  case. 

Out  of  it  before  its  collapse,  Norris  went  East.  There 
used  to  be  a  saying,  ideas  travel  West,  stories  travel  East. 
Like  Jack  London,  Norris  was  a  great  story-teller  and 
traveled  East.  He  went  to  meet  ideas  nearer  their  source 
with  which  to  find  his  bearings.  More  than  London,  he 
looked  on  writing  as  an  art,  never  as  propaganda,  and  on 
the  novel  as  a  sacred  obligation:  "  Each  age  speaks  with 
its  own  peculiar  organ.  .  .  .  Today  is  the  day  of  the 
novel.  .  .  .  By  no  other  vehicle  is  contemporaneous  life 
so  adequately  expressed."  To  be  vital,  the  novel  must 
grow  out  of  real  life,  and  not  out  of  the  idea  of  realism. 
Howells  was  a  realist,  he  said,  Zola  a  romanticist,  since 
life  beneath  surfaces,  taken  in  all  its  phases,  sordid,  un- 
lovely, abnormal,  was  romance.  "  Realism  stultifies  itself, 
it  notes  only  the  surfaces."  *  With  this  faith  in  his  heart, 
he  had  written  stories  of  San  Francisco  for  The  Wave, 
and  one  novel,  Moran  of  the  Lady  Letty,  and  two 
unpublished  novels,  handover  and  The  Brute  and 
McTeague.  He  was  twenty-seven  years  of  age. 

This  was  the  story-teller  who  in  1898  joined  the  house 
of  Doubleday,  McClure  as  reader  and  literary  adviser, 
invited  by  Samuel  McClure,  who  saw  journalistic  virtue 
in  the  serial  novel  appearing  in  The  Wave.  It  was  dated 

*  "  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist,"  Frank  Norris. 

167 


with  a  current  event,  the  sinking  of  the  Maine  and  the 
outbreak  of  the  Spanish-American  War.  Doubleday  pub- 
lished the  novel,  a  fair  success,  and  then  the  great 
McTeague,  written  three  years  before  —  a  success  of 
scandal  at  first  and  then  ignored  in  our  country  until  long 
after  Norris's  death  in  1907.  With  Moby  Dick  and  An 
American  Tragedy  it  shares  that  quality  most  praised  by 
moderns  —  sense  of  volume.  Dreiser  writes  of  it : 

"  In  the  days  of  its  first  circulation  there  was  considerable 
complaint  as  to  McTeague's  vulgarity,  the  ignorance  and 
brutality  of  its  principals  and  their  associates.  For  that  was 
the  day  of  transcendental  perfection  (on  paper)  throughout 
America !  ...  To  me  when  I  first  read  it  in  1900,  it  brought 
the  thrill  of  realism  as  related  to  America.  And  what  a  thrill ! 
At  that  time  I  was  but  twenty-nine  and  had  just  concluded 
Sister  Carrie  .  .  .  my  own  work  about  Chicago  and  New 
York.  Who  was  this  man?  ...  I  inquired  of  my  literary 
friends  and  .  .  .  learned  it  was  a  first  book  by  a  young  man 
out  in  San  Francisco." 

Unknown  then  to  Dreiser,  Frank  Norris  was  already 
in  New  York;  and  Sister  Carrie  fell  to  him  as  part  of  the 
day's  work  of  manuscript  reading.  It  made  an  instantane- 
ous appeal,  which  Yeats  has  called  the  test  of  art.  He 
talked  of  it  to  everyone :  "  It  is  the  best  novel  I  have 
read  since  I  have  been  reading  for  the  firm,  and  it  pleases 
me  as  well  as  any  novel  I  have  ever  read,  published  or 
otherwise."  Morgan  Robertson,  a  writer  of  sea-stories, 
told  how  one  morning  happening  to  call  on  Norris  in  his 
office,  he  was  met  with  the  news :  "  I  have  found  a  master- 
piece. The  man's  name  is  Theodore  Dreiser."  When  Rob- 
ertson said  he  knew  him,  he  said :  "  Tell  him  what  I  think 
of  it.  I  am  writing  him  to  call.  I  hope  the  house  publishes 
it.  It's  a  wonder."  With  the  notation  that  it  must  be  pub- 
lished, he  gave  the  manuscript  over  to  Henry  Lanier,  the 
junior  partner,  born  in  Georgia,  brought  up  in  Baltimore 
(son  of  the  poet  Sidney  Lanier  and  a  friend  as  well  as 
associate  of  Norris). 

"  It  hit  him  hard,"  Mr.  Lanier  said,  who  graciously 
had  consented  to  think  back  for  me  to  this  spring  of  1900. 
I  said :  "  Perhaps  it  hit  him  especially  hard,  because  wasn't 
Norris  going  back  on  himself  at  this  period  —  that  is,  on 
the  quality  you  find  in  McTeague?  Had  they  made  him 
feel  in  New  York  the  pressure  of  commerce,  when  he 
168 


wrote  The  Octopus  and  The  Pit?  "  —  "  No,  I  wouldn't 
say  that,"  was  the  answer  of  the  more  temperate 
Mr.  Lanier.  "  Of  course  he  was  disappointed  by  the  re- 
ception given  McTeague;  I  think  he  could  hardly  believe 
it.  But  I  wouldn't  say  he  compromised  to  money  in  his 
later  works.  As  I  recollect  his  feelings  at  that  time  he 
merely  thought  McTeague  must  be  too  lonely  and  aloof 
to  be  reasonable.  He  was  the  kind  of  man  who  had  to  be 
acknowledged,  and  then  he  believed  in  *  the  people  '  more 
than  the  rest  of  us  do.  I  remember  he  came  in  one  day 
full  of  his  '  big  idea/  a  Wheat  Cycle  in  three  parts,  of 
which  he  finished  two  before  his  death,  The  Octopus  and 
The  Pit.  He  was  like  a  fanatic,  ablaze  with  it.  *  He  would 
knock  'em  cold  this  time,'  I  remember  he  said.  ...  I 
don't  think  he  was  pandering,  he  was  too  much  in  earnest, 
but  he  got  to  intellectualizing  over  the  situation,  so  that 
perhaps  there  is  not  the  first-hand  quality,  if  you  like, 
that  there  is  in  McTeague.  The  later  work  approaches 
journalism,  possibly  ...  I  don't  know.  They  were  all 
big  books.  ...  Of  course  he  liked  luxury,  clothes,  res- 
taurants, wine,  the  bright  lights  you  might  say,  though 
not  in  a  greedy  way.  .  .  .  Then  he  had  to  have  his  girl, 
and  he  got  her,  married  her.  .  .  ."  —  "  Was  she  at- 
tractive?" I  asked.  —  "Really  I  can't  say  ...  not  to 
me  especially,  but  then  I  am  old-fashioned.  He  liked  her, 
she  was  a  blonde,  rather  a  large  woman.  .  .  .  He  liked 
fishing,  was  crazy  about  bass-fishing.  I  found  him  a  cabin 
up  on  Greenwood  Lake  near  Greenwich  where  he  used 
to  stay  a  good  deal  of  the  time.  If  I'm  not  mistaken  he 
read  Dreiser's  Carrie  up  there.  Yes,  I  seem  to  remember 
his  bringing  it  down  from  the  country  one  morning  ter- 
ribly excited  about  it.  ...  No,  I  don't  think  Norris  ever 
thought  of  money  in  connection  with  writing.  Of  course 
he  was  under  a  good  deal  of  pressure  at  this  time,  but  he 
was  too  much  the  artist.  .  .  .  We  all  loved  him.  .  .  . 
He  was  a  quivering  personality." 

So  between  a  dynamic  personality,  Dreiser,  and  a  quiv- 
ering personality,  Norris,  there  blazed  for  a  minute  the 
fire-brand  truth,  luxury,  art,  whatever  you  prefer  to  call 
it  —  that  element  from  which  over  and  over  again  people 
fly.  Truth  like  love  is  a  luxury.  We  don't  want  luxury. 


Today  we  fly  from  it  in  an  aeroplane.  But  this  new  frac- 
tion of  it,  Sister  Carrie,  got  this  time  by  luck  a  running 
start.  "  It  must  be  published,"  Norris  said.  Lanier  read 
it  and  hated  it,  and  agreed  that  they  must  publish  it.  For 
him,  he  explains,  a  man  loving  old  mellow  things,  it  was 
hateful.  "  It  had  no  background  " :  the  characters  were 
treated  as  of  equal  importance  with  the  most  cultivated 
delightful  men  and  women:  whereas  "  people  are  not  of 
equal  significance  "  in  his  opinion.  Nevertheless  it  was 
powerful,  unavoidable.  Norris  was  right,  it  had  to  be 
published.  Then  Walter  Hines  Page  read  it,  later  am- 
bassador to  England,  at  this  time  partner  of  Frank 
Doubleday  in  the  stead  of  S.  S.  McClure  who  had  by  now 
gravitated  back  to  his  magazine.  He  agreed  with  the 
younger  men  that  it  was  a  book  to  publish,  "  a  natural," 
he  called  it.  A  contract  was  drawn  up  and  signed  by  the 
author  and  these  two  gentlemen.  Sister  Carrie  was  on  the 
way  to  the  printing  press. 


170 


55 

Famous  Women  of  literature:  Mrs. 
Grundy,  otherwise  Mrs.  Samuel  Clemens, 
otherwise  Mrs.  Frank  Doubleday. 


.he  legend  goes,*  and  Mr.  Lanier  partly 
corroborates  it,  that  at  this  moment  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Frank 
Doubleday,  who  had  been  traveling  in  Europe,  returned 
to  New  York;  and  Mr.  Doubleday,  the  senior  partner, 
arriving  at  his  offices  in  25th  Street,  among  other  matters 
was  confronted  with  this  initial  novel  of  an  unknown 
Hoosier.  Since  it  was  Saturday  he  took  it  to  his  home  in 
Oyster  Bay,  a  suburb  of  Murray  Hill  and  Washington 
Square,  to  read  it  over  the  week-end.  And  then  .  .  .  and 
then,  according  to  fable,  again  enters  the  villain,  Pro- 
priety —  this  time,  if  you  have  not  guessed  it,  in  the 
refined  and  engaging  dress  of  Mrs.  Frank  Doubleday. 
And  here  since  no  one  can  or  will  recollect  this  particular 
week-end,  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  imagine  the  scene. 
First,  however,  it  is  possible  to  identify  the  enemy  —  ac- 
cording to  her  friends,  an  almost  perfect  woman,  wife, 
mother,  church  member,  hostess,  in  this  well-fed,  well-bred 
apex  of  New  York  in  1900.  Mr.  Charles  P.  Everitt,  who 
with  his  brother  Sam  worked  also  at  Doubleday,  Page  & 
Co.,  gave  me  a  dilated  picture :  "  She  was  beautiful,  she 
was  a  lovely  woman,  she  was  stately.  In  fact,  not  long 
before  he  died,  I  met  Walter  Hines  Page  on  the  street, 
and  I  said  to  him,  '  Walter,  I  don't  believe  there  ever  was 
such  a  woman  as  Mrs.  Frank  Doubleday.'  And  he  said  to 
me  with  tears  in  his  eyes :  '  Charlie,  I  have  never  known 
the  equal  of  Mrs.  Frank  Doubleday.'  ' 

Wrapt  in  such  an  aura,  I  imagine  her  now  entering  the 
study  where  Mr.  Frank  Doubleday  was  busy  reading  and 

*  H.    L.   Mencken,   A    Book   of  Prefaces;    Burton   Rascoe,    Theodore 
Dreiser;  Frank  Harris,  Contemporary  Portraits. 

171 


possibly  enjoying  Sister  Carrie.  This  might  have  been 
what  she  read  over  her  husband's  shoulder,  as  he  turned 
the  pages  and  her  virtuous  eyes  easily  picked  the  "  in- 
decencies "  after  the  first  note  of  them: 

"  A  dainty  self-conscious  swaying  of  the  hips  by  a  woman 
was  to  him  as  alluring  as  the  glint  of  rare  wine  to  the  toper. 
He  would  thrill  as  a  child  with  the  unhindered  passion  that 
was  in  him.  .  .  ." 

"He  appeared  to  great  advantage  behind  the  white 
napery  and  silver  platters.  ...  As  he  cut  the  meat  his 
rings  almost  spoke.  ...  He  helped  Carrie  to  a  rousing 
plateful.  .  .  .  That  little  soldier  of  fortune  took  her  good 
turn  in  an  easy  way.  .  .  .  Even  then  in  her  commonplace 
garb  her  figure  was  evidently  not  bad,  and  her  eyes  were 
large  and  gentle.  Drouet  looked  at  her  and  his  thoughts 
reached  home.  .  .  .  She  felt  that  she  liked  him  .  .  .  there 
was  something  even  richer  than  that  running  as  a  hidden 
strain  in  her  mind.  .  .  ." 

"  The  jackets  were  the  greatest  attraction.  When  she  en- 
tered the  store  she  already  had  her  heart  fixed  upon  the 
peculiar  little  tan  jacket  with  large  mother-of-pearl  but- 
tons ...  all  the  rage  that  fall.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  '  I'll  tell  you  what  you  do/  he  said,  '  you  come  with 
me  and  I'll  take  care  of  you.  .  .  .  Why  don't  you  get  your- 
self a  nice  little  jacket.  .  .  .  I'll  loan  you  the  money.  .  .  . 
Now  why  don't  you  let  me  get  you  a  nice  room?  ...  I 
won't  hurt  you.  .  .  .  Aw,  come  Carrie.  .  .  .  What  can  you 
do  alone?'  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  She  followed  whither  her  craving  led.  She  was  as 
yet  more  drawn  than  she  drew.  .  .  .  He  would  need  to  de- 
light himself  with  Carrie  as  surely  as  he  would  need  to  eat 
his  heavy  breakfast.  .  .  ." 

"...  *  I  wish  I  could  get  something  to  do,'  she  said.  — 
*  You'll  get  that  all  right.  .  .  .  Get  yourself  fixed  up,  see  the 
city.  ...  I  won't  hurt  you.  .  .  .  Got  on  the  new  shoes? 
.  .  .  Stick  'em  out.  .  .  .  George,  they  look  fine.  .  .  .  Put 
on  your  jacket.  .  .  .  Say  that  fits  like  a  T,  don't  it?'  he 
remarked  feeling  the  set  of  it  at  the  waist  and  eyeing  it  from 
a  few  paces  with  real  pleasure.  ...  At  Carson  Pirie's  he 
bought  her  a  nice  skirt  and  shirtwaist.  .  .  .  She  was  pretty, 
yes,  indeed.  .  .  .  She  caught  her  little  red  lip  with  her  teeth 
and  felt  her  first  thrill  of  power.  .  .  ." 

In  those  days  the  more  valiant  New  York  matrons  were 
occupied  among  their  good  works  with  purity  leagues  for 
the  suppression  of  vice,  for  the  lapsed  and  lost,  for  the 
social  evil.  Indeed  at  about  this  time  they  were  making 
a  pleasant  sanitary  prison  where  wayward  girls  too  tender 
172 


in  years  for  the  jail  might  be  agreeably  locked  up  —  the 
Florence  Crittendon  Home.  And  here  was  Doubleday, 
Page  about  to  publish  a  book  about  vulgar  people,  a  Chi- 
cago drummer  and  a  factory  girl  from  the  country,  which 
apparently  recommended  prostitution  as  a  way  of  life  in 
little  tan  jackets  with  large  pearl  buttons.  At  least  as  she 
read  Mrs.  Doubleday  could  find  no  hint  of  condemnation. 
She  looked  into  it  again.  Now  there  was  a  change  of 
names,  a  new  seducer,  a  saloon-manager  if  you  please,  and 
yet  described  as  a  handsome,  well-dressed  dependable 
citizen!  It  must  have  been  she  was  mortified  as  she  went 
from  lewd  facet  to  facet  lighted  by  her  orthodox  mind : 

"He  drew  near  this  lily,  which  had  sucked  its  waxen 
beauty  from  a  depth  of  waters  which  he  had  never  pene- 
trated, and  out  of  ooze  and  mould  which  he  could  not  un- 
derstand. He  drew  near  because  it  was  waxen  and  fresh. 
It  lighted  his  feelings  for  him.  It  made  the  morning  worth 
while." 

"Finally  when  the  long  flush  of  delight  had  subsided, 
he  said:  'When  is  Charlie  going  away?  .  .  .  Come  away 
and  leave  him.  ...  I  can't  live  without  you.  .  .  .'  — ... 
'Well  perhaps  we  can  arrange  to  go  somewhere.'  —  'Sup- 
pose we  didn't  have  time  to  get  married  here.'  —  'If  we 
got  married  as  soon  as  we  got  to  the  other  end  of  the  jour- 
ney it  would  be  all  right.'  —  '  I  meant  that,'  he  said.  .  .  . 
She  was  extremely  happy  now.  ...  As  for  him  the  mar- 
riage clause  did  not  dwell  in  his  mind." 

Then  if  she  read  on  she  followed  them  to  New  York 
with  the  stolen  money  from  the  safe  of  the  gorgeous 
saloon,  and  followed  him  satisfactorily  enough  to  penury 
and  suicide,  but  Carrie  disgracefully  to  being  a  stage 
favorite  and  to  heartless  success.  But  I  think  she  did  not 
read  so  far  without  exclaiming:  "  But,  Frank,  this  is  im- 
moral, disgusting!  You  mean  to  say  that  Mr.  Page  and 
that  nice  young  Lanier  are  going  to  publish  it?  You  must 
all  be  out  of  your  minds !  If  you  publish  that  book,  I,  for 
one  shall  be  ashamed  to  face  society.  I  would  sooner  go 
down  on  my  knees  and  scrub  floors  than  derive  income 
from  such  filth."  So  slamming  to  the  door  of  her  mind,  and 
locking  it,  what  difference  whether  she  read  the  rest  of  it 
or  not.  If  she  did,  she  read  with  eyes  which  never  felt  the 
fine  distinctions  and  the  cruel  sorrows  of  these  passages 
nor  of  others  that  could  neither  shock  nor  graze  a  literal 


mind :  Did  she,  for  example,  get  the  adventure  of  the  big 
first  theme  —  the  creeping  out  from  a  rural  fringe  of  ac- 
tivity to  a  center  of  it,  Chicago?  Chicago  of  all  places! 
That  pork-packers'  village,  that  no-man's  land : 

".  .  .  To  the  child,  the  genius  with  imagination,  or  the 
wholly  untravelled,  the  approach  to  a  great  city  for  the  first 
time  is  a  wonderful  thing.  Particularly  if  it  be  evening  — 
that  mystic  period  between  the  glare  and  gloom.  .  .  .  Ah, 
the  promise  of  night!  .  .  .  What  old  illusion  of  hope  is 
not  here  forever  repeated !  Though  all  humanity  be  still  en- 
closed in  the  shops,  the  thrill  runs  abroad.  It  is  in  the  air. 
The  dullest  feel  something  which  they  may  not  always  ex- 
press or  describe.  ...  It  is  the  lifting  of  the  burden  of 
toil.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  The  gleam  of  a  thousand  lights  is  often  as  effective 
as  the  light  in  a  wooing  and  fascinating  eye.  Half  the  un- 
doing of  the  .  .  .  natural  mind  is  accomplished  by  sources 
wholly  inhuman." 

Or,  was  she  aware  of  the  theme  of  winter,  maintained 
as  she  was  at  an  even  temperature  of  68  ? 

".  .  .  Not  poets  alone,  nor  artists,  nor  that  superior  order 
of  mind  which  arrogates  to  itself  all  refinement,  feel  this, 
but  dogs  and  all  men.  The  sparrow  upon  the  wire,  the  cat 
in  the  doorway,  the  dray-horse  tugging  his  weary  load,  feel 
the  long  keen  breaths  of  winter.  It  strikes  to  the  heart  of 
all  life,  animate  and  inanimate.  .  .  ." 

Or  the  melody  of  money,  having  never  known  the  lack 
of  it? 

".  .  .  Money:  '  something  everybody  else  has  and  I  must 
get,'  would  have  expressed  [Carrie's]  understanding  of  it 
thoroughly.  Some  of  it  she  now  held  in  her  hand  —  two 
soft  green  ten  dollar  bills  —  and  she  felt  that  she  was  im- 
mensely better  off  for  the  having  of  them.  .  .  ." 

Did  she  see  in  the  deathly  drabness  of  Carrie's  sister 
and  brother-in-law  in  their  West  Side  flat  some  of  the 
seeds  of  American  crime,  now  become  so  renowned?  I 
think  she  called  them  virtuous  lower  middle-class  people 
—  the  backbone  of  the  nation.  Nor  could  she  have  been 
expected  to  see  in  her  own  decorous  mind  other  seeds  of 
our  crimes : 

"Minnie  was  no  companion  for  her  sister  —  she  was  too 
old.  Her  thoughts  were  staid  and  solemnly  adapted  to  a 
condition.  .  .  ." 

"When  Hanson  came  home  at  seven  o'clock  he  was 
inclined  to  be  a  little  crusty.  .  .  .  This  never  showed  in 

174 


anything  he  said  so  much  as  in  a  certain  solemnity  of  coun- 
tenance and  the  silent  manner  in  which  he  slopped  about. 
He  had  a  pair  of  yellow  carpet  slippers  ...  he  would  im- 
mediately substitute  for  his  solid  pair  of  shoes.  This  and 
washing  his  face  with  the  aid  of  common  washing  soap  un- 
til it  glowed  a  shiny  red,  would  constitute  his  only  prepa- 
ration for  the  evening  meal.  He  would  then  get  his  evening 
paper  and  read  in  silence.  .  .  .  For  a  young  man  this  was 
rather  a  morbid  turn  of  character  and  so  affected  Carrie. 
.  .  .  She  felt  the  drag  of  a  lean  and  narrow  life.  .  .  ." 

"  He  was  as  still  as  a  deserted  chamber.  .  .  .  Carrie  on 
the  other  hand  had  the  blood  of  youth." 

Nor  can  you  blame  her  that  she  could  not  see  in  the 
nonentity  of  Carrie  the  seeds  of  u  that  sympathetic  and 
impressionable  nature  which,  ever  in  its  most  developed 
form  has  been  the  glory  of  the  drama  " ;  nor  gifts  of 
allurement  very  like  those  of  famous  courtesans  of  his- 
tory who  likewise  had  been  of  humble  origin,  and  yet 
never  from  Wisconsin!  What  right  had  this  callow 
Hoosier  to  endow  his  trivial  heroine  with  talents  which 
certainly  neither  she  nor  any  other  Eastern  woman 
of  influence  intended  to  permit  in  the  country  of  their 
forefathers? 

".  .  .  Something  delicate  and  lonely  in  her  voice,  but 
[Drouet]  could  not  hear  it.  He  had  not  the  poetry  in  him 
that  would  seek  a  woman  out  under  such  circumstances  and 
console  her  for  the  tragedy  of  life.  Instead  he  struck  a 
match  and  lighted  the  gas.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  How  was  it  that  in  so  little  a  while  the  narrow  life 
of  the  country  had  fallen  from  her,  and  the  city  with  all  its 
mystery  taken  its  place?  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  Her  little  shoes  now  fitted  her  smartly  and  had 
high  heels.  She  had  learned  much  about  laces  and  those 
little  neck-pieces.  .  .  ." 

"...  She  looked  in  the  mirror  and  pursed  up  her  lips 
.  .  .  with  a  little  toss  of  the  head,  as  she  had  seen  the  rail- 
road treasurer's  daughter  do  from  Evansville,  Indiana. 
She  caught  up  her  skirts  with  an  easy  swing.  .  .  .  She  used 
her  feet  less  heavily.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  The  mouth  had  the  expression  at  times,  in  talk- 
ing and  in  repose  of  one  who  might  be  upon  the  verge  of 
tears.  .  .  .  The  pronunciation  of  certain  syllables  gave  to 
her  lips  this  peculiarity  of  formation  ...  as  suggestive 
and  moving  as  pathos  itself.  .  .  ." 

And  how  could  a  Murray  Hill  matron,  who  was  what 
she  wanted  to  be,  wife,  mother,  influential  citizen,  charm- 

175 


ing  hostess,  have  felt  with  Carrie  the  sadness  of  her  lot, 
equipped  now,  and  yet  for  what? 

".  .  .  When  she  came  to  her  own  rooms,  Carrie  saw 
their  comparative  insignificance.  .  .  .  What  after  all  was 
Drouet?  What  was  she?  At  her  window  she  thought  it 
over,  rocking  to  and  fro  and  gazing  out  across  the  lamp-lit 
park.  .  .  .  Some  old  tunes  crept  to  her  lips,  and  as  she  sang 
them,  her  heart  sank.  .  .  .  She  was  sad  beyond  measure, 
and  yet  uncertain,  wishing,  fancying.  .  .  .  Now  for  the  old 
cottage  room  in  Columbia  City,  now  for  the  mansion  upon 
the  Shore  Drive,  now  for  the  fine  dress  of  some  lady,  now 
the  elegance  of  some  scene.  .  .  .  Finally  it  seemed  as  if  all 
her  state  were  one  of  loneliness  and  forsakenness.  .  .  .  She 
hummed  and  hummed,  sitting  in  the  shadow  by  the  win- 
dow, and  was  therein  as  happy,  though  she  did  not  perceive 
it,  as  she  ever  would  be." 

Nor  could  an  authority  on  manners  and  morals  be 
asked  to  find  interest  in  the  emotions  and  pretensions  of 
the  "deep-feeling"  saloon-manager  or  in  his  shallow 
family  or  equivocal  "  social  prestige."  Yet  here  they  were 
brilliantly  set  down : 

".  .  .  He  read  the  paper,  which  was  heightened  in  in- 
terest by  the  shallowness  of  the  themes  discussed  by  his  son 
and  daughter.  Between  his  wife  and  himself  ran  a  river  of 
indifference.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  True  love  she  [Carrie]  had  never  felt  for  him. 
.  .  .  This  was  due  to  a  lack  of  power  on  his  part,  a  lack 
of  that  majesty  of  passion  that  sweeps  the  mind  from  its 
seat,  fuses  and  melts  all  arguments  and  theories.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  These  gentlemen  Elks  knew  the  standing  of  one 
another.  They  had  regard  for  the  ability  which  could  amass 
a  small  fortune,  own  a  nice  home,  keep  a  barouche  or  car- 
riage, perhaps,  wear  fine  clothes,  and  maintain  a  good  mer- 
cantile position.  .  .  .  Hurstwood^  who  was  a  little  above 
the  order  of  mind  who  could  accept  this  standard  as  perfect 
.  .  .  was  quite  a  figure.  .  .  .  Look  at  him  any  time  within 
the  half  hour  before  the  curtain  was  up,  he  was  a  member 
of  ...  a  rounded  company  of  five  or  more  whose  stout 
figures,  large  white  bosoms  and  shining  pins,  bespoke  the 
character  of  their  success.  .  .  .  The  gentlemen  who  brought 
their  wives  called  him  out  to  shake  hands  with  them.  He 
was  evidently  a  light  among  them.  ...  It  was  greatness 
in  a  small  way,  small  as  it  was.  .  .  ." 

The  greatness  of  America  today,  small  as  it  is,  hated 
and  satirized  by  Sinclair  Lewis  throughout  a  book,  is 
noted  impartially  here  in  passing  from  one  turn  of  the 


drama  to  another.  But  Dreiser  making  his  way  so  easily 
among  values  apparently  could  not  beguile  the  cultured 
wife  of  his  publisher.  Not  even  when  he  defined  travel 
alluringly : 

"  Thus  lovers  are  forgotten,  sorrows  laid  aside,  death  hid- 
den from  view.  There  is  a  world  of  accumulated  feeling  back 
of  the  trite  dramatic  expression  —  CI  am  going  away/" 

Nor  when  with  a  single  casual  character,  a  young  man 
met  at  a  party,  realms  are  revealed  to  Carrie  before  un- 
suspected, beyond  those  which  money  could  buy:  and 
never  to  be  known  to  either  of  her  lovers,  drummer  or 
saloon  manager,  nor  to  any  of  her  stray  friends.  So  he 
constructs  the  immensities  of  consciousness  which  the 
childlike  mind  gets  glimpses  of  through  holes  in  the 
roof,  holes  in  the  floor,  cracks  in  the  wall  of  her  simple 
dwelling: 

".  .  .  '  He   dosn't   amount  to  much,'   said  Ames.  .  .  . 
'  Nearly  as  bad  as  Dora  Thome/  .  .  .  Carrie  felt  this  as  a 
personal  reproof.  She  read  Dora  Thorne,  or  had  a  good  deal 
in  the  past.  .  .  .  Now  this  clear-eyed,  fine-headed  youth 
made  fun  of  it.  ...  She  looked  down  and  for  the  first  time 
felt  the  pain  of  not  understanding.  .  .  .   [She]   wondered 
what  else  was  right,  according  to  him.  .  .  .  '  Don't  you 
think  it  rather  fine  to  be  an  actor?"  she  asked  once. — 
1  Yes  I  do  ...  to  be  a  good  one.'  .  .  .  Just  this  little  ap- 
proval set  Carrie's  heart  bounding.  Ah,  if  she  could  only  be 
an  actress  —  a  good  one!  .  .  .  such  men  as  he  would  ap- 
prove of  her.  .  .  .  She  said  good-bye  with  feigned  indif- 
ference. .  .  .  Still,   the   coach   seemed  lorn.  .  .  .  She   did 
not  know  whether  she  would  ever  see  this  man  any  more. 
What  difference  could  it  make?  What  difference  could  it 
make?  .  .  .  Hurstwood  had  returned,  and  was  already  in 
bed.  His  clothes  were  scattered  loosely  about.  Carrie  came 
to  the  door  and  saw  him,  then  retreated.  .  .  .  Back  in  the 
dining-room  she  sat  in  her  chair  and  rocked.  Her  little 
hands  were  folded  tightly  as  she  thought.  Through  a  fog 
of  longing  and  conflicting  desire  she  was  beginning  to  see. 
.  .  .  She  was  rocking  and  beginning  to  see." 
Dreiser    at    twenty-nine    could    tell    poignantly    these 
chasms  between  the  different  strata  of  American  society 
—  bleak  separations,  almost  peculiar  to  us,  which  are 
enough  to  account  for  our  despair  today.  And  too  he 
knew  that  it  was  need  of  money  that  drove  most  people 
from  one  class  into  another.  It  was  want,  fear  of  cold  and 
hunger,  wedded  to  ambition  that  drove  Carrie  out  of  the 

177 


humdrum  classes  into  the  special  one  of  the  theatre.  And 
it  was,  I  am  afraid,  the  fact  of  these  chasms  that  kept 
Mrs.  Doubleday  from  crossing  over  into  the  lives  of 
this  book,  either  to  follow  Carrie  toward  the  bright  lights, 
or  the  "  liberal  opulent  "  Hurstwood  into  the  dark  velvet 
ways  of  poverty  and  death.  The  long  slide  downward, 
after  he  had  taken  the  money,  and  his  fine  name,  breath 
of  life  to  him,  had  gone;  the  rich  disintegration,  punctu- 
ated by  looking  for  jobs,  then  by  ceasing  to  look  for  jobs, 
the  days  of  sitting  in  hotel  lobbies,  then  of  rocking  by  the 
radiator  to  the  reading  of  innumerable  newspapers;  the 
one  pitiful  climb  up  into  activity,  when  as  a  scab  he  runs  a 
car  in  a  street-car  strike;  the  metallic  cruelty  of  jeers, 
stones,  wounds,  and  the  careering  of  the  cable  car  under 
his  ignorant  touch  over  all  humanity,  that  is,  over  all  but 
the  rich;  then  the  final  descent  alone  without  Carrie,  in 
this  year  when  80,000  men  were  out  of  work  in  New  York 
City,  into  the  ways  of  odd-job  men,  beggars,  bums;  and 
then  nothing,  not  even  a  memory.  ...  In  a  masterly 
way,  the  way  of  Nature,  Dreiser  weaves  this  descent  into 
the  design  of  the  book,  and  as  with  Carrie's  good  fortune, 
into  the  changing  sea  of  life  in  which  the  two  of  them 
floated  for  a  while : 

".  .  .  Constant  comparison  between  his  old  state  and 
his  new  showed  a  balance  for  the  worse.  .  .  .  The  poisons 
generated  by  remorse  inveigh  against  the  system.  ...  To 
these  Hurstwood  was  subject.  ...  In  the  course  of  time  it 
told  upon  his  temper.  .  .  .  His  step  was  not  as  sharp  and 
firm.  .  .  .  He  was  given  to  thinking,  thinking.  .  .  .  The 
new  friends  he  made  were  not  celebrities.  ...  He  was  left 
to  brood.  .  .  . 

".  .  .  If  one  thinks  that  such  thoughts  do  not  come  to 
so  common  a  type  of  mind  ...  I  would  urge  for  their  con- 
sideration that  it  is  the  higher  mental  development  .  .  . 
which  refuses  to  dwell  upon  such  things.  .  .  .  The  un- 
intellectual  miser  sweats  blood  at  the  loss  of  a  hundred 
dollars.  .  .  .  The  Epictetus  smiles  when  the  last  vestige 
of  physical  welfare  is  removed.  .  .  ." 

Step  by  step,  little  by  little,  until  his  brain,  in  solitude 
cold  and  hunger,  is  not  the  same  brain.  He  dreams  wak- 
ing dreams  of  the  old  bright  respectable  days,  and  these 
blurred  delusions  are  all  the  life  left  to  him  on  park 
benches  and  in  night  lodgings.  Then  the  final  animate 
step: 
178 


"'Give  me  a  little  something,  will  you,  Mister?'  he 
said  to  the  last  one.  'For  God's  sake,  do,  I'm  starving.'  — 
'  Aw,  get  out,'  said  the  man,  who  happened  to  be  a  common 
type  himself.  '  You're  no  good.'  .  .  .  Hurstwood  put  his 
hands  red  from  cold,  down  in  his  pockets.  Tears  came  into 
his  eyes.  '  That's  right.  .  .  .  I'm  no  good  now.  I  was  all 
right.  I  had  money.  I'm  going  to  quit  this,'  and  with  death 
in  his  heart  he  started  down  toward  the  Bowery.  He  re- 
membered a  lodging-house  where  there  were  little  close 
rooms  with  gas  jets  in  them,  almost  pre-arranged,  he  thought 
.  .  .  which  rented  for  fifteen  cents  ...  he  had  no  fifteen 
cents.  .  .  .  On  the  way  he  met  a  comfortable  looking 
gentleman  .  .  .  the  gentleman  looked  him  over  and  fished 
for  a  dime.  Nothing  but  quarters  were  in  his  pockets. 
'  Here/  he  said,  handing  him  one  to  be  rid  of  him.  .  .  . 
With  this  the  idea  of  death  passed  for  a  little  out  of  his 
mind.  .  .  ." 

With  a  skilful  suggestion  of  the  wife  and  daughter  and 
rich  son-in-law  of  Chicago  days,  now  like  Carrie  oblivious 
of  him,  who  at  the  moment  were  whirling  into  New  York 
in  a  fast  Pullman  on  their  way  to  Rome,  through  what 
will  be  Hurstwood's  last  blizzard,  there  follows  the  ac- 
count of  the  final  flop  in  a  side  street  off  the  Bowery  —  a 
passage  that  may  surprise  critics  who  say  that  Dreiser  is 
a  writer  who  can't  write : 

"It  was  push  and  jam  for  a  minute,  with  grim  beast 
silence  to  prove  its  quality  and  then  it  melted  inward,  like 
logs  floating,  and  disappeared.  There  were  wet  hats  and  wet 
shoulders,  a  cold,  shrunken,  disgruntled  mass,  pouring  in 
between  bleak  walls.  It  was  just  six  o'clock  and  there  was 
supper  in  every  pedestrian's  face.  .  .  .  And  yet  no  supper 
was  provided  here,  nothing  but  beds.  .  .  .  His  old  wet 
cracked  hat  he  laid  softly  upon  the  table.  Then  he  pulled 
off  his  shoes  and  lay  down.  ...  It  seemed  as  if  he  thought 
a  while,  for  now  he  arose  and  turned  the  gas  out,  standing 
calmly  in  the  blackness,  hidden  from  view.  After  a  few 
moments  in  which  he  reviewed  nothing,  but  merely  hesi- 
tated, he  turned  the  gas  on  again,  but  applied  no  match. 
Even  then  he  stood  there,  hidden  wholly  in  that  kindness 
which  is  night,  while  the  uprising  fumes  filled  the  room. 
When  the  odor  reached  his  nostrils,  he  quit  his  attitude  and 
fumbled  for  the  bed.  .  .  .  'What's  the  use?'  he  said 
weakly,  as  he  stretched  himself  to  rest.  .  .  ." 

"  Of  Hurstwood's  death  she  was  not  even  aware.  A  slow 
black  boat  setting  out  from  the  pier  at  Twenty-seventh 
Street  upon  its  weekly  errand  bore,  with  many  others,  his 
nameless  body  to  the  Potter's  Field.  .  .  ." 

179 


The  debut  and  burial  of  Sister  Carrie. 


o  in  this  story  everything  is  told  just  as  it  hap- 
pened, with  now  the  pathos  of  a  bar-room  ballad,  now  a 
ruthlessness  of  intellect.  And  why  the  editor's  wife  did 
not  cry  or  even  feel  a  pain  around  her  heart  to  think  that 
men  are  made  for  ends  like  this,  is  hard  to  know.  Or  why 
she  did  not  feel  that  a  precious  record  of  the  grim  life  on 
top  of  which  she  ate  and  slept  and  dressed  and  had  her 
being,  was  in  her  hands,  is  hard  to  say.  On  Monday  morn- 
ing her  husband  took  the  proof  sheets  back  to  his  office 
with  instructions  that  the  contract  be  broken.  So  do  those 
without  feeling  and  without  much  intelligence  decree  that 
life  shall  not  be  heightened  or  purified  by  understanding. 
Is  it  for  fear  that  then  it  will  leave  them  behind?  At  this 
particular  period  in  this  country  of  banks,  Bibles  and 
candy,  the  decree  of  such  unofficial  censors  held  singular 
sway. 

There  is  an  inclination,  perhaps  unconscious,  among 
the  men  connected  in  that  day  with  this  publishing  com- 
pany to  belittle  the  importance  of  Mrs.  Doubleday  in  the 
suppression  of  a  now  historic  book,  which  the  firm  itself 
can  hardly  repudiate.  It  is  as  if  to  protect  her  name  from 
taint  of  prudery,  now  become  unfashionable.  The  pellucid 
Mr.  Lanier,  for  one,  is  not  sure  that  she  ever  read  the 
book:  "  It  was  Frank,"  he  said,  "  who  made  the  trouble. 
He  hated  it  enough  without  other  influence,  called  it  *  in- 
decent,' and  begged  us  at  once  to  break  the  contract.  If 
we  went  ahead  with  it,  although  he  couldn't  stop  us,  he 
warned  us  he  would  do  all  in  his  power  to  ruin  the  sale." 
At  the  same  time  he  volunteered  that  the  publisher's  wife 
was  one  of  those  deceptively  beautiful  characters  who 
loved  to  dominate  in  the  name  of  virtue.  Mr.  C.  P. 
1 80 


Everitt,  however,  remembers  the  affair  more  in  accord- 
ance with  the  legend. 

He  remembers  a  dinner  at  the  house  of  Mrs.  Doubleday, 
"  A  most  distinguished  gathering,"  where  she  had  said: 
"  Frank,  I  would  rather  get  down  and  scrub  floors  than 
have  you  publish  that  book."  But  he  added  protectively: 
"  Don't  say  I  said  she  was  referring  to  Sister  Carrie.  I 
got  into  trouble  once  telling  that.  As  a  matter  of  fact  she 
may  have  been  referring  to  Tom  Dickson's  Leopard's 
Spots,  a  libel  on  the  Negro  race.  In  fact  I  think  she  was. 
She  felt  just  as  strong  against  race  prejudice  as  against 
the  social  evil  —  she  was  a  woman  of  very  high  prin- 
ciples." .  .  .  These  high-principled  American  matrons! 
How  naively  ignorant  they  have  been  in  their  pursuit 
of  good  works !  And  how  their  men  have  deferred  to 
them,  hoping  thereby  to  concoct  some  sort  of  social  sta- 
bility in  a  hit-or-miss  land !  What  fine  institutions  they 
have  gathered  money  to  build  up,  to  house  the  victims  of 
their  bloodless  code !  And  what  bright  human  hopes  they 
have  helped  to  tear  down !  .  .  .  "  But  did  they  publish 
Leopard's  Spots  f  "  I  ventured  to  ask  —  u  Oh,  yes,  it  went 
into  the  hundred  thousand  class :  we  made  a  pile  of  money 
out  of  it."  —  "  And  did  she  get  down  and  scrub  floors?  " 
—  "  No."  —  "  Then  don't  you  think  it  must  have  been 
Sister  Carrie  she  was  speaking  of  ?  "  —  No,  my  reasoning 
was  specious.  He  was  not  prepared  to  indict  his  glamor- 
ous hostess  for  a  deed  which  since  that  time  has  become 
an  embarrassment  to  the  "  fine  and  reputable  house  of 
Doubleday." 

Yet  I  believe  the  myth  has  legs  to  stand  on  —  a  symbol 
of  the  way  Americans  have  always  entrusted  to  women 
the  matter  of  art  along  with  the  matter  of  society,  as  un- 
worthy of  their  important  lives.  It  was  the  story  told 
Dreiser  in  a  letter  from  Frank  Norris  cursing  the  com- 
pany for  planning  to  withdraw  the  book:  "  In  her  ab- 
surd opinion  it  was  '  vulgar  and  immoral.'  "  And  some 
years  later  Thomas  H.  McKee,  lawyer  for  Doubleday, 
gossiping  over  the  affair  with  Dreiser,  spoke  of  Mrs. 
Doubleday  as  the  original  censor,  and  wondered  why 
with  so  good  a  cause  against  his  publishers  he  had  not 
brought  suit:  expecting  it,  he  had  at  once  prepared  a 

181 


defence.  In  1903  William  Heinemann  too,  the  English 
publisher  of  Sister  Carrie,  had  confided  to  him :  "  I  fear 
my  admiration  for  your  book  has  cost  me  the  friendship, 
not  only  of  Mrs.  Doubleday,  but  of  Doubleday  himself." 
At  another  dinner-party  —  Page  and  Norris  were  present 
—  she  had  asked  him  how  he  could  have  published  so 
"  vulgar  and  disgraceful  "  a  book:  his  answer  had  been 
that  it  was  "  a  distinguished  privilege  "  to  have  done  so, 
which  the  husband  had  taken  as  insulting  to  his  wife. 

Whether  husband  or  wife  or  both  were  to  blame,  the 
undisputed  fact  is  that  not  long  after  the  fatal  week-end 
Dreiser  had  a  letter  from  his  publishers  asking  him  to 
come  in  for  a  talk.  Mr.  Lanier  remembers  "  acutely  the 
unhappy  fifteen  minutes  "  spent  in  this  talk.  He  and  Page 
had  felt  that  with  Doubleday  against  it,  publication  would 
be  unfair  to  Dreiser,  that  the  book  was  too  good  to  be 
smothered  in  that  way.  He  was  prepared,  he  said,  to  ex- 
plain to  the  young  writer  how  deeply  he  admired  his  novel, 
"  a  fine  piece  of  work,"  and  how  he  wanted  to  do  all  in 
his  power  to  help  him  sell  it  successfully  elsewhere.  And  he 
is  quite  sure  he  could  have  succeeded.  He  hoped  to  make 
him  see  how  little  it  would  mean  to  merely  print  and 
catalogue :  how  easy  it  was  for  a  publisher  to  kill  a  book 
just  by  hinting  to  his  salesmen  not  to  push  it,  just  by  fail- 
ing to  advertise  it.  A  heart-rending  picture,  but  he  was 
given  no  chance  to  paint  it.  He  had  calculated  without 
the  usually  agreeable  author  of  a  first  book.  Dreiser,  the 
terribly  social  savage  after  wistful  years  of  neglect  at  the 
hands  of  society  would  not  listen;  had  no  use  for  Lanier's 
urbanities.  He  had  been  swimming  against  surf  in  the 
open  sea  long  enough.  This  time  he  had  his  hands  on  the 
edge  of  the  boat  of  acknowledgment.  Whether  they  liked 
it  or  not  he  was  going  to  climb  in.  "  Crushed  and  tragically 
pathetic,"  Lanier  remembers  him,  doggedly  he  repeated 
they  had  made  a  contract  with  him ;  they  would  have  to  go 
ahead;  that  was  the  end  of  the  matter.  And  the  tall, 
loose-jointed  dreamer,  less  loose  and  dreamy  than  usual, 
gave  his  intense  ultimatum  and  walked  out  of  the  office. 
That  day  the  enemy  in  him  must  have  taken  a  leap  ahead, 
and  have  grown  to  almost  full  size,  if  not  yet  to  full 
efficiency. 
182 


The  office  of  Doubleday  Page  &  Company  was  now" 
hard  put  to  it.  How  to  placate  young  Hoosier  and  older 
Episcopalian,  the  rugged  new  artist  and  the  shrewd 
middle-aged  merchant,  who  was  not  going  to  promote  a 
questionable  book  unless  (like  The  Leopard's  Spots)  he 
was  convinced  it  would  sell  a  hundred  thousand  copies. 
Mr.  Lanier  with  his  civilized  impartiality  is  quick  to 
admit  that  then  their  business  chief  would  have  felt  it 
his  "  artistic  "  duty  to  waive  morals  and  promote  Sis- 
ter Carrie.  But  the  literary  partners  could  not  honestly 
assure  him  of  this  degree  of  popularity.  McKee,  their 
lawyer,  was  called  in;  nothing  to  do  but  fulfill  the  con- 
tract, he  told  them;  anything  else  might  be  disastrous  to 
a  new  ambitious  firm.  So  on  November  8,  1900,  Sister 
Carrie  had  her  humble  debut  —  an  edition  of  1000 
or  so  copies  in  what  later  reviewers  agreed  to  call 
a  "  dull,  cheap,  red  binding,  with  the  name  in  small, 
dull,  black  lettering";  an  assassin's  edition  in  a  country 
where  books  have  to  look  expensive  in  order  to  be  well 
thought  of. 

Then  again  the  story  of  the  disposition  of  these  copies 
varies.  It  would  be  my  instinct  to  believe  the  version  re- 
peated again  and  again  in  almost  the  same  words  in  the 
reviews  of  the  later  Dodge  and  Harper  editions,  which 
must  have  been  taken  from  these  publishers'  advertise- 
ments and  from  hearsay  —  that  is,  Dreiser's  own  version. 
According  to  him,  and  he  had  it  from  Frank  Norris,  the 
book  was  never  marketed  at  all,  but  thrown  into  the  cellar 
where  anyone  who  felt  like  reading  a  "  dirty  book  " 
helped  himself.  Norris,  bitterly  disappointed,  salvaged 
as  many  copies  as  he  could,  and  sent  them  to  various  book 
editors,  and  even  after  that  continued  dispensing  them. 
Grant  Richards,  an  English  publisher,  in  a  letter  to  Drei- 
ser tells  of  Norris  giving  him  a  copy  of  Sister  Carrie  in 
1901  with  the  hope  that  he  would  publish  it  in  England. 
And  then  the  legend  divides  again.  Some  say  that  after 
a  while  the  remaining  volumes  of  the  disgraced  Carrie 
were  burned  in  the  furnace  of  that  cellar,  and  some  that 
they  merely  lay  there  under  the  dust  of  years  and  that  if 
one  wrote  enclosing  a  money-order  for  the  amount,  the 
book  could  be  had.  Mr.  Lanier  inclines  toward  the  latter 

183 


version,  but  probably  a  less  dramatic  account  of  the  affair 
will  in  the  end  be  held  as  fact. 

In  1929  Mr.  Vrest  Orton  published  a  bibliography  of 
Dreiser's  work,  in  which  he  gives  a  spirited  account  of 
his  pains  over  several  years  to  unearth  the  facts  of  this 
incident  through  the  Doubleday  office.  At  length  Mr. 
S.  A.  Everitt  answered  that  they  had  no  records  except 
the  record  of  date,  but  that  as  he  remembered,  "  the 
edition  of  from  1000  to  2000  copies  was  sold  to  the  trade 
in  the  regular  way,  the  same  as  any  other  novel  published 
at  the  time.  .  .  ."  With  this  to  encourage  him  he  now 
wrote  to  Mr.  Doubleday  himself  for  a  transcript  of  the 
sales-records,  who  doubted  that  they  were  "  available/' 
but  would  see  what  he  could  do;  he  did  not  believe  that 
any  copies  had  ever  been  "  destroyed,  burned,  or  re- 
maindered." A  day  or  so  later  a  letter  came  from  his 
secretary  which  for  Mr.  Orton  contained  "  the  whole 
story  in  a  nutshell"  as  revealed  by  the  analysis  card: 
"  The  first  edition  consisted  of  1008  copies,  of  which  129 
were  sent  out  for  review,  465  were  sold,  and  the  balance 
of  423  copies  was  turned  over  to  J.  F.  Taylor  &  Com- 
pany," a  remainder  house  now  out  of  business.  Yet  an 
analysis  card  presented  thirty  years  after  the  event  is  less 
convincing  than  a  human  memory  recorded  at  the  moment 
of  it,  and  is  as  easy  to  fabricate.  To  support  Dreiser's  and 
Lanier's  memory  is  the  sensitive  attitude  today  of  the  firm, 
as  of  people  ridiculed  beyond  composure  for  a  literary  and 
commercial  error.  Two  things  are  sure  —  their  sense  of 
propriety  had  its  way  for  a  time,  and  as  certainly  Dreiser 
has  had  his  revenge,  but  it  was  to  be  a  distant  and  ex- 
pensive one. 


55 

"  Not  elevating  mental  food." 

American  press 

"  At  last  a  master-piece  out  of  America" 

English  press 


he  historic  meaning  of  some  men  is  aloof- 
ness, the  virtue  of  hermits  or  of  gods  or  stars.  They  shine 
impregnably  from  afar.  Dreiser's  meaning  has  in  it  the 
virtue  of  mingling,  of  engaging  in  spite  of  himself;  in 
fact,  of  proving  how  the  world  is  small.  Here  were  the 
Doubledays  introducing  his  obscure  name  into  the  circle 
of  their  sacrosanct  dinner-parties.  Here  was  Frank  Nor- 
ris,  become  a  voice  in  the  wilderness  for  this  stranger, 
who,  he  felt,  was  writing  according  to  his  gospel.  He  loves 
him  as  a  kind  of  miracle,  an  oriflamme  in  the  windy  dusty 
American  skies.  I.  F.  Marcosson  writes  to  Dreiser  in 
1910:  "  Your  name  always  brings  to  my  mind  the  unfor- 

fettable  picture  of  Frank  Norris  thrilled  with  admiration 
or  Sister  Carrie."  Mr.  Grant  Richards,  asked  to  de- 
scribe Norris,  said,  "  I  don't  know;  what  struck  me  for- 
cibly about  him  was  that  apparently  he  was  more  eager 
for  Dreiser's  Carrie  to  be  read  than  for  his  own  novels." 
Then  there  were  the  critics  to  whom  Norris  sent  the  129 
salvaged  copies.  Their  reviews,  some  thirty  of  them 
which  Dreiser  has  kept,  mirror  naively  our  intelligentsia 
in  1900;  so  directly  had  he  challenged  their  likes  and 
dislikes,  awaking  pleasure  in  but  two  or  three,  and  irri- 
tation or  disdain  in  the  rest.  With  few  exceptions  these 
scolding  critics,  even  those  who  felt  the  power  of  the 
book,  discuss  it  as  a  social  or  antisocial  tract,  not  as  a 
would-be  work  of  art.  The  more  sophisticated  day  of 
literary  supplements  and  book  guilds  was  not  yet  at  hand. 
Quaint  utilitarians  still  guarded  the  manners  and  morals 
of  a  hustling  young  people : 

185 


Life,  New  York,  1900:  "  Such  girls,  however,  as  imagine 
they  can  follow  in  [Carrie's]  footsteps  will  probably  end 
their  days  on  the  Island  or  in  the  gutter.  .  .  ." 

Advertiser  and  Union,  New  York,  1900:  "...  Not  ele- 
vating mental  food  for  all.  .  .  .  Peculiar  and  masterly 
written  novel.  .  .  ." 

New  York  Tribune,  1900:  "A  realistic  story  of  Chicago 
life  might  easily  miss  being  a  pleasant  story.  .  .  ." 

Chicago  Tribune,  Feb.  25,  1901:  "Needless  to  say  the 
book  is  not  a  pleasant  one  to  read  if  one  is  to  maintain  a 
cheerful  optimism,  but  the  author  is  right  in  assuming  that 
America  needs  enlightenment  rather  than  .  .  .  flattery,  if 
the  present  rate  of  advance  is  to  be  maintained.  ...  In 
each  case  it  is  felt  this  fate  is  of  the  man's  own  making, 
that  self  discipline  and  well-grounded  morals  would  have 
avoided  every  evil  .  .  .  that  man  is  still  the  captain  of  his 
destiny,  the  master  of  his  fate.  .  .  .  Not  once  does  the 
name  of  the  deity  appear  .  .  .  except  ...  as  ...  pro- 
fanity. Sister  Carrie  transgresses  the  literary  morality  of  the 
average  American  novel  to  a  point  that  is  almost  Zola- 
esque.  .  .  ." 

Newark  Sunday  News,  Sept.  I,  1901:  "...  The  reader 
longs  for  some  relief  from  .  .  .  these  very  real  people. 
.  .  .  There  is  no  strong  or  noble  nature  in  the  book; 
neither  is  there  any  lady  or  gentleman.  .  .  .  This  is  the 
most  serious  criticism  of  the  book,  this  and  an  utter  lack 
...  of  a  literary  manner  of  diction.  .  .  .  The  style  is  in 
many  ways  excellent,  at  times  even  nervous.  .  .  .  But  one 
does  not  wish  to  have  a  writer  express  himself  in  the  same 
way  as  do  his  somewhat  uncultivated  characters.  ...  If 
only  Carrie  could  be  more  like  Trilby ! " 

Minneapolis  Journal,  1901:  "Carrie  had  a  better  fate 
than  most  pretty  country  girls  who  go  to  a  large  city,  and 
become  the  mistresses  of  unprincipled  men.  .  .  .  The  story 
leaves  a  very  unpleasant  impression." 

Louisville  Times:  "There  is  little  sunshine  ...  it  is 
plain  realism.  .  .  .  Mr.  Dreiser  can't  expect  success  .  .  . 
but  like  Mr.  Norris  he  is  an  artist.  .  .  ." 

Seattle  Post  Intelligencer:  "  You  would  never  dream  of 
recommending  to  another  person  to  read  it.  ...  Yet  it 
comes  within  sight  of  greatness.  .  .  ." 

The  Book  Buyer,  March,  1901:  "Mr.  Dreiser  ...  is 
the  chronicler  of  materialism  in  its  basest  forms.  .  .  .  But 
the  leaven  of  the  higher  life  remains,  nowhere  stronger 
than  with  us.  Of  all  this  Mr.  Dreiser  betrays  no  cog- 
nizance. .  .  . 

All  too  fairly,  these  excerpts  reflect  American  men- 
tality in  1900,  or  rather  the  lack  of  it.  Almost  there  was 

1 86 


none.  Nearly  three  centuries  of  Europeans  in  North 
America  had  produced  from  time  to  time  prize-intellects 
and  ace-adventurers;  and  yet  how  few  critics  of  thought 
and  adventure,  without  which  society  drifts !  The  result 
had  to  be  reviews  like  these.  Reading  them  one  wonders 
what  had  been  the  use  of  our  original  heroes  —  the  bawdy 
Washington  and  Franklin,  the  aesthetic  Jefferson,  the 
savory  Daniel  Boone,  Johnny  Appleseed,  John  Audubon, 
Andrew  Jackson,  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  all  the  others 
who  had  labored  for  hard  glory  more  than  easy  money. 
What  real  use  were  independence  and  new  inventions, 
and  an  exquisite  democratic  elegance  as  in  Monticello  and 
the  University  of  Virginia;  what  use  were  new  lands  and 
apple  trees  and  birds  and  native  flowers,  if  they  had 
established  no  traditions  of  enjoyment?  Most  of  all,  what 
use  a  house  not  divided  against  itself,  if  not  to  be  divided 
meant  that  pious  money-maniacs,  the  hands  and  stomach, 
were  to  rule  the  house  in  the  stead  of  heart  and  brains 
and  loins?  And  verbally  speaking,  what  use  Melville, 
Poe,  Twain  and  Whitman,  the  first  three  become  gift- 
books  for  children,  the  fourth  jailed  as  lewd  and  mad, 
if  these  heroes  had  succeeded  in  establishing  no  standards 
of  art  by  which  to  judge  the  prophets  yet  to  come?  It  is 
not  that  the  reviewers  of  Sister  Carrie  saw  nothing  in 
its  author.  They  did  in  fact  feebly  praise  him  as  their 
predecessors  had  feebly  praised  his  predecessors.  But  it  is 
the  moribund  nature  of  their  refusals  and  acceptances  as 
of  men  and  women  scarcely  alive  that  is  shocking.  And 
especially  it  is  shocking  considered  in  relation  to  the 
boundless  energy  of  the  merchants  and  inventors  who  had 
hired  these  students  to  keep  track  of  the  intellectual 
growth  of  the  nation.  They  seem  like  craven  employees  re- 
clining on  their  jobs.  And  yet  of  course,  had  they  not  been, 
they  would  have  lost  their  jobs. 

It  is  interesting  to  analyse  them  in  relation  to  this 
provocative  book.  Clearly  for  some  hidden  reason  they 
are  uneasy  before  some  of  the  facts  of  life,  and  most 
uneasy  of  all  before  the  agreeable  fact  of  its  pleasures. 
Even  those  who  rather  liked  the  book  took  refuge  in  ad- 
miring Hurstwood's  tragedy,  ignoring,  if  they  felt  it,  that 
Dreiser's  wisdom  lay  in  a  balanced  awareness  of  bloom  as 


coincident  with  decay.  Some  of  them,  to  exonerate  them- 
selves, laughed  indulgently  at  this  upstart  for  imagining  he 
could  interest  readers  with  "  the  plain  unvarnished  truth." 
A  curious  repellent  psychology  comes  to  light  in  these  re- 
views, a  fear  of  statement  which  Americans  hide  beneath 
a  smirk.  Dreiser,  I  think,  more  directly  than  any  other 
writer  had  been  born  to  challenge  it.  Unfailingly  each  one 
of  his  books  inclusive  of  An  American  Tragedy  (since  that 
date  perhaps  he  is  less  engaged)  breathes  its  unequivocal 
statements  for  and  against  us,  against  which  his  opponents 
have  felt  coerced  to  make  their  one  faltering  statement, 
in  brief  this :  Don't  tell  the  truth,  it  doesn't  pay.  He  has 
the  distinction  of  having  forced  as  best  he  could  the  issue, 
of  having  probed,  perhaps  even  solved  the  mystery  of  a 
People  Afraid  of  Statement. 

In  contrast  to  them  two  or  three  men  had  the  force 
to  speak  out.  They,  like  Dreiser,  are  remnants  of  a  pio- 
neer past.  That  is,  they  were  attempting  to  carry  greedy 
America,  still  recovering  from  civil  war,  and  still  inun- 
dated by  the  inchoate  flood  of  immigrants,  into  the  un- 
explored fields  of  the  imagination  and  intellect.  The  axe 
had  won,  the  railroads  had  won,  the  factories  had  won, 
the  banking-houses  had  won,  and,  it  seemed  to  them,  the 
human  spirit  would  have  to  win  in  commercial  America, 
or  these  few  would  die  of  malnutrition  of  nerves  and 
senses.  There  were  at  this  time  but  five  or  six  names  for 
radicals  to  champion  —  Fuller,  Garland,  Norris,  London, 
and  then  possibly  Will  Payne,  Robert  Herrick,  Brand 
Whitlock,  Hervey  White,  Vaughan  Moody;  and  now 
there  was  Dreiser.  Mark  Twain  had  not  yet  published 
The  Myterious  Stranger  upsetting  every  bit  of  smug 
laughter  he  had  generated.  Stephen  Crane  was  dead,  and 
his  friend  Harold  Frederic  too,  with  his  sardonic  novel  of 
Methodist  insanity  and  class  arrogance.*  There  was  Rob- 
inson, a  poet  in  New  York,  and  Ambrose  Bierce,  a  wit  in 
San  Francisco,  too  resentful  toward  their  country  to  be 
the  hope  of  anyone,  who  preserved  the  virtue  of  aloofness, 
and  made  a  tiny  dual  aristocracy  —  two  isolated  drops  of 
elegance  of  mind.  Considering  the  outlook,  it  was  not 
strange  that  the  two  or  three  live  hopeful  critics  should 

*   The  Damnation  of  T  her  on  Ware. 
188 


have  been  almost  evangelical  in  their  praise  of  Sister 
Carrie.  Their  eagerness  for  creation  to  go  on  helps  to 
compensate  for  the  almost  unendurably  dull  eyes  and  ears 
of  the  others.  It  is  an  eagerness,  nearly  gone  from  the 
Western  World  today,  and  seems  to  have  lived  over  from 
the  era  of  our  discovery  and  to  have  carried  forward  the 
tradition  we  still  cling  to  of  a  strong  new  race  bound  to 
create  something  to  express,  and  to  express  itself. 

One  of  these  champions  was  William  Marion  Reedy, 
who  for  some  years  in  St.  Louis  had  edited  a  magazine  of 
politics,  science  and  art,  as  he  and  his  friends  knew  them, 
designed  to  increase  flavor  and  quality,  and  to  counter- 
act the  cruel  sentimentality  of  the  times.  If  Norris  was  a 
voice  in  the  wilderness,  Reedy  was  an  innkeeper  in  the 
desert  to  give  hospitality  to  kindred  wayfarers.  He  is 
remembered  as  a  kind  of  tearful,  laughing  Rabelaisian, 
one  of  the  last  to  fight  for  the  integrity  of  individu- 
als as  opposed  to  brute  industrial  will.  Mencken  has 
called  him  a  fool,  but  the  more  human  and  more  original 
Middle  Westerners,  Dreiser,  Masters  and  Sandburg,  for 
example,  separated  now  by  bleak  differences,  would  agree, 
I  believe,  to  the  end  of  time  about  "  Bill  Reedy,"  so  much 
they  loved  him  for  himself  and  for  the  oasis  he  created 
out  in  God's  country.  He  was  a  man's  man,  even  to  the 
point  —  or  so  I  have  heard  it  told  with  pride  —  of  hav- 
ing taken  for  wife  a  man's  woman,  one-time  mistress  of  a 
house  of  pleasure  in  St.  Louis,  that  one  approach  to 
Bacchic  priestess  the  country  has  known.  Her  money,  it  is 
said,  made  possible  his  Mirror,  and  her  delectable  table 
his  enormous  girth,  noted  as  one  of  his  charms.  I  have 
heard  him  described  in  words  near  to  song;  his  appetite 
for  food,  drink,  night-long  talk,  his  ribaldry,  his  warmth, 
rare  books  and  restless  scholastic  mind.  Apparently  one 
of  the  few  men  of  his  time  who  consciously  wanted  to 
bring  the  sundered  parts  of  the  Puritan  soul  together 
again.  A  recent  newspaper  jingle  celebrates  him:  "  O,  the 
days  of  Diamond  Brady,  —  Marion  Reedy,  Steevie 
Brody,  —  Great  Teddy,  Col.  Cody,  —  and  the  rowdy 
rodeos! " 

He  writes  Dreiser  in  December,  1900,  at  once,  with  al- 
most a  sob  of  pleasure  over  his  novel :  "  It  is  damned 

189 


good,  I  shall  say  as  emphatically  as  this  in  The  Mirror," 
which  he  does;  and  then  in  January  writes  again  evidently 
in  answer  to  a  discouraged  letter  from  Dreiser: 

"  You  say  you  have  not  much  hope  for  Sister  Carrie. 
I  want  to  tell  you  that  it  is  a  tip-top  novel.  An  elderly  lady 
denounced  it  to  me  at  dinner  the  other  evening  simply  be- 
cause she  had  seen  just  such  drummers  .  .  .  doing  just 
such  things  ...  on  the  trains  running  in  and  out  of 
Chicago.  ...  I  am  sure  the  thing  will  be  a  '  go.'  "  In 
another  letter  he  names  his  rule  of  conduct:  "My  un- 
idealism  in  our  little  talk  seems  to  have  hit  you  hard.  .  .  . 
Well,  I  have  an  ideal:  it  is  to  be  cheerful  and  between 
you'n  me  it  isn't  always  easy  in  the  face  of  the  facts.  .  .  ." 

George  Horton  too,  a  timid  Chicago  novelist,  recom- 
mends the  book  to  his  readers,  but  its  tragic  rather  than 
its  idyllic  passages.  Perhaps  only  Reedy  among  Ameri- 
cans treats  it  as  independent  of  plot.  Horton  writes  for 
the  Chicago  Record  Herald,  January,  1901 : 

"  The  characters  are  so  genuine  they  produce  that  queer 
feeling  .  .  .  one  sometimes  gets  from  listening  to  a  phono- 
graph. You  are  certain  that  the  human  beings  must  lie  just 
a  little  back  of  the  talk.  .  .  .  Why  a  firm  who  can  get  hold 
of  such  literature  must  expend  their  resources  in  push- 
ing .  .  .  clap-trap  ...  is  a  puzzle  to  everyone  not  in  the 
publishing  business." 

And  to  Arthur  Henry  he  writes  virulently  the  kind  of 
opinion  which  unluckily  the  critic,  except  for  an  infre- 
quent Vance  Thompson  or  H.  L.  Mencken,  never  dares 
to  publish : 

"  I   had   fancied   something  of  the   kind  .  .  .  Doubleday 

belongs  to  that  species  of  long-eared  animals  which  are  not 

hares.  Had  he  lived  in  Christ's  time  he  might  have  attained 

to  the  supreme  distinction  of  bringing  the  Saviour  of  the 

World  into  Jerusalem.  That  is  the  one  crowning  glory  of 

the  ass.  Otherwise  such  fat-witted  prigs  as  Doubleday  have 

tried  in  all  ages  to  pull  down  men  of  genius.  .  .  ." 

In  addition  there  were  a  number  of  grateful  letters, 

although  most  of  them  contained  moral  reservations: 

"  I  think  there  are  a  few  objectionable  features  to  the 

book,  objectively  speaking,  though  I  know  it  is  all  true 

to  life,"  one  friend  wrote.  And  another:  "  To  sit  fifteen 

minutes  in  a  bar-room  and  hear  the  talk  is  interesting; 

but  to  spend  a  whole  evening  there  might  prove  tiresome." 

So  over  the  country  little  messages  awoke  on  the  wires 

190 


of  human  thought  and  were  flashed  from  the  readers  of 
the  book  back  to  its  author.  But  they  would  have  soon 
died  on  unpopular  lips,  had  it  not  been  for  stimulation 
from  the  outside.  Norris  finally  had  his  way,  not  at  home 
but  in  England.  William  Heinemann,  perhaps  through 
Norris,  perhaps  through  George  Brett  of  the  Macmillan 
Company,  had  seen  a  copy  of  Sister  Carrie.  In  May, 
1901,  he  published  it,  abridged  for  the  sake  of  brevity 
not  morals,  in  his  Dollar  Library  of  American  novelists, 
which  included  Norris's  Octopus,  Payne's  Story  of  Eva, 
Crane's  Monster,  James's  Sacred  Fount,  Garland's  Rose 
of  Dutcher's  Coolly.  Without  exception  the  English  re- 
views of  this  edition  are  extravagant  in  praise.  Their  cer- 
tainty is  refreshing.  Not  one  of  them  deplores  the  "  dan- 
gerous morals  "  of  the  book,  nor  makes  an  issue  of  its 
diction. 

The  Daily  Mail,  London,  1901,  exclaims:  "At  last  a 
really  strong  novel  has  come  from  America,  almost  great 
because  of  its  relentless  purpose,  its  marvellous  simplicity. 
.  .  .  Mr.  Dreiser  has  contrived  a  masterpiece." 

The  Daily  Chronicle  comparing  Sister  Carrie  and  The 
Story  of  Eva,  both  about  village  heroines  adrift  in  Chicago, 
finds  it  interesting  but  hard  to  understand  "  that  passion 
for  social  getting-on,  which  forms  so  often  the  mainspring 
of  American  lives,"  and  the  theme  of  Payne's  novel.  He 
concludes  that  though  "  more  pleasant  reading,  its  lan- 
guage always  good,"  The  Story  of  Eva  is  less  "  artistic, 
less  relentlessly  true  to  life,"  than  Sister  Carrie.  .  .  . 
"  Dreiser  .  .  .  draws  no  moral  .  .  .  simply  a  grimly  grey 
story  of  life  and  life  near  the  bone.  In  this  lies  the  powerful 
attraction  it  holds,  and  it  proves  Mr.  Dreiser  an  author  to 
be  reckoned  with  and  never  to  be  overlooked  —  a  true 
artist." 

The  Academy  is  "  impressed  by  the  subtlety  of  descrip- 
tion," is  "  startled  into  interest,"  has  "  never  met  such  a 
description  of  an  American  heroine  before,"  and  then 
couples  it  with  The  Octopus :  "  The  movement  in  them  is 
large,  racial;  the  vision  poetic  and  comprehensive;  the 
sentiment  is  never  sentimentality.  They  exercise  the  high- 
est function  of  the  modern  novel.  .  .  .  Mr.  Dreiser  is  be- 
yond question  one  of  the  most  promising  novelists  writing 
in  English." 

Manchester  Guardian,  1901:  "Rarely  even  in  modern 
work  have  we  met  with  characters  so  little  idealised,  so 
patiently  presented.  They  might  seem  to  have  something 
in  common  with  the  unchanging  heroes  of  adventure.  .  .  . 

191 


His  work  is  faithful,  accurate,  unprejudiced,  and  it 
should  belong  to  the  veritable  documents  of  American 
history.  .  .  ." 

The  Athenaeum,  London,  September  7,  1901:  "The 
sixth  of  the  volumes  ...  in  Mr.  Heinemann's  Dollar  Li- 
brary and  .  .  .  the  most  important.  .  .  .  Between  its 
covers  no  single  note  of  unreality  is  struck.  ...  It  is  un- 
trammeled  by  any  concession  to  convention  or  tradition, 
literary  or  social.  .  .  .  Throughout  its  pages  one  feels 
pulsing  the  sturdy  restless  energy  of  a  young  people,  a  na- 
tion busy  upon  the  hither  side  of  maturity.  ...  It  strikes 
a  key-note  and  is  typical,  both  in  the  faults  of  its  manner 
and  in  the  wealth  and  diversity  of  its  matter,  of  the  great 
country  which  gave  it  birth.  Readers  there  are  who  will 
find  permanent  place  for  Sister  Carrie  on  their  shelves 
beside  M.  Zola's  Nana.  .  .  ." 

Within  these  English  and  American  reviews  lies  a 
paradox:  The  young  Americans  far  from  exhibiting  "  the 
sturdy  restless  energy  of  a  young  people  "  are  like  im- 
potent dyspeptics  as  critics;  that  is,  except  for  an  oc- 
casional rebel  who  is  too  busy  fighting  for  art  to  enjoy  it. 
The  adult  Englishmen  on  the  other  hand  exclaim  with 
delight  at  the  discovery  of  a  new  work  of  genius  as  a 
child  is  supposed  to  at  a  delectable  surprise.  Spontaneity 
associated  with  youth  marks  the  older  race ;  f  earfulness, 
a  trait  of  senility,  the  new.  This  faint-heartedness  follows 
us  today.  Though  an  army  of  would-be  sophisticates  led 
by  Wilson,  Rosenfeld,  Frank,  Brooks  and  Krutch,  con- 
siders itself  embarked  on  definition  and  analysis,  a  residue 
of  that  same  grudge  and  hatred  against  both  artist  and 
audience  corrodes  their  enjoyment  —  a  snob's  uneasy 
seriousness  in  the  face  of  basic  immaturity. 

The  notion  of  the  infallibility  of  the  child,  invented  by 
Jesus  Christ,  supported  by  the  disappointed  Pilgrims, 
stylized  by  John  Dewey  out  of  his  wealth  of  inexperience, 
having  actually  been  put  to  practice  in  the  United  States, 
turns  out  to  be  a  sentimental  fallacy.  The  fiasco  of  Ameri- 
can society  is  proof  of  this.  Epidermically  a  child  is  indis- 
putable; muscularly  a  child  is  promising;  from  every 
other  point  of  view  a  child  is  an  embryo  and  will  soon 
become  abortive,  when  not,  as  in  the  past,  forcibly  ex- 
posed to  maturity.  All  the  vitality  in  the  world  will  only 
enable  the  child  to  cry  unless  this  high  voltage  meets  with 
narrower  and  inflicted  exercise.  It  is  the  same  racially. 
192 


Superficially  —  as  from  the  point  of  view  of  surfaces  now 
well  outside  the  human  being  like  buildings,  airplanes  and 
railroads  —  we  have  proved  that  a  new  race  may  be 
supreme.  But  intrinsically,  as  from  the  core  outward  to 
toes  and  finger  tips,  a  new  race  is  handicapped  unless 
critically  exposed  to  its  own  past,  which  takes  it  traveling 
back  into  other  pasts  and  from  them  into  other  presents. 
Impossible  to  know  the  present  except  on  a  road  that 
leads  from  the  past.  From  a  full-grown  branch  the  ripe 
fruit  falls,  and  the  branch  remains  to  bear  again.  What 
we  think  of  as  youth  is  a  property  of  civilization  wrested 
from  the  new-born  by  terribly  patient  and  spirited  elders. 
It  is  marked  by  ease  and  liberality. 

These  English  journalists  in  1901  displayed  a  young 
mind  at  the  advent  of  Dreiser,  just  as  previous  English- 
men had  been  quick  to  recognize  Melville  and  Whitman, 
and  later  critics  would  recognize  Robert  Frost  before  we 
did,  and  the  French  through  Baudelaire  would  give  their 
love  and  tears  to  Poe  before  we  gave  ours.  It  almost 
seems  that  with  few  exceptions  we  have  waited  for  Euro- 
pean sanction  before  daring  to  enjoy  our  own  originals. 
Whitman  could  not  admit  this;  it  contradicted  his  de- 
lusion of  our  independence.  By  implication  he  threw  the 
glory  our  way :  "  To  have  great  poets,  we  must  have  great 
audiences."  And  yet  in  admiring  him,  Emerson  and  Bur- 
roughs solicited  and  welcomed  British  support.  And,  to 
go  back  of  that,  who  but  Carlyle  had  given  Emerson  his 
passport  to  security?  Fight  a  revolution  so  that  you  won't 
have  to  live  with  your  parents  or  pay  them  taxes,  but  you 
are  not  even  then  and  never  will  be  quite  rid  of  them. 

Dreiser,  for  all  his  rhapsodies  a  clear  thinker,  in  which 
lies  his  strength,  was  frankly  elated  by  English  approval. 
It  was  refreshing  to  be  praised  because  he  had  drawn  no 
moral.  Payne  had  made  a  moral  issue  of  "  social  success," 
and  had  wed  his  Eva  to  the  scion  of  an  "  old  Chicago 
family,"  wealth  rewarding  beauty,  position  the  spirit,  to 
make  a  happy  ending.  Perhaps  the  reviewer  felt  too  the 
way  the  vernacular  of  the  one  novel  conveys  the  uneven 
shiftless  rhythms  of  American  life  in  that  day;  whereas 
Payne's  quite  sensitive  English,  for  all  its  painstaking, 
never  once  flashes  Chicago  streets  or  smells  or  noises  or 

193 


shapes  or  tones  to  the  reader.  He  was  a  Chicagoan,  writ- 
ing about  Chicago,  but  in  terms  of  some  older  city. 
Harold  Frederic,  writing  about  America  in  England, 
falls  into  the  same  falsely  correct  ways.  Dreiser  on  the 
other  hand  walked  with  the  gait  and  spoke  with  the  voice 
of  his  own  streets.  He  acted  and  reacted  from  surfaces 
to  depths  and  depths  to  surfaces.  The  people  of  his  book 
in  their  Chicago  clothes  were  human  animals  of  whatever 
place  or  time.  The  critics  of  the  older  city  preferred  him. 
What  was  best  of  all,  they  were  praising  him  for  his 
consuming  passion,  more  urgent  even  than  the  wish  for 
luxury  and  grandeur  —  the  necessity  u  to  write  about  life 
as  it  is,"  just  as  Balzac,  Hardy,  Turgeniev,  all  of  his 
favorites,  had  written  about  life  as  it  is.  Moreover,  they 
spoke  as  if  it  were  the  thing  to  do,  whereas  in  the  United 
States  even  his  friends  decried  it  as  the  one  thing  not  to 
do.  To  understand  our  unfortunate  literary  fortunes  it 
is  necessary  to  accept  as  an  axiom  this  initial  refusal  of 
Fact  among  us.  It  was  well  for  Dreiser  that  he  had  not 
the  hypocrisy  which  pretends  to  scorn  foreign  patronage; 
he  needed  all  that  he  could  get.  It  was  to  be  a  long  five 
years  before  Sister  Carrie  would  emerge  from  the 
Doubleday  cellar  to  be  read  as  if  just  discovered  by  "  the 
great  country  that  gave  it  birth;  "  and  ten  years  before 
Harper's  decided  to  advertise  it,  with  a  word  from 
Arnold  Bennett,  as  u  perhaps  the  great  American  novel." 
As  slowly  as  that  did  ideas  take  hold  in  a  land  where 
industry  galloped  at  breakneck  speed. 


194 


56 

Life  near  the  bone: 

"  Life  seemed  an  endless  chain 

Without  meaning  "  DREISER 

T 

JLhrough  the  winter  and  spring  and  summer 
of  1901  the  new  novelist  lived  on  with  his  devoted  wife 
in  their  small  apartment  near  Riverside  Drive.  He  began 
work  on  a  second  novel  and  together  they  watched  the 
progress  of  the  first.  She  felt  that  on  the  whole  he  was  get- 
ting a  good  deal  of  notice  in  his  own  country,  where  every 
child  was  taught  that  repeated  enterprise  and  long  en- 
durance in  the  teeth  of  neglect  were  necessary  virtures; 
that  to  be  noticed  at  all  was  risky  and  would  spoil  the 
child.  Then  of  course  they  could  share  elation  over  the 
English  reviews.  There  were  kill-joys  who  pretended  that 
these  held  but  the  irresponsible  praise  of  grandparents. 
But  that  in  itself  was  delightful,  since  evidently  the  re- 
viewers looked  on  him  as  a  legitimate  American,  whereas 
since  early  Warsaw  days  his  native  land  looked  upon  him 
and  his  parents  and  sisters  and  brothers  as  not  much  more 
than  immigrant  waifs,  scarcely  to  be  tolerated,  except 
that  immigrants  kept  wages  down.  Sarah  Osborne  White 
a  truly  British  great-grandchild  whose  parents  had  been 
pioneers  in  the  obscure  Southwest,  at  length  was  justified 
in  having  married  beneath  her.  A  clipping  bureau  sent 
them  news  of  fame,  which  they  pasted  with  the  letters 
into  a  careful  scrap-book.  He  praises  her  as  a  fine  house- 
keeper; he  had  never  been  so  comfortable  before.  She 
could  cook,  wash  and  iron,  trim  her  hats,  make  over  her 
clothes,  mend  his.  .  .  If  they  were  frugal  and  saved 
enough,  some  day  her  folded  dream  of  family  life  might 
come  true.  She  wanted  love  too,  wanted  to  fulfil  her 
dreams  of  youth.  So  do  women,  and  men  as  well,  pin  their 
all  to  belief  in  a  close  partnership,  when  in  reality  the 

195 


cracks  of  chasms  greater  than  canyons  are  already  there 
to  separate  them. 

So  she  counted  without  real  knowledge  of  her  moody, 
cyclonic  husband.  Ancestry  meant  little  to  him,  except 
to  indicate  what  stuff  he  was  made  of.  Class  meant  noth- 
ing to  him,  except  as  it  meant  to  be  on  top  commanding 
the  scene,  and  not  part  of  the  dust  to  be  swept  up  from 
the  pavement.  Adventure  and  supremacy  meant  every- 
thing to  him  — "  Yes,  pretty  much  from  the  first  I 
thought  I  was  a  marked  guy,"  was  his  answer  as  to 
whether  he  had  always  been  conscious  of  his  power.  Per- 
haps for  this  the  United  States  piqued  him  more  than 
England;  it  had  still  to  be  conquered.  "  At  times,"  he 
said,  "  I  was  afraid  the  English  didn't  know.  Perhaps 
they  were  rather  garrulous."  Anyway  he  wanted  his  own 
people  to  acknowledge  him.  He  was  too  thoroughly  na- 
tive to  think  of  leaving  them.  Sometimes  descendants  of 
earliest  settlers,  English,  French  or  Spanish  have  been 
throwbacks  to  the  Old  Country  and  forever  homesick  for 
it.  But  this  child  out  of  recent  German-Slavic  blood  was 
one  of  the  throw-forwards,  one  of  the  new  Americans. 
Like  them  he  had  no  nostalgia  for  the  past,  though  unlike 
most  of  them  he  was  endowed  with  a  memory  of  it.  An 
unseduced  English  protege,  by  preference  he  remained  at 
home  to  fight  it  out. 

For  some  months  it  seemed  that  victory  might  come 
soon.  His  book  was  not  selling,  was  scarcely  on  the  mar- 
ket, but  now  surely  with  English  publication,  if  Double- 
day  continued  to  suppress  it,  some  other  house  would  take 
it  over.  He  was  writing  stories  again  and  articles,  and 
planning  two  novels,  The  Rake  and  Jennie  Gerhardt. 
Since  1900  he  had  written  thirty  chapters  of  one  and  ten 
or  twelve  of  the  other.  He  wrote  abundantly  out  of  the 
momentum  Sister  Carrie  had  given  him.  Gradually,  how- 
ever, he  began  to  notice  a  change  in  the  attitude  of  pub- 
lishers and  editors.  By  the  fall  of  1901  he  found  it  use- 
less to  present  his  wares.  Almost  as  if  because  of  foreign 
favor  a  stubborn  resistance  seemed  to  be  growing  against 
him  —  a  manner  of  saying,  "  I  guess  we'll  do  our  own 
thinking,  without  a  lot  of  English  snobs  mixing  in,  who 
pick  an  upstart  one  generation  from  the  steerage  to  rep- 
196 


resent  our  culture. "  Not  that  I  have  heard  Dreiser  ana- 
lyse their  attitude  to  that  extent;  in  fact  he  appears 
never  to  give  himself  the  indulgence  of  expressing  re- 
sentment. But  he  recalls  with  a  kind  of  relish  phrases  that 
escaped  the  editors  in  the  next  few  difficult  years,  and 
that  followed  him  even  into  success,  which  suggest  such 
an  interpretation.  With  the  chapters  and  synopses  of 
the  two  novels  he  approached  McClure,  Phillips  &  Co., 
and  asked  for  an  advance,  to  give  him  time  to  write  them. 
They  dismissed  him,  he  remembers,  in  words  that  said: 
"  If  this  is  your  slant  on  life,  quit,  get  out,  it's  rotten." 
Successively  Macmillan,  Appleton's  and  Harper's  coldly 
turned  him  down.  Nor  would  anyone  take  over  that 
"  masterpiece  "  by  an  artist  whom,  according  to  the  Eng- 
lish press,  "  no  one  could  afford  to  neglect." 

Now  it  appeared  that  the  very  magazines  which  before 
had  published  him  were  refusing  even  stones  and  articles. 
He  was  banned,  "  a  disgrace  to  America,"  one  editor 
told  him.  Once  coming  out  of  Harper's  he  met  William 
Dean  Howells,  who  since  the  day  of  the  interviews  had 
been  always  friendly;  but  this  time  he  passed  him  hur- 
riedly with  the  words,  "  You  know,  I  don't  like  Sister 
Carrie."  In  the  orthodox  market  he  was  shunned  as  if 
infected.  Finally  the  commercial  house  of  J.  F.  Taylor, 
the  same  that  relieved  Doubleday  of  the  last  traces  of 
their  unloved  venture,  consented  to  give  him  fifty  dollars 
a  month  until  he  had  finished  one  or  both  of  the  novels, 
and  they  made  an  advance  of  $300.  This  together  with  a 
few  savings  would  last  longer  on  a  visit  to  his  wife's 
parents  in  Missouri  than  it  could  in  New  York.  An  article 
about  him  in  the  St.  Louis  Post-Dispatch,  January  26, 
1902,  gives  this  news  item: 

"  Theodore  Dreiser,  a  former  St.  Louisian,  who  has 
newly  gained  fame  as  a  novelist,  was  in  the  city  last  week 
on  his  way  to  Montgomery  City,  Mo.,  to  visit  the  relatives 
of  his  wife.  ...  It  is  a  first  novel  .  .  .  which  has  brought 
him  into  prominence.  The  British  literary  reviews,  in  par- 
ticular, give  it  high  praise,  ranking  it  with  The  Octopus 
by  Frank  Norris,  at  the  top  of  a  list  of  novels  for  the  last 
year." 

The  reporter,  perhaps  impressed,  lists  and  quotes  from 
these  reviews,  after  which  I  imagine  Dreiser  put  them 

197 


back  in  his  pocket,  where  you  could  not  blame  him  for 
keeping  them  as  an  amulet  against  "  the  great  country 
that  had  given  him  birth,"  and  so  far  little  else.  Then  the 
reporter  interviewed  the  new  celebrity,  just  as  ten  years 
before  for  the  same  paper  he  had  interviewed  important 
visitors.  If  it  was  fun  for  the  tables  to  be  turned  in  the 
same  city  where  with  McCord  and  Wood  he  used  to 
dream  his  grandest  dreams  of  grandeur,  he  betrays  no 
juvenile  exhilaration,  merely  answers  questions  soberly 
as  for  one  who  really  wanted  to  know : 

"  .  .  .  '  I  have  not  tried  to  gloss  over  any  evil  any 
more  than  I  have  stopped  to  dwell  upon  it.  Life  is  too 
short;  its  phases  are  too  numerous.  What  I  desired  to  do 
was  to  show  two  little  human  beings,  or  more,  playing  in 
and  out  of  the  giant  legs  of  circumstance.  Personally  I  see 
nothing  immoral  in  discussing  with  a  clean  purpose  any 
phase  of  life.  ...  If  life  is  to  be  made  better  or  more 
interesting  its  conditions  must  be  understood.'  .  .  .  Mr. 
Dreiser  is  well  remembered  by  St.  Louis  newspaper  men 
and  other  citizens.  He  is  still  a  young  man." 

I  suppose,  too,  he  spent  an  evening  with  the  endearing 
Reedy  to  discuss  hilariously  "  the  sad  vicissitudes  of 
things,"  while  perhaps  their  wives  sat  apart  in  the  parlor 
finding  less  to  say  to  each  other.  At  least  that  was  apt 
to  be  the  way  among  the  random  wives  of  random  ge- 
niuses in  that  decade.  Then  they  were  off  to  the  Missouri 
village  and  to  the  dignified  relatives,  proud  now  of  their 
son-in-law;  to  the  good  smells  of  animals  and  barns,  to 
the  winter  fields,  steaming  under  a  Southwestern  sun. 

Alone  with  his  wife  among  all  but  strangers  to  his 
new  world  of  performance  and  audience,  and  again  under 
the  seduction  of  odorous,  spacious  days  and  nights  on  the 
distant  prairie,  this  sojourn  spelled  a  crisis  for  him  — 
the  realization  that  marriage  after  only  three  years  al- 
ready meant  defeat.  And  was  he  to  submit  to  it,  to  the 
"  harsh  compulsions  of  society  and  the  State,  which  in- 
variably seek  to  preserve  themselves  at  the  expense  of  the 
individual?"  or  somehow,  some  way,  could  he  still  be 
free  to  create  and  explore?  Many  of  his  stories,  nearly 
all  of  them,  are  concerned  with  the  muffled  struggle  that 
goes  on  between  the  people  of  intense  desire  for  life  and 
those  content  to  be  slowly  put  to  death  by  custom.  Carrie, 
198 


Cowperwood,  Dreiser  himself  manage  to  come  out  with 
partial  victory.  Hurstwood,  Jennie,  Aileen,  Witla, 
emerge  defeated.  So  obsessed  is  Dreiser  with  this  prob- 
lem as  it  first  victimised  him,  that  he  has  made  two  stories 
out  of  it,  attributed  to  other  sets  of  characters;  the  sharp- 
ness of  confessional  is  in  them.  One  is  an  episode  in  The 
"  Genius  "  which  takes  the  depleted  Witla  back  to  visit 
his  wife's  relatives.  There,  "  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
lurking  hope  of  some  fresh  exciting  experience  with  a 
woman,  he  would  have  been  unconsciously  lonely  .  .  . 
This  thought  .  .  .  quite  as  the  confirmed  drunkard's 
thought  of  whiskey  —  buoyed  him  up."  The  essential 
tonic  appears,  a  girl  of  eighteen  in  splendid  bloom,  out  of 
these  lowlands;  and  is  denied  him  by  his  devoted  wife  and 
by  society.  Dreiser  computes  the  disastrous  pressure 
from  either  side,  as  if  he  remembered  a  moment  of  his 
own; 

"  The  world  said  one  life,  one  love.  .  .  .  Could  any  one 
woman  satisfy  him?  Could  Freida,  if  he  had  her?  He  did  not 
know.  He  did  not  care  to  think  about  it.  Only  this  walking 
in  a  garden  of  flowers  —  how  delicious  it  was. 

"  No  one  here  interested  him  save  this  girl  .  .  .  secretly 
he  already  cursed  the  day  he  had  married.  .  .  .  That 
blossoming  of  life  at  eighteen  ...  he  could  not  be  faith- 
less to  that.  ...  It  haunted  him.  ...  It  remained  clear 
and  demanding.  ...  He  could  not  deny  it  ...  the  beauty 
of  youth  .  .  .  that  was  the  standard,  and  the  history  of 
the  world  proved  it." 

The  history  of  the  world  does  not  quite  prove  it,  and 
yet  it  tells  us  that  the  famous  haeteras  have  been  those 
who  prolonged  into  the  years  the  despotism  of  youth,  if 
finally  by  no  more  than  emblem  or  spirit.  In  the  sexually 
naive  United  States,  most  of  all  in  its  distant  provinces, 
he  was  right,  there  was  no  one  to  exert  this  magic  except 
the  young.  Out  of  such  simplicity  have  come  the  Zieg- 
feld  Follies,  and  the  schoolgirl  complexion  and  school- 
girl mentality,  for  the  tired  business  man.  The  native 
Dreiser  answered  to  the  rule  of  youth  in  company  with 
the  business  men;  but  the  foreigner  in  him  rebelled 
against  its  early  death  decreed  by  custom.  Again  in  Rella, 
a  story  written  in  1923,  told  to  him  "  one  evening  in 
Greenwich  village  by  an  American  poet  who  has  since 

199 


died,"  he  repeats  an  almost  identical  episode,  "  innately 
truthful  and  self-revealing  "  : 

".  .  .  the  mere  proximity  of  this  girl  was  proving  toxic. 
...  A  feeling  of  languor  alternated  with  one  of  intense 
depression  ...  a  deadly  drug  could  not  have  acted  with 
greater  power.  .  .  .  Married,  married!  The  words  were  as 
a  tolled  bell.  And  yet,  in  truth,  I  was  not  interested  (even 
in  her  case)  in  a  long  enduring  marriage  .  .  .  darkly  I 
speculated  as  to  why  love  should  necessarily  pass  into  this 
more  formalistic  and  irksome  relationship,  only  later  to 
end  in  death.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  rows  of  corn  whispered  and  chaffered  of  life.  ... 
The  wood-perfumed  air  and  wet  grass  under  foot  gave  me 
a  sense  ...  of  life  dreamily  and  beautifully  lived.  A  surg- 
ing sense  of  the  newness  ...  of  the  world  was  upon  me. 
.  .  .  But  .  .  .  how  much,  if  any,  of  this  eternal  newness 
for  me.? 

The  stark,  merciless,  unheeding  nature  of  love  was  being 
brought  home  to  me  with  a  greater  force  than  ever  before." 

Poisons  like  these  invaded  Dreiser.  It  was  not  exactly 
his  wife,  he  says :  "  There  was  no  compulsion  there  by  that 
time.  She  was  all  right,"  except  that  she  had  no  under- 
standing of  adventure  and  no  need  of  it  herself.  It  was 
the  lambent  earth  on  the  one  hand  and  the  dullness  of 
Missouri  custom  on  the  other  that  ate  into  him.  He 
wanted  new  brilliance,  he  wanted  variety,  which  Rodin 
has  called  passion.  Melancholy  like  a  blanket  was  cover- 
ing him;  his  nerves  beginning  to  falter,  and  then  sleep 
and  then  digestion  to  give  way.  Now  it  was  impossible 
for  him  to  make  progress  with  either  novel,  the  very 
thing  he  was  there  for.  He  read  over  the  thirty  chapters 
of  The  Rake,  and  destroyed  them.  Jennie  Gerhardt  he 
kept  but  could  not  write  it.  So  now  he  was  living  on  a 
false  advance.  (Later  when  he  could  he  paid  it  back  to 
the  publishers.)  He  thought  perhaps  if  they  traveled  to 
the  South  he  could  write,  but  the  white  sands  and  the 
salt  breezes  of  the  Gulf  did  nothing  for  him.  Again,  as 
seven  years  before,  money  and  hopes  were  dwindling. 
This  time  health  was  failing.  There  was  nothing  to  do, 
it  seemed,  but  for  him  to  go  to  New  York  alone,  un- 
trammeled,  and  once  more  assail  the  market  for  any 
kind  of  a  writing  job.  She  returned  to  her  parents  to  wait 
once  more  until  he  could  support  her.  He  lived  in  Brook- 

200 


lyn  in  a  room  not  much  better  than  the  hall  bedroom  of 
other  lean  years,  and  tried  to  sell  his  stories  and  articles. 

Those  who  remembered  him  still  shunned  him;  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  wrote  him  that  he  was  "  morally  bank- 
rupt and  could  not  publish  there."  No  one  had  to  tell  him 
that  soon  he  would  be  physically  and  financially  bankrupt. 
Soon  he  would  be  too  miserable  to  invite  confidence  when 
he  went  the  rounds  of  job  hunting.  Soon  the  pawnshops 
would  do  their  meager  bit  for  him  again.  He  contem- 
plated suicide.  It  was  that  condition  so  glibly  called  a 
nervous  breakdown.  Asked  to  look  back  for  the  cause 
of  it,  he  does  not  blame  his  wife,  nor  marriage,  nor  even 
the  suppression  of  Sister  Carrie,  nor  any  outside  agent. 
It  was  his  own  moodiness,  he  thinks,  that  got  him.  So  he 
analyses  it  in  talk : 

'  The  book  wasn't  selling,  there  was  no  money  coming 
in,  but  I  got  plenty  of  praise  for  it  from  people  I  cared 
about.  I  knew  enough  by  this  time  not  to  want  it  from  the 
general  run  of  people ;  the  country  was  too  backward  intel- 
lectually; I  knew  that.  .  .  .  Frank  Norris  liked  it,  Heine- 
mann  wanted  it.  ...  When  he  got  here  in  1903  he  gave 
a  lunch  for  me  at  Martin's  restaurant,  and  asked  some 
people,  the  editor  of  Harper's,  the  editor  of  Scribner's, 
some  smart  women  —  you  know,  the  kind  that  counted. 
That  gave  me  confidence.  There  was  always  something, 
someone  to  give  me  confidence  —  friends  really  after 
Sister  Carrie,  even  before,  who  wanted  me  to  write,  made 
me  feel  that  I  was  important.  ...  I  don't  know,  I  think 
it  was  one  of  those  periods  when  I  got  to  meditating.  It 
happened  to  me  once  before  in  1894  in  Pittsburgh,  after 
reading  Huxley,  Spencer,  Schopenhauer.  .  .  .  Here  was 
this  immense  system  about  us,  chaotic,  meaningless  as 
far  as  we  could  find  out,  even  the  best  of  us,  and  you  per- 
sonally, were  nothing.  Or,  if  you  were,  what  were  you? 
I  got  to  thinking  that  there  was  no  answer  and  that  de- 
pressed me.  It  was  the  same  thing  now  in  1902.  The  book 
was  suppressed;  I  couldn't  get  accepted  where  I  had  been 
before.  No  one  would  touch  my  stuff.  I  was  hard  up,  and 
I  got  to  meditating  —  everything  seemed  futile,  not  so 
much  myself  but  the  whole  field  of  effort.  Life  seemed  an 
endless  chain  without  meaning.  I  think  it  was  that." 

201 


So  he  meditated  —  chaos,  futility,  suicide.  From  pride 
he  shunned  the  friends  who  would  have  liked  to  surround 
him.  It  was  best  to  see  no  one.  And  then  quite  by  chance 
one  day  walking  in  the  Broadway  district  he  met  his 
brother  Paul.  He  had  met  him  a  few  years  before  not 
long  after  he  had  left  Every  Month,  and  there  had  been  a 
coolness  between  them  for  that  reason.  Paul  was  at  the 
height  of  his  success  —  gold-headed  cane,  silk  shirt,  smart 
suit,  and  a  fine  apartment  in  the  Marlborough  —  out  of 
royalties  from  many  national  successes  —  The  Letter 
That  Never  Came,  I  Believe  It,  For  My  Mother  Told  Me 
So,  The  Convict  And  The  Bird,  The  Pardon  Came  Too 
Late,  Just  Tell  Them  That  You  Saw  Me,  The  Blue  And 
The  Gray,  The  Bowery,  On  The  Banks  Of  The  W abash. 

The  last  song  had  been  his  suggestion.  Paul  had  said 
one  summer  Sunday  morning  at  the  Howley,  Haviland 
office :  "  Why  don't  you  give  me  an  idea  once  in  a  while  ?  " 
The  younger  brother's  answer  had  been:  "  Me?  ...  I 
can't  write  those  things.  Why  don't  you  write  something 
about  a  state  or  a  river  .  .  .  something  that  suggests  a 
part  of  America?  People  like  that.  Take  Indiana  .  .  . 
the  Wabash  river?  It's  as  good  as  any  other  .  .  .  and 
you  were  raised  by  it."  — "  Not  a  bad  idea,"  Paul 
thought,  but  Thee  must  write  the  words.  "  Rather  shame- 
facedly," he  says,  he  did  produce  the  first  verse  and 
chorus,  almost  as  it  was  published;  and  not  long  after  the 
coolness  between  them ;  his  own  fault,  he  thinks  —  "  I 
was  very  difficult  to  deal  with." 

One  night,  "  young,  lonely,  wistful,"  he  heard  a  quar- 
tet of  boys  singing  it,  passing  under  his  window  —  his 
words : 

"  Round  my  Indiana  homestead  wave  the  cornfields. 
In  the  distance  loom  the  woodlands  clear  and  cool. 
Often  times  my  thoughts  revert  to  scenes  of  childhood, 
Where  I  first  received  my  lessons,  nature's  school. 
But  one  thing  there  is  missing  in  the  picture, 
Without  her  face  it  seems  so  incomplete. 
I  long  to  see  my  mother  in  the  doorway, 
As  she  stood  there  years  ago,  her  boy  to  greet! 
Oh,  the  moonlight's  fair  tonight  along  the  Wabash, 
From  the  fields  there  comes  the  breath  of  new  mown  hay. 
Thro'  the  sycamores  the  candle  lights  are  gleaming, 
On  the  Banks  of  the  Wabash,  far  away." 
202 


Soon  it  was  everywhere,  in  the  papers,  on  the  stage,  on 
the  hand-organs  and  whistled  in  the  streets.  And  when 
they  met  he  had  felt  a  kind  of  unreasoning  resentment 
against  his  brother  over  a  success  which  he  had  scorned 
to  be  part  of.  "  On  the  banks,  I  see,"  he  had  said.  And 
Paul  had  answered,  "  On  the  banks.  .  .  .  You  turned  the 
trick  for  me,  Thee,  that  time.  Why  don't  you  ever  come 
and  see  me?  I'm  still  your  brother.  ...  A  part  of  that 
is  really  yours."  —  "  Cut  that,  the  words  are  nothing," 
and  he  had  passed  on  brusquely.  Now  again  they  met  after 
Thee's  own  success  and  failure.  This  time  the  ballad- 
maker  would  not  let  him  go,  he  was  shocked  by  his 
appearance,  insisted  on  his  address,  horrified  because  the 
number  in  Brooklyn  contained  a  thirteen.  The  next  morn- 
ing he  was  there  with  a  cab  to  bear  him  off  to  the  affluent 
Marlborough: 

"  I  was  so  morose  and  despondent  that  I  resented  it, 
resented  myself,  my  state,  life.  ...  *  I  can't,'  I  said  finally. 
.  .  .  '  I  don't  need  your  help.  You  don't  owe  me  any- 
thing '  —  '  Owe,  Hell ! '  he  retorted.  '  Who's  talking  about 
owe.  .  .  .  For  that  matter  I  owe  you  half  of  On  The  Banks. 
.  .  .  You  can't  go  on  living  like  this.  .  .  .  Why,  Thee, 
you're  a  big  man.  Damn  it  —  don't  you  see  —  don't  make 
me '  —  and  he  took  out  his  handkerchief  and  wiped  his 
eyes.  .  .  .  '  Get  your  things  .  .  .  you've  got  to  come,  that's 
all.  I  won't  go  without  you.'  .  .  ." 

He  prevailed  with  "  such  tenderness  and  concern  as 
[one  pictures]  existing  between  parents  and  children,  but 
rarely  between  brothers  —  and  he  a  man  of  years  and 
some  affairs,  and  I  an  irritable,  distrait  and  peevish  soul." 
So  Dreiser  tells  it,  remembering  how  he  took  him  into  the 
luxury  of  a  good  hotel,  into  new  clothes,  and  then  in  a 
day  or  so  in  his  car  to  a  sanitarium  kept  by  a  friend  of 
Paul's,  an  ex-wrestler,  the  famous  Muldoon,  whose  for- 
tunes were  made  by  rich  American  wrecks  seeking  youth 
again.  His  portraits  of  his  brother  make  him  a  cipher  of 
that  infectious  American  charm,  belonging  more  to  the 
men  than  to  the  women,  which  has  kept  us  going.  It  is  met 
in  rich  and  poor,  mechanics,  salesmen,  entertainers,  even 
in  bankers  and  lawyers.  It  pervades  and  persuades  those 
who  meet  it,  colors  our  songs  and  jokes  and  manners,  and 
lack  of  manners,  and  is,  so  far,  more  specially  than 

203 


Pullmans  or  bathrooms  or  office  buildings,  the  spiritual 
flower  of  the  United  States  —  blend  of  the  humor  of 
many  nations. 

He  was  six  weeks  at  Muldoon's  in  training  under  a 
ruder  sample  of  American  wizardry,  whom  he  describes 
without  sparing  himself  in  Culhane  the  Solid  Man.*  Then 
he  returned  to  New  York  u  fairly  well  restored  in  nerves 
if  not  in  health."  His  brother's  act  of  love  and  this  strong 
Irishman's  contempt  of  weakness  seemed  to  have  com- 
bined urgently  with  Dreiser.  From  this  moment  a  new 
condition  of  mind  and  body  appeared  to  direct  his  dreams 
and  desires.  He  was  on  the  way  to  the  outside  of  them, 
and  came  to  rule  them  more  from  the  outside.  He  would 
not  abandon  them  ever,  but  he  would  teach  himself  to 
fight  for  them  and  make  them  count  —  that  is,  sell  the 
dreams  and  fulfil  the  desires.  Not  again  would  he  permit 
meditations  to  let  him  down  into  something  "  lymphatic 
and  flabby  as  oysters."  He  had  seen  too  many  magnates 
without  their  clothes  at  Muldoon's,  and  had  heard  that 
trainer's  roar  of  scorn.  Times  would  come  when  the  fight 
would  have  equal  savor  for  him  with  that  of  dreams 
and  desires. 

If  he  were  really  to  regain  strength,  an  indoor  job 
would  be  fatal.  He  looked  for  something  in  the  open  air 
and  through  influence  hired  himself  to  the  New  York 
Central  Railroad  at  twelve  cents  an  hour  and  ten  hours 
a  day  with  a  construction  gang,  and  was  glad  to  get  even 
this.  When  he  went  to  solicit  the  job  he  had  left  his  lunch, 
a  loaf  of  bread,  on  a  window-sill  outside  the  superintend- 
ent's office,  and  had  come  out  to  find  that  a  neat  porter 
had  thrown  it  into  a  garbage  bin  —  the  end  of  food  for 
him  that  day.  His  money  was  as  low  as  that,  and  his 
decision  to  take  no  more  from  his  brother  as  firm.  For  six 
months  he  worked  as  a  day  laborer,  for  a  few  days  carry- 
ing and  piling  lumber.  Then  finding  that  too  hard,  under 
a  wild  Irish  boss  he  ran  errands,  signing  for  shipments 
of  bolts,  sand,  cement,  putty,  and  carrying  O.K.  blanks 
to  the  main  office  for  materials  needed  in  the  construction 
of  concrete  platforms,  culverts,  coal  bins,  sidewalks, 
bridge  and  building  piers. t 

*   Twelve  Men.  f  The  Mighty  O'Rourke:  Twelve  Men. 

204 


So  passing  from  magnetic  Irishman  to  Irishman,  cured 
by  fresh  air,  and  by  contact  with  the  unintellectual  world 
of  day  laborers  and  contractors,  he  went  back  into  the 
market  of  books  and  journals,  equipped  to  seek  and  find 
a  job.  He  had  been  refreshed  too  by  what  was  denied  him 
on  the  Missouri  farm  —  "  a  new  exciting  experience  with 
a  woman,"  or  maybe  with  several  of  them.  He  is  an 
example  of  a  man  who  has  catered  to  his  necessities  in 
spite  of  conventions,  thereby  suffering,  if  you  like,  a 
loss  in  sensibility,  and  yet  exposing  himself  equally  to  a 
wilder  and  less  habitual  sea  of  the  senses  than  most  people 
swim  in. 

Rehabilitated  he  sought  and  finally  received  a  position. 
He  found  it  in  a  sheerly  commercial  publishing  house, 
Street,  Smith  &  Company.  It  was  the  fall  of  1904;  he  was 
thirty-three  years  old.  The  head  of  the  firm  was  nick- 
named Million  Dollar  Ormond  Smith,  since  he  thought 
and  talked  only  in  terms  of  huge  profits.  "  The  worse  the 
swill  the  better  you  can  sell  it,"  was  his  slogan.  Dreiser 
calls  his  experience  there  "  a  riot,  a  scream."  It  was  ir- 
responsible editing,  one  of  the  first  of  the  book  rackets. 
He  went  in  at  fifteen  dollars  a  week  as  editor  of  Fiction. 
His  wife  returned  from  Missouri  to  live  with  him  and 
serve  and  save  again.  Soon  he  conceived  the  idea  of 
starting  a  magazine,  modeled  on  Munsey's,  the  most 
successful  of  the  ice  to  I5c  variety.  With  a  Scotch- 
Irishman,  Charles  Agnew  McLean,  whom  he  got  to  know 
and  enjoy,  and  who  was  a  great  favorite  with  Ormond 
Smith,  two  new  thrill-journals  were  evolved,  Smith's  and 
The  Popular  Magazine.  Dreiser  took  charge  of  the  first. 
In  one  year  Smith's  reached  a  circulation  of  125,000. 

In  addition  to  these,  he  had  a  hand  in  Street  &  Smith's 
5c  libraries  which  had  published  for  years  such  classics  as 
Diamond  Dick,  Luck  and  Pluck,  Brave  and  Bold,  Nick 
Carter,  to  secretly  regale  the  boys  of  the  United  States 
and  the  men  whose  minds  could  not  grow  up.  They  catered 
to  that  thirst  for  adventure  and  sheer  marvels  of  which 
boys  and  men  are  never  allowed  to  find  enough  around 
the  corner  or  across  the  street,  or  next  door,  or  in  their 
own  houses,  or  in  their  own  selves.  Perhaps  there  never 
could  be  enough  of  it  for  anyone  this  side  of  paradise, 

205 


unless  perchance  for  those  born  into  gangland  or  among 
trappers,  hunters,  Mexicans  or  Indians.  It  was  Dreiser's 
job  to  take  whatever  manuscripts  of  promise  arrived, 
and  bring  them  up  to  the  standard  of  Street  &  Smith 
technique.  This,  he  says,  he  usually  accomplished  by  cut- 
ting them  in  two  and  tacking  an  end  to  the  first  half  and  a 
beginning  to  the  second,  thereby  doubling  the  output  for 
the  firm. 

In  this  carefree  editorial  atmosphere  Dreiser  pro- 
gressed from  $15  to  $35  a  week.  At  the  same  time  he  and 
McLean  formed  a  project  to  make  a  publishing  firm  to- 

f ether,  with  an  eye  on  his  part  to  the  re-publication  of 
ister  Carrie.  Doubleday,  however,  incredible  as  it  seems, 
refused  to  give  up  the  plates.  McLean's  advice  was  to  go 
and  buy  them ;  he  would  help  him.  The  publisher  at  length 
agreed  to  sell  for  $500,  with  which  transaction  his  firm 
goes  out  of  this  story.  In  later  years  Mencken  takes  one 
last  fling  at  them : 

"  For  his  high  services  to  American  letters,  Walter  H.  Page 
had  been  made  ambassador  to  England,  where  Sister  Carrie 
is  regarded  ...  as  c  The  best  story  on  the  whole  that  has 
yet  come  out  of  America,'  .  .  .  another  proof,  perhaps  of 
that  cosmic  imbecility  upon  which  Dreiser  himself  is  so 
fond  of  discoursing." 

The  plates  were  secured,  but  the  publishing  scheme  fell 
through;  Dreiser  later  paid  the  sum  himself.  McLean  got 
jealous  of  his  success  as  an  editor.  His  fault  it  may  have 
been,  since  as  he  confesses,  "  I  was  always  difficult  to  deal 
with."  Yet  some  such  fact  appears  to  have  been  accepted 
by  the  gossips.  The  Standard,  New  York,  January  2nd, 
1908,  reviewing  his  career,  says: 

"  So  Dreiser  came  back,  but  this  time  with  a  purpose  to 
climb  to  the  seats  of  the  mighty.  .  .  .  New  York  is  not  the 
most  affectionate  corner  of  the  world  to  carry  out  ideas  of 
this  character.  ...  He  did  break  through  in  one  spot 
where  tons  of  printed  matter  are  tobogganed  to  that  class 
which  revels  in  the  .  .  .  romantic,  but  before  the  news 
could  reach  the  heads  of  the  establishment  that  the  house 
had  acquired  the  asset  of  a  brain,  the  lesser  organs  .  .  . 
combined  to  prevent  the  disruption  of  the  nincompoops' 


206 


5J 

Further  from  the  bone:  Broadway  Maga- 
zine; "  The  great  American  novel,  per- 
haps." 


reiser  himself  does  not  think  of  McLean 
as  a  nincompoop ;  he  liked  him,  but  he  succeeded  in  fore- 
stalling him.  He  had  heard  that  The  Broadway  Maga- 
zine, belonging  to  Ben  Hampton,  was  looking  for  an 
editor.  In  the  spring  of  1905  he  solicited  the  job  and  got 
it,  and  so  could  resign  from  the  pulp-thrill  factory 
to  one  of  higher  pretensions.  He  was  by  now  in  good 
trim  for  the  battle  called  success,  and  not  scornful  of  the 
ease  it  would  give  him.  For  this  new  position  he  needed  to 
be  "  fit."  Hampton,  himself,  like  every  other  would-be 
live  wire  in  New  York,  was  a  success  fiend.  The  town 
teemed  with  young  men  mostly  from  the  villages  who 
intended  no  longer  to  be  village  nobodies. 

It  is  formidable  —  this  period  of  our  development. 
Out  of  their  high  schools  and  fresh-water  colleges  what 
of  the  past  were  schoolboys  remembering?  Almost  noth- 
ing it  would  seem,  but  the  myth  of  Xerxes,  Hannibal, 
Alexander,  Caesar,  Attila,  Napoleon,  who  in  their  days 
and  countries  came  singly  and  were  paragons.  But  now  in 
this  land  of  machinery  every  boy  was  a  potential  con- 
queror, or  he  was  a  nobody.  Why  was  it  that  the  old 
maids  and  sad  young  men,  who  had  to  teach  or  starve, 
stressed  so  exclusively  these  mighty  brutes  of  history  to 
boys  and  girls  eager  to  learn  about  the  world  outside  of 
their  provinces?  Was  it  that  in  this  way  they  satisfied 
their  need  of  rape  and  violence?  Certainly  they  taught 
that  temper  called  Roman  to  American  children,  many  of 
whom  must  have  been  born  childlike  enough  —  little  new 
bushes  in  April,  where  birds  chattered.  They  fast  became 
Roman,  and  have  made  a  two-faced  empire,  half  puritan, 

207 


half  sybarite,  and  wholly  material,  even  if  less  sophisti- 
cated than  the  Roman  Empire.  The  school  teachers  have 
had  their  revenge. 

But  it  is  necessary  to  return  to  commencement  day. 
Some  of  the  pupils,  slightly  intrigued  by  intellectual 
prowess,  were  not  quite  ready  to  abandon  it  when  they 
came  out  into  the  world  face  to  face  with  the  problem 
of  "making  good."  These  quite  naturally  veered  toward 
newspapers  or  magazines  with  the  vague  hope  that  some 
day  they  could  be  writers  or  artists.  Mr.  Hampton,  when 
he  left  Knox  College,  in  Galesburg,  Illinois,  confesses 
to  being  one  of  them.  S.  S.  McClure,  John  and  Rob 
Findley,  Brady,  Phillips,  had  graduated  not  long  before 
him  and  already  shone  in  journalism  in  the  East.  He 
ran  a  paper  in  Galesburg  for  a  while,  and  then  with  the 
money  went  on  to  New  York  in  1898  to  make  a  fortune, 
preferably  as  a  "  serious  "  writer.  But  as  S.  S.  McClure 
pointed  out  there  was  no  money  in  it;  "the  highest 
price  novelist  we  had,  W.  D.  Howells,  only  made  $4,000 
a  year."  The  magazine  field  looked  more  promising.  He 
appraised  it  in  terms  of  circulation  and  advertising. 
McClure's  to  be  sure,  had  only  a  small  circulation,  400,- 
ooo;  Munsey's  introducing  half-tone  illustrations,  600,- 
ooo  perhaps;  Youth's  Companion  800,000.  Century,  the 
best  of  the  literary  magazines,  with  a  mere  forty  or  fifty 
thousand,  was  not  to  be  considered.  But  the  Saturday 
Evening  Post  had  reached  already  a  million  and  a  half 
and  had  swept  up  the  country's  advertising,  such  as  it 
was.  In  connection  with  it  Charles  Austin  Bates,  a  pioneer 
in  advertising,  had  organized  a  ready-made  ad-service. 
This  gave  Hampton  an  inspiration;  national  advertising 
was  the  gateway  to  the  future.  Literature  and  business 
could  yet  be  married,  or  at  any  rate  they  could  be  made  to 
lie  down  in  the  same  bed  together.  So,  always  slightly 
leaning  toward  the  arts,  he  bought  the  remnants  of  the 
Irving  Batcheller  Literary  Syndicate,  which,  he  said,  was 
buying  a  mere  name,  though  in  the  past  it  had  handled 
some  big  literary  merchandise.  The  Red  Badge  of  Cour- 
age had  been  one  of  its  minor  purchases. 

Into  this  obsolete  business  he  introduced  the  modern 
pulmotor  —  an  advertising  service.  Soon  he  was  supply- 
208 


ing  R.  &  G.  Corsets,  Wesson's  Oil,  American  Tobacco. 
With  money  from  that  he  went  on  to  his  particular 
dream  of  a  magazine.  He  bought  the  old  Broadway,  and 
in  an  office  on  22nd  Street,  began  pumping  life  into  it  to 
make  it  a  vehicle  of  New  York,  as  The  Strand  was  of 
London.  He  employed,  he  says,  about  twenty-five  artists 
and  writers,  paying  as  much  as  $18  to  $25  a  week  for 
reporters  and  $100  for  ad-writers,  with  the  result  that 
"  newspaper  men  fairly  beseiged  his  office."  He  lacked  a 
good  literary  editor  and  advertised  for  one.  Among  those 
who  applied  was  Dreiser.  He  remembers  him  well  the 
day  he  came  into  his  office,  u  a  heavy-set,  lunky  fellow, 
obviously  a  newspaper  man,  singularly  unattractive."  It 
is  certain  neither  caught  the  other's  quality.  They  saw 
each  other  in  terms  of  value,  not  of  charm.  "  The  minute 
I  set  eyes  on  him,"  Hampton  said,  "  I  figured  the  man 
was  a  genius.  I  said  to  myself,  '  Jesus,  here's  a  wow,'  and 
hired  him  on  the  spot."  He  worked  for  $60  a  week  with 
a  promise  of  $100  if  the  circulation  went  up  to  75,000. 
It  went  fast  to  above  a  hundred  thousand.  The  previ- 
ously quoted  New  York  Standard  tells  of  his  success : 

"  Then  he  tackled  the  Broadway  magazine,  a  publication 
of  odorous  memory,  started  by  that  celebrated  adaptor  of 
other  people's  ideas,  Roland  Burke  Hennesy.  Later  on 
Broadway  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Hamptons,  in  class  A 
as  advertising  experts,  but  nothing  much  on  magazine 
editing.  The  job  was  an  Augean  one  ...  for  Dreiser.  .  .  . 
He  turned  in  a  river  of  good  literature  and  snappy  special 
articles,  changing  the  magazine  completely,  except  in  name. 
People  began  to  sit  up  and  take  notice.  .  .  .  Instead  of 
sneaking  round  the  corner  to  read  it  they  carried  it  in  the 
sunlight  and  were  proud  of  it.  Circulation  began  to  grow, 
and  advertisers  gave  up  real  money  for  its  pages.  It  was 
the  prettiest  piece  of  transformation  work  seen  in  New 
York  for  many  a  day.  .  .  ." 

So  Dreiser  made  the  magazines.  He  was  on  the  inside 
now  among  the  money  makers.  He  could  exclude  as  he 
had  often  been  excluded.  He  was  a  procurer  among  the 
prostitutes  of  literature.  He  had  left  to  one  side  the 
lonely  realm  of  art,  and  behind  him  the  vagabond  news- 
paper men  and  fantastic  song-writers  and  5-cent  thrill- 
makers,  and  was  crossing  over  to  that  paradise  of  irri- 
descent  shaded  lamps,  perpetual  palms  and  oriental  rugs, 

209 


shared  by  magazine  and  advertising  agencies.  Though  all 
of  journalism  compromised  to  a  lie,  the  newspaper  lie 
ran  nearer  to  the  turf  than  the  magazine  lie.  The  offices 
of  one  as  compared  to  the  other  had  the  look  of  stables 
as  compared  to  parlors  of  the  newly  arrived.  Newspapers 
disguised  facts;  magazines  fabricated  fiction.  Their  edi- 
tors had  the  look  of  facial  massages,  and  the  sound  of 
massaged  manners.  They  never  spat  or  swore,  or  put 
their  feet  on  the  desk  like  the  newspaper  men.  They 
frightened  elegantly,  not  gruffly.  Sometimes  their  habit  of 
polite  pretence  so  emptied  their  faces  of  human  expres- 
sion that  they  began  to  look  like  dressed  up  animals  — 
the  great  ones  like  foxes  or  cats  or  spiders;  the  smaller 
ones  like  weasels,  ants  and  beavers,  and  beneath  these 
were  the  chipmunks  and  mice. 

Broadway  Magazine  was  not  properly  in  this  grand 
powerful  inane  shiny-paper  class.  Under  Mr.  Hampton 
it  was  a  compromise  between  the  live  and  the  static. 
Compared  to  the  great  whoring  periodicals  dominant 
today,  it  was  not  much  more  than  a  frontier  bagnio.  This 
was  a  period  and  a  publisher  still  believing  that  vital 
news  could  be  made  to  pay.  He  conceived  the  idea 
of  increasing  circulation  by  telling  on  the  great  and 
powerful.  His  success  came  partly  through  muck-raking. 
It  was  the  day  for  it.  The  Interests  already  ruled  con- 
structively, but  not  yet  defensively.  Thomas  Lawson 
could  write  and  publish  his  American  epic,  Frenzied 
Finance,  hoping  thereby  to  change  the  course  of  the 
real  Niagara,  Big  Business.  Ida  Tarbell  had  already 
slightly  stirred  the  complacent  nation,  and  stimulated 
the  circulation  of  McClure's  with  her  disclosures  as  to 
Standard  Oil.  Pearson's  magazine,  February  1914,  prints 
a  review  of  Hampton's  progress,  as  Broadway  came  to 
be  called  —  a  story  which  appears  in  detail  in  Upton 
Sinclair's  Brass  Check: 

".  .  .  He  never  indulged  in  personal  attacks  and  was 
painstakingly  accurate;  but  it  was  every  month  a  steady 
hammering  at  conditions  as  they  really  are.  .  .  .  There 
was  not  one  great  and  powerful  interest  in  America  that 
he  had  not  antagonised.  ...  In  four  years  the  circulation 
increased  from  12,000  to  440,000  —  on  the  strength  of  the 
boldest  muck-raking  that  had  ever  been  done." 
210 


Initially  also,  according  to  Hampton  and  others,  success 
was  due  to  Dreiser's  editorial  talents.  He  slipped  over 
every  possible  clever  short  story  and  article  that  came  to 
him,  like  Hampton  unwilling  to  believe  that  people  pre- 
ferred to  be  bored,  much  as  their  ideas  differed  as  to 
what  was  boring.  They  were  both  right,  it  seemed;  cir- 
culation soared.  But  Hampton  was  his  own  assassin;  in 
the  end  advertising  fell.  In  1911,  four  years  after  Dreiser 
had  left  the  paper,  the  game  was  up.  The  Interests  had 
put  an  end  to  muck-raking,  and  on  the  best  security 
Hampton  found  himself  unable  to  get  money  at  any  bank. 
"  Some  of  the  banks,"  Pearson's  says,  "  admitted  that 
they  had  been  instructed  not  to  lend  him  anything."  The 
magazine  was  stabbed,  and  died  at  the  special  hands  of 
The  New  Haven  Road,  a  Morgan  property,  and  the 
object  of  Hampton's  last  exposure.  Mr.  Hampton  re- 
tired to  the  position  of  advertising  manager  of  American 
Tobacco,  whose  president  of  twenty  years  later  has  con- 
vinced the  public  that  they  will  avoid  laryngitis  and  won't 
get  fat  if  they  smoke  Lucky  Strikes.  As  fast  as  that  did 
advertising  travel  beyond  the  dreams  of  men  in  1905. 

From  the  spring  of  1905  to  the  autumn  of  1907  in  the 
last  decade  of  rational  magazines,  and  rational  advertis- 
ing Hampton  and  Dreiser  worked  together,  one  to  build 
his  paper  into  a  great  periodical,  the  other  to  secure  his 
future,  that  sometime  he  might  be  a  writer  again. 
Mr.  Hampton  says  of  him,  that  he  made  a  professional 
success;  acquired  a  standing  with  other  editors;  that  he 
had  "  a  marvellous  objective  mind  "  but  that  above  that 
was  an  even  more  remarkable  "  subjective  mind,"  which 
drove  him  to  the  necessity  of  writing,  and  kept  him  from 
ever  attaining  the  editorial  speed  of  a  Ray  Long,  for 
example.  Such  an  editor,  unhampered  by  the  substantive 
"  was  an  objective  genius  pure  and  simple."  A  very  inter- 
esting distinction,  unless  the  object  in  Mr.  Hampton's 
mind  could  be  boiled  down  to  as  pure  and  simple  a  thing 
as  money.  But  I  think  there  is  more  to  it  than  that:  an 
effort  to  define  the  impersonal  conquering  mind,  unre- 
lated to  other  people,  or  to  oneself  or  to  nature,  related 
to  things,  to  objects  —  the  mind  which  at  its  best  makes 
money;  in  distinction  to  the  personal,  reflective,  creative 

211 


mind  —  the  mind  which  at  its  best  makes  art.  .  .  . 
u  Christ  in  Hell/'  he  ended  abruptly,  and  with  intense  ad- 
miration for  his  ex-editor,  "  Dreiser  could  no  more  keep 
from  writing  as  he  saw  life  than  he  could  keep  from 
breathing.  Read  him  describing  department  stores  or 
street  railways  and  you  know  them  to  the  life,  physically, 
legally,  socially."  He  himself  had  hated  Comstockery, 
and  was  so  moved  by  Sister  Carrie  that  he  would  have 
liked  to  publish  it  for  him. 

Dreiser,  on  the  other  hand,  perhaps  unfairly,  does  not 
reciprocate.  Almost,  it  would  seem,  an  antagonism,  which 
Hampton  ignores,  operated  between  them.  In  De  Mau- 
passant Junior  he  describes  him  with  more  bias  than  I 
have  noticed  elsewhere  in  his  portraits : 

"  Our  publisher  and  owner  was  a  small,  energetic,  vibrant 
and  colorful  soul,  all  egotism  and  middle-class  conviction 
as  to  the  need  of  '  push,'  ambition,  '  closeness  to  life/ 
*  punch,'  and  what  not  else  American  to  the  core,  .  .  . 
hourly  as  it  were,  demanding  the  *  hows  '  and  '  whyfores  ' 
of  the  dream  which  the  little  group  I  was  swiftly  gathering 
about  me  was  seeking  to  make  real." 

Since  he  was  the  publisher  and  owner  one  can't  quite 
blame  him  for  this  demand,  nor  does  Dreiser  blame  any 
other  individual  for  being  American  to  the  core.  He  goes 
on  to  demolish  him : 

".  .  .  While  he  wanted  something  new  in  fiction,  some- 
thing more  virile  and  lifelike  than  that  '  mush '  ...  to  be 
found  in  the  current  magazines,  still  it  must  have  a  strong 
appeal  for  the  general  reader  (!);  and  be  very  compelling 
in  fact  and  clean  —  a  solid  little  pair  of  millstones  which 
would  .  .  .  end  in  mascerating  everything  vital  out  of  any 
good  story. 

...  He  had  a  facile  and  specious  method  of  arguing,  a 
most  gay  and  in  some  respects  magnetic  personality,  far 
from  stodgy  or  gross,  which  for  a  time  attracted  many  to 
him.  Very  briskly  then,  he  proceeded  to  make  friends  with 
all  those  with  whom  I  had  surrounded  myself.  ...  In  ad- 
dition to  these  there  was  a  constantly  swelling  band  of 
writers,  artists,  poets,  critics,  dreamers  of  social  reform, 
who  were  now  beginning  to  make  our  place  a  center;  an 
amusing  vivid  strident  world." 

Again  can  you  blame  the  publisher  even  if  his  editor  had 
been  a  magnet  for  this  circle,  in  wanting  to  be  "  artistic  " 
too.  Perhaps  an  antipathy  grew  between  them  because 

212 


Hampton  had  not  the  thick-skinned  "  objective  mind  "  of 
the  ideal  editor;  whereas  Dreiser  has  found  most  intri- 
guing those  who  don't  know  how  to  compromise.  "  Noth- 
ing by  halves,"  is  his  preference.  If  a  magnate,  then  be 
a  ruthless  one  like  Yerkes !  If  a  hypocrite,  a  terrible  one 
like  Rockefeller!  If  a  reformer,  then  a  creator  like  Hay- 
wood  or  Lenin!  If  an  artist,  then  one  strong  enough  to 
stay  lonely  and  isolated  as  he  himself  would  soon  find  was 
his  necessity.  He  held  the  artist's  prejudice  against  an 
expedient  reformer  like  Hampton  —  that  is,  one  not  co- 
erced by  anger.  He  besides  was  too  much  fascinated  by 
the  spectacle  of  unscrupulous  finance  to  want  to  interfere 
with  it,  supposing  that  he  could.  He  wanted  to  watch  it 
and  make  people  more,  not  less  lustful,  if  he  influenced 
them  at  all.  For  twenty-five  years  since  that  time  he  has 
watched  it,  until  in  1930,  he  has  denounced  its  greed  as 
loudly  as  could  any  reformer,  but  too  late.  Better  perhaps 
had  he  thrown  some  of  his  force  of  mind  against  it 
earlier.  But,  as  in  every  other  sphere  of  our  life,  different 
literary  elements  rarely  mingled.  Writers  separated  by 
so  much  as  a  slight  prejudice  kept  away  from  each  other. 
Dreiser,  for  example,  never  liked  Jack  London,  because 
he  called  him  and  everyone  "  comrade." 

He  made  two  friendships  important  to  him  in  these 
years  on  Broadway.  One  was  a  young  man  from  the 
Southwest,  Texas  and  Missouri,  a  writer  after  his  own 
heart  in  the  reckless  line  of  descent  of  Poe  and  Stephen 
Crane  —  Harris  Merton  Lyon,  whom  he  included  on  his 
staff  and  helped  all  that  he  could.  He  saw  in  him  an  un- 
compromising, scornful  writer.  But  according  to  his  por- 
trait of  him  in  Twelve  Men*  he  lost  him  to  luxury  and 
dissipation  and  an  early  death,  because  of  this  publisher's 
influence  over  him,  whom  he  represents  as  the  villain  of 
the  story.  I  asked  him  if  he  had  not  been  unfair  to  Hamp- 
ton in  the  picture.  His  answer  was:  "Well,  perhaps,  in 
some  of  the  details,  but  just  the  same  I  know  he  killed 
Lyon."  —  "  How?  "  I  said  —  "  He  made  him  put  happy 
endings  to  his  stories,  I  know  he  did."  —  "  That  curse 
of  all  American  fiction,  the  necessarily  happy  ending!  " 
It  went  hand  in  hand  with  "  the  uplift  note  "  on  Hamp- 

*  De  Maupassant  Jr. 

213 


ton's  magazine,  and  he  abhorred  the  liaison.  He  speaks 
of  Lyon  as  a  proud  father  or  teacher  might.  Once  after 
a  long  time  of  not  seeing  him,  he  came  to  dinner,  "  bring- 
ing of  all  things  a  great  armful  of  red  roses."  An  incon- 
gruous gift,  it  seemed,  from  the  ex-railroad  boy  to  the 
ex-Hoosier.  Neither  exactly  knew  how  to  give  or  receive 
it.  The  memory  is  none  the  less  dear  to  Dreiser.  And  he 
likes  to  remember  too  that  Lyon  left  when  he  died 
enough  manuscript  to  make  "  two  small  volumes  of  short 
tales  ...  in  the  clear,  incisive,  uncompromising  vein 
.  .  .  and  with  that  passion  for  revelation  which  charac- 
terized him  at  first,  that  same  unbiased  and  unfettered 
non-moral  viewpoint. "  It  was  u  wonderful  and  hopeful  " 
that  New  York  contained  this  new  intellect  in  the  midst 
of  so  much  pretension,  and  monstrous  that  America 
should  have  killed  it. 

Also  while  with  Broadway  he  met  B.  W.  Dodge,  "  a 
most  lovable  alcoholic  "  and  an  editor  with  imagination. 
He  was  "  crazy  about  him."  Together  they  carried 
through  the  publishing  scheme  he  had  planned  with 
McLean.  Plots  were  thickening  fast  at  this  time.  On 
May  1 8,  1907,  B.  W.  Dodge  &  Co.,  that  is,  Dodge  and 
Dreiser,  republished  Sister  Carrie,  though  not  before  one 
more  protest  out  of  Chaos.  The  box  containing  the  plates 
and  sheets,  for  which  five  hundred  hard  earned  dollars 
had  been  paid,  went  through  a  storage  fire.  Half  of  them, 
too  charred  to  use,  had  to  be  made  over  again.  But  finally 
the  book  was  really  out  in  the  light  of  the  public,  the  first 
edition  gone  in  less  than  two  weeks. 


214 


58 

The  New  Enemy,  Sophistication 

HP 

Jl  he  reviewers,  educated  by  British  opinion, 
did  better  this  time,  with  three  times  as  many  notices, 
almost  all  of  them  flattering  either  in  anger  or  praise. 
In  seven  years  the  country  had  undergone  a  change  of 
temper.  Chiefly  in  those  years  there  had  come  about  a 
fever,  an  agony,  among  young  people  to  force  the  United 
States  to  be  habitable  for  men  and  women  of  imagination. 
Lone  figures  like  Thompson  and  Reedy,  and  the  several 
little  magazines  and  theatres,  and  exiled  professors  in 
callow  universities  had  sown  seeds  of  envy.  Young  people 
were  tired  of  vicarious  romance.  They  must  have  experi- 
ence themselves  which  is  romance,  and  have  it  quick. 
There  began  that  optimistic  flowering,  that  nascence  of 
the  spirit,  of  which  people  ask  today,  is  it  over?  Or  swear 
today  that  it  has  just  begun,  or  else  that  it  is  anomolous 
and  can  never  be.  Sister  Carrie  was  welcomed  on  its 
merits  —  a  strong  plant  out  of  our  soil  and  despite  our 
dust,  the  real  thing.  It  satisfied  many  of  the  new  Ameri- 
cans. Yet  too,  there  would  be  those  impatient  of  its  crudi- 
ties who  could  not  stand  it.  They  saw  in  it  their  own 
crudities,  the  flatness  of  American  life,  which  at  heart 
they  knew  would  be  the  death  of  their  aesthetic  dreams. 
And  yet  how  hard  to  admit  defeat !  There  must  be  short 
cuts  to  quality  by  a  process  of  transfusion,  even  in  quanti- 
tative North  America !  They  would  make  a  forced  growth 
of  the  art  of  living  and  the  art  of  celebrating  living,  to 
enjoy  the  fruits  before  they  died.  Whistler  and  Henry 
James  had  done  this  by  becoming  European.  They  would 
do  it  at  home.  Such  crusaders  sometimes  resented  Sister 
Carrie  as  bitterly  as  did  the  moralists.  A  new  enemy  was 
entering  the  scene  for  the  native  Dreiser  —  the  importer 
of  more  than  fashion,  the  importer  of  sophistication. 

215 


The  reviews  of  the  book  in  1907  are  slides  of  Ameri- 
can life  in  that  year.  You  will  find  there  the  old  style 
moralist  to  whom  talk  of  sex  was  quite  simply  taboo ;  the 
new  style  moralist  to  whom  talk  of  sex  was  entirely 
proper,  if,  and  don't  misunderstand  them,  sex  brought 
unhappiness  or  taught  an  economic  lesson.  You  will  find 
there  the  old  style  high-brow,  jealous  of  the  English 
language,  hugging  Pater,  Arnold,  and  possibly  Swin- 
burne; the  new  style  intellectual,  homesick  for  maturity 
in  a  senile  juvenile  land,  and  what  difference  the  manner 
as  long  as  the  matter  was  a  telegram  out  of  reality?  And 
then  you  will  find  already  the  new  antagonist,  the  sophisti- 
cate, the  fly  in  the  ointment.  This  first  novel  of  this  first 
American  Realist  was  a  storm  center : 

Boston  Transcript:  "A  matter  for  regret  that  he  should 
have  deliberately  chosen  to  devote  his  creative  talent  to  a 
woman  and  two  men  who  never  quicken  our  nobler  im- 
pulses. .  .  ." 

Ohio  Journal:  "  Such  books  are  to  be  shunned  .  .  .  there 
is  so  much  in  the  world  that  is  fresh  and  clean,  elevating 
little  stones  .  .  .  that  are  well  worth  telling.  .  .  ." 
The  Club  Fellow:  New  York:  "  The  modern  writer  should 
not  make  vice  seem  attractive.  .  .  .  But  it  is  not  immoral 
to  describe  the  allurements  that  await  the  young  girl  in  our 
over-crowded  cities,  so  long  as  it  shows  that  no  breach  of 
the  moral  law  ever  can  result  in  happiness.  .  .  .  Sister 
Carrie  shows  bitterness  and  disillusion  at  the  end  of  the 
path." 

Advance,  Chicago:  "No  better  sermon  could  be  preached 
...  on  the  necessity  of  leaving  other  people's  money 
alone.  .  .  ." 

New  York  Sun:  "  Mr.  Dreiser  should  take  a  course  in  read- 
ing, Flaubert,  Defoe,  etc.  .  .  .  After  such  a  course  [his] 
gents  will  give  up  wearing  pants,  vests,  Prince  Alberts,  and 
tuxedos  of  the  slop  shops.  .  .  ." 

Philadelphia  Ledger,  Agnes  Repplier:  "  [He]  has  the 
faculty  of  picturing  his  scenes  so  vividly  in  clear-cut  Eng- 
lish that  they  compel  instant  and  abiding  interest." 
Texas  Post,  Houston,  Harris  Merton  Lyon:  "  I  see  in 
Sister  Carrie  one  more  evidence  of  a  broader,  American 
intellectual  freedom.  .  .  .  Possibly  the  day  will  come  when 
George  Moore's  Memoirs  of  My  Dead  Life  will  not  have 
to  be  expurgated  as  if  for  children  when  .  .  .  issued  in 
the  United  States." 

And  then  the  opinion  of  the  man  of  the  world,  deriv- 
ing from  Europe,  the  new  enemy.  Mr.  Harrison  Rhodes, 
216 


a  fashionable  critic  of  that  time,  reflects  the  type.  Writ- 
ing for  The  Bookman,  languorously  he  reminds  his  read- 
ers that  Mr.  Dreiser  as  realist  and  immoralist  is  like 
all  good  natives,  somehow  lacking.  What  had  he  told  of 
lasciviousness,  what  really  of  gaiety? 

"  The  intelligent  foreigner  will  find  her  amazingly  typical 
of  the  chill  in  our  .  .  .  blood.  No  one  need  avoid  Sister 
Carrie  as  an  '  improper  book/  When  Miss  Meeber  yields  to 
the  blandishments  of  her  drummer,  there  was  unques- 
tionably, from  the  point  of  view  of  the  intelligent  foreigner 
a  '  scene  a  faire.'  That  Mr.  Dreiser  avoids  it  is  proof  equally 
of  his  innate  refinement  and  of  the  American  sense  that 
love  involves  many  things  besides  physical  passion.  Indeed 
one  is  tempted  ...  to  the  reflection  that  Miss  Meeber  con- 
sidered that  physical  feature  of  life  too  unimportant  to  be 
worth  even  avoiding." 

Here  is  the  pessimist  who  despairs  of  celebrating  life 
where  there  is  so  little  to  celebrate.  Here  is  the  self-exiled 
American  with  a  small  audience  now  to  reinforce  him. 
Perhaps,  I  am  not  sure,  looking  forward  out  of  the  strug- 
gle for  authentic  imagination  in  our  country,  from  Poe 
and  Whitman  to  the  originals  of  the  near  past  —  perhaps 
we  shall  find,  looking  beyond  them  into  the  present,  this 
type,  the  exile,  self-deported  to  Europe  spiritually  or 
actually  or  both,  to  be  the  sole  one  among  our  artists 
enough  nourished  to  survive.  The  intervening  fifteen 
years,  however,  belong  more  to  us  than  to  Europe.  They 
are  years  of  vigor  and  revelation,  years  of  artists,  espe- 
cially writers,  who  worked  like  tillers  of  the  soil,  or  who 
worked  like  engineers,  building  bridges  and  viaducts  and 
always  roads. 

Dreiser  was  one  of  them,  unaware  perhaps  of  the 
existence  of  an  entering  wedge  of  connoisseurs  preoccu- 
pied with  values  alien  to  his  foreground.  He  made  no 
effort  to  cope  with  them.  Instead  seriously  he  answered 
the  now  familiar  critics  of  his  diction.  He  said  to  them : 
"  To  sit  up  and  criticize  me  for  saying  '  vest '  instead  of 
1  waistcoat ' ;  to  talk  about  my  splitting  the  infinitive  and 
using  vulgar  commonplaces  here  and  there,  when  the 
tragedy  of  a  man's  life  is  being  displayed,  is  silly.  More, 
it  is  ridiculous.  It  makes  me  feel  that  American  criticism 
is  the  joke  that  English  authorities  maintain  it  to  be." 

And  to  the  moralists  he  took  the  trouble  to  say:  "  The 

217 


mere  living  of  your  daily  life  is  drastic  drama.  Today 
there  may  be  some  disease  lurking  in  your  veins  that  will 
end  your  life  tomorrow.  .  .  .  Life  is  a  tragedy.  ...  I 
simply  want  to  tell  about  life  as  it  is.  Every  human  life  is 
intensely  interesting  .  .  .  even  when  there  are  no  ideals, 
when  there  is  only  a  personal  desire  to  survive,  the  fight 
to  win,  the  stretching  out  of  the  fingers  to  grasp  —  these 
are  the  things  I  want  to  write  about  —  the  facts  as  they 
exist,  the  game  as  it  is  played.  ...  I  said  I  was  pointing 
out  no  moral.  Well,  I  am  not,  unless  this  is  a  moral  — 
that  all  humanity  must  stand  together  and  war  against 
and  overcome  the  forces  of  nature.  I  think  a  time  will 
come  when  personal  gain  will  rarely  be  sought  at  the  ex- 
pense of  someone  else.*' 

But  with  words  and  thoughts  like  these,  he  turned  his 
back  on  the  whole  literary  field,  moralists,  aesthetes  and 
admirers,  to  enter  with  fellow  natives  into  the  fight 
against  some  of  the  forces  of  nature  —  hunger  and  desti- 
tution. At  the  same  time  his  English  champions,  with 
nothing  to  gain  and  nothing  to  lose,  were  always  being 
loyal  to  him  —  Frank  Harris,  William  Locke,  Arnold 
Bennett.  The  narrative  must  leave  them,  however,  to 
follow  the  author  of  their  favorite  American  novel  into 
American  commerce. 


218 


59 


Life  far  from  the  bone 
Butterick  Patterns 


I 


,n  the  same  spring  of  1907,  John  O'Hara  Cos- 
grave  came  into  the  picture,  an  editorial  friend,  who 
under  Ridgeway  edited  Munsey's  which  superseded 
Everybody's.  Guessing  that  Hampton  and  Dreiser  were 
destined  to  separate,  he  recommended  him  to  George  W. 
Wilder  of  the  Butterick  Publications.  He  had  recently 
lost  his  combined  editor  and  art-editor  —  "  a  young  fel- 
low," as  Dreiser  tells  it,  who  killed  himself  over  an  affair 
with  "  some  society  girl,"  discovered  and  denied  him  by 
society.  He  was  one  of  a  number  to  enter  into  his  medita- 
tions at  this  time  as  somehow  related  to  him,  men  who 
came  up  and  went  under.  A  composite  of  them  emerged 
later  as  his  "  Genius." 

Impressed  by  his  Broadway  record  Wilder  offered 
Dreiser  the  position,  at  $7,000  a  year  and  a  bonus  as 
the  circulation  mounted.  So  in  the  summer  of  1907  he 
entered  the  Butterick  Publishing  Co.,  whose  large  fac- 
tory building  already  stood  at  Spring  and  MacDougal 
Streets.  He  was  at  once  managing  editor  of  five  fashion 
magazines,  the  Delineator,  the  Designer,  the  New  Idea, 
the  South  American  Delineator,  and  the  German  from 
which  they  imported  material.  Chief  of  this  was  the  De- 
lineator. He  was  a  long  way  now  from  Indiana  valleys, 
further  than  his  brother  Paul  with  his  sentimental  bal- 
lads which  swept  the  country-lanes  and  parlors,  and  yet 
of  course,  he  too  was  catering  to  the  villages.  New  York 
was  and  is  a  vast  explosion,  made  out  of  the  dreams  of 
villages,  clasping  in  a  distorted  ecstasy  the  patterns  of 
the  older  cities. 

As  five-fold  Butterick  editor  and  art  editor,  he  came  as 
near  to  big  business  as  any  periodical  in  that  day  could 

219 


bring  him.  He  had  a  staff  of  thirty-two  people,  whom  he 
had  selected  each  for  his  or  her  special  value.  He  con- 
trolled the  editorial  policy  of  these  journals  —  his  condi- 
tion so  that  Broadway  difficulties  might  not  be  repeated. 
He  was  an  "  idea-man  "  and  canvassed  the  country  for 
men  and  women  with  ideas.  Pretty  soon,  he  says,  "  Any 
one  who  had  any  idea  about  the  United  States  ran  down  to 
The  Delineator."  Forty-two  thousand  manuscripts  came 
in  to  them  in  a  year.  He  fulfilled  a  wish  of  his,  an  office 
painted  green  and  bronze  and  hangings  and  furnishings 
to  go  with  green  and  bronze ;  people  came  there  Saturday 
afternoons  for  tea  and  talk;  he  held  a  kind  of  "  salon." 
Circulation  mounted,  as  it  had  in  his  previous  ventures.  In 
fact,  this  time,  with  stipulated  freedom,  he  sent  it  soaring 
in  four  years  from  400,000  to  1,200,000.  Newspaperdom, 
October  24,  1927,  writes  about  him: 

"  Perhaps  the  most  nervous  man  ...  I  ever  saw  in  an 
editorial  chair  is  Theodore  Dreiser  ...  of  that  nervous, 
ever-active,  never  still  nature;  tall,  but  not  broad- 
shouldered,  generous  of  feature  and  alert  ...  a  typical 
Westerner,  and  there  are  few  who  would  not  pause  on  the 
street  to  look  back  at  the  tall  man.  .  .  . 

In  the  [six  months]  in  which  he  has  been  editing  The 
Delineator  he  has  injected  much  new  life  .  .  .  into  it. 
[He]  says:  'Get  personality  into  your  work.  ...  I  be- 
lieve the  average  person  likes  best  to  read  about  people 
and  their  accomplishments  and  to  know  .  .  .  something 
of  the  king-pin  of  the  combination.  .  .  .'  " 

Leaders  interested  him  when  he  was  editor  of  a  woman's 
fashion  magazine  as  acutely  as  at  any  other  time.  Luckily 
for  him,  he  happened  to  be  editor  in  the  last  decade  of 
"  personality."  Soon  it  would  be  forbidden  by  Big  Busi- 
ness, except  as  an  empty  slogan,  along  with  alcohol  and 
free  speech. 

The  Butterick  Publications  (I  tell  it  for  those  too 
young  to  remember  life  before  the  cloak  and  suit  trade) 
like  The  Ladies'  Home  Journal  had  for  years  been  pro- 
viding dress  patterns  for  virtuous  women  of  moderate 
means,  to  make  up  at  home  spring  and  fall.  The  models 
originated  in  the  clothes  that  Queen  Victoria  and  her 
dowagers  wore.  Butterick  subtracted  some  of  the  fullness 
but  none  of  the  goodness  and  diagrammed  them  for  home 

220 


use.  Coming  into  New  York  in  those  days  BUTTERICK 
in  electric  letters  commanded  the  harbor.  Butterick  pat- 
terns were  the  grief  of  daughters  who  hoped  to  disobey 
their  frugal  mothers  in  the  matter  of  dress.  Advice  was 
that  they  could  be  realized  to  good  advantage  in  domestic 
materials,  every  thread  by  no  means  wool  or  silk  or 
linen.  And  pitifully  they  were  devoid  of  "  sex-appeal," 
which  at  about  this  date  was  beginning  to  creep  in.  Here 
paradoxically  was  a  flagrant  libertine  of  American  letters 
appointed  to  be  purveyor  of  "  safe  fashions  for  home 
people."  It  is  amusing  to  think  that  perhaps  Whitman 
gave  the  first  American  impulse  toward  nudity,  and 
Dreiser  toward  clothes.  He  was  too  innocent,  how- 
ever, and  too  politic  to  make  any  radical  change  away 
from  domestic  styles.  That  remained  for  more  mundane 
importers  to  do  with  Vogue  and  Harper's  Bazaar.  He 
attacked  from  another  angle.  His  friends  laughed  to  think 
of  him  in  this  low-brow  guise  of  fashion-dictator,  but  with 
characteristic  seriousness  and  without  shame  he  studied 
the  problem  —  how  to  reach  the  ladies.  He  stimulated 
with  ideas;  ideas  gave  birth  to  longings,  and  longings  to 
the  need  of  new  clothes.  Women  over  the  country  felt  that 
somehow  a  friend  of  theirs  was  breathing  a  tiny  wind  of 
danger  into  Butterick  standards.  New  invitations  ap- 
peared between  the  lines.  Or  if  he  did  not  calculate  quite 
so  nicely,  anyway  it  was  his  policy  to  wake  the  women  up. 
He  would  be  the  one  to  give  them  a  "  high-brow  maga- 
zine," and  they  would  like  it. 

When  I  asked  Mr.  William  Lengel,  at  first  secretary, 
and  then  editor  under  Dreiser,  today  assistant  editor  of 
Cosmopolitan,  to  tell  me  what  he  remembered  of  Deline- 
ator days,  his  exclamation  was :  "  I  hope  you  will  do 
justice  to  Dreiser  as  editor;  a  book  could  be  written 
about  it."  Too  ignorant  of  American  business  to  write 
this  book,  I  can  only  submit  what  notes  I  took  for  it  on  my 
visit  to  Mr.  Lengel,  and  to  others  who  had  worked  on  his 
staff.  It  was  a  hot  July  day  in  1930  when  I  made  the  pil- 
grimage to  the  new  Hearst  temple  of  journalism  at  59th 
Street  and  Eighth  Avenue,  which  succeeds  in  being  a  dis- 
tillation in  concrete  of  all  religious  architecture,  Greek, 
Gothic,  Egyptian,  Aztec,  Assyrian,  Christian  Science. 

221 


Ascending  in  the  aphrodisiac  elevator,  I  reached  the  outer 
halls  of  the  editorial  offices  where  an  impeccable  Ziegfeld 
beauty  nineteen  years  distant  from  Butterick  patterns 
lisped  telephone  numbers  and  took  down  names.  Mine 
was  handed  to  a  boy  who  could  have  adorned  pages  of 
Petronius.  Soon  with  courtesy  beyond  belief  for  New 
York  City  or  any  city,  I  was  told  that  Mr.  Lengel  was 
talking  to  England;  if  I  could  wait  .  .  .  ? 

I  waited,  studying  originals  of  International-Cosmo- 
politan illustrations  and  covers,  which  hung  like  treasures 
on  the  walls,  and  symptomized  the  various  appeals  — 
the  mother  appeal;  the  infant  appeal,  the  virility  appeal, 
the  adventure  appeal,  the  juvenile  sex-appeal.  Babies 
there  were  digging  in  sand  piles,  splashed  with  sunlight; 
Arabians  descending  on  chargers  over  cliffs;  American 
Indians  glad  that  their  friends  the  white  men  had  come ; 
bankers  with  tall  glasses  on  golf-club  verandahs;  the 
American  girl  with  translucent  nostrils  exquisitely 
equipped  for  the  slightly  pouting  clean-jawed  Young 
American.  ...  I  thought  in  these  twenty  years  Mr. 
Lengel  would  have  surely  forgotten  the  amateur  days  on 
Spring  and  MacDougal  Streets,  but  no !  With  scarcely  a 
flash  of  the  first  manner  of  the  magnate  receiving  no  one, 
he  recalled  that  the  appointment  related  to  Theodore 
Dreiser.  Sitting  across  from  me  at  his  vast  fumed-oak 
desk,  imperial  with  bronze  cigar  and  cigarette  boxes, 
lighter  and  tray,  blotter  and  paper  holder,  and  the  spe- 
cially designed  telephone  instrument  recently  vibrant  with 
London,  he  looked  like  a  late  Roman  wish  come  true.  In 
fine-striped  lavender  shirt  and  cool  brown  summer  clothes 
he  had  been  evolved,  mouth,  nose,  eyes,  hair  and  smile  in 
crisp  Dionysian  curves.  Yet  in  this  interview  he  was  an 
apprentice  remembering  his  favorite  master. 

At  twenty  he  was  a  drop  in  the  stream  that  came  from 
the  Middle-West.  Already  having  practiced  law  in  a  small 
lowan  town,  he  came  wishing  to  be  an  actor  in  New  York, 
or  a  writer.  Knowing  next  to  nothing  about  stenography, 
he  said,  but  with  "  plenty  of  pep  "  and  only  twenty-five 
cents  in  his  pocket,  he  had  answered  an  advertisement 
which  took  him  to  the  Butterick  offices  to  apply  for  posi- 
tion as  secretary  to  the  editor  in  chief.  He  was  told  by 

222 


the  fiction  editor,  Mr.  Charles  Hanson  Towne,  that  his 
boss  would  be  the  most  disagreeable  man  in  the  world  to 
work  for;  never  praised  anyone,  found  fault  with  every- 
one. .  .  .  He  had  fired  the  last  man  because  he  had  lost 
a  book  of  clippings.  .  .  .  But  somehow  Lengel  got  on 
with  him,  not  as  secretary  —  he  discharged  him  as  that, 
but  retained  him  as  one  of  the  sub-editors.  He  thinks 
Dreiser  liked  him  because  he  was  "  brash, "  while  most 
editorial  minds  were  timid.  One  day  he  came  upon  Sister 
Carrie  on  a  shelf  in  his  chiefs  office.  After  a  look  at  it  he 
went  out  and  bought  it.  It  was  Saturday;  he  read  it  in 
Central  Park  until  nightfall,  and  the  next  day  on  the 
sands  at  Coney  Island :  "  Dreiser  was  big,  ungainly, 
homely,  but  after  that  I  would  have  done  anything  he 
asked  of  me.  .  .  ."  In  later  days  he  has  done  all  that  he 
could  for  him,  to  the  extent  of  recently  publishing  a 
Hearstian  version  of  This  Madness  which  even  then,  it 
is  rumored,  lost  for  the  magazine  all  the  advertising  that 
articles  by  Mr.  Coolidge  gained. 

I  asked  him  exactly  why  he  thought  of  Dreiser  as  a 
good  editor:  "  He  made  people  think.  He  had  the  biggest 
correspondence  department  of  any  periodical  up  to  date. 
A  lot  of  men  got  magazine  training  under  him  —  Dr. 
Crane,  Homer  Croy,  Charles  Hanson  Towne,  Lee 
Harriman,  George  Creel,  James  E.  West.  They  may 
not  like  to  admit  it  but  they  learned  a  lot  down  there. 
That  child-rescue  campaign  —  West  owed  his  position 
as  secretary  of  the  Boy  Scouts  to  that.  .  .  .  He  got 
up  a  rediscussion  of  spiritualism  —  Are  the  dead  alive? 
—  it  made  a  lot  of  talk;  some  of  the  churches  wanted  to 
stop  subscriptions.  He  made  a  strong  virile  magazine 
for  women."  —  Here  I  interrupted:  "I  should  think 
then  commercially  he  must  have  failed.  "  No,  it  suited 
them  all  right.  The  trouble  was,  he  put  on  so  much  cir- 
culation, the  advertising  couldn't  equal  it;  I  guess  they're 
still  trying  to  catch  up.  .  .  .  The  bigger  the  circulation, 
you  know,  the  more  expensive  it  is  to  publish.  It's  the 
advertising  end  that's  got  to  pay  for  it."  — "  Then, 
the  trouble  was,  he  suited  a  large  feminine  audience, 
but  not  their  husbands,  the  advertisers?"  —  "No,  it 
wasn't  that.  The  advertising  department  just  didn't 

223 


hustle  around  like  he  did  to  meet  his  circulation.  It  was 
the  day  for  a  lively  publication;  he  knew  it."  —  "And 
it's  not  the  day  now?  "  —  "  Perhaps  not,  psychology  has 
changed."  —  "  But  didn't  they  think  Dreiser  was  getting 
a  little  too  interesting?  "  —  "I  don't  know.  There  was  a 
man  came  over  from  The  Woman's  Home  Companion. 
He  said,  *  Make  Delineator  softer.'  Dreiser  said,  (  Send 
a  letter  to  all  our  readers,  and  ask  them  if  they  want  a 
namby-pamby  magazine.'  He  won  out.  He  was  a  great 
editor." 

Miss  Katherine  Leckie,  another  of  his  staff,  a  Chicago 
newspaper  woman,  the  first,  she  thinks,  to  go  as  a  reporter 
on  a  par  with  men,  gave  him  almost  the  same  testimonial : 
"  The  greatest  editor  I  ever  worked  under !  .  .  .  A  very 
fine  mind !  .  .  .  And  he  always  gave  the  woman  the  same 
chance  as  the  man.  .  .  .  One  of  the  few  who  considered 
women  as  workers,  and  that  sex  did  not  enter  into  the 
situation."  Not  long  ago  she  met  him  by  chance  in  a 
vegetarian  restaurant  on  56th  Street,  and  they  remi- 
nisced. She  had  said,  "  Those  were  great  days."  And  his 
answer  had  been,  "  Yes,  if  they  had  lasted.  They  ought 
to  have  gone  on  for  years.  .  .  ." 

Mary  Field  Parton,  one  of  his  contributors,  was  as 
zealous  in  praise.  She  describes  Dreiser  as  seeming  to  her 
formidable  in  those  days,  and  above  all,  sophisticated, 
already  a  man  of  the  cities,  but  then  as  she  says,  she  had 
come  from  Chicago  and  the  Far  West,  and  felt  shy  and 
young.  She  had  come  with  a  word  of  introduction  from 
Clarence  Darrow,  whom  he  admired.  She  liked  Dreiser 
enormously;  he  was  always  so  ready  to  welcome  a  new 
idea,  and  so  interested  in  writing  for  its  own  sake.  She, 
too,  attributes  to  him  a  disinterested  intellect  where 
women  were  concerned,  which  contradicts  his  legend.  She 
remembers  an  article  she  made  for  him  about  Emma 
Goldman,  The  Dynamiter,  whom  he  considered  the  most 
important  American  woman  of  that  time  because  u  she 
dared  to  stand  alone."  He  told  her  how  to  write  it  to 
conform  to  Butterick  standards.  She  was  to  make  them 
think  she  was  pointing  a  finger  of  scorn  at  the  anarchist: 
"Emma  Goldman  dares  to  talk  of  free  love;  the  true 
woman  should  never  dream  of  freedom.  .  .  .  Emma 
224 


Goldman  thinks  human  beings  are  good  enough  to  govern 
themselves ;  ridiculous !  "  .  .  . 

So  here  is  a  fourth  group  of  people  that  came  to  sur- 
round this  visionary  who  loved  society  so  well  that  he  was 
willing  to  fight  it  to  be  part  of  it  —  the  magazine  group. 
This  time  he  figured  as  a  nucleus.  It  took  him  among 
the  arrived  illustrators,  litterateurs,  musicians,  and 
decorators  of  the  city,  to  their  parties  in  town  and 
country,  on  to  yachts  and  into  expensive  motors  and  house- 
parties.  He  never  made  the  estuary  that  had  now  widened 
out  of  the  original  baffling  Four  Hundred,  so  much  in 
his  thoughts  when  he  was  young,  but  he  met  people  rich 
and  successful  enough  to  skirt  the  banks  of  it,  and  he  got 
a  nearer  sense  of  its  place  in  the  American  scheme.  What 
was  more,  he  had  the  luxury  now  of  requited  love  in  more 
expensive  dress  than  he  had  known  it  before.  More  than 
one  woman,  who  seemed  to  him  desirable,  wanted  him, 
and  was  willing  to  pay  in  money  and  grief  if  necessary. 
Women  were  part  of  these  town  and  country  excursions. 
He  on  his  side  was  determined  not  to  pay  too  much  in 
any  medium.  Ambition  carried  him  like  a  fast  horse  a 
good  rider. 

Wilder,  the  publisher,  he  says,  got  excited  as  he 
watched  circulation  soaring,  and  jumped  his  salary  from 
seven  to  ten,  and  then  to  twelve  thousand;  and  in  1908, 
four  years  from  the  time  he  was  getting  fifteen  dollars 
a  week,  to  fourteen  thousand.  This  with  the  bonus 
mounted  into  money,  $25,000  a  year  in  the  end,  to  be 
saved  so  that  he  could  be  free  to  write  about  life 
as  he  saw  it.  He  and  his  wife  lived  now  in  a  comfortable 
apartment  on  Morningside  Drive,  but  even  so,  he  says: 
"  I  was  a  very  simple  person  with  no  money  to  spend  on 
luxuries. "  They  worked  and  saved.  His  will  to  choose 
the  forces  that  would  best  serve  him  is  in  full  action 
now.  He  began  to  write  Jennie  Gerhardt  again,  and 
completed  twenty  chapters  of  it,  which  in  1908  he  sent 
on  urgent  request  to  the  English  publisher,  Grant 
Richards.  With  a  few  reservations  as  to  diction,  hoping 
that  he  could  perhaps  reform  him  as  to  such  words  as 
afectional,  and  pronunciamento,  Richards  wrote  him 
that  it  was  "  a  very  fine  piece  of  work,  a  fit  and  worthy 

225 


successor  to  Sister  Carrie/'  and  "  would  healthily  depress 
everyone  of  its  intelligent  readers."  He  exhorts  him  to 
finish  the  book  quickly,  telling  him  he  has  "  no  right  to 
hide  his  talent  year  after  year,"  and  hopes  to  be  his 
publisher. 


226 


Breaking  with  unbroken  traditions 


JJLn  1909  in  accordance  with  this  trait  which 
forced  selection  and  action,  Dreiser  and  his  wife  sepa- 
rated, never  to  live  together  again.  I  have  asked 
friends  of  his  who  knew  them  both  what  impelled  the 
break.  One  of  them,  an  illustrator  of  sensitive  fibre,  said : 
"  I  don't  know,  she  would  have  irritated  me.  One  night  I 
went  to  see  them  up  on  Morningside  Drive.  There  they 
were  in  the  dining  room.  She  was  sprinkling  clothes  on 
the  same  table  where  he  was  correcting  proof.  I  felt  a 
lack  of  understanding  in  that.  Perhaps  Dreiser  didn't 
mind.  He,  on  the  other  hand,  was  subject  to  fits  of  terrible 
depression,  impossible  to  live  with,  I  should  think."  An- 
other friend  imagined  that,  though  she  tried,  she  could 
not  stand  his  "  varietism  "  as  to  women,  and  that  he  could 
not  stand  her  melancholy  over  it.  He  had  sympathy  for 
both  of  them,  for  her  tears  and  for  his  "  wandering  forth 
to  others."  Also  he  thought  that  she  was  jealous  of 
Dreiser  creatively,  had  always  wanted  to  be  a  writer 
herself.  Still  another  insists  that  it  was  because  she  re- 
wrote at  his  request  the  first  chapters  of  Jennie  Gerhardt, 
and  that  he  returned  them  to  their  original  state,  that 
they  quarreled  and  separated.  He  himself  cannot  re- 
member that  it  was  any  one  thing.  They  separated  because 
he  had  one  code  and  she  another  too  alien  to  maintain 
together.  So  Dreiser  broke  the  American  tradition  that 
the  artist  should  live  like  any  other  citizen  with,  for,  and 
of  the  family  and  the  home  —  that  nucleus  for  radiator, 
telephone,  refrigerator,  kiddy-car,  automobile,  player 
piano,  and  radio  to  come.  He  departed  from  the  wisdom 
of  Howells  and  Mark  Twain  more  flagrantly  than  other 
men  of  genius  in  the  United  States  were  known  to  do. 
Even  the  radical  architect,  Frank  Lloyd  Wright,  mar- 

227 


ried  oftener  and  quicker  than  Dreiser.  He  was  about  to 
embark  at  this  date  on  twenty  years  free  of  matrimony. 
No  longer  would  the  letters  he  received  end  with  the  in- 
variable. "  My  wife  and  I  join  in  the  season's  best  wishes 
for  you  and  yours." 

In  another  year  he  made  his  second  break  with  native 
custom.  He  broke  with  his  last  job  under  an  employer 
other  than  himself.  Erman  J.  Ridgeway,  so  successful 
with  Munsey's,  joined  forces  with  Wilder.  He  was  a 
strict  Methodist  and  out  of  sympathy  with  the  author  of 
Sister  Carrie.  One  rumor  has  it  that  Dreiser  was  tired  of 
journalism  and  let  himself  out.  Another  that  Ridgeway 
said,  "  Make  the  magazine  as  harmless  as  the  Ladies' 
Home  Journal  or  quit."  Still  another,  that,  contrary  to 
Miss  Leckie's  belief,  he  did  allow  sex  to  enter  ever  so 
slightly  into  journalism  with  a  young  stenographer,  in 
the  beauty-correspondence  department,  and  that  Mr. 
Ridgeway  was  properly  indignant  and  fired  him.  Dreiser 
himself  says  that  these  may  have  been  contributing  causes, 
but  that  no  American  publisher  would  let  morals  stand 
in  the  way  of  business.  Circulation,  he  points  out,  was  still 
mounting.  He  left  of  his  own  accord,  not  exactly  that  he 
was  bored  with  editing  but  that  he  was  no  longer  a  free 
agent;  and  besides  there  was  trouble  about  the  bonus. 

Back  of  personal  causes,  was  the  economic  fact  that 
the  Interests  had  begun  to  fear  the  magazines.  In  May 
1909  John  Kenneth  Turner  in  the  American  Magazine 
had  gone  too  far,  in  articles  sympathetic  to  Mexican 
radicals  and  to  an  uprising  of  slaves  in  Yucatan.  Presi- 
dent Taft  at  the  bidding  of  Finance  had  had  to  "  hotfoot 
it  to  the  border  to  stage  a  love-fest  with  Diaz,"  in  the 
words  of  Lemuel  Parton,  an  ace  newspaper  man  who 
thus  dates  the  death-blow  to  a  liberal  press  in  the  United 
States.  In  that  year  the  American  Magazine  changed  its 
policy,  and  soon  after  McClure's  and  Hampton's  col- 
lapsed. Thomas  Lawson  and  Ida  Tarbell  had  been  al- 
lowed to  talk  too  ably.  Just  as  once  the  Yankee  religion- 
ists had  persecuted  the  nonconforming  children  of  their 
day,  their  successors,  the  financiers,  were  about  to  exe- 
cute the  new  brand  of  wizards,  the  newswriters,  who 
were  leading  their  readers  off  to  forbidden  fields,  away 
228 


from  the  modern  churches  —  Office,  Factory  and  Store. 
From  now  on  controlled  syndicate  news  was  to  become 
the  only  orthodox  news.  The  American  press  was  about 
to  divide  into  right  and  left  wings.  The  right  would  grow 
fat  and  windy  and  prosperous.  The  left  would  grow  lean, 
and  self-righteous  and  unremunerative ;  would  live  on 
the  sneers  of  rotarians  and  the  money  given  by  rotarians' 
wives;  and  would  finally  after  two  decades  find  itself 
narrowed  to  the  Nation  and  the  New  Republic  and  a 
few  art  journals  published  in  Paris. 

I  asked  Dreiser  if  he  thought  he  would  have  stayed 
on  as  editor  of  Butterick,  if  all  had  gone  well,  just  for 
the  chance  of  making  a  fortune.  He  couldn't  say,  but  he 
thought  not:  "No  man  could  stand  it  indefinitely;  it 
would  make  a  hack  out  of  him.  .  .  .  Besides/'  he  added, 
"  I  am  a  writer,  not  an  editor."  Even  on  the  Delineator 
people  featured  him  as  a  writer  after  the  reappearance 
of  Sister  Carrie.  He  is  sure  that  many  contributions  from 
important  writers  in  England  and  America  came  to  him 
as  author  of  that  novel.  Letters  he  has  kept  bear  him 
out  —  letters  from  Edgar  Jepson,  Albert  Kinross,  W.  B. 
Trites,  hoping  to  contribute  to  his  journal  and  mentioning 
that  friends  of  theirs,  Zangwill,  Frank  Harris,  Richard 
Middleton,  Charles  Flandrau  admired  the  book.  And 
letters  from  Gustavus  Myers,  Albert  Bigelow  Paine, 
Brand  Whitlock,  Fremont  Rider,  Edwin  Markham,  I.  F. 
Marcosson,  Adele  Marie  Shaw,  Louise  Closser  Hale, 
Grace  McGowan  Cook,  James  Huneker,  all  pay  homage 
to  him  as  novelist.  Usually  they  compare  him  to  Zola, 
"  even  Balzac,"  sometimes  to  Flaubert,  once  to  Strind- 
berg,  and  quite  wildly  to  de  Goncourt  and  George  Moore. 
One  man,  however,  the  Yankee  John  Kendrick  Bangs 
balks  at  the  idea  of  Butterick  contamination.  He  writes : 

"What  is  the  matter  with  you  anyway?  .Do  you  really 
think  that  I  could  be  such  an  ass  as  to  submit  those  Nature 
Fakir  stones  to  you  as  editor  of  the  Delineator?  .  .  .  The 
tales  were  sent  in  response  to  your  repeated  requests  to  let 
you  see  something  that  might  do  for  B.  W.  Dodge  and 
Company.  .  .  . 

"  It  will  perhaps  please  you  to  hear  that  at  least  upou 
three  occasions  I  was  asked  questions  as  to  ...  the  author 
of  Sister  Carrie.  ...  I  told  the  inquisitive  Westerners  that 

229 


you  had  served  six  terms  in  Sing  Sing,  were  regarded  as  in- 
corrigible and  all  the  other  nice  things  I  happen  to  know 
about  you,  even  going  so  far  as  to  boom  the  Delineator." 

In  these  years  he  had  those  who  hated,  as  well  as  those 
who  loved.  He  was  a  man  among  the  men,  a  fox  among 
the  foxes,  carving  a  destiny,  making  off  with  some  of  the 
spoils.  He  was  at  the  same  time  in  the  strange  position  of 
being  shepherd  to  the  flock.  It  was  in  accordance  with  his 
three  selves,  the  conqueror,  the  solitary,  the  good  fellow, 
impeding  and  helping  one  another.  What  he  had  made  in 
solitude  followed  him  into  the  market.  A  woman  on  his 
staff  writes  to  one  of  his  associates,  John  Cosgrave : 

"...  I  am  so  thrilled  because  he  told  me  Dreiser  is  the 
Sister  Carrie  Dreiser.  I  didn't  like  him  a  bit;  he  never  is 
nice  like  you  and  says,  '  That's  bully.'  I  have  been  think- 
ing of  trying  to  get  out  of  the  Delineator,  it  was  only  busi- 
ness anyway.  Now  I  feel  just  as  loyal  to  him  as  I  do  to  you. 
I  can't  tell  you  how  good  work  affects  me.  ...  I  feel 
to  Dreiser  like  one  feels  to  a  chief.  ...  I  don't  care 
two  cents  about  the  money  part  now.  .  .  .  It's  the  one 
big  serious  true  American  novel  with  blood  in  it  —  not 
ink.  .  .  ." 

How  long  will  it  continue  in  the  modern  world  —  this 
personal  need  for  mind,  for  intellect  really,  which  human 
beings  hold  to,  however  vacant  the  outlook?  On  his  side 
this  hero  remembers  his  trials,  how  for  example,  his 
fiction  editor  signed  all  acceptances  with  his  own  name 
and  all  refusals  with  Dreiser's,  which  in  itself  marked 
him  as  a  very  carping,  formidable  official. 


230 


"  All  the  most  valuable  things  are  useless 
.  .  .  to  those  who  understand  that  life  is 
not  lived  at  all  if  not  lived  for  contempla- 
tion or  excitement  .  .  .  that  we  can  do 
almost  what  we  will  if  we  do  it  gaily,  and 
think  that  freedom  is  but  a  trifling  with 
the  world.''  W.  B.  YEATS 


t  length  the  days  in  the  market  were  over. 
Dreiser  had  done,  in  a  sense,  the  impossible,  what  so 
many  would-be  artists  start  out  to  do  and  abandon.  He 
had  gained  independence  through  hiring  himself  out  for 
a  space  of  years  —  in  his  case  six  years.  Friends  write  to 
him  now  as  one  might  to  a  champion  fighter,  among 
them  James  Huneker:  "I'm  sorry  for  the  Delineator's 
sake  that  you  are  leaving  it  and  I  hope  you  have  some- 
thing better.  But  —  if  you,  Theodore  Dreiser,  could  or 
would  return  to  your  old  field,  the  gain  for  our  litera- 
ture would  be  something  worthwhile.  We  have  but  one 
Sister  Carrie,  despite  the  army  of  imitators."  As  it  hap- 
pened Dreiser  set  about  to  fulfil  this  hope,  since  even 
more  passionately  it  was  his  own  desire,  and  at  last  he 
felt  able  and  equipped. 

He  had  enough  money  for  a  while  and  plenty  of  the 
honey  of  esteem.  Sex  received  him  variously.  A  various 
world  was  beginning  to  tell  him  he  was  important.  Love 
and  self-love  were  being  fed;  lust  and  vanity,  the 
two  forever  intermingled  insatiates,  which  when  fed 
become  relaxation  and  strength.  He  was  thirty-nine 
years  old  after  all  these  preparations,  but  now,  he  was 
convinced,  not  yet  too  old  "  to  write  about  life  as  it 
was,"  as  he  saw  it.  And  the  restless  way  that  he  saw 
it,  he  was  certain  was  not  far  from  the  way  that 

231 


it  was.  He  set  about  completing  Jennie  Gerhardt  in 
earnest. 

He  brought  to  it  a  brain  and  heart  toughened  by  the 
parades  he  had  witnessed  and  taken  part  in.  He  had 
watched  finance  like  a  dragon  get  possession  of  the  minds 
and  bodies  of  Americans.  He  had  lived  in  the  narrow 
rooms  of  wedlock  and  found  their  comforts  irksome. 
Friends  had  gone  in  these  years.  He  knew  the  agony  of 
separations.  One  had  been  a  love  who  had  jilted  him,  his 
dream  of  all  that  he  wanted.  u  Peter,"  the  wonderful 
McCord,*  cartoonist,  writer,  collector,  was  dead  in  a 
flash  of  pneumonia  —  he  who  had  taught  him  to  "  love 
life's  every  facet,"  whether  pollination  or  decay.  With 
him  he  had  traveled  back  to  ancient  ornaments  and 
scripts,  and  equally  he  had  given  him  a  keener  appetite 
for  the  modern  world,  no  matter  how  vulgar  or  cruel  — 
for  anything,  anyone  that  entered  into  crises.  In  these 
years  too,  his  brother  Paul,  who  meant  to  him  his  mother 
and  Indiana  and  the  lights  and  jokes  of  Broadway,  had 
died  of  a  broken  spirit  when  his  song  business  failed  him, 
and  with  it  his  bright  guests  and  friends.  He  was  fifty-five : 
'  With  a  slightly  more  rugged  quality  of  mind  he  might 
have  lasted  till  seventy,"  so  the  younger  brother  mourns 
him. 

Frank  Norris,  his  intellectual  brother,  was  gone. 
O.  Henry  was  dead,  who  after  he  had  served  in  the  peni- 
tentiary, he  thinks,  had  come  to  know  life  and  how  to 
write  about  it.  Jack  London  had  compromised  with  re- 
ality, had  confided  to  him  once  in  a  saloon  on  2jrd  Street : 
"  I'd  like  to  write  the  real  thing,  but  I  can't  sell  'em." 
And  there  were  others,  Harold  Frederic,  Hamlin  Gar- 
land, Hervey  White,  Will  Payne,  Robert  W.  Chambers, 
who  had  started  brilliantly  with  one  or  two  first  novels, 
and  had  not  known  how  to  endure.  They  were  dead  or 
they  had  given  up.  "  They  were  too  sensitive,"  he  sup- 
poses, "  to  stand  the  face  of  reality;  and  fell  by  the  way 
or  leaned  against  the  bar."  In  these  years,  it  seemed  to 
him  as  if  a  storm  or  a  war  had  swept  over  the  men  of 
his  age  and  interests,  and  knocked  them  all  out,  himself 
included.  When  it  had  cleared  away  the  others  were  miss- 

*  Twelve  Men. 
232 


ing;  somehow,  he  doesn't  know  why,  he  was  still  there. 
He  would  try  to  tell  the  story  of  the  storm  in  a  novel.  It 
would  be  called  The  "  Genius." 

At  the  same  time  new  friends  were  coming  in.  In  the 
first  year  with  Butterick,  he  conceived  and  edited  on  the 
side  a  journal  called  The  Bohemian,  in  company  with 
some  others,  chief  of  whom  was,  "  Billy  Smith,  a  fasci- 
nating character,  an  architect,  who  built  extravagant 
houses  for  Long  Islanders."  There  were  also  Fritz  Krog 
and  Phil  Goodman,  a  producer,  who  later  liked  to  boast 
that  Dreiser  had  fired  him,  and  who  is  known  today  for 
having  first  put  the  side-splitting  W.  C.  Fields  into  musical 
comedy.  The  houses  of  some  people  have  many  sides,  one 
side  opening  on  one  of  the  finite  or  infinite  sides  of  an- 
other house.  If  you  walk  around  the  conglomerate  house 
where  Dreiser  has  lived,  you  will  find  a  side  touching  on 
a  side  of  nearly  all  the  houses  of  his  period,  which,  like 
any  one  period,  comprises  an  untold  number  of  periods. 

Into  The  Bohemian  could  go  material  too  racy  for  the 
"  highbrow  "  Delineator.  As  one  of  its  contributors,  so 
crucial  a  figure  as  H.  L.  Mencken  drops  casually  into 
this  biography.  Willard  Huntington  Wright,  who  started 
as  a  novelist  and  excellent  critic,  and  ended  as  the  rich 
Van  Dine  of  detective  story  fame ;  George  Bronson  How- 
ard, a  precocious  writer  of  popular  novels,  who  finally 
committed  himself  to  morphine  and  suicide;  Andre  Tri- 
don,  acid  pro-German  translator  of  French  and  German 
novelties,  who,  later  a  war  suspect,  committed  himself  to 
the  practice  of  psychoanalysis  and  died  obscurely;  George 
Jean  Nathan,  carefree  critic  and  humorist,  Mencken's 
future  partner  in  journalism  —  these  and  other  young 
men  came  to  be  friends  of  Dreiser's  in  these  years 
through  their  admiration  for  Sister  Carrie  or  through 
The  Bohemian,  or  through  Mencken's  genius  for  bring- 
ing people  together.  They  pooled  some  of  the  same  sym- 
pathies about  the  need  of  a  libertine  life  and  a  libertine 
art  in  America.  "  We  used  to  take  our  girls  to  the  same 
restaurants,  and  drink  together  —  it  was  before  prohi- 
bition—  in  other  words  we  had  a  grand  time!  "  is  the 
way  that  Mencken  remembers  it  with  an  exquisite  lilt  of 
reminiscence  in  his  voice.  It  must  have  been  that  they 

233 


made  that  slide  of  life  known  as  "  men  about  town  "  — 
that  shifting,  glancing,  joking  plane  which,  introduced 
into  soberer  living,  lends  courage  to  the  gloomiest  pessi- 
mist. 

In  1908,  one  of  Dreiser's  English  admirers,  William 
J.  Locke,  whose  Beloved  Fagabond  was  a  mad  success  in 
the  United  States,  landed  in  New  York  with  an  appropri- 
ate number  of  reporters  to  get  his  advance  impressions 
of  the  country.  One  of  his  first  questions  was :  "  And 
what  is  your  Mr.  Dreiser  doing  these  days?"  — 
"  Dreiser?  "  they  had  not  heard  of  him  —  "  The  author 
of  Sister  Carrie!  "  —  They  did  not  know  it.  "  Americans 
do  not  know,"  he  said,  "  that  England  looks  on  Sister 
Carrie  as  the  finest  American  novel  sent  over  in  the  last 
twenty  years,  and  to  Dreiser  as  the  biggest  American  nov- 
elist who  has  sent  us  anything,  and  is  waiting  for  Carrie's 
successor? "  One  of  the  interviewers  hazarded  the 
information:  "A  recent  French  critic  characterized 
Mrs.  Wharton's  House  of  Mirth  as  the  greatest  Ameri- 
can novel"  —  "  Really?  dear  me!  I  would  hardly  con- 
sider that  a  just  characterization  ...  a  charming 
writer,  a  poet,  a  fine  novelist  .  .  .  but  I  should  scarcely 
think  she  had  as  yet  reached  the  stature  of  Hawthorne." 

In  the  midst  of  these  occurrences,  dark  and  light, 
Dreiser  gave  himself  to  the  completion  of  Jennie  Ger- 
hardt.  In  the  spring  of  1911  through  the  agency  of  Mae 
Holly,  he  sold  it  to  Harper's,  the  firm  which  eleven  years 
before  had  refused  his  first  novel  without  a  word.  .  .  . 
In  November  they  published  it  with  the  agreement  that 
they  would  take  over  that  book  from  the  defunct  house 
of  B.  W.  Dodge.  They  agreed,  too,  to  bring  out  the  next 
novel,  already  more  than  half  completed,  The  Financier, 
which  appeared  in  1912.  And  Sister  Carrie  in  1913. 
These  three  years  make  the  keystone  of  his  success. 

At  length  after  the  long  struggle,  Dreiser  had  arrived 
in  his  own  country,  sanctioned  by  a  leading  firm,  presented 
with  a  public.  No  longer  a  novice,  he  was  heralded  as  a 
pioneer  who  had  reached  a  difficult  frontier.  "  The  first 
American  to  force  American  publishers  into  the  handling 
of  mature  literature  without  expurgating  it,"  Mr.  Wells 
of  Harper's  says  today,  in  that  manner  of  the  parent  who 

234 


has  accorded  to  the  child  the  privilege  to  stay  up  till,  say, 
twelve  o'clock.  "  More  than  any  one  writer,  the  first  to 
turn  the  current  of  public  taste  into  new  channels,  so  that 
there  is  small  fear  of  censorship!  "  A  militant  modern, 
in  fact,  in  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Wells,  forcing  the  elders  to 
get  out  of  the  old  wagon  and  get  into  the  new  train!  If 
you  put  the  question  to  other  students  of  our  books,  they 
agree,  often  regretfully,  that,  yes,  they  suppose  "  Dreiser 
deserved  the  title." 

He  was,  in  fact,  the  entering  wedge.  Whitman,  though 
purer,  had  not  accomplished  this.  He  was  too  pure,  or  he 
came  too  early,  to  mingle  in  a  conflict  with  the  past.  He 
was  a  dawn  breaking  in  the  busy  afternoon  of  an  elderly 
but  not  ancient  day;  a  dawn  breaking  when  the  prudery 
of  the  Scarlet  Letter  seemed  like  a  faint  ray  of  sunlight  to 
people  who  kept  their  blinds  closed  and  had  no  way  to 
know  when  it  was  morning  noon  or  dusk  in  their  airless 
best  parlors.  It  was  not  Whitman,  it  was  this  diffuse 
realist  who  had  finally  forced  the  issue.  It  was  a  double 
triumph  of  newness  —  a  step  toward  free  thought  and  a 
step  toward  illiteracy,  which  this  combative  son  of  an 
immigrant,  this  nonentity,  had  wrenched  from  the  genteel 
house  of  Harper. 

Having  gotten  thus  far,  what  did  he  say  and  think 
about  it?  He  did  not  say  in  approved  blase  style,  "  now 
that  I  have  it,  it  isn't  much."  In  fact,  now  that  he  had 
it,  it  was  food  and  wine  to  him.  He  worked  and  played 
as  never  before,  and  seems  not  to  have  doubted  his  fought- 
for  and  paid-for  right  to  take  from  the  elders  the  reins 
of  thought  and  conduct.  To  the  attic  or  the  graveyard 
with  their  puny  colonial  sophistication!  It  was  time  for 
immigrants  to  be  natives,  for  the  vulgarians  to  rule.  For 
the  parlors  to  know  what  the  stables  and  kitchens  and 
sheds  and  streets  and  saloons  and  offices  and  factories 
were  doing  and  thinking.  For  all  the  American  realities  to 
step  abroad  and  see  the  world,  and  be  seen  by  the  world. 
It  was  time  for  promiscuity  to  stalk  in  and  through  the 
parlors,  since  they  held  nothing  strong  enough  to  en- 
force awe. 

"  Old  prejudices  must  always  fall  and  life  must  always 
change,"  is  an  axiom  he  has  made.  He  would  be  found 

235 


among  the  changes,  he  would  never  be  static.  Recollecting 
this  vantage  point  in  his  story,  he  pauses :  "  Well,  that's 
about  all.  The  rest  was  easy  enough.  I  had  risen  against 
the  wind." 

Yet  to  most  people,  the  fifteen  years  until  the  appear- 
ance of  An  American  Tragedy  would  not  be  looked  upon 
as  easy  enough.  He  had  risen  against  the  wind  of  custom 
up  to  where  there  were  other  conflicting  wind  currents 
that  would  bear  him  on  and  help  him  in  the  struggle.  The 
opposing  wind  had  chiefly  been  that  of  American  morality, 
which,  as  a  condition  dictated  a  dead  temperature  of 
seventy,  windows  doors  and  cracks  closed  for  the  victims 
within,  but  which  could  blow  up  quite  a  cold  gale  for 
the  nonconformists  outside.  Dreiser  had  long  felt  its 
hostility,  and,  though  fortified  now  by  other  friendly 
winds,  still  had  it  to  resist  as  best  he  could.  He  tells  how 
Ben  Dodge  had  taken  him  one  day  into  Putnam's  and 
Dutton's  bookstore  to  introduce  him  to  the  manager,  a 
friend  of  his.  He  had  left  him  in  the  front  of  the  store  for 
a  few  minutes  to  ask  this  favor,  but  had  come  back  alone, 
embarrassed:  "Well,  I  know  you'll  be  able  to  laugh  it 
off,  he  doesn't  want  to  meet  you." 

In  the  Harpers'  office  there  was  the  same  cold  shoulder. 
Not  on  the  part  of  Ripley  Hitchcock  or  F.  A.  Duneka,  the 
literary  editors.  Though  they  were  Century  Club  gentle- 
men, they  had  acquired  the  letter  paper  and  handwriting 
and  indulgence  of  English  liberals.  It  was  Mr.  Hitchcock 
who  had  first  seen  fit  to  publish  Stephen  Crane,  expur- 
gating him,  however,  for  the  Nineties.  Nor  did  the  man- 
aging editor,  Major  Leigh,  a  Virginian  democrat,  not 
especially  of  the  first  families,  function  as  a  cold  shoulder. 
He  was  "  wonderful,  hospitable,"  Dreiser  thought.  In 
the  old  Knickerbocker  bar  he  remembers  the  Major, 
"pretty  well  loaded,"  proclaiming  him  to  one  and  all: 
"  the  only  author  I  have  ever  loved!  "  He  had  said  to 
him  early  in  his  connection  with  the  Harpers :  "  I  am  go- 
ing to  back  you  for  a  long  race,  and  I  want  you  to  meet 
Colonel  Harvey."  But  the  Colonel,  one  of  the  partners 
in  the  firm  and  later  Ambassador  to  England,  refused  to 
meet  him.  Ambassadors,  it  seemed,  were  inevitably  so- 

236 


ciety  meat  and  Dreiser  poison.  Another  genteel  editor, 
who  in  his  luckless  days  had  turned  him  down,  now  hailed 
him  equivocally:  "  Well,  for  your  sake  I'm  glad  of  your 
success.  Times  have  changed,  literary  standards  have 
lowered."  So  it  went.  He  was  in  all  these  years  until  he 
made  money  from  An  American  Tragedy  to  be  looked 
upon  as  an  outcast,  almost  an  ogre.  For  one  to  speak 
of  him  in  the  presence  of  conventional  people,  at  a 
dinner-party  for  instance,  even  if  they  were  writers  and 
supposedly  interested  in  our  literature,  was  received  as  im- 
proper; the  subject  was  instantly  changed. 

In  a  sense  it  is  possible  to  analyse  the  prejudice  against 
him.  Here  was  a  giant  who  had  carried  since  childhood 
scars  of  ostracism,  for  being  first  the  child  of  a  German 
Catholic,  an  always  unpopular  settler,  and  then  for  being 
one  of  an  unforgivably  poor  family  which  had  more 
than  once  outraged  the  Indiana  code.  Fortifying  scars 
like  these  could  not  be  becoming  to  anyone.  A  timid  soul 
would  get  deprecating;  a  fearless  sensitive  temper  would 
get  ungracious,  whenever  exposed  anew  to  the  enemy. 
And  then  besides,  why  should  these  men  like  him,  when 
without  their  manners  and  advantages,  he  did  more  ex- 
actly as  he  pleased  than  they  did?  They  had  wives  they 
could  not  shake,  they  had  jobs  which  kept  them  at  their 
distinguished  desks,  slaves  to  clock  and  calender.  They 
had  homes  in  town  and  country  which  they  had  to  report 
to,  every  evening,  every  night.  He  on  the  other  hand,  as 
he  was,  without  office,  servant  or  telephone,  almost  with- 
out address,  "  wallowed,"  so  it  came  to  be  said,  unpun- 
ished, in  what?  "  In  sex,"  of  course !  What  else?  Therein 
lay  his  frightful  legend;  though  what  women  saw  in  him, 
homely,  boorish,  God  only  knew !  He  was  irritating,  that 
was  all.  The  exhilarating  ankles,  disturbing  knees,  the 
arch  of  unfamiliar  thighs,  the  eternal  flicker  and  fire  of 
these,  they  had  to  catch  as  best  they  could  from  the  front 
rows  of  music  halls;  while  these  same  delights,  it  was 
said,  walked  voluntarily  into  the  lair  of  this  uncouth 
realist.  .  .  .  More  than  he  needed,  more  than  he  wanted, 
so  grew  the  fable.  You  can't  blame  them  for  being 
jealous.  You  will  have  to  blame  the  country  where 
morals  had  been  honored  beyond  love  and  art,  and  where 

237 


strangeness  was  always  suspect,  and  nature  had  become 
strange.  The  forces  of  nature  were  to  be  segregated 
in  engines  and  power  plants.  Men  were  to  be  dena- 
tured. Genius,  the  digit  of  human  nature,  was  to  be 
dethroned. 


238 


New  monuments  for  old 


o  Dreiser  was  a  high  powered  car,  which 
women  nearly  always  like,  forced  into  the  paradox  of 
running  a  race  with  the  brakes  on.  If  you  ask  him  what 
he  thinks  of  these  handicaps,  his  answer  is  that  he  is  glad 
of  them:  "A  career  needs  hardship."  But  does  it?  And 
how  much  hardship  does  it  need?  Sister  Carrie  had 
weathered  handicaps.  What  of  its  successor  Jennie  Ger- 
hardtf  The  soil  hostile  to  creation  differed  in  the  mak- 
ing of  it.  The  first  novel  is  a  figment  of  the  cold  streets 
and  highways,  up  and  down  which  Dreiser  had  had  to 
travel  often  alone  and  hungry.  The  second  had  its  start 
in  adversity  but  its  completion  in  a  more  alien  sediment, 
that  of  commercial  success,  at  the  end  of  the  period  of 
magazine  editing.  The  drama  came  through  with  sym- 
metry and  bloom,  but  with  a  fractional  loss  of  wildness. 
It  is  irrefutable  in  its  first  chapters,  written  before  his 
prosperity,  in  its  tragic  moments,  and  in  the  theme  of 
class  over  individual : 

"  The  world  into  which  Jennie  was  thus  duly  thrust  forth 
was  that  in  which  virtue  has  always  vainly  struggled  since 
time  immemorial;  for  virtue  is  the  wishing  well  and  doing 
well  unto  others.  Virtue  is  that  quality  of  generosity  which 
offers  itself  willingly  for  another's  service,  and  being  this, 
it  is  held  by  society  to  be  nearly  worthless." 

And  yet  in  the  face  of  all  the  expert  praise  this  book  has 
had,  until  it  has  become  a  near  classic,  I  read  it  with  the 
sense  that  Butterick  has  brushed  its  surfaces.  They  are 
slightly  and  unconsciously  tamed  as  if  to  suit  immature 
indoor  eyes  and  judgments,  parlors  and  offices.  To  have 
been  excluded  any  longer  from  these  precincts  would  have 
been  for  this  novelist  to  die  altogether.  And  yet  to 
have  been  included  had  for  the  moment  tempered  his 

239 


original  quality.  How  to  be  that  paradox,  a  primal  suc- 
cessful artist  in  America?  —  Always  the  unanswered 
question ! 

Jennie,  his  favorite  heroine,  he  has  called  her,  is  the 
flower  of  a  family  like  his  own,  and  seems  to  resemble 
his  mother  more  than  any  of  his  sisters.  Her  father  is  to 
the  last  inflection  the  picture  of  his  father,  except  as  he 
is  bigoted  Lutheran  instead  of  Catholic: 

"  Father  and  grandfather  before  him  were  sturdy  German 
artisans,  who  had  never  cheated  anyone  out  of  a  dollar,  and 
this  honesty  of  intention  came  into  his  veins  undiminished." 

There  is  not  in  our  writings  a  more  flawless  cinema  of  a 
poor  family  of  foreigners  set  down  in  the  midst  of  our 
freedom  to  get  ahead  a  little  if  they  can.  Jennie  not  far 
removed  from  German  soil,  removed  only  to  the  cottages 
and  sidewalks  of  immigrants  fringing  a  strident  indus- 
trial city,  Columbus,  Ohio,  is  as  whole  a  creature  as 
Hardy's  Tess  in  her  Devonshire.  Successfully  Dreiser 
moves  her  into  relation  with  a  United  States  senator,  who 
lives  in  the  principal  hotel  of  the  town,  like  a  palace  to 
Jennie.  He  gives  her  dignified  presents  and  caresses,  be- 
friends her  family,  and  then,  one  night  when  she  has  gone 
to  ask  his  help  to  get  her  brother  out  of  jail  for  stealing 
coal,  the  fairy  story  takes  a  quick  realistic  turn.  His 
"  senatorial  quality  "  vanishes,  her  beauty  and  his  pleas- 
ure make  a  bridge  between  low  life  and  high  life  more 
rapid  than  those  to  be  found  in  romances  that  travel  to 
happy  endings.  Dreiser  sees  reality  in  this  way  —  drab- 
ness  shot  with  brilliants  for  one  or  another,  and  then 
drabness  again.  High  life  moving  in  the  sky  like  a  bright 
ball  touches  someone  below  with  its  fire  and  draws  him  or 
her  up  into  ease  and  luxury,  until  this  very  realm  close-up 
grows  drab  in  turn.  He  is  chronicler  of  the  fierce  differ- 
ences in  the  scale  of  civilized  society  more  than  he  is  of 
the  subtle  conflicts  between  different  temperaments. 

The  story  develops  with  broad  strokes  not  new  to  melo- 
drama —  the  sudden  death  of  the  senator,  the  birth  of 
the  child,  the  anger  and  collapse  of  the  religious  father; 
Jennie  and  her  more  patient  mother  moving  the  family 
and  baby  to  another  city,  Cleveland,  to  escape  the  talk 
of  their  neighbors,  whom,  just  as  it  would  be  in  the  raw 
240 


West,  they  scarcely  knew.  The  son  of  a  rich  carriage- 
manufacturer  in  Cincinnati,  a  guest  in  the  house  where 
Jennie  works  as  maid,  takes  her  out  of  her  own  class  into 
no  class,  preferring  her  to  the  meager  women  of  his 
world.  "  There  was  something  about  her  which  suggested 
the  luxury  of  love."  He  installs  her  illicitly  in  Chicago, 
where  he  directs  a  branch  of  the  family  business.  She  on 
her  side  had  been  growing  as  she  watched  the  people  she 
served: 

"  She  began  to  get  a  faint  suggestion  of  hierarchies  and 
powers.  They  were  not  for  her  perhaps,  but  they  were  in 
the  world,  and  if  fortune  were  kind  one  might  better  one's 
state.  .  .  .  [Yet]  Who  would  have  her  to  wife  knowing  her 
history?  .  .  .  Her  child,  her  child,  the  one  transcendent 
gripping  theme  of  joy  and  fear.  If  she  could  only  do  some- 
thing for  it  —  sometime,  somehow!  " 

So  far  Dreiser's  handling  of  this  melodrama  in  major 
key  changes  melodrama  into  realism.  The  story  unfolds 
in  the  actual  glare  of  these  fresh-water  cities.  Jennie  is 
real.  The  carriage-prince  is  real,  and  their  eventual  idyllic 
home  on  the  Chicago  South  Side  with  its  lawn  and  flower- 
beds and  shady  trees,  where  after  a  while  he  allows  the 
old  father  and  Jennie's  child  to  live  with  them.  Especially 
to  the  life  is  this  type  of  business  man  who  makes  anti- 
social laws  for  himself  without  losing  commercial  effi- 
ciency. Likewise  his  father,  the  solid  conservative,  and 
his  brother,  the  hard  bloodless  executive,  are  precisely 
set  down  in  relation  to  American  business  and  to  the  awk- 
ward human  event  of  unmarried  love.  The  fate  of  Jen- 
nie, unAmerican  in  her  devotion  to  the  man  she  lives 
with,  breaks  with  logic  out  of  the  conflicting  wills  of 
these  three  manufacturers,  united  in  one  aim,  the  car- 
riage-industry. They  embody  the  optimism  and  enterprise 
and  starkness  of  the  towns  that  were  being  whistled  into 
shape  on  the  shores  of  the  Great  Lakes  in  the  Eighties 
and  Nineties.  Dreiser  knew  and  remembered  the  ground, 
and  had  interviewed  just  such  men  for  more  than  one  of 
his  special  articles  about  business  leaders. 

But  somewhere  here  the  author  falls  short  of  his  ma- 
terial. Whenever  he  takes  these  men  into  what  stands 
for  their  social  fabric,  among  their  wives  and  children 

241 


and  would-be  fashionable  friends,  he  is  inexperienced. 
He  sets  down  his  hero,  Lester  Kane  as : 

"thirty-six  years  of  age  ...  an  essentially  animal  man, 
pleasantly  veneered  by  education  and  environment  .  .  . 
like  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  Irishmen  who  in  his 
father's  day  had  worked  on  the  railroad  track,  dug  in  the 
mines,  picked  and  shovelled  in  ditches,  and  carried  up  brick 
and  mortar  on  the  endless  structures  of  a  new  land  .  .  . 
strong,  hairy,  axiomatic,  and  witty." 

This  is  specific,  but  besides  this  the  Kanes  were  "  socially 
prominent  " ;  Lester  was  "  raised  a  member  of  the  so- 
cially elect  " ;  Mrs.  Gerald,  who  takes  him  away  from 
Jennie,  is  "  the  picturesque  center  of  a  group  of  admirers 
recruited  from  every  capital  of  the  civilized  world."  She 
captures  him  by  telling  him  he  is  "  too  much  of  a  social 
figure  to  drift,"  and  he  feels  that  she  is  too  much  of  "  a 
social  opportunity  "  to  refuse.  The  scope  of  the  task 
Dreiser  has  set  himself  is  remarkable,  covering  the 
gamut  of  the  respectable  midwestern  world,  as  it  reached 
toward  New  York  and  Europe.  It  covers  the  class  he 
himself  came  from  of  hard-working  artisans,  brought 
into  relation  with  the  sphere  of  those  great  homes 
founded  often  by  sons  of  that  class  —  stags  on  the  lawn, 
Duchess  lace  and  Holland  shades  at  the  windows  — 
which  piqued  him  as  he  worked  his  way  toward  New  York 
in  the  Nineties.  His  plans  are  good,  but  his  high-life  char- 
acters are  imperfectly  developed  and  even  fall  back  on 
newspaper  cliches  for  definition. 

He  is  right  in  his  major  premise  that  this  super- 
structure in  the  West,  which  he  calls  the  "  socially  elect," 
did  include  the  families  of  manufacturers  of  carriages, 
soap,  harvesting  machines,  bathroom  fixtures,  sleeping 
cars,  as  well  as  dry  goods  merchants,  wholesale  grocers 
and  fabulous  butchers.  This  always  happened  whenever 
the  self-made  millionaire  married  into  the  Colonial  tra- 
dition of  aristocracy.  His  Eastern  wife  then  dictated  a 
formula  more  utterly  refined  and  circumspect  than  per- 
haps has  ever  been  put  into  practice  in  any  other  land  or 
time.  So  fearful  they  were  of  being  considered  "  typical 
Westerners  "  that  they  succeeded  in  creating  a  vacuum, 
which  segregated  them  from  the  ungainly  life  that 
242 


swirled  around  them.  They  became  humorous,  never  seri- 
ous, decorous,  never  decorative.  Intimacy  was  vulgar; 
love  and  hate  were  unmentionable ;  crises  were  improper. 
Art  was  something  to  be  endowed  in  museums  or  sym- 
phony concerts,  never  to  be  met  with  in  the  person  of  the 
artist.  Beauty  was  melodramatic  and  belonged  to  the 
stage  and  opera.  "  Good  taste  "  and  "  a  sense  of  humor  " 
were  the  requirements.  A  fear  of  life  inconceivable  to  the 
greedy  powerful  Dreiser  stalked  among  these  socially 
elect,  and  terrified  the  lustier  nouveau-riches  who  waited 
outside  their  doors,  hoping  some  day  to  qualify.  They 
held  hideous  sway  over  the  growth  of  new  red-blooded 
cities,  these  elect;  they  paralysed  the  senses  and  froze 
the  spirit.  But  they  existed.  You  could  tell  them,  not  by 
any  fine  web  of  relations  they  had  woven;  they  scarcely 
touched  each  other  physically  or  mentally.  You  could  tell 
them  by  their  Things  —  their  embroidered  linen,  their 
antique  furniture,  their  restrained  dinner-parties,  their 
quiet  carriages,  conservative  clothes,  and  by  the  thin 
well-bred  inflections  of  their  voices  into  which  almost  no 
vulgarity  and  no  fire  ever  entered.  Go  to  the  museum  in 
Columbus,  Ohio;  you  will  find  there  the  elaborate  im- 
ported Things  of  these  western  aristocrats.  Or  read  the 
lives  of  Mark  Hanna  or  Nicholas  Longworth.  Sons  and 
daughters  too  sensitive  for  their  fathers,  who  reverted 
to  human  type  and  rebelled  against  this  anemia  of  their 
mothers,  escaped  to  Europe  or  lost  their  minds.  Many  of 
them,  more  than  has  been  written,  went  crazy,  got  queer. 
Apparently  Dreiser  did  not  know  his  material  well 
enough  to  define  the  irony  and  drama  inherent  in  it,  as  he 
did  throughout  Sister  Carrie.  His  socially  elect  would 
have  been  despised  from  above  almost  as  much  as  they 
despised  the  Gerhardts.  The  women  tweak  the  men's  ears, 
use  cosmetics  unheard  of  then  in  the  West,  are  pert  and 
familiar;  and  falsest  of  all,  men  and  women  lack  face- 
tiousness,  what  was  called  "a  sense  of  humor"  —  that 
weapon  of  polite  society  with  which  to  kill  emotions,  and 
ridicule  a  thing  as  vulgar  as  illicit  love.  They,  like  Jennie, 
would  have  been  insecure  in  their  relation  to  the  "  socially 
elect."  Jennie's  lonely  end  is  real,  but  the  Kanes'  victory 
without  her  for  their  class  is  at  moments  conventionally 

243 


designed.  There  are  mortal  agonies  in  the  book  when 
death  makes  separations  for  Jennie.  Five  times  the  bell  is 
rung,  twice  fatally,  when  her  child  dies  and  then  Lester, 
who  calls  her  back  to  say  goodbye.  It  is  a  novel  presided 
over  by  funerals.  But  in  the  latter  chapters  of  her  defeat, 
where  there  is  neither  love,  nor  birth  nor  funeral,  the 
hierarchy  that  rears  itself  above  her  lovely  head  is  not  as 
real  and  flexible  as  Dreiser  wished  to  make  it.  Even,  he 
had  to  resort  to  the  society  column  to  suggest  it : 

"  There  was  a  simple  cottage  where  she  lived  in  retire- 
ment. .  .  .  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lester  Kane  when  resident  in 
Chicago  were  the  occupants  of  a  handsome  mansion  on  the 
Lakeshore  Drive,  where  parties,  balls,  receptions,  dinners, 
were  given  in  rapid  and  at  times  almost  pyrotechnic  suc- 


244 


Interlude:  "  Americans  are  infinitely  repel- 
lant  particles."  EMERSON 


great  novelists  of  modern  times,  Dos- 
toevsky,  Turgenieff,  Victor  Hugo,  Balzac,  Meredith, 
Proust,  have  not  been  content  to  create  their  monuments 
to  human  living  without  an  effort  to  define  the  entire 
conflicting  scale  from  low  to  high  materially,  from  ordi- 
nary to  rare  spiritually.  Was  it  Shakespeare  who  first  gave 
them  the  idea?  Dreiser,  isolated  in  America,  valiantly 
assumed  the  same  problem,  and  tried  first  in  Jennie  Ger- 
hardt  to  encompass  it.  More  than  that,  he  was,  so  far, 
the  only  big  intellect  except  for  Henry  James  and  pos- 
sibly Robinson  in  difficult  narrative  poems,  to  have  at- 
tempted this  synthesis.  His  guess  at  the  whole  scheme  is 
in  fact  a  proof  of  intellect.  It  is  terribly  significant  that 
he  failed  in  details,  and  that  afterwards  he  never  quite 
set  out  to  define  except  by  implication  our  uppermost 
classes,  from  the  point  of  view  of  social  values.  And 
why  was  it  that  he  had  to  fail,  just  as  Edgar  Lee  Masters 
later  was  to  try  and  fail?  Because  for  some  reason 
fashionable  people  in  America  have  never  had  any  curi- 
osity about  their  artists  as  artists.  Mrs.  Astor  is  re- 
membered for  having  scolded  her  son-in-law  because  he 
dined  with  so  vulgar  a  fellow  as  Mark  Twain.  The  tradi- 
tion had  not  changed,  in  fact  is  scarcely  changed  today. 
One  wonders  why.  First,  I  suppose,  the  Colonists  were 
afraid  of  creative  minds,  much  as  the  old  Jews  were;  they 
made  images.  And  then  as  time  went  on  American  busi- 
ness men,  I  imagine,  were  afraid  to  let  writer,  painter, 
or  musician  into  their  houses,  since  dangerously  they 
could  come  around  in  the  afternoon  or  even  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  amuse  their  wives.  They  on  the  other  hand  had 

245 


to  stay  in  their  offices  until  six  o'clock  or  more.  It  was, 
in  contrast  to  Europe,  a  country  where  men  and  women 
never  lunched  together  until  recently,  never  met  from 
breakfast  till  the  dinner  hour.  Then  there  was  another 
thing;  a  man  with  "  ideas  "  was  a  menace  to  business.  He 
might  be  a  radical,  he  probably  was.  Somehow  they 
trained  their  wives  to  fear  an  artist  or  poet  as  they  would 
a  beggar.  One  reason  perhaps  why  writers  from  among 
them,  Henry  James,  Henry  Adams,  for  example,  went  to 
Europe.  There  could  be  no  one  to  talk  to  in  their  own 
houses.  And  now  that  the  floodgates  were  loosed,  that 
the  lower  classes  were  getting  into  print,  to  admit  a  man 
of  genius  was  all  the  more  precarious.  Probably  they 
wouldn't  wear  clean  collars  or  have  good  table  manners. 
It  was  a  thing  not  to  be  risked. 

It  was  different  of  course,  with  foreign  celebrities.  It 
would  be  inhospitable  to  exclude  them.  They  were  ac- 
cepted in  Europe  and  were  distinguished,  and  besides  they 
wouldn't  stay  long.  Even  so,  Europeans  have  had  curious 
impressions  of  American  hospitality.  The  composer  Stra- 
vinsky, recently  feted  at  lunch,  dinner  and  cocktail  hour 
in  Chicago,  is  said  to  have  complained  to  a  friend:  "  My 
trip  has  been  a  failure,  I  am  not  appreciated  in  America. 
I  have  met  no  one."  She  remonstrated  with  him :  "  How 
can  you  say  that,  no  composer  has  ever  been  lionized  as 
you  have."  —  "  Yes,  among  these  nice  people,  metis  ou 
sont  les  cervelles? "  And  an  English  philosopher  tells 
how,  lecturing  in  a  fashionable  women's  club  in  a  Western 
city,  he  was  given  a  dinner  at  the  house  of  his  hostess 
and  one  of  the  men  at  the  dinner  began  a  speech  of  wel- 
come with  the  facetious  threat  that  American  business 
men  had  "  quite  as  much  sex-appeal  as  their  distinguished 
guest,  even  if  they  were  not  pacifists !  " 

The  chasms  were  deep  in  1910  that  separated  "  high 
society "  from  ideas,  just  as  they  were  deep  that  di- 
vided business  from  art,  and  remain  deep  today  except 
that  now  class  mysteries  are  breaking  down  before 
the  various  rackets.  A  writer  might  make  a  fortune  out 
of  the  movie  rights  of  a  book  and  become  a  pillar  of 
society.  A  debutante  might  turn  into  a  chorus  girl,  a 
billionaire's  son  into  a  song  writer,  and  everyone  into 
246 


aviators  or  aviator's  wives.  The  words  "  socially 
elect "  perhaps  are  following  "  Mrs.  Grundy "  into 
antiquity. 

But  that  is  going  far  ahead  of  the  story  whose  hero, 
unknown  to  fashion,  was  one  of  those  innocently  to  effect 
the  change.  Prosperous  editor  though  he  was,  his  excur- 
sions to  Long  Island  house  parties  could  not  have  taken 
him  among  the  Eastern  equivalents  of  the  people  he 
wanted  to  set  down  in  Jennie  Gerhardt.  Or,  with  his  rapid 
eye,  subtracting  the  arrogance  of  New  York  over  the 
Middle  West,  he  would  have  known  how  to  define  them, 
and  his  book  would  have  gained  in  value.  These  comfort- 
able people,  for  one  thing,  discovering  themselves  in  the 
book,  would  have  then  found  him  authentic,  and  would 
have  been  less  comfortable  and  more  alive  to  realities. 
As  it  was,  a  spiral  of  estrangement  instead  of  a  spiral  of 
understanding  was  working  up  through  the  various 
classes. 

Possibly  this  has  come  near  to  being  the  defeat  of  both 
manners  and  art  in  America  —  the  fact  that  the  two 
have  been  insoluble,  one  in  the  other.  An  anecdote  about 
Dreiser  in  1911  illustrates  the  cleavage.  It  was  Arnold 
Bennett's  turn  to  visit  the  great  United  States.  Curiously 
he  is  quoted  as  asking  the  same  question  asked  by  Locke 
a  few  years  before :  "  And  what  is  your  Mr.  Dreiser 
doing  these  days?  "  The  scene  was  a  banquet  given  him 
by  distinguished  publishers  and  authors,  most  of  them 
socially  experienced.  The  story  was  told  me  by  Floyd 
Dell,  then  a  young  Chicago  critic,  who  had  been  an  in- 
stant admirer  of  Dreiser.  Delighted  that  this  English 
novelist  shared  his  enthusiasm,  he  listened  with  all  his 
ears.  But  no  one  seemed  to  know  precisely  what  Dreiser 
was  doing  or  appeared  to  care,  and  yet  the  company  con- 
tained members  of  the  firm  of  Harper,  contracted  at 
that  moment  to  publish  three  of  his  books.  But  they  were 
not  proud  of  it,  would  not  talk  about  him;  in  fact  the 
subject  was  changed.  In  the  face  of  their  indifference 
Bennett  was  then  said  to  have  declared:  "  Dreiser  is  the 
most  significant  figure  among  your  writers.  Oddly  enough, 
I  spend  most  of  my  time  asking  people  if  they  have  read 
Sister  Carrie,  and  find  they  haven't.  I  always  say,  '  Well, 

247 


get  it.'  "  There  was  a  slight  well-bred  stir  at  such  in- 
sistence and  at  such  evident  disparity  of  opinion  between 
England  and  her  lost  Colony.  Perhaps  some  of  the  guests 
went  home  and  thought  it  over.  Several  newspaper  arti- 
cles of  the  time  quote  Bennett  as  always  with  the  same 
obsession:  "I  can't  read  American  authors  in  general, 
they  write  for  money.  ...  I  like  Theodore  Dreiser 
best.  .  .  .  Then  there  is  another,  David  Graham  Phil- 
lips, but  whenever  I  mention  his  name  people  shrug  their 
shoulders  and  say :  '  Yes,  no,  I  don't  know  —  well,  any- 
way he  is  very  crude.'  ' 

The  American  Review  dug  up  an  article,  The  Future  of 
the  American  Novel  which  Bennett  had  written  for  the 
Atlantic  Monthly  in  1903,  but  that  journal  had  sup- 
pressed it  as  a  piece  of  British  perversity.  It  was  printed 
now  in  1912.  There,  he  had  prophesied  that  Norris  and 
Dreiser  would  be  the  forerunners  of  a  new  literature, 
"  big  and  romantic  like  American  landscapes  and  for- 
tunes." Balzac,  he  was  sure,  confronted  with  "  Pitts- 
burgh, the  sixteen  hour  express  between  New  York  and 
Chicago,  Wall  Street,  Mr.  Pierpont  Morgan,  the  wheat 
growing  states  .  .  .  would  have  said,  '  This  country  is 
steeped  in  romance;  it  lies  about  in  heaps.  Give  me  a 
pen  quick,  for  Heaven's  sake.'  "  At  last  there  were 
native  writers  who  realized  this  for  themselves,  was  the 
burden  of  the  article.  But  these  words  of  hope  had  been 
withheld  for  nine  years  from  whatever  American  Bal- 
zacs  were  languishing  on  the  heaps  of  romance.  And 
now  that  Mr.  Bennett  had  come  to  see  for  himself,  he 
found  the  number  reduced  to  the  one  mysterious  Dreiser, 
and  possibly  Phillips.  And  it  seemed  that  they  lived  in- 
cognito. He  must  have  learned,  however,  that  Phillips 
had  been  shot  and  killed  not  long  before  by  a  mad- 
man who  mistook  him  for  another.  And  he  managed 
to  discover  that  Harper  had  had  the  enterprise 
to  publish  after  ten  years  one  more  American  can- 
vas from  his  favorite  candidate.  He  would  get  it  at 
once,  and  really  he  would  like  to  meet  the  man.  On 
October  26,  1911,  Major  Leigh  dictated  a  social  gem 
to  his  secretary  who  mailed  it  to  the  socially  unelected 
Hoosier: 
248 


"  Dear  Mr.  Dreiser: 

Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  leaves  today  for  Boston  to  stay  over 
there  till  next  Monday.  It  has  been  in  our  minds  to  bring 
you  two  gentlemen  together  and  next  week  we  will  try  to 
fix  it  up  as  speedily  as  possible. 

Mr.  Duneka  and  Mr.  Wells  have  both  had  considerable 
conversation  with  him  about  you  and  Jennie  Gerhardt, 
and  of  course  we  have  given  him  a  copy  of  the  book.  It  is 
hoped  that  we  may  have  whatever  benefit  there  may  be  in 
having  the  book  praised  by  Mr.  Bennett.  Mr.  Bennett  is  so 
much  in  the  public  eye  and  ear  at  the  present  time,  that  I 
suppose  we  would  all  agree  aside  from  all  other  considera- 
tions, that  Mr.  Bennett's  good  opinion  of  Jennie  Gerhardt 
would  be  desirable. 

...  I  will  immediately  look  up  the  Kansas  City  Journal 
and  see  what  can  be  done  with  the  fine  send-off  they  gave 
Jennie  that  you  told  me  about.  .  .  ." 

Very  little,  I  suppose,  could  be  done  in  the  opinion  of 
Major  Leigh  with  praise  from  Kansas,  and  yet  Dreiser 
always  banked  on  the  support  of  the  whole  United 
States,  in  which  there  must  be  exceptions  like  himself, 
hungry  to  read  about  life  as  it  was.  As  for  Arnold  Ben- 
nett, he  would  like  to  know  him  of  course,  but  he  was  shy 
about  it  under  his  publishers'  auspices.  It  was  evident 
from  the  letter  that  they  were  not  to  meet  as  equals 
for  pleasure,  but  merely  as  a  business  concession.  He  man- 
aged to  evade  the  invitation;  he  could  be  aloof  and  sensi- 
tive too  on  his  side.  Besides,  perhaps  people  were  right, 
he  did  not  know  exactly  how  to  get  in  and  out  of  a  room. 
.  .  .  Later  in  London,  however,  where  he  found  himself 
feted  as  an  equal,  Dreiser  and  Bennett  met  and  enjoyed 
each  other. 


249 


".  .  .   Then  I  asked  again 

Why  Cato  Braden  died  at  fifty-one, 

And  Will  said:  '  Winston  Prairie,  Illinois 

Killed  Cato  Braden.'  "  E.  L.  MASTERS 


Jl  stress  these  rifts  because  they  appear  to  me 
to  have  made  half  of  our  difficulties,  and  to  have 
been  ignored  by  most  of  the  experts  who  have  at- 
tempted to  analyse  the  temper  of  the  country.  While  on 
the  productive  side  business  men  and  politicians  and 
crooks  were  always  cementing  their  common  interests 
just  as  in  other  countries;  on  the  side  of  enjoyment, 
which  is  the  side  of  life,  there  was  no  trust,  no  loyalty, 
no  cohesion  between  the  different  elements.  Arnold  Ben- 
nett's amazement  at  the  one  fact  of  Dreiser's  obscurity 
in  1911,  ten  years  after  the  publication  of  Sister  Carrie, 
is  a  tiny  etching  of  the  whole  scheme. 

The  scheme  differed  in  Europe.  In  England,  a  civiliza- 
tion based  on  class  arrogance,  always  there  have  been 
aristocrats  who  sought  to  enliven  their  lot  with  people  of 
genius;  if,  that  is,  they  could  induce  them  to  be  guests. 
They  were  curious  about  them,  needed  their  wits  if  they 
could  capture  them  for  occasions.  Bennett  himself,  out 
of  the  "  lower  middle  class,"  after  his  first  success  was 
forced  into  knowing  everyone,  was  forced  into  being  a 
writer,  as  he  tells  in  a  burlesque  called  The  Great  Man. 
Perhaps  he  was  never  completely  at  ease  in  the  new  circles 
where  his  talents  were  taking  him,  but  at  least  he  had 
witnessed  the  program  of  manners  from  peers  to  com- 
moners, and  knew  them  first  hand.  He  knew  also  that 
personal  distinction,  genius  if  possible,  was  the  element 
that  welded  into  some  kind  of  meaning  the  various  parts 
of  society. 

Take  another  example,  D.  H.  Lawrence,  son  of  a  coal 
250 


miner,  as  Dreiser  was  son  of  a  foreman  in  a  woollen  mill, 
and  Sandburg  of  a  blacksmith,  and  Anderson  of  a  house 
painter.  In  Lady  Chatterly's  Lover  sex  seems  awkward, 
even  inexperienced,  but  English  manners  are  authentic 
enough  to  create  the  illusion  of  society.  And  why?  Be- 
cause Lawrence  found  himself  dragged  into  drawing 
rooms,  whether  he  liked  it  or  not  —  a  tribute  to  a  new 
poet  in  their  great  tradition  of  poetry.  It  was  the  same 
with  Hardy,  and  Meredith  whose  father  was  a  tailor,  and 
today  with  James  Joyce  wherever  he  writes  openly  enough 
to  betray  the  tones  of  voice.  Existing  hierarchies  are  ac- 
curately implicit  in  their  novels,  so  that  each  character 
has  the  special  weave  in  the  design  ordained  by  the  fabric. 
This  sophistication  is  even  truer  of  French  writers,  the 
products  of  a  long  legend  which  has  deified  the  intelli- 
gence as  we  have  deified  money.  To  the  artist,  whether 
originally  peasant,  vagabond,  bourgeois  or  aristocrat, 
white,  yellow  or  black,  doors  open  in  proportion  to  the 
degree  of  talent  the  critics  allot  to  him.  To  a  genius  in 
fashion  no  important  door  is  closed.  He  may  exclude  what 
he  now  calls  bourgeois  society  or  run  away  from  it,  but 
he  is  not  excluded  from  its  calculations  as  long  as  his 
day  of  glory  lasts.  It  is  no  wonder  then  that  we  feel  a  cool 
ease  of  surface  in  the  works  of  the  French  giants  and  in 
those  of  smaller  writers.  From  Proust  in  deliberate  de- 
tail, from  Appollinaire  involuntarily,  to  take  two  Jews, 
we  get  a  sense  of  the  subtleties,  intricacies,  distances,  in- 
timacies, which  together  create  that  suspended,  miasmic, 
varied,  welded  state  of  mind  —  the  city  of  Paris.  Yet  if 
these  same  men  had  lived  in  New  York  or  Chicago,  being 
Jews,  they  would  have  been  excluded  from  all  but  Jewish 
society  and  would  have  had  to  guess  at  what  went  on  in 
other  leisure  classes,  which  very  possibly  was  almost 
nothing  at  all.  There  are  countless  examples.  To  select  at 
random,  among  the  projects  of  the  sculptor  Brancusi,  run- 
away child  of  Roumanian  farmers,  a  princess  was  origi- 
nally a  subject  in  company  with  a  bird,  a  fish,  a  newborn 
child,  a  sorceress,  a  negress.  Joseph  Delteil,  the  son  of 
a  woodcutter  and  wine-maker  in  the  Midi,  knows  the 
types  of  his  country  and  of  other  countries  as  if  by  heart, 
no  matter  what  the  class.  He  serves  them  like  tennis  balls, 

251 


hardly  counting  them  —  kings,  heroes,  peasants.   Ele- 
gance, an  aesthetic  principle,  permeates  classes  and  races. 

Art  penetrates  in  Europe  to  the  honor  of  artists. 
Comedians  and  music  hall  favorites  are  feted  officially. 
The  negro  singer,  Paul  Robeson,  was  given  a  lunch  in  the 
House  of  Parliament;  Charlie  Chaplin,  a  child  of  Eng- 
lish slums,  was  guest  of  honor  of  Briand,  Foreign  Min- 
ister of  France;  while  in  our  exciting  democracy  whom 
does  official  Washington  select  to  invite  to  the  White 
House  for  ice  cream  and  tea?  Explorers,  inventors  and 
boy  scouts!  A  good  start,  but  a  meager  sense  of  plot;  we 
complicate  nothing.  In  Europe  in  a  measure  dreams  like 
Dreiser's  have  come  true  —  art  reflecting  and  deepening 
reality  through  the  alembic  of  special  temperament. 

Contrastingly,  "  America's  most  powerful  novelist," 
as  the  newspapers  now  call  him,  wrote  his  first  and  his 
second  and  his  third  novel,  all  of  his  works  in  fact,  until 
after  An  American  Tragedy,  unknown  to  the  ruling  class 
in  the  city  where  he  lived.  It  was  the  same  in  Chicago 
when  that  town  produced  a  few  years  later  a  crop  of 
modern  men  of  letters.  They  were  known  far  before  they 
were  known  near.  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  much  as  he  coveted 
"  luxury  and  refinement,"  being  after  all  the  son  of  a 
country  lawyer  who  was  a  friend  of  Lincoln  and  partner 
of  Herndon,  and  for  all  that  the  heroic  Harriet  Monroe 
could  do  for  him  in  Poetry,  was  never  known  among  the 
"  socially  elect  "  of  Chicago  until  he  got  into  the  papers 
for  his  cruel  sonnets  to  his  wife,  and  felt  that  he  was  ostra- 
cized. He  moved  to  New  York  where  he  joined  as  many 
clubs  as  he  could  and  became  a  recluse  and  a  Victorian. 
Meanwhile,  sophisticated  people  in  London  were  praising 
his  Spoon  River  Anthology  as  fifteen  years  before  they 
had  seized  upon  Sister  Carrie  as  important.  And  the 
"  great  Carl  Sandburg,"  as  he  has  been  called,  Chicago's 
poet,  who  never  has  deserted  the  city,  what  of  him? 
I  think  if  any  one  of  the  "  socially  elect  "  had  confessed 
to  knowing  him  in  the  days  of  Cornhuskers  and  Smoke 
and  Steel,  they  would  have  been  suspected  of  leading 
a  double  life  —  that  is,  until  his  biography  of  Lincoln 
became  a  best  seller,  and  he  had  a  chance  to  be  respectable, 
had  it  pleased  him.  He  had,  however,  the  reporter's  scorn 
252 


and  the  socialist's  hatred  of  upper  classes:  (perhaps  the 
poet's  hatred)  and  assumed  a  kind  of  burglar's  disguise, 
which  made  a  formidable  defence  against  what  overtures 
Chicago  might  have  offered  him. 

In  old  countries  there  are  walls,  everywhere  walls, 
through  which,  however,  beauty  and  genius  sometimes 
penetrate  like  radium.  To  escape  walls  emigrants  have 
come  to  these  shores,  only  to  meet  barriers  worse  than 
walls  —  intangible  chasms  which  insulated  even  that  vola- 
tile element  creative  genius.  What  made  the  chasms? 
Stupid  religions?  Money?  Machinery?  Yet  money  and 
machinery  were  beautiful  and  new,  not  mouldy  like  old 
Europe;  the  poor  and  hungry  came  to  enjoy  them.  Per- 
haps paradoxically  it  was  democracy  that  made  the 
chasms ;  that  star  they  watched  from  the  steerage  as  they 
crossed.  It  was  hard  to  say,  except  that  there  were  these 
barriers. 

To  go  to  the  end  of  this  decade,  1910-1920,  there  was 
the  example  of  a  young  Italian,  known  only  to  a  few, 
but  who  figured  in  this  period  of  letters.*  He  is  a  symbol 
of  the  disillusioned  emigrant,  and  of  the  many  moderns 
who  wanted  to  make  America  see  how  modern  she  is 
and  failed.  He  came  with  the  Latin  faith  that  a  poet 
would  count  in  a  new  country,  especially  in  Chicago ;  and 
succumbed  to  these  chasms  across  which  intelligence  could 
not  jump.  He  was  tough,  but  not  tough  enough  for  this 
glacier,  Western  society,  where  in  precise  fact  a  poet  was 
held  in  no  more  favor  than  a  "  kept  woman,"  if  as  much. 
He  screamed  a  challenge  among  the  whistles  and  sirens 
which  reads  like  revenge  for  its  victims. t  A  poem  to  a 
young  lady  of  the  "  socially  elect  "  places  a  curse  on 
them  : 

..."  I  wrote  insults, 

Called  you  a  liar  for  saying: 
(  Sex  and  life  are  two  different  things.' 

*  "  Emanuel  Carnevali,  the  black  poet,  the  empty  man,  the  New  York 
which    does   not   exist  ...  I    celebrate   your   arrival."    Carlos   Williams. 
"...  one  of  the  two  contemporary  poets  in  America  whose  work  at- 
tained an  international  standard."  Regis  Michaud. 

"  He    seemed    sometimes    to    be    throwing-    himself    at    the    sun."    Carl 
Sandburg. 

f   The  Hurried  Man. 

253 


...  I  said 

( If  God  intervenes  you  will  be  a  poet/ 
But  God  never  intervened." 

He  went  away  to  Italy  and  wrote  back  : 

..."  I  arrive  in  the  land  of  wine  — 

Wine  for  the  soul.  .  .  . 
.  .  .  You  are  young  and  hurried;  what  threatens  you 

That  you  rush  so,  America? 
...  I  have  feared  for  you 

The  revenge  of  Love,  0  America !  " 

Dreiser  all  these  years  was  a  counterpart  of  his  two 
heroines,  patient  like  Jennie,  adventurous  like  Carrie.  He 
could  not  and  would  not  run  away  from  "  that  oblivion 
of  hurry,"  America,  or  be  oblivious  to  it.  He  knew  there 
were  doors  closed  to  him,  forbidden  thresholds,  for  all 
his  appetite  to  understand.  He  would  have  to  measure 
life  beyond  them  from  the  outside.  Somehow  he  would 
manage  to  apprehend  it.  Perhaps  even,  unlike  Jennie,  in 
the  end  he  would  dictate  to  it.  He  was  one  of  the  older 
stronger  natives  ready  to  fight  intangible  chasms.  Sand- 
burg, Masters  and  Anderson  were  others.  Now  and  then 
in  company,  but  most  often  singly,  they  watched  the 
crevices  deepening  between  art  and  society,  and  between 
art  and  commerce,  and  watched  the  cracks  filling  up  be- 
tween society  and  commerce,  that  is,  between  manners 
and  money.  What  they  and  others  have  made  of  Ameri- 
can life,  on  their  side  of  the  great  gap,  launched  its  most 
productive  period  in  the  arts  —  the  years  between  1910 
and  1925  or  1926.  Almost,  it  seems,  such  writers  may 
have  been  the  antecedents  of  a  new  kind  of  American 
society.  I  think  it  is  not  too  pompous  to  say  that,  although 
they  wrote  to  create  and  not  to  reform,  each  of  them  in 
his  separate  way  hoped  fervently  for  change. 


254 


Jennie  and  her  lovers 


J. 


ennie  Gerhardt,  published  in  October,  1911, 
and  Gertrude  Stein's  Three  Lives,  published  in  1909, 
head  the  list  in  these  creative  years.  Three  Lives  would 
in  the  end  effect  a  revolution  in  method.  Dreiser's 
novel  was  at  once  producing  a  change  of  theme.  It  was  an 
immediate  success  in  modern  red-blooded  America.  Con- 
sidering it  aside  from  its  permanent  value  as  language, 
the  story  had  three  merits  as  story.  In  newspaper  lingo, 
the  forsaken  Jennie,  unlike  Carrie,  was  made  to  pay  for 
her  sins  against  society;  that  pleased  everybody.  Then 
the  presentation  was  called  "  clean  ";  that  is,  her  hours 
of  flagrant  delight  with  both  senator  and  carriage-manu- 
facturer are  silent  chapters.  An  advantage,  since  the 
men  could  imagine  them  anyway,  and  their  virtuous 
wives,  reading  the  book,  would  remain  unenlightened. 
Above  all,  Jennie  was  an  ideal  woman  for  American 
business  men,  who  had  no  time  for  romance  and  great 
need  of  comfort ;  she  gave  everything  and  asked  nothing. 
It  is  colossal  how  Dreiser  has  written  their  poetry  for 
them,  not  verses  about  their  mothers  and  wives  and  chil- 
dren, but  about  their  secret  sweethearts  —  the  little 
girls,  the  swell  babies,  news  of  whom  was  winked  from 
one  to  another.  And  it  must  have  gratified  them  too  be- 
cause he  drew  them  and  their  girls  with  the  dignity  of 
vital  organs,  in  true  relation  to  the  rest  of  the  world  of 
human  beings.  He  never  made  fun  of  them.  With  tears 
in  their  words,  the  newspaper  men,  spokesmen  for 
American  manhood,  cheated  so  long  of  the  luxuries,  pro- 
claimed him  their  writer.  I  believe  a  railroad  conductor 
or  a  brakeman,  or  a  railroad  president,  had  he  read  Jen- 
me  Gerhardt y  would  have  said,  "  This  guy  [or  this  fellow] 

255 


knows  his  stuff."  But  in  1912  these  valiant  animals  rarely 
read.  Returns  had  to  come  in  from  their  understudies, 
the  newspaper  men.  They  came  from  many  cities  and 
states.  New  York,  Brooklyn,  Chicago,  Detroit,  St.  Paul, 
Los  Angeles,  Utica,  Hartford,  Washington,  Alabama, 
New  Orleans,  Oshkosh,  Kansas,  Boston,  St.  Louis,  Pitts- 
burgh, Cleveland,  Kentucky,  San  Francisco,  Indianapolis, 
Baltimore  —  these  and  more  received  the  author  of  Car- 
rie and  Jennie  (but  Jennie  chaperoned  Carrie  for  them) 
with  high  praise  or  if  by  chance  the  reviewer  was  an  old 
maid  or  oldf ashioned,  with  traditional  censure : 

Chicago  Record  Herald:  "...  Jennie  was  sinning  against 
society  .  .  .  while  she  yet  remained  unspoiled  in  heart. 
.  .  .  Not  suitable  for  immature  readers.  .  .  .  The  story 
of  a  young  woman  gone  wrong  .  .  .  European  rather  than 
American.  —  Almost  as  perfect  as  Balzac  or  Flaubert." 
Philadelphia  Telegraph:  ".  .  .  Jennie  is  the  type  of  woman 
really  too  unselfish  to  be  virtuous.  .  .  ." 
Evening  Star,  Washington:  "  In  10,000  years  from  now, 
Mr.  Dreiser,  when  the  animosities  of  sex,  mayhap,  are 
somewhat  mollified  should  put  out  this  book  again.  Then 
we  shall  see  what  can  be  done  for  the  Jennie  Gerhardts." 
New  York  Times:  ".  .  .  Panku  chopped  out  the  sun,  the 
moon  and  the  rest  of  the  universe  with  a  sledgehammer. 
.  .  .  Both  the  Chinese  author  of  the  Universe  and  the 
author  of  Jennie  went  at  their  jobs  with  about  an  equal 
absence  of  false  modesty,  with  an  equal  amount  of  courage." 
Philadelphia  Inquirer:  ".  .  .  Not  to  be  mentioned  in  the 
presence  of  Mrs.  Grundy.  We  have  gotten  so  far  along  that 
we  no  longer  ignore  real  life  in  literature.  .  .  ." 
Cleveland  Town  Topics:  "Jennie  Gerhardt  in  all  except 
the  one  essential,  seemed  purity  itself." 
Post,  Covington,  Kentucky:  "  If  one  were  to  guess  the  liter- 
ary parentage  of  Theodore  Dreiser,  one  would  say  .  .  . 
Dostoevsky.  .  .  ." 

And  then  the  warier,  more  expedient  reviews.  The  now 
dying  moralists  wrote : 

New  York  American:  "Jennie  is  no  model  for  any  girl 
who  sees  life  on  all  sides.  Every  girl  should  put  a  high  price 
upon  herself;  the  price  of  the  woman  is  the  man.  ...  Is  a 
woman  ever  justified  in  smirching  her  womanhood,  in  stain- 
ing her  virtue,  in  order  to  help  her  relatives  —  even  to  save 
them  from  starvation?  This  must  be  answered  with  an 
iron  '  NO/  .  .  .  There  are  misfortunes  worse  than  star- 
vation." 

256 


Morning  Telegram,  New  York:  "He  ought  to  choose  a 
bigger  theme  than  the  story  of  a  kept  woman." 
San  Francisco  Chronicle:  "  The  fact  that  she  accepts  money 
from  both  her  lovers  may  be  taken  ...  as  against  the 
heroine,  but  .  .  .  she  should  be  credited  with  spending 
the  coin  on  her  poor  relations." 

These  reviews  are  most  of  them  naive,  in  that  they 
consider  a  novel  as  incident  rather  than  as  drama,  or 
style.  But  historically  they  indicate  how  the  critics  have 
shifted  ground  since  1900.  Many  more  in  1912  enjoy 
a  story  of  life  as  it  is,  and  because  of  the  vulgarity  they 
read  into  it;  and  those  who  denounce  it  already  begin 
to  sound  antiquated.  It  is  evident  that  an  old  system 
of  morals  is  beginning  to  crumble,  and  that  the  iron  of 
Dreiser's  realism  was  like  a  drill  heading  into  the 
decay. 

Two  writers  especially  loved  the  book  for  itself,  both 
of  them  men  who  were  to  count  in  this  most  lively  period 
of  our  letters.  One  was  the  young  Chicago  critic,  Floyd 
Dell,  who  had  taken  the  place  of  Francis  Hackett  on  the 
Evening  Post,  that  inventor  of  the  "  literary  supplement." 
At  about  this  time  Floyd  Dell  had  almost  lost  his  job  be- 
cause someone  had  told  the  publisher  there  was  a  drawing 
of  himself  and  his  wife  in  the  nude  on  the  walls  of  their 
flat;  and  soon  after  he  did  lose  it  for  a  review  which  be- 
gan, "  Have  a  cocktail !  No.  .  .  ."  But  the  No  was  neg- 
ligible ;  in  those  days  a  family  paper  should  not  mention 
cocktails  even  to  disparage  them.  Jennie  Gerhardt  was 
for  him  promise  of  a  heaven  of  our  own,  not  English,  not 
French,  not  Russian.  He  was  one  of  those  who  wanted  to 
make  the  country  a  land  of  the  free  and  brave  in  spite  of 
graveyards  and  academies,  and  did  do  his  share  until  re- 
cently, when  life  in  capitalist  America  appears  to  have 
made  him  reactionary.  In  1911  he  wrote  in  his  literary 
review : 

"W.  B.  Yeats  has  put  the  case  against  professors  and 
manuals  of  literature  ...  in  the  current  Forum:  '  They 
come  between  a  man  and  literature,'  he  says,  '  substituting 
arguments  and  hesitations  for  the  excitement  at  the  first 
reading  of  the  great  poets  which  should  be  a  sort  of  violent, 
imaginative  puberty.'  ' 

And  of  Jennie  Gerhardt,  he  wrote : 

257 


"  The  melting  mood  ...  the  sign  of  great  art,  is  what  this 
book  continually  evokes  in  the  reader.  .  .  .  Dreiser  writes 
of  meetings  and  partings,  festivities  and  funerals,  as  though 
no  one  had  ever  written  of  them  before.  The  life  of  Lester 
and  Jennie  together  is  as  familiar  as  a  sunset,  and  as  per- 
petually interesting.  He  sees  everything  eagerly,  clearly, 
without  prejudice." 

The  other  is  H.  L.  Mencken,  German-American  cham- 
pion of  a  native  speech,  sophisticated  and  free.  And  yet 
for  Mencken  it  must  be  authoritative  speech :  That  is,  free 
speech  must  be  the  orthodox  ritual  for  a  land  of  the  free. 
For  a  number  of  years  he  was  to  be  an  advisor,  almost  a 
confessor  to  Dreiser,  the  most  adventurous  and  authentic 
writer  he  could  find  to  champion.  He  wrote  what  would 
make  a  small  book  in  unreserved  praise  of  Jennie  Ger- 
hardt  publishing  it  in  various  journals  and  newspapers, 
The  Smart  Set,  The  Free  Lance,  The  Baltimore  Evening 
Sun,  The  Los  Angeles  Times.  Here  is  an  abridgment 
of  it: 

"  If  you  miss  reading  Jennie  Gerhardt  .  .  .  you  will  miss 
the  best  American  novel  that  has  reached  the  book  counters 
in  a  dozen  years.  On  second  thought  change  '  a  dozen  '  into 
'  twenty-five.'  On  third  thought,  strike  out  everything  after 
counters.  On  fourth  thought,  strike  out  everything  after 
novel.  ...  I  am  firmly  convinced  that  Jennie  Gerhardt 
is  the  best  American  novel  I  have  ever  read  with  the  lone- 
some but  Himalayan  exception  of  Huckleberry  Finn  .  .  . 
[which  is]  not  a  boy's  story,  not  a  comic  story,  but  a  mer- 
ciless picture  of  the  decay  and  break-up  of  a  civilization. 
...  A  canto  in  the  epic  of  the  Old  South.  .  .  . 

".  .  .  Once  again  Dreiser's  heroine  is  a  woman  whose 
gentleness  is  her  undoing.  Once  again  he  is  in  the  midst  of  a 
tragedy  whose  moral  it  is  that  all  the  stock  morals  are 
untrue.  Once  again  he  sets  forth  like  Conrad  and  Moore 
and  the  great  Russians,  the  eternal  meaninglessness  of 
life.  .  .  . 

"  The  thing  is  done  with  superb  assurance.  .  .  .  Not 
one  eyelash  is  out  of  place.  .  .  ." 

This  was  a  time,  and  Dreiser  and  Mencken  prime  fac- 
tors in  it,  bent  on  a  new  discovery  of  America,  the  chance 
of  intellectual  exchange,  the  event  of  ideas  circulating 
from  one  to  another.  In  the  preceding  century,  intellect 
was  a  provincial  thing  fermenting  chiefly  in  New  Eng- 
land. Or  else,  when  rebellious,  it  was  a  terribly  lonely 
258 


thing,  which  doomed  Poe  to  death,  and  Whitman  and 
Thoreau,  and  Dickinson,  to  hermitages,  and  Melville  to 
silence.  Now  rebellious  thought  was  beginning  to  be  a 
game  and  a  pastime.  It  would  have  its  censors,  its  um- 
pires, its  champions.  Marriages  of  minds  were  giving 
birth  to  an  intelligentsia.  Mencken  appointed  himself  one 
of  its  guardians  in  all  three  capacities,  champion,  umpire 
and  censor.  This  story  is  incomplete  without  attempting 
his  portrait. 


259 


"  The  volume  will  be  a  slaughter  house. 
Positively  no  guilty  man  will  escape  .  .  . 
/  shall  even  denounce  myself." 

H.  L.  MENCKEN 


"y  temperament  more  than  by  immediate 
birth,  Mencken  was  a  child  of  the  German  stream  that 
had  flowed  toward  America  to  commit  a  Protestant  para- 
dox —  enforce  freedom.  The  country,  initially  settled 
by  perhaps  the  worst  of  the  English  and  the  best  of  the 
Germans  and  Dutch,  and  always  a  sprinkling  of  master 
Swiss  minds,  had  long  ago  pushed  the  Indians  on  to 
their  reservations  and  pueblos,  the  French  into  New 
Orleans,  Detroit  and  Canada,  the  Spaniards  into  South- 
western deserts  too  hot  and  strange  for  northern  races. 
Into  this  initial  mould  had  flowed  and  overflowed  more 
English  and  Germans,  and  then  Irish,  Italians,  Scandina- 
vians, Jews,  Balkans,  Orientals.  All  of  them  were  still 
trying  to  fight  it  out  and  become  a  race.  Mencken  was 
the  first  to  assume  the  care  of  their  common  language, 
American. 

Bill  Nye  distinguishes  George  Washington  as  the  only 
one  of  our  great  men  rich  enough  to  support  a  French 
nurse  in  his  youth.  Mencken  appears  to  be  the  one  writer  of 
his  day  with  the  luxury  of  a  pedigree,  which,  however, 
being  German,  has  not  afforded  him  its  proper  prestige. 
His  grandfather  came  to  the  United  States  in  1848  and 
settled  in  Baltimore.  Back  of  him  was  a  Saxon-Friesian 
family  of  merchants  and  scholars,  some  of  whom  de- 
lighted in  agnosticism  and  music  —  faithfully  traced  by 
his  biographer  to  the  i6th  century.*  In  the  I7th  century 
Otto  Mencken,  professor  of  ethics  at  Leipzig,  founded 
the  first  learned  German  review,  Acta  Eruditorum  with 

*  The  Man  Mencken  by  Isaac  Goldberg. 
260 


which  to  attack  the  pedantry  of  the  day.  His  son  Johann 
was  famous  for  a  satire,  De  Charlataneria  Eruditorum, 
an  exposure  of  sham  and  fraud.*  The  portrait  of  Otto 
has  the  sceptical  sensitive  mouth  of  H.  L.  Mencken,  and 
Johann  wrote  a  phrase  in  his  book  characteristic  of  his 
American  nephew  of  three  centuries  later :  "  So  great, 
oh  listeners,  is  the  power  of  impudence,  even  in  serious 
matters."  Add  to  this  inheritance  an  ancestral  aunt  who 
was  the  mother  of  Bismarck,*  and  you  will  find  Mencken 
is  an  amazingly  logical  scion  of  his  family,  with  his  two 
contradictory  passions,  liberty  and  order,  freedom  and 
authority.  Into  the  bargain  he  is  a  verbal  buffoon,  a  genius 
for  joke  and  paradox.  The  result  has  been  our  first  scho- 
lastic statesman  of  masculine  proportions,  our  first  modern 
encyclopaedist,  an  American  Diderot,  though  more  cau- 
tious and  less  voluptuous  than  that  I7th  century  French- 
man. Beginning  with  Mencken,  American  letters  began  to 
be  noticed  by  men  and  to  be  feared  by  women's  clubs  and 
neuters.  He  brought  literature  into  the  field  of  action.  In 
America  that  was  to  bring  it  shorn  of  some  of  its  rightful 
subtleties. 

To  meet  him  professionally  in  the  cause  of  letters  was 
at  first  like  meeting  a  busy  politician  with  no  time  for 
frivolous  exchange,  his  face  a  round  mask,  decorous,  un- 
revealing,  voice  cold,  manner  formidable.  But,  which  was 
engaging,  at  first  flicker  of  something  indiscreet,  divert- 
ing or  essential,  his  eyes,  locked  behind  the  mask,  seemed 
to  turn  a  kind  of  somersault,  and  were  green  and  alive, 
and  his  voice  took  on  timbre.  Beneath  the  politician  you 
saw  then  the  buffoon  and  the  crusader  —  buffoon  for  sake 
of  enjoyment,  but  diplomat  for  the  sake  of  a  cause.  His 
enemies  are  the  well-known  puritan  and  bourgeois,  the 
last  known  now  as  Babbitt:  "As  you  say  yourself,"  he 
writes  to  Dreiser,  "  it  is  quite  impossible  to  trust  any 
American.  Scratch  him  and  you  will  find  a  puritan."  And 
he  calls  them  names  enough,  moralists,  uplift  ers,  Peck- 
sniffians,  Comstockians,  virtuosi  of  virtue,  donkeys,  ver- 
min, degraded  swine:  "  Let  them  squeal.  We  can  stand 
the  noise  if  they  can  stand  what's  coming  to  them."  But  to 
satisfy  his  need  of  authority  the  enemy  may  be  also  the 

*  The  Man  Mencken  by  Isaac  Goldberg. 

26l 


extreme  aesthete  when  he  is  free  and  rebellious.  He  dis- 
trusts anarchical  poets;  and  beauty  where  it  is  dangerous 
to  reason ;  he  distrusts  madness.  "  Poetry  lies,"  he  has  writ- 
ten repeatedly.  For  beauty  he  resorts  to  classical  music. 
Most  of  all,  and  paradoxically,  he  distrusts  sex.  Talking 
recently  about  Dreiser  he  called  him  opprobriously  a 
"  professional  sexologist " :  "  The  importance  of  sex  is 
much  over-rated.  If  all  the  women  were  shot  at  five  today 
the  men  would  go  on  just  about  the  same."  Yet  there  was 
a  question  mark  in  the  statement  which  allowed  me  to  sug- 
gest: "  Well,  perhaps,  in  a  country  where  really  there  are 
no  women,  just  wives  and  secretaries ! "  He  had  not 
thought  of  that.  He  had  not,  it  seemed,  thought  of  women 
or  of  artists  to  the  extent  of  their  powers.  Was  it  that  he 
was  determined  to  function  as  critic  in  a  society  hostile  to 
sex  and  art,  and  so  for  years  had  drawn  arbitrary  lines  ? 

Perhaps  his  gift  of  writing  would  have  gained  in  sub- 
tlety, had  his  grandfather  never  emigrated.  To  champion 
the  cause  he  loved  was  to  fight  the  moralists,  loud  and  in- 
cessantly. His  diatribes  in  spite  of  brilliance  have  caught 
from  the  enemy  the  moral  voice  of  the  scold  and  the  elder. 
Yet  sometimes,  as  in  his  great  work  The  American  Lan- 
guage it  is  modulated  —  a  voice  of  learning  and  relish. 
And  his  letters  to  friends,  to  judge  by  those  I  have  been 
privileged  to  read,  unite  judgment  with  ribaldry,  and 
create  speech  enviable  as  a  freshet.  That  Mencken's  pub- 
lished writings  have  not  the  spontaneity  and  depth  that 
belong  to  him,  indicates  our  tragedy  —  a  background  of 
separations  and  irrelations  disjointed  almost  beyond  hope, 
even  today.  They  have  prohibited  except  in  a  few  rare 
cases  —  Whitman  and  Dreiser  sometimes  are  two  of 
them  —  the  artlessness  without  which  art  is  pompous. 

This  American  figure,  a  deliberate  instrument  of 
change  for  fifteen  years,  as  it  happened,  became  a  close 
ally  of  Dreiser's,  just  as  Arthur  Henry  had  once  been. 
Only  where  the  more  feminine  Henry  was  concerned  with 
the  intimate  task  of  his  writing  as  art,  Mencken  pro- 
claimed him  to  the  public,  and  exhorted  him  to  fight  to  be 
a  public  character.  The  spirit  of  the  day  was  with  him; 
publicity  counted  more  than  intimacy. 

Isaac  Goldberg  prints  in  his  Mencken  biography  Drei- 
262 


ser's  earliest  impression  of  him.  In  the  summer  of  1908 
Mencken  had  come  to  the  office  of  The  Delineator  about 
some  articles  on  the  care  of  children  he  had  written  with 
a  Dr.  Hirschberg  of  Baltimore : 

"...  a  taut,  ruddy,  blue-eyed,  snub-nosed  youth  .  .  . 
yellow  shoes  and  bright  tie  ...  enormously  intriguing  and 
amusing  .  .  .  reminding  me  of  nothing  so  much  as  a  rich 
brewer's  son.  .  .  .  With  the  sang-froid  of  a  Caesar  or  a 
Napoleon  he  made  himself  comfortable  in  an  almost  arch- 
episcopal  chair,  designed  ...  to  reduce  the  over  confi- 
dence of  the  average  beginner.  .  .  .  From  that  .  .  .  unin- 
tended vantage  point  he  beamed  on  me  with  the  confidence 
of  a  smirking  fox  about  to  devour  a  chicken.  So  I  was  the 
editor  of  the  Butterick  publications.  *  He  had  been  told 
about  me/  " 

What  he  had  been  told  was  especially  the  fact  of  Sister 
Carrie,  which  his  friend,  George  Bronson  Howard,  had 
given  him  to  read  in  Baltimore  in  1902,  when  they  were 
both  in  their  early  twenties.  He  had  treasured  it  ever 
since,  and  laughed  to  find  its  author  editor  of  The  De- 
lineator. Dreiser  perhaps  on  the  defensive  laughed  back : 
"  '  Well,  well,'  I  said,  '  if  it  isn't  Anheuser's  own  brightest 
boy  out  to  see  the  town.'  "  Having  thus  in  true  American 
fashion  exchanged  insults,  they  could  proceed  at  once  to 
being  friends,  forgetting  the  original  purpose  of  the  visit 
in  a  riotous  exchange  of  ideas  and  prejudices.  (Mark 
Twain  describes  these  required  preliminaries  exquisitely 
in  Tom  Sawyer;  Tom  and  a  new  village  boy  must  first 
knock  each  other  down  before  there  can  be  friendship.) 
"  From  then  on,"  Dreiser  says,  "  I  counted  him  among 
them  whom  I  most  prize  ...  he  visited  me  in  New 
York  and  I  in  turn,  repaired  to  Baltimore.  We  multiplied 
noisy  and  roystering  parties.  .  .  ."  Some  months  later  he 
recommended  him  to  Fred  Splint,  a  new  editor  of  Smart 
Set,  previously  one  of  his  sub-editors,  who  had  come  to 
ask  for  advice  as  to  policy  and  style.  Dreiser  suggested 
that  "  as  intriguing  as  anything  else  would  be  a  book  de- 
partment, with  a  really  brilliant  and  illuminating  re- 
viewer "  —  in  fact,  Mencken.  So  in  a  sense  was  launched 
a  critic  who  for  many  years  would  be  dominant  in  form- 
ing American  opinion. 

Although  Mencken  likes  to  disown  it,  being  today 

263 


estranged  from  Dreiser,  at  this  period  he  worked  like 
the  trainer  of  a  champion  for  him.  Jennie  Gerhardt  had 
convinced  him.  Dreiser  had  sent  it  to  him  a  month  or  two 
before  it  was  published,  as  also  he  had  sent  it  to  other 
friends  for  their  expert  judgments,  perhaps  not  wishing 
to  run  the  risk  again  of  suppression.  He  had  had  various 
advices.  He  sent  it  to  his  wife,  who  gave  amusing  advice : 
"  .  .  .  I  also  cut  several  dozen  '  Jennie  was  charming,' 
and  '  Lester  was  a  big  man  in  his  way.'  You  won't  mind 
if  I  laugh  a  little,  will  you?  The  book  is  so  much  bigger 
than  these  little  things.  ..."  A  Delineator  contribu- 
tor, Vera  Simonson,  who  gave  illustrated  lectures  on 
Africa,  "  never  knew  that  men  made  such  sudden  bold 
proposals  to  women."  However  she  resigns  herself:  "  I 
had  rather  the  theme  would  have  been  a  more  pleasant 
one,  but  life  of  today  breathes  sex.  We've  got  to  accept 
the  truth.  .  .  .  "  C.  B.  Decamp  wants  him  to  dispense 
with  the  funeral  scene;  it  is  too  "  gloomy."  James  Hune- 
ker  calls  it  "  a  big  book  eloquent  in  its  humanity  " ;  it 
made  him  "  happy  because  it  attempted  to  prove  noth- 
ing." But  his  style  is  still  too  "literary";  his  "fashion- 
able women  are  not  well  realized  " ;  and  he  begs  him 
to  cut  out  the  epilogue  that  follows  his  "  superb  ending 
on  what  musicians  would  call  a  suspended  harmony  " : 
"  I  take  off  my  hat  to  you,  Theodore  Dreiser !  That 
funeral  scene  and  the  last  few  paragraphs  .  .  .  are 
those  of  a  master.  Don't  spoil  [it]  for  the  sake  of  mor- 
alizing." This  last  advice  Dreiser  took.  These  and  other 
varying  advices  are  almost  antiques,  even  the  astute  ver- 
dict of  Huneker,  in  their  leisure  and  seriousness.  Today 
there  is  such  haste  to  publish  that  I  doubt  if  even  the 
publisher,  and  rarely  the  writer,  has  time  to  read  each 
word  of  the  book  before  it  is  executed  in  print. 

So  these  different  friends  had  their  reservations,  but 
Mencken,  except  for  noting  a  few  technical  errors,  had 
none.  He  writes : 

"...  it  is  probable  that  more  than  one  reviewer  will  object 
to  its  length  .  .  .  detail  .  .  .  painstaking  —  but  rest  as- 
sured that  Heinrich  Ludwig  von  Mencken  will  not  be  in  the 
gang.  ...  I  get  a  powerful  effect  of  reality,  stark  and 
unashamed.  It  is  drab  and  gloomy  but  so  is  the  struggle 
264 


for  existence.  It  is  without  humor  but  so  are  the  jests  of 

that  great  comedian  who  shoots  at  our  heels  and  makes  us 

do  our  grotesque  dancing. 

...  If  anyone  urges  you  to  cut  down  the  book  bid  that 

one  be  damned.  And  if  anyone  urges  that  it  is  over-gloomy 

call  the  police.  ...  It  is  at  once  an  accurate  picture  of  life 

and  a  searching  criticism  of  life  .  .  .  my  definition  of  a 

good  novel. 

.  .  .  David  Phillips  might  have  done  such  a  good  story, 

had  he  lived,  but  his  best  .  .  .  The  Hungry  Heart,  goes  to 

pieces  beside  '  Jennie/  " 

Mencken  was  right;  Phillips  never  equaled  Dreiser 
in  calibre,  nor  perhaps  could  have.  He  was  a  hope  be- 
cause he  talked  candidly  of  sex,  a  virtue  in  itself  twenty 
years  ago  to  the  impatient  few  like  Mencken.  But  his 
romantic  heroines,  who  had  to  be  rewarded,  blinded  him 
to  irony.  When  Sinclair  Lewis  appeared  ten  years  later, 
he  suffered  from  the  same  bias,  though  with  him  it  was 
he,  Lewis,  for  whom  life  must  somehow  be  agreeable,  if 
not  in  Minnesota,  then  in  England  perhaps  or  in  Italy. 
The  result,  though  not  exactly  romantic,  is  not  irony 
in  the  grave  sense  of  the  word;  it  is  sarcasm.  What 
Mencken  felt  in  Dreiser,  underlying  the  unmoral  tone, 
was  what  Cezanne  has  called  the  dark  line  —  and 
Mencken,  too,  by  coincidence  *  — the  line  of  doom  which 
can  relate  the  merest  lyric  or  brush  mark,  or  can  relate 
diffuseness  like  Dreiser's  to  inevitable  equations.  For 
Mencken  he  "  stems  directly  .  .  .  not  from  Zola,  Flau- 
bert .  .  .  but  from  the  Greeks.  ...  A  motto  to  his 
books  .  .  .  might  be :  *  Oh  ye  deathward  going  tribes  of 
men,  what  do  your  lives  mean  except  that  they  go  to  noth- 
ingness.' "  In  Jennie  Gerhardt  he  finds  "  a  primitive  and 
touching  poetry."  In  fact,  perhaps  he  comes  about  as  near 
to  poetry  as  he  permits  himself  to  travel  when  he  grazes 
this  dark  line  in  Dreiser,  which,  he  says,  reveals  "  the 
life  of  man,  not  as  a  simple  theorem  in  Calvinism,  but 
as  a  vast  adventure,  an  enchantment,  a  mystery."  This 
fellow  German-American  excited  Mencken's  emotions. 
For  him  as  for  Conrad  and  Nietzsche,  he  abandoned  pru- 
dence. He  suggested  him  in  terms  of  his  favorite  ances- 
tral art  —  music:  "  After  the  Fifth  Symphony  or  any  of 

*  A  Book  of  Prefaces:  H.  L.  Mencken. 

265 


the  Nine  ...  it  is  not  easy  to  listen  to  a  Chopin  noc- 
turne, and  after  Mr.  Dreiser's  story,  by  the  same  token, 
you  will  not  find  it  easy  to  read  the  common  novels  of  the 
month."  So  started  an  allegiance  of  one  mind  to  another 
which  it  would  take  some  years  to  defeat. 


266 


A  Traveler  at  Forty: 
"  I  accept  now  no  creeds.  I  do  not  know 
what  truth  is,  what  beauty  is,  what  love  is, 
what  hope  is."  DREISER 


JS  reiser  is  not  a  modern  but  a  belated  Vic- 
torian "  was  the  idea  of  an  English  reviewer  of  1911, 
thus  varying  the  verdict  of  that  day.  u  No  doubt,"  he  adds 
"  this  is  due  to  his  nationality  ...  he  is  dealing  with  a 
society  that  is  at  least  thirty  years  behind  Europe."  It  hap- 
pens that  once  I  heard  him  say  the  same  thing  of  himself 
throwing  the  emphasis  differently,  and  in  company  with 
an  idea  startling  enough  to  stay  with  me.  It  was  late 
afternoon  some  time  in  1918  on  a  walk  along  the  Hudson. 
The  sun  was  over-brimming  the  river  with  light  as  it 
might  have  done  for  the  first  Hollanders  on  the  after- 
noon of  their  invasion.  The  Hudson  had  the  look  it 
knows  how  to  wear  of  being  a  gateway  to  new  amazing 
victories.  Dreiser  in  the  face  of  it  said  dryly:  "  This  turn 
of  the  century  —  you  know  I  believe  it's  the  end  of  some- 
thing not  the  beginning  of  anything." 

It  seemed  to  me  perverse  of  him  or  old-fashioned. 
Wasn't  it  after  all  a  period  of  ferment  in  our  culture, 
a  birth  of  new  elements,  a  revival  of  old?  For  four 
years  the  war  had  thrown  talented  Europeans  our  way 
who  preferred  not  to  fight,  or  were  sent  on  missions. 
New  York  shimmered  with  different  and  eager  eyes. 
There  was  as  yet  no  prohibition  to  flatten  and  dull  our 
features  beyond  recognition.  The  war  was  a  ghastly  but 
exciting  fact  across  the  seas,  in  the  face  of  which  it  was 
dangerous  but  daring  to  maintain  an  unbiased  intellect. 
The  daring  counted.  People  cared.  The  war  was  a  heart- 
rending nightmare,  but  to  one  like  myself  not  visited  by 

267 


personal  deaths,  it  did  not  seem  like  a  catastrophe  that 
would  mean  unhealing  wounds  for  years  to  come,  it  might 
be  for  the  rest  of  any  of  our  lives.  Instead  perhaps  the 
war  would  be  more  like  a  storm,  which  when  spent  would 
bring  brighter  skies.  The  anemic  Christian  formula  for 
one  thing  might  be  going  out  in  death,  leaving  survivors 
with  a  degree  of  actinic  life  not  acknowledged  in  ages.  I 
said  something  of  this  to  Dreiser,  naming  new  American 
poets  and  new  enterprises,  live  forms  and  live  ideas  of 
our  own  —  a  revival  in  which  certainly  he  was  a  factor. 
And  in  France  modern  art  played  like  a  fountain,  like 
fireworks  for  the  dead  from  the  living  —  "  Ancient  pre- 
Christian  principles  and  new  shapes !  "  I  said. 

"  Well,  perhaps,  but  I  don't  see  it  that  way  "  was  his 
answer.  "  Whatever  we  have  came  out  of  the  last  century, 
and  it's  about  over.  We're  the  tag-end  of  it,  the  grand 
finale.  Look  at  it  any  way  you  like,  who  are  the  new  giants 
in  art  or  science  or  philosophy?  Rodin,  Anatole  France, 
Einstein,  Freud  —  the  end  of  a  long  line  of  giants,  not 
the  beginning.  And  who  else?  "  —  More  glib  in  art  than 
in  science  I  gave  a  list,  Matisse,  Picasso,  Cocteau,  Stra- 
vinsky, Satie,  Brancusi,  Diaghileff,  and  a  number  of 
others  were  high-geared,  and  they  were  moderns.  Life 
would  be  newer  and  more  brilliant  because  of  them.  — 
"  Well,  if  they're  any  good,"  was  his  rejoinder,  "  they 
belong  to  the  past.  What's  more  I  believe  the  big  radicals 
came  too  soon  for  their  time.  We're  in  for  a  reaction.  A 
few  more  years  and  an  idea  outside  of  business  won't  get 
a  show  anywhere." 

So  much  for  this  belated  Victorian,  who  in  1911  went 
to  Europe  for  the  first  time.  Today  the  fact  of  his  going 
brings  to  mind  our  conversation  of  five  years  later,  and 
is  evidence  on  his  side  of  the  argument.  In  1911  for  this 
self-made  intellectual  to  go  to  Europe  for  the  first  time 
was  as  distinct  an  event  in  his  life  as  for  Columbus  to  sail 
to  America  or  Lindbergh  to  fly  to  Paris.  Today  it  might 
be  an  event  for  a  European  to  cross  to  the  United  States 
to  study  for  himself  our  contagious  code  of  money-making 
as  the  sole  index  of  power.  Or  an  event  for  any  philoso- 
pher to  visit  Soviet  Russia  and  study  its  proposed  tyranny 
of  brotherly  love.  But  it  is  not  any  more  a  like  event  for 
268 


an  American  of  like  calibre  to  go  to  Europe.  Twenty 
years  have  made  that  difference.  An  intellectual  epoch  has 
ended.  It  is  doubtful  that  another  has  begun.  Today  an 
American  writes  or  paints  as  a  matter  of  course  from 
Paris.  Unknown  to  the  French  it  is  his  aesthetic  suburb, 
where  he  can  live  in  what  is  left  of  the  demoded  modern- 
ism of  the  past.  Twenty  years  ago  Europe  was  the  fron- 
tier and  the  background  of  thought,  without  knowledge 
of  which  a  man  remained  the  boob  that  an  American  was 
supposed  to  be  and  still  may  be  for  aught  I  know.  Today 
the  new  epoch  is  dropping  Europe  from  curriculums  as 
the  old  dropped  Latin  and  Greek. 

Dreiser  owed  his  adventure  to  an  English  friend  and 
would-be  publisher,  Grant  Richards.  After  Heinemann's 
success  with  Sister  Carrie  and  Norris's  praise  he  had 
sought  him  out  in  New  York.  "  I  knew  no  American 
whose  friendship  I  enjoyed  more  .  .  .  for  the  five  years 
it  lasted,"  Richards  said.  Perhaps  it  delighted  him  to 
know  a  prodigy  from  the  people  scorned  by  our  polite 
society,  which  in  turn  used  to  be  scorned  by  Englishmen 
as  a  mere  imitation  of  their  own.  Anyway  the  English 
have  never  stopped  discovering  America,  while  we  have 
chiefly  discovered  other  things,  not  often  ourselves. 
Dreiser  wrote  of  Richards :  "  I  have  always  liked  him. 
.  .  .  He  wears  a  monocle  in  his  right  eye  and  I  like  him 
for  that.  .  .  ."  One  morning  in  the  month  of  the  debut 
of  Jennie  Gerhardt,  this  personage  appeared  for  break- 
fast, and  proposed  England,  the  Riviera,  Rome  and 
Paris,  and  a  book  of  notes  to  be  published  on  his  return. 
Dreiser's  answer  was,  "  If  it  can  be  arranged."  Richards 
arranged  it  with  an  advance  on  the  travel  book  from  the 
Century  Company.  With  Mencken  at  home  as  it  happened 
as  a  willing  custodian  to  send  him  clippings  and  proclaim 
him  to  his  public,  with  the  urbane  Richards  to  tell  him 
what  to  wear,  where  to  tip  and  what  and  whom  to  see,  in 
November  1911  the  author  of  Carrie  and  Jennie  set  sail 
for  the  headquarters  of  western  imagination  —  Europe. 

To  Baldwin  Macy,  interviewing  for  the  Chicago  Eve- 
ning Post,  he  gave  his  reasons  for  going.  He  wanted  to 
know  the  cities  where  the  Financier,  the  hero  of  his  next 
novel,  a  trilogy,  would  be  going.  And  then  he  had  an  idea 

269 


about  America  as  the  coming  world-power,  and  yet  he 
had  his  doubts.  He  was  going  to  see  for  himself  "how 
we  rank  in  our  chances  for  the  future  among  the  rest  of 
the  nations."  Here  he  was  in  truth  at  forty  a  belated 
titan,  inquirer  more  than  cynic,  and  a  true  American  — 
world-power  a  personal  dream.  He  writes  of  himself  at 
this  moment:  "  I  accept  now  no  creeds.  I  do  not  know 
what  truth  is,  what  beauty  is,  what  love  is,  what  hope  is." 
And  yet  he  sailed  to  observe  and  discover  Europe.  He 
sailed  looking  for  creeds,  truth,  beauty,  love  and  hope. 
He  belonged  with  the  giants  of  the  past  who  were  one 
after  another  arriving  after  long  travail  at  the  same  im- 
passe :  in  a  hypothetical  universe  there  can  be  no  ultimate 
answer.  But  he  had  not  joined  with  immediate  posterity 
which  was  soon  to  say:  "  Then  why  bother  to  ask  any 
questions?"  He  sailed  to  Europe  looking  for  questions 
and  answers. 

And  then  besides  he  sailed  for  fun:  ".  .  .  a  host  of 
gulls  —  an  air  of  delicious  adventure  ...  at  the  foot 
of  Thirteenth  Street.  Did  ever  a  boy  thrill  over  a  ship  as 
I  over  this  monster  of  the  seas?  "  There  were  two  ac- 
tresses, friends  of  Richards,  who  gave  them  their  per- 
fumed time;  one  sang  coon  songs  with  him;  there  were 
the  machinery  and  the  stokers  of  the  Mauretania  por- 
tentous to  him;  and  in  the  nocturnal  "  all's  well  "  from 
the  crow's  nest  "  an  echo  of  old  journeys  and  old  seas 
when  life  was  not  safe  " ;  and  when  they  landed  in  Fish- 
guard,  gulls  again,  "  their  little  feet  coral  red,  their  beaks 
jade  grey,  their  bodies  snowy  white  or  sober  grey,  wheel- 
ing and  crying  —  *  My  heart  remembers  how.'  "  He  was 
a  traveler  at  forty  hard  to  define  —  a  cold  realist,  a 
somber  mystic,  or  at  times  as  high-keyed  as  a  nigger  with 
a  watermelon  or  a  diamond  or  a  bar  of  jazz.* 

Grant  Richards  was  in  his  way  quite  as  belated.  He 
liked  to  believe  in  genius  as  well  as  money.  In  an  inter- 
view I  asked  him  how  he  had  come  to  take  Dreiser  to 
Europe :  "  I  liked  him,  I  suppose,  and  valued  him.  He 
was  an  American  who  would  be  remembered  after  his 
death.  Why  not  give  him  a  chance  while  he  was  living.  I 
knew  that  friends  of  mine  would  be  interested  to  meet 

*  A  Traveler  at  Forty. 
270 


him."  —  "  And  you  didn't  think  of  him  as  socially  crude 
or  inexperienced  the  way  New  Yorkers  did?  "  I  was  im- 
pelled to  ask  in  pursuit  of  one  of  the  themes  this  book  was 
bringing  me.  —  "Why  should  I?"  he  answered  with 
logical  surprise.  "  A  man  is  interesting  or  he  isn't.  Dreiser 
was  delightful,  a  great  man,  an  original." 

So  here  he  was  admitted,  not  excluded,  for  the  first 
time,  where  he  imagined  he  belonged,  among  people  who 
valued  social  relations.  Here  from  November  until  April 
he  would  be  enjoying  life,  making  notes  with  the  lust  pe- 
culiar to  him,  untroubled,  perhaps  stimulated,  by  the 
thought  of  the  thousands  who  had  been  over  the  ground 
before  him.  Whether  it  was  an  English  drawing  room  or 
village  or  prostitute,  a  painting  by  Degas  or  Picasso,  a 
cathedral,  the  casino  at  Monte  Carlo,  a  cafe,  a  castle, 
the  pope,  a  cocotte,  a  new  friend  or  ancient  background, 
he  sought  to  define  it  as  he  did  Niagara  Falls  —  a  pris- 
tine experience.  It  is  a  time  to  leave  him  pondering  the 
distinctions  between  European  nations,  and  between  all 
of  Europe  and  America,  to  review  the  literary  scene  into 
which  he  had  entered  as  a  wedge  signifying  change. 


271 


"  He  proposed  the  religion  of  World's 
Fairs.  The  chaos  of  education  approached 
a  dream"  HENRY  ADAMS 

V  V  hat  were  some  of  the  other  symptoms 
of  change  and  birth?  Chief  among  them  was  the  fact 
that  education  was  coming  to  an  exotic  crisis,  the  germs 
of  which  dated  back  some  years  and  figure  in  previous 
pages  of  this  book.  "  Be  native  "  was  beginning  to  be 
written  in  people's  minds,  but  "  be  native  exotically  " 
was  a  concurrent  demand.  Now  that  that  fondling,  par- 
entage undefined,  the  American  language,  had  surely 
drifted  out  of  the  streets  and  offices  and  railways  and 
riverways  and  music  halls  into  its  own  idiom,  own  ca- 
dences, diction  and  spelling;  now  that  a  number  of  writers 
from  Whitman  to  Dreiser  were  lending  the  creature  their 
names;  and  that  Mencken  and  others  would  soon  grow 
learned  over  it;  this  young  language  turned  about  im- 
patiently. Used  now  to  convey  what  culture  we  had,  our 
speech  grew  suddenly  conscious  of  our  lack  of  literate 
and  aesthetic  experience.  At  last  a  real  minority,  more 
than  a  handful,  became  dissatisfied.  We  looked  jealously 
toward  Europe  again,  and  Europe  met  us  with  exports, 
especially  if  we  would  pay  for  them. 

But  now  the  escape  was  no  longer  to  England  or  Ger- 
many or  Scandinavia.  Matthew  Arnold  and  Pater  and 
Swinburne  were  scrapped.  Opinion  turned  away  from 
Ibsen;  too  moral  and  fog-bound.  And  away  from  Wag- 
ner; too  heavy  and  Teutonic.  Everything  a-Nordic  was 
coming  into  fashion,  Gaelic,  Iberian,  Latin,  Gallic,  and 
Slavic.  And  French  culture  was  forwarding  applicants 
to  the  near  and  far  East,  Africa  and  South  America, 
especially  to  the  art  of  primitive  peoples,  even  back  to 
272 


American  Redskins.  What  Kipling  had  called  heathen 
was  growing  sacred  now.  So  while  the  business  man  ad- 
vanced creating  our  relentless  destiny,  the  intelligentsia 
was  undergoing  a  foreign  transfusion.  As  many  races  con- 
tributed to  our  culture  as  to  our  population.  People's 
minds  got  dressed  in  these  importations.  They  wore  them 
like  charms  and  amulets  as  if  to  be  cured  forever  of  their 
past.  A  violent  phase  began  of  that  difficulty  from  which 
we  have  suffered  —  our  sense  of  inferiority  contradicting 
our  independence.  Costumes  kept  arriving  at  our  ports, 
causing  countless  costume  parties.  Were  they  ever  grafted 
into  our  habits  of  living,  and  become  more  than  mental 
trinkets?  Henry  Adams  asked  himself  this  question, 
when  he  visited  the  Chicago  World's  Fair  of  1893: 
"  Was  it  real  or  only  apparent?  One's  personal  universe 
hung  on  the  answer  ...  if  the  rupture  was  real  and  the 
new  American  world  could  take  this  sharp  and  conscious 
twist.  .  .  ."  But  his  friends  who  made  the  Fair,  Hunt  and 
Richardson,  La  Farge  and  St.  Gaudens,  Burnham, 
McKim  and  Stanford  White  "  talked  as  though  they 
worked  only  for  themselves,  as  though  art  to  the  western 
people  was  a  stage  decoration;  a  diamond  shirt-stud;  a 
paper  collar."  Today  it  is  as  difficult  to  know  if  it  is  real; 
though  easy  to  say,  "  Not  yet  perceptibly,  but  perhaps." 

There  would  at  least  be  one  profit  to  this  fever  to  be 
foreign  —  the  country's  treasures  from  all  over  the 
earth,  stored  in  private  and  public  collections.  The  in- 
dustrial billionaire  was  doing  his  contradictory  part  to 
perpetuate  the  memory  of  civilizations  he  was  busy  de- 
stroying. Foreigners  coming  with  their  wares  to  a  mar- 
ket not  yet  closed  to  them  were  lending  us  vitality.  Na- 
tives were  giving  their  strength  in  behalf  of  old  splendors 
and  of  new  ones  soon  to  be  old.  What  dividends  have 
come  of  this,  or  will  come,  let  other  accountants  compute. 

Although  it  was  as  much  his  idea  to  define  our  own 
present  and  future  as  to  travel  elsewhere,  one  of  the  im- 
porters in  this  period  was  Henry  Adams.  The  grandson 
of  the  president  who  died  heart-broken  to  see  Washing- 
ton's paternal  program  fail,  Adams  was  educated  from 
childhood  to  feel  the  vague  failure  of  New  England  as 
the  cradle  of  a  nation.  Born  in  the  shadow  of  the  Boston 

273 


State  House  yet  he  never  felt  that  he  belonged  there,  but 
rather  with  his  grandmother  and  her  Louis  Seize  chairs 
and  1 8th  century  house  in  Quincy.  Nor  as  the  son  of 
an  ambassador  to  England,  where  he  was  for  a  time  a  iQth 
century  European,  did  he  feel  that  he  belonged  there. 
Always  he  was  in  search  of  polarization.  Finally  at 
sixty  he  made  two  books,  a  kind  of  hammock  between 
;i  Thirteenth  Century  Unity  "  and  "  Twentieth  Century 
Multiplicity."  And  it  happened  that  these  volumes  printed 
privately  in  1904  and  1905,  radiated  beyond  the  100 
friends  to  whom  he  sent  them,  and,  before  they  were 
printed  publicly,  had  turned  a  sensitive  minority  into  being 
world-wise.  They  gave  Americans,  if  they  cared  to  take  it, 
at  last  a  related  point  of  view: 

".  .  .  as  the  unit  by  which  to  measure  motion  down  to 
his  own  time,  without  assuming  anything  as  true  or  untrue 
except  relation  .  .  .  [Adams]  began  a  volume  which  he 
mentally  knew  as  Saint-Michel  and  Chartres.  .  .  .  From 
that  point  he  proposed  to  fix  a  position  for  himself  which 
he  could  label  The  Education  of  Henry  Adams.  .  .  .  With 
the  help  of  these  two  points  of  relation  he  hoped  to  project 
his  lines  forward  and  backward  indefinitely,  subject  to  cor- 
rection from  anyone  who  should  know  better." 

Had  his  readers  followed  him  forward  they  would 
have  found  close  predictions  as  to  the  war  of  1914,  the 
crash  of  1929,  and  the  "  new  social  mind  of  today."  But 
rather  than  an  appetite  for  the  future  presided  over  by 
the  machine,  whose  headquarters  would  be  the  United 
States,  they  caught  from  him  a  nostalgia  for  the  past 
presided  over  by  the  Virgin,  identified  with  Venus,  whose 
headquarters  were  France.  He  gave  the  gist  of  Catholic 
Mediterranean  Europe,  whose  centuries  had  perpetuated 
the  gist  of  Pagan  Antiquity  in  a  threefold  Latin  Culture 
—  the  Virgin  behind  screen  of  chastity  secretly  inspiring 
the  rites  of  ancient  goddesses.  And  this  he  gave  in  terms 
of  America,  and  America  in  terms  of  Europe. 

Then  there  was  another  pagan  yeast,  likewise  presided 
over  by  the  Virgin.  It  came  from  the  south  of  Ireland, 
brought  by  Yeats  and  Lady  Gregory  and  the  players  of 
the  Abbey  Theatre.  They  assisted  at  a  miracle  of  birth 
here.  They  gave  an  impulse  to  a  choral  of  poets  who  com- 
bined like  birds  in  the  early  morning  to  startle  a  people 
274 


who  thought  that  poetry  had  been  dropped  in  favor  of 
the  machine  forever.  Celtic  wit  had  long  run  in  our  blood 
and  exploded  in  laughter;  it  made  part  of  limber,  racy, 
coarse  American.  But  Gaelic  music  and  imagery  had  been 
left  behind  or  confiscated  when  the  emigrant  landed.  Now 
spoken  by  Yeats  and  these  players  in  1911,  if  they  did  not 
enter  our  common  speech,  the  germ  of  them  operated 
esoterically  in  the  birth  of  poetry  about  to  occur.  Yeats 
said  that  a  poem  was  "  passionate  speech/'  not  a  literary 
ornament;  poetry  was  idiom  violent  with  emotion;  "  the 
muses  love  violence." 

In  this  year  1911  the  hopeful  and  somewhat  fragile 
Harriet  Monroe  went  unashamed  from  door  to  door  of 
bankers  and  packers  and  public-utility  magnates,  para- 
phrasing the  words  of  Yeats.  Poetry,  she  told  them,  was 
as  real  and  vital  a  force  as  industry;  Chicago  was  as  in- 
stinct with  poets  as  any  other  city,  if  only  there  might  be 
the  money  to  buy  their  wares.  Perhaps  they  did  not  be- 
lieve her,  though  some  of  them  wrote  verse  secretly.  But 
flattered  to  see  Chicago  in  this  new  light,  flattered  to  be 
valued  instead  of  sneered  by  a  high-brow,  they  gave  her 
a  little  of  their  money  and  then,  I  suppose,  turned  to  their 
next  deal,  and  then  a  highball  and  a  blonde  at  the  College 
Inn,  perchance.  The  Poetry  Magazine  printed  its  first 
number  in  November  1912. 

I  think  Miss  Monroe  was  as  brave  as  Joan  of  Arc  and 
almost  as  successful.  Poets  sprang  into  action  over  night, 
natives,  exiles  and  strangers.  The  Chicago  post  office  be- 
came a  station  through  which  traveled  the  verse  of  many 
peoples.  Hindoo  and  Chinese  appeared  translated  in  her 
pages,  deepening  the  sense  of  Eastern  forms  which  years 
before  Lafcadio  Hearn  and  Yoni  Noguchi  had  proposed 
to  us.  The  lowan  Ezra  Pound,  self-deported  to  London, 
was  foreign  editor,  sending  her  paraphrases  from  the 
Chinese,  old  French  and  Italian,  and  with  them  much 
scornful  advice  as  to  how  to  wake  Americans  up  from 
their  long  provincial  sleep.  When  she  sometimes  returned 
them  to  him  as  insulting  to  the  noble  bankers  who  had 
listened  to  her  prayer,  he  dissented,  and  from  across  the 
sea  launched  an  independent  aggressive  campaign;  as 
indignant  a  critic  as  Mencken  and  a  hundred  times  more 

275 


exacting.  He  did  his  best  to  ram  up-to-date  culture  down 
domestic  throats  and  even  introduced  modernism  into 
England.  Yeats  admits  to  revising  his  poems,  making 
them  less  "  poetic  "  at  Pound's  suggestion.  The  great 
Bostonian,  Amy  Lowell,  untiring  prosodist,  connoisseur 
and  salesman,  joined  both  camps  and  spread  the  propa- 
ganda of  free  verse  and  imagism  on  the  French  plan 
and  the  Japanese.  Transfusion  flourished  in  the  art  of 
verse.  Under  its  sway  two  overlapping  methods  emerged, 
one  free  and  native,  informal  and  tough  like  American 
life;  the  other  precious,  even  snobbish,  bent  on  refining 
the  technique  of  verse,  however  alien  to  our  shiftless  talk 
and  manners.  And  true  to  native  precedent  new  chasms 
appeared  to  separate  these  new  poets. 

There  were  other  importers.  Alfred  Stieglitz,  a  Jew 
born  in  New  Jersey,  with  the  fervor  of  his  race  for  re- 
ligion and  propaganda  had  a  dream  of  converting  New 
York,  perhaps  the  whole  country  to  Art.  He  believed 
apparently  that  if  he  could  effect  a  mystic  union  between 
Art  and  the  Camera,  then  Art  would  get  a  passport 
into  the  machine  age.  He  brought  to  this  faith  a  mastery 
of  the  camera  and  a  flair  for  the  work  of  the  great  mod- 
erns in  Europe  at  a  time  when  few  other  Americans  had 
the  eye  to  see  them.  In  1905  with  Edward  Steichen  he 
established  a  gallery  at  291  Fifth  Avenue,  Photo-Seces- 
sion, and  a  journal  called  Camera  Work.  "  291  "  came  to 
be  thought  of  as  a  temple,  and  Stieglitz  a  high  priest,  a 
god,  just  as  later  Georgia  O'Keefe,  his  favorite  painter, 
became  a  goddess,  to  some  of  the  devotees.  One  of  them, 
Waldo  Frank,  composed  a  rhapsody  to  291 :  * 

"  291  is  a  religious  fact  ...  an  altar  where  ...  no  lie 
or  compromise  could  live.  .  .  .  New  York  was  a  lying  and 
destroying  storm;  291  was  a  candle  that  did  not  go  out, 
since  it  alone  was  truth." 

Frank  believed  too  that  291  was  a  kind  of  high-class 
factory  for  painters,  a  group  "  more  brilliant,  self- 
conscious,  hardy,  radical  than  any  on  earth,"  he  calls 
them.*  An  exaggeration  of  which  two  retrospective  ex- 
hibitions, European  and  American,  in  the  fall  of  1930 
were  proof.  But  these  same  shows  testified  to  the  exotic 

*  Our  America:  Waldo  Frank. 


virus  to  which  artists  had  succumbed  in  the  last  genera- 
tion. And  Stieglitz  was  one  of  those  to  administer  it  not 
only  to  his  own  small  sect  but  to  an  uncounted  clientele 
throughout  the  country.  Perhaps  the  infection  took  more 
crucially  among  writers  than  painters.  Carlos  Williams, 
Carl  Sandburg,  Sherwood  Anderson,  I  imagine,  would 
pay  their  tribute  to  this  brilliant  teacher  as  having  in- 
directly deepened  their  education.  He  was  a  voice  in  the 
wilderness  preceding  the  famous  Armory  exhibition,  of 
1915,  after  which  the  United  States  was  inculcated  with 
modern  art. 

First  Rodin  back  in  1905,  then  Cezanne,  VanGogh, 
Gauguin,  Matisse,  Picasso,  Bracques,  Derain,  Pascin, 
Brancusi,  Modigliani,  Leger,  Duchamps,  Picabia  —  all 
of  the  innovators,  realists  and  surrealists  —  were 
preached  by  turns  at  291.  Their  fame  spread  and  with 
it  the  fame  of  some  of  the  writers  and  musicians  who  in 
that  most  conscious  of  centers,  Paris,  were  collaborators 
with  the  painters  toward  an  art  that  would  match  the 
new  age,  and  its  fabulous  discoveries  in  science  and 
machinery.  Appolinaire,  Cocteau,  Jacob,  Cendras,  Satie, 
Stravinsky,  Milhaud,  would  as  the  years  went  on  become 
vague  terms  in  New  York. 

o 

In  1909  Gertrude  Stein,  a  Jewess  born  in  Alleghany, 
Pennsylvania,  brought  up  to  the  age  of  five  in  Paris  and 
Vienna,  and  then  in  California,  had  published  a  volume 
of  three  stories,  Three  Lives,  a  sheerly  original  work  in 
which  one  could  detect  no  foreign  influence.  At  Radcliffe 
she  had  been  a  favorite  student  of  William  James,  with 
the  wish  to  become  a  psychologist.  Her  excursions  among 
states  of  mind  carried  her  into  incursions  into  language. 
Three  Lives,  the  stories  of  three  servant  girls  in  terms  of 
their  hidden  minds,  initiated  a  method  of  writing  as  new 
and  real  as  Dreiser's  themes  were  real  and  startling. 
Later  she  became  a  part  of  the  education  of  Sherwood 
Anderson  and  later  still  of  Ernest  Hemingway  and  of  no 
one  knows  how  many  others.  She  went  with  this  small 
volume  literally  into  the  language.  Had  she  been  content 
to  stay  there  we  might  have  had  an  essential  novelist 
defining  the  conflicts  of  states  of  mind  as  revealed 
by  American  speech.  But  soon  she  followed  the  line 

277 


of  exiles  to  Paris,  where  under  the  influence  of  Picasso 
she  came  to  use  words  disassociated  from  ideas  as  if  they 
were  paint.  She  set  a  style  of  writing  exotic  to  letters, 
which  sought  to  give  the  color  and  tone  of  thought  rather 
than  the  thought  itself.  In  this  way  she  has  produced  some 
alluring  poems,  and  perhaps  has  liberated  her  own  soul. 
But  I  think  that  so  far  she  has  enslaved  the  minds  of  her 
many  disciples  in  a  blind  attempt  to  emulate  her,  and 
has  helped  to  stunt  the  growth  of  our  articulate  talent. 
In  1925  however,  toward  the  end  of  this  fruitful  era  of 
letters,  she  published  The  Making  of  Americans,  in  lan- 
guage open  to  all,  an  epic  which  ought  to  be  required  in 
courses  of  American  literature. 

In  these  years  too  translations  from  the  Russian, 
Tchekov  and  Dosteovsky,  for  example,  were  set  up  like 
altars  to  an  alien  divinity:  Tragedy.*  "  America  has  al- 
ways taken  tragedy  lightly,"  according  to  Henry  Adams. 
And  Frost  in  his  malicious  way  has  scanned  the  thought 
"  —  How  are  we  to  write  —  The  Russian  novel  in 
America  —  As  long  as  life  goes  so  unterribly?  "  Had  he 
said,  "  is  supposed  to  go,"  Dreiser  could  have  told  him  it 
was  next  to  impossible.  Soon,  as  a  bright  accompaniment 
to  sorrow,  the  Russian  ballet,  Pavlova,  Nijinsky  and  the 
Moscow  Art  Theatre  and  Opera  and  the  Habima  Players 
would  come  and  play  their  ultra  violet  rays  upon  us.  And 
American  drab  greens  and  browns  would  try  to  get  dyed, 
quite  ineptly,  with  the  spectrum  of  Southeastern  Europe. 
People  who  had  never  danced  or  noticed  tragedy  would 
buy  vermilion,  tyrian  and  turquoise  scarfs  and  flirt  with 
flexibility  and  intensity.  At  this  time  too  the  mysticism  of 
Maeterlinck,  in  the  whole  tone  scale  of  Debussy,  and  the 
musical  innovations  of  Satie,  Stravinsky,  Ravel,  Milhaud 
and  the  other  five  of  Les  Six  surprised  the  ears  of  the 
United  states. 

Then  there  was  another  seduction  nearest  home  out  of 
the  Negroes  by  the  Jews  —  ragtime,  syncopation,  and 
toward  the  end  of  the  decade,  jazz!  The  Castles  were 

*  Macmillan  published  the  translations  of  Constance  Garnett:  The 
Brothers  Karamazoff,  1912,  Crime  and  Punishment,  19145  House  of  the 
Dead.,  1915,  The  Idiot,  1913,  Possessed,  1914)  R<*™  Youth,  1916, 
White  Nights,  1918. 

278 


teaching  the  debutantes  to  dance  as  only  the  half  world 
had  danced  before.  French  dressmakers  were  teaching  the 
girls  to  dress  as  only  their  half  world  dressed  in  Paris. 
Cocktails  were  teaching  them  to  talk  and  carry  on  far 
away  from  the  sacred  institution,  Home.  "  Out  "  *  was 
suddenly  "  wonderful  "  to  all  the  young  and  some  of  the 
elders  of  this  moral  land.  Here  perhaps  would  be  the  one 
real  fusion  of  exotic  and  native.  An  intimation  of  sex 
was  finally  claiming  the  young  as  its  subjects.  On  this  one 
frivolous  plane,  intricate  technique,  grew  angular  flowers, 
not  deeply  rooted,  but  rooted,  in  American  soil  —  So- 
phistication of  shoulders,  wrists,  ankles,  buttocks,  of 
piano  and  trombones  and  nasal  song  became  a  ritual  of 
speed,  to  unconsciously  celebrate  fast  trains,  rapid  build- 
ing, fast  workers,  racing  motors  —  the  one  ritual  Euro- 
peans so  far  have  imported  from  us. 

So  all  these  bright  and  distinguished  packages  kept 
arriving  and  spoke  to  us  of  life  lived  deeply  elsewhere. 
Always  in  love  with  externals,  each  time  we  saved  the 
wrappings  and  imitated  them  as  best  we  could.  Did  we  put 
our  own  essential  content  into  them,  or  are  they  now 
empty  wrappings  ?  It  is  not  easy  to  know.  The  most  we 
can  say  is  that  these  imports  stimulated  us  and  took  us 
to  a  different  plane;  and  that  with  individual  artists  a 
new  culture  occurred. 

*  Adventures  in  a  Perambulator:  John  Carpenter. 


279 


"  /  doubt  whether  the  world  is  ever  .  .  . 
inclined  to  face  its  darker  phases  any  more 
than  it  is  capable  of  .  .  .  acknowledging 
its  most  exquisite  pleasures.  .  .  .  In  the 
main  the  vast  majority  are  comparable  to 
spindling  underbrush  or  grass.  Here  and 
there  in  this  jungle  .  .  .  are  giant  trees, 
sequoias,  banyans,  and  some  lives  are  no 
longer  comparable  to  trees.  They  soar  like 
vast  and  lonely  uplifts  of  rock,  not  only  in 
thought  but  in  action."  DREISER 


JLnto  this  changing  America,  Dreiser  came  back 
from  Europe,  not  changed  but  immeasurably  strength- 
ened, he  says.  He  had  been,  for  a  minute,  part  of  liaisons 
not  just  between  himself  and  one  other  man  or  woman  as 
at  home,  but  between  a  number  of  men  and  women  who 
joined  for  the  surprising  purpose  of  personal  exchange. 
He  felt  in  the  houses  where  Richards  had  taken  him  in 
London,  and  in  the  cafes  on  the  continent,  and  from  de- 
lightful people  he  met  on  his  way,  an  intimation  of  liaisons 
between  infinite  numbers,  intangible  and  valuable  to  life; 
not  to  be  known  to  Americans  yet  or  perhaps  ever.  And 
how  can  they  be  known  to  us  when  leaders  among  us 
appear  to  praise  above  all  loneliness,  and  have  made  a 
cult  of  silences  and  solitudes  —  a  perversion  out  of  the 
"great  open  spaces"?  So  that  perhaps  exaltation,  in- 
creases, but  wit  as  certainly  decreases.  In  Europe  Dreiser 
felt  precisely  the  values  which  Henry  James  asked  of  his 
novels  to  define  —  the  values  of  human  relations.  And 
now  he  knew  for  himself  "  the  wine-like  air,  the  net-like 
movements  .  .  .  the  dancing  lights  .  .  .  that  indescrib- 
able tension  .  .  .  sense  of  life  at  the  topmost  level  of 
nervous  strength,"  which  is  Paris.  He  had  felt  the  "  great 
280 


artistic  impulse  of  Italy "  which  had  made  "  perfect 
things,"  and  the  appetite  for  extremes  which  had  made 
murderers  like  the  Borgias  into  the  patrons  of  "  perfec- 
tion." He  felt  Germany  like  a  "  forge  or  workshop  "  and 
"its  blazing  force  or  defiance";  and  "in  England  the 
distinction  of  the  fireside,  the  family  heirloom  " ;  London 
"  more  fatalistic  and  therefore  less  hopeful  than  New 
York"  but  at  the  same  time  "not  so  hard  or  foreign." 
Neither  had  his  voracious  sensibility  missed  in  Holland 
"  that  delicate  refinement  of  soul  "  which  had  allowed 
the  Dutch  painters  canvasses  in  which  "  life  is  revealed 
static,  quiescent,  undisturbed,  innocently  gay,  naively 
beautiful." 

The  book,  A  Traveler  at  Forty,  is  like  the  Ho  osier 
Holiday  a  book  of  young  rapture  and  old  questioning  — 
the  two  most  lyric  records  Dreiser  has  made;  in  both 
cases  as  if  a  child  with  adult  brain  were  entering  the 
world  for  the  first  time.  But  toward  the  end  of  the  trip 
there  was  something  to  kill  joy:  money  gave  out.  In 
"  Madame  G's  Bar  "  they  talked  it  over,  and  their  two 
tempers,  one  suave  the  other  foreboding,  clashed. 
Richards  who  had  managed  the  finances  had  to  admit  the 
money  was  gone.  "  But,"  he  said,  "  why  not  stay  in 
England  and  write  this  summer  and  draw  on  your  future." 
"  No,"  was  the  realist's  answer,  "  I've  got  to  buckle 
down  to  work  at  once  at  anything  that  will  make  me 
ready  money  " ;  best  "  to  drop  the  writing  end  .  .  .  and 
return  to  the  editorial  desk."  —  "  '  Really,'  [Richards] 
said  with  a  grand  air.  '  You  discourage  me.  .  .  .  Here 
you  are  a  man  of  forty.  .  .  .  Your  work  is  all  indicated 
and  before  you.  Public  faith  such  as  my  own  should  have 
some  weight  with  you  and  yet  after  a  tour  of  Europe, 
such  as  you  would  not  reasonably  have  contemplated  a 
year  ago,  you  sink  down  supinely  and  talk  of  quitting. 
Truly  it  is  too  much.  .  .  .  You  must  cultivate  some  in- 
tellectual stability  around  which  your  emotions  can  center 
and  settle  to  anchor.'  "  * 

Much  seemed  to  have  happened  in  this  Hoosier's  mind 
while  he  sat  with  the  Londoner  in  Madame  G's  Bar. 
For  one  thing  he  thought  of  New  York  —  "  The  subway 

:       *  A  Traveler  at  Forty. 

281 


like  my  library  table  —  it  is  so  much  of  an  intimate. 
Broadway  .  .  .  the  one  idling  show  place.  .  .  .  The 
pull  of  the  city  overseas  was  on  me  —  and  that  in  the 
spring  I  I  wanted  to  go  home.  .  .  .  All  in  all  the  Atlantic 
metropolis  [was]  the  first  city  in  the  world  to  me  ... 
richer  and  freer  in  its  spirit  than  London  or  Paris,  though 
so  often  more  gauche,  more  tawdry,  more  shamblingly 
inexperienced.  ...  It  was  definitely  settled  at  this  con- 
ference that  ...  I  was  to  take  a  boat  sailing  from 
Dover  about  the  middle  of  April.  .  .  .  This  agreed,  we 
returned  to  our  pleasures  and  spent  three  or  four  very 
delightful  days  together." 

"  When  the  day  came  to  sail  I  was  really  glad  to  be 
going  home,  although  on  the  way  I  had  quarreled  so  much 
with  my  land  for  the  things  which  it  lacks  and  Europe  ap- 
parently has. 

Our  boasted  democracy  has  resulted  in  little  more  than 
the  privilege  every  .  .  .  American  has  of  being  rude  and 
brutal  to  every  other.  Our  early  revolt  against  sham  civility 
has,  in  so  far  as  I  can  see,  resulted  in  nothing  save  the 
abolition  of  all  civility.  .  .  .  Life,  I  am  sure,  will  shame 
us  out  of  it  eventually." 

So  the  American  went  home  where  one  had  to  be  more 
gauche,  more  shamblingly  inexperienced  than  in  Lon- 
don or  Paris,  or  be  different.  Though  never  shambling, 
he  belonged  there,  perhaps,  and  not  with  Richards 
of  the  monocle.  Now,  in  the  way  of  genius  of  whatever 
birth,  resenting  criticism,  he  deserted  the  critic,  and  used 
the  criticism.  Once  home,  with  an  advance  from  Harper's 
of  $1000  to  get  there,  he  did  not  go  back  to  editing,  but 
went  to  work  to  finish  The  Financier.  But  he  compromised 
this  much  to  "  ready  money."  He  let  it  go  at  the  cost  of 
style  and  brevity  to  please  his  publishers.  Mr.  Duneka 
writes  him : 

"  I  have  just  finished  re-reading  The  Financier.  I  was 
really  shaken  by  it.  It  does  not  seem  possible  for  you  to 
keep  up  the  sense  of  power  the  book  gives  one.  I  am  trem- 
bling for  the  rest  of  it.  Not  that  I  doubt  you,  but  because  of 
the  greatness  of  it  all.  The  book  promises  to  be  unhumanly 
big." 

Then  in  the  way  of  publishers  he  stopped  trembling  to 

say: 

282 


"  We  are  very  keen  to  publish  The  Financier  in  August  if 
that  is  humanly  possible.  It  would  stand  a  much  better 
chance  to  get  a  running  start  of  the  other  fall  books.  This 
is  important." 

Dreiser  got  back  in  April;  the  book  was  published  under 
pressure  in  October. 

And  he  worked  for  money  in  other  ways.  He  coached 
Harper's  as  to  how  to  advertise,  and  they  made  use  of  his 

Suite  modern  suggestions.  He  had  not  boosted  circulation 
or  Smith,  Hampton,  Butterick  for  nothing.  The  other 
concession  to  trade  was  to  let  the  breach  widen  between 
himself  and  his  European  host.  He  too  may  not  have  been 
above  reproach,  but  then  we  expect  more  of  artist  than  of 
publisher  in  the  way  of  delicate  precision;  the  artist  has 
come  to  be  thought  of  as  the  natural  martyr.  Apparently 
Richards  imagined  that  the  English  rights  of  his  guest's 
four  books  belonged  to  him.  Already  he  had  taken  over 
"  a  few  copies  "  of  Sister  Carrie  from  the  former  pub- 
lisher, Heinemann,  whom  evidently  Dreiser  was  under  no 
compulsion  to  see  in  spite  of  that  luncheon  at  Martin's  in 
1903  which  had  given  him  so  much  courage.  Heinemann 
writes  with  distant  reproach  as  if  some  courtesy  may  have 
been  dispensed  with:  uAs  one  of  the  first  admirers  of 
Sister  Carrie  I  shall  be  very  sorry  not  to  see  you  before 
you  go."  Certainly  Dreiser  had  flirted  with  Richards;  but 
now  threw  him  down  casually  in  favor  of  Harper's  who 
told  him  they  would  not  think  of  handling  his  books  at 
home  if  another  firm  was  to  dispense  them  in  England; 
"  unless  of  course  very  substantial  payment  were  made 
for  the  right."  A  Traveler  at  Forty  dedicated  to  Bar- 
fleur,  alias  Richards,  is  the  one  book  confided  to  the 
house  of  Richards.  In  December  1912  he  writes  to  Drei- 
ser from  the  Hotel  Knickerbocker  in  New  York : 

"  I  make  friends  with  too  much  reluctance  to  surrender 
them  with  anything  but  great  unwillingness  and  regret,  but 
your  letter  .  .  .  left  me  no  choice.  With  regard  to  your 
books  I  write  not  as  a  disappointed  publisher  .  .  .  but  as 
a  wounded  admirer  [of  your  work]  to  whom  you  had  made 
almost  extravagant  promises  of  association.  .  .  .You  speak 
of  business  reasons  for  our  meeting.  I  cannot  imagine  what 
they  are  .  .  .  but  all  the  same  ...  I  will  say  that  I  shall 
be  here,  with  intervals,  from  2:30  till  3:45  when  I  go  down 
to  the  boat." 

281 


They  met  for  the  last  time  "  for  just  fifteen  minutes  " ; 
and  I  imagine  "  Barfleur  "  went  down  to  the  boat  in 
sadness,  perhaps  in  anger.  In  1914  however  he  had  re- 
covered himself  enough  to  remind  Dreiser,  "  though  it 
goes  very  much  against  the  grain,"  of  a  debt  of  £3, 
175,  6d.  He  "  sees  no  reason  why  it  should  run  on  from 
year  to  year."  Lately,  when  interviewed  this  urbane  Lon- 
doner of  the  old  school  upset  the  delightful  image  of  two 
friends  on  a  spree  in  Europe,  which  Dreiser  makes  in  his 
travel  book.  He  said:  "Theodore  Dreiser,  your  dis- 
tinguished novelist?  But  really  I  can't  help  you;  I  don't 
remember  any  voyage  we  took  together.  I  never  knew 
him."  Dreiser  on  the  other  hand  says  wistfully:  "  I  would 
give  anything  not  to  have  quarreled  with  him,  and  over 
money  too !  I  owe  him  so  much ;  that  trip  to  Europe !  It 
was  like  a  tonic  that  lasted  me  for  years;  it  was  new  life 
to  me.  I  shall  never  forget  it." 

The  incident  is  slight  and  not  important  as  gossip,  but 
it  is  enough  to  stand  as  sign  of  the  kind  of  temper  which, 
with  perhaps  less  remorse  than  the  business  man  can  take 
personally  all  that  it  wants  and  give  nothing  back,  unless 
publicly  in  the  integrity  of  art.  Or  put  it  this  way;  the 
man  of  affairs  often  makes  no  personal  relations  at  all, 
only  rotarian  connections,  while  the  artist  excels  in  the 
personal.  With  few  exceptions  creative  genius  has  been 
known  to  be  blind  to  friendship,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
be  more  alive  than  others  to  the  need  of  friends.  De- 
votees of  beauty  think  of  genius  as  heroic;  other  men,  in- 
cluding most  psychologists,  think  of  it  as  abnormal,  mad, 
insane.  One  thing  is  sure,  there  can  be  no  consistent  pleas- 
ure in  contemplating  it  unless  we  begin  by  accepting  its 
cruelty  as  hand  in  hand  with  its  tenderness  —  cruelty  to 
the  one  left  behind;  tenderness  to  the  one  about  to  be 
embraced,  as  it  travels  its  road  to  the  happy  ending,  Fame. 
No  synchronization  except  in  the  annealment  of  the  mo- 
ment of  Art.  There  may  be  a  current  of  giving  too,  as 
always  in  the  case  of  Dreiser  to  unknown  writers,  un- 
commercial journals,  friends  in  need;  but  these  are  gifts 
not  for  gain  or  duty  but  for  luxury  of  giving.  Genius 
chooses  and  rejects  associates,  and  so  the  drama  is  main- 
tained. Take  for  example  a  man  at  opposite  poles  in  most 
284 


ways  from  Dreiser,  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Griswold  writes 
of  him: 

"  There  seemed  to  him  no  moral  susceptibility;  and  what 
was  more  remarkable  in  a  proud  nature,  little  or  nothing  of 
the  true  point  of  honor.  He  had  to  a  morbid  excess,  that 
desire  to  rise  which  is  vulgarly  called  ambition,  but  no 
wish  for  the  esteem  or  love  of  his  species;  only  the  hard 
wish  to  succeed  —  not  shine,  not  serve,  —  succeed,  that 
he  might  have  the  right  to  despise  the  world  which  galled 
his  conceit." 

And  Poe  says  of  himself: 

"  I  love  fame  —  I  dote  on  it  —  I  idolize  it  —  I  would  drink 
to  the  very  dregs  the  glorious  intoxication;  I  would  have 
incense  arise  in  my  honor  from  every  hill  and  hamlet,  from 
every  town  and  city  on  this  earth;  Fame!  Glory!  —  they 
are  life-giving  breath,  and  living  blood;  no  man  lives,  unless 
he  is  famous;  how  bitterly  I  belied  my  nature  and  my 
aspirations,  when  I  said  I  did  not  desire  fame  and  that  I 
despised  it!  " 

One  might  say  that  Dreiser  was  not  this  man  wild  to 
conquer,  but  merely  the  burned  child,  who  would  not 
again  find  himself  reduced  to  a  loaf  of  bread  and  a  job 
at  i$  an  hour.  But  I  don't  think  so.  I  believe  that  like 
Hurstwood  it  would  have  been  quite  possible  for  him  to 
lie  down  in  a  flop  and  inhale  the  gas  at  15^  a  night;  if, 
and  it  is  a  mammoth  if,  he  had  not  had  some  of  that  de- 
sire for  fame  that  links  him  with  other  differing  aesthetic 
geniuses,  Whitman,  Poe,  Bierce,  Mark  Twain;  and  links 
them  all  with  the  business  geniuses,  Rockefeller,  Yerkes, 
Hearst,  Al  Capone,  on  the  one  token  of  desire  for  power. 
Dreiser  knew  the  link  when  he  wrote :  "  After  all  we  can- 
not all  be  artists,  statesmen,  generals,  thieves  or  finan- 
ciers." If  you  asked  such  a  temperament,  especially  when 
bent  on  art  or  wisdom,  "  Do  you  think  you  are  God?  ", 
and  he  were  honest,  he  would  say,  "  Yes,  that's  my  busi- 


ness." 


Despite  the  wide  differences  between  the  most  word- 
wise  and  the  least  word-wise  of  our  poets,  there  is,  beside 
the  wish  to  dominate,  a  more  special  likeness  between  Poe 
and  Dreiser.  An  exquisite  among  critics,  Jean  Cocteau, 
asked  the  question :  "  What  is  it  in  America  in  the  climate 

285 


or  in  the  soil  that  can  have  made  Poe  turn  entirely  toward 
horror  and  mystery?  To  find  that  out  I  would  be  curious 
to  visit  your  country.  It  excites  me."  The  Americans 
he  questioned  said:  "  You  are  wrong,  there  is  nothing; 
Poe  was  an  accident;  the  country  is  the  most  cheerful  in 
the  world,  depressingly  cheerful,  and  the  most  open,  a 
literally  ingenuous  land."  But  Cocteau  guessed  right; 
there  is  something.  Poe  and  Dreiser  are  two  writers 
whose  speech  bear  witness  to  an  element  of  horror  and 
mystery  special  to  the  United  States.  Melville,  Haw- 
thorne in  his  neurotic  way,  Bierce,  and  Masters  are  others. 
The  humorist  Ring  Lardner  is  another.  Back  of  each 
laugh  in  which  he  is  as  lucky  and  fantastic  as  a  player 
with  four  aces,  are  hatred  and  frustration. 

Poe  expressed  his  sense  of  it  by  completely  defying 
it.  He  painted  it  as  the  decay  of  beauty,  the  rule  of  evil; 
he  made  himself  an  exile  with  "  the  few  who  love  me  and 
whom  I  love  .  .  .  those  who  feel  rather  than  those  who 
think  "  in  the  valleys  and  islands  of  his  spirit,  never  free 
however  from  the  terror  of  the  American  world  in  which 
he  knew  he  lived :  "  Of  my  country  and  of  my  family  I 
have  little  to  say.  Ill  usage  and  length  of  years  have 
driven  me  from  the  one  and  estranged  me  from  the 
other."  And  yet  he  said  much  about  his  country  by  in- 
version in  each  poem  and  story.  He  turned  the  horror 
about  and  made  the  victims  not  the  victors  shine.  Baude- 
laire lucidly  points  out  that  Poe's  flight  was  not  from  him- 
self but  from  his  country,  "  that  barbarous  land  lighted 
by  gas." 

And  Dreiser  has  felt  the  horror  of  our  optimistic  land 
and  the  mystery  of  it;  but  has  expressed  it  by  marry- 
ing with  it  and  celebrating  its  enormity.  He  has  made  the 
conqueror  shine.  And  what  could  it  be  that  would  triumph 
over  these  vast  spaces;  a  wilderness  much  of  it  for  years 
not  even  lighted  by  gas,  but  only  by  stars ;  which  cast  their 
spell  of  beauty  and  thereby  complicated  the  question? 
What  could  these  great  children  take  with  them  across  the 
country  as  they  traveled  in  their  covered  wagons?  Not 
love,  not  beauty,  as  civilizing  forces  to  a  land  dedicated 
to  "  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness."  Their 
tolerant  religions  could  not  tolerate  those  twin  lodestars. 
286 


They  traveled  in  covered  wagons  with  covered  souls. 
But  to  bridge  the  chasms  that  remained  chasms  for  neglect 
of  old  human  principles,  there  could  be  other  new  power; 
executive,  mechanical,  numerical,  mineral,  and  finally 
electrical  —  lucrative  power  pursued  into  excesses.  It 
was  and  is  as  cold  as  it  is  brilliant,  white  to  some,  black 
to  others  according  to  their  senses.  It  is  never  colored. 
Only  conquerors  from  Tamburlaine  to  the  American 
billionaire  have  known  that  certain  rich  coldness,  black 
or  white  as  you  will.  The  American  has  heated  it  with 
speed,  steam,  electricity,  money,  booze  and  blondes;  the 
moon,  sun  and  stars  and  what  they  naturally  brought 
being  inadequate.  That  is,  they  have  wandered  far  from 
nature  which  perhaps  seemed  too  much  of  a  vast  problem 
to  cope  with.  And  yet  before  them  the  Indian  and  the 
Spaniard  managed  to  make  their  bow  to  nature  and  make 
a  living  too. 

Henry  Adams  puts  it  dryly : 

"  Even  Commodore  Vanderbilt  and  Jay  Gould  lacked 
social  charm.  Doubtless  the  country  needed  ornament  and 
needed  it  badly  —  but  it  needed  energy  still  more,  and 
capital  most  of  all.  .  .  .  To  fit  out  an  entire  continent  with 
roads  and  with  the  decencies  of  life  would  exhaust  the 
credit  of  an  entire  planet.  .  .  .  Such  an  estimate  seemed 
outrageous  to  a  Texan  member  of  Congress  who  loved  the 
simplicity  of  nature's  noblemen;  but  the  mere  suggestion 
that  a  sun  existed  above  him  would  outrage  the  self-respect 
of  a  deep-sea  fish  that  carried  a  lantern  on  the  end  of  his 
nose.  From  the  moment  that  the  railroads  were  introduced, 
life  took  on  extravagance." 

"For  a  hundred  years,  between  1793  and  1893,  the 
American  people  hesitated,  vacillated,  swayed  forward  and 
back,  between  two  forces,  one  simply  industrial,  the  other 
capitalistic,  centralizing  and  mechanical.  In  1893,  the  issue 
came  on  the  single  gold  standard,  and  the  majority  de- 
clared itself,  once  and  for  all,  in  favor  of  the  capitalistic 
system  with  all  its  necessary  machinery.  .  .  .  The  whole 
mechanical  consolidation  of  force  .  .  .  ruthlessly  stamped 
out  the  life  into  which  Adams  was  born,  but  created 
monopolies  capable  of  controlling  the  new  energies  that 
America  adored.  .  .  .  After  this  vigorous  impulse  nothing 
remained  for  an  historian  to  ask  —  but  how  long  and 
how  far!" 

Nothing  indeed,  except  that  perhaps  an  historian  might 
take  a  step  further  back  to  a  basis  of  earlier  days  —  in 

287 


fact  to  the  birth  of  the  nation.  He  might  perhaps  see 
that  an  American  became  a  "  deep-sea  fish/'  with  a  need 
of  energy  more  than  ornament,  just  because  his  religion 
forbade  him  to  obey  the  sun  and  wear  the  ornaments  of 
the  sun.  And  perhaps  it  was  not  "  the  majority  "  that 
declared  itself  for  the  new  order,  but  the  craftier  deep- 
sea  fish  who  forced  the  new  order,  to  outwit  a  religion  that 
belonged  to  incongruous  pastures,  and  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  giant  waves  of  the  sea  of  American  life.  Certain 
it  is  that  Dreiser  with  no  more  censure  than  Adams 
plunged  in  among  the  deep-sea  fish  and  planned  an  Ameri- 
can Odyssey  to  be  known  as  A  Trilogy  of  Desire,  where 
the  burden  of  the  action  depends  upon  the  conqueror 
more  than  upon  the  conquered  masses.  The  first  volume 
of  it,  The  Financier,  was  in  fact  so  American  a  bolt  that 
it  almost  lifted  him  from  the  literary  columns  to  the 
financial.  And  just  as  he  identified  himself  with  his  two 
heroines,  Carrie  and  Jennie,  in  their  need  for  life  and 
love  and  ornament,  now  he  writes  himself  into  the  char- 
acter of  the  financier  in  his  need  of  conquest. 

In  Rome,  a  Mrs.  Q.  had  told  him  the  story  of  the 
Borgia  family,  which  seemed  to  him  so  important  a  notch 
in  the  measure  of  possibility  that  he  incorporated  it  in  his 
travel  book  in  all  its  extravagance,  and  naively  as  if  it 
were  news.*  He  liked  Mrs.  Q.  "  She  was  not  in  the  least 
morbid.  The  horror  and  cruelties  of  lust  and  ambition 
held  no  terrors  for  her.  She  liked  life  as  a  spectacle."  She 
was  of  his  own  kind.  Once  at  a  party  there  was  a  discussion 
between  Dreiser  and  the  pacifist  John  Dos  Passos,  who 
had  spoken  of  an  accident  too  terrible  to  look  at,  he 
thought.  Dreiser  couldn't  understand  it;  he  could  look 
at  anything.  Why  not?  Some  time  after  in  the  course  of 
talk  I  submitted  the  anecdote  as  instance  of  both  the 
older  and  younger  realist  to  the  impartial  Robert  Frost, 

*  "  Once,  riding  in  the  subway,  Dreiser  opened  a  copy  of  the  Evening 
World  and  showed  me  the  line :  '  Let  us  introduce  you  to  the  work  of  Rud- 
yard  Kipling.'  I  scoffed,  saying  people  already  knew  that  work.  Dreiser  said, 
4  No,  they  don't  5  they  have  to  be  introduced  to  everything.'  To  believe  that, 
and  yet  to  write  novels,  requires  infinite  patience.  It  also  lays  the  ghost  of 
c  style  '  j  for  perhaps  one-half  of  style  is  repression.  The  stylist  is  the  man 
who  withholds  his  pen."  WJwt  Manner  of  Man  He  Is:  Harris  Merton 
Lyon. 

288 


who  in  chance  encounters  has  seemed  almost  uniquely  a 
mind  exhilarated  by  evidence.  His  disposal  of  it  was : 
"  Well,  I  suppose  that  when  you  get  so  you  can  look  at 
anything  your  eyes  run  the  danger  of  hardening  so  you 
don't  see  things."  But  do  they?  Isn't  it  possible  that  they 
might  then  get  strong,  not  hard.  For  myself  I  should 
think  of  this  quality  of  Dreiser's  as  a  rare  asset  for  an 
artist  in  search  of  perfection.  And  if  he  failed  it  would 
not  be  because  of  the  brain's  command  to  the  senses  to 
face  experience,  but  more  because  of  an  imperfect  set  of 
senses. 

In  any  event  Dreiser  may  well  have  been  glancing  back 
at  the  Borgias  when  he  wrote  the  story  of  the  more 
metallic  but  not  less  cruel  Yerkes,  whom  he  called  Cow- 
perwood.  And  assuredly  he  remembered  the  Romans  too, 
remains  of  whom  in  Rome  were  like  — 

"  the  glistening  shell  of  an  extinct  beetle  or  the  sugges- 
tion in  rocks  of  a  prehistoric  world.  .  .  .  Mind  was  theirs 
—  vast,  ardent  imagination.  .  .  .  They  were  the  great  ones 
— the  Romans.  We  must  learn  from  them." 

"  Since  the  making  of  the  Roman  Empire  the  world  has 
held  no  men  so  great  as  the  business  overlords  of  America. 
They  were  men  who  thought  in  terms  of  a  continent." 

Except  for  these  analogies  to  Latins,  ancient  and  modern, 
there  is  no  exotic  ingredient  in  The  Financier  or  in  the 
second  volume  of  the  trilogy,  The  Titan,  published  a  year 
and  a  half  later,  May  1914.  Nor  is  there  in  The  Traveler 
at  Forty,  which  appeared  in  November  1913.  Foreign 
lands  excited  his  imagination,  but  never  influenced  his 
manner  which,  for  all  the  sophistication  that  was  at 
length  going  the  rounds  of  our  villages,  has  remained 
notoriously  Dreiserian. 


289 


50 

"  Whilst  others  have  struggled  in  vain  you 
have  scaled  the  difficult  cliffs." 

Masters  to  Dreiser  in  1912 


o  Dreiser  shot  his  bolt  for  Harper's  in  double- 
quick  time.  The  Financier  came  to  800  pages  and  yet  made 
a  powerful  effect.  Fifteen  years  later  he  rewrote  it.  In 
its  present  form  it  is  as  economical  as  Sister  Carrie,  and 
a  more  ambitious  though  not  more  tender  undertaking. 
Following  on  Carrie  and  Jennie  it  made  him  another 
friend,  the  poet  Edgar  Lee  Masters.  They  lasted  each 
other  for  a  number  of  years.  Dreiser  regrets  his  loss, 
and  not  more  than  many  of  his  readers.  Where  has  he 
gone,  this  poet?  Did  the  poet  in  him  die  and  the  lawyer 
with  the  dead  poet's  equipment  step  out  of  the  old  skin 
to  write  today  Lincoln  The  Man,  where  he  indicts  Lincoln 
for  not  being  God.  The  book  might  have  been  called 
"  Case  of  the  States  Against  Abraham  Lincoln."  Why 
this  should  have  happened  to  a  poet  belongs  not  here 
but  toward  the  end  of  a  baffling  book  repeatedly  at- 
tempted and  not  yet  written :  "  The  Rise  and  Fall  of 
Spiritual  America."  Dreiser  to  this  day  believes  in  him 
and  perhaps  in  his  country  too.  His  voice  values  Masters 
when  he  speaks  of  him:  "  He  knows  absolute  fatality; 
that  life  alters  and  affects  man;  that  man  can't  alter  life. 
His  poems  have  the  deathless  ring  that  there  is  to  great 
work." 

In  fact  for  him  Masters  was  for  years  the  American 
poet  of  our  day  in  the  sense  of  the  old  story  of  the 
Western  village :  "  Aint  you  got  no  amusements  round 
this  town?"  — "  Why,  yes,  at  six  o'clock  the  whore 
walks."  For  the  novelist  the  poet  walked  and  the  poet 
was  Masters.  As  late  as  1917  he  reviewed  in  Life,  Art 
and  America,  printed  in  The  Seven  Arts,  the  village  tem- 
290 


per  of  the  country,  nominating  Masters  as  poet.  And  this 
at  a  date  when  there  was  beginning,  it  seemed  to  others,  a 
galaxy  of  poets:  Robinson,  Lindsay,  Sandburg,  Frost, 
T.  S.  Eliot  among  them.*  He  admired  Sandburg,  except 
that  he  feared  he  was  a  reformer.  And  today  it  is  Dreiser 
who  is  the  reformer.  Of  these  other  poets  he  did  not  catch 
their  "  deathless  ring."  Masters  on  his  side  in  1912  had 
some  reservations  mingled  with  reverence.  After  the  first 
three  novels  he  praised  Dreiser  for  his  understanding  of 
American  fact,  his  scepticism,  his  daring,  his  rendering  of 
life  as  if  it  were  a  circus  parade,  both  tawdry  and  entic- 
ing. .  .  .  But  he  said  to  him  and  of  him  that  if  he  found 
a  theme  to  wholly  focus  his  powers  and  come  forth  "  fused 
and  molten,"  then  he  would  add  to  his  work  that  quality 
that  makes  art.  The  comment  diversifies  the  two  men  — 
the  emotional  Dreiser,  who  yet  wished  not  to  lose  the 
parts  in  the  whole;  the  finely  cynical  Masters,  who  seems 
sometimes  overcome  by  rhythm  and  loses  the  sparkle  of 
various  voices  in  a  too  insistent  blank  verse. 

But  Mencken  and  Reedy  for  example  were  not  so  ex- 
acting as  to  ask  of  him  to  be  an  epic  poet  in  the  final  sense. 
They  liked  him  the  way  he  was.  And  there  were  many, 
many  others  who  were  grateful  to  this  writer  for  encom- 
passing the  world  they  lived  in  and  at  the  same  time  tak- 
ing such  direct  dives  into  it.  Their  world,  they  knew,  hung 
on  the  kind  of  financier  portrayed  with  amazing  vitality 
in  these  two  volumes. 

One  thing  is  sure  —  of  his  books  as  works  of  art  both 
praise  and  censure  are  plausible.  A  favorite  query  with 
Dreiser,  repeated  in  his  writings,  used  to  be :  "  Why  don't 
you  take  hold  of  life?  Why  are  you  content  to  sip  it?  Why 
don't  you  live  to  the  utmost?  "  A  fair  enough  question, 
apt  to  be  resented  by  the  victim.  On  inquiry  he  was  even 
willing  that  living  to  the  utmost  should  be  construed 
as  meaning  adornment,  travel,  possession,  adulation, 

*  "  To  me  it  is  a  thing  for  laughter,  if  not  for  tears  5  one  hundred  and 
twenty  million  Americans  .  .  .  one  hundred  and  forty  years  ...  a  rich 
soil  .  .  .  silver  and  precious  and  useful  metals  ...  a  land  amazing  in  its 
mountains,  its  streams,  its  valley  prospects  ...  its  tremendous  cities  and 
far-flung  facilities  .  .  .  and  yet  contemplate  it.  Artists,  poets,  thinkers, 
where  are  they?  .  .  .  Since  Whitman,  one  poet:  Edgar  Lee  Masters.  .  .  ." 

291 


grabbed  or  stolen  if  need  be  —  in  other  words  tangible 
high  voltage.  I  remember  the  question  put  to  me  and  I 
tried  to  answer  with  a  counterquestion :  "  Why  don't  you 
go  in  for  quality?  There  is  more  intensity  in  quality,  per- 
haps more  drama  even."  He  seemed  to  be  living  under 
the  spell  of  his  own  hero  of  that  time,  the  Titan,  nearly 
a  victim  of  the  American  delusion,  size  and  numbers.  Yet 
he  had,  to  contradict  me,  the  air  of  a  man  imbued  pre- 
cisely with  quality;  and  his  answer  opened  a  door  to  it: 
"I  know  —  you're  right  —  but  the  country  is  big;  you 
can't  write  about  it  in  a  small  peckish  way;  there's  not 
time  to  polish.  Later  on  I  intend  to  rewrite  my  books, 
condense  them.  Just  now  I  have  too  much  to  do,  too  much 
to  put  forth.  People  need  it.  They  need  to  know  things." 
The  Financier  is  the  one  rewritten  book,  and  yet  The 
Titan  as  if  to  support  his  point  is  the  more  bewildering 
canvas.  Where  the  pulse  beats  there  is  flesh,  and  where 
there  is  flesh  there  is  quality,  whether  beautiful  or  not. 
Until  recently  deliberate  beauty  in  a  woman  was  a  chal- 
lenge, almost  an  impropriety;  and  in  a  man  forbidden;  and 
native  poems  and  pictures  were  antique  notions.  As  a 
nation  we  have  used  noise  and  action,  songs  and  dances, 
not  poems  or  paintings.  We  have  used  motion.  If  a  writer 
has  translated  this  motion  into  language,  impossible  to 
deny  him  quality  or  success,  however  leisurely  his  form ! 
In  The  Financier  and  more  so  in  The  Titan  the  pulse 
beats.  With  the  men  we  see  their  pores,  moustaches,  their 
hands,  stomachs  and  neckties,  their  ways  of  walking  and 
talking  and  cringing  and  of  being  brave,  and  nearly  always 
their  eyes.  With  the  women  we  get  their  bloom,  or  their 
wrinkles,  their  fragrance  or  absence  of  fragrance,  their 
rosettes  and  ruffles  and  petticoats  and  corsets  —  it  was 
the  day  of  many  clothes.  And  then  we  get  the  cross  cur- 
rents and  radio  messages  set  up  between  them,  which,  in 
spite  of  the  often  explicit,  literal  language,  make  actual 
worlds  in  the  two  books.  It  must  be  that  structural  quan- 
tity makes  quality  in  its  own  right,  and  that  size  has  its 
seductions,  and  that  mass  of  detail,  when  zealous  and  in- 
tegral, creates  at  moments  currents  of  reality  by  which 
one  leaps  the  uncharged  spaces,  the  way  an  electric  car 
leaps  crossings.  Perhaps  Dreiser  is  the  triumph  of  subject 
292 


matter.  He  wrote  about  what  mattered,  letting  alone  the 
manner,  and  what  mattered  mattered  enough  to  him  to 
create  manner. 

The  story  of  Cowperwood  is  near  to  being  the  history 
of  Charles  T.  Yerkes,  a  traction  magnate,  operating  first 
in  Philadelphia  and  then  in  Chicago,  New  York  and  Lon- 
don. He  is  nearer  to  the  temper  of  Yerkes  than  Clyde 
in  An  American  Tragedy  is  to  the  young  man  of  the  mur- 
der case  from  which  Dreiser  drew  the  framework  of 
that  story.  Yerkes  began  life  toward  the  end  of  the  rule 
of  Andrew  Jackson,  so  distasteful  to  the  grandfather 
of  Henry  Adams,  when  it  became  the  federal  policy  to 
confide  the  property  of  the  people  to  the  care  of  the 
States,  and  the  policy  of  the  separate  States  to  confide  it 
to  the  care  of  brilliant  and  more  often  than  not  unscru- 
pulous individuals.  Yerkes  became  one  of  these.  Dreiser 
conceives  him  in  the  person  of  Frank  Cowperwood  as 
having  taken  his  cue  for  behavior  from  a  drama  he  wit- 
nessed at  the  age  of  ten.  In  a  fish  market  window  near 
his  home  in  Philadelphia  he  had  watched  a  lobster  in  a 
tank  day  by  day  slowly  eating  a  squid,  until  it  was  dead. 
The  theme  runs  through  the  two  books : 

1  That's  the  way  it  has  to  be,  I  guess.  .  .  .  That  squid 
wasn't  quick  enough/  ...  he  figured  it  out.  .  .  .  Things 
lived  on  each  other  —  that  was  it.  Lobsters  lived  on  squids. 
.  .  .  What  lived  on  lobsters?  Men  of  course!  .  .  .  And 
what  lived  on  men?  Was  it  other  men?  Wild  animals  lived  on 
men.  And  there  were  Indians  and  cannibals.  And  some  men 
were  killed  by  storms  and  accidents.  He  wasn't  so  sure 
about  men  living  on  men;  but  men  did  kill  each  other. 
How  about  wars  and  street  fights  and  mobs?  He  had  seen 
a  mob  once.  It  attacked  the  Public  Ledger  building  as  he 
was  coming  home  from  school.  .  .  .  It  was  about  the  slaves. 
.  .  .  Sure,  men  lived  on  men.  Look  at  the  slaves.  They 
were  men.  .  .  .  Men  killing  other  men  —  negroes.  .  .  . 
For  days  and  days  Frank  thought  of  this  and  of  the  life 
that  he  was  tossed  into.  .  .  ." 

"  From  seeing  his  father  count  money,  he  was  sure  he 
would  like  banking;  and  Third  Street  where  his  father's 
office  was,  seemed  to  him  the  most  fascinating  street  in  the 
world.  .  .  .  This  medium  of  exchange,  gold,  interested 
him  intensely.  .  .  ." 

So  he  described  a  boy's  mind,  always  an  easy  task  for 
Dreiser.  And  he  accepted  the  equation  of  squid  and  lob- 

293 


ster  as  the  law  of  life.  Surely  it  was  and  is  prominent  in 
the  United  States  where  there  has  been  small  time  or 
wisdom  or  too  vast  spaces  to  cultivate  the  delicate  re- 
lations between  people  and  people  and  their  things,  which 
in  other  countries  have  disguised  the  crudities  of  battle. 
Dreiser  was  at  home  in  the  career  of  Yerkes.  Where 
writers  like  Upton  Sinclair,  Thomas  Lawson  and  Ida  Tar- 
bell  wanted  to  scare  their  squid-like  readers  into  seeing 
what  was  being  taken  away  from  them  day  by  day  by  the 
armed  lobsters,  he  wanted  most  of  all  to  set  it  down  as 
the  dominant  fable  of  our  life,  which  had  for  virtues  lust 
and  enterprise,  and  for  vices  cruelty  and  greed.  He  seems 
to  say:  u  Do  what  you  like  about  it;  my  job  is  to  make 
you  feel  the  drama,  and  the  men  and  women  and  children 
involved  in  it  to  their  marrows." 

Particularly,  Yerkes  began  his  career  at  the  moment 
when  street  railways  came  into  being  in  the  United  States. 
That  might  in  itself  have  endeared  him  to  the  Hoosier, 
who  far  from  feeling  the  discord  and  shrillness  of 
street  cars  seems  to  have  loved  them  about  as  some  poets 
have  loved  ships  or  railroads  or  airplanes.  Sister  Car- 
rie loved  street  cars  when  she  came  to  Chicago;  she 
loved  the  tinkle  of  them.  And  of  Cowperwood's  predilec- 
tion Dreiser  makes  in  his  succinct  way  a  prose  poem : 

"  Chicago  was  growing  fast,  and  these  little  horse  cars 
on  certain  streets  were  crowded  night  and  morning  — 
fairly  bulging  with  people  at  the  rush  hours.  If  he  could 
only  secure  an  octopus-grip  on  one  or  all  of  them;  if  he 
could  combine  and  control  them  all !  What  a  fortune !  That, 
if  nothing  else,  might  salve  him  for  some  of  his  woes  —  a 
tremendous  fortune  —  nothing  else.  He  forever  busied 
himself  with  various  aspects  of  the  scene  quite  as  a  poet 
might  .  .  .  with  rocks  and  rills.  To  own  these  street  rail- 
ways !  To  own  these  street  railways !  So  rang  the  song  in 
his  mind." 

So  this  novelist,  sensitive  but  not  quite  a  sensualist,  is 
yet  an  objectivist.  He  felt  the  objective  song  of  American 
merchants'  lives,  whether  it  were  cars,  cement,  gas,  plumb- 
ing, talcum  powder,  magazines  or  deodorants.  —  That 
song  allowed  them  by  their  chaste  acquisitive  ancestors 
which  has  made  objects  instead  of  states  of  mind.  And  he 
felt  the  frequent  need  of  the  executive  of  all  races  and 
294 


times  to  acquire  as  collector  the  objects  of  the  one  power 
beyond  him  —  creative  art.  He  knew  too  the  necessity  of 
the  conqueror  for  his  many,  many  vanquished  women  —  a 
trait  of  Cowperwood's  which  most  critics  call  exagger- 
ated. But  on  the  contrary  it  may  be  that  Dreiser  has  dealt 
him  a  conservative  number  for  a  magnate  of  that  huge 
day  and  temper.  I  remember  a  story  told  me  by  a  Chicago 
advertising  man  some  ten  years  ago,  who  off  duck- 
shooting  with  a  friend  of  his,  president  of  a  great  industry 
whose  goods  he  advertised,  said:  "  Well,  Bill,  how  many 
women  have  you  got  now?"  —  "Why,  Vick,  not  so 
many  since  the  war,  rents  are  too  high.  I  can  remember 
the  time  when  I  kept  twenty  or  thirty;  I  don't  suppose  I 
got  more  than  twelve  or  fifteen  now  and  two  of  them  are 
pals,  they  share  the  same  room."  Call  that  an  exaggera- 
tion, outstripping  the  Titan's  score,  but  it  serves  to  sug- 
gest that  force  is  force  in  the  face  or  behind  the  back  of 
every  code,  gratified  by  number  or  by  arrangement  as  the 
talent  runs.  There  is  in  fact  the  whispered  legend  of  one 
of  our  powerful  financiers,  supposed  to  have  found  his 
pleasures  with  choir  singers  behind  organ  pipes  —  a  di- 
version, whether  true  or  not,  far  more  to  his  credit,  I 
would  think,  than  the  mere  bleating  of  religious  emotion 
without  earthly  outlet.  Yet  doubtless  there  will  be  those 
to  dispute  me. 

But  what  distinguishes  Dreiser's  hero  from  the  other 
pioneers  is  a  quality  of  his  own,  a  daring,  a  candor,  a 
vanity  that  defies  the  accepted  code.  "  In  every  one  of 
his  novels  he  has  tried  to  break  the  lockstep  of  society," 
one  critic  says  of  him.  I  think  rather  without  trying  he 
has  run  counter  to  it.  Cowperwood  was  the  same  kind  of 
man.  He  takes  in  his  youth  for  mistress  the  high-spirited 
ostentatious  child  of  a  business  associate,  speculator  and 
city-boss,  an  Irish  Catholic  only  a  life-time  from  the 
steerage;  and  he  goes  to  prison  not  so  much  for  having 
speculated  with  city  funds  as  because  this  Irishman  re- 
senting the  use  he  has  made  of  his  daughter  withdraws 
his  support  in  the  panic  following  the  Chicago  fire.  Then, 
when  in  later  years  in  Chicago  Cowperwood  grows  into 
something  more  complicated  and  exacting,  and  she  re- 
mains the  same  inexperienced  exuberant  beauty,  he  de- 

295 


serts  her  for  a  long  line  of  women,  who  perhaps  will 
each  one  tell  him  something  new  and  reward  him  for  his 
fabulous  gift  of  money-making.  It  is  this  boldness  with 
women  in  company  with  his  boldness  in  bribing  city  coun- 
cils and  his  boldness  in  taking  luck  away  from  other  more 
cautious,  more  conventional  but  quite  as  unscrupulous 
leading  citizens,  that  finally  defeats  him.  It  defeats  him 
in  Chicago  just  as  it  would  have  saved  him  in  Paris,  Berlin 
or  St.  Petersburg.  In  Chicago  they  said,  "  This  man  is 
a  monster;  in  addition  to  other  atrocities  he  seduces 
women."  In  Europe  they  would  have  said:  "This  man 
is  a  monster,  but  perhaps  we  forgive  him;  he  is  so  pictur- 
esque and  women  love  him." 

In  Chicago  they  did  not  want  so  extravagant  a  con- 
queror. The  community  accepted  his  gift  of  a  great 
observatory  with  which  to  study  and  perhaps  exploit 
other  planets  than  the  earth;  employed  his  methods  to 
get  rid  of  him,  and  dispensed  with  him  as  a  citizen.  He 
is  an  electron  dropping  out  of  the  atomic  sphere,  Chicago, 
taking  his  immoderateness  with  him,  and  leaving  the  place 
the  more  careful,  stingy,  colder  town  that  it  cared  to  be. 
If  Dreiser  had  continued  to  live  there  the  same  fate 
would  have  been  in  store  for  him,  just  as  it  was  to  be  for 
the  town's  most  distinguished  architect,  Frank  Lloyd 
Wright,  and  as  it  would  be  for  the  town's  most  creative 
lawyer,  Clarence  Darrow  —  both  without  extraordinary 
honor  in  their  own  city.  Chicago  is  a  market  place  at  the 
heart  of  a  nation,  river-threaded,  lake-bound,  prairie- 
winded,  where  gulls  fly  and  pigeons  flutter,  generating 
extravagant  dreamers;  and  then  killing  them.* 

To  this  extent  of  daring  Cowperwood  is  identified  with 
Dreiser  himself.  But  there  is  a  lock-step  element  in  the 
street  car  magnate's  life  belonging  to  the  common  not  the 
uncommon  American  which  makes  native  the  theme  of 
the  novel.  Where  was  it  that  Cowperwood  wanted  his 
money  and  his  wife  and  his  house  and  art  collection  to 
take  him?  Not  into  really  great  pursuits  and  among 
great  friends,  but  into  exactly  that  chimera  which  was  the 

*  Read  if  you  can  find  them  Henry  Fuller's  finely  ironic  pictures  of 
his  day  as  evidence,  With  the  Procession,   The  Cliff  Dwellers,  Chicago, 
1895  and  1893. 
296 


undoing  of  Jennie  Gerhardt  —  Chicago  society.  And 
when  that  was  denied  him,  into  New  York  society;  and 
when  that  became  impossible,  into  London  society.  The 
theme  is  the  tragic  one  of  emptiness,  empty  houses,  empty 
prestige.  "  Residential  homes  "  figure  like  handsome  vil- 
lains in  these  two  novels,  and  increasingly  in  The  Titan, 
and  figure  still,  in  spite  of  the  hero's  acquired  riches,  from 
the  outside  looking  in.  First  the  mansion  in  Chicago 
was  futile,  then  the  palace  on  Fifth  Avenue.  The  rumor 
of  Aileen,  mistress  before  she  was  wife,  and  besides 
"  too  rich  in  her  entourage,  too  showy,"  added  to  the 
rumor  of  a  prison  term  in  Philadelphia,  defeated  him 
in  Chicago,  and  then  in  New  York.  With  Aileen  "  he 
knew  it  was  useless  to  try."  The  young  girl  who  succeeds 
her,  whom  Dreiser  himself  loves,  his  one  heroine  except 
for  his  mother,  but  made  out  of  dreams  instead  of  mem- 
ories, is  described  as  with  a  high-bred  litheness  —  "  She 
had  the  air,  the  grace,  the  lineage,  the  blood  —  that  was 
why.  .  .  ."  And  although  her  Kentucky  mother  had  kept 
a  house  of  assignation  in  Louisville,  the  inference  is  that 
in  the  third  volume,  never  yet  published,  she  would  accom- 
plish for  him  social  distinction  in  London.  In  the  story 
of  the  Chicago  magnate,  this  happened  in  the  end.  A 
later  mistress,  it  is  said,  became  a  friend  of  the  king  and 
queen  of  England.  That  is,  mistress  she  was  called;  al- 
though an  old-timer,  a  wheat  speculator,  impatient  at  the 
refinements  of  Dreiser's  Titan,  is  quoted  as  exclaiming: 
"  Hell,  she  wasn't  his  mistress;  she  was  his  daughter!  " 
After  that  rude  myth  by  one  of  the  Titan's  enemies, 
I  thought  how  perhaps  "  the  great  American  novel  " 
could  not  yet  have  been  written,  since  the  extreme  Ameri- 
can possibility  is  scarcely  ever  rumored.  Shelley  could 
write  The  Cenci,  Coleridge  Christabel,  Gide  The  Coun- 
terfeiters, Delteil  The  Five  Senses,  and  Poe  long  ago  The 
House  of  Usher  and  Ligeia,  to  cite  at  random.  But  per- 
haps now  the  American  cult  of  "  being  nice  "  has  defi- 
nitely tongue-tied  without  their  knowing  it  even  the  most 
adventurous  of  our  writers.  Too  late  now  to  sink  shafts 
as  deep  as  the  lowest  level  of  the  veins  of  American  possi- 
bility? We  are  brave  and  bold,  but  ignorant. 

297 


51 

"  /  want  to  chip  off  one  little  piece,  if  I  can, 
of  the  leaden  weight  that  keeps  men's  eyes 
closed  to  the  truth.  And  yet  I  shall  be  only 
roundly  scored  for  my  pains."  DREISER 


Iways  in  these  books  Dreiser  was  doing 
his  utmost  to  make  live  the  mingled  drama  of  some 
national  characters  —  Financier,  Politician,  Journalist, 
Merchant,  Madam,  Mistress,  Wife,  Leading  Citizen, 
Society  Queen,  Handsome  Office,  Palatial  Mansion.  How 
well  did  he  succeed?  Experts  contradict  each  other. 
Frederic  Chapman,  English  reader  for  The  John  Lane 
Co.  who  finally  published  The  Titan  writes  high  praise 
of  the  book  as  a  powerful  document,  but  criticizes  his 
"  knowledge  of  minutiae,  that  tell  in  the  matter  of  truth 
to  period  ": 

".  .  .  So  as  not  to  render  you  uneasy  I  will  say  that  the 
trifling  anachronisms  I  detected  are  concerned  only  with 
the  clothing  of  the  actors  .  .  .  the  furnishings  of  some  of 
their  rooms." 

James  Huneker  on  the  other  hand  does  not  detect  them : 

"  I  confess  The  Financier  which  I  read  in  Berlin  bowled 
me  over.  Where  and  when  did  you  get  all  the  color,  the 
facts,  the  old  streets  of  Philadelphia  where  I  was  born, 
where  I  played  in  Buttonwood  Street  as  a  boy!  .  .  . 
C.  T.  Y.  I  knew  well,  and  his  wife  (No.  2).  I'm  curious, 
I  confess,  to  follow  their  fortunes." 

A  member  of  the  Chicago  Board  of  Trade  writes  him  ask- 
ing if  he  has  not  served  in  a  broker's  office;  his  knowledge 
of  finance  is  so  accurate.  Masters,  the  academician,  re- 
bukes him  for  the  title,  and  also  for  the  names  of  the 
characters.  He  notes  the  deliberate  scope  of  the  book,  and 
then  again  some  flaw  which  he  gropes  to  analyse.  Although 
Cowperwood,  he  thinks,  is  more  valuable  and  dramatic 
298 


than  Rockefeller  or  Morgan,  he  is  equally  a  demi-gorgon, 
not  a  Titan  acting  against  the  gods  for  a  racial  purpose. 
With  an  acute  ear  for  names  himself,  he  wonders  why 
Dreiser  does  not  keep  a  note-book  of  real  names  to  resort 
to.  ...  He  will  do  greater  work,  he  tells  him.  .  .  . 

Dreiser  it  is  said  never  has  kept  a  notebook,  secreting 
his  masses  of  detail  in  the  cells  of  his  mind.  His  answer  to 
these  critics  might  be  as  in  an  interview  about  Jennie 
Gerhardt:  "  My  one  ambition  is  to  conform  to  the  large 
truthful  lines  of  life.  If  I  do  that,  no  matter  if  my  char- 
acters live  in  Columbus,  Ohio,  or  not,  I  will  be  true 
everywhere."  He  is  in  fact  an  approximatist,  qualifying 
repeatedly  with  an  "  or  nearly  so."  But  his  approxima- 
tions give  the  idea  in  more  ample  relation  to  life  as  life 
than  do  some  of  the  more  exact  imitations  of  other 
Americans. 

Take  for  example  the  fashionable  men  and  women  who 
finally  succeed  in  ostracizing  the  Cowperwoods  from 
Chicago.  They  do  not  always  have  just  the  tone  of  voice 
or  idiom  that  belonged  to  them,  but  they  suggest  the 
singular  meagerness  of  what  passed  for  society  in  that 
windy  city.  As  in  Jennie  Gerhardt  the  superstructure  is 
not  completed,  but  here  the  drift  is  uncannily  real.  As  for 
the  low-life  characters,  if  first-hand  evidence  is  of  value, 
I  had  it  at  an  early  age  as  to  two  who  might  have  served 
as  models.  One  August  evening  in  the  trout  season  a  pair 
of  Chicago  aldermen,  the  famous  Bathhouse  John  and 
Hinky  Dink,  appeared  at  our  camp  on  Lake  Superior. 
They  were  going  to  consult  the  mayor  of  Chicago  who 
summered  at  the  snobbish  hunting  and  fishing  club  be- 
yond, and  stopped  to  ask  for  the  trail.  Any  strangers  so 
far  away  from  the  one  wagon  road  to  civilization  would 
have  surprised  us.  But  these  two  were  city  birds,  street 
birds,  an  apparition  in  a  primeval  forest.  They  admired 
the  beauty  of  the  place,  like  Mackenty  in  The  Titan  when 
he  showed  Cowperwood  to  the  door  after  a  half  bargain 
between  millionaire  and  boss:  "  '  A  nice  moon,  that! '  he 
added.  A  sickle  moon  was  in  the  sky.  *  Good  night.1 ' 

Their  derby  hats,  diamond  scarf  pins,  city  shoes,  "  Yes- 
Mam  "  and  "  No-Sir "  struck  illiterately  on  the  ele- 
gance of  Norway  pines,  and  afterwards  we  were  told 

299 


they  were  "  very  unscrupulous  men  " ;  but  we  liked  them, 
they  were  an  event.  They  seemed  to  belong  in  the  midst 
of  affairs,  to  tell  in  a  flash  more  news  than  some  of 
the  members  of  the  mayor's  club,  who  were  exactly  of 
that  element  in  Chicago  hostile  to  the  unorthodox  cor- 
ruption Dreiser  pictures  in  his  epic  of  Big  Business.  The 
mayor  himself  was  accepted  there,  and  yet  a  little  squeam- 
ishly; he  was  not  a  Republican;  he  was  a  Southerner;  he 
was  not  a  snob.  Reading  The  Titan  today  I  get  the  same 
sudden  sense  of  life  I  got  that  evening  between  Salmon 
Trout  River  and  Bay  —  life  of  raw  cities,  coarse,  inept, 
dangerous,  but  without  which  the  West  of  America  was 
not  settled.  This  phase  of  the  settlement,  the  much  praised 
Willa  Gather  consistently  ignores  or  misconstrues,  in 
her  nice,  heartbreaking,  humorless  elegies  for  the  old 
days;  and  so,  I  think  disqualifies  herself  as  authentic.  The 
less  polished  Dreiser  proceeds  to  the  gist  of  things  —  to 
the  red  yellow  and  blue  which  whirling  make  gray. 

Take  again  the  values  he  knew  how  to  establish  in  the 
slight  encounters  of  Cowperwood  with  two  men  who 
might  be  thought  of  as  titans  rather  than  demi-gorgons. 
The  first  of  these  takes  place  in  The  Financier  in  Phila- 
delphia in  his  twenties : 

"  One  day  he  saw  Lincoln  —  a  tall,  shambling  man,  long, 
bony,  gawky  ...  as  he  issued  from  the  doorway  of  Inde- 
pendence Hall.  .  .  .  For  days  the  face  of  Lincoln  haunted 
him,  and  very  often  during  the  war  his  mind  reverted  to 
that  singular  figure.  It  seemed  to  him  unquestionable  that 
fortuitously  he  had  been  permitted  to  look  upon  one  of 
the  world's  really  great  men.  War  and  statesmanship  were 
not  for  him;  but  he  knew  how  important  those  things  were 
—  at  times." 

Perhaps  Dreiser  meant  that  vaguely  Cowperwood  felt 
the  importance  of  this  particular  war  in  relation  to  his 
own  ambitions.  It  would  be  a  war  which  under  Republican 
indulgence  would  gather  back  into  a  centralized  power 
of  corporations,  though  never  again  into  a  central  federal 
power,  the  rights  of  the  people,  let  out  to  promiscuous 
individuals  under  previous  Democratic  indulgence.*  The 

*  That  is,  if  one  shakes  together  Adams'  temperate  Degradation  of 
The  Democratic  Dogma  and  Masters'  virulent  Lincoln  The  Many  one  has 
a  right  to  imagine  some  such  reciprocal  American  deal  occurring  in  the 

300 


second  meeting  occurred  years  later  with  Altgeld  in 
Chicago,  the  governor  with  socialist  dreams,  who,  much 
as  he  needed  money,  refused  a  bribe  of  $100,000  to  give 
Cowperwood  a  free  hand  in  his  street  car  schemes.  Drei- 
ser describes  Altgeld  poignantly;  Swanson  he  calls  him: 

"  primarily  soft-hearted,  sweet-minded,  fiery,  a  brilliant 
orator,  a  dynamic  presence.  In  addition  .  .  .  woman- 
hungry  —  a  phrase  which  sex-starved  intellectuals  the  world 
over  will  understand,  to  the  shame  of  a  lying  age,  that  be- 
cause of  quixotic  dogma  belies  its  greatest  desire,  its  great- 
est sorrow,  its  greatest  joy.  ...  In  a  vague  way  he  sensed 
the  dreams  of  Cowperwood.  The  charge  of  seducing  women 
...  so  shocking  to  the  yoked  conventionalists,  did  not 
disturb  him  at  all.  Back  of  the  onward  sweep  of  the  genera- 
tions he  himself  sensed  the  mystic  Aphrodite." 

[Cowperwood  defines  the  situation]  " '  The  men,  as  you 
must  know,  who  are  fighting  you  are  fighting  me.  I  am  a 
scoundrel  because  I  am  selfish  and  ambitious  —  a  material- 
ist. You  are  not  a  scoundrel  but  a  dangerous  person  because 
you  are  an  idealist/ 

[And  then  Dreiser  appraises  Altgeld's  refusal  of  the 
bribe]  Life  rises  to  a  high  plane  whenever  and  wherever 
in  the  conflict  regarding  material  possession  there  enters  a 
conception  of  the  ideal." 

Here  perhaps  is  an  instance  of  the  value  and  of  the  dis- 
junction Masters  feels  —  a  teasing  statement  but  made 
not  quite  out  of  elements.  The  conflict  cannot  be  between 
the  material  and  the  ideal  —  these  are  but  artificial  terms 
—  but  must  be  between  the  finite  and  the  infinite,  the 
unrelated  and  the  related  intellect  or  vision.  Here  were 
meetings  and  then  tremendous  separations,  between  the 
financier  and  the  dreamer  in  action,  of  which  this  Cowper- 
wood on  the  one  hand  and  Lincoln  and  Altgeld  are  fair 
symbols.  The  meetings  are  rarer  now  and  the  separations 
have  so  deepened  that  today  we  have  scarcely  an  adult 
statesman  to  keep  house  for  us,  and  are  further  than  ever 
from  a  department  of  art  or  of  letters  in  Washington, 
which  might  help  to  fuse  the  life  of  a  people  by  officially 
acknowledging  creative  unbiased  statement  —  in  other 
words,  Art.  Dreiser  felt  the  isolation  that  existed  be- 
tween these  big  men,  but  did  not  here  bridge  the  chasm 
in  words. 

course  of  the  nineteenth  century  j  or  in  fact  if  one  but  looks  about  without 
reading  history. 

301 


What  if  anything  hampered  him  in  this  epic  he  had 
planned?  Possibly  a  shade  of  idealism  in  the  painting  of 
his  hero.  Not  that  there  is  any  glossing  over  of  monstrous 
deeds.  He  tells  without  sparing  his  hero  of  the  destruc- 
tion of  a  building  overnight,  which  stood  in  the  way  of 
the  magnate's  cable-car  ambitions,  whose  owner  would 
not  sell  at  his  price.  Also  of  the  snaring  of  a  virtu- 
ous mayor  with  a  woman  hired  to  seduce  him  and  turn 
his  love  letters  over  to  the  Financier.  And  blaming  no 
one,  he  tells  of  the  revenge  of  one  of  the  reputable  citi- 
zens, whose  wife  had  played  with  the  demi-gorgon,  and 
who  raised  $300,000  to  buy  Republican  victory  to  de- 
feat "  the  monster  "  in  the  city  council.  Mencken  pro- 
nounces Cowperwood  "  the  best  picture  of  an  immoralist 
in  all  modern  fiction  —  at  least  since  Thackeray's  Harry 
Lyndon."  Reedy  writes  in  The  Mirror : 

"  Cowperwood  is  large-looming  ...  an  artist  in  evil.  In 
The  Titan  there  is  something  mellower  than  in  any  of  its 
predecessors.  It  is  a  more  urbane,  more  cultured  book.  .  .  . 
Every  page  shows  the  effect  ...  of  those  experiences  he 
told  us  about  in  ...  A  Traveler  at  Forty." 

These  two  were  themselves  men  of  affairs  immersed  in 
the  American  drama,  like  Dreiser,  almost  enjoying  it.  But 
from  across  the  seas  came  an  outcry  of  English  pain  from 
Ford  Madox  Hueffer,  something  of  an  immoralist  him- 
self, and  a  poet,  and  collaborator  with  the  great  Conrad; 
too  amusing  not  to  include,  though  by  length  it  makes  a 
slight  digression: 

"  This  is  the  most  revolting  book  I  have  ever  read,  the 
most  horrible,  the  most  demoralizing,  the  most,  perhaps 
immoral.  ...  A  book  is  horrible  when  it  can  reveal  depths 
of  cynical  ill-doing  such  as  the  reader  had  never  before 
conceived  to  live  in  human  nature.  .  .  .  Demoralizing,  be- 
cause the  book  .  .  .  renders  vice  so  attractive  and  en- 
grossing that  it  may  well  damage  forever  its  readers'  sense 
of  proportion.  .  .  . 

"  I  do  not  know  how  many  seductions  there  are  in  this 
book.  I  have  counted  eleven  to  the  credit  of  the  hero;  and 
I  see  there  are  some  more  seductions  toward  the  end. 
I  have  not  been  able  to  finish  the  book,  it  makes  me  feel 
sick.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  indeed  characteristic  of  the  topsy-turvy  morality 
of  the  impossible  book  that  the  ends  for  which  the  hero 
302 


employs  his  disgusting  means  are  comparatively  decent 
ends  ...  to  give  the  public  better  lighting  system,  better 
trams.  .  .  .  Perhaps  Mr.  Dreiser  is  really  an  Ironist,  since 
all  the  comparatively  reputable  figures  .  .  .  are  .  .  .  with 
their  obsolete  methods  .  .  .  upholders  of  obstructive 
vested  interests  .  .  .  forced  to  employ  exactly  the  same 
disreputable  tactics  as  the  hero  ...  to  cleanse  the  city  of 
his  evil  influence. 

".  .  .  All  I  can  say  is  that  if  the  whole  of  American  life 
is  such  a  thing  as  is  depicted  in  The  Titan  I  would  rather 
see  this  country  ten  times  subjected  to  Prussia  than  allied 
for  ten  minutes  with,  and  victorious  by  aid  of  the  U.  S. 
But  I  comfort  myself  .  .  .  the  majority  of  Americans  are 
quite  decent  people.  Yet  somewhere  in  the  interior  of  that 
vast  continent  must  be  lurking  a  disease  ...  or  there 
never  could  have  appeared  on  the  surface  such  a  running 
sore  as  the  book  called  The  Titan. 

"  Mr.  Dreiser  is  comparatively  illiterate,  he  is  sometimes 
unable  to  spell,  even  in  the  American  fashion  .  .  .  [but] 
I  have  done  him  an  injustice  if  I  have  not  given  the  idea 
that  he  does  present  his  narrative  with  at  least  the  skill 
and  raciness  of  a  reporter.  It  is  a  pity  that  he  cannot  em- 
ploy his  pen  upon  relatively  decent  and  heroic  subjects  — 
say  descriptions  of  Prussians  cutting  women's  throats. 
That  would  leave  a  comparatively  pleasant  taste  in  the 
mouth,  but  Heavens !  here  I  am  writing  in  favor  of  ac- 
cepted Morality!  I  never  thought  to  do  it.  There  must 
be  something  miraculous  about  The  Titan" 

The  book  shocked  Mr.  Hueffer,  now  Ford  Madox 
Ford,  into  forgetting  some  active  epochs  of  history  where 
lucrative  "  cynical  ill  doing  "  and  "  attractive  and  engross- 
ing vice  "  have  equaled  anything  practised  by  this  Chicago 
demon.  Or  he  was  being  an  advance  English  alarm- 
ist over  the  growing  menace  of  the  Lost  Colonies,  and  in 
a  British  way  forgetting  that  his  Empire  merely  preferred 
to  commit  crime  in  heathen  colonies,  that  they  might  keep 
their  island  home  intensively  decorous  and  decorative.  But 
also  one  feels  that,  like  Masters,  he  was  groping  for  the 
reason  of  aesthetic  annoyance  with  the  book. 

Is  it  this  ?  Dreiser's  plan  is  miraculously  true  and  strong 
—  a  synecdoche  of  the  American  empire  in  the  making.  It 
brought  a  howl  of  approval  and  denunciation  in  critical 
reviews,  not  for  or  against  the  defeat  of  democracy,  but 
for  or  against  Dreiser  for  uncovering  a  corner  of  it.  It 
proved  that  people  could  read  of  the  financial  parabolas 

303 


that  would  result  in  today's  tyranny,  without  the  wish  or 
without  the  power  to  fight  the  progress  of  them.  And  the 
moral  of  the  book  has  the  splendor  of  honesty;  it  proposes 
that  honesty  is  not  necessarily  the  best  policy  for  any  one 
man.  It  would  have  been  the  best  policy  for  Hurstwood  in 
Sister  Carrie.  His  theft  haunted  him  to  suicide,  whereas 
Cowperwood's  crimes  carried  him  through  to  victories 
agreeable  enough  to  him.  Dreiser  sees  with  a  terribly  clear 
eye  the  inevitable  differing  paths  of  different  tempers. 
Carrie  triumphed;  Jennie  kept  a  brave  balance;  Aileen 
went  down  before  thwarted  passions,  before  "  separations 
too  hard  to  bear."  All  this  he  knew  unswervingly.  And 
yet  if  the  book  falls  short,  so  that  experts  like  Masters  and 
Ford  ask  why,  isn't  it  in  the  choice  of  colors  with  which  he 
paints  the  hero?  The  matching  of  tones  is  not  inevitable. 
Especially  he  exalts  or  illumines  in  Cowperwood  two  at- 
tributes, love  of  daring  and  of  beauty,  thus  obscuring  the 
Titan's  callousness.  Out  of  his  own  love  for  these  traits,  he 
treats  him  a  little  the  way  Marlowe  treated  Tamburlaine, 
with  awe.  Take  the  attitude  of  this  man  to  the  women  who 
love  him.  Here,  I  think,  Dreiser,  camera-like,  has  fol- 
lowed native  truth,  but  as  if  satisfied  with  it  has  failed  to 
relate  it  to  the  rest  of  life.  How  could  the  conqueror  have 
time  for  elaborate  ecstasies?  Another  less  amorous  mag- 
nate might  steal  his  cherished  deal,  should  he  dally  too 
long  lasciviously  with  a  woman  as  the  full  moon  dallies 
summer  nights  above  earth.  Coldness,  if  not  continence, 
was  a  superstition  among  us;  with  it  men  were  told  they 
would  attain  a  speed  and  a  skill  beyond  other  nations  in 
business  or  in  sports.  Whether  truth  or  not,  it  has  served 
to  hold  the  winner  to  a  youth  of  sacrifice  to  victory  and  to 
an  old  age  of  atrophied  senses,  or  of  unstrung  nerves. 
Dreiser  knew  his  hero  —  "  business  first."  People  of  high 
capacity  need  many  things  at  once,  or  one  thing  in  many 
phases.  The  more  sensitized  the  artist  the  more  he  will 
try  to  know  one  thing  in  many  phases,  though  it  be  but 
common  language,  paint,  stone,  wood  or  clay. 

Cowperwood  going  toward  circumferences  rather  than 
to  centers,  and  cheating  himself,  since  after  all  the  center 
is  the  most  exclusive  point  of  the  circle,  is  then  given  a 
meaning  beyond  him.  At  moments  Dreiser  nearly  con- 
304 


fuses  him  with  himself  at  his  best,  as  if  this  magnate  were 
a  rebel  defying  the  world  for  an  exciting  lucid  cause, 
instead  of  for  a  mere  fortune  and  entrance  into  estab- 
lished society.  He  gives  him  words  he  would  not  have 
said :  "  All  of  us  are  in  the  grip  of  a  great  creative  im- 
pulse." Or  had  he  said  them,  he  would  not  have  under- 
stood them,  since  in  spite  of  his  collection  of  jewels,  paint- 
ings and  ladies,  he  was  not  curious  enough  to  analyse 
creation.  Creation  is  that  state  in  life  or  art,  which  being 
original  and  primitive,  new-born,  needs  few  stage  proper- 
ties earned  or  stolen.  Creation  is  a  state  of  mind  or  state 
of  energy.  To  borrow  an  enticing  phrase  from  physics,  the 
electron  jumping  to  a  different  orbit,  "  the  atom  gives  out 
energy  in  the  form  of  light." 

As  if  hypnotized  by  Cowperwood,  here  he  emphasizes 
certain  values  at  the  expense  of  others,  which  elsewhere  he 
has  been  quick  to  balance.  Cowperwood  we  are  told  never 
read;  but  we  are  not  told  that  of  course  he  never  read  be- 
cause books  might  bring  him  face  to  face  with  apparitions 
that  would  shake  his  faith  in  himself.  Safer  were  his 
cameos  and  coins  and  Bouguereaus  and  Rembrandts,  high- 
priced  and  silent.  None  the  less  here,  so  far,  is  the  one  por- 
trait of  an  American  financier  resembling  in  grandeur  a 
Rembrandt  or  Titian  or  Tintoretto.  We  see  him  in  vol- 
ume as  Chicagoans  of  that  day  remember  him,  a  costly 
enigma  and  magnet,  driving  with  his  red-headed  Aileen 
south  on  Michigan  Avenue  toward  the  palatial  home, 
everyone  turning  to  say:  "  Look,  there  is  Yerkes,"  almost 
no  one  bowing  or  waving. 

Moreover  to  be  synchronous  it  is  important  to  say  that 
in  the  very  years  of  making  The  Titan  Dreiser  was  writ- 
ing The  Girl  in  the  Coffin,  The  Blue  Sphere,  In  the  Dark; 
and  would  a  few  years  later  write  The  Hand  of  the  Potter, 
where  the  edge  of  misery  and  poverty  appears  like  tat- 
tered velvet.  Out  of  this  period  too  come  stories  of  people 
neither  rich  nor  poor  in  relation  to  the  theme ;  Free,  Mar- 
ried, The  Lost  Phoebe,  Chains,  Fulfilment  owe  their 
drama  not  to  an  extreme  of  outward  circumstance  but  to 
inner  moods.  And,  as  if  this  novelist  were  himself  sated 
with  terrifying  display,  he  follows  The  Titan  with  The 
"  Genius  " —  an  heroic  project  to  relate  a  character,  high- 

305 


powered  and  sensitive,  to  the  welter  of  unrelated  elements 
that  compose  American  society.  Once  to  the  question: 
"  Did  you  ever  know  a  self-made  Croesus  whom  you  liked 
as  well  as  anyone,"  his  answer  was :  "  No,  I  don't  think  so. 
I  love  delicacy  too  well.  The  making  and  holding  of  great 
wealth  destroys  delicacy."  And  again  he  said  of  a  short 
story  written  at  this  date :  "  Of  all  my  stories  for  me 
The  Old  Neighborhood  comes  nearest  to  art  —  a  thing 
of  mist,  which  art  should  be." 

We  have  lived  with  three  religions  in  our  time:  the 
Christian  religion  going  on  in  churches;  the  religion  of 
Money  going  on  in  banks;  the  religion  of  Communism 
going  on  in  Soviet  Council  halls.  Dreiser,  "  incurable  in- 
dividualist," he  has  called  himself,  repelled  in  child- 
hood by  the  Catholic  religion,  learned  to  repudiate  it  and 
all  substitutes  for  it.  Then  he  imagined  he  walked  alone, 
and  he  has  more  than  most  people.  Yet  at  some  point, 
perhaps  almost  unconsciously  did  he  feel  too  lonely?  Or 
else  fighting  the  enemy,  did  germs  of  the  enemy  enter 
into  him,  so  that  he  veered  slightly  toward  the  impersonal 
religion  of  Money  ?  Today,  it  is  said,  repelled  by  excessive 
Capitalism,  he  is  veering  toward  the  still  more  impersonal 
religion  of  Communism.  If  that  is  true  he  has  ceased  for 
the  moment  to  walk  the  lonely  way  of  art.  When  he  left 
Sister  Carrie,  to  live  at  all,  he  was  forced  away  from  an 
intensely  fresh,  personal,  detached  point  of  view  into 
public  issues.  The  cold  fingers  of  impersonality  sometimes 
operate  in  the  language  of  later  works  as  they  operate  in 
American  streets  and  houses.  Then  as  often  he  has  gone 
back  to  an  intimacy  with  himself;  tenderly  in  Jennie  Ger- 
hardt,  thriftily  in  the  rewritten  Financier,  nervously  and 
like  fire  in  The  Hand  of  the  Potter,  terribly  in  An  Ameri- 
can Tragedy.  His  later  life  has  been  a  traveling  back  and 
forth  between  cloisters  and  forums.  The  restlessness  of 
this  commuting  marks  his  work,  without  yet  defeating 
him;  as  it  has  defeated  American  society.  Some  strange- 
ness in  him  has  swung  the  balance  his  way. 


306 


"  Art  is  the  stored  honey  of  the  human  soul, 
gathered  on  wings  of  misery  and  travail. 
Shall  the  dull  and  the  self-seeking  and  the 
self -adverting  close  this  store  on  the  grop- 
ing mind."  DREISER 


Y 


et  this  travel  back  and  forth  between  mar- 
ket and  home  was  not  entirely  his  choice.  He  wanted 
fame,  but  he  wanted  it  through  his  works,  not  through 
having  to  fight  for  them.  The  same  thing  may  be  true 
of  many  apparently  forensic  men;  of  Mencken  and  Ezra 
Pound  possibly.  The  effort  to  adjust  themselves  to  their 
environment,  Pound  to  the  one  he  left  behind  him,  re- 
sulted in  an  effort  to  adjust  the  environment  to  them. 
Or  perhaps  their  case  is  suggested  in  a  boy's  defence  of 
a  friend,  denied  him  because  he  taught  him  "  dirty 
words, "  the  kind  prevailing  in  Twain's  Elizabethan  dia- 
logue. The  defence  was:  "  I  don't  think  he's  really  bad; 
you  don't  understand  him ;  he's  just  shy." 

Maybe  these  great  rebels  have  been  "  just  shy,"  and 
trying  to  make  themselves  at  home  in  a  too  cold  environ- 
ment. To  Dreiser's  shyness,  if  he  had  it,  was  added  re- 
curring hostility  from  the  outside,  and  from  those  of 
whom  he  might  have  expected  support,  his  publishers. 
More  times  than  any  other  contemporary,  in  his  thirty 
years  of  writing,  he  is  on  record  as  having  to  turn  from 
creative  work  to  battle  with  publishers  rather  than  com- 
promise ;  the  last  war  was  as  late  as  193 1  with  Hollywood 
producers.  In  1914  at  the  date  of  completing  The  Titan, 
had  it  not  been  for  obstruction  from  the  outside,  he  ap- 
peared to  be  on  the  road  to  an  ease  which  might  have 
tempered  and  seasoned  him  as  it  has  some  European 
giants.  He  was  fast  writing  about  "  life  as  it  is,"  and  with 

307 


success  of  esteem.  Jennie  Gerhardt,  The  Financier,  A 
Traveler  at  Forty,  were  bringing  fame  more  than  no- 
toriety, and  were  helping  to  change  the  minds  of  editors 
and  reviewers.  The  Financier  still  caused  anger  of  the  old 
kind:  "A  work  marred  by  the  representation  of  sexual 
passion!  "  "  Such  things  be  ...  their  contemplation  is 
unprofitable  and  unpleasant."  But,  for  example,  after  the 
reviews  of  the  travel  book,  one  scarcely  ever  hears  any 
more  of  Mrs.  Grundy  or  of  "  immature  readers  "  as  fac- 
tors in  the  publishing  game.  Mrs.  Grundy  watching  over 
her  brood  of  young  people  was  being  relegated  to  the 
church  magazines;  that  is,  until  the  male  of  her,  John 
Sumner  and  his  vice  society,  came  along  to  revive  her 
fights  and  make  a  last  stand  for  polite  hypocrisy. 

The  appearance  of  The  Titan  released  a  new  outcry 
against  "  liaisons "  outside  of  marriage.  Axiomatically 
they  were  said  to  be  "  gross,  sordid,  ugly,  unpleasant " ; 
while  those  within  marriage,  one  infers,  thought  of  as 
nearly  divested  of  "  sexual  passion,"  were  equally  refined 
and  spiritual.  And  reviewers  too  were  still  scandalized  by 
the  offers  of  American  truth  as  reading  matter.  Russian, 
Swedish,  German,  French  was  acceptable;  but  the  truth 
must  not  be  American.  Yet  now  those  most  outraged  fell 
under  the  spell  of  realism;  the  book  was  "  masterly,  fear- 
less, colossal  " ;  they  were  left  "  gasping  " :  "  He  never 
spares  the  truth,  but  nevertheless  it  is  a  great  work,"  one 
of  them  said. 

And  in  other  ways  fertilization  came  to  Dreiser.  Never 
really  without  women  as  This  Madness  and  A  Gallery  of 
Women  suggest,  now  in  Chicago  hunting  the  material  of 
The  Titan,  he  found  a  girl  to  live  with  for  longer,  he  says, 
than  any  other  woman  between  the  days  of  his  first  wife 
and  his  last.  She  appears  in  This  Madness  as  Sidonie  and 
perhaps  in  The  Titan  as  Stephanie.  The  child  of  a  Jewish 
father  and  New  England  mother,  she  had  beauty  and 
talent,  and  was  pliant  and  stimulating.  After  she  was  gone 
"  there  was  no  one  woman,"  he  says.  "  There  might  have 
been  one  housekeeper  one  day  and  a  different  one  the  next. 
I  lived  alone,  really."  Together  they  made  the  apart- 
ment at  165  West  Tenth  Street,  his  address  for  four  or 
five  years.  Two  long  rooms,  tall  windows  from  ceiling 
308 


to  floor,  finely  divided  so  that  they  offered  the  rare  light 
of  a  century  ago ;  a  pair  of  marble  fireplaces  where  coal 
burned;  a  bare  grey  floor  wide-planked,  again  as  of  a  cen- 
tury ago,  and  an  air  of  order  and  space  —  this  house  is 
not  forgotten  today  by  those  who  went  there  to  talk  of 
life  and  art  in  America  and  other  countries,  and  propose 
schemes,  journals,  and  societies  to  promote  life  and  art,  or 
to  promote  themselves  or  Dreiser,  or  by  those  who  rang 
at  the  door  to  thank  him  for  The  "  Genius  "  or  it  might  be 
for  Plays  Natural  and  Supernatural,  A  Hoosier  Holiday, 
Free  and  Other  Stories,  The  Hand  of  the  Potter,  Twelve 
Men,  Hey-Rub- A -Dub-Dub —  books  belonging  to  this 
period.  The  place  was  not,  I  imagine,  a  temple  like  Stie- 
glitz'  291  Fifth  Avenue.  James  Oppenheim  tells  how 
Dreiser  said  to  him:  "  Every  age  has  its  great  man;  I  am 
the  one  of  this  age."  But  I  think  he  is  rarely  as  confiding 
as  that.  And  besides  there  were  too  many  in  those  days  to 
dispute  him,  to  make  unreserved  satellites.  Perhaps  too  he 
attracted  sceptics.  But  that  Tenth  Street  could  be  on 
occasion  a  lodge  for  talk  is  traditional;  Dreiser  folding 
and  unfolding  his  handkerchief,  and  talking  when  he 
wanted  to  luminously  without  a  sign  of  the  diffuseness 
that  readers  find  in  his  books.  The  first  picture  I  ever  had 
of  this  novelist  was  from  Masters  in  perhaps  1916,  who 
back  from  New  York  described  an  afternoon  there:  A 
bottle  of  gin  between  them,  snow  outside,  coals  inside, 
that  peculiar  light  through  the  Victorian  windows,  and 
a  world  of  talk  and  laughter. 

And  to  this  address  came  like  bonuses,  enviable  letters. 
It  is  rare  to  see  so  many  addressed  to  one  man.  They  had 
come  before,  and  would  come  afterwards  when  he  moved 
to  California,  and  then  back  to  New  York  to  various 
addresses,  and  finally  after  An  American  Tragedy  to 
the  more  cathedral  Rodin  Studios  in  upper  New  York. 
Dreiser  is  fastidious  in  his  own  letters,  as  he  is  in  some  of 
his  poems.  Brevity  and  design  mark  them.  And  apparently 
the  magnet  of  fertile  mind  operated  especially  in  these 
years  between  him  and  those  who  wrote  to  him. 

Mencken's  envelopes  are  rarely  dated,  but  they  appear 
to  have  flowed  between  1910  and  1925.  Many  of  them  if 
opened  in  the  morning  might  have  seemed  as  ethereal  as 

309 


champagne  for  breakfast  or  a  cocktail  before  noon,  or 
if  they  came  in  the  afternoon  as  agreeable  as  beer  in 
Munich  or  Rhine  wine  on  the  Rhine  between  Cologne 
and  Heidelberg.  Whether  he  hopes  all  Englishmen  will 
roast  in  hell,  or  declares  he  will  name  his  next  child 
Hindenberg,  whether  boy  or  girl,  or  proposes  that  since 
suffragettes  are  enlisting  for  the  war  and  this  will  lead 
to  immorality,  he  and  Dreiser  should  go  as  midwives,  or 
congratulates  Dreiser  on  his  dying  words  —  "  Pontius 
Pilate,  I  come  "  —  and  submits  his  own  last  words,  too 
Saxon  to  pass  the  censor  even  today,  which  Dreiser  is  to 
run  to  the  window  with  before  closing  his  eyes;  or  begs 
him  to  be  more  diplomatic  and  not  consort  with  dirty- 
haired  villagers,  tin-pot  revolutionaries,  sophomore  ad- 
vanced thinkers,  jitney  socialists  and  other  vermin,  thus 
ruining  his  chances  with  serious  citizens ;  or  tells  him  the 
prophecy  of  the  most  gifted  colored  psychic  in  Maryland 
that  Dreiser  will  live  to  a  great  old  age,  heart,  lungs, 
kidneys,  brain  intact,  senile  changes  visible  in  but  one 
respect;  or  implores  him  not  to  use  general  delivery,  it 
is  a  pickpocket's  address ;  or  asks  why  in  hell  he  does  not 
sign  his  letters,  he  sells  his  autographs  at  50^  apiece; 
or  suspects  he  is  a  kept  man  from  his  stationery;  or  tells 
him  that  every  tourist  coming  back  from  the  Coast  has 
some   tale   about  his   Roman   levities  — "  Yesterday  I 
heard  that  you  have  gone  over  to  the  Theosophists,  and 
are  living  at  Point  Loma  in  a  yellow  robe,  with  hasheesh 
blossoms  in  your  hair  .  .  ." ;  or  asks  him  to  do  an  article 
for  his  new  journal,  wherein  he  may  call  the  Methodists 
by  name  and  call  the  Baptists  the  sewer-rats  of  God;  or 
deplores  The  Hand  of  the  Potter  as  beyond  the  pale  of 
production  and  a  poor  play  at  that;  or  corrects  his  spelling 
"  the  prize  is  spelled  *  Nobel  '  not '  Noble  '  " ;  or  tells  him 
not  to  worry  over  his  future,  that  the  ground  is  solid 
under  him;  or  gives  the  news  that  he  heard  Billy  Sunday 
the  other  night,  that  it  was  in  brief  "  a  convention  of 
masturbators  —  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven  " ;  or 
assures  him  he  will  go  after  his  enemies  in  his  next :  — 
"  That  old  bitch  is  forever  at  the  bat  "  —  "I  shall  come  to 
the  case  of  the  old  cow,  she  is  a  dirty  old  slut  "  —  "I  will 
take  up  the  professors  as  they  come  along."  —  "  On  with 
310 


the  shrapnel,  ahead  with  the  machine  guns !  "  —  These  let- 
ters usually  signed  "  yours  in  Christ/'  on  occasion  "  Alloy- 
sius  Hohenzollern  "  or  "  Gustav  of  Magdala,"  or  "  Jesus 
Baumgartner,"  are  sparkling,  wicked,  hilarious  and  seri- 
ous. Under  them  runs  a  current  which  always  is  grave  and 
therefore  crucial,  of  two  conflicting  tempers:  Mencken, 
scholar,  wit,  protestant,  the  man  of  the  library  in  his  cor- 
rect house  in  Baltimore,  of  the  editorial  battle  field  in 
New  York,  of  drinking  bouts  at  Luchow's,  Knickerbocker, 
Astor,  Algonquin :  and  Dreiser,  the  prowler  in  dark,  curi- 
ous, wilder  places,  and  lighted  centers  as  well;  mystic 
and  catholic,  boorish  and  compassionate,  approximate  and 
precise  by  turns.  They  met  at  cross  roads  of  realism  and 
enterprise,  and  kindled  bonfires  there  for  fun.  In  later 
years  perhaps  the  novelist  got  tired  of  having  to  laugh  at 
himself  and  the  critic  of  having  always  to  praise  another. 

Masters'  letters  in  the  years  1912  to  1919  were  more 
reverent,  often  like  wine  in  praise  and  phrase.  It  is  a  loss 
that,  possibly  out  of  a  sense  of  the  sacredness  of  personal 
relations,  he  has  refused  permission  to  cite  from  these  let- 
ters. They  possess  a  devotion  to  art,  and  friendship,  frag- 
ments of  which  would  give  solace  to  lonely  readers  in  a 
chaotic  land.  He  writes  as  his  friends  of  those  years  have 
heard  him  speak,  exhorting  the  few  heroic  spirits  to  go  on 
even  "  in  the  contempt  of  men,"  that  is  of  other  Ameri- 
cans. Among  heroes  Dreiser  in  those  days  was  important 
to  him.  He  bemoans  the  country  as  a  dusty  chaos  of  Sun- 
day schools  and  evangelists.  Only  great  art  or  great  wit 
can  change  it,  and  perhaps  not  that.  As  for  Chicago,  it  was 
a  city  of  despair,  as  it  has  been  for  others  too  sensitive,  too 
uprooted  to  endure  it  without  a  diminution  of  creative 
strength.  Some  have  kept  still  or  even  whistled  for  cour- 
age ;  some  like  Henry  Fuller  have  spoken  in  a  clear  but 
scarcely  audible  voice.  Others  like  Masters  have  cried  out 
in  talk  and  in  poems  or  novels,  and  then  have  abandoned 
their  city  for  other  more  hopeful  lands. 

He  brightens  when  he  writes  that  people  come  around 
since  Spoon  River,  interesting  people,  but  Masters  never 
brightens  for  long;  bores  come  too  and  women  who  want 
to  be  refitted.  Masters  is  a  poet  of  rain  and  fog,  dreaming 
of  sun-bright  objects  across  hills.  He  exhorts  Dreiser  to 


keep  his  blasphemous  edge,  assuring  him  he  has  'em  all 
beat  "  and  rejoices  like  a  true  son  of  Belial  thereat."  Of 
these  almost  tearful  instructions,  up  to  date  Dreiser  has 
followed  a  fragment.  In  1931  certainly  "  in  the  contempt 
of  men  "  he  will  be  seen  fighting  the  lowbrow  hardboiled 
decree  of  Hollywood  magnates  as  to  what  they  cared  to 
make  of  An  American  Tragedy,  his  book,  not  theirs; 
going  on,  that  is,  before  the  jeers  and  snickers  of  the 
New  York  movie  critics,  who  appear  to  champion  the 
Jesuits  of  Paramount.  Or  at  least  they  go  on  record  as 
totally  indifferent  to  an  issue  concerning  them  as  much  as 
Dreiser  —  the  integrity  of  American  letters. 

Then  from  1911  until  1920,  the  year  of  his  death,  there 
are  from  time  to  time  whimsical  serious  notes  from  Wil- 
liam Marion  Reedy  in  St.  Louis  —  a  flavor  to  them. 
They  had  in  common  as  friends  Masters  and  the  young 
Harris  Merton  Lyon.  Spoon  River  Anthology  first  ap- 
peared in  Reedy's  Mirror,  and  was  first  praised  in  New 
York  by  Dreiser.  In  1915  at  165  West  Tenth  Street 
Masters  read  these  village  epitaphs  to  a  company  of 
literati,  New  Yorkers  who  had  to  credit  Chicago  with  a 
real  poet,  indifferent  as  that  city  was  to  the  glory  of  it. 
Reedy  writes  of  Masters  from  the  heights  of  near  old  age : 

"  I  hear  from  Masters  every  two  or  three  days  and 
he  is  still  conjugating  the  verb  amare  with  the  usual  con- 
junctive calamities  that  are  the  accompaniment  of  such 
grammatical  exercises.  It's  fine  to  be  beyond  Good  and 
Evil.  Behold  me!  I'm  57  and  immune  to  temptation." 

"A  letter  from  Masters  this  morning  [he  had  gone  to 
New  York  "  to  participate  poetically  in  the  Lowell  cen- 
tenary exercises  "] .  Little  about  Lowell,  lots  about  lovely 
ladies.  That  man  should  adopt  for  his  middle  name  that 
of  the  mythical  husband  of  Sappho  —  Penifer.  But  this  is 
the  voice  of  envious  senectitude." 

Then  intense  letters  about  Lyon  after  his  death  in 
1916,  with  pity  for  unfulfilment,  and  praise  to  Dreiser 
for  trying  to  collect  and  get  published  Lyon's  stones  and 
essays.  After  devoted  work  on  their  part  it  appears  the 
manuscript  was  snatched  back  by  Lyon's  wife,  advised  not 
to  trust  these  friends :  they  might  be  self-seeking.  So  the 
burial  perhaps  in  oblivion  of  another  young  American, 
who  came  and  went  too  soon,  killed  by  America.  Or  that 
312 


is  the  verdict  of  those  who  have  read  his  two  books 
Graphics  and  Sardonics,  published  at  Reedy's  expense. 
In  fact  Reedy  appears  to  have  always  published  in  this 
way;  his  famous  Mirror  never  soaring  into  dollars.  Here 
are  fragments  from  different  letters : 

".  .  .  Back  from  the  wilds  of  Wisconsin  ...  I  am  in 
hearty  sympathy  with  you  on  the  proposal  to  print  Lyon's 
best  work.  I  tried  to  help  him  with  some  of  the  publishers. 
...  I  don't  blame  them  much  however.  I  printed  1000 
copies  of  Graphics  and  I  think  I  have  sold  less  than  fifty. 
...  I  think  the  trouble  is  with  the  public  and  its  ten-reel 
mind." 

"...  I  was  exceedingly  fond  of  that  boy  and  admired 
his  work  this  side  of  idolatry  —  a  great  man  —  all  too 
early  dead." 

".  .  .  Poor  Lyon  —  my  God  how  he  burned  for  fame  .  .  . 
based  on  excellence;  how  he  scorned  the  idea  of  working 
for  the  market.  .  .  .  Our  last  meeting  was  poisoned  by  a 
clash  between  two  women  over  something  the  nature  of 
which  I  was  never  able  to  make  out.  Lyon  and  his  wife  de- 
camped from  my  house  —  Lyon  with  his  doom  on  him  (as 
I  knew  from  the  doctors).  .  .  .  Damn  women.  .  .  .  But 
what  are  we  going  to  do  without  them?  " 

".  .  .  It  hurt  me  to  read  those  things  —  reviving  the  man 
—  the  boy  —  himself.  .  .  .  His  very  soul  bared.  .  .  .  And 
mostly  he's  in  agony.  ...  I  think  there  is  too  much  mor- 
bidity in  the  stories.  .  .  ." 

"...  I  have  read  Twelve  Men.  .  .  .  Your  study  of  Lyon 
is  wonderful.  I  was  interested  also  in  your  study  of  poor 
Dick  Wood.  .  .  .  You  know  Dick  went  all  to  pieces  and 
died  as  a  morphine  fiend.  .  .  ." 

[and  the  last  letter]  "  Your  phone  is  a  damned  delusion. 
Eleventeen  times  I've  tried  to  get  you  in  two  weeks.  .  .  . 
Now  I  hope  you  don't  think  I'm  going  away  without  see- 
ing you  for  I'm  not.  .  .  .  I'm  damned  tired,  stale,  flat  and 
unprofitable.  ...  I  was  thrice  at  the  village  in  to  see  my 
protege  Barney  Galant,  and  had  some  drinks,  but  drinks 
don't  help." 

Like  poems  that  don't  lie  these  letters  follow  the  arch 
of  lives  and  fall  into  sadness  with  the  passing  of  youth 
and  hope.  There  is  one  from  Lyon  himself,  still  young 
but  tired,  thanking  him  for  trying  to  get  him  a  publisher : 

"  It  is  serious  with  me.  I  would  write  long  books  if  I 
could  [with]  the  encouragement  of  a  publisher  of  weight. 

313 


It  seems  to  me  we  are  all  that  way.  Balzac,  the  man  of 
*  incomparable  power  '  would  never  have  kept  so  assidu- 
ously at  the  grind  if  his  head  had  not  also  been  filled  with 
the  sound  of  fame  ringing  in  his  ears.  .  .  .  Some  men  are 
blessedly  narrow  enough  to  be  devoted  to  their  Art;  some 
are  silly  enough  to  be  able  to  warm  up  an  affection  for 
Posterity.  A  common  strain  in  me  prevents  the  possibility 
of  such  amours.  .  .  .  Not  having  [a  publisher]  I  some- 
times even  cease  to  think  at  all  and  drift  with  the  days,  let- 
ting a  pagan  materialism  suffice  me.  Even  though  I  itch 
with  longing  and  disdain,  I  say,  '  After  all  enough  has  been 
written.' 

.  .  .  Reedy  is  sending  you  at  my  request  his  St.  Louis 
Mirror.  The  Farmhouse  series,  unsigned,  is  mine." 

Masters  and  Reedy  and  this  little  known  young  man 
seem  like  three  of  the  many  advance  messengers  of  the 
war  that  wages  now  between  nature  and  machinery,  in 
which  letters  are  not  burned  as  at  Alexandria  but  are  lost 
in  a  great  oblivion.  Impossible  for  example  to  get  today 
more  than  a  rumor  of  works  of  Lyon,*  Reedy  is  a  for- 
gotten Samaritan.  Masters  is  incompletely  published  and 
his  poems  are  elegies  of  such  death.  The  New  York 
Tribune  in  1931  speaks  of  him  as  "  an  unknown  lawyer 
from  Springfield,  Illinois." 

Then  there  were  other  friends  who  were  gayer.  There 
was  George  Sterling,  the  California  poet  and  libertine, 
who  committed  suicide  in  1927  —  a  mind  enough  in  the 
major  key,  one  would  think,  to  be  conserved  by  pub- 
lishers. He  belongs  in  the  end  of  this  book,  a  friend  be- 
tween 1920  and  1927,  but  he  belongs  too  in  this  chapter 
which  is  partly  designed  as  a  profile  of  how  concentrative 
American  genius  can  be,  and  how  almost  wholly  dissi- 
pated it  has  been  by  its  public.  As  if  they  were  careless 
children  emptying  into  sand  fine  pitchers  of  elixir  and  then 
smashing  the  jugs  or  deserting  them  to  the  weather  of 
beaches  or  of  vacant  lots.  Sterling  was  the  last  and  long- 
time friend  of  that  intolerant  wit,  Ambrose  Bierce,  al- 
though Bierce  cursed  him  in  a  letter  before  he  went  to  be 

*  It  is  the  same  with  many  others  who  unlike  Lyon  achieved  fame. 
Most  of  the  novels  of  Henry  Fuller,  for  example,  are  out  of  print.  Quick- 
sand, by  Hervey  White,  is  out  of  print,  a  book  which  Dreiser  puts  among 
the  great  books  of  the  world.  Bierce  and  Crane  are  hard  to  get.  —  The  list 
of  lost  artists  is  long. 


lost  in  Mexico  in  1916.  Equally  it  seems  his  heart  included 
so  opposite  a  soul  as  Dreiser's,  and  then  as  different  tem- 
pers as  Edwin  Markham,  Robinson  Jeffers,  Mary  Austin, 
Gertrude  Atherton,  Witter  Bynner,  Arthur  Ficke,  Upton 
Sinclair,  Sinclair  Lewis,  Mencken  and  Masters,  many 
of  whom  would  clash  if  they  met  in  the  same  room.  Ster- 
ling apparently  went  to  the  last  barriers  of  his  nature  in 
pursuit  of  pleasure  and  pain,  so  that  wherever  the  heart 
beat  he  was  at  home.  He  was  an  extravagant,  and  loved 
Dreiser  for  extravagant  devotion  to  life.  He  writes  him 
first  in  1920  to  Los  Angeles,  where  he  lived  three  years,  to 
invite  him  to  his  "  cool  grey  city  of  love,"  u  not  quite  the 
city  it  was,  but  the  daughter  of  the  vine,  though  shy,  can 
still  be  found  by  the  faithful.  And  there  are  other  daugh- 
ters." Then  follow  letters  addressing  him  as  Theodore, 
Beloved  Mastodon,  Dear  Megatherium,  Beloved  Bronte- 
saurus,  Dear  Titanosaurus,  praising  his  work,  telling  of 
escapades,  discussing  ultimate  answers  to  chaos;  asking 
and  thanking  him  for  a  preface  to  his  Lilith,  and  for  help 
to  a  friend,  a  young  novelist ;  sending  him  a  ballad,  son- 
nets, satires;  in  the  end  thanking  him  for  a  gift  of  money 
—  he  lived  as  he  could.  Here  are  extracts : 

".  .  .  I've  been  rereading  The  Titan,  Sister  Carrie,  and 
The  Hand  of  The  Potter.  .  .  .  How  you  tower  above  the 
snipes  and  the  tirmites.  Mencken  though  he  puts  up  a 
good  fight  for  you,  doesn't  give  you  justice  by  a  long  shot. 
One  has  to  think  in  centuries  to  do  that."  .  .  . 

"  I  was  in  the  lily  pond  again,  last  month,  this  time  with 
a  beautiful  blonde.  The  police  arrested  us,  but  fortunately 
we  got  our  clothes  on  before  they  appeared.  .  .  .  They 
took  us,  at  my  request,  to  the  old  superintendent  of  the 
Park,  who  though  in  bed,  had  us  released.  But  it  got  in  the 
papers.  If  I'd  had  a  clipping  I'd  enclose  it." 

"...  I  am  eager  that  Lilith  should  have  a  good  sale, 
not  for  any  monetary  reasons,  but  to  justify  faith  in  it. 
...  A  foreword  from  you  would  '  make  '  it  and  me.  .  .  . 

"  It  takes  real  nerve  to  praise  a  man  and  then  ask  a  great 
favor.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  The  *  Tragedy '  came  back  safely  with  your  in- 
scription. .  .  .  Heart  does  not  often  accompany  head  to 
the  degree  it  does  with  you  .  .  .  wish  you  were  with  me 
today  by  this  blue  bay. 

"  I  am  here  with  Red  Lewis,  who  like  me  is  in  the  front 

3IS 


rank  of  your  admirers.  But  he  is  upstairs  sleeping  off  last 
night's  jag,  and  is  oblivious  to  all  this  pure  beauty." 

".  .  .  Thanks,  a  million  of  them!  I  knew  you'd  not  fail 
me.  .  .  . 

"  As  to  the  philosophy  of  the  poem  ...  so  keen  a  mind 
as  yours  can  discern  that  Lilith  .  .  .  has  utterly  the  better 
of  the  argument  (  .  .  .  the  crux  of  the  poem),  yet  I  have 
put  into  the  mouth  of  Trancred  the  best  that  can  be  said 
for  the  optimist,  and  many  readers  will  believe  that  is  right. 
I  think  that  is  the  better  way  as  denoting  the  eternal  bal- 
ance between  good  and  evil  (pleasure  and  pain). 

".  .  .  Schopenhauer  claims  that  pain  is  the  only  reality, 
and  it  is  indeed  the  greatest  one.  Nevertheless,  pleasure  is 
more  than  the  mere  absence  of  pain,  as  witness  the  violence 
and  individuality  of  the  sex-ecstasy,  for  instance." 

".  .  .  You  and  Mencken  are  my  sole  inducements  to  a 
trip  to  New  York.  Next  year  I  may  make  it.  ...  Here  are 
fine  bright  minds  in  this  sex-mad  city  and  I  have  to  waste 
most  of  my  creative  energy  on  4th  rate  short  stories  under 
a  nom-de-plume.  .  .  ." 

"  Next  year  "  he  was  gone  by  his  own  hand  from  sex- 
mad  cities  to  where  u  Unheard  but  of  the  spiritual  ear, 
—  Endures  the  challenge  of  the  timeless  foe  —  .  .  .  An 
icy  music,  mercilessly  clear."  Two  other  verses  sent 
Dreiser  bridge  the  country  from  West  to  East,  or  crudely 
so.  One  is  a  jingle;  a  lumber-jack  in  the  wilderness  yearns 
for  civilization,  "  For  a  little  jazz  on  the  vie,"  "  a  jolt  of 
rot-gut  rye  "  and  a  "  whore  in  her  perfumed  bed."  The 
other  is  addressed  to  a  New  York  critic,  modern  ten 
years  ago: 

"O  diligent  small  Jew!  Behold  in  me 

That  sluggard  once  commended  to  the  ant  .  .  . 

(Now  why  the  ant?  the  flea  is  busier), 

Yet  marvelling  is  in  me,  as  I  gaze  and  note 

Your  lore  in  magazine  and  book 

Revealing  how  you  love  some  brother  bard 

In  terms  that  men  are  very  joyous  for. 

I,  haply  sitting  on  the  poor-house  porch 

Shall  see  you  pass  in  your  swift  limousine, 

And  weeping,  cry:  O  diligent  small  Jew!  " 

The  reader  may  object  that  now  I  am  far  afield  of  my 
theme,  but  it  is  not  so.  The  diligent  critic  had  undoubtedly 
dismissed  Sterling  as  out  of  date.  Yet  these  letters  show 
him  as  timeless  in  the  possession  of  faith  and  lust,  whereas 
the  selfsame  critic,  now  out-dated,  may  very  possibly  have 

316 


crumbled  to  pieces  out  of  diplomacy.  The  moral  of  it  is 
that  fashions  like  all  the  devil's  decrees  are  salutary,  if 
revolt  is  allowed  to  follow  them.  If  the  various  fleas  and 
poets  of  the  day  had  really  exchanged  goading,  the  blade 
of  Irony  might  at  length  have  appeared,  and  have  given 
edge  to  the  national  temper.  It  was  the  time  for  Ameri- 
cans to  fuse,  and  they  let  the  moment  pass.  Now  we  must 
wait  again  for  no  one  knows  how  many  years  for  Civili- 
zation. 

Other  personalities  appear  out  of  a  profusion  of  letters 
from  vivid  men.  John  Maxwell,  dating  from  the  Chicago 
Globe  days  writes  from  time  to  time  salty  news ;  once  on 
receipt  of  the  manuscript  of  A  Book  About  Myself: 

"  I  also  took  the  liberty  to  cross  out  about  four  lines  in 
which  I  was  made  to  inveigh  against  the  virtue  of  women 
and  the  honor  of  men.  .  .  .  There  is  no  chance  to  live  on 
earth  and  express  our  sentiments  publicly.  However  I  have 
let  the  sentiment  stand  that  I  consider  999  men  out  of  a 
thousand  bastards.  I  won't  renig  on  that.  But  a  fellow  just 
can't  lambast  womanhood  generally.  .  .  . 

"  Did  you  know  that  the  nation  is  trembling  in  the  throes 
of  a  ...  political  revolution.  ...  It  will  never  win  except 
through  bloodshed.  What  we  are  hearing  now  is  preliminary 
tremors  of  the  mighty  quake  that  will  end  in  the  destruction 
of  our  present  government.  Yet  they  are  so  blind  they  can- 
not see.  Instead  of  cooperating,  they  advise  killing  and  im- 
prisonment, physical  torture  of  one  kind  or  another.  But 
it  has  always  been  so." 

After  the  same  book  came  many  reminiscences  from 
journalists,  rich,  failures,  venerable  and  middle-aged. 
They  had  known  these  St.  Louis  characters,  and  testified 
jubilantly  to  Dreiser's  accuracy.  One  of  them  tells  of  a 
night  spent  wandering  with  Reedy  about  the  resorts  of 
St.  Louis,  when  his  wife  was  dying,  a  Catholic  married 
after  divorce;  and  he  was  denied  their  house  so  that  she 
might  receive  sacrament  and  enter  heaven.  "  The  things 
Reedy  said  to  me  that  night  I  shall  never  forget,"  ran 
the  letter.  These  men  contradict  critics  who  have  called 
Dreiser  authentic  as  novelist  but  loose  as  biographer. 
Their  anecdotes  are  sometimes  epitaphs,  so  many  of  these 
figures  dying  violent,  dissolute  or  strange  deaths.  They 
are  letters  that  have,  as  in  some  of  Masters'  poems,  that 
almost  toneless  monotone  and  twang  of  Western  voices, 


trained  to  be  afraid  of  intimate  statement,  and  lowering 
the  voice  for  scandal,  even  in  letters.  The  voices  take  you 
to  sentiment  and  jokes  and  sudden  cackle  on  village 
porches  summer  nights,  to  leaves  of  trumpet  vines  and 
wild  grape  vines,  to  big  yards  and  Main  Streets  back  West, 
even  where  the  writers  have  graduated  to  cities. 

Thomas  B.  Mosher,  the  first  American  publisher  of 
physically  aesthetic  books,  usually  small  reprints  of  the 
classics,  is  one  of  these  and  comes  as  an  unexpected  find  in 
Dreiser  files.  In  a  letter  to  Reedy  his  voice  is  mellow  and 
rustic  and  breaks  the  monotone.  He  speaks  of  a  Mirror 
review  of  The  Financier: 

"  It  is  certainly,  Bill,  beyond  me  to  express  the  admira- 
tion I  feel  for  a  cuss  like  yourself  who  can  take  up  his  pen 
and  sling  liquid  lightning.  .  .  .  This  you  have  done,  my 
son,  and  ...  I  have  only  to  say  you  struck  it  to  the  heart. 
I  greatly  admired  Clayhanger  and  yet  Arnold  Bennett  is 
not  in  it  with  Theodore  Dreiser.  Old  man  your  head  for 
once  is  bigger  than  your  heart  and  it  would  be  hard  to  chase 
that  fat  fantastic  heart  of  yours  into  all  the  holes  and  cor- 
ners it  has  probably  crept  since  the  days  when  you  were  a 
newspaper  boy  and  I  was  a  damned  poor  clerk  in  St.  Louis 
in  '79." 

Then  there  are  just  as  many  letters  with  a  literary  tone 
of  voice;  naturally  cultured  among  the  older  men;  fash- 
ionably rough-neck  among  the  younger.  Among  them  are 
Alexander  Harvey,  George  P.  Jenks,  W.  E.  Williams  of 
Kansas  City,  W.  H.  Wright  (S.  S.  VanDine),  Charles 
Yost,  Thomas  Boyd  of  St.  Paul,  Charles  Fort,  Max  East- 
man, Edward  Smith,  John  Barry,  Fremont  Older  out  in 
San  Francisco,  Sherwood  Anderson,  Frank  Harris,  John 
Powys,  Ben  Hecht,  Jim  Tully,  Burton  Rascoe,  Matthew 
Josephson,  David  Karsner,  Dudley  Nichols,  Sol  P.  Car- 
son and  Claude  Bowers  who  writes : 

"  Have  just  read  your  opinion  of  the  intelligentsia  .  .  . 
of  our  delectable  city  in  the  World.  I  have  long  known  there 
was  something  miserably  wrong  with  our  Best  Minds  for 
the  most  part.  .  .  .  You  have  hit  the  nail  on  the  head.  They 
are  men  in  petticoats." 

"  Spinsters  in  trousers  "  might  have  driven  the  nail  out 
of  sight.  But  the  intellectuals  of  this  correspondence  are 
not  in  this  class.  In  fact  a  marvelous  vigor  operates  in 
these  letters  back  and  forth  between  Dreiser  and  their 

318 


writers  —  some  of  these  men  so  grateful,  they  insist,  for 
his  books  and  for  his  "  blasphemous,"  fearless  integrity. 
It  gives  them  courage  to  go  on.  Perhaps  only  Ben  Hecht 
writes  with  tongue  slightly  in  cheek,  a  little  patronizing, 
more  inquisitive  than  sincere — a  harbinger  of  today's 
attitude  toward  seriousness.  Dreiser  on  his  side  appears  in 
this  correspondence  as  one  repeatedly  solicited  to  find  an 
editorial  job  or  to  find  a  publisher  or  to  write  a  preface  or 
to  inscribe  a  book  for  friend  or  stranger.  Almost  always 
a  later  letter  discloses  that  he  has  done  his  utmost;  or 
sometimes  it  is  he  who  offers  help  on  his  own  initiative. 
Sherwood  Anderson  writes  him  in  1916 : 

"  Some  one  once  told  me  of  the  difficulty  you  have  had 
with  publishers  so  perhaps  you  will  sympathize  with  me 
...  I  want  you  to  read  one  of  my  novels.  .  .  . 

"  I  have  written  four  long  novels  and  none  of  them  have 
been  published  ...  I  am  nearly  forty  years  of  age.  .  .  ." 

"...  I  must  personally  thank  you  for  your  .  .  .  article 
in  Seven  Arts  Magazine.  It  sets  forth  as  nothing  I  have  ever 
read  .  .  .  the  complete  and  terrible  fact  of  the  wall  in  the 
shadow  of  which  American  artists  must  work. 

"  To  any  of  us  here  in  America  the  one  really  hopeful 
note  of  our  times  is  your  own  stout  figure  pounding  at  the 
wall. 

"  Our  hats  off  to  you,  captain." 

And  Charles  Fort  repays  Dreiser's  find  of  a  publisher 
for  him  with  fantastic  letters  out  of  pools  of  friendship, 
and  the  invention  of  a  "  heathen  cocktail  "  which  he 
names  after  Dreiser.  To  some  laymen  he  appears  to  make 
fiction  out  of  scientific  lore  and  rumor,  and  appears  to 
believe  in  a  land  above  the  earth,  complementary  to  it, 
from  which  rain  frogs,  blood,  meteors  and  other  phe- 
nomena, and  occasionally  ambassadors  in  the  likeness  of 
men.  Perhaps  Dreiser  is  related  to  him  on  the  side  that 
seeks  to  surround  the  network  of  facts  with  explicit  mys- 
teries. Though  "  realist  "  he  has  paid  homage  to  a  num- 
ber of  miraculous  doctrines  —  Christian  Science,  mental 
telepathy,  spiritualism.  Have  they  been  the  more  plausible 
to  this  child  from  "  credulous  "  Indiana  because  of  that 
background  of  Pagan-Catholic  ghouls,  saints  and  devils? 
Or  has  it  been  quite  simply  his  wish  to  propose  imagina- 
tively that  u  anything  may  be  true,"  —  a  proposal,  isn't 

319 


it,  that  Arthur  Eddington,  the  physicist,  makes  mathe- 
matically. .  .  .  And  then  from  that  premise  does  he 
sometimes  favor,  again  like  Eddington,  unproved  se- 
quences .  .  .  ?  The  cocktail  is  made  after  this  recipe : 

"  You  take  a  glass  of  beer  and  put  a  live  goldfish  in  it  — 
instead  of  a  cherry  or  olive  or  such  things  that  occur  to  a 
commonplace  mind. 

:<  You  gulp. 

"  The  sensation  of  enclosing  a  live  organism  is  delight- 
fully revolting.  I  think  it's  immoral.  I  have  named  it  the 
Dreiser  cocktail." 


320 


55 

"  The  pains  lie  among  the  pleasures  like 
sand  in  rice,  not  only  bad  in  themselves  but 
spoiling  the  good."  HERMAN  MELVILLE 

T 

JLhese  letters  tell  of  time  crowded  but  unhur- 
ried, of  moments  of  fulfilment.  Then  in  most  cases  the 
liaison  ends,  not  always  by  death;  often  by  that  "  change- 
fulness  "  which,  he  says,  "  is  mine  and  life's,"  and  we  get 
imitations  of  the  final  change  death.  Today  on  his  six- 
tieth birthday  an  interviewer  quotes  him  in  words  that 
chill  the  blood,  perhaps  to  shock  her  and  yet  palpably  his 
words:  "I  have  never  wanted  friends,  and  have  never 
been  in  a  position  where  I  didn't  have  to  fence  myself  in." 
One  wonders  from  signs  like  this  if  his  "  changefulness  " 
is  not  in  part  another  word  for  fear  of  criticism.  Fact  is, 
the  years  have  cut  him  off  from  some  of  these  finest  inti- 
macies. Is  that  why  he  disdains  them  now?  Mencken 
explains  it  casually:  "  Oh  well,  New  York  is  a  washer-out 
of  friendships."  And  it  used  to  be  repeated,  "  He  stands 
weather-beaten  and  lonely  .  .  .";  yet  then  and  always 
as  these  letters  show,  and  friends  and  ex-friends  bear  wit- 
ness, he  was  living  many  lives  and  nearly  as  many  deaths, 
their  number  dependent  on  changefulness  —  a  chain- 
stitch  life  of  people.  The  fire  and  ashes  of  them  appear 
in  his  pages. 

In  five  years,  1914  to  1919  Dreiser  published  eight 
books  *  all  of  them  luminous,  that  is,  giving  forth  light, 
if  read  faithfully;  each  of  them  deeply  concerned  with 
why  and  how  we  live.  And  less  concerned  with  how  to  say 
it.  In  the  same  years,  however  "  weather-beaten  and 

*  The  Titan,  1914$  The  "Genius,"  19155  Plays  of  The  Natural  And 
The  Supernatural,  1916}  A  Booster  Holiday,  1916;  Free  And  Other 
Stories,  19185  The  Hand  Of  The  Potter,  1919;  Twelve  Men,  19195  Hey 
Rub- A -Dub-Dub,  1919. 

321 


lonely,"  requests  came  to  him  for  articles  from  people  as 
various  as  Ray  Long  of  The  Cosmopolitan,  Max  East- 
man of  the  New  Masses,  David  Karsner  of  The  Call, 
and  on  special  cross-roads  James  Oppenheim  and  Waldo 
Frank  of  Seven  Arts,  Frank  Harris  owner  of  Pearson's, 
and  on  a  main  cross-road  Mencken  and  Nathan  of  The 
Smart  Set  and  The  American  Mercury.  He  is  in  these 
years  a  terrific  lesson  in  energy;  a  nucleus  for  people  so 
foreign  one  to  the  other  that  it  is  fabulous  to  believe  they 
all  wanted  him.  He  responded  with  story  or  article,  some- 
times to  be  turned  down  even  by  solicitors,  who  had  their 
public  to  think  of.  But  nothing  deterred  him.  A  wraith  of 
a  story,  The  Lost  Phoebe  *  was  sent  out  a  dozen  times 
through  two  agents  from  1912  to  1915  before  finally  The 
Century  accepted  it,  and  later  Famous  Short  Stories  re- 
printed it.  Its  first  agent  wrote  that  in  his  opinion  it  was 
useless  to  send  it  to  The  Saturday  Evening  Post  —  the 
mere  sketch  of  an  insane  tottering  old  man,  who  can't 
believe  his  wife  is  dead;  and  he  wanders  calling  her  until 
he  dies.  The  Post,  Mr.  Reynolds  reminds  him,  and  it 
could  not  have  been  news,  "  prefers  stories  of  youth  and 
happiness  or  of  action."  But  Dreiser  insists  that  the 
Pollyanna  temple  shall  have  its  chance  of  refusal,  which 
it  takes.  In  1918  however  this  same  journal  prints  Free* 
more  gloomy  and  harsher  than  The  Lost  Phoebe.  William 
Griffiths  of  The  National  Sunday  Magazine  would  like 
"  mighty  well  "  to  have  something  from  Dreiser,  but  if 
it  is  u  sad  "  he  doubts  that  he  wants  it;  he  would  like  one 
of  his  "  strong  stories  "  like  the  one  about  a  railroad 
section-boss  he  had  seen  in  McClure's.  Colliers  begs  him 
to  put  "  plot  "  and  "  emotional  interest  "  into  his  work. 
Douglas  Z.  Doty  of  Century,  accepting  The  Lost  Phoebe, 
warns  him  they  can't  publish  it  at  once  on  account  of  war 
news  being  "  rather  grim  ";  their  "  only  chance  for  light- 
ness is  in  the  fiction."  So  the  spectres  of  the  Howells  days, 
Sweetness  and  Gladness  join  now  with  "  Pep  "  and  con- 
tinue to  pronounce  their  rancid  curse  upon  our  letters. 
In  1916  however  the  Cosmopolitan  pays  $600  for  Mar- 
ried *  —  a  brief  contrast  of  city  and  village,  and  of  how 
life  is  cruel,  turned  to  light  in  two  people's  hearts.  In  1918 

*  Free  And  Other  Stories. 
322 


they  print  The  Second  Choice  *  as  desolating  as  Tchekov 
at  his  greyest.  Sewell  Haggard  accepts  an  article  for 
Hearst's  for  $500.  The  Sunday  New  York  Tribune  prints 
a  story  called  Love  which  loses  the  editor  his  job.  So, 
patiently  Dreiser  places  his  wares  for  money  or  for  next 
to  nothing,  $30  once  from  The  New  Republic  for  a  story. 
He  submits  short  plays,  but  editors  high-brow  and  low- 
brow feel  that  "  dramatic  material  is  not  available  for 
magazine  use,"  or  that  the  plays  are  too  "  psychologic  " 
to  be  dramatic. 

He  had  to  count  on  the  lively  editors  of  Smart  Set 
and  the  Little  Review  to  see  these  plays  in  print  and  on 
a  future  life  to  see  most  of  them  on  the  stage. f  Mencken 
and  Nathan  regret  repeatedly  they  can't  pay  him  more; 
they  are  involved  in  a  battle  themselves  to  "  put  some 
genuine  intelligence  into  that  decrepit  and  maudlin  sheet." 
They  submit  to  months  without  salary  in  the  cause  of 
national  exhilaration,  and  finally  give  up  in  favor  of  a 
fresh  start,  their  Mercury.  The  Smart  Set  remains  for  all 
their  effort  "  as  righteous  as  a  decrepit  and  converted 
Madame,"  Mencken  writes.  Yet  not  before  they  have 
published  a  number  of  novelties  including  the  first  stories 
of  James  Joyce  to  be  printed  in  America. 

So  it  went,  this  battle  for  lively  letters;  a  formidable 
lesson  in  endurance,  for  which  men  appear  too  tired  to- 
day or  spineless.  In  addition,  with  Dreiser  sales  were 
crucial ;  he  lived  by  what  he  wrote,  counting  nickels,  riding 
in  subways  and  street-cars;  even  the  5th  Avenue  bus  was  a 
luxury.  Today  he  praises  hardship,  a  spur  to  good  work, 
he  says.  But  sometimes  perhaps  the  repeated  melancholy 
of  it  dulls  the  sharpest  "  blasphemous  edge."  His  record 
is  the  more  grilling  when  one  considers  the  handicap  of 
at  least  three  major  battles  with  his  publishers  in  these 
few  years,  in  one  of  which  Mencken  was  a  devoted  ally. 

The  first  engagement  came  in  the  winter  of  1915. 
Harper's  had  accepted  and  printed  The  Titan.  It  was  all 

*  Free  And  Other  Stories. 

f  In  1917  The  Girl  In  The  Coffin  was  skilfully  produced  by  the 
Washington  Square  Players  and  in  1921  The  Hand  Of  The  Potter  was 
execrably  played  for  only  two  weeks  by  the  Provincetown  Players.  Other- 
wise Dreiser's  plays  have  never  reached  the  commercial  footlights. 

323 


but  bound.  Then  out  of  a  cloudless  sky,  the  Doubleday 
incident  repeated  itself.  Over  the  telephone  the  book  was 
withdrawn,  and  with  no  new  reason  given;  "  a  bit  too 
strong"  was  all  they  could  say  —  Messrs  Duneka,  Hitch- 
cock and  Leigh,  now  dead.  The  remaining  editors  of  that 
day,  Mr.  Wells  and  Mr.  Hoyns,  can  remember  nothing 
of  the  affair.  Mr.  Hoyns,  when  asked,  agrees  that  it  was 
curious  for  a  firm  to  go  so  far  and  then  retract;  he  can 
remember  no  other  incident  of  the  kind  in  his  connection 
with  Harper's.  Mr.  Thomas  Wells  thinks  it  was  due  to 
the  typesetters,  one  of  whom,  he  remembers,  came  to  Mr. 
Duneka's  desk  next  to  his,  with  some  of  the  proof  sheets, 
and  the  advice  not  to  publish  The  Titan.  His  colleagues 
in  the  printing  room  had  all  agreed  that  the  book  was 
obscene  and  objectionable.  Apparently  then  some  $2,000 
(or  at  least  that  is  what  Dreiser  says  he  eventually  had 
to  give  them  for  the  plates)  was  jeopardized  to  save  the 
delicate  feelings  of  the  typesetters.  Rumor  however  had 
it  differently  at  the  time.  It  was  hinted  that  a  would-be 
ambassador  to  England  blocked  the  way  —  the  very 
Colonel  Harvey  who  back  in  1910  "  did  not  want  to 
meet  "  the  author  of  Jennie  Gerhardt.  The  last  mistress 
of  the  great  Yerkes,  now  fashionable  in  London,  or  at 
least  with  king  and  queen,  could,  it  seemed,  be  more  valu- 
able to  the  Colonel  than  a  great  novel  could  be  to  his 
publishing  house.  Others  said  that  a  Chicago  newspaper 
might  sue  for  a  libelous  rendering  of  one  of  its  founders. 
So  two  years'  work  fell  like  a  card  house.  Nothing  to  do 
but  to  send  the  book  elsewhere.  Mitchell  Kennedy  like- 
wise would  not  touch  it.  It  seemed  that  he  too  wished  to 
stand  in  well  with  the  favorite  of  the  traction  magnate, 
who,  it  was  thought,  resembled  the  young  and  beguiling 
Berenice,  last  in  the  list  of  the  Titan's  loves.  A  legend 
had  it  that  Dreiser  himself  was  infatuated  with  this 
princess  of  American  subversive  royalty.  This  he  dis- 
claims: "  I  admired  her,  she  had  that  mysterious  trait  — 
style.  If  she  gave  a  dinner  or  a  luncheon  it  was  staged  like 
a  play,  but  there  was  no  chance  to  know  her ;  she  was  too 
much  the  diplomat  and  wrapped  herself  in  importance. 
She  received  from  a  green  onyx  couch  covered  with  furs 
and  brocades." 

324 


Letters  and  telegrams  fly  between  Dreiser  and  friends 
of  his  on  the  one  hand  and  the  publishers  on  the  other, 
most  of  them  interested  but  scared.  The  "  lovable  "  B.  W. 
Dodge  tries  to  help  him,  with  the  suggestion  of  Dodd, 
Mead  &  Co.,  but  takes  it  back: 

".  .  .  if  .  .  .  too  strong  for  Harper's  it  would  surely  be 
too  rich  for  D.  M.  and  Co.  .  .  .  The  entire  family  are  very 
pious  Presby's.  There  is  not  a  black  sheep  in  the  entire 
flock  which  is  a  large  one.  The  only  book  they  ever  pub- 
lished which  shaded  the  Ten  Commandments  was  "  Pam  " 
.  .  .  and  they  have  regretted  it  ever  since. 

Also,  Dodge  writes,  he  "  is  strictly  sober  "  now  and  would 
like  the  novelist  to  go  back  into  the  publishing  business 
with  him.  Dreiser  does  this  with  the  loan  of  some  money. 
Not  many  years  after  Dodge  died,  owing  him  some 
thousands  of  dollars  dating  back  to  the  Sister  Carrie 
returns,  the  loss  of  which  he  says  he  never  regretted,  so 
much  he  loved  him.  D.  Z.  Doty  of  The  Century,  pub- 
lisher of  A  Traveler  at  Forty,  is  sorry  that  his  house  is 
afraid  of  The  Titan.  Mr.  Charles  Scribner  writes  squeam- 
ishly from  the  Century  Club  he  is  certain  of  refusing  the 
book  before  reading  it,  but  that  no  doubt  it  will  make  a 
financial  success  and  there  are  "  publishers  who  would 
jump  at  the  chance."  Doran  decides  after  a  careful  read- 
ing he  "  would  not  publish  Dreiser  if  he  were  the  last 
author  on  earth."  Mencken  writes: 

"An  eternal  pox  upon  the  Harpers.  And  Doran  be 
damned  for  his  flight.  God  knows  this  country  needs  that 
weekly,  once  planned.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  high  time  you  stopped  listening  to  the  vapid  criti- 
cisms of  publishing  donkeys.  Such  vermin  over-estimate 
their  own  sagacity  and  what  is  more  their  own  importance. 
Imagine  Kennedy  objecting  to  a  book  of  yours.  .  .  ." 

Finally  at  Lengel's  instigation  John  Lane  and  Co.  show 
a  spark  of  interest.  Their  American  editor  however, 
J.  Jefferson  Jones,  was  about  to  turn  the  book  down,  when 
again  an  Englishman  as  with  Sister  Carrie  came  to  the 
rescue.  Lane's  English  advisor,  Frederic  Chapman,  also 
translator  of  Anatole  France,  happened  on  the  scene.  He 
made  this  report : 

"  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt  that  as  far  as  John  Lane 
Co.  is  concerned  this  is  the  most  important  chance  that 

325 


has  come  its  way  since  the  establishment  of  the  New  York 
business,  and  while  I  should  not  anticipate  in  England  any- 
thing like  the  sales  which  may  be  counted  on  in  America, 
the  book  is  certain  to  rouse  a  good  deal  of  discussion  and 
to  be  treated  with  unqualified  respect  by  the  more  serious 
reviewers. 

"The  ostensible  causes  upon  which  Harper's  have  with- 
drawn the  book  are  quite  negligible.  .  .  .  Mr.  Dreiser 
records  his  hero's  fluttering  from  one  flame  to  another  with 
entire  passivity.  He  hardly  commends  and  certainly  never 
condemns,  but  he  has  handled  his  episodes  in  so  masterly  a 
fashion  that  I  do  not  think  there  is  the  least  chance  of  the 
prurient  public  getting  flustered.  A  ready  retort  to  any- 
body .  .  .  would  be  to  refer  them  to  Mr.  Galsworthy's 
.  .  .  Dark  Flower  .  .  .  which  is  infinitely  more  immoral 
(supposing  immorality  to  exist  in  either)  .  .  ." 

So  now  all  is  well;  even  the  English  publication  of 
The  Titan  went  through,  to  the  regret  of  Mr.  Mitchell 
Kennedy,  two  of  whose  letters  to  Alexander  Harvey  are 
almost  proof  of  the  rumor  that  he  was  the  poison  in 
Dreiser's  candy,  and  all  for  fear  of  treason  to  majesty. 
The  novel,  he  thought,  should  never  have  been  published 
in  America  and  could  not  possibly  be  published  in  Eng- 
land without  incurring  legal  liability.  He  had  written 
John  Lane  to  that  effect.  He  presumed  he  would  not  wish 
to  bring  the  book  out  on  account  of  "  his  friendship  of 
many  years'  standing  with  Miss  Grigsby."  That  publisher 
must  have  looked  on  style  and  story  as  separate  issues. 
The  Titan  appeared  in  England,  apparently  without  detri- 
ment to  himself  or  his  friend,  the  American  heiress. 

Yet  it  looks  as  if  quite  surely  "  High  Society  "  had  the 
importance  which  Dreiser,  for  one,  never  afraid  of  ridi- 
cule, has  had  the  intellect  to  give  it.  And  in  the  drama  of 
our  letters  the  socially  elect  and  the  socially  aspiring  ap- 
pear to  have  played  the  part  of  Villain  not  of  Friend 
to  Art. 


326 


"  Whatever  his  faults  of  composition  or 
construction,  and  there  are  not  so  many  as 
his  friends  endeavor  to  make  out,  he  has 
magnificently  booted  the  reading  public,  the 
morally  subsidized  critics  and  the  very  pub- 
lishers in  the  coarsest  regions  of  their 
bodies  —  their  souls.  And  for  this  .  .  .  / 
acclaim  him  as  the  only  real,  uncontami- 
nated  genius  of  these  States  and  pray  to 
God  that  my  friend  Sherwood  Anderson 
will  hurry  up  and  get  published  so  that 
there  will  be  two  of  them." 
The  Scavenger,  Little  Review,  October,  1916 


low  Dreiser  again  unconsciously  was  setting 
the  stage  for  a  second  and  more  spectacular  engage- 
ment. This  time  it  would  be  a  storm  center  about  which 
would  flare  for  a  while  the  forces  of  Methodism  and 
Conservatism,  and  the  scattered  amateurs  of  free 
speech;  an  incongruous  clash  of  people  never  meant  to 
meet  even  in  battle,  the  kind  of  grim  play  that  our  de- 
mocracy is  addicted  to.  On  the  plateau  of  achievement 
to  which  the  largeness  of  The  Titan  had  taken  him,  he 
completed  another  tome  of  life,  The  "  Genius"  and 
ma'de  a  contract  for  publication  with  Lane  in  July  1914 
—  the  book  was  published  in  September  1915.  He  has 
said,  perhaps  it  is  his  favorite  work.  By  implication,  not 
by  dogma,  The  "  Genius  "  indicts  American  society  for 
the  destruction  of  treasure  it  ought  to  prize,  just  as  his 
Tragedy  accuses  it  for  the  failure  of  a  common  man  to 
be  a  healthy  animal. 

The  hero,  Eugene  Witla,  a  painter,  stands  for  all  those 
he  had  known  and  heard  of,  possessed  by  beauty,  who 
were  constantly  dying  in  suicide  or  drink  or  insanity  or 

327 


worldly  success,  defeated  by  a  raw  industrial  disorder. 
He  had  four  men  in  mind  when  he  wrote  it,  his  young 
predecessor  of  the  Delineator;  the  erotic  illustrator, 
Everett  Shinn;  himself,  especially  as  to  outward  circum- 
stance; and  a  fourth  unnamed.  The  composite  stood  in 
his  mind  for  the  artists  who  could  not  propose  asceticism 
like  Emerson,  Thoreau,  Sandburg  or  Frost;  who  had  to 
surround  themselves  with  the  luxuries,  and  yet  had  to  be 
haunted  by  that  small  silver  clarion  voice  calling  to  un- 
explored mysteries.  It  would  not  let  them  rest  or  be 
complacent.  The  voice  for  which  men  immolate  them- 
selves in  isolated  workrooms  in  agony  of  birth.  For 
Dreiser  tolerant  and  hopeful,  these  men  were  not  in- 
frequent, and  if  they  had  any  of  the  sheen  of  genius  at 
all  they  were  sacred.  People  complaining  that  his  hero 
from  Alexandria,  Illinois,  is  not  the  real  article  malign 
the  portrait.  Illinois  could  give  birth  to  genius;  though 
it  might  repudiate  it;  Dreiser  knew  this.  Quite  clearly 
he  has  endowed  him  with  that  something  of  Endymion, 
devastating  to  women,  envied  by  other  men,  a  prowess,  a 
u  deathful  glee,"  which  does  not  always  lead  to  mastery 
in  art.  Dreiser  has  made  him  lovingly,  the  kind  of  hero  he 
himself  used  to  wish  he  could  be  among  the  village  girls 
and  boys  back  in  Indiana : 

"  Why,  I  have  been  ...  a  lord 

Of  flowers,  garlands,  love-knots,  silly  posies, 

Groves,  meadows,  melodies,  and  arbour-roses  .  .  ." 

So  endowed  out  of  a  kinder  childhood  than  his  own, 
Dreiser  exposes  him  step  by  step  to  the  very  life  he  him- 
self had  been  through,  exchanging  writing  for  painting. 
Out  of  it  grows  a  different  ending.  His  hero's  gifted  sensu- 
ality finally  exiles  him  from  the  American  market,  whereas 
a  greater  ruggedness  and  enforced  austerity  has  kept 
Dreiser  there,  too  big  for  it  and  yet  within  it. 

Conversely  to  the  Titan,  the  nature  of  the  Genius  is 
true,  and  not  the  masterpieces  attributed  to  him.  No  use 
to  deny  that  here  the  book  leans  on  a  mistaken  premise. 
The  hero,  both  voluptuary  and  "  great  painter,"  ac- 
claimed in  Paris  as  Dreiser  had  been  in  London,  was  im- 
possible to  the  United  States.  He  could  not  have  hap- 
pened here  in  that  day  or  yet  today.  One  way  or  another 

328 


provincialism  follows  us,  try  as  we  do  to  escape  in  air- 
planes and  through  dollars.  Winslow  Homer  and  Albert 
Ryder  could  paint,  but  they  were  stoics,  willing  to  live 
apart,  unknown  certainly  to  France;  Whistler  emaciated 
his  exacting  art  by  taking  it  to  Europe,  and  it  would  have 
died  had  he  stayed  at  home.  Nor  has  there  been  a 
painter  of  self-tutored  power  equal  to  Dreiser's  own  or 
to  Masters'  or  Frank  Norris'.  Being  a  country  blind  to 
color  how  could  we  be  a  country  of  painters?  Pascin  knew 
it  when  he  said  "  It  takes  twice  as  much  genius  to  paint 
in  America  as  it  does  in  France  and  no  one  has  that  much." 
Dreiser's  innocence  of  this,  and  of  the  art  of  painting, 
discolors  the  truth  of  his  hero. 

No  use  either  to  deny  Dreiserian  lapses  into  language 
too  sweet  or  banal,  giving  delight  to  detractors.  Never- 
theless The  "  Genius  "  is  greater  than  its  faults  —  a  new 
undertaking  not  to  be  scorned  by  true  snobs.  As  he 
wrote  it,  Masters'  words  might  have  sounded  for  him, 
"  to  be  fused  and  molten,"  and  his  own  words,  "  to 
have  a  canvas  as  big  as  the  back  of  a  church."  It  is  bigger 
than  that,  appearing  out  of  a  tumult  of  life,  and  a  convul- 
sive knowledge  of  death.  The  wistful  green  village  like 
Warsaw;  youth  in  fabulous  Chicago;  Bohemia  in  amateur 
New  York;  the  dreamy  midwest  farmland  of  the  fiancee 
too  binding  to  forget;  robust  drive  of  day-laborers,  sweat 
and  salt;  rich  varnished  magazine  world  to  which  the 
Genius  is  diverted;  native  excursion  into  Christian  Sci- 
ence; and  then  the  solitudes  of  the  heart  or  resonance  or 
conflict  of  two  hearts  together  —  all  is  made  as  if  ex- 
perienced. 

In  the  erotic  theme  of  village  and  farmland,  and  in 
the  last  act,  describing  a  circle  of  birth,  surgery  and 
death,  the  phrasing  is  that  of  a  master.  Especially  the 
climax  in  a  New  York  hospital  reads  like  more  than  a 
play;  it  reads  like  an  opera  whose  finale  orchestrally 
binds  the  themes  of  the  book.  You  feel  the  earth  revolving 
in  its  haze  of  mimetic  cries,  quick  acts  and  gestures  of 
human  beings  —  here  of  surgeons,  nurses,  a  new  child, 
and  the  bond  broken  between  two  people  who  had  tried 
life  together  and  failed.  Magnificence  brings  to  mind 
the  Homeric  hymn  where  birth  and  the  turn  of  the  gen- 

329 


erations  is  chanted.  Mencken's  claim  is  supported  here  — 
"  Dreiser  derives  from  the  Greeks."  Style  is  maintained 
as  in  the  decline  of  Hurstwood  in  Sister  Carrie,  and  in  the 
drowning  and  death-house  scenes  of  the  Tragedy  —  evi- 
dence that  Dreiser  might  always  have  disciplined  words 
to  obey  his  will  had  he  not  been  distracted  by  other 
pastimes.  In  1915  and  again  when  the  book  reappeared 
in  1923  he  was  strangely  censured  for  this  feat  of  lan- 
guage; childbirth,  a  Caesarian  operation,  were  "  impos- 
sible subject  matter."  Even  admirers  merely  tolerated  it 
for  the  skill  of  it.  Yet  the  next  decade  of  critics,  fash- 
ions changing,  would  tumble  into  praise  of  the  same 
theme  more  selfishly  treated  in  Hemingway's  Farewell  to 
Arms. 

The  influence  of  this  ending  alone  should  have  given 
Dreiser  a  passport  to  victory,  "  fused  and  molten,"  but 
Masters,  that  severest  critic,  could  not  quite  confer  it. 
He  says  to  him  intimately  in  letters,  and  more  elaborately 
in  a  review  in  the  Chicago  Evening  Post  that  he  is  greater 
than  the  book : 

"  [Dreiser]  understands  what  a  man  almost  a  genius 
must  contend  with  in  this  disorderly  land  of  rhetorical  free- 
dom and  societal  tyranny  and  banality.  .  .  .  Over  the  book 
one  can  hear  sometimes  Gargantuan  laughter;  at  other 
times  a  trembling  sensitiveness  seems  to  vibrate  through 
the  pages.  .  .  .  He  seems  to  me  our  greatest  novelist  now 
writing.  .  .  .  Dreiser  has  recorded  the  definite  figure  of  a 
man  moving  through  an  America  that  required  strength  of 
the  first  order  to  overcome,  if  any  strength  could  do  that. 
...  He  can  be  glad  .  .  .  that  he  revolutionized  American 
fiction.  It  can  never  return  to  the  old  standards  of  reticence 
about  life.  But  he  has  not  reached  the  climax  whither  his 
genius  inevitably  tends.  That  climax  must  come  .  .  .  that 
book,  when  it  shall  be  written  will  be  ...  more  quint- 
essential than  this  one." 

Reedy,  who  confessed  he  once  turned  down  a  story 
of  Lyon's  because  a  hat-pin  was  specified  as  an  instru- 
ment of  abortion,  did  not  like  The  "  Genius"  "  the  mul- 
tiplication of  amours."  And  even  Mencken  was  unex- 
pectedly prudish.  His  review  of  The  "  Genius  "  is  called 
A  Literary  Behemoth.  He  was  glad  of  its  Greek  quality, 
but  found  lapses  of  taste,  not  always  lingual  either,  but 
as  to  topic  —  one  where,  as  he  phrases  it,  "  the  young 

330 


man  runs  his  hand  up  under  the  girl's  skirts  —  unneces- 
sary! "  in  his  opinion.  As  written,  the  episode,  surely  not 
unknown  to  erotic  traffic,  is  lascivious  and  grave;  part  of 
"  a  transport  of  agony  and  delight "  broken  by  the  girl's 
fears.  With  it  is  told  the  grief  of  conflict  between  puritan 
and  pagan,  a  theme  of  the  book;  and  the  hero  asks 
Dreiser's  choral  question:  "  What  is  life?  .  .  .  What  is 
the  human  body?  What  produces  passion?  Here  we  are 
surging  with  a  fever  of  longing  and  then  we  burn  out 
and  die."  Another  time,  succumbing  to  him,  the  girl 
makes  the  ancient  threat  of  death  or  marriage : 

"  He  thought  of  her  with  her  beautiful  body,  her  mass  of 
soft  hair  all  tarnished  in  death.  .  .  . 

1  You  wouldn't  do  that? '  he  asked. 

'  Yes,  I  would/  she  said  sadly.  .  .  .  '  You  know  that 
little  lake,  I'd  drown  myself!  .  .  .' 

".  .  .  Thus  he  stood  by  the  bank  of  this  still  lake  mar- 
velling at  the  subtleties  of  reflected  radiance,  twining  and 
intertwining  it  all  with  love,  death,  failure,  fame.  ...  It 
was  romantic  to  think  that  in  such  a  lake,  if  he  were  un- 
kind, Angela  would  be  found.  By  such  a  darkness  as  was 
now  descending  would  all  her  bright  dreams  be  submerged. 
...  It  would  be  as  beautiful  as  romance.  ...  He  stared 
at  the  fading  surface  .  .  .  silver,  lavender,  leaden  gray. 
Overhead  a  vivid  star  already  was  shining.  How  would  it 
be  with  her  if  she  were  really  below  those  still  waters? 
How  would  it  be  with  him?  It  would  be  too  desperate,  too 
regretful.  No,  he  must  marry  her.  It  was  in  this  mood  that 
he  returned  to  the  city,  the  ache  of  life  in  his  heart." 

For  libertines  like  Mencken,  like  Reedy,  to  turn  prude; 
not  to  take  glee  and  grief  together  as  Dreiser  knew  how 
to  weave  them,  must  have  bewildered  him.  Perhaps  in 
part  it  accounts  for  his  habit  of  repetition  and  emphasis. 
He  had  to  tell  people  until  they  understood,  in  what 
language  he  could  find  and  in  euphuisms  like  bosom  and 
quivering  limbs  if  necessary.  In  1915  American  prose 
held  no  precedent  for  erotic  event.  When  approached  it 
was  by  way  of  asterisks  or  snickers.  Mencken,  however, 
was  soon  to  waive  prejudice  and  give  months  of  time  to 
the  defense  of  The  "  Genius." 

There  were  others  under  the  complete  spell  of  the 
book.  The  poet  and  aesthete,  Arthur  Ficke,  overseas 
now  —  the  war  is  on  for  Americans  —  far  from  his  dis- 


tinguished  collection  of  Japanese  prints  picked  up  The 
"  Genius  "  and  wrote  a  poem  to  Dreiser : 

"  Tonight  I  am  alone, 
A  long  way  from  that  Chinese  restaurant, 
I  have  just  turned  the  last  page 
Of  a  book  of  yours  — 
Now  there  are  passing  before  me 
Interminable  figures  in  tangled  procession  — 
Proud  or  cringing,  starved  with  desire,  or  icy, 
Hastening  toward  a  dream  of  triumph;  fleeing 

from  a  dream  of  doom,  — 
Through  a  chaotic  and  meaningless  anarchy, 
Under  heavy  clouds  of  terrific  gloom 
Or  through  ravishing  flashes  of  knife-edged 

sunlight  — 

Their  heads  haloed  with  immortal  illusion,  — 
The  terrible  and  beautiful,  cruel  and  wonder- 
laden  illusion  of  life." 

Jim  Tully,  ex-pugilist,  wrote  him :  "  There  are  two  men 
I  have  always  wanted  to  meet,  Thomas  Hardy  and  Theo- 
dore Dreiser  .  .  .  it  is  a  vast  piece  [ The  "  Genius  "]  — 
and  as  long  as  you  can  turn  out  a  book  like  that  —  you  can 
tell  old  lady  Frank  Harris  to  go  to  hell.  .  .  .  Just  think 
if  I  get  a  book  over  it  will  be  the  first  one  by  an  ex- 
pugilist  .  .  ."  Frank  Harris,  admiring  Dreiser,  had  felt 
"  forced  to  admit "  that  Sister  Carrie  was  his  best  book. 
The  critics  and  the  public  were  to  blame  as  well  as  the 
writer,  but  "  no  explanation/'  he  decreed,  "  can  justify 
such  a  fact."  He  accused  the  "  German  paste  "  in  him 
for  blindness  to  "  beauty  of  words."  In  the  same  article 
Harris  gave  himself  away  preferring  the  softer  and  preju- 
diced David  Graham  Phillips.  Phillips'  "  Susan  nodded 
delightedly  "  and  "  sneered  he  at  Wright,"  as  synonyms 
for  "  she  said  "  and  "  he  said  "  are  insensibilities  typical  of 
Phillips  to  which  I  for  one  prefer  Dreiser's  "  he  looked 
into  her  eyes,  the  same  were  filled  with  tears."  Why  not 
admit  that  as  a  people  we  are  not  "  language-minded," 
except  in  jokes? 

F.  Scott  Fitzgerald  at  the  end  of  the  decade  freshly 
delivered  from  Princeton  and  into  his  own  creation,  the 
Jazz  Age,  was  another  to  pay  tribute.  Especially  The 
"  Genius  "  got  him.  Perhaps  he  found  himself  there. 
Though  a  more  frivolous  and  more  moral  version  of  that 

332 


hero,  he  too,  judging  from  his  stories,  conceived  of  life 
as  impossible  without  the  luxuries,  and  has  not  succumbed 
to  their  market  price  for  the  moment  without  authentic 
work  to  his  name.  Sometimes  lyrical  to  the  point  of 
strangeness,  a  kind  of  youthful,  syncopated,  crystal- 
gazing!  One  evening  he  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Tenth 
Street.  He  arrived  presenting  a  bottle  of  champagne, 
which  Dreiser  put  in  the  ice  box.  A  circle  of  owl-like  faces 
were  drinking  near  beer.  Very  little  was  said.  It  seemed 
impossible  to  talk.  So  ended  his  gallant  effort  to  do  what 
with  the  exception  of  Howells  and  the  Concord  School, 
no  one  has  done  in  these  States  —  talk  and  bridge  a  gen- 
eration. "  Americans  are  infinitely  repellent  particles." 
The  Gaelic  Ernest  Boyd  in  a  portrait  of  Fitzgerald  de- 
scribes the  same  visit  between  "  the  master  and  his  young- 
est disciple  "  with  foreign  glee  over  our  disconnected 
history  and  scattered  genius,  all  for  lack  of  medium  of  ex- 
change. The  picture,  he  says,  is  "  testimony  to  the  sur- 
vival in  Scott  Fitzgerald  of  respect  for  honorable  achieve- 
ment, under  difficulties  certainly  unknown  to  him  or  his 
contemporaries."  *  Perhaps  not  entirely  unknown;  yet  his 
friends  for  a  fact  had  already  gone  over  to  Proust,  Ger- 
trude Stein  and  James  Joyce,  who  did  not  particularly 
want  them. 

John  Cowper  Powys  and  Randolph  Bourne  were  other 
important  actors  in  Dreiser's  behalf  at  this  time.  Powys, 
novelist  and  poet,  came  to  the  United  States  early  in  the 
decade  of  The  "  Genius"  and  became  for  some  years  an 
evangelist  of  culture,  bearing  rumor  of  art  to  the  villages. 
He  was  loved  by  many  women's  clubs  for  his  Greek  head 
and  fire  of  mind,  and  lived  through  it  to  achieve  less  pro- 
miscuous days.  To  him  goes  the  distinction  as  foreigner 
of  having  preached  our  living  writers  to  us  —  among 
them  Dreiser  and  Masters,  hot  from  the  iron.  Between 
him  and  Dreiser  exists  a  friendship  violated  by  neither: 
"  A  man  derived  out  of  Emily  Bronte,  Hardy  and  Dosto- 
evsky,"  Dreiser  says  in  his  most  caressing  voice,  "  lack- 

*  Portraits:  Real  and  Imaginary,  1924.  "Being  Memories  and  Im- 
pressions of  Friends  and  Contemporaries  5  with  Appreciations  of  Divers 
Singularities  and  Characteristics  of  Certain  Phases  of  Life  and  Letters 
Among  North  Americans  as  Seen,  Heard  and  Divined  by  Ernest  Boyd." 

333 


ing  Hardy's  terrible  fatality,  but  possessed  like  all  of 
them  by  a  sense  of  inanity  and  cruelty.  He  really  believes 
in  devilishness.  I  can't  see  it  that  way.  Most  people  are  too 
busy  to  be  possessed  by  devils.  Take  a  butcher  cutting 
meat  all  day  or  a  factory  hand  or  clerk,  they  haven't  the 
time.  .  .  .  Powys  is  amorphous,  wonderful,  I  count  on 
him." 

For  Englishmen  more  than  for  most  Americans  Dreiser 
has  had  an  aesthetic  appeal.  Powys  knows  him  that  way. 
He  first  heard  of  him  some  fifteen  years  ago  on  a  train 
coming  out  of  Toledo;  the  Toledo  Blade  opened  at  a 
double  page  interview  called,  perhaps,  "  Apostle  Of 
Chaos."  The  headline  caught  him,  and  when  he  read,  "  I 
have  no  hope,  yet  I  do  not  despair,  life  drifts,"  he  thought 
can  there  be  such  an  American?  He  first  met  him  at 
Maurice  Browne's  Little  Theater  in  Chicago.  After- 
wards he  knew  him  well  in  New  York:  "  I  always  had 
the  impression  of  someone  hard  and  firm,  aristocratic 
hands,  Nordic,  athletic,  countrified.  He  wore  tweeds  and 
had  the  European  fashion  of  carrying  a  stick  .  .  ."  To 
Powys  "  there  are  two  kinds  of  force,  one  from  the  sun, 
the  other  from  the  cold,  beyond  the  stars'  rays.  A  man 
touched  by  force  of  cold  can  draw  on  it  at  will  as  through 
a  long  thin  pipe.  Dreiser  is  such  a  man;  endowed  with  a 
planetary  consciousness;  possessed  of  brains  that  create 
an  order."  Once  on  a  walk  in  California  he  told  Powys 
that  his  critics  wanted  to  make  him  into  a  materialist:  "  I 
am  not  one,  I  have  never  taken  life  at  its  face  value."  — 
u  He  is  superstitious  like  an  old  Roman,  believes  in  signs, 
and  that  a  certain  type  of  person  seen  at  a  certain  time 
will  bring  good  luck  or  bad.  ...  At  one  time  when  I  was 
an  invalid  of  all  the  people  who  came  to  see  me  Dreiser 
was  as  considerate  as  a  woman ;  he  alone  went  off  promptly 
at  ten  o'clock.  .  .  .  He  lives  in  no  middle  distance  be- 
tween himself  and  others  and  when  there  is  not  serious 
exchange,  attempts  approach  through  sportive  badinage 
difficult  to  answer  verbally.  .  .  .  He  has  no  cold  malice, 
is  non-human,  and  morbidly  sensitive."  So  this  friend  de- 
scribed him. 

In  1914,  the  year  before  the  publication  of  The 
"  Genius,"  Margaret  Anderson's  left-wing  Little  Review 
334 


had  been  born  in  accordance  with  the  vigorous  enter- 
prise of  these  days  both  for  the  exotic  and  the  native. 
She  was  a  young  woman  according  to  her  memoirs  who 
liked  chocolates  and  disliked  reality,  that  of  sex  included  * 
—  "  My  greatest  enemy  is  reality  ...  I  have  fought  it 
successfully  for  thirty  years  ...  I  have  always  held 
myself  aloof  from  natural  laws."  In  which  of  course  she 
was  a  native,  also  in  a  genius  for  selling.  For  thirty  years 
she  sold  Art  not  as  a  merchandise  but  as  a  luxury,  and 
with  high  spirits  made  the  most  seriously  lively  journal 
yet  published  in  these  States.  Before  she  fled  reality  and 
took  her  journal  off  to  flirt  with  Europe,  and  in  American 
fashion  marry  manners  which  had  little  to  do  with 
American  matters,  the  Little  Review  was  perhaps  the 
only  conveyance  remarkable  for  native  prose  and  poetry 
we  have  had,  that  is,  of  any  duration.  In  November  1915 
she  published  an  article  by  Powys  who  was  traveling  in 
the  opposite  direction,  away  from  Europe  and  toward 
America  —  a  review  of  The  "  Genius."  For  him  Dreiser 
bridged  the  gulf  between  the  old  countries  and  this  new 
one.  Over  his  bridge  where  sex  and  tragedy  finally  walked, 
might  now  come  other  American  prophets  of  reality, 
and  a  language  might  be  established  that  would  purge  us 
of  provincialism.  The  Little  Review  followed  this  with 
The  Dlonysian  Dreiser,  the  outburst  of  one  of  those  en- 
gaging youths  of  this  period  who  thought  the  wilderness 
was  this  time  just  about  to  bloom  with  life  and  genius, 
calling  himself  Scavenger: 

"  Really,  you  of  the  firm-fireside-faith,  what  is  there  to 
be  done?  Here  is  the  Dionysian  dastard  who  dares  proclaim 
that  life  is  a  decent,  orderly  routine  and  that  life  is  also  a 
wild,  warm  passionate  thing;  that  it  is  also  a  flame  in  which 
there  is  only  one  color,  the  red,  golden  color  of  youth. 

And  the  answer  is  —  howl.  A  howl  will  go  up  I  swear  it. 
It  will  start  from  the  critics. 

I  can  almost  read  their  forthcoming  reviews  as  I  close 
my  eyes. 

*  "  Dick  was  one  of  those  civilized  men  to  be  found  exclusively  in 
America  it  seems,  who  are  more  interested  in  an  idea  than  in  a  woman." 
"...  Bauer  being  enormously  interested  in  Duncan's  dancing  as  art,  I 
being  totally  uninterested  in  it  as  sex." 

From  My  Thirty  Years  War 
by  Margaret  Anderson. 

335 


e  A  sensually  depraved  and  degenerate  type. 

'  Striking  at  the  bed  rock  of  public  solidarity,  of  home 
happiness,  of  everything  decent  and  worth  while.  .  .  .' 

Howl,  you  who  have  stultified  your  artists  and  buried 
them  under  the  gingerbread  morality  of  your  own  monoto- 
nous lives.  Dreiser  is  the  one  novelist  being  published  in 
America  today  who  doesn't  listen  to  you,  who  describes  you 
at  your  various  bests,  who  wrings  the  pathos  and  joys  out 
of  your  little  worlds;  who  paints  in  with  the  brush  of  a 
universal  art  what  you  and  I  are  doing  in  Alexandria  and 
Chicago  and  New  York  and  all  the  milk-station  stops  be- 
tween. .  .  ." 

And  Randolph  Bourne  in  older  prose  salutes  Dreiser 
as  an  equal  of  European  novelists  in  an  article  for  the 
New  Republic  called  Desire  as  Hero;  as  the  opposite  of 
"  Booth  Tarkington  who  makes  business  the  master  mo- 
tive of  life  to  which  religion  and  sex  are  incidental  " : 

"  Of  course  no  great  Continental  novelist  ever  believed 
this,  Holland  or  Dostoevsky  or  Tolstoi  or  Frenssen  or  Nexo. 
The  major  motives  of  these  continentals  is  almost  always 
the  inexorable  desire  of  life  ...  a  desire  which  consists  of 
walking  in  the  mud  with  the  face  toward  the  stars.  .  .  . 
No  matter  how  badly  Mr.  Dreiser  does  his  work,  he  would 
be  significant  as  the  American  novelist  who  has  most  felt 
this  subterranean  current  of  life  .  .  .  our  only  novelist  who 
has  tried  to  plumb  far  below.  .  .  . 

His  hero  is  really  not  Sister  Carrie  or  the  Titan  or  the 
Genius,  but  that  desire  within  us  that  pounds  in  manifold 
guise  against  the  walls  of  experience." 

Here  was  an  American  critic,  it  was  said,  who  should 
not  have  died.  The  War  killed  him.  For  such  a  critic  to 
publish  and  live  in  New  York  in  war  time  was  out  of  the 
question.  He  appeared  to  his  friends  to  burn  with  that 
impartial  mind  sometimes  called  Greek,  to  which  democ- 
racies used  to  dedicate  themselves  when  they  were  born. 
Mind,  creative  not  destructive,  living  in  the  moment, 
seduced  more  by  the  future  than  by  the  past,  but  scarcely 
more.  Whitman  dreamed  of  it  for  his  new  clean  United 
States  with  his  one  forgetfulness  that  grass  grows  best  out 
of  mould. 

In  the  midst  of  this  decade  in  1916  on  the  eve  of  our 
entry  into  the  Great  War,  a  number  of  fairly  young 
optimists,  James  Oppenheim,  Louis  Untermeyer,  Van 
Wyck  Brooks,  Paul  Rosenfeld,  Waldo  Frank,  founded 
336 


a  magazine  called  The  Seven  Arts  to  meet  the  renais- 
sance they  conceived  to  be  u  bursting  in  the  sky  over  the 
heads  of  an  amazed  people."  Dreiser,  though  "  lumber- 
ing," Sandburg,  Masters,  Frost,  Mencken,  Amy  Lowell 
were  like  "  rockets  from  unconnected  quarters."  u  The 
Seven  Arts  would  be  a  channel  for  the  flow  of  these  new 
tendencies."  "  We  were  wild  enough,"  Oppenheim  says, 
"  to  believe  that  while  Europe  was  cutting  its  own  throat 
the  artists  and  critics  could  dominate  America."  Randolph 
Bourne  joining  with  them,  though  certain  that  the  war 
would  put  a  stop  to  this  brief  bright  awakening,  fought 
for  it  to  the  last  moment.  Especially  he  fought  the  in- 
tellectuals who  in  sentimental  numbers  (among  them  his 
own  teacher,  John  Dewey,  and  Van  Wyck  Brooks  too), 
were  going  over  into  the  war  hysteria,  and  enlisting  what 
wits  they  had  on  the  side  of  this  "  fashionable  war."  Mind 
should  not  be  drafted  like  this  without  his  caustic  dissent. 
In  the  meantime,  in  a  year  and  a  half  The  Seven  Arts 
published  besides  these  first  rockets,  newer  writers,  Sher- 
wood Anderson,  Bodenheim,  Padraic  Colum,  Dos  Passes, 
Jack  Reed,  Van  Loon,  John  Dewey,  Carl  Van  Vechten, 
Eugene  O'Neill,  Spingarn,  and  "  stacks  of  others "  in- 
cluding "  all  the  poets  from  Frost  to  Sandburg."  Then 
Bourne's  articles  about  the  war  killed  The  Seven  Arts.  In 
1917  endowment  was  withdrawn.  With  no  place  to  pub- 
lish, the  blow  killed  him.  "  Had  he  lived,"  his  friends 
say,  "  the  Twenties  might  have  been  more  sparkling  than 
they  were."   Bourne  was   "  deformed,   humped-back,   a 
longish  medieval  face,  sewed-up  mouth,  and  ear  awry,  but 
his  speech  held  you  spell-bound  and  you  looked  into  eyes 
as  young  as  a  spring  dawn,"  so  Oppenheim  described 
him;  and  also  a  visit  to  him  after  he  had  died:  "  I  lifted 
the  sheet  from  his  face.  He  seemed  to  mean  all  that  had 
been  stopped."  Dreiser,  as  deeply  moved,  speaks  of  him 
as  "  a  beautiful  monstrosity,  the  one  gem-like  critical  mind 
of  that  day."  Perhaps  they  exaggerated  and  idealized  him 
as  critic,  feeling  the  crying  need  of  a  critic,  where  all  that 
was  alive  was  reeling  and  shifting.  But  if  not,  it  is  a 
strange  symbol  of  these  States,  that  when  the  mind  ar- 
rived it  was  lodged  in  a  warped  and  twisted  body,  and 
that  they  killed  it  as  quick  as  they  could. 

337 


Here  exactly  is  the  moment,  1916  to  1917,  the  hour  of 
this  fruition  and  this  death,  when,  with  the  stage  set  as 
described,  the  principal  battle  of  Dreiser's  story  was 
waged  over  freedom  of  letters.  Who  gained  and  who 
lost  seems  yet  to  be  hanging  in  the  balance.  "  The  howl  " 
over  The  "  Genius"  prophesied  by  the  young  enthusiast 
of  The  Little  Review,  broke  loose.  Since  its  publication 
in  1915  along  with  the  acclaim  had  sounded  little  shrill 
shrieks,  venomous  enough,  from  posthumous  Mrs. 
Grundys.  One  of  them  signing  herself  N.  P.  D.,  literary 
taster  for  the  New  York  Globe  and  Commercial  Adver- 
tiser,, had  always  shivered  at  Dreiser  as  at  a  snake  or  a 
bedbug.  Now  she  despised  him  more  than  ever.  He  was  a 
"  pro-German,"  a  friend  of  Mencken,  of  Hun  extrac- 
tion and  from  low  steerage  people  at  that.  Against  The 
"  Genius"  whose  hero  she  confuses  with  Cowperwood 
of  The  Titan,  she  launched  her  prettiest  sarcasm.  First 
quoting  the  letter  of  a  correspondent  which  she  said 
"  should  dispose  of  Dreiser  for  all  time  as  without  humor, 
without  pity,  and  without  the  least  love  of  art  or  nature," 
then  she  lightly  amused  herself : 

"  The  f  Genius '  is  probably  Mr.  Dreiser's  most  sub- 
jective work  and  it  is  the  ugliest.  What  interest  it  has  is 
pathological.  One  may  be  sorry  for  a  man  who  sees  nothing 
in  life  but  girls,  an  unending  procession  of  girls,  hardly 
more  to  be  differentiated  than  the  Pink  Leg  and  Blue  Leg 
of  the  chorus.  .  .  .  When  Zola  (Mr.  William  Lyon  Phelps 
points  out)  saw  a  dunghill  he  saw  nothing  else.  .  .  .  Ros- 
tand looking  at  the  same  unlovely  object,  beheld  the  vision 
of  Chantecler.  But  Dreiser  would  never  see  Chantecler; 
only  the  dung  and  the  hens.  .  .  .  We  understand  that  the 
Tauchnitz  publications  are  about  to  be  resumed.  .  .  .  We 
hope  that  The  '  Genius  '  will  appear  in  a  German  transla- 
tion. That's  how  kindly  we  feel  toward  the  Germans." 

This  lady  in  the  same  column  discloses  with  her  scorn 
of  legs  a  love  of  anthologies,  Home  Book  of  Verse, 
Treasury  of  Irish  Verse;  a  tenderness  for  humorists, 
Stephen  Leacock,  "  our  own  Dooley  and  George  Ade  "; 
and  for  romanticists,  E.  Temple  Thurston  and  Lord 
Dunsany.  She  betrays  a  fear  of  Jews  and  their  miraculous 
Art  Theatre  —  Pinsky's  The  Treasure  is  facetiously  dis- 
paraged; and  a  passion  for  Women's  Suffrage.  When 

338 


Dreiser  had  previously  complained  of  her,  Mencken  had 
tried  to  soothe  him :  u  Who  in  hell  is  N.  P.  D.,  some  lousy 
old  maid?  No  one  reads  the  Globe  anyway."  Instinctively 
the  realist  divined  that  these  very  no-ones  who  read  the 
Globe  were  among  those  who  would  support  legislation 
for  war,  prohibition  and  censorship;  in  fact  that  by  force 
of  their  respectable  numbers  they  were  the  acquiescent 
chorus  that  would  make  possible  our  gloomy  plutocracy. 
And  Mencken  himself  was  this  time  aroused : 

"  The  secret  of  the  Globe  braying  lies  in  the  last  para- 
graph: the  grand  crime  in  these  days  is  to  bear  a  German 
name.  Who  is  this  N.  P.  D?  I  have  a  little  list.  There  must 
never  be  any  compromise  [with]  the  common  run  of  '  good, 
right-thinking  Americans  '  ...  we  must  stand  against 
them  forever,  and  do  what  damage  we  can  to  them  and  their 
tin  pot  democracy.  ...  I  am  waiting  patiently  for  her  to 
write  a  book.  The  Lord  God  Jehovah,  soon  or  late,  always 
delivers  them  into  my  hands." 

From  Chicago  Mrs.  Elia  Peattie,  literary  editor  of  the 
Chicago  Tribune,  also  an  advocate  of  votes  for  women, 
makes  a  more  passionate  onslaught,  dated  December  4, 
1915.  Perhaps  there  was  danger  in  giving  American 
women  the  vote  who  had  had  from  their  men  so  little 
else.  Mrs.  Peattie  was  vehement: 

"  John  Cowper  Powys  refers  to  The  ( Genius '  as  *  the 
American  prose  epic '  .  .  .  I  will  never  admit  such  a  thing 
until  I  am  ready  to  see  the  American  flag  trailing  in  the 
dust  dark  with  the  stains  of  my  sons  .  .  .  and  the  Germans 
completing  their  world  rule  by  placing  their  governor 
general  in  the  White  House  at  Washington.  .  .  .  An  epic 
as  I  understand  it  is  a  narrative  of  elevated  characters  de- 
scribing the  exploits  of  heroes.  ...  If  this  is  an  epic  it  is 
the  epic  of  a  human  Tom-cat.  It  is  a  back  fence  narrative. 
...  I  repudiate  it  as  the  American  prose  epic.  .  .  ." 

This  she  does  in  the  name  of  Ibsen,  Whitman  and  Lin- 
coln, who  knew  "  love  and  temptation  "  too,  but  who  like 
her  had  never  had  such  low  feline  thoughts  as  Theodore 
Dreiser.  Mencken  was  jubilant: 

"  This  Peattie  stuff  is  a  scream.  The  fair  wench  is  a 
novelist  herself  sweetly  praised  by  Hildegarde  Hawthorne. 
By  all  means  let  me  have  this  masterpiece  of  the  ovarian 
school  when  the  time  comes  to  write  the  review  of  reviews." 

And  now  an  eminent  college  professor  joined  the  ladies 
against  the  Tomcat.  College  professors,  as  Mencken  has 

339 


scrupulously  computed  in  his  Book  of  Prefaces,  1917,  had 
always  expressed  their  disapproval  of  serious  contem- 
porary native  genius  by  ignoring  it  in  favor  of  minor 
celebrities.  The  1892  edition  of  Richardson's  American 
Literature  disposed  of  Mark  Twain  .  .  .  u  with  less 
than  four  lines/'  ranking  him  "  below  Irving,  Holmes, 
Lowell  .  .  .  below  Artemus  Ward,  Josh  Billings,  and 
Petroleum  Nasby."  By  the  year  1910  Professor  William 
Lyon  Phelps  could  chide  Richardson  for  this;  and  then 
in  1916  in  his  Advance  of  the  English  Novel  could  dis- 
miss Dreiser  completely  by  not  a  single  mention  of  him.* 
And  this  was  true,  according  to  Mencken's  vigorous  sta- 
tistics, of  the  other  "  heavyweights  of  the  craft,  the  new 
Dunciad,"  he  labels  them  —  the  Pancoasts,  Hallecks, 
Babbitts,  Brownells,  Pattees.  In  their  tomes  and  treatises 
on  modern  American  writers  of  that  day  he  has  discov- 
ered praise  of  O.  Henry,  Sydnor  Harrison,  Owen  Wister, 
Hopkinson  Smith,  R.  H.  Davis,  R.  W.  Chambers,  but 
never  a  word  for  or  against  the  author  of  Sister  Carrie, 
Jennie  Gerhardt,  The  Financier,  The  Titan,  and  The 
"  Genius." 

The  jocular  N.  P.  D.  apparently  owed  her  witticism 
destroying  Zola  and  Dreiser  to  Professor  Phelps,  but  for 
the  most  part  he  kept  still  about  this  Hoosier  cock  and 
tomcat.  And  it  is  certain  he  never  advised  him  as  read- 
ing matter  for  his  young  charges  at  Yale.  It  took  a  pro- 
fessor from  Dreiser's  own  land,  the  more  zealous  Mid- 
dle West,  to  celebrate  him  by  actively  denouncing  him. 
Out  in  the  golden  fields  of  Illinois  Professor  Stuart  P. 
Sherman  held  the  chair  of  English  in  the  State  univer- 
sity. There  he  devoted  his  life  to  cultivating  the  nerves 
of  the  sons  of  farmers  and  mechanics.  Also  from  the 
midst  of  that  vast  culture  of  rye,  corn  and  wheat  he  was 
able  to  sell  now  and  again  his  wisdom  to  friends  and  edi- 
tors back  East.  He  was  with  other  professors  a  mission- 
ary trying  to  perpetuate  the  Colonial  tradition,  in  his  case 
to  the  far  reaches  of  the  plough  and  the  McCormick 
reaper.  Together  these  scholars  held  the  trenches  against 
the  new  America.  In  the  Nation  of  December  2,  1915, 
Professor  Sherman  launched  his  offensive  at  what  he  con- 

*  A  Book  of  Prefaces,  pp.  131  to  134. 
340 


ceived  to  be  the  enemy  of  the  moment,  the  tomcat  author 
of  The  "  Genius."  He  was  too  wary  to  admit  him  among 
the  "  realists,"  knowing  that  what  with  Balzac,  Hardy, 
Flaubert,  and  the  lately  translated  Russians,  as  well  as 
the  popular  Bennett  and  Wells,  the  term  had  taken  a 
favorable  meaning.  Instead  he  coined  for  him  a  new  epi- 
thet, "  naturalist,"  and  hoped  he  had  packed  its  mean- 
ing with  verbal  poison.  Dreiser's  crime  lay  in  treating 
men  and  women  as  if  they  were  animals.  To  many  of  the 
poets  and  priests  of  history  this  would  have  been  to  flat- 
ter them,  but  to  a  temper  like  that  of  Sherman  it  was  an 
irreverent  sphere  from  which  to  draw  analogies.  Con- 
densed, the  indictment  runs  like  this : 

"  In  his  books  the  male  of  the  species  is  characterized 
by  cupidity,  pugnacity  and  a  Simian  inclination  for  the 
other  sex;  the  female  is  a  soft,  vain,  pleasure-seeking  crea- 
ture devoted  to  personal  adornment  and  quite  helplessly 
susceptible  to  the  flattery  of  the  male.  .  .  .  His  people  have 
cat-like  eyes,  feline  grace,  sinuous  strides,  eyes  and  jaws 
which  vary  from  those  of  the  tiger,  lynx  and  bear  to  the 
tolerant  mastiff  and  the  surly  bull  dog.  ...  In  his  Finan- 
cier two  lovers  run  together  like  leopards.  .  .  .  Raising 
human  stock  in  America  evidently  includes  for  Dreiser 
feeding  and  clothing  but  not  the  most  elementary  moral 
ideas  of  conduct.  Routine  is  dull,  moralists  are  asses,  re- 
spectability is  unctuous,  teachers  are  owl-like  conventional- 
ists, faithful  parents  lead  an  apple  pie  order  of  existence. 
.  .  .  We  turn  with  relief  from  The  '  Genius '  to  the  scan- 
dals in  the  news  sheets." 

So  this  professor  perversely  paraphrased  Dreiser  and 
strengthened  the  Dreiserian  myth,  so  welcome  to  his  stu- 
dents, the  new  generation.  Therein  a  man  given  over  to 
difficult  achievement,  and  darkly  wondering  what  is  right, 
what  wrong,  was  construed  as  a  wicked  sensualist,  leading 
women  and  children  astray.  The  myth  grew,  and  perhaps 
drove  the  real  Dreiser  in  an  effort  to  be  understood  into 
exploring  regions  as  dreary  and  forbidding  as  the  mind 
of  the  Jewish  moron  in  The  Hand  of  The  Potter,  and  the 
mind  of  Clyde  Griffiths  in  An  American  Tragedy.  Against 
the  ignorance  of  a  typical  scholar  like  Sherman,  who  had 
nicely  digested  Emerson's  serene  philosophy,  perhaps 
Dreiser  began  to  feel  that  he  had  been  born  to  fight,  al- 
most alone  and  single  handed.  Darkness  contradicting 


light,  evil  contradicting  good  —  was  it  his  mission  to  fer- 
tilize American  minds  with  the  luxury  of  these  contrasts  ? 
At  length  he  may  have  thought  so,  and  let  the  enemy  in 
him  crystallize. 

The  professor  as  if  to  prophesy  battle  and  revolution 
ended  his  Nation  article  with  a  threat:  u  This  theory  of 
animal  behaviour  cannot  be  an  adequate  basis  on  which 
to  study  human  nature.  .  .  .  And  when  one  half  of  the 
world  attempts  to  assert  such  a  theory,  the  other  half 
rises  in  battle." 

And  so  in  the  course  of  time  "  the  other  half  "  did. 
The  article  pays  Dreiser  the  curious  compliment  of  being 
a  whole  uhalf."  No  other  rebel  or  scientist,  not  Zola  or 
Rodin  or  Anatole  France,  not  H.  G.  Wells  or  Pavlow, 
not  even  Whitman  is  lined  up  with  the  offending  Hoosier. 
In  July,  1916,  The  "Genius"  came  to  the  notice  of  a 
Society  belonging  to  Sherman's  "  half  of  the  world,"  the 
New  York  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice,  which  at 
length  begins  to  be  remembered  as  a  quaint  antique.  And 
yet  American  "  vice  "  today  takes  its  color  from  the  sup- 
pression of  yesterday,  and  is  accordingly  simple. 


342 


55 

".  .  .  What  I  hate 
Is  that  crude  Demos  which  shouts  down 

the  minds, 
Outvotes  them,  takes  those  silly  lies  that 

move 

The  populace  and  makes  them  into  laws, 
And  makes   a  village   of  a  great  Re- 
public." EDGAR  LEE  MASTERS 

"  No  ship  of  all  that  under  sail  or  steam 
Has  gathered  people   to  us  more  and 

more 
But  Pilgrim-manned  the  Mayflower  in  a 

dream 
Has   been   their  anxious  convoy   in   to 

shore."  ROBERT  FROST 


JJLt  was  a  fanatic  from  the  backwoods  of  Connecti- 
cut, Anthony  Comstock,  who  invented  this  fine  society 
which,  aiming  to  suppress  vice,  succeeded  rather  in  sup- 
pressing wit,  wisdom  and  beauty.  He  inaugurated  it  in 
the  autumn  of  1873  in  the  rooms  of  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association,  with  the  help  of  Morris  K.  Jessup, 
William  E.  Dodge,  J.  Pierpont  Morgan,  Robert  R. 
McBurney  and  other  eminent  citizens  in  whom  sense  of 
poetry  and  satire  must  have  run  low.  Exclusive  Circles 
again  were  dictators  in  matters  which  they  did  not  prize. 
The  tragedy  of  American  Art  has  always  so  consistent 
a  plot  that  it  falls  naturally  into  one's  hands.  These  rich 
men  like  Comstock  were  rooted  spiritually  if  not  actually 
in  the  hardships  of  our  Puritan  past;  and  on  the  crest  of 
Northern  fortunes  made  secure  by  the  Civil  War,  they 
were  launching  the  pious  merchant  plutocracy  supreme  a 
generation  later. 

343 


There  are  critics  today  tired  of  blaming  the  Mayflower 
Puritans  for  our  puritanism.  They  like  to  find  a  less  hack- 
neyed cause.  Is  it  that  they  dislike  to  admit  that  victory 
for  Cromwell's  Dissenters  has  run  to  its  dreariest  meas- 
ure in  our  States,  although  at  the  same  time  to  glittering 
heights  ?  Some  of  them  blame  machinery  and  they  may  be 
right.  Morris  L.  Ernst  and  William  Seagle  in  their  study, 
Obscenity  and  the  Censor  *  accuse  democracy  for  thwart- 
ing sex  and  therefore  art : 

"  If  the  age  of  faith  adopted  the  index  of  heresy,  the  age 
of  Divine  Right,  the  index  of  treason,  it  was  inevitable  for 
the  age  of  democracy  to  adopt  the  index  of  sex.  ...  It  is 
one  of  the  penalties  of  civilization." 

This  might  be  all  very  well,  and  we  could  settle  down  to 
the  alternative,  sexlessness  or  tyranny,  perhaps  choosing 
tyranny,  if  it  were  not  for  the  precedent  of  the  French 
Republic,  where  pleasures  of  sex  and  art  appear  to  have 
survived  not  only  democracy  but  machinery.  Mr.  Ernst 
and  Mr.  Seagle  however  may  be  among  those  who  dis- 
pute the  axiom  that  France  is  civilized.  They  go  to  great 
pains  to  ferret  out  examples  of  suppression  in  France, 
and  of  course  in  England,  as  absurd  as  any  we  have  com- 
mitted—  curious  as  incident,  misleading  as  evidence. 
Even  England,  its  cradle,  has  survived  censorship  intel- 
lectually. The  truth  appears  to  be  that  censoring  societies 
in  these  older  countries  have  ruled  the  minds  of  their 
members  but  have  not  colored  the  life  of  a  whole  nation 
as  with  us.  Compare  our  letters  and  images  with  theirs, 
compare  the  faces  in  our  streets  and  subways,  stores  and 
homes,  with  the  faces  in  theirs,  and  a  vast  difference  in- 
vades the  senses,  for  which  a  prohibition  of  reality  would 
be  enough  to  account.  Or  for  those  who  can't  trust  their 
own  senses,  the  story  was  expertly  compressed  in  1917 
into  one  chapter,  ready  to  swallow,  Puritanism,  a  Liter- 
ary Force  by  H.  L.  Mencken.  He  tells  there  how  after  the 
Civil  War  it  became  fashionable  to  be  a  millionaire,  and 
the  millionaires  were  expediently  churchmen.  Therefore 
it  became  fashionable  to  be  pious.  The  Puritan  doctrine 
armed  with  money  grew  militant  and  aggressive.  And, 
he  might  have  added,  it  tinged  even  the  temper  of  the 

*   To  the  Pure  .  .  .  A  Study  of  Obscenity  and  the  Censor. 

344 


Catholic  Church  in  America.  St.  Paul,  inventor  of  chas- 
tity, could  finally  see  his  strictest  dreams  come  true.  Go 
from  St.  Paul  to  Calvin  and  Cromwell,  from  them  to 
Emerson  and  Longfellow,  from  them  to  Rockefeller,  Edi- 
son and  Ford,  and  you  will  tumble  into  a  typical  American 
home  of  the  early  2Oth  century  not  quite  extinct  today. 

To  protect  this  cherished  institution  from  turbulent 
changing  America,  Anthony  Comstock  conceived  laws 
and  corporations.  Perhaps  as  a  young  man  among  the 
birches  and  maple  trees  of  Connecticut,  intoxicating  him- 
self each  Sunday  with  ecstasy  of  virtue  in  the  cool  white 
meeting  house  he  was  a  rustic  poet  like  Bunyan,  evolving 
a  vision  of  purity.  For  this  one  can  understand  him.  Who 
has  not  had  moods  imagining  a  world  without  vice  or  mis- 
ery? Perhaps  tortured  by  rumor  of  the  great  cities  he  had 
said,  "  I,  single  handed,  by  the  grace  of  God,  shall  go  up 
and  eradicate  sin  from  the  market  places."  It  may  have 
been  with  him  at  the  start  that  same  expensive  Christian 
dream  conceived  for  charity  and  health,  ending  in  cruelty 
and  disease.  He  was  a  rustic  with  simple  faith  perhaps; 
although  Mencken  who  has  studied  him  does  not  think  so. 
But  for  worldlings  like  Jessup,  Dodge,  and  Morgan,  es- 
pecially Morgan  with  his  art  collection  and  library,  to 
endorse  him,  and  for  no  one  of  their  world  to  oppose 
them  or  to  laugh  at  them,  places  American  society  of  the 
Seventies  almost  outside  of  history  and  untouched  by  it. 
Long  before  this  elsewhere  occasional  aristocrats  and 
originals,  that  is,  those  without  fear,  had  begun  to  tire 
of  Christian  idealism,  and  had  developed  a  protective 
irony  against  it.  And  now  it  was  the  very  age  of  scepti- 
cism and  adventure.  To  a  friend  who  had  shuddered  at 
an  Egyptian  image,  Baudelaire  had  said:  "  Best  to  be- 
ware when  you  call  that  god  ugly,  perhaps  he  is  the  true 
God."  In  America  a  genius,  Whitman,  was  passionately 
proposing  the  mysteries  of  reality.  But  the  lords  of 
American  finance  as  a  body  apparently  still  preferred  the 
ignorant  Comstock,  and  his  musty  parlors  of  Christian 
endeavor.  In  any  event  they  joined  with  him  to  fight  the 
reaffirmation  of  nature. 

First  of  all  they  had  to  create  legal  precedent,  not  to 
be  found  in  the  original  Constitution,  celebrated  for  pro- 

345 


posing  free  speech  and  religious  tolerance.  In  1842  how- 
ever a  Federal  statute  had  been  passed  to  exclude  the  im- 
portation of  obscenity,  giving  custom  officers  the  right 
to  confiscate  at  the  port  "indecent  and  obscene  prints, 
paintings,  lithographs,  engravings  and  transparencies.'* 
Under  the  heading  of  prints  fell  some  of  the  more  sala- 
cious classics,  so  that  for  example  it  is  likely  that  Emer- 
son had  the  privilege  to  be  exposed  to  a  less  fecund  past 
than  say  Jefferson  or  Benjamin  Franklin.  But  until  1868 
no  one  had  felt  the  need  of  a  statute  to  curb  native  inde- 
cency. People  were  too  pure  to  require  it.  If  ever  heresy 
was  committed  the  inherited  English  Common  Law  was 
enough  to  take  care  of  that.  But  now  in  1868  the  Con- 
necticut Yankee  Comstock  took  it  upon  himself  to  pro- 
pose and  put  through  a  New  York  state  law,  entitled  "  An 
Act  for  the  Suppression  of  the  Trade  in,  and  Circulation 
of  Obscene  Literature,  Illustrations,  Advertisements" 
and  so  forth.  American  children,  he  found,  were  growing 
up  again,  out  of  the  dirt  of  their  own  soil  this  time,  and 
must  be  restrained  once  again  from  growing  up. 

Five  years  passed  in  prayer  and  lobbying,  and  Com- 
stock saw  his  further  scheme  of  a  society  to  enforce  this 
law  come  true,  and  himself  secretary.  It  was  incorporated 
under  a  special  act  of  the  legislature  of  New  York  —  the 
Empire  State  —  with  the  right  of  search,  seizure  and  ar- 
rest. In  the  same  year,  1873,  this  untiring  crusader  with 
his  churchly  friends  put  through  the  first  Federal  statute 
to  hamper  native  imagination  and  intellect.  Now  all  "  ob- 
scene, lewd,  lascivious,  disgusting,  filthy,  indecent  mat- 
ter "  was  to  be  barred  from  the  mails.  And  now  the 
couriers  whom  "  neither  snow  nor  rain  nor  heat  nor 
gloom  of  night "  can  stay  in  "  their  appointed  rounds  " 
could  be  stayed  by  vice  commissioners  from  carrying  read- 
able reading  matter  to  Americans.  Soon  after  this  the 
Western  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice  was  born  in 
Cincinnati,  and  the  Watch  and  Ward  Society  in  Boston. 
Almost  coincident  with  these,  other  extra  official  bodies 
grew  in  power  licensed  by  the  Government  to  do  their 
work  for  them  —  the  Y.M.C.A.,  the  Order  of  Gideon, 
the  Christian  Endeavor,  the  Anti-Saloon  League,  the  Pur- 
ity League,  with  back  of  them  quite  certainly  the  magnates 
346 


of  gas,  railroads,  steel,  copper,  gold.  And  the  fun  began 
for  the  reformers,  favored  by  an  incipient  Oligarchy 
which  would  in  the  end  banish  Democracy,  like  a  worn- 
out  wife,  to  a  comfortable  Home  in  Washington. 

So  now  the  germ  was  fertilized  by  which  Indecency 
grew  with  weeds  and  skyscrapers  to  such  rank  propor- 
tions as  the  tabloids,  and  movies,  and  speakeasies,  and 
other  rackets  of  today.  This  happened  in  the  decade  of 
Whitman's  full  fame  and  in  the  years  that  gave  birth  to 
Crane,  Norris,  Dreiser,  Masters,  Sandburg,  Anderson 
and  Mencken,  as  if  cure  should  follow  cause  in  a  not  yet 
ended  circle  of  cause  and  cure,  cure  and  cause.  These  new 
men  grew  up  with  the  birth  and  growth  of  militant  Puri- 
tan reform  in  America,  invented  to  thwart  them  as  best 
it  could. 

At  first  the  temper  of  the  day  was  with  the  reformers 
—  day  of  the  old  Concord  school  and  the  young  Howells; 
and  there  was  not  much  native  cleansing  to  do.  When 
once  trivial  commercial  pornography  had  been  stemmed, 
though  certainly  not  choked,  the  crusaders  turned  their 
attention  to  expurgating  importations,  ancient  and  mod- 
ern —  Rabelais,  Casanova,  Boccaccio,  Shakespeare, 
Swift,  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Balzac,  Zola,  Daudet,  Hardy 
and  even  Du  Maurier.  Jude  the  Obscure  was  banned, 
Trilby  attacked.  A  frenzy  of  purging  came  over  the  coun- 
try. Librarians,  district  attorneys  and  ministers  turned 
censor.  A  minister  in  Boston  undertook  to  issue  a  pure 
version  of  the  Bible.  Heretofore  seriously  daring  books 
used  to  die  of  neglect;  now  they  were  made  notorious. 
This  happened  to  Leaves  of  Grass  twenty-six  years  after 
it  was  first  published,  and  brought  it  new  fame,  but  also 
shelved  it  among  forbidden  volumes  in  places  of  learning. 
At  length  in  the  Nineties  as  polite  a  story  as  Frederic's 
The  Damnation  of  Theron  Ware  was  banned  and  Gar- 
land's virtuous  Rose  of  Dutcher's  Coolly  was  threatened. 
Any  native  writer  concerned  with  real  experience  was 
suspect.  Recently  D.  H.  Lawrence's  The  Rainbow  had 
been  banned.  The  work  of  scientists  was  prohibited  — 
The  Sexual  Question,  Forel,  and  Psycopathia  Sexu- 
alis,  Krafft-Ebing.  Comstock  grew  strong  and  smug.  He 
boasted  that  his  percentage  of  convictions  in  forty  years 

347 


ran  to  98.5 ;  and  that  he  had  destroyed  "  enough  books, 
stereotype  plates,  photographic  negatives,  and  photo- 
graphs to  fill  sixteen  cars,  fifteen  loaded  with  ten  tons 
each,  and  the  other  nearly  full."  *  But  the  names  of  these 
many  criminals  and  their  works  were  always  withheld 
from  a  free  people.  Write  today  to  his  successor,  John  S. 
Sumner,  for  statistics  and  his  reply  is :  "  .  .  .  we  know  of 
no  prepared  list  of  suppressed  books  in  this  country.  There 
are  obvious  reasons  why  such  a  list  should  not  be  pub- 
lished." Comstock's  printed  slogan,  preserved  by  Mencken 
was :  "  MORALS,  Not  Art  or  Literature."  And  he  might 
have  added  not  honesty,  or  laughter  either. 

In  their  fifty  years  these  societies  enacted  many  un- 
conscious farces  dear  now  to  satirists :  Benjamin  Franklin, 
father  of  the  Post  Office  and  the  Saturday  Evening  Post, 
was  barred  from  the  mails  when  it  came  to  his  Advice  to 
Young  Men  on  the  Proper  Choosing  of  a  Mistress.^  To 
this  moment  it  is  difficult  to  find  it  in  libraries  or  book- 
stores; young  men  have  had  to  get  on  without  it.  In  1912 
the  report  of  the  Chicago  Vice  Commission  was  pro- 
hibited the  mails.  In  1923  President  Warren  G.  Harding 
accepted  the  honorary  chairmanship  of  the  Founder's 
Committee  of  the  New  York  Society;  and  in  1927,  to 
protect  their  dead  chairman,  Mr.  Sumner  with  six  police- 
men had  to  invade  a  printing  plant  and  carry  off  the  plates 
and  sheets  of  what  was  said  to  be  the  story  of  an  illicit 
love  of  Gamaliel  and  the  natural  daughter  thereof. § 
These  reformers  never  allowed  themselves  to  laugh;  and 
their  opponents  got  to  laughing  too  easily.  The  jokes  be- 
came simple  and  in  terms  of  one  syllable  —  prude,  or  at 
most  of  two  —  prison.  The  huge  crime  of  the  reformers 
was  in  excluding  people  from  human  experience;  the  more 
baffling  crime  was  in  barring  them  from  subtleties.  What 
chance  to  refine  tone  or  gesture  of  speech  and  image,  when 
by  dull  moralists  intellect  is  driven  to  consider  merely 
subject  matter,  the  facts  of  living,  which  should  be  basic 
to  art?  What  chance  for  impeccable  manner  out  of  a 

*  Puritanism  —  A  Literary  Force. 
f   To  the  Pure  by  Ernst  and  Seagle. 

§  The  book  is  called  The  President's  Daughter.  The  incident  is  re- 
corded in  To  the  Pure. 

348 


moral  background  which  murdered  mystery  quite  as  a 
radio  announcer  can  murder  silence? 

In  1915  Anthony  Comstock  died,  rich,  ridiculed  and 
respected,  leaving  an  organization  so  efficient  as  to  carry 
on  without  his  initial  fervor,  as  long  as  the  millionaires 
would  pay  the  salaries  of  its  officers.  He  died  in  the  year 
of  The  "  Genius  "  appearance.  Eleven  months  passed  and 
the  message  of  that  book  with  its  beauties  and  imperfec- 
tions had  gone  to  thousands  of  people.  "  In  July  1916," 
as  Mr.  F.  L.  Rowe,  secretary  of  the  Cincinnati  society, 
told  it  at  the  time,  "  Rev.  John  Herget  of  the  Ninth 
Street  Baptist  Church  became  acquainted  with  the  book, 
when  he  was  called  to  a  telephone  by  an  unidentified  per- 
son who  complained.  Immediately,"  Mr.  Rowe  assured 
his  interviewer  from  the  Cincinnati  Inquirer,  "  we  pro- 
cured a  copy  of  the  present  issue,  and  find  that  it  is  filled 
with  obscenity  and  blasphemy.  We  have  succeeded  in  hav- 
ing it  removed  from  practically  every  book  store  in  the 
city."  But  this  was  not  enough.  Ecstatic  over  new-found 
treasure  the  Society  appealed  to  the  Post  Office  Depart- 
ment in  Washington,  which  took  no  action  because  the 
complaint  "  had  not  been  presented  in  the  proper  form." 

Sumner,  however,  was  not  squeamish  about  "  form  " 
and  leaped  to  the  challenge  with  the  advantage  of  living 
near  the  very  source  of  the  evil,  the  John  Lane  Com- 
pany. His  appetite  was  further  whetted  by  the  receipt  in 
his  mail  of  pages  furiously  torn  from  a  copy  of  The 
"  Genius  "  belonging  to  the  New  York  Public  Library. 
Naming  "  75  lewd  and  17  profane  passages,"  Sumner 
confronted  the  publisher  and  ordered  them  deleted  or  the 
book  withdrawn  and  the  plates  destroyed.  Lane's  Ameri- 
can representative,  Mr.  J.  Jefferson  Jones,  withdrew  the 
book,  awaiting  "  further  action  "  on  someone's  part.  But 
he  took  the  precaution  to  ask  Dreiser's  permission  before 
destroying  the  plates.  Dreiser  got  possession  of  them  and 
stored  them  in  a  warehouse  in  New  Jersey.  As  formidable 
as  that  did  Sumner  and  his  public  seem  to  Mr.  Jones, 
who  yet  with  English  support  in  the  case  of  The  Titan 
had  dared  where  Harper's  feared  to  tread.  Frederic  Chap- 
man, who  had  constituted  the  support,  was  no  longer 
Lane's  literary  advisor  in  London.  Soon  after  he  died. 

349 


On  August  zoth,  1916  the  New  York  Tribune  featured 
Sumner  and  Dreiser  on  the  same  page  with  headlines  of 
the  Great  War : 

"Allies  Strike  155  Mile  Line  in  Balkans  —  Drive  to  Win 
Back  Serbia  Closes  Ring  of  Gunfire  —  Enemy  Routed  in 
Macedonia  —  Offensive  on  Fourth  Front  Opens  Wedge 
Along  Salonica  Railroad  —  Vice  Society  Works  Out  New 
Method  of  Censoring  Literature  —  Plan  Tried  Out  on 
Dreiser's  'Genius:' 

"  The  essential  feature  of  the  new  method  is  to  get  rid  of 
objectionable  publications  without  giving  authors  and  pub- 
lishers the  benefit  of  free  advertising,  such  as  followed  Corn- 
stock's  attack  on  the  picture  '  September  Morn  '  and  the 
novel  '  Hagar  Revelly.'  ' 

The  "  Genius  "  was  the  first  powerful  American  novel 
threatened  by  the  vice  crusaders.  Garland,  Harold  Fred- 
eric, David  Phillips,  Upton  Sinclair  had  less  cavernous 
visions  and  a  less  unswerving  hold  on  them.  They  had  not 
the  austere  talent  to  secrete  and  display  worlds  of  life  in 
three  dimensions  as  Dreiser  could.  So  in  attacking  him 
these  moralists  were  attacking  the  very  volume  of  new- 
ness which  threatened  them,  in  the  hope  of  purging  it  of 
all  but  commercial  and  industrial  currents.  Perhaps  for 
this  or  because  a  ferment  was  at  work  in  the  country  on 
the  verge  of  war  and  yet  so  newly  awakened  to  a  sense  of 
itself,  The  "  Genius  "  case  became  a  rallying  point  for 
rebels.  The  wine  of  consciousness  was  in  the  air  out  of  a 
double  crisis  —  birth  and  death,  the  agony  of  final  arrival 
and  the  despair  of  sudden  going.  A  few  men  and  women 
like  some  of  those  back  of  the  Seven  Arts,  the  Little 
Review,  the  Poetry  Magazine,  and  others  in  scattered 
positions  wanted  to  hold  on  to  what  had  finally  been  won 
by  scientists  and  poets  and  critics  for  native  intellect.  By 
virtue  of  being  American  some  of  them  still  dreamed  with 
Jefferson  and  Whitman  that  a  new  society  would  emerge 
into  history  with  a  freedom  of  its  own,  a  progression  in 
the  spirit,  like  that  of  Athens  or  of  France  or  of  England. 
Coincident  with  this  moment  in  any  event,  if  not  out  of 
it,  came  a  fruition  of  impulses  which  had  been  trying  to 
survive  since  the  difficult  days  of  Melville,  Poe,  Thoreau, 
and  Whitman. 

In  this  year  1916  and  in  the  next  years  Dreiser  grew 

350 


to  full  strength  as  an  opposing  force.  And  as  different  and 
startling  crusaders  as  Mencken,  Frank  Harris  and  Ezra 
Pound  came  to  the  defence  of  The  "  Genius,"  or  rather 
to  the  attack  of  censorship.  Not  one  of  the  three  was 
much  interested,  as  it  happened,  in  the  work  itself,  but 
they  were  passionately  aggressive  against  that  too  "  crude 
demos  "  which  was  making  United  Villages  out  of  the 
only  land  of  their  birth.  And  then  there  were  others,  Har- 
vey O'Higgins,  Felix  Shay,  Alexander  Harvey,  George 
Keating,  Elias  Rosenthal,  Joseph  Auerbach,  Sherwood 
Anderson,  Randolph  Bourne,  who  admired  The 
"  Genius  "  as  well.  The  case  brought  many  names  asso- 
ciated with  quite  different  phases  of  thought  into  rela- 
tion with  one  another,  and  all  into  relation  with  the  single 
name  of  Dreiser.  It  seemed  as  if  the  country  might  con- 
clude a  moment  of  fusion.  Some  of  these  men  valued  pre- 
cisely Dreiser;  the  balance  of  power  was  with  him  what- 
ever his  sins.  Others  like  Mencken  and  Harris  valued 
Dreiser  but  deplored  The  "  Genius,"  a  decline  from  lit- 
erary grace.  Still  others  like  Ezra  Pound,  already  in  Eng- 
land teaching  Yeats  to  be  modern  and  himself  to  be 
ancient,  had  not  much  use  for  author  or  book.  Dreiser 
was  not  brief  enough  or  fused  enough  to  please  them.  He 
was  too  American.  Yet  they  must  all  have  felt  "  a  formid- 
able integrity  "  *  at  issue,  or  it  is  not  likely  they  would 
have  made  this  incident  of  censorship  into  a  nucleus 
around  which  to  fight  from  freedom  of  art. 

*  Sallie  Kussel,   who  typed   most  of  An  American    Tragedy  said  of 
Dreiser:  "  I  shall  never  forget  his  formidable  integrity." 


351 


56 

"  MORALS—  not  An  or  Literature." 

ANTHONY  COMSTOCK 

"  The  dirtiest  book  of  all  is  the  expurgated 
book."  WALT  WHITMAN 

"  A  man  mounts  toward  the  height  of 
Olympus  .  .  .  he  is  already  half  trans- 
ported to  the  sky ;  but  a  wretched  jailor's 
hand  drags  him  back  into  the  gutter.  If  you 
hold  converse  with  the  Muse  they  take  you 
for  a  debaucher  of  girls.  And  they  will 
make  you  stand,  my  friend,  at  the  bar  with 
thieves.  .  .  .  Earth  has  its  boundaries 
but  human  stupidity  is  limitless." 

FLAUBERT  TO  DE  MAUPASSANT 

T 

JLhe  counter  move  on  the  part  of  the  John 
Lane  Company  was  to  ask  the  support  of  the  Authors' 
League  of  America,  of  which  Dreiser  was  not  a  member.* 
On  the  24th  of  August  they  called  a  special  meeting  of 
their  Executive  Committee.  The  sense  of  it  was  that  The 
"Genius"  was  "  not  lewd,  licentious  or  obscene"  and 
that  the  Vice  Society  may,  if  not  checked,  "  prevent  the 
sale  of  many  classics  and  of  much  of  the  serious  work 
which  is  now  being  offered,"  and  that  "  the  League  take 
such  action  as  may  be  possible  to  prevent  the  suppression 
of  the  work  complained  of."  The  resolution  concluded 
with  the  typed  signatures  of  the  Executive  Committee, 
George  Barr  Baker,  Rex  Beach,  Thompson  Buchanan, 
Ellis  Parker  Butler,  George  Creel,  Arthur  I.  Keller, 
Leroy  Scott,  Louis  Joseph  Vance,  Kate  Jordan,  Helen  S. 
Woodruff.  But  of  these  the  names  of  Butler,  Baker,  Keller, 

*  According  to  Dreiser  he  was  invited  to  join  the  Authors'  League  two 
or  three  years  after  its  start.  But  when  he  asked  them  what  they  did  "  for 
the  average  author,  they  took  umbrage  ";  and  he  never  joined. 

352 


Scott,  Jordan  and  Woodruff  were  absent  from  the  formal 
protest  drawn  up  some  days  later,  and  finally  distributed 
under  the  auspices  of  the  League.  As  one  goes  over  the 
files  of  this  curious  battle  it  becomes  clear  that  the  Au- 
thors as  a  body  found  "  action  "  impossible.  Too  many 
of  their  members  recoiled  from  Dreiser,  the  naturalist,  the 
pro-German,  the  crude  craftsman.  And  "  sex  "  and  "the 
dark  side  of  things  "  were  too  "  unpleasant."  Yet  they 
allowed  the  protest  to  go,  framed  by  the  bolder  members : 

"We,  the  undersigned,  American  writers,  observe  with 
deep  regret  the  efforts  now  being  made  to  destroy  the  work 
of  Theodore  Dreiser.  Some  of  us  may  differ  from  Mr. 
Dreiser  in  our  aims  and  methods,  and  some  of  us  may  be 
out  of  sympathy  with  his  point  of  view,  but  we  believe  that 
an  attack  by  irresponsible  and  arbitrary  persons  upon  the 
writings  of  an  author  of  such  manifest  sincerity  and  such 
high  accomplishments  must  inevitably  do  great  damage  to 
the  freedom  of  letters  in  the  United  States,  and  bring  down 
upon  the  American  people  the  ridicule  and  contempt  of 
other  nations.  The  method  of  the  attack,  with  its  attempt 
to  ferret  out  blasphemy  and  indecency  where  they  are  not, 
and  to  condemn  a  serious  artist  under  a  law  aimed  at  com- 
mon rogues  is  unjust  and  absurd.  We  join  in  this  public 
protest  against  the  proceeding  in  the  belief  that  the  art  of 
letters,  as  carried  on  by  men  of  serious  purpose  and  with 
the  co-operation  of  reputable  publishers,  should  be  free 
from  interference  by  persons  who,  by  their  own  statement, 
judge  all  books  by  narrow  and  impossible  standards;  and 
we  advocate  such  amendments  of  the  existing  laws  as  will 
prevent  such  persecutions  in  future." 

The  Secretary  of  the  League,  Eric  Schuler,  contributed 
the  further  service  of  a  talk  in  October  with  Mr.  Suther- 
land of  the  Post  Office  Department  in  Washington,  who 
thought  that  in  all  probability  the  Department  would 
"  take  no  action  in  the  matter  of  The  '  Genius.'  "  A  later 
letter  from  U.  S.  Attorney  H.  Snowden  Marshall  to 
Dreiser's  lawyer,  on  November  2,  1916  confirmed  him 
"  that  it  was  not  a  case  in  which  prosecution  was  war- 
ranted." At  this  point  the  Authors'  fervor  for  freedom 
of  American  letters  appears  to  have  waned.  Also  The 
John  Lane  Company,  who  at  first  talked  of  bringing  the 
matter  into  the  courts  at  their  expense,  were  afraid  to 
fight  for  Dreiser.  Mr.  Jones  generously  advised  him  "  to 
let  his  attorney,  Mr.  Stanchfield,  loosen  the  dogs  of  war 

353 


on  Sumner  and  his  crowd  at  once."  Mencken  thinks  that 
the  publishers  lacked  the  money,  and  were  failing  in  New 
York;  but  Dreiser  must  have  had  less  money  than  they. 
Now  once  more  it  was  up  to  him  to  wrench  from  conserva- 
tives the  right  to  tell  about  life  as  he  saw  it,  and  survive 
the  telling  in  the  United  States.  The  Comstocks  had  al- 
ready cut  off  his  income  from  The  "  Genius,"  $2,400  in  less 
than  a  year,  and  could  impose  a  fine  or  prison  sentence,  or 
both,  if  upheld  by  the  courts.  In  the  event  of  this  they 
planned  the  suppression  of  all  of  his  books.  Some  years 
later  he  is  quoted  in  an  interview  as  having  "  fought  the 
'  Genius  '  battle  single-handed."  Perhaps  at  the  time  he 
felt  isolated  enough,  and  as  the  years  passed  looked  back 
on  the  persecution  as  that  of  many  against  one.  But  the 
records  disclose  that  he  had  in  energy  and  money  the  sup- 
port of  a  few  devoted  allies,  and  offers  from  others.  It 
may  be  they  quarreled  among  themselves  and  with  Dreiser 
as  to  the  best  method  to  defeat  the  Comstocks,  so  that 
he  felt  the  loneliness  of  opposition,  never  acceptable  to 
genius.  In  any  event  he  fought  with  a  vigor  which  had 
grown  out  of  sleek  alluvial  valleys  and  Catholic  and  Men- 
nonite  discipline.  His  first  exclamation  to  reporters  was 
in  their  own  "  that's-telling-'em  "  language :  "  If  my  name 
were  Dreiserevsky  and  I  said  I  came  from  Moscow  I'd 
have  no  trouble.  But  I  come  from  Indiana  —  so  good- 
night !  "  But  he  did  not  go  to  sleep.  For  two  years  he  gave 
out  interviews  which  went  into  news  columns  as  if  ideas 
were  events.  To  the  New  York  Sun  he  said : 

"  I  look  on  this  interference  with  myself  or  any  other 
serious  writer  as  an  outrage  and  I  fear  for  the  ultimate 
intelligence  of  America.  A  band  of  wasp-like  censors  has 
appeared  and  is  attempting  to  put  the  quietus  on  our  litera- 
ture, which  is  at  least  showing  signs  of  breaking  the  bonds 
of  puritanism,  under  which  it  has  so  long  struggled  in  vain. 
Poe,  Hawthorne,  Whitman  and  Thoreau  have  in  turn  been 
the  butt  and  gibe  of  unintelligent  persons,  until  by  now  we 
are  well-nigh  the  laughing  stock  of  the  world.  When  will 
we  lay  aside  the  swaddling  clothes  forced  on  us  by  ... 
antiquated  moralists  and  their  uneducated  followers  ?  .  .  ." 

And  to  the  New  York  Tribune : 

"  To  me  the  issue  is  a  contest  that  goes  to  the  very  roots 
of  thought  in  this  country.  Are  we  going  to  succumb  to 

354 


Puritan  thought,  or  is  it  possible  for  the  United  States  to 
accept  a  world  standard  of  thinking?  .  .  .  We  are  always 
talking  about  the  great  American  novel.  How,  I  want  to 
ask  intelligent  men,  are  we  going  to  produce  that?  By 
adopting  the  standard  of  criticism  which  has  permitted  the 
publication  of  Flaubert,  Balzac,  and  others  in  France; 
Tolstoi  in  Russia;  Moore  and  Bennett  and  others  in  Eng- 
land, Strindberg  and  Ibsen  in  Sweden  and  Norway?  Or 
are  we  going  to  let  Major  Funkhauser,  who  obtained  the 
withdrawal  of  Anthony  and  Cleopatra  in  Chicago  .  .  .  and 
Sumner  to  read  and  decide  how  far  our  minds  shall  go? 

"  Is  this  a  free  country?  Is  an  artist  to  be  allowed  to  in- 
terpret life  as  he  sees  it,  or  is  he  to  conform  to  a  car- 
conductor  standard  of  literature?  There  is  something  sickly 
about  the  whole  mental  attitude  of  this  country.  .  .  ." 

To  the  Chicago  Herald-Examiner : 

"  No  mythical  Heaven  about  which  no  one  knows  any- 
thing ...  is  going  to  serve  any  longer.  Man  should  unite 
and  make  war  on  the  other  forces  of  nature  that  now 
oppress  him,  reorganize  his  religious  conceptions,  as  well 
as  the  theories  of  the  state  under  which  he  lives,  until  he 
has  brought  all  of  them  into  tune  with  his  own  great  needs." 

To  the  Brooklyn  Eagle : 

"  It  is  dreadful  to  think  of  shackles  being  forged  which 
are  going  to  hold  the  mind  ...  in  a  vise-like  grip  of 
timidity  utterly  precluding  initiative.  There's  little  enough 
courage  as  it  is.  ...  I  have  my  following,  and  that  is  all 
anyone  could  expect  ...  all  anyone  could  possibly  want. 
It  would  be  absurd  to  desire  unanimous  approval.  It  isn't 
necessary.  But  ...  if  something  doesn't  happen  to  break 
down  the  .  .  .  hide-bound  tradition,  which  is  the  enemy 
of  the  race,  man  will  go  to  seed." 

He  asked  the  public  to  remember  "  the  incident  of  Gorki's 
reception,  to  whom  even  Mark  Twain  had  been  afraid  to 
extend  the  hand  of  welcome.  And  Gorki,  the  head  of  an 
important  paper  in  Russia  was  using  his  power  to  spread 
his  distrust  of  America."  A  few  weeks  before  he  had  seen 
in  a  newspaper  "  a  rabid  attack  on  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
which  summed  him  up  as  a  failure,  Poe  the  most  pre- 
cious heritage  of  the  land  1  A  failure !  " 

His  friends  fought  with  him  for  his  and  their  "  great 
needs."  A  defence  committee  was  formed  with  a  secre- 
tary, Harold  Hersey,  who  set  to  work  to  send  the 
League's  protest  to  authors  all  over  the  country  for 

355 


their  signatures.  Among  them  Mencken  gives  to  Harvey 
O'Higgins  the  chief  credit  for  this  work.  But  according 
to  the  documents  Mencken  himself  appears  to  have  la- 
bored for  signatures  until  they  reached  the  number  of 
478.  "  Perhaps,"  he  said,  "  it  was  as  much  my  secretary 
in  Baltimore  as  anyone  else;  she  worked  untiringly  for 
all  of  two  months.  .  .  ."  As  for  himself,  he  added,  the 
affair  engaged  him  because  it  gave  him  a  chance  to  can- 
vass the  intelligence  of  the  country.  Especially  he  de- 
lighted in  following  up  refusals  or  failures  to  answer  with 
a  personal  letter.  Sometimes  in  the  case  of  an  important 
signature  he  wrote  and  replied  three  or  four  times.  The 
files  show  on  Mencken's  side  a  devotion  to  making  history 
and  keeping  its  records.  He  is  a  creative  statistician. 
When  I  interviewed  him  fifteen  years  after  these  events 
he  volunteered  to  send  me,  a  stranger  to  him,  all  of  the 
papers,  protest,  lists  of  names,  clippings  and  letters,  a 
heavy  package.  They  might  provide  my  book,  he  thought, 
with  an  amusing  paragraph  or  two  about  this  phase  of 
Dreiser's  career.  They  could  do  more  than  that;  they 
could  make  a  novel  of  ideas,  a  kaleidoscope  of  the  Ameri- 
can point  of  view  in  1916.  Mencken  himself  once  prom- 
ised his  public  to  write  this  novel,*  but  may  have  wearied 
of  the  issue.  When  I  returned  the  material  to  his  office  he 
pronounced  its  epitaph,  as  if  the  cause  of  wit  had  been 
foredoomed  to  failure :  "  Well,  this  will  go  back  into  my 
files  now,  where  it  will  gather  dust,  I  suppose  until  my 
death,  and  then  be  sold  at  auction,  knocked  down  for 
thirty  cents  —  article  517.  ...  And  that's  what  will 
happen  to  Dreiser  some  day,  too.  And  to  you  as  well,"  he 
added,  as  if  the  idea  delighted  him.  A  dreary  verdict!  I 
could  not  resist  anticipating  a  livelier  death  —  That  some- 
thing of  our  past  might  remain,  if  only  a  theorem,  sur- 
viving annihilation,  to  amuse  or  challenge  or  give  back- 
ground to  the  future ! 

In  the  first  autumn  of  The  "  Genius  "  battle  Mencken 
was  hopeful.  He  was  like  a  hunter  bagging  his  game  at 

*  Prefaces:  Theodore  Dreiser,  page  143:  "Among  my  literary  lum- 
ber is  all  the  correspondence  relating  to  this  protest,  and  some  day  I  mean 
to  publish  it  that  posterity  may  not  lose  the  joy  of  an  extremely  diverting 
episode." 

356 


each  new  important  signature  or  absurd  refusal.  Unlike 
Dreiser  he  could  enjoy  the  affair  as  a  sport,  a  contest.  He 
exhorted  in  warlike  vocatives,  "  On  with  the  machine 
guns !  Forward  the  Zeppelins !  I  am  planning  a  general 
offensive.  ...  I  am  full  of  hope  that  shrapnel  will  play 
a  part."  And  yet  it  was  his  policy  to  try  and  convert 
Puritans.  Constantly  he  coached  the  novelist  not  to  alien- 
ate them.  In  one  letter  he  scolds  him  for  flirting  with 
"  tenth-rate  geniuses  ";  in  another  he  warns  him  that  the 
best  way  to  get  signatures  is  to  "  besiege  the  leading  au- 
thors of  the  country :  by  leading  authors  of  course  I  mean 
those  best  known  to  the  public.  The  signature  of  such  an 
old  ass  as  Brander  Matthews  would  be  worth  a  great 
deal."  Hersey  writes  Mencken  that  he  is  much  disturbed 
by  Dreiser's  excursion  into  the  "  red  ink  crowd."  *  Specifi- 
cally that  seemed  to  refer  to  a  visit  on  Mitchell  Ken- 
nerly's  advice  to  the  office  of  John  Quinn,  who,  it  was 
known,  had  a  collection  of  modern  paintings,  sculptures 
and  writings,  still  thought  of  in  America  as  "  crazy, 
insane,  lunatic."  t  John  B.  Stanchfield,  an  admirer  of 
Dreiser,  and  a  collector  of  exciting  classics,  rather  than 
moderns,  had  been  chosen  by  right-wing  friends  as  the 
safer  legal  advice.  Dreiser,  who  antagonized  easily  but 
seldom  harbored  resentment,  perhaps  never,  apparently 
could  value  the  advice  of  one  like  Kennerley  who  had  at- 
tempted to  block  him.  In  his  impartial  way  he  computed 
that  loyalty  did  not  necessarily  mean  judgment.  On  the 
same  afternoon  he  paid  a  visit  to  both  lawyers  to  see 
which  one  he  liked  best.  Mr.  Hersey  was  in  despair,  but 
as  it  turned  out  Stanchfield  was  more  suited  to  Dreiser's 
taste.  John  Quinn  belonged  among  Americans  who  were 
already  emigres  to  older  lands.  It  may  be  that  the  author 
of  The  "  Genius  "  felt  the  cleavage  —  a  not  unfriendly 
but  critical  sophistication.  Mr.  Stanchfield  offered  to  de- 
fend him  at  his  own  expense,  just  as  John  Quinn  a  few 
years  later  did  in  the  case  of  Joyce's  Ulysses  for  the  Little 
Review. 

None  the  less  it  was  Dreiser's  bolder  method  to  mus- 

*  "  Red  ink  "  denoted  red  wine  of  Italian  restaurants,  where  the  intel- 
ligentsia liked  to  go  to  escape  from  Home. 

f  Matisse,  Picasso,  Derain,  Brancusi,  Duchamps,  James  Joyce. 

357 


ter  all  the  rebels,  exotic,  disreputable,  dangerous,  obscure 
or  snobbish,  in  the  manner  of  Paul  Revere  on  his  mid- 
night ride ;  to  make  a  new  start  for  adult  America.  One 
cannot  compute  which  was  the  wiser  instinct,  his  or 
Mencken's.  The  nature  of  their  separate  ways  indicates  a 
society  too  backward  to  embark  on  complicated  journeys. 
A  Brooklyn  newspaper  covering  the  event  vindicates 
Mencken : 

"  The  protest  contained  some  well-known  names.  .  .  . 
But  on  this  same  list  is  that  of  Rose  Pastor  Stokes,  recently 
sentenced  to  ten  years  in  a  Federal  prison,  and  Max  East- 
man who  has  figured  in  the  courts  quite  frequently."  * 

On  the  other  hand  Mencken  did  not  make  converts  of 
many  of  the  "  old  asses."  Such  dignitaries  as  Brander 
Matthews,  Shakespeare  authority,  Nicholas  Murray  But- 
ler, president  of  Columbia,  William  Lyon  Phelps  and 
Bliss  Perry,  Yale  and  Harvard  professors,  William  Dean 
Howells,  Hamlin  Garland,  Agnes  Repplier,  Arthur  Pier 
of  Youth's  Companion,  Paul  Elmer  More  would  not  fall 
into  his  trap.  They  evaded  the  issue  by  pleading  igno- 
rance of  Dreiser's  work;  or  else  they  wished  the  cause  of 
freedom  had  a  better  case;  or  like  Garland,  Matthews, 
and  Perry  they  chose  to  "  suspect  that  the  movement 
was  being  pushed  by  his  publishers  for  advertising  pur- 
poses "  —  "  a  piece  of  very  shrewd  advertising,"  ac- 
cording to  Hamlin  Garland.  Howells  wrote  to  Francis 
Hackett : 

"  I  have  no  doubt  that  half  literature,  prose  and  poetry, 
could  as  reasonably  be  suppressed  as  Mr.  Dreiser's 
book.  .  .  ." 

Yet  not  having  read  it,  this  venerable  dean  of  letters  pre- 
ferred to  imperil  half  of  literature  than  take  a  chance. 
He  felt  quite  secure  about  his  own  half. 

There  were  other  incurables  more  honest  and  confid- 
ing. Writers  like  Ellis  Parker  Butler,  Louis  Pendleton, 
Mark  Sullivan,  Thomas  A.  Jenkins,  Clara  Louise  Burn- 
ham,  seemed  to  turn  hysterical  at  the  first  hint  of  sex  or 
tragedy.  An  occasional  one  of  them  would  sign  out  of 
respect  for  Mencken.  He  was  a  scholar;  it  is  the  habit 
of  prudes  to  go  for  sensation  to  remote  cultures.  Here 

*  Both  for  so-called  political  offences. 

358 


are  some  of  their  responses  to  the  merciless  sleuth  of 
Baltimore : 

".  .  .  Some  books  can  be  so  rotten  that  they  should  be 
destroyed.  .  .  .  Private  censorship  is  the  best  way.  .  .  . 
Things  are  not  necessarily  truthful  because  they  stink,  or 
strong  because  they  smell.  ...  A  man  is  not  more  manly 
for  going  about  without  pants  or  underwear." 

"...  I  don't  know  what's  the  matter  with  me  —  per- 
haps I  am  just  hopelessly  middle-class  or  middle-aged  be- 
fore my  time,  but  t  the  frank  discussion  of  sex  '  in  fiction 
has  always  given  me  the  feeling  of  distinct  nausea.  .  .  . 
There  are  a  few  honest  men  like  Dreiser  .  .  .  but  also  .  .  . 
there  are  many  of  the  Cosmopolitan  school  —  nasty  little 
fellows  who  are  willing  to  do  a  little  tickling  in  this  line  for 
the  cash.  ...  I  am  going  to  sign  the  protest  not  enthu- 
siastically, but  because  I  have  just  as  much  contempt  for 
the  paid  smut-hounds  as  I  have  for  the  dishonest  smut 
purveyors.  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  Is  it  merely  putting  his  books  in  library  Hocked 
cases  '  ?  If  that  is  all,  I  don't  think  it  calls  for  a  protest,  as 
it  is  well  to  keep  such  literature  from  very  young  persons  of 
both  sexes.  ...  I  am  now  reading  The  '  Genius '  .  .  . 
taken  from  a  locked  case  in  the  Philadelphia  library.  His 
insight  into  beauty  in  all  nature  appeals  to  me,  but  his 
sexual  stuff  is  not  very  convincing  and  leaves  me  cold." 

"  This  author  should  be  hanged  for  his  breaches  of  good 
taste  ...  if  not  for  writing  .  .  .  the  most  pernicious  book. 
I'm  no  prude.  I  have  read  Zola  and  much  of  Balzac  .  .  . 
Tom  Jones  .  .  .  Boccaccio  .  .  .  even  parts  of  Rabelais 
.  .  .  Burton's  Arabian  Nights.  The  classics  named  do  not 
offend  .  .  .  partly  because  oceans  and  ages  roll  between, 
but  .  .  .  Dreiser  knows  no  restraint.  What  other  writer 
living  or  dead  would  have  staged  a  childbirth  scene  and 
given  details  of  the  horrible  Caesarian  operation?  ...  I 
am  opposed  to  the  fettering  of  genius,  but  .  .  .  Mr.  Dreiser 
delves  in  the  revolting  and  the  filthy.  ...  I  have  no  desire 
to  protest  against  an  effort  to  check  the  flow  of  literary 
ditchwater." 

These  comments  accorded  with  Comstock  and  Sumner. 
Felix  Shay,  editor  of  The  Fra,  East  Aurora,  New  York,  a 
disciple  of  Elbert  Hubbard,  baited  Sumner  by  letter,  and 
got  the  same  kind  of  answer  from  headquarters : 

"  This  is  a  matter  of  almost  ancient  history.  We  received 
serious  complaints  against  the  book  .  .  .  and  it  was  very 
apparent  that  its  circulation  was  a  violation  of  the  law. 

359 


.  .  .  You  say,  '  I  think  you  make  a  serious  error  in  annoy- 
ing a  man  of  unquestionable  character  and  accomplish- 
ment.' .  .  .  What  possible  difference  can  this  make?  The 
law  makes  no  distinction  as  to  social,  literary  or  other 
standing  of  the  offender;  nor  is  any  consideration  given  as 
to  the  intent  of  the  author.  .  .  .  What  the  law  seeks  to  pre- 
vent is  the  harmful  effect  produced  on  the  immature  mind 
by  a  certain  class  of  book.  ...  I  think  it  is  well  understood 
in  the  book  trade  that  any  publisher  who  makes  a  practice 
of  putting  objectionable  literature  on  the  market  soon  goes 
out  of  business.  .  .  .  We  are  looking  at  this  particular  book 
from  the  standpoint  of  its  harmful  effect  on  female  read- 
ers of  immature  mind,  and  by  this  we  do  not  necessarily 
mean  youthful  readers." 

From  this  rigid,  unrelenting  stand,  jump  ahead  a  dozen 
years  and  contemplate  the  riches  acquired  by  the  very 
kind  of  publisher  there  referred  to,  and  you  will  tremble 
for  the  tranquillity  of  Mr.  Sumner's  latter  years.  I  asked 
Mencken  to  describe  Sumner.  "  A  Sunday-school  scholar," 
he  said,  "  A  feeble  fellow  compared  to  Comstock  or 
Chase  of  the  Boston  Watch  &  Ward  Society.  Chase  was 
a  bombastic  Methodist  teacher,  sadistic."  Back  in  the  days 
of  tyrannical  "  purity  "  Shay  having  hooked  his  Sumner, 
played  him  for  all  he  was  worth,  perhaps  more;  and 
prophesied  the  change  about  to  take  place  in  the  temper 
of  American  public  and  publishers : 

"  There  is  a  difference  in  men.  .  .  .  There  is  a  difference 
in  the  intent  of  men  sufficient  to  change  the  entire  applica- 
tion of  your  laws.  Whether  his  '  Genius  }  is  one  of  the  great 
novels  .  .  .  neither  you  nor  I  are  qualified  to  judge.  But 
both  of  us  should  have  the  good  taste  to  leave  it  to  fame 
or  to  oblivion. 

"  If  you  are  sincere,  and  I  wish  to  think  you  are,  I  warn 
you  beware  a  misuse  of  power!  Beware  of  false  zeal!  .  .  . 
To  tear  down  a  man  and  build  up  a  theory!  Beware  in 
your  attempt  to  protect  '  the  immature  female  mind  — 
not  necessarily  youthful '  from  the  '  harmful  effect '  of  this 
book.  Offhand  it  seems  to  me  gentlemen  of  your  persuasion 
more  than  Dreiser,  have  insisted  that  female  minds  not 
necessarily  youthful  remain  immature ! 

"  Why  not  open  the  windows  of  their  minds  in  the  blessed 
sunshine  of  knowledge.  .  .  .  Give  the  immature  female 
mind  a  chance  to  grow  through  exercise! 

".  .  .  Come  Sumner,  we  don't  want  to  drown  the  in- 
tellect, stop  the  tongue  in  a  pail  of  sanctimonious  whitewash, 
do  we? 
360 


".  .  .  Last  night  I  read  Genesis,  Chap.  Xyi,  verses  2 
to  5.  ...  Why  don't  you  suppress  the  Bible  if  only  your 
Maw'  is  supreme?  I  ask  sincerely  .  .  .  and  anticipate  a 
logical  action.  No,  not  really  a  logical  action !  I  don't  want 
you  to  suppress  the  Bible." 

One  point  in  Sumner's  letter  not  challenged  by  Shay, 
especially  shocks  the  innocent  democratic  mind:  Sum- 
ner's  word  was  law;  the  question  was  "  ancient  history  " 
before  it  was  tried. 

Beside  the  moralists  of  the  old  school  another  class  of 
writers  was  loath  to  sign.  They  were  talented  craftsmen, 
some  of  them  at  the  start,  who  had  found  their  best  work 
too  costly.  Now  they  were  filling  orders  for  romance,  ac- 
ceptable to  the  magazines,  and  were  jealous  of  Dreiser. 
They  knew  how  to  write  and  how  to  invent;  why  should 
"  a  mere  plagiarist  from  life  "  get  more  fame  than  they? 
And  they  were  uneasy  that  out  of  his  momentum  might 
come  a  change  of  fashion  in  fiction  to  displace  them.  A 
letter  to  Mencken  from  Henry  Sydnor  Harrison,  author 
of  Queed  and  V .  V .' s  Eyes  slyly  reflects  their  fear  of  en- 
croaching realism.  Mencken,  he  says,  has  "  set  his  founda- 
tions to  rocking  in  a  review  of  a  book  of  his  own  ";  yet 
he  is  unwilling  to  sign : 

"...  I  cannot  say  whether  The  (  Genius  '  is  decent  or  in- 
decent until  I  have  read  it  ...  something  I  am  unable  or 
unwilling  to  do.  But  I  can  say  there  is  such  a  thing  as  in- 
decency in  art,  and  .  .  .  Sumner  was  exactly  right  when  he 
said  that  authors  as  a  class  were  no  better  judges  of  in- 
decency .  .  .  than  any  other  class.  .  .  . 

"  I  can't  see  the  necessity  of  this  protest  .  .  .  the  Ameri- 
can philistine  is  precisely  the  person,  I  supposed,  that  Mr. 
Dreiser  holds  in  particular  contempt.  ...  It  is  hardly 
conceivable  .  .  .  that  the  most  resolute  of  our  naturalists 
should  turn  now  to  care  for  the  approbation  of  these  per- 
sons with  the  sale  that  it  carries.  As  an  offset  to  the  annoy- 
ance of  persecution  ...  he  has  the  memory  of  the  dis- 
tinguished example  of  Flaubert  .  .  .  and  he  possesses  a 
standing  as  an  artist  hardly  matched  by  any  other  living 
American  writer. 

"  You  see  I  am  saying  that  it  seems  to  me  Mr.  Dreiser 
has  fared  very  well." 

To  this  snobbery  which  invited  Dreiser  to  starve  on 
the  memory  of  Flaubert,  Mencken,  sensing  jealousy,  re- 


plied  that  though  his  own  point  of  view  was  "  almost  un- 
brokenly  literal,"  he  admired  Harrison  as  the  best  of  our 
craftsmen,  and  begged  again  for  his  name : 

"  I  leave  it  to  your  own  blushful  remorse.  .  .  .  Imagine 
Brahms  refusing  to  hear  '  Die  Walkiire  '!  ...  As  for  your 
second  objection  it  pains  me  even  more.  Who  is  better  fitted 
to  judge  novels  .  .  .  men  of  letters,  or  a  small  clique  of 
filthy  minded  Puritans?  Have  you  ever  read  Comstock's 
pamphlets,  —  the  Bible  of  the  smut-hounds?  Read  it  and 
weep!  .  .  . 

"  Third,  what  you  forget  is  that  the  Comstocks  are  try- 
ing to  pillory  Dreiser  before  the  world  as  a  merchant  of 
mere  pornography,  a  low  and  lewd  fellow  .  .  .  and  to  send 
him  to  a  Federal  prison  for  five  years.  ...  Is  this  the  sort 
of  thing  that  should  go  unchallenged  in  a  free  Republic? 

"  Personally  I  don't  care  for  The  '  Genius.3  But  I  know 
that  Dreiser  is  a  serious  artist.  ...  If  we  put  his  failure 
to  meet  our  personal  notions  .  .  .  above  the  principle  that 
every  artist  should  be  free,  then  we  plainly  hand  over  letters 
to  a  crowd  of  snooping  and  abominable  Methodists,  and  say 
goodby  to  all  we  have  struggled  for.  .  .  . 

"  The  one  aim  of  the  protest  is  to  enter  a  caveat  against 
such  .  .  .  intolerable  proceedings,  and  to  give  public  notice 
that  the  authors  of  the  United  States  ...  are  united 
against  the  common  enemy  as  the  authors  of  France  were 
in  the  Zola  case." 

Flaubert,  Mencken  might  have  added,  was  acquitted  be- 
fore the  tribunal  of  Paris  of  the  charge  against  Madame 
Bovary.  But  for  all  his  righteous  eloquence  this  critic  did 
not  make  a  convert  of  his  craftsman,  nor  unite  the  authors 
of  America.  Harrison,  whose  implicative  style  sometimes 
recalled  George  Meredith,  wrote  back  that  "  critics  and 
artists  should  live,  not  like  brokers  in  unity,  but  aloof  and 
apart."  In  this  he  had  his  way.  Isolations  continued  to  pre- 
vent exchange  of  ideas  among  them.  They  continued  to 
seek  relations  with  ideals ;  the  conformists  with  decorum 
and  prosperity,  the  radicals  with  license  and  martyrdom. 
Out  of  the  cleavages  grew  snobs  in  both  camps.  By  the  one 
kind  Dreiser  was  firmly  put  down  as  "  a  lewd  and  low 
fellow  " ;  Sumner  was  upheld.  By  the  other,  as  the  years 
went  on,  and  lewdness  and  lowness  became  fashionable,  he 
was  condemned  anew  as  old-fashioned  and  serious.  Out  of 
the  upheaval  one  common  thing  continued  to  triumph, 
brought  over  on  the  Mayflower  —  intellectual  frivolity. 

362 


Whether  practised  by  moralists  or  immoralists  we  do  not 
yet  escape  from  it. 

In  the  autumn  of  1916,  the  very  month  of  the  Genius 
controversy,  I  first  met  Dreiser  —  not  in  the  least  uncouth, 
on  the  contrary,  distinguished  by  eyes  and  mouth  that  re- 
lated him  to  Yeats  and  Henry  James,  not  long  before  on 
exhibition  in  the  United  States.  Visionary  and  workman 
in  him  had  recreated  loose  Indiana  features.  He  spoke  of 
his  battle  with  the  Vice  Society  but  not  at  length,  or  as  if  it 
much  concerned  him.  He  agreed  that  common  controversy 
was  the  death  of  art,  the  murder  of  mystery.  But  how  any- 
way was  there  to  be  art  when  there  were  no  vital  women 
as  women,  except  those  of  the  streets  or  music  halls,  and 
they  unconsciously  so?  American  colleges  were  neutraliz- 
ing women.  Men  too,  I  said.  No,  he  thought  there  was 
more  appetite  left  in  men.  Look  at  our  cities,  power 
plants  and  railroads,  the  work  of  wonderful  imaginations. 
But  what  intellectual  women  of  passion  did  we  have?  — 
Mary  Garden  and  Emma  Goldman,  that  was  all.  Jane 
Addams  was  as  sad  as  a  whipped  animal.  Isadora  Duncan? 
Perhaps.  Where  had  I  been  educated?  Bryn  Mawr?  He 
had  just  written  an  article,  Life  and  Art  in  America, 
where  he  had  asked  his  readers  to  name  one  woman  of 
any  distinction  or  achievement  out  of  the  twenty-five  years 
of  that  institution.  Perhaps  he  would  amend  it.*  So  we 
talked.  .  .  . 

But  if  in  what  was  called  society  one  ventured  to  speak 
of  Dreiser  as  a  figure  important  to  New  York,  it  was 
soon  to  find  that  his  name  if  recognized  at  all  was  dis- 
missed with  a  shudder.  As  in  earlier  days  he  was  improper. 
I  remember  once  an  author  who  after  the  subject  had  been 
changed  murmured,  "  Do  you  know  what  woman  Drei- 
ser's living  with  now?  "  Upon  my  ignorance  as  to  that, 
the  first  and  last  spark  of  interest  in  "  America's  fore- 
most novelist  "  died. 

*  This  he  did  not  do :  "  There  is  not  a  chemist,  a  physiologist,  a 
botanist,  a  biologist,  an  historian,  a  philosopher,  an  artist  of  any  kind  or 
repute  among  them.  They  are  curators,  directors,  keepers.  They  are  not  in- 
dividuals in  the  true  sense  of  the  word.  They  are  not  free.  .  .  ."  Hey-Rub- 
A -Dub-Dub,  pages  260-261. 

363 


Now  the  story  flows  out  of  these  narrow  corridors  of 
conventional  thought.  Born  within  or  escaped  to  the 
greater  world  beyond  correctness,  there  existed  an  enter- 
prising minority.  Their  responses,  to  Hersey  and  Mencken 
in  The  "  Genius  "  case,  follow  along  the  gullies  of  change. 
They  fall  like  rain  on  the  arid  soil  of  conventional  opin- 
ion. They  make  rifts  in  the  clouds;  they  have  about  them 
the  stir  and  breath  and  lights  of  dramatic  America,  as  of 
theatre  signs  reflected  on  wet  pavements  or  of  stars  in 
city  puddles  blown  toward  unknown  goals : 

"  I  take  great  pleasure  in  signing  .  .  .  when  any  Ameri- 
can writer  succeeds  in  getting  anything  except  Sunday 
school  optimism  past  our  first  two  trenches  —  the  maga- 
zine editors  and  the  book  publishers  —  he  should  not  be 
forced  to  endure  any  additional  trials  of  censorship.  .  .  ." 
Robert  Wason,  Norwalk,  Connecticut. 

"  Ye  Gods!  Are  we  reverting  to  the  Stone  Age?  Like  to 
sign  it  a  dozen  times."  Frederick  Isham,  Detroit. 

"  Anything  I  can  do  submerge  the  prurient  puritanism  of 
the  Comstock  castrati  will  be  done  with  all  the  energy  I 
possess."  William  Lee  Havery. 

"  I  hope  that  what  you  say,  that  the  case  is  already  won, 
is  true,  and  that  I  will  have  an  opportunity  in  a  very  short 
time  to  rejoice  with  you."  E.  W.  Howe,  Potato  Hill  Farm, 
Atchison,  Kansas. 

"...  I  am  very  glad  to  add  my  name  to  the  names  of 
those  who  are  fighting  the  powers  of  narrow-minded  dark- 
ness." Amelie  Troubetzkoy. 

"  For  Dreiser  personally  I  have  a  strong  feeling  of  affec- 
tion, ...  for  he  is  one  of  the  few  men  who  tried  once  upon 
a  time  to  do  me  a  distinct  service.  .  .  .  Had  I  listened  to 
Dreiser,  perhaps  I  would  now  be  dead,  but  I  would  not  have 
suffered  the  pangs  of  such  slavery  as  is  now  imposed  on  me. 

"  He  is  not  a  craftsman,  or  I  am  —  well,  write  me  down 
as  an  ass. 

"  But  to  the  point,  if  you  are  serious  in  that  lowly  I  affix 
the  signature  that  has  sent  many  a  good  man  to  the  chin- 
gow,  I  do  hereby  do  it.  ...  I  have  less  use  for  moralists 
than  I  have  for  Dreiser.  .  .  ."  Leo  Crane,  Moqui  Indian 
Agency,  Keams  Canyon,  Ariz. 

"I  ...  should  have  regretted  not  being  able  to  throw 
what  weight  I  have  in  the  scale  of  Liberty  and  Freedom  for 
the  arts  to  develop  themselves  as  they  think  fit.  Nothing 
could  be  more  pernicious  to  the  future  of  literature  in 
America  than  to  have  it  in  the  hands  of  a  few  bigoted  and 

364 


fanatic  people.  .  .  .  No  country  can  hope  to  develop  itself 
unless  its  authors  are  permitted  to  educate  it.  .  .  ."  Amy 
Lowell,  Dublin,  N.  H. 

"  Willingly  I  sign  the  protest.  Let  'em  look  to  the  sex-rot 
of  the  movie."  Opie  Read,  Chicago. 

"...  You'll  be  shocked  by  my  colossal  ignorance.  You 
see  I  am  only  a  Bostonian  ...  all  the  same  I  am  curious 
to  know  what  more  appalling  enormity  poor  Mr.  Dreiser 
has  perpetrated  than  the  rest! 

[In  answer  to  Mencken's  reply  to  this] :  "  I  suspect  that 
Mr.  Dreiser's  work  belongs  wholly  or  in  part  to  the  order 
of  fiction  I  should  never  glance  at.  ...  Yet  I  do  not  believe 
in  any  personal  literary  censorship  .  .  .  and  we  are  all  in 
this  world  to  help,  not  to  hinder  one  another.  ...  I  am 
signing  the  petition."  Lilian  Whiting,  Boston,  Massa- 
chusetts. 

"...  Shades  of  John  Milton!  What  are  we  coming  to 
in  this  country!  Not  long  since  I  used  the  awful  words 
'  eunuch  '  and  '  seminal '  in  some  verses,  and  they  were 
returned  to  me  with  a  shocked  and  grieved  letter  by  one  of 
our  leading  editors.  ...  A  trivial  instance,  but,  I  fear, 
typical.  .  .  ."  Lee  Wilson  Dodd,  New  Haven,  Conn. 

"  Let  me  thank  you  for  calling  my  attention  to  the 
Dreiser  protest.  .  .  .  Curiously  enough,  I  lunched  with 
Wells  and  Bennett  in  London  last  summer,  and  they  spoke 
of  it  with  great  feeling."  Isaac  F.  Marcosson,  New  York. 

"  Thank  you  for  the  opportunity  to  sign.  ...  It  is,  as 
you  say,  a  matter  which  should  appeal  vitally  to  all  Ameri- 
can writers;  both  in  justice  to  Mr.  Dreiser  and  in  the  name 
of  saneness  and  honesty  in  all  literary  art."  Mary  Mac- 
Lane,  Butte,  Montana. 

".  .  .  We  must  unite,  all  of  us,  to  do  away  with  this 
hideous  .  .  .  early  Victorian  provincialism  which  has  been 
brought  to  light  by  Dreiser  —  to  the  intense  astonishment 
of  the  world  of  letters.  .  .  ."  Cosmo  Hamilton,  New  York. 

".  .  .  As  a  man  he  is  impossible,  but  as  an  artist  he  is 
entitled  to  every  pound  of  energy  and  every  dollar  we  can 
spare  to  protect  his  work.  ...  I  confess  it  with  shame,  I 
am  so  buried  in  the  movie  business  trying  to  earn  a  huge 
salary  .  .  .  that  I  did  not  know,  until  I  picked  up  Pearsons 
last  week.  .  .  .  Count  on  me  in  every  way,  financial  and 
otherwise."  Forrest  Halsey,  Fredericksburg,  Virginia. 

"  If  I  can  be  of  any  assistance,  financially  or  morally, 
in  having  the  law  amended,  please  call  on  me."  George  T. 
Keating,  New  York. 

Then  there  were  four  replies  from  Frank  Harris,  Ezra 
Pound,  Sherwood  Anderson  and  Robert  Frost,  the  first 

365 


three  from  the  social  point  of  view;  Frost's  from  an  inner 
mind  which  refused  to  be  delayed  by  public  thought,  and 
yet  was  more  related  than  the  others  to  Dreiser's  con- 
viction: "Life  is  not  reasonable — reason  has  but  little 
influence  over  us  compared  to  chance." 
Harris  wrote  to  Hersey: 

"  I  have  signed  your  protest  and  I  have  withdrawn  from 
the  Author's  League  of  America  because  they  have  not 
taken  energetic  action  in  the  Dreiser  matter,  which  I  de- 
sired and  expected.  I  think  any  decent  Author's  League 
would  have  got  up  a  defense  fund  to  stand  the  cost  of  the 
whole  case  for  Mr.  Dreiser.  It  is  a  disgraceful  prosecution, 
lower  even  than  would  be  tolerated  in  England.  ...  I  re- 
fused to  join  the  Author's  League  in  England  because  I 
regarded  myself  as  an  American.  I  joined  the  League  here 
because  I  thought  it  would  make  itself  felt,  but  such  an 
opportunity  having  passed  unnoticed  I  withdraw  my  name. 
...  To  any  movement  by  authors  to  defend  Dreiser  I  will 
cheerfully  contribute." 

And  Ezra  Pound  wrote  to  Hersey  from  London : 

"  I  hasten  to  return  signed  Dreiser's  protest.  Will  have  it 
printed  in  The  Egoist  as  soon  as  possible.  Am  glad  the 
Author's  League  has  been  at  last  aroused  to  do  some- 
thing. Can  you  inform  me  if  it  has  ever  before  attempted 
to  do  anything  for  the  freedom  of  American  letters?  Or 
whether  it  has  not  until  the  present  date  been  typically 
'American'  after  the  fashion  of  ...  the  general  religious 
dinginess  of  American  'associations'?  Is  there  really  an 
Author's  League?  And  what  is  the  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Letters?  And  are  there  two  men  in  the  country,  or  are  they 
all  Comstock's  dogs  and  pot  lickers?" 

And  the  romantic  Anderson  to  Mencken,  from  Taylor 
Critchfield  &  Co.,  an  advertising  agency  in  Chicago,  in  a 
frenzy  of  reason : 

"I  am  with  you  in  believing  that  the  preservation  of 
Dreiser's  right  to  print  books  and  sell  them  is  the  most 
important  matter  that  has  ever  come  up  in  America.  Jesus 
Mariar,  the  question  of  whether  America  goes  to  war  or 
not  is  secondary.  Will  you  accept  my  thanks  for  the  big 
part  you  are  taking  in  fighting  this  morality  monster.  If 
Dreiser  wins  it  will  give  us  all  more  breathing  space." 

And  the  fastidious  Frost  in  New  Hampshire,  whose 
poems  had  not  been  published  until  1914,  and  then  first 
in  England,  wrote  to  Mencken : 
366 


"With  all  my  heart  —  on  general  principles  —  though 
I  don't  know  much  about  Dreiser's  books  beyond  that 
they  are  honest,  and  though  I  don't  care  a  hang  for  'the 
ridicule  and  contempt  of  other  nations  '  .  .  .  I  had  not 
heard  that  the  Comstockians  were  after  Dreiser.  .  .  . 
These  fools  should  consider  where  H.  G.  Wells  has  come 
safely  out  in  his  latest  by  being  left  entirely  alone  to  think 
things  out  for  himself.  The  way  our  wildest  attempts  to 
think  free  always  end  in  the  same  conclusion  is  the  sad- 
dest proof  that  no  other  conclusions  are  possible." 

Seven  august  Englishmen  cabled  their  joint  signatures 
to  the  protest,  and  there  was  great  rejoicing  at  their 
voluntary  support:  Arnold  Bennett,  W.  L.  George, 
William  J.  Locke,  E.  Temple  Thurston,  Hugh  Walpole, 
H.  G.  Wells  and  Lewis  Wilkinson.  Signatures  and 
promises  came  and  went  like  sparks.  But  "  these  fools  " 
did  not  "  consider."  The  John  Lane  Company  never  got 
back  its  courage  to  sell  The  "Genius."  And  yet  it  hap- 
pened that  these  "  wild  attempts  to  think  free  "  did  not 
end  in  quite  the  "  same  conclusions."  They  went  into  the 
making  of  another  formula,  maybe  as  sorry  as  the  old 
one,  but  not  as  rigid.  By  its  nature  Puritans  were  soon 
to  admit  that  the  last  word  was  no  longer  theirs.  There 
were  other  words  to  come. 

Frank  Harris  in  Pearson's,  Ezra  Pound  in  The  Egoist, 
Mencken  in  The  Smart  Set  and  the  newspapers,  Alex- 
ander Harvey,  editor  of  Current  Opinion,  and  Dreiser 
in  numerous  interviews  and  articles  fought  for  the  issue 
violently.  Randolph  Bourne  and  Mencken  made  analyses 
of  his  work  such  as  could  not  have  been  elicited  by  "  lewd 
and  profane  writing."  *  And  although  he  did  not  become 
innocent  in  the  eyes  of  the  courts  or  of  respectable  people, 
he  became  a  kind  of  dark  pool  or  cavern  that  stood  to 
many  others  for  mystery  and  reality — an  element  of 
wonder.  All  of  those  who  could  not  dare  but  wished  they 
might,  found  solace  in  Dreiser.  And  those  born  to  dare 
found  precedent  in  him.  He  became  a  source  of  thought 
and  of  action. 

In  the  fusion  of  the  moment  on  January  5,  1917  "at 

*  Bourne:  The  Art  of  Theodore  Dreiser.  The  Dial,  June  1917. 
Mencken:  The  Dreiser  Bugaboo ,  The  Seven  Arts,  1917. 

367 


the  home  of  Mr.  Frank  Harris,  3  Washington  Square, 
Mr.  Theodore  Dreiser,  Mr.  Harold  Hersey,  Mr.  Frank 
Harris,  Mr.  Karl  Karsten,  Mr.  Theodore  Schroeder," 
according  to  the  minutes  of  the  meeting,  "met  to  discuss 
the  foundation  of  an  author's  aid  society."  It  should 
operate  to  counteract  the  Societies  for  the  Suppression  of 
Vice,  and  be  potent  where  the  Authors'  League  was  inert. 
Dreiser  suggested  "  propaganda  to  develop  more  whole- 
some public  opinion,"  and  "  an  attack  upon  the  censor 
for  the  protection  of  books  perhaps  once  in  five  years." 
Harris  proposed  "  lobbying  in  the  Legislature  to  shift 
the  burden  of  censorship  from  private  societies  to  the 
Attorney  General,  and  then  only  after  expert  advice;  the 
discovery  and  exposure  to  ridicule  of  the  people  who 
supported  the  Comstocks;  and  the  issue  of  a  periodical." 
The  lawyer,  Schroeder,  an  authority  on  laws  pertaining 
to  obscenity  *  proposed  an  attack  "  on  Comstock  and  his 
successors  for  alleged  violation  of  trust  funds."  They  de- 
cided to  hold  a  founders'  dinner.  Frank  Harris  agreed  to 
arrange  it  and  to  invite  among  others  : 

"Otto  Kahn,  Samuel  Untermyer,  Ida  Tarbell,  Edgar 
Lee  Masters,  Percy  Stickney  Grant,  John  Dewey,  Jacques 
Loeb,  Marcella  Sembrich,  Mary  Garden,  Senator  Borah, 
Princess  Troubetzkoy,  Francis  Hackett,  Felix  Warburg, 
Frederick  MacMonnies,  John  Quinn,  William  Marion 
Reedy,  Mrs.  Harry  Payne  Whitney,  Stephen  S.  Wise, 
D.  W.  Griffiths,  Carrie  Chapman  Catt,  Gertrude  Atherton, 
Finley  Peter  Dunne,  Arthur  B.  Davies,  Gutzon  Borglum, 
Frank  A.  Vanderlip,  Arthur  Brisbane,  Elizabeth  Marbury, 
and  perhaps  Booth  Tarkington,  B.  W.  Huebsch,  Amos 
Pinchot,  Max  Eastman,  William  Randolph  Hearst  and 
Mitchell  Kennedy." 

A  shining  project !  And  who  knows,  history  might  have 
been  made  if  these  financiers,  opera  singers,  suffragettes, 
movie  magnates,  ministers,  statesmen,  fashionable 
women,  politicians,  scientists,  educators,  painters,  pub- 
licists, poets  and  novelists  had  dined  together  in  the  name 
of  art.  It  was  before  Prohibition.  But  study  the  various 
biographies  of  these  celebrities  and  you  will  see  that  the 
solar  planets  could  sooner  have  met  in  one  room.  Tough 
as  they  were,  Dreiser,  Harris  and  Schroeder  appear  to 

*  Author  of  Obscene  Literature  and  Constitutional  Law. 
368 


have  believed  in  miracles.  There  was  never  another  meet- 
ing toward  an  author's  aid  society  "  to  aid  indigent  au- 
thors of  approved  merit  and  their  dependants  as  well  as 
to  defend  ably  and  freely  censored  authors  in  need.  .  .  ." 
Capital  was  not  ready  yet  to  shift  its  support  from  morals 
to  art.  Is  it  seriously  ready  today?  Is  there  yet  a  depart- 
ment of  art  and  letters  in  Washington  or  in  any  State  capi- 
tal in  pursuit  of  the  aims  proposed  at  this  meeting  of 
optimists?  In  the  sense  of  private  enterprise  the  Guggen- 
heim scholarship  foundation  at  length  acknowledges  na- 
tive artists  and  scientists;  but  have  helped  them  to  leave 
the  country,  not  to  stay  in  it. 

In  March  1917,  through  the  firm  of  Stanchfield  &  Levy, 
Dreiser  brought  suit  against  his  publishers  for  failure  to 
fulfil  their  contract  with  him.  A  "  friendly  suit,"  they 
agreed  —  the  court  was  to  decide.  In  May  1918  the  case 
was  argued  before  the  Appellate  Division  of  the  Supreme 
Court.  Joseph  S.  Auerbach  in  his  brief  for  Dreiser  made 
a  distinguished  summary  of  the  novel,*  save  for  throwing 
its  emphasis,  as  I  suppose  lawyers  must,  in  the  direction 
of  accepted  morality:  The  hero,  he  told  the  court,  a 
painter  in  a  country  which  had  no  use  for  art,  forced  to 
marry  a  girl  he  was  tired  of,  sought  to  deepen  life  and 
marriage  with  "  sexual  excesses."  These  led  to  the  defeat 
of  his  painting  and  to  excursions  elsewhere,  both  financial 
and  amorous.  And  these  in  turn  led  to  financial  ruin 
after  fabulous  success  in  the  advertising  game.  The  moral 
to  be  drawn  was  as  clear  as  water;  the  five  judges  must 
see  it:  go  the  narrow  road,  disobey  your  senses,  and  you 
will  be  rich  and  successful.  That  the  book  discloses  the 
cruel  reaches  of  such  a  code  over  natures  alien  to  it,  that 
the  hero's  environment  as  well  as  his  own  "  excesses  " 
combined  against  him  —  this,  Auerbach  was  careful  not 
to  say.  He  proved  beyond  a  reasonable  doubt  that  The 
"  Genius  "  was  a  moral  work  of  genius.  With  this  he  sub- 
mitted that  according  to  precedent  serious  contemporary 
art  should  be  immune  to  censorship,  or  else  the  works  of 
Chaucer,  Shakespeare,  Laurence  Sterne,  the  playwrights 

*  J.  S.  Auerbach,  "  Authorship  and  Liberty,"  North  American  Review, 
June  1918. 

369 


of  the  Restoration,  and  many  parts  of  Old  Testament 
Scripture  would  be  imperiled.  As  examples  of  books  less 
reticent  than  Dreiser's  novel,  and  acquitted  by  the  courts, 
he  offered  The  Triumph  of  Death  by  D'Annunzio,  the 
works  of  Voltaire,  Flaubert's  Madame  Bovary,  Moore's 
Memoirs  of  My  Dead  Life,  and  he  lightened  his  argu- 
ment with  the  opinions  of  New  York  judges  Seabury, 
Hiscock,  Cullen,  Werner  and  O'Brien:  "  It  is  no  part  of 
the  duty  of  courts  to  exercise  a  censorship  over  literary 
productions,"  Judge  Seabury  had  ruled.  "  To  condemn 
a  standard  work  because  of  a  few  of  its  episodes,  would 
compel  the  exclusion  from  circulation  of  a  very  large 
proportion  of  the  works  of  the  most  famous  writers  of 
the  English  language,"  Judge  O'Brien  had  once  said. 
".  .  .  There  is  no  ...  precise  test  by  which  to  deter- 
mine what  constitutes  decency  or  indecency  either  of 
words  or  acts.  .  .  .  The  question  .  .  .  must  ...  be 
tested  by  the  prevailing  common  judgment  and  moral 
sense  of  the  community  .  .  ."  was  the  opinion  of  Judge 
Hiscock,  in  sustaining  the  dismissal  of  an  indictment  for 
indecent  speech  at  a  public  meeting. 

The  five  judges,  Clark,  Laughlin,  Smith,  Page  and 
Shearn,  presiding  at  the  trial,  despite  the  478  signatures 
of  protesting  American  writers  and  of  seven  English 
writers,  perhaps  felt  that  the  prevailing  moral  sense  of 
the  community  was  against  The  "  Genius."  Or  they  were 

?ersuaded  by  the  argument  of  the  defendant's  attorney, 
ohn  J.  Kirby.  He  asserted  first  that  "  good  intent  .  .  . 
did  not  enter  as  a  factor  in  the  defense  of  cases  brought 
under  Section  1141  of  the  penal  law  of  the  state  of  New 
York."  Second,  that  even  if  "  good  intent  were  a  factor," 
there  was  nothing  in  this  case  "  to  indicate  that  any  intent 
existed  in  the  mind  of  the  author  or  in  the  plan  of  the 
publisher  other  than  to  reap  financial  benefit  from  .  .  . 
this  book."  It  had  been  agreed  between  author  and  pub- 
lisher that  the  loss  to  Dreiser,  if  the  contract  were  not 
carried  out,  would  be  not  less  than  $50,000.  But  since  con- 
tinued publication  constituted  a  violation  of  the  penal  law, 
the  publisher  was  guilty  of  no  breach  of  contract;  and 
the  plaintiff  was  not  entitled  to  damages  or  "  to  any  other 
relief  whatever."  Thus  the  friendly  Kirby.  He  had  proved 

370 


that  the  book  was  "  obscene,  lewd,  lascivious,  indecent, 
filthy,  or  disgusting,"  because,  although  the  hero  suf- 
fered punishment  for  his  immoralities,  the  women,  in- 
cluding his  wife,  whom  he  had  seduced  before  marriage, 
"  had  these  experiences  without  apparent  harm  to  them- 
selves or  their  position  in  society."  Mr.  Sumner  had  said 
as  much  at  the  outset :  "  The  book  is  demoralizing  be- 
cause its  women  characters  apparently  suffer  no  harm  in 
their  social  standing." 

In  the  week  preceding  the  decision  the  Brooklyn  Daily 
Eagle  condensed  the  issue  into  an  appropriate  headline: 
"  Five  Judges  Will  Decide  if  The  '  Genius '  is  Genius, 
Tommyrot,  or  Plain  Filth."  And  other  papers  over  the 
country  had  a  sly  laugh  at  the  "highbrows  "  so  that  all 
good  citizens  could  titter  with  them.  The  five  judges  pos- 
sibly influenced  by  journalistic  mockery  sided  with  the 
plain  people :  They  found  themselves  without  jurisdiction 
of  the  action.  Immature  minds  were  thus  protected  from 
further  corruption.  American  writers  had  legal  warning 
that  their  characters  could  "  sin  "  unpunished  only  at  the 
risk  of  search,  seizure  and  arrest  of  their  books. 

It  was  open  to  Dreiser  to  appeal  the  decision.  But  with- 
out money  from  his  most  sensational  book  there  was  not 
the  means.  Those  who  had  vowed  support  out  of  the  lapse 
of  time  lost  interest.  Stanchfield  died.  It  seemed  less  futile 
to  turn  from  legal  action  to  his  own  profession,  writing. 
He  published  among  other  books  Hey-Rub-A-Dub-Dub, 
A  Book  of  the  Mystery  and  Wonder  and  Terror  of  Life, 
an  answer  and  a  challenge  in  terms  of  his  philosophy  to 
the  moralists  who  had  not  left  him  alone  to  think  things 
out  for  himself.  For  five  years  The  "  Genius  "  rested  in 
the  dark  of  the  warehouse  across  the  Hudson.  Again,  as 
eighteen  years  before  with  Sister  Carrie,  Dreiser  waited. 


"  Art  walks  into  Nature  the  source,  and 
comes  out  with  Form  the  aim  —  of  every 
thing." 

"  What  really  is  caviar,  nightingale 
tongues,  de  foie  gras,  cheese  —  if  not 
cruelty,  indecency  and  relish?" 

"  Snow  flakes  fall  voluptuously.  High-noon 
sea  and  leaves,  shells  and  insects,  rapture 
ended,  turn  obscene;  afternoon  is  censor. 
A  moon,  a  fruit,  a  joke,  a  drunkard,  a  lily 
and  an  orchid  might  be  lewd.  Filth  a  luxury 
to  fertilize  a  fern" 

"  Art,  an  acrobat,  a  juggler,  balances  far 
out  where  others  are  afraid  to  go." 

DOROTHY  DUDLEY 


o  with  these  thousands  of  words  over  The 
"  Genius,"  all  the  great  abstractions  had  been  popularly 
invoked  in  newspapers,  meetings  and  journals.  Out  of 
the  welter  it  is  clear  that  in  one  sense  the  American  spirit 
was  united.  At  this  date  except  for  a  few  originals,  con- 
servatives and  radicals  used  the  same  tone  of  voice.  Even 
the  originals  suffered  at  moments  from  righteousness. 
Both  Comstocks  and  Intellectuals  were  zealots  in  the 
face  of  an  exaggerated  condition. 

For  human  beings  in  America,  Sex,  it  is  clear,  had  been 
crystallized  into  one  of  two  fictions.  Sex  had  become  a 
vague  abstraction,  a  hidden  necessity  by  which  children 
slipped  invisibly  into  the  world.  Or  Sex  had  become  an 
exalted  luxury,  a  forbidden  drug,  beyond  the  hopes  of  a 
race  who  believed  they  were  foredoomed  to  prose.  Put 
down  the  cash,  buy  a  woman  —  by  a  curious  impersonal 
name  men  called  the  purchase.  Or  save  your  dollars,  marry 
372 


the  nearest  approach  to  the  girl  of  magazine  romance; 
and  spend  a  life  wondering  why  she  gave  you  nothing, 
nothing  at  all  promised  in  the  unexpurgated  Arabian 
Nights.  Sue  for  breach  of  promise.  Such  was  the  fate  of 
conquerors. 

None  the  less  we  had  come  over  on  the  Mayflower  pro- 
claiming independence,  for  ourselves.  We  had  cheated 
the  Redskins,  burned  the  witches,  got  rid  of  French  and 
Spaniards,  cast  off  the  English,  freed  the  slaves,  and 
would  enter  the  World  War,  singing  the  battle  cry  of 
freedom.  As  Christ  died  to  make  men  holy,  we  lived  and 
died  to  make  men  free.  The  song  caught  the  throat  in  a 
sob.  Immigrants  the  earth  over  heard  the  song  and  joined 
us.  We  had  behind  us  no  organic  I3th  Century  art  and 
order  to  offer  them;  no  radiant  renaissance  bearing  a 
foliated  i8th  Century  to  proceed  from  —  to  romanti- 
cism, to  realism,  and  then  to  modernism.  But  we  had  for 
background  and  future  our  own  invention,  Freedom,  dis- 
tant god  of  a  people  who  got  up  in  the  morning  to  work, 
and  went  to  bed  early  to  get  up  still  earlier  in  the  morning 
to  work — for  liberty.  It  was  our  pursuit  of  happiness. 
Science,  machinery  and  money  were  bringing  us  victory. 

Now  by  this  second  decade  of  the  new  century,  the 
snake,  Time,  not  measured  by  clocks  so  much  as  by 
change,  had  really  and  truly  shifted  its  position  in  the 
grass.  Hygiene,  plumbing,  the  telephone,  electric  lights, 
steel  construction,  automobiles,  electric  power,  phono- 
graphs and  movies  had  come  to  stay.  They  were  classic 
achievements  to  make  men  free  and  happy,  north,  south, 
east  and  west.  To  an  orchestra  of  steam  shovels,  pile- 
drivers  and  riveters,  to  banners  of  smoke  and  confetti  of 
advertising,  a  nation  proclaimed  jubilees  and  festivals. 
And  yet  freedom  evaded  us.  We  were  rich  in  things,  sud- 
denly poor  in  spirit,  so  the  critics  said.  Mind  and  imagina- 
tion were  imprisoned.  The  radicals  protested  now  with 
fervor  equal  to  that  of  the  Puritans  this  hoax  of  wealth 
which  the  pioneers  had  foisted  on  them  in  the  name  of 
liberty.  Of  such  were  the  defenders  of  Dreiser,  impres- 
sive, righteous,  and  sometimes  rigid  like  his  enemies. 

These  critics  of  art  did  not  say  "  '  Bawdy,  indecorous, 
licentious,  gay,  ribald,  equivocal,  obscene !  '  —  you  accuse 

373 


us  and  we  are ;  just  as  we  are  *  orderly,  delicate,  painstak- 
ing, compassionate  and  undefiled/  we  who  venerate  life 
and  seek  to  celebrate  it."  They  made  no  defence  of  por- 
nography in  the  sense  that  on  one  side  of  art  is  always  a 
church,  on  the  other  side  a  bordel,  and  that  art  is  the 
proposal  of  daring  in  a  problem  of  balance.  A  crisis  had 
been  evoked  and  had  to  be  evaded,  for  lack  of  critical  intel- 
lect experienced  enough  to  design  it.  It  was  a  moment  aris- 
ing out  of  the  times  and  dealing  with  them,  and  yet  as  unre- 
lated aid  unimplicated  as  an  alien  child  with  its  parents. 
If  there  was  a  challenge  out  of  Dreiser  and  now  out  of 
Masters,  and  a  year  or  so  later  from  Sandburg,  Carlos 
Williams,  Sherwood  Anderson,  it  was  for  the  critics  to 
say  to  the  churchmen:  "  We  repudiate  your  Anglo-Saxon 
code.  We  are  mixed  from  all  the  races  of  the  earth,  and 
claim  a  mingled  standard  of  whim  and  conduct."  Or  else 
to  say  to  the  conservatives :  "  We  accept  your  hypocrisy 
because  we  have  to.  This  ghost  of  yours  who  crossed  on 
the  Mayflower  and  goes  back  on  the  Mauretania  continues 
to  rule  our  great  melting  pot,  with  its  law  of  separations 
and  right  of  property.  But  since  happily  you  permit  the 
lowbrows,  the  rotarians  and  their  girls,  their  lewdness  of 
shows  and  newspapers  and  nation-wide  conventions,  we 
shall  take  our  pleasures  too  in  the  pursuit  of  understand- 
ing, and  read  what  we  like,  write  what  we  like,  say  what 
we  like."  But  the  editors  and  critics  made  together  no  such 
bold  stand.  In  this  day  they  were  like  the  timid  children  of 
explorers,  admiring  their  fathers,  Whitman,  Dreiser,  or 
Masters,  say,  but  afraid  of  their  mothers,  Mrs.  Clemens, 
Mrs.  Doubleday,  Miss  N.  P.  D.,  Mrs.  Peattie. 

In  the  case  of  Dreiser  his  supporters  either  disciplined 
him  or  sanctified  him.  Floyd  Dell  complained  because 
neither  Titan  nor  Genius  was  a  political  rebel  leading  the 
nation  out  of  capitalism  to  freedom.  Burton  Rascoe  a  few 
years  later  made  Dreiser  into  a  respectable  saint  and  his 
detractors  like  Professor  Sherman  into  liars.  Mr.  Rascoe 
sees  no  "  sex  thrills,  no  pornography,  no  immoralism,  no 
destruction  of  standards  ...  in  the  general  tone  of 
Mr.  Dreiser's  work.  .  .  .  Contrary  to  the  current  opin- 
ion Mr.  Dreiser  does  not  undermine  moral  foundations." 
In  fact  except  for  the  passages  which  he  quotes  from  his 

374 


books  he  makes  him  out  a  very  dull  prophet.  This  was  a 
portrait  published  in  1925,  but  it  is  typical  of  the  right- 
eousness of  the  intelligentsia  of  1916  to  1918,  that  mo- 
ment of  popular  controversy  between  radical  and  con- 
servative elements.  Somehow  the  radicals  missed  their 
chance  and  went  over  to  the  moralists.  They  liked  to  say 
that  Art  was  serious  and  free,  and  therefore  virtuous. 
Dreiser,  they  thought,  was  an  emancipator  and  therefore 
harmless.  With  serious  artists  and  uncompromising  art 
journals  we  should  be  emancipated.  Even  they  went  so  far 
as  to  invite  Sumner  and  his  cohorts  to  attack,  censor  and 
ban  the  music  shows,  the  dance  halls,  the  movies  and  the 
tabloids.  His  legitimate  field,  they  said.  And  yet  wasn't  it 
the  field  out  of  which  expression  was  growing?  Happily 
such  censorship  was  impossible ;  popular  art  paid  too  well. 
Or  else  we  might  never  have  had  Bert  Williams,  Ed 
Wynn,  Marilyn  Miller,  Frank  Tinney,  Joe  Cook,  Al  Jol- 
son,  the  Marx  Brothers,  Charlie  Chaplin,  Ring  Lardner, 
Anita  Loos,  and  a  hundred  others,  often  not  in  the  least 
Puritan  and  sometimes  lascivious  lewd  or  obscene,  in- 
tricate and  subtle.  At  least  they  remained  unmolested  to 
exhilarate  the  Land  of  the  Free;  and  to  be  the  darlings  of 
a  later  set  of  cognoscenti,  who,  piously  too,  felt  they  must 
have  their  folk  lore.  But  that  is  the  epilogue  to  this  story. 
Out  of  such  a  carnal,  ribald,  vulgar  and  limber  back- 
ground Dreiser  had  come.  He  tells  it  himself  in  A  Hoosier 
Holiday,  in  A  Book  About  Myself,  in  Dawn,  in  each  book 
he  writes.  He  was  one  of  the  immoral,  indecorous,  con- 
quering Americans,  allowed  to  live  when  they  dealt  in 
the  medium  of  money,  but  apt  to  be  censored  when  they 
worked  with  words.  "  It  is  you  who  have  put  aside  Puri- 
tanism and  gone  straight  to  the  heart  of  life,"  one  disci- 
ple wrote.  But  this  was  an  inverted  compliment.  He  had 
not  gone  to,  he  had  come  from  the  heart  of  life,  which 
has  always  put  aside  Puritanism  and  every  other  incon- 
venient code.  "  You  are  the  one  man  in  the  country  whose 
productions  can  hold  a  man's  attention.  Our  literature 
until  you  arrived  was  made  up  of  books  by  females,  for 
females,  the  females  having  in  some  cases  .  .  .  the  ex- 
ternal aspects  of  masculinity,"  wrote  another  victim  to 
our  segregations.  To  him  evidently  men  and  nature  were 

375 


worthy,  women  and  pederasts  negligible.  Yet  his  hero 
had  written  five  novels,  and  several  plays  recreating  the 
fierce  chasms  men  and  women  were  trying  to  cross  to  find 
each  other  again  after  Christianity  and  after  Puritanism. 
Still  another  moralist  wrote  a  poem  elevating  Dreiser  to 
a  lofty  mountain;  Sumner  had  followed.  The  writer  had 
given  "  a  great  round  laugh  "  at  which  the  reformer  had 
fallen  off  the  mountain  to  ignoble  lowlands.  Yet  this  Ger- 
man-Slav's distinction  was  not  one  of  exalted  isolation 
but  of  mingling  with  crowds  low  and  high,  of  tunneling 
and  excavating  through  muck,  dirt  and  rock,  in  search  of 
"  the  mystery  and  terror  and  wonder  of  life." 

Five  years  later  when  The  "  Genius  "  appeared  again, 
the  Jewish  publisher  took  the  precaution  to  introduce  it 
with  a  preface  from  so  earnest  a  radical  it  is  a  pity  to 
betray  him.  It  is  done  only  in  fastidious  pursuit  of  my 
plot.  He  said  that  it  was  not  the  kind  of  "  an  immoral 
book  that  appealed  to  the  baser  passions."  It  was  a  book 
for  "  safe  and  sane  readers."  It  was  a  work  of  art.  A 
work  of  art  "  appealed  to  the  aesthetic  feeling."  This 
feeling  was  to  be  gained  "  from  reading  a  great  book, 
from  hearing  great  music,  viewing  great  paintings,  going 
into  a  great  cathedral,  or  looking  at  Niagara  Falls,  or  the 
Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado."  Almost  pointedly  great 
women  or  small  ones  were  left  out  of  the  category.  I 
know  little  about  Niagara  Falls,  but  it  is  certain  that  the 
Grand  Canyon  of  the  Colorado  appeals,  if  at  all,  to  the 
baser  passions,  and  anyone  viewing  for  long  this  master- 
piece of  an  arch-fiend  might  become  dangerous  and  in- 
sane. 

In  that  stupendous  chasm,  obscene  perpendicular  gran- 
ites contradict  and  deride  the  precise  order  of  soaring, 
fluted  mountains  —  colossal  pomp  and  mockery,  propos- 
ing death  to  human  beings.  Nothing  crosses  the  vermilion, 
purple,  saffron  miles  on  miles  of  formal  battlements  and 
uncouth  obelisks,  unless  a  crow  or  raven.  Nothing  lives 
there  unless  unseen  and  unknown  presences.  Even  tourists 
have  been  known  to  perish  in  this  mineral  despotism.  If 
typhoons,  paranoics,  massacres,  volcanoes  in  their  mobile 
violences  appeal  to  the  aesthetic  feeling,  then  the  Canyon 
makes  that  appeal  in  its  monstrous  indifference.  If  what  is 

376 


at  once  terrifying,  salacious,  decorative,  implacable,  ap- 
peals, then  invoke  this  king  of  chasms. 

In  as  far  as  American  civilization,  forgetting  New  Eng- 
land hills  and  streams,  has  run  parallel  to  that  far-flung 
precipitous  scenery  which,  after  the  long  slopes  from  the 
Atlantic,  after  the  Prairies,  after  the  Rockies,  drops  more 
abruptly  to  the  Pacific  —  to  this  extent  Dreiser's  novels, 
in  the  sense  of  being  American  digits,  do  bear  analogy  to 
the  Grand  Canyon  and  the  Yellowstone  Geysers,  the 
Great  Divide,  Death  Valley  and  the  Badlands.  The  In- 
dians of  the  Southwest  had  propitiated  with  ceremonial 
this  extravagance  in  which  they  found  themselves.  Their 
way  was  to  celebrate  the  color  and  order  with  impeccable 
song,  dance  and  image.  Ours  was  not  to  propitiate  but  to 
conquer,  to  outrival  the  magnitude  and  cruelty.  Dreiser's 
characters,  for  example,  are  men  and  women  forced  out 
upon  perilous  voyages,  some  of  them  so  spirited  or  re- 
silient they  cannot  quite  perish  in  a  wilderness;  many  of 
them  not  strong  enough  to  live  there  except  in  masses. 

In  a  new  transitional  migratory  age  Dreiser's  problem 
as  an  artist  was  as  different  from  that  of  Pueblo  Indians  as 
festivals  are  from  storms.  After  centuries  of  migration 
from  Asia  perhaps  to  South  America  and  back  to  New 
Mexico  and  Arizona,  the  Redskins  had  established  an 
order  by  which  to  live,  large  enough,  they  thought,  to 
conciliate  the  elements,  narrow  enough  to  take  care  of 
their  needs.  The  new  American  on  the  other  hand  was 
recording  life  in  the  process  of  violent  changes.  While 
the  artist  dreamed  and  planned,  the  newspapers  and  the 
advertising  men  at  an  unscrupulous  rate  of  speed  ran  off 
with  his  inventions,  and  made  the  language  and  made  the 
decor  of  a  people.  Dreiser  worked  so  fast  he  hoped  to 
get  ahead  of  them,  and  in  the  hurry  he  lost  some  of  the 
plans  he  was  capable  of.  None  the  less  spontaneously  he 
initiated  one  phase  essential  to  art,  by  which  his  calcula- 
tions resembled  Indian  ceremonial  more  than  our  own  up 
to  that  date.  He  invoked  profaneness  to  correct  exalta- 
tion. He  was  one  of  the  first  to  do  this. 

In  the  Pueblo  corn  ceremonials  the  Koshari  are  clowns 
performing  against  the  rhythm,  as  if  to  say  the  other  side 
of  grief  is  gaiety,  the  other  side  of  refinement  is  vulgarity. 

377 


At  variance  with  the  music,  with  obscene  joke  and  ges- 
ture, they  ridicule  the  other  dancers,  who  impervious  to 
the  clowns  step  ecstatically  to  the  chant  and  drums,  throb 
of  the  earth,  pulse  of  time.  Nothing  grows,  the  Indians 
say,  without  mockery.  The  Koshari,  privileged  in  the 
tribe,  provide  the  scandal  without  which  art  becomes 
tame ;  the  others  the  solemnity,  without  which  it  is  trivial. 
In  their  understanding  elements  are  mingled  not  separate. 
With  them  it  is  impossible  to  unravel  the  lewd  from  the 
chaste,  the  noble  from  the  ignoble.  Their  dances  are  not 
safe  or  perilous,  they  are  critical;  not  mad  or  sane;  they 
are  balanced. 

It  was  like  this  with  Dreiser  as  near  as  he  could  come 
to  it.  His  enemies  were  proposing  safety,  his  friends  free- 
dom. With  what  ceremony  he  had  at  his  command  he  was 
proposing,  like  primitive  races  and  like  the  great  individu- 
als of  all  time,  the  forces  of  nature  together,  as  often 
scandalous  and  tyrannical  as  they  were  orderly  or  exalted. 
Life,  human  or  inhuman,  was  seductive,  revolting,  dirty, 
clean,  lyrical,  discordant,  delicious  and  desolate  by  moods, 
years  and  moments,  no  matter  what  the  epoch.  Art  was 
accordingly  dangerous.  But  in  an  era  of  transition  with  no 
one  phase  subordinated  to  another,  except  all  to  the  ele- 
ment of  change,  danger  above  everything  rode  the  air.  He 
supposed  he  was  in  the  vanguard  of  this  giant  migration 
from  old  times  to  new.  So  friends  and  enemies  seemed  to 
think.  He  had  not  yet  become  old  fashioned.  Yet  he  had 
not,  like  many  moderns,  forgotten  the  uprooted  souls 
struggling  in  the  rear  to  carry  the  burden  of  tradition 
along  with  them  over  ruts  and  cracks.  He  was  one  of  the 
few  modern  Americans  who  valued  venerable  culture; 
"  Life  is  to  be  learned  as  much  from  books  and  art  as  from 
life  itself,  almost  more  so  in  my  opinion,"  he  wrote  in  1 9 1 6. 

By  this  token  he  could  understand  reformers  like  Corn- 
stock  and  Sumner,  professors  like  Sherman  and  Phelps. 
They  were  right,  The  "  Genius  "  might  easily  lead  people 
to  fornication,  adultery,  failure,  despair;  and  The  Titan 
to  greed,  enterprise,  robbery,  murder  and  conquest;  and 
so  might  the  European  classics  and  moderns  which  these 
church  people  had  censored.  They  were  trying  to  save 
old  American  customs  from  the  new  wilderness;  he  was 

378 


hoping  somehow  to  save  more  primitive  elaborate  cul- 
tures than  those  dreamed  of  in  New  England  philosophy. 
That  was  the  one  difference.  Except  that  it  might  very 
well  be  that  everything  would  get  junked  in  the  wilderness, 
and  while  the  moralists  would  accordingly  lament,  what- 
ever happened,  it  was  his  one  certain  code  to  be  prepared 
for  change.* 

For  a  time,  however,  it  looked  perhaps  as  if  Method- 
ists and  Presbyterians  would  get  junked  first.  In  1919 
Jurgen,  a  book  more  salacious  than  The  "  Genius"  recall- 
ing the  realism  of  I3th  Century  Provence,  the  work  of 
an  amateur  libertine  at  that,t  was  banned;  but  reinstated 
in  less  than  two  years  and  at  the  expense  of  publisher  and 
censors.  This  was  an  advance  over  Dreiser's  experience. 
He  had  been  one  of  those  to  prepare  the  way.  In  1917 
Gauthier's  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin  had  been  attacked 
by  Sumner,  and  at  once  acquitted  —  by  theme  and  style 
so  insidiously  erotic  that  a  child,  reading  it  in  Chicago 
or  New  York,  might  defy  father  mother  and  democracy 
to  attempt  as  elegant  and  luxurious  a  solution  in  the 
United  States.  In  every  way  an  inexpedient  book,  cor- 
rupting accepted  morals,  causing  nostalgia  for  days  never 
known  in  America  and  long  since  gone  from  France.  Yet, 
though  repeatedly  attacked  by  the  censors,  Mademoiselle 
de  Maupin  was  always  upheld  by  the  courts.  Clearly  the 
vice  societies  were  losing  ground.  It  was  the  same  with 
books  of  science  which  like  works  of  art  led  to  experiment 
in  sex  rather  than  to  prohibition.  They  were  attacked  as 
often,  but  less  often  convicted.  Sumner  and  his  friends 
were  beginning  to  be  behind  the  times.  Every  value  was  in 
a  state  of  flux,  changing  into  undefined  values.  Dreiser 
was  ahead  of  the  times,  or  preferably  outside  of  them  like 
all  lovers  of  beauty.  Most  of  his  friends  were  at  least 
abreast  of  the  times.  Together  they  had  helped  to  bring 
about  this  change  of  sentiment.  Yet  really  he  himself  had 
not  asked  for  change,  as  much  as  for  the  right  to  record 
customs  and  changes  and  their  interrelations.  He  was  an 
American  interested  in  balance. 

Nor  did  he,  like  his  admirers,  claim  for  his  books  ex- 

*  Hey  Rub- A -Dub-Dub:  Change. 

f  James  Branch  Cabell,  wistful  scholarly  Virginian. 

379 


emption  from  censorship  on  the  ground  that  they  were 
great  achievements.  Among  the  timorous  fictions  of  the 
day  they  were  as  bold  and  faithful  as  he  could  make  them ; 
how  near  to  art  he  could  not  say.  Except  he  was  certain 
that  beauty  had  never  been  timid,  and  that  no  one  had 
reached  it  without  honesty.  Nor  did  he  have  contempt  for 
all  puritans.  They  might  be  important  actors  in  the  drama 
at  hand,  who  suffered  and  inflicted  suffering.  He  had  suf- 
fered with  them  when  he  created  the  fathers  of  Jennie 
and  of  Aileen,  and  his  own  father  for  example.  Often 
they  meant  more  to  him  than  some  of  the  radicals  who 
might  be  merely  colorless  spectators  or  weak  actors. 

He  told  me  once  of  two  unintentional  converts  of  his, 
and  he  was  not  especially  proud  of  them.  One  was  an 
editor  he  had  known,  who  hated  his  novels  —  u  uncouth, 
vulgar,  impossible !  "  One  day  he  became  insane.  A  mutual 
friend  went  to  visit  him  where  he  lived  in  the  country. 
There  he  was  sitting  on  his  front  porch,  believing  himself 
to  be  the  "  Genius,"  Eugene  Witla,  and  boasting  of  his 
amorous  exploits.  In  the  telling,  Dreiser  let  his  carefully 
pleated  handkerchief  unfold  without  emphasis,  and 
laughed  a  little.  A  grim  joke,  but  there  it  was !  And  then 
there  was  the  professor  out  in  Illinois,  Sherman,  who 
somehow  regretted  his  scholarly  life,  and  resigning  from 
the  cornfields,  had  come  East  to  find  reality  before  it  was 
too  late.  Spoon  River  Anthology,  Sandburg's  poems,  An 
American  Tragedy,  all  the  moderns  he  had  abused,  had 
jarred  him  out  of  sleep.  And  he  had  done  "  the  naturalist  " 
a  wrong,  he  wrote  in  the  New  York  Tribune.  A  novelist 
who  could  drown  his  heroine  in  a  lonely  lake  and  send  his 
pitiful  hero  to  the  chair  for  their  sins,  was  a  great  and 
good  philosopher  after  all.  His  own  life  had  been  spent 
in  futile  security,  it  seemed  to  him.  Not  many  years  later 
by  some  caprice  of  nature,  Sherman's  own  end  came  by 
drowning  in  a  lake.  .  .  .  And  yet  Dreiser  wanted  to  be 
neither  reformer  nor  rebel.  On  the  arc  of  a  flood  of 
change  he  was  only  trying  to  tell  about  human  beings,  and 
relate  their  hidden  passions  to  the  old  and  new  values 
which  preyed  on  them.  If  on  such  an  expedition  of  un- 
derstanding some  of  those  who  chose  to  join  fell  by  the 
way,  it  was  by  malice  of  nature,  not  by  his  choice. 
380 


58 

"  To  the  artist  there  is  never  anything 
ugly  in  nature.  .  .  .  A  big  gross  woman 
might  be  ugly,  but  tell  her  once  that  her 
son  has  died  and  you  will  see  how  beautiful 
she  is.  It  is  the  same  with  character.  There 
are  no  vices,  there  are  only  phases.  .  .  . 
//  a  man  sets  himself  to  the  making  of  bad 
sculpture,  that  is  evil.  .  .  .  Art  is  only 
the  truth,  but  the  truth  is  scattered.  One 
must  have  the  gift  of  scenting  it.  .  .  . 
One  arrives  at  that  through  taste." 

Rodin  to  a  critic 

"Life  is  not  reasonable,  it  is  dramatic. 
.  .  .  The  beggar  sitting  by  the  roadside  is 
dramatic.  .  .  .  It  is  thrilling  to  see  the 
way  he  ekes  out  a  living.  Besides  being 
dramatic  life  is  beautiful.  .  .  .  The  beg- 
gar just  mentioned  is  beautiful.  His  dirt 
and  his  rags,  his  bandaged  feet  and  his 
sores  are  all  beautiful  to  me.  They  may  not 
be  pleasant  but  they  are  artistic.  .  .  . 

"  When  it  comes  to  immorality  in  books 
the  so-called  '  best  seller'  type  of  fiction  is 
vicious  in  the  extreme.  .  .  ." 

Dreiser  to  a  reporter 

T 

JLwo  men  in  our  time  have  been  possessed  by 
an  engrossing  passion  for  observing,  that  is,  a  prodigious 
appetite,  Rodin  and  Dreiser,  Parisian  and  Hoosier.  And 
of  course  there  have  been  others  in  accordance  with 
the  greedy  character  of  the  epoch  now  closed.  Both 
these  men,  as  it  happened,  so  far  apart,  were  hated  for 
this  appetite.  Rodin  living  in  a  country  whose  villages, 
cathedrals,  farms,  women  and  meals  have  been  designed 

381 


by  Taste  felt  the  force  of  program.  The  man  washed 
out  of  ancient  river  deposits  known  to  us  as  the  valleys 
of  the  Wabash,  Ohio,  Missouri,  Tippecanoe,  to  float 
as  best  he  could  on  the  haphazard  streams  of  our  big 
cities,  felt  the  force  of  Accident.  Rodin  had  the  greater 
talent  for  his  craft,  or  more  leisure  or  more  background 
in  which  to  learn  it.  Both  of  them  desired  and  found  ex- 
treme intimacy  and  variety  in  women,  and  were  called 
immoral.  And  both  thought  of  themselves  primarily  as 
workmen,  not  as  innovators,  and  of  Nature  as  their  one 
teacher.  Both  were  labeled  in  their  day  pioneer,  realist, 
revolutionist,  and  neither  of  them  cared  to  be  labeled  or 
to  found  schools  or  movements  —  nor  did  they  care  to 
be  disputed.  They  felt  authentic. 

In  the  years  following  the  Genius  controversy,  titles 
did  not  interest  Dreiser.  He  laughed  at  being  called  a 
modern,  a  saviour  to  put  us  on  the  map,  to  save  us  from 
provincialism :  "  I  am  not  an  instrument,  that  is  only 
silly,  I  am  a  symptom  of  change. "  Instinctively  he  wanted 
to  be  judged  outside  of  time  and  place,  of  a  new  century 
and  a  new  country.  The  success  of  acclaim  was  not  strange 
to  him,  but  more  like  refound  parents  who  gave  him  at 
length  a  house  and  security.  He  joined  no  societies  and 
did  not  change  his  way  of  life.  On  the  contrary,  in  the 
same  apartment  on  Tenth  Street  he  appears  to  have  gone 
back  in  these  years  to  the  directness  of  youth.  He  began 
to  write  poems  that  recall  the  boy  that  used  to  rock  by 
the  south  window  of  the  house  in  Sullivan,  his  dog  in  his 
arms,  dreaming  of  alliance  with  clouds,  lizards,  fish  and 
wings :  "  My  early  poems  were  no  good,  but  I  struck  a 
measure  just  before  the  Great  War,  and  wrote  five  poems 
printed  in  Moods.  I  did  them  out  of  a  mystic  despair,"  he 
said.  Then  the  other  poems  came  along  in  the  next  few 
years.* 

He  wanted  the  strength  of  dreams  for  his  books.  He 
wanted  to  count  as  a  primal  force,  feeling  in  himself  an 
ancestry  back  of  tribes,  back  of  mammals,  back  of  cells, 
back  of  suns,  leading  yet  no  one  knew  where,  or  leading 
nowhere  unless  into  an  unofficial  intimacy  with  life.  His 
novels  unfolding  in  Chicago,  New  York,  Missouri,  In- 

*  Moods,  Cadenced  And  Declaimed,  June  1926. 

382 


diana,  Tennessee,  Wisconsin  and  tourist  Europe,  should 
for  all  their  detail,  or  really  because  of  it,  lead  from  leaf 
to  branch,  branch  to  trunk  and  trunk  to  root.  What,  after 
all,  did  Carrie's  need  of  food  and  lights,  jackets,  lace  ties 
and  little  shoes  have  to  do  with  time  or  place?  And  what 
did  Jennie's  need  of  love  and  loving  have  to  do  with 
them?  Or  Cowperwood's  need  of  conquest,  verve  and 
beauty?  Was  a  Corsican,  were  the  Borgias  not  precedent 
for  like  passions?  Had  Roman,  Macedonian,  Persian, 
Egyptian,  Peruvian  not  been  possessed  like  Cowperwood 
by  the  necessity  of  magnificence?  His  "  Genius  "  Eugene 
Witla,  was  he  so  different  from  genius  of  other  nations, 
always  endowed  beyond  the  understanding  of  orderly 
obedient  men  and  women?  It  was  not  the  man,  it  was  his 
story  which  Dreiser  had  designed  to  differ  sharply.  His 
talents  came  to  grief  sooner  in  the  United  States,  or 
rather  were  diverted  from  art  to  finance,  in  which  field 
alone  Americans  were  allowed  to  break  rules  and  make 
new  ones.  That  was  the  one  difference  he  could  see.  For 
him  it  spelled  failure  if  the  crux  of  his  meaning  was  lost 
to  readers  in  the  detail  of  the  vast  chaotic  settings  to 
which  his  characters  belonged  —  the  only  settings  he  was 
sure  of,  the  only  characters  he  knew  well. 

In  these  years,  1910  to  1920,  this  writer,  often  called 
the  world's  worst  great  writer,  was  ambitious  and  humble 
about  words  and  their  magic.  As  he  wrote  he  knew  very 
well  he  "  would  like  to  go  back  and  polish  and  condense." 
Yet  always  as  in  St.  Louis  over  his  first  poem,  he  was 
"  eager  to  be  on  with  his  meaning  which  had  to  do  with 
this  tangle  of  life."  Both  Mencken  and  Masters  wrote 
him  that  they  need  not  remind  him  of  his  fault  of  pro- 
lixity; he  was  aware  of  it  himself  and  would  correct  it 
in  time.  This  was  true,  he  was  so  anxious  to  conquer  it  that 
he  went  to  school  for  style  with  friends  he  trusted. 
Mencken  read  The  Financier,  The  Titan,  A  Hoosier  Holi- 
day in  manuscript,  and  suggested  cuts  and  contractions. 
He  wrote  him  once  in  these  days,  "  I  have  read  about 
75,000  words  of  A  Hoosier  Holiday  and  I  am  proceeding 
forward  steadily  at  twenty-five  miles  an  hour  .  .  .  the 
best  writing  you  have  ever  done.  A  genuine  feeling  for 
style  is  in  it.  But  I  am  constantly  outraged  by  banalities 

383 


due  to  wordiness,  and  it  seems  to  me  they  should  come 


out." 


The  novelist  did  not  resent  this  criticism,  even  felt  that 
he  deserved  it.  But  when  Mencken  ridiculed  him  publicly 
for  lack  of  style,  then  apparently  he  protested.  The  critic 
replied  suavely,  rather  mockingly:  "  Many  of  those  arti- 
cles in  the  Smart  Set  were  forgeries.  English  spies  wrote 
them.  Nothing  issuing  from  my  actual  hand  has  ever 
failed  to  make  three  things  plain :  that  you  have  an  adept 
and  lascivious  style,  that  you  are  a  baptized  man  and  that 
you  are  the  handsomest  man  in  the  Republic." 

He  turned  then  to  Floyd  Dell  and  asked  him  to  read 
and  edit  The  "  Genius  "  for  him.  Dreiser  thinks  now  that 
he  accepted  the  cuts  to  the  extent  of  about  35,000  words, 
but  Mr.  Dell  believes  that  for  the  most  part  Dreiser  did 
the  work  himself.  At  least  he  said:  "  I  remember  going 
to  see  him  one  day  and  there  he  was  at  his  desk  erasing 
my  blue  pencilling."  Another  friend,  he  tells  it  himself, 
strengthened  passages  by  deleting  repetitions  and  connec- 
tives, without  changing  a  word.  "  I  need  an  editor,  I  know 
it,  but  one  who  will  understand  my  intention  and  change 
nothing  from  a  sense  of  propriety,"  I  have  heard  him  say. 
Mencken,  he  thought,  sometimes  confused  the  issue  with 
diplomacy:  "  Some  of  your  discussions  of  women  in  the 
college  chapter  \Hoosier  Holiday]  seem  to  me  to  be  very 
unwise.  Also  the  D.  A.  W.  episode  had  better  be  changed. 
He  is  now  a  highly  respectable  Baltimorean.  .  .  .  The 
slightest  suspicion  that  he  ever  engaged  in  so  carnal 
an  enterprise  .  .  .  would  cause  his  expulsion  from  the 
Unitarian  Church  and  probably  would  lose  him  his 
home." 

He  had  then  a  veneration  for  style,  condensation  he 
called  it,  and  used  to  be  humble  over  his  weakness  for 
explicit  repeated  detail.  He  amazed  me  once  in  these  years 
by  an  invitation  to  condense  the  writing  of  Twelve  Men. 
I  was  young  and  a  snob  about  manner,  and  imagined  that 
a  writer  even  in  America  would  want  to  decide  upon  each 
comma  and  semicolon;  and  that  quality  transcended  quan- 
tity, and  that  haste  was  vulgar.  I  asked  him  why  not? 
Again  he  said  in  effect  that  mere  quality  was  lost  in  the 
United  States,  there  was  no  audience  for  it;  it  was  of 

384 


course  the  aim  of  art,  but  left  to  itself  in  our  country  it 
could  only  end  in  anaemia.  American  writers  still  had  too 
much  to  do  in  putting  out  genuine  material.  If  the  plans 
were  true  and  the  work  had  movement  that  was  all  that 
could  be  expected  of  them  in  this  early  moment  of  our 
civilization. 

It  seemed  to  me  he  had  not  the  least  egotism  about 
his  writings.  He  appeared  to  look  upon  them  much  like 
an  architect  or  a  mural  painter  of  old  times  designing 
for  the  sake  of  the  city,  who  left  detail  to  apprentices; 
that  is  if  any  one  would  acknowledge  him  as  master  by 
consenting  to  be  apprenticed.  He  seemed  not  to  be  quite 
sure  that  they  would.  He  admitted  that  he  asked  of  them 
a  wisdom  of  detail  in  relation  to  his  plan  he  himself  pre- 
tended not  to  have  mastered.  Yes,  he  knew  that  a  para- 
dox was  involved  here,  but  what  of  it?  Yet  I  imagine  that 
perhaps  no  one  ever  refused  to  help  him  if  they  could. 
He  had  an  importance  of  being,  not  to  be  withstood. 

Afraid  to  tamper  with  another's  record  of  himself,  I 
did  very  cautiously  cut  from  six  of  the  portraits  in  Twelve 
Men  what  seemed  to  be  gratuitous  phrases  and  connec- 
tives, and  excessive  repetitions  of  the  same  words.  And 
too,  I  think  I  allowed  myself  the  frivolous  delight  of  de- 
leting sex-life,  love-life,  enthuse,  colorful,  to  sense,  to 
glimpse,  feeling  a  little  guilty  for  fear  that  then  Dreiser 
would  not  be  Dreiser.  And  I  may  have  divided  into  their 
parts  some  of  his  suspended  sentences  wound  up  like  tops, 
if  I  thought  that  finally  they  would  not  spin.  Always  he 
agreed  gratefully  to  the  changes,  but  in  the  midst  of  the 
work  he  made  an  excuse  of  my  slowness  and  finished  the 
revision  himself.  It  was  better  so.  Dreiser  lives  and  has 
his  being  in  a  tangle  of  qualitative  phrases  and  parentheses, 
which  perhaps  an  intimate,  but  no  outsider,  could  change 
for  the  better.  They  are  introduced  or  excused  by  to  the 
contrary  notwithstanding,  which  latter,  which  same,  and 
the  like,  I  could  not  help  but  think,  at  the  same  time,  in 
other  words  —  a  quantity  of  cliches  apparently  agreeable 
to  him.  It  is  his  nature  to  offer  other  words,  a  clustered 
choice  of  them  for  any  one  link  in  his  thought,  and  to  sub- 
ordinate these  to  a  larger  cluster  of  choices.  And  it  is 
his  nature  to  use  the  careless  diction  of  his  own  people, 

385 


Americans.  In  that  way,  he  seems  to  say,  they  will  under- 
stand me  and  my  idiom  will  be  telltale  and  pantomimic. 

Ford  Madox  Ford  tells  of  lunching  with  him  not  long 
ago.  Always  the  talk  turned  on  style.  He  was  amazed  at 
Dreiser's  knowledge  of  the  theory  of  style.  He  seemed 
to  have  read  every  authority  (perhaps  like  a  novice  who 
studies  methods  and  positions  of  loving).  "  Why  then," 
Ford  asked  him,  "  when  you  know  so  much,  do  you  use 
a  phrase  like  *  He  looked  into  her  eyes,  the  same  were 
suffused  with  tears  '  ?  "  The  answer  was  immediate :  "  I 
live  in  a  country  of  business  men,  my  characters  are  col- 
ored by  business,  love  or  hatred  of  it.  I  imagine  by  using 
that  language  I  get  nearer  to  them."  This  may  be  true, 
but  almost  I  believe  that  Dreiser  like  all  spontaneous 
workmen  invented  first  and  excused  afterwards.  Over  and 
over  he  recalls  the  douanier  Henri  Rousseau.  Wishing 
for  the  salons,  studying  the  ways  of  the  salon,  aiming 
beyond  the  provinces,  he  had  nevertheless  to  use  the  man- 
ner at  hand,  the  manner  of  his  own  villages ;  and  yet  made 
thereby  universal  images. 

Walt  Whitman  has  the  name  of  deliberate  intention, 
but  perhaps  he  too  created  first  and  analysed  afterwards. 
Fact  has  it  that  he  wrote  but  one  book  of  poems,  and 
spent  years  making  them  more  deliberate.  Consider  the 
long  lists,  the  alternatives  and  co-ordinates  in  Whitman. 
They  bring  to  mind  the  leisurely  lists  occurring  with 
Dreiser,  and  occurring  in  American  talk.  We  step  lively, 
but  we  take  our  time  talking,  if  we  talk  at  all ;  some  Ameri- 
cans have  never  finished  a  sentence.  Also  consider  the  in- 
evitable participial  dependent  clauses,  loose,  rangy,  hap- 
hazard, and  at  the  same  time  expressive  like  American 
workmen  and  mechanics,  like  our  cities  and  villages,  used 
both  by  Whitman  and  Dreiser.  Graphically  they  pro- 
claim the  uncertain  conditional  planes  on  which  we  shift 
from  phase  to  phase,  as  if  living  with  us  were  a  suspension 
without  roots  or  foundation,  a  world  in  the  air,  one  thing 
today,  another  tomorrow. 

There  however  the  likeness  ends.  Whitman  is  a  poet 
of  "  must  "  and  "  must  not,"  declaring  health.  People 
must  not  ask  to  know  or  be  sophisticated,  but  like  ani- 
mals in  the  forest,  like  fish  in  the  sea,  like  birds  along  riv- 
386 


ers,  they  must  try  to  find  their  human  balance  again. 
Dreiser  is  a  writer  pursued  by  fatality  and  doom,  in  the 
sense  that  men  have  made  cities,  hierarchies,  perfumes, 
music,  perversions  and  refinements  beyond  their  mastery. 
Simplicity  and  nature  seduced  Whitman.  Complication 
and  artifice  concern  Dreiser.  Yet  if  he  could  not  relate 
these  through  language  to  the  unknown  forces  out  of 
which  they  spring,  he  would  rather  not  have  written. 

His  need  of  language  was  imperative.  He  worked 
prodigiously  for  mastery.  Out  of  this  intensity  came  his 
novels  with  moments  of  precision  and  passages  of  ap- 
proximation. At  the  same  time  practice  produced,  as  if 
easily,  short  stories,  plays,  poems  and  essays,  many  of 
them  possessing  a  virtue  for  which  he  is  too  little  known 
—  economy  of  form.  They  have  the  shove  and  push,  grief 
and  success  of  America  in  them.  They  mingle  the  jokes 
of  day  laborers  building  railroads,  the  terror  of  work- 
men digging  a  tunnel  when  barriers  give  way  and  the 
river  rushes  back  on  them;  the  curses  of  reporters  who 
have  lost  to  more  brutal  reporters;  the  glee  of  politicians 
and  magnates  when  the  weak  are  framed  and  they  shoot 
into  power;  the  voices  of  trainmen  in  moments  of  acci- 
dent; the  drop  of  a  murderer  behind  box  cars  and  over  a 
dark  river  pier,  the  police  upon  him ;  and  the  muffled  voices 
of  human  hearts  asking  for  the  death  of  one,  the  presence 
of  another;  the  sharp  cry  of  futility  when  the  death 
comes.  The  obsession  of  one  for  money,  of  another  for 
excitement,  of  another  for  love  or  beauty,  of  another 
merely  not  to  die ;  and  above  all  the  scarcely  ever  concord- 
ant aims  and  whims  of  human  beings  —  these  preside  like 
apparitions  in  his  short  stories  and  plays. 

Under  them  run  primordial  passions,  struck  to  flame 
by  the  fact  of  sex,  the  wish  for  power,  the  desire  to  live; 
and  frustration  or  fulfilment  is  always  at  the  expense  of 
one  or  another.  The  Second  Choice,  St.  Colomba  and  the 
River,  Chains,  Typhoon,  nearly  all  of  the  stories  ring 
the  bell  of  fate.  Stitching  back  and  forth  with  the  aid  of 
his  many  connectives,  always  to  the  amusement  and  horror 
of  critics  —  yet  they  write  their  logic  the  way  the  stock 
ticker  prints  the  rise  and  fall  of  prices,  or  the  electric  pen- 
cil in  railway  stations  tells  the  arrival  of  trains.  No  other 

387 


letter  file  of  Dreiser's  contains  so  many  testimonials  from 
strangers,  because  he  has  guessed  their  secrets,  as  the 
responses  to  his  two  volumes  of  short  stories.  "  How 
could  you  have  guessed  ?"  they  keep  saying.  Many  so- 
called  stylists  have  not  written  with  hands  so  supple  and 
alive  to  mystery.  A  man's  style  is  a  man's  self.  Style  is 
direction. 

Tonally  the  plays  go  beyond  the  stories.  They  have  the 
truth  of  distinct  language  dictated  by  the  characters,  and 
no  less  of  form.  The  Girl  in  the  Coffin,  The  Blue  Sphere,  In 
the  Dark,  Laughing  Gas,  Old  Ragpicker*  The  Dream,^ 
are  exclamation  points  or  question  marks.  The  one  long 
play,  The  Hand  of  the  Potter,  is  a  deep  perforation  from 
life.  The  plays  multiply  skilfully  the  ghosts  and  voices 
of  the  past  and  the  subconscious,  in  whose  intangible 
atmosphere  any  one  wave  of  events  gathers  and  breaks. 

It  is  the  size  of  the  longer  books,  and  the  lack  of  time 
in  America  to  encompass  it,  that  has  given  Dreiser  the 
title  of  "  the  worst  great  writer  in  the  world,"  "  crude," 
"  clumsy."  A  selection  could  be  made  which  would  give 
him  the  opposite  name.  To  those  who  say,  "  what  does  it 
matter  ?  "  these  plays  answer :  "  To  see  crisis,  to  verbalize 
essence,  matters."  They  turn  everyday  life  into  mimic 
events.  Death,  love,  jealousy,  murder,  deformity,  acci- 
dent, dreams,  destitution  —  these  commonplaces,  over 
which  we  stretch  the  tight  smooth  skin  of  convention,  here 
spring  to  view  like  inner  organs  after  the  surgeon's  in- 
cision. 

*  Plays  of  the  Natural  and  the  Supernatural,  February  1916. 
f  Hey  Rub- A -Dub-Dub,  December  1919. 


388 


59 

" /'//  have  grounds 

More  relative  than  this:  the  play's  the 

thing, 
Wherein  I'll  catch   the   conscience   of  a 

king."  SHAKESPEARE 


ad  Dreiser's  plays  been  produced  on  the 
American  stage,  had  he  turned  his  strength  from  books 
to  the  theatre,  I  think  he  would  have  impelled  a  progres- 
sion in  our  drama,  which  in  turn  would  have  helped  in- 
tensify our  direction  as  a  people.  Kings  and  subjects  who 
never  read  or  never  exchange  their  views  about  books, 
sometimes  find  themselves  in  the  same  theatre,  and  for  a 
minute  united  by  the  same  message. 

The  Girl  in  the  Coffin,  as  produced  by  the  Washington 
Square  Players  in  1917,  went  for  verity  of  tissue  beyond 
the  plays  of  Eugene  O'Neill.  For  all  his  facility  and  effort 
our  national  dramatist  remains,  like  the  hotel  in  a  Western 
town :  "  It  ain't  the  best,  it's  the  only  one."  Dreiser's  play, 
merely  an  atom  of  drama,  was  American  fibre  in  speech 
and  action.  O'Neill's  plays,  especially  the  late  ones,  are  his 
fears  and  fantasies  speaking  to  people  of  like  fears  and 
fantasies  about  the  life  they  have  to  lead.  They  have  not 
the  power  to  recreate  American  flesh  and  blood  the  way 
that  Tchekov  could  Russian,  or  Synge  Irish,  or  the  actor 
Grasso  could  Sicilian,  or  the  actress  Sadda  Yacco  once 
could  Japanese.  This  transmission  of  our  own  life  through 
speech  and  gesture  is  a  miracle  that  rarely  happens  over 
our  footlights.  We  have  received  real  records  of  nearly 
every  other  people  on  earth,  and  but  few  of  our  own. 

The  Hand  of  the  Potter  was  played  with  no  great  skill 
by  the  Provincetown  Theatre  and  for  only  three  weeks  in 
1921,  two  years  after  it  was  published.  Even  so,  like  the 
shorter  play,  this  tragedy  transmitted  a  quality  so  rare 

389 


with  us  as  to  be  shocking  —  the  sense  of  life  conceived  in 
cubic  volume.  I  remember  the  middle  act  of  The  Love 
Nest  by  Ring  Lardner  as  giving  also  the  acute  shock  of 
life;  the  first  and  third  acts  having  been  tacked  to  the 
drama  by  others  to  make  a  Broadway  evening.  The  Moon 
is  a  Gong  by  John  Dos  Passos;  The  Racket  by  a  Chicago 
writer;  and  to  some  extent  The  Great  Gatsby  from  Scott 
Fitzgerald's  novel  —  from  these  plays  too  came  the  direct 
sense  of  American  reality.  They  were  plays,  not  recipes  for 
plays,  not  confections  like  The  Front  Page,  Broadway, 
and  Kearney's  dramatization  of  An  American  Tragedy .* 
They  were  plays,  not  personal  vagaries  like  nearly  every- 
thing from  O'Neill  and  his  followers. 

Though  few  may  agree  with  me  I  have  a  suspicion  that 
if  our  theatre  had  acknowledged  and  presented  first  rate 
talent  like  Dreiser's,  Frost's,  Ring  Lardner's,  and  prob- 
ably Masters',  who  have  all  been  ambitious  to  use  the 
medium  of  the  stage,  our  culture  would  have  gained  in 
body  and  precision.  Or,  rather,  had  we  not  been  the  kind 
of  people  who  for  example  prefer  drugstore  and  speak- 
easy drinks  to  real  wine  and  liquor,  such  writers  might 
have  become  stage  favorites. 

As  it  is  even  in  love  and  money-making,  we  are  ex- 
pected to  use  our  faculties  to  evade  the  issue;  we  call 
money-making  "  service  "  to  others.  We  call  women  pros- 
titutes, debutantes,  secretaries  or  wives.  Finally  we  may 
become  the  most  synthetic  and  successful  liars  of  history. 
Our  lies  may  achieve  such  virtuosity  as  to  invent  truth. 
Chaplin's  films,  some  of  the  best  music  shows,  the  Marx 
Brothers  today,  suggest  what  truth  of  manner  may  after 
a  while  come  out  of  American  indirectness  when  handled 
by  artists. 

There  are  other  brilliant  examples.  A  devoted  artist, 
Edward  Steichen  photographer,  and  an  American  phi- 
losopher John  B.  Watson,  who  has  influenced  popular 
knowledge  more  than  any  other  since  William  James, 
have  gone  over  to  the  vast  hyperbole,  Advertising,  quite 
like  Dreiser's  "  Genius."  Steichen  justifies  his  desertion 
by  an  analogy  between  our  business  world  and  other  great 

*  Kearney's  own  play  A  Man's  Man  belonged  more  truly  to  the  first 
class  of  plays,  those  that  transmitted  the  current  of  reality. 

390 


periods  of  commercial  art,  Athenian,  Gothic,  Venetian.* 
Watson's  change  of  front  supports  one  of  his  own  prem- 
ises: Knowledge  is  action  out  of  response  to  stimuli;  a 
man  who  cannot  respond  properly  is  a  failure;  the  proper 
response  to  American  stimuli  is  to  make  money;  he,  Wat- 
son, will  not  be  a  failure;  so  he  acts  to  sell  Pond's  facial 
creams  and  becomes  vice-president  of  one  of  the  greatest 
advertising  companies  in  the  world.  "  In  a  store,  and 
doing  well."  .  .  . 

But  why  is  it  that  whereas  in  truth  Phidias,  Praxiteles, 
Michelangelo  and  Titian  worked  for  the  big  business 
men  of  their  time,  neither  Matisse  nor  Picasso  nor  Stei- 
chen's  own  preceptor,  Stieglitz,  nor  Einstein  nor  Pavlow 
have  permitted  their  art  or  science  to  be  harnessed  to  com- 
merce or  to  communism?  They  remain,  to  borrow  Wat- 
son's term  apparently  "  unconditioned  "  by  expedience. 
If  we  knew  why  they  have  preferred  this  to  popular  suc- 
cess, some  modern  sophisms  might  be  dissolved. 

Dreiser  is  one  of  the  few  Americans  who  has  preferred 
disgrace  to  success,  although  capable  of  both.  Repeatedly 
he  has  made  "  improper  responses  to  stimuli."  In  the 
realm  of  intelligence  he  is  an  American  high-water  mark, 
not  British,  not  exotic,  and  yet  achieving  waves  that  fall 
beyond.  The  Hand  of  the  Potter  is  one  of  the  waves.  The 
theme  and  substance  is  native,  but  the  fact  of  its  declara- 
tion is  still  as  foreign  to  us  as  it  was  once  for  Whitman 
to  say,  "  I  sing  the  body  electric  " ;  or  as  it  is  for  Whitman 
today  to  say,  "  To  the  States  or  any  one  of  them,  or  any 
city  of  the  States  —  resist  much,  obey  little."  This  tragedy 
discloses  secrets  never  elsewhere  spoken  of  with  us,  in 
dispassionate  detail  and  with  passionate  relation  of  de- 
tail to  whole.  The  play  has  two  superficial  flaws.  The  oc- 
casional Irish  characters  speak  with  a  brogue  inaccurately 
recorded;  a  good  actor  could  have  changed  this.  And 
in  the  last  act  for  a  few  pages  discussion  outbalances  ac- 
tion. For  the  Provincetown  Players  Dreiser  cut  and  con- 
densed this  discourse.  The  second  edition  of  the  play  is 
thus  revised.  Had  he  turned  into  a  playwright  he  might 
have  come  to  sacrifice  leisure  altogether  to  form. 

Otherwise  The  Hand  of  the  Potter  in  contradiction  to 

*  Steichen:   The  Photographer  by  Carl  Sandburg. 

391 


his  other  big  works  gives  the  excitement  of  tone  as  dic- 
tated by  detail,  exactly  in  the  sense  that  the  tonal  mes- 
sage of  trees  at  a  distance  is  concerned  with  each  leaf  and 
pine  needle.  The  play  was  written  in  the  fall  of  1916 
directly  after  the  attack  on  The  "  Genius"  It  seems  to 
say:  if  you  object  to  the  havoc  of  sex  and  the  sordidness 
of  business  and  the  subterfuge  of  Christian  Science  and 
the  fatality  of  childbirth,  all  of  which  goes  on  around  you 
in  your  own  class  as  well  as  in  every  other,  I  will  give  you 
something  more  terrible,  more  basic,  more  inexorable  to 
contemplate.  He  selects  for  the  stage  as  the  mainspring  of 
the  action  that  same  force  most  feared  in  America,  sex, 
but  this  time  acting  through  the  soul  of  a  pervert,  and 
therefore  uncontrollable.  He  is  the  son  of  an  East  Side 
Jewish  family,  the  father  a  peddler  of  thread  and  needles ; 
and  he  has  been  two  years  in  prison  for  assault  on  a  child, 
and  is  out  on  parole.  Thus  the  tragedy  originates  on  what 
would  be  conventionally  thought  of  as  the  lowest  plane  of 
life ;  and  from  that  shocking  premise  branches  into  drama. 
The  action  takes  place  on  the  road  between  the  old  and 
new  worlds.  The  parents  and  the  lame  sister  speak  the 
rich  mournful  memory  of  Odessa.  The  younger  boy  and 
the  other  daughters,  one  a  manicure,  the  other  married 
to  a  smart  Jew  on  the  way  possibly  to  Park  Avenue  gran- 
deur, are  already  new  Americans,  cheerful,  strident  and 
practical.  On  the  one  side  is  the  family  under  their  hot  tin 
roof;  on  the  other  side,  the  neighbors,  passers-by,  work- 
men and  shop  keepers,  Irish,  German,  Jewish  —  the  Euro- 
pean world,  hot  with  conflicting  languages  and  customs. 
On  a  July  Saturday  afternoon,  when  the  rest  of  the  family 
are  gone  to  the  park  or  on  joy  rides,  the  encounter  with 
rape  and  murder  of  the  crazed  youth  and  the  little  girl 
with  pink  face  and  red  braids  from  an  Irish  family  in  a 
tenement  below,  joins  violently  for  a  moment  these  two 
elements  —  the  family  and  the  streets  outside.  Together 
now  they  in  turn  are  poured,  like  a  sudden  flood  from  pipes 
bursting,  into  the  bigger  New  York  world  of  courts  and 
newspapers,  into  official  violence  and  indifference.  The  pri- 
vate paths  of  human  minds,  the  public  thoroughfares  of  a 
big  city  are  crossed  here  in  accuracy  of  drama.  A  clock  tick- 
ing noisily  when  other  sounds  cease,  the  mother's  box  of 
392 


rags,  a  yellow  oilcloth  on  the  family  table  with  which  the 
young  man  wraps  the  child's  body,  a  vacant  lot  outside 
seem  like  other  characters  in  the  first  two  acts,  as  do  the 
city  newspapers  in  the  fourth  act.  When  hunted  into  a  hall 
bedroom  the  murderer  with  what  mind  is  left  him  decides 
to  lie  down  and  die  by  gas,  the  newspapers  swarm  around 
him,  speaking  of  him  and  to  him  of  his  crime,  crying  ex- 
tras in  the  street  below  "  All  about  Isadore  Berchansky !  " 
and  on  edges  torn  from  newspapers  he  scribbles  last  notes 
to  his  family  and  the  world,  which  pieced  together  make 
poetic  sense  of  insane  discord  —  a  requiem  of  the  acts 
before  and  the  last  scene  to  come. 

" '  I'm  guilty  and  insane  caused  by  the  beautiful  make- 
ups of  girls  that  has  set  me  very  passionate.  Don't  cry.  .  .  . 

'  I  want  to  say  if  I  don't  die  this  way  I'll  take  my 
medicine  just  the  same.  Fields,  carnages,  four  trees. 

'.  .  .  Poor  mom!  You  think  I'm  innocent,  even  yet, 
don't  you?  Mothers  is  wonders!  Great!  I  am  too,  only  I 
ain't  made  right.  ...  It  don't  do  things  right  always.  Can 
you  blame  a  man  when  he  ain't  right?" 

The  play  enters  into  the  very  nerve  cells  of  a  criminal, 
an  imperfect  organism ;  yet  a  kind  of  symbol  of  many  of 
us,  and  of  what  happens  to  people  suppressed  by  tin  roofs 
and  churches — a  revelation  as  intimate  as  with  Hurst- 
wood  in  Sister  Carrie,  as  with  Clyde  Griffiths  in  An 
American  Tragedy.  After  death  the  gates  of  intimacy 
are  down.  Reporters,  police,  the  landlord  enter  in:  "  Ach, 
my  house !  My  gas !  " 

Here  Dreiser  has  been  severely  criticized.  While  the 
reporters  wait  for  the  police  inspector  and  the  father  to 
arrive,  they  ask  each  other  what  should  be  done  about 
such  pitiful  mishaps  as  the  dead  murderer  under  the  sheet 
before  them.  One  of  them  speaking  as  if  he  might  be  the 
Hoosier  of  twenty  years  before  on  the  night  service  of 
the  World,  advocates  the  study  by  state  officials  of  Have- 
lock  Ellis,  Freud  and  Krafft-Ebing.  Critics  said  that  re- 
porters were  not  learned  enough  to  invoke  such  authori- 
ties, or  to  give  a  damn;  and  that  the  discourse  was  too 
long.  It  is  true  that  length  here  originally  broke  the  sus- 
pense. But  that  American  reporters  who  have  had  as 
fare  for  years  the  unpopular  vitals  of  our  life,  while  they 
served  the  roasts  to  the  public,  disguised  in  stereotyped 

393 


sauces,  would  be  incapable  of  scientific  thought,  given  such 
a  half  hour  of  grim  leisure,  is  to  underrate  them.  The 
critics  forgot  that  Poe,  Ambrose  Bierce,  Stephen  Crane, 
O.  Henry,  Sandburg,  Dreiser  have  all  of  them  been  re- 
porters doing  police  court  service.  In  fact  if  we  have  ever 
had  popular  ballad  makers  and  philosophers,  they  have 
been  the  newspaper  men.  It  is  part  of  Dreiser's  logic  that 
he  gives  them  in  this  tragedy  the  role  of  the  detached 
chorus  discussing  the  ways  of  the  gods  and  of  fate. 

The  choral  debate  yields  to  the  entrance  of  the  police 
inspector  and  later  of  the  father,  to  identify  the  body. 
He  speaks  "  heavily  and  sadly,"  and  the  landlord  in 
shrill  retort.  They  make  the  final  discord  on  which  the 
tragedy  ends: 

"'  Yes,  dat's  my  son.  Dat's  my  boy.  .  .  .  Gas?  Veil,  it's 
better  den  de  oder.  .  .  .  Dat  he  should  end  so!  It  is 
strange.  Four  years  ago  ve  lived  next  door.' 

*  So  he  vuz  your  son,  vuz  he?  Such  a  scoundrel !  He  owes 
for  t'ree   veeks   rent,  yet.  And   he   should   come   by   my 
house!  ...  I  should  lose  two  t'ousand  dollars    [the  re- 
ward]. If  I  know,  he  vouldn't  'a'  been  here  long.  I  t'ought 
he  acted  strange.' 

*  I  vill  pay !  I  vill  pay !  —  only  not  today,  please.  I  heven't 
so  much/ 

'An'  you!  Vy  shouldn't  you  bring  up  your  children 
right?  If  you  should  bring  him  up  right  —  if  you  should 
keep  him  off  de  streets,  den  he  vouldn't  do  such  a  ting!' 

'  My  friend,  hev'  you  children? ' 

'  Yes!' 

'  Den  you  should  know.  Vy  pull  at  de  walls  of  my  house? 
Dey  are  already  down ! ' ' 

So  the  play  ends  in  a  sorrowful  mean  give-and-take  of 
words  between  the  two  eternal  factors  of  life,  tenant  and 
landlord.  This  time  both  Jews,  both  poor,  both  fathers 
of  families,  that  so-boasted  unit  in  the  Land  of  the  Free. 
And  the  quarrel  is  over  a  room  too  miserable  for  anyone, 
even  a  crazy  pervert  to  die  in.  ...  Everything  is  told 
just  as  it  happened,  not  exaggerated  or  underrated. 

Yet  the  play  was  derided  and  cursed  by  some  of  Drei- 
ser's own  friends.  They  had  begged  him  all  these  years 
to  be  economical  with  language,  "  fused  and  molten."  At 
length  he  was.  And  now  they  complained  more  than  ever. 
He  could  not  be  negligible  and  yet  he  could  not  please,  it 

394 


seemed.  ...  It  was  not  until  he  had  written  An  Ameri- 
can Tragedy  nine  years  later,  840  pages  to  these  209,  deal- 
ing with  a  like  theme,  that  u  America's  foremost  novelist  " 
was  honored  as  such.  Strange  that  one  must  say  a  thing 
over  and  over  and  at  such  great  length  before  finally  it  en- 
gages. I  asked  Dreiser  once  soon  after  the  publication  of 
the  play,  why  he  did  not  write  again  as  close  to  his  subject 
as  in  The  Hand  of  the  Potter.  His  answer  was :  "  No  one 
can  touch  always  the  exposed  nerve  of  life.  It  would  kill 
him  or  people  would  kill  him  for  it."  He  waited  some 
years  before  he  went  as  close  to  heart  beats  and  nerve  re- 
actions again.  Then  for  a  brief  moment  he  was  at  length 
acclaimed  as  heroic. 

In  1916  he  took  his  play  to  Arthur  Hopkins,  a  coura- 
geous producer  in  New  York.  In  December  of  that  year 
Mr.  Hopkins  accepted  it  and  gave  him  an  advance  of  one 
thousand  dollars.  In  April  1917  he  abandoned  the  project 
and  the  advance  to  the  author:  "  It  is  the  best  American 
play  that  has  been  submitted  to  me,  and  I  would  eagerly 
have  produced  it  had  not  Dreiser  imposed  on  me  so 
many  bulls,  caveats,  and  salvos,"  he  was  quoted  as  say- 
ing. The  bulls,  caveats,  and  salvos,  according  to  their 
author,  were  merely  his  refusal  to  change  the  play  in 
order  to  lessen  the  horror.  According  to  Nathan  a  fash- 
ionable theatre  critic  of  that  day:  "That  Dreiser  wrote 
The  Hand  of  the  Potter  with  a  Rolls-Royce  in  view 
seems  to  me  as  certain  as  that  he  writes  novels  with  noth- 
ing in  view  but  the  novels."  Mencken  begged  him  fran- 
tically to  destroy  the  play,  burn  it  or  put  it  behind  the 
clock  and  forget  it : 

"  I  say  the  subject  is  forbidden  on  the  stage  .  .  .  banned 
by  that  convention  on  which  the  whole  of  civilized  order 
depends.  ...  If  the  thing  were  possible  Pd  advocate  ab- 
solutely unlimited  freedom  in  speech.  I  think  the  world 
would  be  better  off  ...  if  the  stage  could  be  used  to  set  up 
a  more  human  attitude  towards  sexual  perverts  ...  if 
novels  could  describe  the  precise  process  of  reproduction 
from  the  first  hand  shake  to  lactation,  and  so  show  the 
young  what  a  bore  it  is.  But  these  things  are  forbidden.  .  .  . 
The  play  is  a  piece  of  pish  —  clumsy,  banal,  unnatural, 
almost  idiotic.  Its  publication  would  lose  you  the  respect 
of  all  intelligent  persons,  and  make  every  man  who  labored 
on  the  protest  look  like  an  ass." 

395 


For  some  years  the  two  men  continued  to  be  intimates, 
but  it  may  be  that  here  was  the  first  serious  wedge  to 
separate  them.  For  one  thing  the  critic  now  placed 
himself  on  record  as  bored  by  the  processes  of  nature, 
always  enthralling  to  Dreiser.  Not  nature  but  argu- 
ment and  document  amused  Mencken,  and  they  must 
not  be  too  identical  with  reality.  Then  they  became 
poetry,  and  poetry  shocked  him.  Moreover  he  truly  be- 
lieved that  this  play  was  treacherous  to  the  cause  they 
had  fought  for  side  by  side,  the  freedom  of  letters. 
The  moralists  would  be  right  this  time;  it  was  "  plain 
dirt." 

Three  years  later  another  disagreement  widened  the 
distance  between  them.  Dreiser  was  living  in  California; 
Mencken  wrote  him  generously  that  he  would  "  go  to 
the  mat  with  Sumner,"  and  persuade  him  to  compromise 
so  that  The  "  Genius  "  could  be  reissued.  Or  else  possibly 
he  rather  hoped  to  see  it  abridged;  often  he  had  urged 
him  u  to  cut  a  lot  of  stuff  "  in  the  novel  which  seemed  to 
him  over  erotic.  The  meeting  and  the  compromise  were 
accomplished,  Mencken  thought  rather  to  the  advantage 
of  The  "  Genius."  Dreiser's  refusal  of  the  compromise 
seems  easy  to  understand.  The  passages  which  the  editor 
was  willing  to  sacrifice,  I  should  think,  were  among  the 
most  engaging  and  important  in  the  novel.  But  what  went 
hard  on  friendship  was  that  this  book  was  finally  reissued 
without  any  cuts  in  July  1923,  and  without  a  word  of  ex- 
planation or  of  thanks  to  Mencken  —  an  unfairness,  a 
lack  of  manners,  he  could  not  help  thinking,  both  to  him 
and  Sumner. 

Mencken  is  a  man  of  code  and  etiquette.  He  believes  in 
fair  rules  and  then  in  keeping  them.  Dreiser  says  of  him- 
self, as  if  pleased  with  the  idea,  "  Sometimes  I  think 
I  am  a  wild  animal."  And  of  Mencken,  "  All  you  have 
to  say  to  him  is  the  one  word,  '  mysticism/  he  leaps  up 
in  the  air."  A  few  years  more  and  a  few  more  disagree- 
ments and  the  stimulant  of  banter  and  advice  and  schemes 
between  these  two  undoubtedly  ceased.  Perhaps  each  re- 
grets at  moments  the  loss  of  the  other.  When  I  asked 
Mencken  the  cause  of  the  estrangement  one  of  his  answers 
was:  "  Well,  we  have  different  customers  now."  Then  he 

396 


added,  "  Besides,  what  fun  is  it  to  defend  a  man  who  no 
longer  needs  defence?  .  .  ." 

But  to  return  to  The  Hand  of  the  Potter  its  author 
would  need  defense  for  a  long  time  yet.  Denounced  by 
"  his  most  faithful  critical  mount,"  and  the  play  reviewed 
as  an  interesting  but  venal  enterprise  by  Nathan,  it  was, 
one  would  know,  ill-fated  from  the  first.  Mencken  had 
insisted  that  "  no  intelligent  publisher,"  let  alone  theatri- 
cal manager,  would  touch  it.  And  Dreiser  himself  began 
to  wonder.  Since  The  "  Genius  "  John  Lane  had  brought 
out  two  more  of  his  books,  the  short  plays  and  A  Hoosier 
Holiday,  February  and  October  1916,  neither  one  of 
them  storm-centers,  but  both  increasing  his  fame.  Now 
in  the  face  of  Mencken's  entreaties  to  burn  it,  he  offered 
Lane  The  Hand  of  the  Potter.  They  refused  it  point- 
blank,  and  were  no  longer  fighting  Sumner  in  his  behalf, 
in  fact  "  had  never  spent  a  cent  on  that  fight."  He  had  no 
other  big  work  to  offer  them.  It  came  over  him  of  a  sud- 
den, he  says,  that  in  spite  of  his  reputation,  really  he 
had  no  publisher.  Living  as  he  was  on  advances,  he  was 
perilously  near  to  destitution  once  again.  Moreover  his 
German  descent  was  against  him  at  this  time,  also  his 
name  as  a  libertine  in  this  most  moral  moment  of  our 
history.  It  was  just  before  the  disillusioned  young  men 
came  back  from  France,  those  who  did,  to  make  jazz  and 
whoopee,  and  jeer  at  pretentiousness  and  hypocrisy. 

What  to  do?  Dreiser  was  at  a  loss.  Then  one  day  in 
May  1917  he  saw  advertised  in  a  catalogue  that  Sister 
Carrie  was  to  be  published  by  Liveright  &  Seltzer  —  the 
first  he  had  heard  of  it.  Previously  out  of  friendship  he 
had  given  permission  to  Frank  Shay,  owner  of  a  Green- 
wich Village  bookstore,  to  make  one  special  edition  of 
Sister  Carrie,  no  more.  Otherwise  the  book  still  belonged 
to  Harper's.  Immediately  he  says  he  telephoned  to  Hor- 
ace Liveright,  then  an  unknown  beginner,  who  came  to 
Tenth  Street  to  explain.  His  story  was  that  Shay,  who 
had  gone  into  the  army,  had  sold  him  Sister  Carrie.  "  On 
whose  authority? "  Dreiser  asked.  Liveright  did  not 
know,  but  made  a  sweeping  offer.  If  he  would  let  him  go 
ahead  he  would  publish  every  Dreiser  book  he  could  get 
hold  of,  past,  present  and  future.  He  and  his  partner,  he 

397 


said,  were  moderns  as  against  timid  conservative  publish- 
ers, and  were  out  to  go  the  limit  and  see  the  fun.  "  Did 
they  have  enough  money?  "  They  could  get  it,  Liveright 
was  sure.  The  act  of  advertising  Sister  Carrie  had  been 
not  too  fastidious.  On  the  other  hand  Dreiser  had  instinc- 
tive faith  in  enterprise  and  youth.  Here  was  a  young  man 
who  insisted  that  he  would  publish  him  no  matter  what 
the  censor  did  and  said.  The  luxury  of  this  idea  appealed 
to  one  who  had  been  bandied  about  for  seventeen  years 
from  publisher  to  publisher.  A  contract  was  made 
whereby  Liveright  and  Seltzer  should  acquire  his  books 
as  fast  as  they  could. 

The  first  manuscript  he  gave  them  was  his  own  favor- 
ite, The  Hand  of  the  Potter.  They  read  it.  As  Dreiser 
remembers  it,  Liveright  telephoned :  "  I'm  advised  it's  too 
strong.  Why  not  wait  and  give  us  something  else  first? 
Seltzer  says  it's  too  strong."  The  answer  to  this  was: 
u  No,  I'm  through  with  publishers  who  quibble  with  my 
stuff.  Send  back  everything,"  and  he  hung  up.  Within  a 
half  hour  Liveright  was  back  on  the  telephone  announcing 
their  decision  to  publish  the  play.  At  last,  at  the  age  of 
forty-six  this  fighter  against  odds  had  earned  the  power 
to  dictate.  From  then  until  1931  when  Hollywood  pirates 
got  the  best  of  him,  he  has  had  liberty  almost  to  present 
"  life  as  he  sees  it." 

The  first  new  book  however  to  be  issued  by  the  new 
firm  was  Free  and  Other  Stories  in  August  1918.  Publica- 
tion of  the  play  was  delayed  by  the  Coburns,  who  in  the 
same  month  had  accepted  it  for  production.  In  Decem- 
ber they  lost  courage  and  abandoned  the  scheme,  like 
Hopkins  giving  and  forfeiting  an  advance.  At  length  in 
April  1919  The  Hand  of  the  Potter  appeared  in  book 
form;  and  in  the  same  month  Twelve  Men,  which  book 
of  portraits  went  a  long  way  to  regain  for  its  author  the 
confidence  of  Mencken  and  other  friends.  They  are  keen 
and  tender  biographs.  Many  faces  and  hands,  voices, 
shoulders  and  mouths  are  in  them.  But  they  do  not  make 
the  acute  victory  over  tone  volume  and  intensity  made  by 
the  unpopular  Hand  of  the  Potter. 


398 


60 

"  Deep  below  deep  lie  the  mysteries,  and 
theories  flourish  like  weeds  in  a  garden  — 
or  let  us  call  them  flowers,  for  at  times 
they  are  so  artistic.  Arts  spring  out  of  the 
mysteries,  but  the  arts  .  .  .  grow  stale  if 
left  to  themselves.  .  .  .  Life  will  have 
none  of  anything  forever.  .  .  .  We  build 
up  rules  wherewith  life  is  to  be  governed, 
and  behold!  —  some  fine  day  the  charac- 
ter of  life  itself  changes  and  our  rules  are 
worthless." 

"  But  speaking  for  a  nation  that  wishes 
to  stand  forth  .  .  .  among  those  that 
lead,  must  not  thought —  intelligent,  artis- 
tic, accurate  vision  —  be  among  its  pri- 
mary characteristics?  .  .  .  Then  why  are 
we  so  bent  .  .  .  upon  more  money,  and 
when  not  that,  upon  idealistically  misinter- 
preting life.  [Owr]  few  genuine  thinkers 
thus  far  are  taboo:  Poe,  Whitman,  Twain. 
Only  in  one  field,  finance  —  not  in  war, 
politics,  the  arts  and  sheer  intellect — do 
our  essential  individuals  compare  favor- 
ably with  those  of  other  lands.  .  .  .  And 
is  it  not  possible  .  .  .  that  .  .  .  where 
the  power  to  think  is  lacking  failure  fol- 
lows? "  DREISER:  Hey  Rub-a-Dub-Dub 


the  alliance  with  Liveright  once  again 
Dreiser  made  part  of  an  historical  moment.  And  at  this 
time  he  had  not  had  to  force  it  altogether;  he  had  been 
invited  to  join.  When  he  wrote  Sister  Carrie  he  had  raped 
an  unwilling  moment;  publication  was  a  tour  de  force. 
When  unwittingly  he  had  enlisted  English  understanding 

399 


which  permitted  the  appearance  of  The  Titan,  it  was  tak- 
ing advantage  of  another  phase  of  our  history.  It  was 
the  day  when  England  still  counted  with  us,  and  when  due 
to  Whitman,  Poe,  Norris,  Crane,  Dreiser  and  Frost  we 
were  beginning  to  count  with  England.  Now  when  it 
looked  as  if  he  might  have  to  lose  out  again,  a  new  ele- 
ment had  begun  to  make  its  appearance,  which  would  as 
much  as  Dreiser  himself  change  the  tenor  of  American 
thought.  It  was  the  advent  of  Jewish  intelligence,  about 
to  seize  new  moral  and  aesthetic  values,  and  turn  the 
moderns  from  martyrs  into  money-makers. 

Under  their  direction  not  only  intellect  for  its  own  sake 
and  art  for  its  own  sake,  but  also  "  books  that  tend  to 
corrupt  morals  "  for  their  own  sake,  would  begin  to  pay. 
Prosperity  was  at  hand.  A  kind  of  crude  artistic  licentious- 
ness soon  would  blaze,  extrinsic  to  great  art,  but  perhaps 
a  prerequisite  with  us  before  we  could  grow  up  and  be 
mature.  A  more  subtle  complicated  state  of  license  would 
have  been  proof  that  already  we  were  grown  up.  The 
contract  between  Dreiser  and  Liveright  in  May  1917, 
between  Middle  West  and  Near  East,  was  an  unconscious 
symptom  of  rough  change. 

The  battle  with  publishers  was  finally  won,  so  much  so 
that  except  for  Boston  the  battle  with  the  public  was  also 
won.  And  Boston  indeed  had  come  hardly  to  count,  so 
wholesale  its  disapproval  of  the  melting  pot,  and  so  cruel 
and  thoughtless  its  disapproval  of  the  new  country,  the 
enormous  child,  to  which  New  England  had  once  contrib- 
uted not  birth  but  anyway  conception.  The  Boston  book 
massacre  of  1927  by  which  An  American  Tragedy  was 
banned  along  with  nearly  every  other  readable  book  in  the 
world,  curiously  enough  happened  to  be  the  year  of  the 
execution  of  Sacco  and  Vanzetti.*  In  that  black  year,  Bos- 
ton the  cradle  of  the  nation,  utterly  disowning  its  own 
progeny,  though  perhaps  with  some  reason,  was  discred- 
ited and  had  to  take  a  sorry  back  seat,  very  far  back. 
Parents  have  never  been  eminent  in  the  United  States. 

*  In   the   suppression   of  An   American    Tragedy,   the   Protestant   vice 
society  had  the  support  of  a  Catholic  judge  and  jury,  who  banned  the 
novel,  according1  to  Arthur  Garfield   Hays,   chiefly  because   of  a   passing 
reference  to  birth  control. 
400 


These  parents  did  not  want  to  be.  They  kept  saying  to 
themselves,  "  Why  couldn't  it  remain  like  in  the  old  days 
of  Emerson  and  Lowell?  " 

The  new  trustees  of  the  Melting  Pot,  self-made  like 
everything  truly  American,  with  their  genius  for  presenta- 
tion were  finally  putting  the  country  on  the  map.  St.  Paul 
had  had  to  wait  for  his  dreary  dream  of  chastity  and 
hypocrisy  to  be  fulfilled  in  North  America.  Likewise  the 
ancient  Jews  wandering  for  centuries  had  to  wait  for  their 
promised  revenge  to  come  true  in  the  same  United  States, 
who  had  most  disdained  them  together  with  other  for- 
eigners, Indian,  French,  Spanish  and  Negro. 

Revenge  for  what?  Possibly  for  having  been  the  one 
race  of  Earth  seeking  at  once  poignant  emotional  and 
intellectual  unity  —  that  is,  the  one  race  untouched  by 
cynicism.  In  other  words  the  most  ambitious  of  the  sons 
of  men.  Wasn't  it  probably  for  this  difficult  program  that 
they  were  originally  punished  by  surrounding  tribes  and 
by  their  own  pragmatic  prophets?  Early  in  their  history 
they  had  of  their  own  accord  reached  an  impasse.  They 
had  invented  a  God  who  commanded  of  them  a  contradic- 
tion in  behavior:  "  He  that  is  wounded  in  the  stones  or 
who  hath  his  privy  member  cut  off  shall  not  enter  into 
the  congregation  of  the  Lord."  Yet  ignoring  the  hardship 
which  might  thereby  be  inflicted  on  those  qualified  to  enter 
into  his  congregation,  the  Lord  synchronously  decreed : 
a  Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery."  Also  in  taboo  of  art 
and  celebration  which  follow  out  of  sexual  passion,  "  The 
Lord  spake  .  .  .  lest  ye  corrupt  yourselves  and  make  you 
a  graven  image  ...  or  when  thou  seest  the  sun  and  the 
moon  and  the  stars  .  .  .  shouldst  be  driven  to  worship 
them." 

Such  a  worship  of  knowledge  coincident  with  such  a 
prohibition  of  living  undoubtedly  reduced  them  to  a  state 
of  neurasthenia,  so  that  they  succumbed  to  other  less 
highly  sensitized  peoples.  And  as  it  was  prophesied  they 
were  scattered  among  the  nations,  and  entered  the  house 
of  bondmen;  though  not  before  "  one  of  their  boys,"  as 
they  like  to  call  him,  had  been  first  executed  and  then 
deified  by  the  Romans,  the  last  conquerors  of  their  land 
before  the  day  of  their  dispersal.  And  then  it  came  to 

401 


pass  in  the  course  of  two  thousand  years  that  they  found 
their  way  to  America,  taking  always  the  statutes  and 
commandments  of  the  Lord  along  with  them,  keeping 
them  all  the  days  of  their  lives,  teaching  them  diligently 
unto  their  children.  And  their  children  became  bond  sales- 
men, so  that  the  word  of  God  was  fulfilled :  u  They  be- 
came blessed  above  all  people  "  with  money.  And  they 
did  begin  to  conquer  some  of  their  enemies  who  had  been 
mightier  than  they,  as  God  little  by  little  delivered  them 
up  unto  them.* 

Coincidently  these  wanderers  achieved  a  second  re- 
venge, this  time  against  their  own  Deity  —  a  revenge  for 
that  day  thousands  of  years  ago  when  in  Mohab  he 
spoiled  their  fun;  broke  in  on  their  dance  and  song,  and 
forbade  them  to  worship  the  calf  of  gold,  made  for  them 
by  their  artist  Aaron,  out  of  the  earrings  and  ornaments 
of  their  wives.  A  number  of  them  began  again  the  wor- 
ship of  gold  with  song  and  dance,  usually  Negro,  in  open 
defiance  of  the  covenant  with  their  God.  And  they  coined 
some  of  the  gold  out  of  the  wisdom  of  whatever  artists 
and  scientists  they  could  find  around  them  —  out  of  that 
sacred  abstract  flame  for  which  once  they  built  the  taber- 
nacle ;  that  word  of  God,  that  inspiration  which  more  than 
any  other  people  they  had  been  trained  to  worship.  Their 
intellect  condensed  through  passion,  their  avid  wish  to 
hold  concourse  with  Deity  in  rich  clothes  worthy  of  Him, 
to  wring  from  Him  his  last  secret,  their  sheer  curiosity 
coupled  with  the  need  of  revenge  for  centuries  of  perse- 
cution —  this  combined  Jewish  element  finally  arrived 
to  take  over  Yankee  Anglo-Saxon  America,  that  country 
most  hostile  to  them. 

Dreiser  lent  himself  to  this  Oriental  holiday.  So,  for 
example,  did  Frost  and  Sandburg  when  the  critic  Louis 
Untermeyer  appointed  himself  advertising  agent  for  all 
the  new  poets.  It  was  really  the  most  irresistible  thing 
that  had  yet  happened  in  America,  the  control  by 

*  "  And  the  Lord  thy  God  will  put  out  these  nations  before  thee  by 
little  and  little:  thou  mayest  not  consume  them  at  once,  lest  the  beasts 
of  the  field  increase  upon  thee.  But  the  Lord  thy  God  shall  deliver  them 
unto  thee,  and  shall  destroy  them  with  a  mighty  destruction,  until  they 
be  destroyed."  Deuteronomy. 
402 


Jewish  intellect  of  Gentile  invention  all  out  of  the  great 
melting  pot.  And  yet  what  was  wrong  with  it?  Was  it  too 
late  perhaps  for  the  two  elements  to  know  how  to  mingle  ? 
Or  were  the  first  years  of  mingling  inevitably  naive?  The 
alliance  was  in  the  case  of  Dreiser  naive.  He  had  too  much 
plain  Indiana  sense  and  dreaminess,  too  earthen  a  temper 
to  know  how  to  join  with  these  Eastern  cerebral  volup- 
tuaries. He  did  not  fit  quite  with  the  champagne  by  cases, 
Shebas  from  the  Follies,  and  shimmying  from  Harlem, 
with  which  the  new-style  publisher  liked  to  overwhelm 
such  favorite  authors  as  Dreiser,  Anderson,  and  Ber- 
trand  Russell,  say,  by  way  of  bonus.  And  yet  of  course  it 
was  "  hopeful,"  Dreiser  thought,  to  see  a  kind  of  liberty 
and  color  and  luxury  invading  the  Home  of  the  Brave. 
Hadn't  he  hoped  for  it  all  these  years? 

Once  walking  through  a  park,  he  had  deplored  to  his 
companion  the  fact  of  a  policeman  who  was  separating 
two  lovers,  and  his  friend  had  laughed:  "I  suppose  to 
you  the  policeman  is  the  criminal?  You  would  like  to  see 
public  pavilions  in  parks  for  love-making?"  —  "Cer- 
tainly, why  not?  "  was  his  answer.  "  That's  what  this  city 
needs !  "  At  that  date  he  was  sure  of  it.  Yet  a  number  of 
years  later  in  1930  he  was  not  so  sure.  He  said  sadly: 
"  If  I  have  had  any  influence  it  seems  to  me  it  has  been 
merely  to  turn  people  upside  down."  —  "  What  in  child- 
birth is  called  the  breech-presentation?  "  —  "  Yes,  that's 
about  all  ...  when  what  I  wanted  was  to  see  mind  and 
body  united  again !  "  —  "I  know  —  an  equal  develop- 
ment of  intellect  and  senses?"  —  "  Why  not?  Nothing 
counts  without  mind  and  taste."  —  "  But  mind  and  taste 
come  only  with  background.  Americans  are  a  people  de- 
tached in  a  foreground.  You  can't  blame  them  if  they  are 
merely  tumbled  upside  down."  —  "  No,  you  can't  blame 
them.  We  might  start  a  club  to  cultivate  background." 

In  this  talk  I  remember  Dreiser  as  with  eyes  looking 
backward  through  generations  and  forward,  shaping  im- 
ages of  people  brilliantly  engaged,  despite  the  wreckage 
and  seaweed  around  American  moorings.  He  looked  the 
intention  of  his  books  —  that  they  should  be  potent  and 
inclusive,  even  if  they  could  not  be  hopeful. 


403 


In  1917,  1918,  1919,  when  the  summary  of  his  philoso- 
phy, Hey-Rub-A-Dub-Dub,  was  published,  he  availed  him- 
self little  of  the  new  society  which  the  editors  and  pro- 
ducers, his  publisher  among  them,  were  forming  in  New 
York,  and  which  promised  to  be  a  triumph  of  what  the 
excluded  could  do  when  once  they  had  collected  them- 
selves to  exclude.  Who  were  his  hosts  after  all?  Procurers 
not  creators!  And  he  more  than  they  had  consumed 
energy  and  time  to  dig  canals  from  life  itself  into  pub- 
lishers' offices,  through  which  now  other  streams  from 
kindred  geniuses  were  more  easily  released  into  print. 
Creation  at  last  filled  the  air  contagiously.  He  felt  that, 
whether  they  acknowledged  him  or  not,  he  belonged  if 
anywhere  among  the  craftsmen  of  no  matter  what  race; 
not  among  the  editors  and  propagandists. 

Impatiently  as  Dreiser  talked  with  others  in  this  day 
he  pleated  and  repleated  his  handkerchief  —  that  singu- 
lar habit  of  his.  What  else  was  there  to  do  with  people 
who  reckoned  by  clocks  and  bank  accounts  ?  Sometimes  he 
flung  the  handkerchief  out  like  a  challenge  in  case  anyone 
would  like  to  reckon  by  intensity.  What  other  gesture 
was  there  to  make  among  companions  who  were  either 
poor  in  emotion  or  poor  in  intellect?  When  would  there 
ever  be  in  the  United  States  a  merger  of  the  two,  which 
alone  produced  great  art  in  individuals  or  in  races?  In  a 
lonely  way  he  was  certain  of  the  need  and  the  lack  of  this 
merger.  His  intention  had  not  in  the  least  changed  since 
the  days  of  Sister  Carrie  —  "Art  was  life  seen  through 
a  temperament."  But  one  had  to  be  by  temperament  at 
once  realist  and  mystic  to  see  life  the  way  it  was. 

Even  his  great  friend  Mencken,  he  was  beginning  to 
feel,  perhaps  unfairly,  was  "  interested  only  in  the  visible 
face  of  life,"  not  at  all  "  in  the  invisible  mechanism  with 
which  science  is  always  concerned."  Yet  judged  by  his 
writings  this  critic  was  devoting  himself  to  the  pursuit  of 
technique,  by  which  intangible  route  alone  one  can  proceed 
surely  to  frontiers.  But  he  approached  technique  more 
diffidently  than  the  novelist,  in  fact  meticulously  step  by 
step  along  paths  of  language  trod  by  others.  And  some- 
times he  got  detained  by  the  others.  Dreiser  on  the  other 
hand  took  tremendous  strides  by  way  of  underbrush  and 
404 


swamps  and  over  deserts  and  precipices,  any  plunging 
way  he  could  find  to  arrive  at  the  barriers  of  the  unknown. 
His  book  of  philosophy  with  the  plaintive  title  was  a 
paraphrase  of  his  intellectual  journey  up  to  this  time. 
Though  Mencken  had  begged  him  to  write  it,  now  that 
it  was  completed  he  let  him  down :  "  It  is  not  so  much  un- 
intelligible as  unintelligent,"  that  is,  "  uneducated  .  .  . 
I  don't  think  you  argue  well."  Dreiser's  answer  was  that 
he  didn't  care.  He  was  sure  he  had  "  blazed  a  chemical 
trail  "  in  the  book,  and  someone  would  come  along  who 
would  get  it  and  "  make  it  very  clear."  The  essays,  he 
said,  contained  "  the  sub-stone  of  a  new  philosophy,  on 
which  could  be  reared  a  sounder  approach  to  life  than  is 
now  voiced."  The  soundness  of  the  approach,  the  book 
implied,  was  in  direct  ratio  to  the  attitude  of  uncertainty, 
of  vagueness  really,  with  which  a  philosopher  was  willing 
to  go,  seeking  his  way  into  the  mysteries.  A  voice  in  the 
play  Laughing  Gas  expresses  the  floating  pier  on  which 
the  positives  and  negatives  of  his  philosophy  rest : 

"  No  high,  no  low !  No  low,  no  high !  Time  without  measure, 
measure  without  time.  A  rising,  a  sinking!  An  endless  ris- 
ing, an  endless  sinking.  .  .  ." 

"  Behind,  before,  beneath,  above,  presence  without  reality, 
reality  without  presence.  .  .  ." 

"  A  rising,  a  sinking!  An  endless  rising!  An  endless  sinking! 
Outward  without  inward !  Inward  without  outward !  " 

As  for  certainties  he  was  certain  only  of  his  desire  to 
present  enigmas,  and  given  health  he  would  find  all  of 
them  worth  the  effort.  Two  interviews  to  newspapers, 
one  in  1911,  the  other  in  1921,  show  how  consistent  and 
flexible  his  attitude  was  in  these  ten  years.  In  1911  before 
sailing  for  Europe  he  confided  to  a  reporter: 

"  I  can  see  no  intelligent  sequence  of  cause  and  effect  in 
life.  .  .  .  No,  I  don't  feel  any  less  happy  on  account  of 
that.  .  .  .  Life  interests  me  intensely  for  that  very  rea- 
son. ...  It  is  more  thrilling  than  the  most  gorgeous  spec- 
tacle that  man  ever  planned.  .  .  .  Besides  being  dramatic, 
it  is  beautiful,  and  I  believe  that  beauty  is  eternal.  .  .  . 
That  would  be  the  reason  for  life,  if  there  were  any.  .  .  . 

"  No,  I  don't  think  there  is  such  a  thing  as  progress  in 
the  sense  that  we  use  the  word.  It  is  merely  a  change.  Who 
can  say  that  it  is  better  to  worship  the  home  as  we  do  today 
than  it  was  in  the  old  times  to  worship  a  bull  or  a  spider? 

405 


.  .  .  Who  can  say  that  the  teachings  of  Jesus  Christ  have 
really  held  for  two  thousand  years?  Certainly  it  isn't  true 
today  that  one  should  turn  the  other  cheek." 

And  in  1921,  in  the  high  tide  of  "  realism/'  as  if  to 
repudiate  his  title  of  pioneer  realist,  another  interview 
seems  to  say,  "  I  refuse  to  be  named  or  labeled.  Expect 
anything  from  me  except  lack  of  instinct " : 

"  Today  in  America  the  realistic  novel  is  at  its  climac- 
teric .  .  .  '  Main  Street/  '  Zell,'  '  Moon  Calf '  .  .  .  <  Erik 
Dorn/  '  Brass/  '  The  Narrow  House  '  and  others.  .  .  .  We 
are  growing  a  crop  of  rugged,  hard-hitting,  outspoken 
novelists  and  this  is  not  a  matter  to  be  deplored.  .  .  . 
But  ... 

"  What  we  miss  in  American  fiction  is  power  of  imagina- 
tion. .  .  .  Perhaps  it  is  not  out  of  place  to  speak  of  this 
at  the  time  of  the  centenary  of  ...  Dante.  If  there  are 
all  the  chain  cigar  stores,  chain  drug  stores,  haberdash- 
eries, movie  theatres,  and  big  hotels  in  Manhattan  to  de- 
scribe, here  are  also  Hell,  Heaven  and  Purgatory  of  the 
soul,  which  Dante  would  have  found.  It  is  that  he  would 
have  gone  beyond  mere  realistic  description  and  shown 
us  the  half-monstrous  proportions  of  our  city  like  a  giant 
sphinx  with  wings.  The  power  of  such  imagination  would 
lift  a  modern  book  into  glorious  fantasy. 

"...  The  mechanical  miracle  around  us  ...  keen 
works  of  science  and  philosophy  ...  it  would  seem  that 
men  should  be  stimulated  as  never  before.  Yet  .  .  .  vigor 
our  novelists  possess,  but  little  exaltation.  .  .  .  They  are 
content  to  examine  the  inside  of  a  boarding  house  or 
chronicle  the  mere  number  of  windows  in  the  colossal 
stone  and  steel  shells  of  our  buildings.  They  stick  close  to 
the  curbstone.  They  rarely  climb  any  such  heights  as  Dante 
climbed  to  look  out  over  the  tremendous  waste  of  lives.  .  .  . 
The  true  epic  of  a  modern  city  has  never  been  written. 
It  is  no  longer  a  theme  for  poetry.  It  demands  an  epic 
treatment  in  prose.  .  .  . 

"  The  modern  city  is  as  mystical  a  thing  ...  as  a  para- 
diso.  It  is  so  crowded  with  grotesque,  ironic,  evilly  fan- 
tastic things.  .  .  .  Nothing  is  too  terrible,  absurd  or  sub- 
lime to  happen  here  and  now.  The  palette  is  prepared  with 
every  conceivable  color  for  a  master  painter." 

So  Dreiser  gave  to  the  newspapers  his  own  plans  in  the 
name  of  the  great  Florentine.  He  had  tried  but  apparently 
he  had  not  realized  them  yet.  There  must  have  been  mo- 
ments in  The  Titan,  The  "  Genius/'  The  Hand  of  the 
Potter,  where  his  intention  was  clear?  But  perhaps  not. 
406 


Anyway  it  was  proved  that  the  play  was  not  the  thing.  He 
had  done  his  utmost  to  make  a  potent  play.  "  First  and 
last "  he  had  wanted  to  do  that.  And  yet  apparently  it 
scarcely  counted  in  current  calculations.  It  was  the  same 
with  his  essays.  Daring  as  they  were,  they  went  almost 
unchallenged.  Younger  Americans  took  the  trail  he  had 
blazed,  but  as  yet  they  have  not  made  it  clearer.  In  fact 
so  far  they  have  let  windfalls  block  the  way. 

At  length  however  he  had  a  publisher  who  promised 
to  let  him  live  and  write  as  he  saw  fit.  And  it  must  be  said 
for  Liveright  of  the  copper  mask  that  as  nearly  as  he 
knew  how  he  kept  that  clause  of  the  contract.  By  this  time 
it  was  an  almost  unpopular  thing  to  do;  since  in  spite 
of  achievement  for  others  as  well  as  himself,  America's 
"  outstanding  "  novelist  was  beginning  to  be  demoded. 
There  were  new  writers,  whose  freedom  he  had  partly 
made  possible,  who  for  some  years  were  dressing  in  more 
alluring  clothes  than  he.  Indeed  they  were  more  fashion- 
able. They  were  moderns  in  manner.  Yet  Liveright  with 
Hebraic  instinct  for  the  inner  flame  of  the  temple,  in 
other  words  for  the  truth  or  the  search  for  truth,  be- 
lieved in  his  Hoosier.  In  the  end  he  was  repaid  in  fame 
and  gold;  and  could  afford  to  be  as  rude  as  he  liked, 
and  have  offices  fitted  with  a  near  Gothic-Jacobean  music 
room. 

In  1919  the  Hoosier  took  himself  off  to  California 
far  from  his  favorite  city,  New  York.  There  for  three 
years  he  lived  —  a  kind  of  vacation.  Yet  there  too  he 
completed  his  second  volume  of  autobiography,  News- 
paper Days.*  And  under  the  title  The  Color  of  a  Great 
City  he  collected  his  sketches  of  that  earlier  New  York 
which  was  already  changing  into  a  new  premise  from 
which  to  compute  reality.  And  always  he  played  with  the 
idea  of  the  new  Inferno,  which  was  to  make  a  "  mystical 
drama  "  out  of  modern  life  as  dictated  by  the  city,  and 
which  would  perhaps  place  him  among  the  poets.  The 
tenacious  Mencken  wrote  him  repeatedly: 

"Why  don't  you  come  back?  Younger  men  have  taken 
your  place.  You  are  being  forgotten.  What  in  hell  are  you 
doing  in  Los  Angeles?  The  town  must  be  unspeakable,  a 

*  Called  A  Book  About  Myself  and  published  in  November  1922. 

407 


huge  den  of  Baptists.  .  .  .  Every  tourist  coming  back  from 
the  Coast  has  some  tale  about  your  Roman  levities.  Yes- 
terday I  heard  that  you  had  gone  over  to  the  Theosophists, 
and  are  living  at  Point  Loma  in  a  yellow  robe,  with  hash- 
eesh blossoms  in  your  hair.  .  .  ." 

As  part  of  the  luxury  of  this  period  he  planted  a  gar- 
den, made  vegetables  grow  the  way  they  used  to  in  Sul- 
livan. And  he  initiated  what  seems  to  have  been  the  most 
coherent  of  his  many  relations  with  women  since  his 
first  marriage.  She  was  a  young  and  beautiful  Hollywood 
novice,  who,  it  is  said,  abandoned  her  career  as  a  screen 
actress  in  favor  of  Dreiser.  At  last  his  wishes  had  come 
almost  true.  He  had  a  liberal  publisher,  enough  money 
to  live  on  and  write,  and  would  have  more  when  The 
"  Genius  "  was  republished  in  July  1923  and  sold  at  once 
50,000  copies.  And  now  he  had  the  American,  perhaps 
universal  necessity,  "  the  beauty  of  youth  "  without  which 
"  life  was  a  joke  .  .  .  yes,  the  beauty  of  eighteen  [or 
not  far  from  it].  It  was  the  standard,  and  the  history 
of  the  world  proved  it."  This  he  had  written  for  his 
"  Genius  "  to  say  as  if  the  words  were  his  own,  and  he 
has  written  it  in  autobiography.  He  had  this  now  without 
complications ;  with  no  pledge,  as  with  his  first  wife,  that 
she  must  be  all  he  would  ever  have.  There  were  other 
relations  that  still  concerned  him;  there  might  be  new 
adventures.  He  has  recorded  himself  as  exercising  the 
right  of  these.  It  was  a  part  of  his  code  as  conqueror  and 
logician.  Why  other  men  did  not  make  it  part  of  theirs 
he  had  often  wondered.  On  these  terms  life  was  luxurious 
in  Los  Angeles.  He  would  not  have  come  East  again,  he 
thinks,  except  that  he  was  forgetting  to  work  and  he  had 
work  to  do.  Perhaps  too  he  was  homesick  for  the  more 
nervous  air  of  New  York,  nearer  to  Europe  and  to  old 
cultures  which  he  valued  as  shamelessly  as  he  did  youth 
and  beauty. 

Dreiser  has  said  that  he  pondered  over  the  tragedy  of 
Americans  from  1918  to  1923.  One  climax  of  tragedy 
was  murder.  Franklin  Booth  the  illustrator,  whose  guest 
he  had  been  on  his  Hoosier  holiday,  remembers  a  con- 
versation one  night  in  New  York,  back  in  1907,  one  of 
those  impersonal  exchanges  that  happen  only  between  in- 
408 


timates,  and  in  the  detached  clarity  of  night.  They  had 
both  wondered  if  murder  was  not  the  most  dramatic  act 
a  man  could  commit.  Dreiser  said  that  to  be  entirely  ex- 
perienced perhaps  a  man  would  have  had  to  commit  mur- 
der. But  lacking  that,  a  novelist  to  realize  the  gamut  of 
life  would  have  to  be  brave  enough  to  imagine  himself  in 
the  clothes  and  skin  of  a  murderer.  He  was  incompetent 
yet  to  write  such  a  book,  but  some  time  vicariously  he 
would  get  there.  .  .  . 

The  Hand  of  the  Potter  was  the  first  fugue  on  this 
theme.  The  play  scarcely  reached  an  audience,  but  always 
the  theme  engrossed  him.  He  would  pose  the  problem  in 
a  different  more  exhaustive  form.  He  would  take  a  man 
nearer  to  normal,  supposedly  responsible  for  his  actions, 
and  show  how  he  too  could  get  caught,  and  precisely  how 
in  accordance  with  the  aimless  inchoate  American  world, 
or  rather  where  the  one  social  aim  was  exteriority  — 
money,  fun  and  show.  A  letter  dated  July  1916  from  a 
writer  on  the  New  York  World  to  Jack  Pratt,  lawyer 
or  librarian,  reveals  Dreiser  as  always  busy  with  the 
problem : 

"Just  a  line  to  introduce  America's  greatest  novelist  — 
Theodore  Dreiser  —  who  would  like  to  read  the  Orket 
clippings  —  Will  you  fix  it  for  him  and  oblige.  .  .  ." 

The  book  like  all  his  books  must  be  drawn  from  reality 
—  a  weakness  according  to  his  detractors  (who  like  to 
say  that  he  is  only  a  reporter,  a  plagiarist  from  life) .  His 
answer  might  have  been  that  by  that  last  token  so  then 
was  Homer,  so  was  Balzac,  so  is  Andre  Gide  a  plagiarist 
from  life.  But  Dreiser  has  never  taken  the  trouble  to 
answer  for  himself  unless  directly  challenged  by  the  law. 
He  read  and  discarded,  he  says,  five  American  tragedies, 
before  he  came  on  an  actuality  whose  circumstances  pro- 
vided him  with  the  frame  he  wanted.  And  then  he  varied 
the  tangle  of  events  slightly,  in  order,  so  he  told  me,  to 
pose  a  criminal  problem  which  no  one  could  answer.  In 
such  a  way  his  masterpiece,  as  it  is  called,  grew  through 
years  in  his  changing  mind.  An  interviewer  quotes  him 
as  saying: 

"  I  never  make  notes.  I  carry  my  plots  around  with  me 
year  after  year  before  setting  pen  to  paper.  By  the  time  I 

409 


am  ready  to  write  I  see  the  book  as  plainly  as  if  it  were  a 
tree  rising  up  before  my  eyes.  Root,  trunk,  branches,  twigs, 
so  to  speak,  are  all  there;  it  is  only  the  leaves  that  require 
to  be  sketched  in." 

In  1922  he  came  back  from  California  to  work  at 
sketching  in  the  leaves.  By  November  1925  the  leafage 
of  An  American  Tragedy  was  completed,  and  a  cycle 
turned  for  Dreiser. 


410 


61 

"  Pigeons  on  the  grass  alas. 

Pigeons  on  the  grass  alas. 

Short  longer  longer  shorter  yellow  grass 

Pigeons    large    pigeons    on    the    shorter 

longer  yellow  grass  alas  pigeons  on  the 

grass 

If  they  were  not  pigeons  what  were  they. 
If  they  were  not  pigeons  on  the  grass  alas 

what  were  they."  GERTRUDE  STEIN 


JLhis  plaintive  and  precise  succession  of  words, 
meaning  I  know  not  what  in  relation  to  its  context,  de- 
scribes to  my  liking  these  ten  to  fifteen  years  of  awakened 
consciousness  at  which  the  United  States  had  arrived.  And 
William  James  has  somewhere  analysed  such  a  period  — 
the  throb  and  defeat : 

"  Sporadic  great  men  come  everywhere.  But  for  a  com- 
munity to  get  vibrating  through  and  through  with  intensely 
active  life,  many  geniuses  coming  together  and  in  rapid 
succession  are  required.  This  is  why  great  epochs  are  so 
rare  —  why  the  sudden  bloom  of  a  Greece,  an  early  Rome, 
a  Renaissance,  is  such  a  mystery.  Then  the  mass  of  a 
nation  grows  incandescent,  and  may  continue  to  glow  long 
after  the  originators  .  .  .  have  passed  away.  We  often  hear 
surprise  expressed  that  in  these  high  tides  ...  not  only 
the  people  should  be  filled  with  stronger  life,  but  that  in- 
dividual geniuses  should  seem  to  be  so  extraordinarily 
abundant.  This  mystery  is  just  about  as  deep  as  ...  why 
great  rivers  flow  by  great  towns.  It  is  true  that  great  public 
fermentations  awaken  and  adopt  many  geniuses,  who  in 
more  torpid  times  would  have  had  no  chance  to  work. 
But  over  and  above  this  there  must  be  an  exceptional  con- 
course of  genius  about  a  time,  to  make  the  fermentation 
begin  at  all.  The  unlikeliness  of  the  concourse  is  far  greater 
than  the  unlikeliness  of  any  particular  genius.  .  .  .  Why, 
the  very  laws  of  physics  are  conditional,  and  deal  with  ifs. 
The  physicist  does  not  say  the  water  will  boil  anyhow;  he 
only  says  the  water  will  boil  if  a  fire  be  kindled  under  it." 

411 


Of  course  there  was  the  water,  there  was  the  fire; 
there  were  many  geniuses  and  some  steam  and  a  brief 
boiling  point.  But  how  much  incandescence,  that  is  the 
question?  There  was  the  grass,  longer,  shorter,  grass; 
there  were  the  pigeons,  large  enough,  but  how  much 
concourse  ? 

After  Dreiser's  Titan,  of  books  of  genius  easily  re- 
membered Spoon  River  Anthology  came  first,  published 
in  book  form  in  1915,  composed  between  1909  and  1914,* 
and  first  printed  in  Reedy's  Mirror  and  Poetry.  This 
pigeon  came  from  the  iambic,  dactylic,  trochaic,  ana- 
paestic, but  chiefly  iambic  Masters,  the  lawyer  in  Chi- 
cago with  village  birth  and  city  hopes  and  universal 
brain.  He  could  say  in  lightest  talk  to  Edward  Sheldon, 
a  romantic  dramatist  of  that  day,  at  a  luncheon  from 
whose  table  Masters  had  removed  the  arrangement  of 
Venetian  glass  flowers  —  they  were  in  his  way:  "  Poetry? 
You  think  of  it  as  romantic?  A  lyric  has  to  be  authentic 
as  a  drop  of  dew." 

And  he  wrote  lyrics  authentic  in  the  sense  of  dew,  to- 
gether with  poems  authentic  like  a  drought.  But  in  this 
period  of  reaction  from  romance  his  bleak  Anthology  so 
gratified  his  readers  that  afterwards  few  would  notice 
any  other  book  he  published.  In  the  years  to  come  per- 
haps they  will  discover  his  Toward  the  Gulf,  The  Great 
Valley,  Domesday  Book.  They  will  find  in  them  the  same 
^  authentic  brain  of  the  Anthology,  but  creation  more 
elaborate,  more  provocative,  and  perhaps  not  quite  so 
free.  Radical  Americans  almost  always  end  by  going 
back  to  Europe.  Masters  went  back  through  rhetoric  and 
prosody,  unwilling  to  survive  in  the  cadences  and  idiom 
of  his  own  land  which  were  too  brutal  or  too  leisurely. 
He  went  back  into  British  metrical  conventions,  the  way 
a  lady  from  Kalamazoo  would  buy  a  seignorial  castle  on 
the  summit  of  a  Maritime  Alp.  Among  them  he  lived 
estranged. 

Yet  in  1915  what  confidence  Americans  had  in  Edgar 
Lee  Masters,  with  intellect  equal  to  Dreiser's  and  a 
greater  verbal  wisdom !  His  brief  conclusive  epitaphs 

*  As  Masters  tells  it  in  his  dedication  of  Toward  The  Gulf  to  William 
Marion  Reedy. 

412 


spoke  to  them  of  life  and  death  truly  American,  not 
British,  not  metropolitan.  They  voiced  the  forgotten  talk 
of  a  whole  segment  of  the  country,  from  which  the  rest 
of  it  could  be  reconstructed  —  of  poor  relatives,  of  dis- 
reputable people,  of  nonentities  unknown  to  High  So- 
ciety. And  they  spoke  their  irony  from  the  heart,  not  in 
thin  staccato  of  Main  Street. 

Some  years  before  the  Anthology  was  published  or 
heard  of,  Dreiser  first  met  Masters,  a  lawyer  in  Clar- 
ence Darrow's  office.  And  he  told  the  young  newspaper- 
men, who  hung  by  eyelashes  to  culture  at  Maurice 
Browne's  Little  Theatre,  that  here  was  an  American 
poet;  they  must  watch  for  him.  They  laughed  at  Dreiser, 
a  mere  stupid  genius  they  said,  but  two  years  later  mar- 
veled at  his  foresight.  These  two,  novelist  and  poet,  thus 
flagged  each  other  in  the  new  American  dawn,  both  desir- 
ing civilization;  and  then  in  later  years  abandoned  hope 
of  it  for  their  country  in  their  time ;  and  in  time  the  poet 
abandoned  the  novelist. 

Out  of  Illinois  too  in  this  day  came  Nicholas  Vachel 
Lindsay,  revivalist  poet,  the  nearest  to  evangelism  that 
letters  have  come.  Poetry,  A  Magazine  of  Verse  was 
sponsor  for  him;  the  assistant  editor,  Alice  Corbin,  had 
found  him.  General  Booth  Enters  Heaven,  The  Congo, 
The  Chinese  Nightingale  took  Americans  white,  black, 
yellow,  reformed  hoboes,  Negroes,  laundrymen  back  to 
where  they  thought  they  came  from  —  Heaven,  Africa, 
Nanking.  Lindsay's  father  had  been  a  missionary  in 
China.  He  himself  believed  in  opposites,  lewdness  and 
chastity,  god  and  devil,  flesh  and  spirit.  His  poems  filled 
with  precepts  were  sure  of  himself,  sure  of  America,  sure 
of  his  home-town,  Springfield,  Illinois.  He  had  a  gift 
direct  from  William  Blake. 

In  1913  William  Butler  Yeats  praised  him  at  a  ban- 
quet in  Chicago  designed  to  celebrate  Miss  Monroe's 
new  magazine  and  to  honor  the  Irish  poet.  He  said  that 
given  this  poet,  the  only  modern  he  had  read,  there  must 
be  others.  He  was  right,  there  were.  First  after  Yeats 
had  spoken,  Edgar  Lee  Masters  read  a  poem  Silence, 
that  thing  more  praised  than  song  by  most  Americans, 
perhaps  because  we  have  more  noise  than  song.  Then 


Lindsay,  who  had  the  charm  of  preferring  song  to  silence, 
rose  and,  eyes  and  forehead  rolling,  read  for  the  first 
time  his  Congo,  tobogganing  up  and  down,  back  and 
forth  over  the  cadences  of  the  poem.  Yeats,  who  had 
just  been  preaching  native  art  to  the  banqueters,  was  yet 
horrified  by  the  oratory  of  this  missionary  voice  —  voice 
akin  to  William  J.  Bryan's,  an  American  free-silver  voice 
capable  of  drums,  lutes,  calliopes,  a  band  of  instruments. 
"  Can't  someone  tell  him  that  a  poem  is  a  matter  of 
art,  not  of  self-abuse?"  Mr.  Yeats  murmured  to  him- 
self. But  the  Illinois  dancing  poet  did  not  care,  did  not 
notice.  The  praise  or  censure  of  a  master  meant  nothing 
to  him. 

A  banquet  however  was  a  banquet,  and  this  banquet, 
Lindsay  told  the  wife  of  the  toastmaster,  who  had  tried 
the  best  he  could  to  combine  culture  and  creation  in  the 
hog  butchers'  city,  had  been  a  gala  evening:  "  I've  had  a 
real  good  time  "  were  his  words  in  the  down-state  lingo 
he  affected.  And  he  added,  "  Now  I'm  not  one  to  be  car- 
nally minded  —  I  wouldn't  want  you  to  think  so,  ma'am, 
but  you've  got  some  pretty  fine  looking  young  women  at 
this  barbecue,  dressed  up  in  what  looks  to  me  like  genuine 
Parisian  rags.  I  wouldn't  care  if  I  met  two  or  three  of 
them  again."  A  dinner  party  followed.  I  appeared  to  fig- 
ure in  the  number,  but  soon  to  fall  from  favor.  Sitting 
next  to  the  new  poet  I  felicitated  him  on  praise  from 
Yeats.  His  reply  was  meant  to  annihilate : 

"  Well,  lady,  where  have  you  been?  It  looks  like  you've 
led  a  pretty  sheltered  life.  .  .  .  Now  I  want  to  tell  you 
something.  I  don't  care  what  an  Irishman  or  an  English- 
man or  a  Chinese  or  an  Australian  has  to  say  about  me." 
—  "  What  do  you  care  about  then?"  I  hazarded,  and 
found  out  —  "  I  care  what  the  people  of  Springfield,  Illi- 
nois have  to  say  about  my  poems,  and  that's  about  all." 
I  asked  out  of  mere  bravado  if  the  people  of  Springfield, 
Illinois  were  not  sheltered  too,  but  in  reality  I  was  fright- 
ened. I  knew  then  at  that  party  following  the  Poetry  ban- 
quet that  the  old  world  was  over;  a  spirit  back  of  nations 
had  cut  the  rope  that  tethered  us.  The  new  world  was 
on  its  way,  and  the  people  would  not  care  for  Nicholas 
Vachel  Lindsay  for  very  long  or  for  any  other  poet  or 
414 


artist  at  all.  His  own  indifference  was  a  prophecy  of  the 
flood  of  forgetfulness  soon  to  come. 

He  went  however  on  his  way  "  exchanging  rhymes 
for  bread  "  south,  east,  north,  and  west.  Sometimes  peo- 
ple gave  him  bread  and  listened  to  the  rhymes,  especially 
in  Chicago,  New  York  and  London.  But  in  Kansas,  Mis- 
souri and  Tennessee,  he  tells  it  himself,  sometimes  they 
gave  him  the  bread  at  once  so  they  would  not  have  to 
listen  to  his  often  impeccable  ballads  and  lyrics.  Yet  be- 
fore the  waters  closed  over  on  this  period,  the  militant 
localism  which  Lindsay  preached  and  sang  bore  fruit  in 
the  United  States.  He  was  one  of  the  sporadic  geniuses. 
His  poems  were  pigeons  out  of  which  came  other  lonely 
pigeons  to  adorn  the  blue  green  yellow  grass.  .  .  .  Eight- 
een years  later  a  chance  remark  of  his  betrayed  that  he 
too  must  have  been  more  cynic  than  optimist.  It  was  not 
many  weeks  before  his  death  that  he  happened  to  say: 
"  I  have  been  the  world  over  looking  for  another  such 
audience  as  I  found  in  Chicago  in  1913. 1  have  not  found 
it."  It  must  have  been  that  the  people  of  Springfield, 
Illinois  had  disappointed  him  after  all,  and  that  he  longed 
for  the  shelter  of  experienced  judgment.  He  like  the  rest 
of  us  apparently  felt  the  stir  of  creation  in  that  day  and, 
though  loath  to  admit  it,  knew  finally  that  it  had  come 
out  of  America  by  way  of  Europe  —  both  immigrant  and 
patrician  Europe. 

And  that  was  not  all  —  the  banquet  in  honor  of  Yeats 
was  again  a  forecast  of  books  to  come.  A  newspaper  man, 
Carl  Sandburg,  born  of  Swedish  parents  in  Galesburg, 
Illinois,  spoke  for  the  first  time  to  a  poetry  audience. 
He  said  these  words,  phrased  like  a  song: 

"  I  am  riding  on  a  limited  express,  one  of  the  crack  trains 

of  the  nation. 
Hurtling  aross  the  prairie  into  blue  haze  and  dark  air  go 

fifteen  all  steel  coaches  holding  a  thousand  people. 
(All  the  coaches  shall  be  scrap  and  rust  and  all  the  men 

and  women  laughing  in  the  diners  and  sleepers  shall 

pass  to  ashes.) 
I  ask  a  man  in  the  diner  where  he  is  going  and  he  answers: 

'  Omaha.' ' 

After  the  last  three  syllables  O-ma-ha,  which  sounded 
and  isolated  the  value  of  an  American  name  for  almost 


the  first  time  in  a  line  of  poetry,  there  was  a  murmur  and 
a  sigh  in  the  hall.  Yeats  could  not  complain  of  oratory. 
Here  was  another  deliberate  poet,  knowing  that  "  the 
muses  love  violence  "  and  love  delicacy  too.  And  certain 
that  a  poem  comes  to  the  poet  from  everyday  speech  and 
action. 

For  him  how  different  the  source  from  that  of  the  Irish 
poet !  For  him  it  would  be  Milwaukee,  Chicago,  Cicero 
home  of  gangsters  and  machine-guns,  Maywood  or  Elm- 
hurst  where  he  lived,  or  any  station  between,  from  which 
poems  would  come  to  him  u  asking  to  be  written."  It 
would  be  the  office  of  the  Chicago  Daily  News  or  Wabash 
Avenue  and  State  Street  scene  of  race  riots,  or  the  Stock 
Yards  or  the  rolling  mills  at  Gary  and  South  Chicago; 
or  the  frog-puddles  along  railroads  in  April,  or  the  utter 
fire  of  rye  and  wheat  fields  west  of  Maywood  —  it  would 
be  wherever  he  went  that  "  deliberate  speech  "  would 
come  to  him  and  give  him  "  letters  telegrams  and  radios." 
They  were  messages  that  chose  to  ignore  "what  love 
is,  what  beauty  is,  what  truth  is,  what  art  is,"  or  to 
dismiss  them  as  worn-out  words.  Decoded,  these  mes- 
sages speak  the  song  of  blood  and  muscles,  glands  and 
bones,  in  animals,  laborers  and  strugglers,  akin  to  the 
song  in  stars,  sea  and  mountains.  They  tell  how  when 
men  get  very  rich  or  want  to  get  very  rich,  they  pay 
the  price  of  having  lost  that  song.  They  speak  of  travel- 
ers and  natives  met  by  the  way,  but  they  speak  ellipti- 
cally  and  in  the  chosen  free  verse  of  their  special  free 
forms. 

While  Whitman  chanted  monumentally  intending  to 
inspire;  while  Dreiser  wrote  humbly  and  hugely  wishing 
always  to  elucidate;  and  Masters  wrote  tearfully  and  bit- 
terly to  lament;  and  Lindsay  sang  lustfully  to  uplift; 
Sandburg  picked  his  way  elegantly,  an  aristocrat  of  our 
slang  and  idiom.  Like  the  others  he  went  directly  into 
nature  and  came  out  with  as  much  love ;  and  with  a  more 
precise  ear  for  poetic  form  as  related  to  promiscuous 
America  than  anyone  before  or  perhaps  since.  Lindsay 
borrowed  older  cadences  with  which  to  celebrate  his  coun- 
try. Sandburg  was  the  first  intentional  poet  to  set  America 
to  its  own  music,  the  way  that  the  anonymous  songs  of 
416 


mountaineers,  prisoners,  Darkies,  ranchmen,  railroad 
hands  had  unintentionally  set  the  country  to  music.  Such 
a  kinship  he  felt  with  American  folk  song  that  in  1927 
he  published  a  volume  assembling  every  example  of  this 
art;  and  he  has  been  inspiration  for  others  to  do  this. 
Such  a  kinship  he  felt  that  he  has  feared  to  go  in  thought 
too  far  beyond  the  psyche  of  these  native  singers.  He  has 
preferred  to  tell  them  that  much  is  better  lost  in  silence, 
sleep,  solitude  and  mist,  than  to  force  issues  too  painful 
for  them  to  face. 

Three  years  after  the  prophetic  banquet  his  Chicago 
Poems  appeared,  and  then  in  successive  years  Corn- 
huskers,  Smoke  and  Steel,  Slabs  of  the  Sunburnt  West, 
Rootabaga  Stones,  Rootabaga  Pigeons,  Lincoln  The 
Prairie  Years,  Good  Morning  America!  He  translated 
America  into  speech  selected  from  it,  but  chosen  with 
more  preciousness  than  is  yet  native  to  us.  Like  Dreiser 
he  was  both  native  and  stranger. 

And  both  were  pioneers.  That  is,  they  were  instru- 
ments or  symptoms  of  change ;  the  one  whereby  American 
thought  became  freer,  the  other  whereby  American  lan- 
guage and  gestures  became  more  flexible.  Dreiser  forced 
terrific  issues  which,  fought  for,  yielded  more  confidence 
in  sex,  in  art,  and  in  science  destructive  to  old  dogmas. 
Mencken  had  preached  the  American  language,  others 
before  had  used  it.  Sandburg  made  it  resonant,  the  speech 
of  the  learned  and  unlearned,  of  outcasts  and  working 
men  inclusive.  Dreiser  had  the  virtue  of  not  changing  the 
subject,  Sandburg  of  not  changing  the  diction  or  the 
decor  for  the  sake  of  propriety. 

These  two  strong  natives,  both  passionate  over  their 
new  country,  belonged  to  a  wedge  of  change  that  was  of 
itself  yielding  a  new  style  of  thought,  a  new  style  of  so- 
ciety. Some  of  their  own  desires  could  be  more  effective 
in  an  epoch  when  fortunes  were  changing  hands  over 
night,  or  were  paper-born  out  of  inflated  moments.  There 
had  to  be  a  break-down  of  old  class  barriers.  With  that 
had  to  come  the  downfall  of  Colonial  morality  and  of  the 
King's  English  and  the  courtiers'  clothes.  For  a  few  years 
High  Society  became  almost  unfashionable,  not  destroyed 
as  in  Russia,  but  neglected.  The  new  plutocracy  today  es- 

417 


tablished  speaks  American  and  has  a  new  set  of  morals  or 
no  morals  at  all. 

Suppose  that  in  these  years  of  flux  originators  like 
Dreiser  and  Sandburg  and  the  few  others  who  heightened 
the  chance  of  a  creative  society,  had  all  of  them  ex- 
changed ideas.  Wouldn't  American  letters  have  better 
fulfilled  the  hopes  of  each  of  them?  But  "  the  unlikeliness 
of  the  concourse  is  greater  than  the  unlikeliness  of  any 
particular  genius."  Of  the  others  the  one  equal  in  vigor 
to  these  two  was  the  Californian,  Robert  Frost.  Dreiser, 
Sandburg  and  Frost  were  three  of  the  elements  essential 
to  a  great  fermentation  in  this  time.  But  they  never  made 
a  triangle,  never  made  a  constellation.  Probably  they  had 
friends  in  common  who  sometimes  spoke  of  one  to  the 
other,  but  without  arousing  curiosity,  or  barely  so.  They 
remained  like  separate  sources  from  whom  many  younger 
writers  separately  depend.  They  remain  the  three  creators 
with  one  thing  in  common  —  strength  to  survive,  though 
by  a  narrow  margin,  a  country  and  a  period  hostile  to 
art  and  friendly  to  extrinsic  creation. 

Once  I  had  in  my  house  a  yellow  Chinese  chow  and 
a  black  Persian  cat,  both  pedigreed.  One  day  in  the  spring 
the  cat  went  out  into  the  shrubs  of  the  backyard  and 
brought  back  a  transient  thrush.  The  pacific  chow,  whose 
hope  it  was  always  to  find  a  bird  in  that  Chicago  yard, 
rushed  to  the  Persian  to  felicitate  her,  one  might  think,  to 
be  repulsed  by  an  arch  of  back,  a  hissing  and  snarling 
through  jaw  and  whiskers,  a  superb  protection  of  her 
game,  terrifying  to  mere  human  beings.  Dreiser's  admira- 
tion of  Sandburg's  accomplished  poems,  met  by  the  poet's 
disdain  of  the  "  varietist's  clumsy  efforts,"  has  reminded 
me  of  that  encounter  between  friendly  dog  and  proud  cat. 

In  1914  Masters  showed  Sandburg's  poems  to  his 
friend  the  novelist  in  New  York.  True  to  his  veneration 
for  art  Dreiser  tried  to  sell  them  to  his  own  publisher. 
Although  the  poems  found  a  publisher  through  other 
friends,  they  continued  to  have  his  support.  He  recom- 
mended them  to  Mencken  and  to  all  other  unconventional 
editors  of  his  acquaintance.  He  said  explicitly  they  were 
wonderful.  In  return  he  got  no  thanks  from  their  author 
who  had  vowed  hatred  against  everything  explicit,  The 


Titan  for  one;  and  especially  perhaps  against  explicit 
statement  as  to  sexual  and  religious  discords  in  American 
life.  He  was  inclined  to  say  that  such  statement  was 
"  gratuitous,  cocksure,  garrulous."  .  .  .  "  Art  was  im- 
plicit " : 

"  Poetry  is  the  tracing  of  the  trajectories  of  a  finite 
sound  to  the  infinite  points  of  its  echoes. 

"  Poetry  is  the  capture  of  a  picture,  a  song,  or  a  flair,  in 
a  deliberate  prism  of  words." 

Subtle  definitions  for  fastidious  ears  and  eyes !  Yet  on 
the  other  side  of  this  poet  was  the  important  unimported 
cat,  Frost,  with  a  meaner  verbal  creed;  almost  ungracious 
if  taken  narrowly  in  relation  to  each  word : 

"  Sometimes  I  have  my  doubts  of  words  altogether,  and 
I  ask  myself  what  is  the  place  of  them?  They  are  worse 
than  nothing  unless  they  do  something,  unless  they  amount 
to  deeds,  as  in  ultimatums  or  battle-cries.  They  must  be 
flat  and  final,  like  the  show-down  in  poker,  from  which 
there  is  no  appeal." 

If  Frost  did  not  arch,  he  has  been  known  to  stretch 
slightly  at  what  he  seemed  to  think  was  vocal  ornateness 
in  the  Manchurian  Sandburg,  who  undoubtedly  ages  ago 
derived  from  the  wealthier  East  through  Mongol  and 
Finn  on  the  way  to  Sweden  and  Illinois.  The  Chicago 
poet  and  the  New  Hampshire  poet  have  met,  it  is  said, 
and  are  friends.  But  American  letters  show  no  record  of 
their  crossing  each  other's  intellectual  path;  no  record 
of  their  having  sifted  out  together  their  relations  to  the 
craft  of  poetry,  of  having  agreed  or  disagreed.  In  fact 
there  is  no  record,  unless  Sandburg's  later  poems  by  their 
greater  subtlety  and  restraint  indicate  an  effect  on  him  of 
that  most  exacting  critic,  Robert  Frost.  In  the  early  days 
of  their  renown  it  was  said  by  eavesdroppers  that,  except 
for  the  lyrics  which  Frost  admired,  and  maybe  envied 
for  a  sensuousness  he  lacked,  to  him  Sandburg  was  often 
farfetched;  just  as  to  Sandburg,  it  is  rumored,  Dreiser  is 
nearly  always  rambling. 

In  fact,  each  in  his  way  felt  indifferent  to  the  other. 
The  author  of  Smoke  and  Steel  disdained  "  the  artifice  " 
of  rhyme  and  regular  metre  in  Frost's  poems.  He  heard 
them  always  as  extrinsic  to  poetic  meaning,  and  there- 
fore not  of  the  first  elegance.  Each  poem  should  be  like 

419 


a  new  shape  out  of  wild  wood  or  driftwood.  And  Dreiser 
had  his  scorns  too.  He  grew  to  think  of  Sandburg  as  a 
reformer,  and  of  both  these  poets  as  "  probably  afraid  of 
sex,"  or  why  didn't  they  come  out  in  the  open  and  speak 
of  it?  Of  marriage,  birth,  death,  sleep,  work  and  crime, 
of  trees,  birds,  flowers  and  stones,  they  spoke  plainly 
enough,  but  when  it  came  to  the  exciting  fact  of  sex,  he 
complained,  they  invented  codes  and  puzzles  to  hide  it  in. 
What  was  wrong  with  it?  Didn't  it  have  its  place  too  in 
"  this  rigmarole  called  life  "  ? 

Here  then  were  the  three  tough  creative  spirits  of  the 
new  country  producing  at  the  same  moment.  Masters 
made  a  fourth  for  a  time.  Like  Dreiser  he  thought  of 
personal  relations  as  essential,  and  at  first  they  paid  each 
other  tributes  of  acknowledgment.  But  for  the  most  part 
the  four  scarcely  took  note  of  one  another.  Each  was 
too  busy  with  his  own  work,  and  besides  who  cared?  If 
ever  they  had  had  it  out  together  as  to  literature  in  jour- 
nals or  saloons  or  parlors,  distinctions  might  have  re- 
sulted to  tighten  American  thought.  The  more  reticent 
Sandburg  and  Frost  might  have  said  that  in  their  opinion 
poetry  could  name  by  name  only  things  that  people  spoke 
of  naturally.  For  unspoken  facts  and  emotions,  diction- 
ary words  and  borrowed  words  were  clumsy.  Symbols, 
even  asterisks  were  better.  Or  they  might  have  said :  Sex 
is  a  mystery;  each  line  a  poem  writes  has  in  it  the  tones 
and  overtones  of  that  mystery.  Dreiser  could  have  an- 
swered back:  But  death  and  birth  are  mysterious  too,  and 
you  speak  of  them  without  disguise?  And  they  might 
have  conceded  to  him  his  daring  as  to  theme,  their  own 
as  to  manner.  But  nothing  like  this  took  place.  Much  as 
Dreiser  set  store  by  exchange  among  equals,  perhaps 
these  others  thought  he  was  an  inferior.  He  was  too 
"  metropolitan  "  Sandburg  used  to  say.  And  Frost  always 
kept  away  from  strangers ;  they  had  to  come  to  him. 

Unconscious  of  each  other  they  had  moments  of  es- 
sential agreement.  Frost's  definition  of  poetry  has  a  de- 
pendant clause :  "  All  poetry  is  a  reproduction  of  the 
tones  of  actual  speech."  Sister  Carrie  and  An  American 
Tragedy  agree  to  this  basically  if  not  always  in  detail. 
Chicago  Poems  and  Good  Morning  America  agree  to 
420 


this  aesthetically  and  often  impeccably.  Yet  Frost,  if  he 
were  candid,  and  he  might  be,  would  have  a  right  to 
say  that  among  American  high-brows  he  has  the  record 
for  cracking  clay  pipes  and  clay  ducks  in  the  shooting 
gallery  of  the  tones  of  actual  speech.  An  expert  like  Ring 
Lardner  has  not  beaten  him  at  that  game.  On  the 
other  hand  which  extends  far  into  wilderness,  Frost  has 
not,  like  Dreiser  or  Sandburg,  attempted  to  recreate  the 
speech  of  the  whole  melting  pot,  in  a  kind  of  superb  com- 
passion for  the  newcomers  to  the  Home  of  the  Brave. 
Frost,  returning  from  California  at  the  age  of  ten  to 
his  grandfather's  home  in  Massachusetts,  has  lived  almost 
always  since  in  that  State  or  in  New  Hampshire  or  Ver- 
mont. Being  a  poet  he  had  need  of  a  language  and  chose 
New  England  speech.  None  of  his  verse  is  influenced  by 
the  voices  of  Sussex,  England,  where  he  went  in  1912  to 
sell  his  poems,  scorned  at  home.  In  three  years  he  came 
back  with  enough  fame  to  get  an  American  publisher,  and 
just  enough  money  to  buy  a  farm  in  New  Hampshire, 
and  to  publish  three  more  books  of  verse.  So  the  legend 
goes.  Nor  are  his  poems  affected  by  the  voices  of  Michi- 
gan students,  to  whose  university  he  went  in  later  years 
to  advise  young  Western  poets.  He  had  chosen  as  the 

honey-comb  in  which  to  secrete  his  moods  New  England 
.  ,.     J      .  i  ...  & 

idiom,  without  ever  patronizing  it. 

Surely  it  had  its  faults  of  cadence  —  a  mean  cadence : 
It  is  a  speech  spoken  flatly  and  finally,  not  in  the  nose 
as  out  West,  but  in  the  front  of  the  mouth  as  if  it  were 
dangerous  to  go  back  into  the  throat  in  the  direction 
of  visceral  and  then  genital  emotions  and  acts.  Frost  ac- 
cepted it,  not  especially  because  he  liked  it,  but  because 
he  lived  within  range  of  its  statement  of  life.  It  was  as 
good  for  his  purpose  as  another  speech,  since  as  long  as 
there  was  life  there  were  tones  of  voice,  and  in  that  case 
could  be  poetry,  given  poets  to  make  it.  Besides,  New 
England  speech  had  its  compensations.  It  was  thin  but 
delicate,  sounding  most  of  the  letters.  And  the  voices  un- 
derstated rather  than  overstated  —  a  virtue  for  Frost 
whose  verse  is  an  unlabelled  challenge  to  American  adver- 
tisers, the  verbal  teachers  of  the  greater  part  of  the 
nation.  In  contrast  his  poems  identify  themselves  to  a 

421 


far  decimal  point  with  knowledge,  the  way  the  last 
cricket  sings  sharply  of  the  summer  when  the  others  have 
gone. 

Dreiser's  books  use  figures  of  speech,  most  often 
similes;  and  are  sometimes  identical  with  nature  or  else 
tell  about  nature.  Sandburg's  poems  and  stories  some- 
times use  and  sometimes  are  figures  of  speech,  mostly 
metaphors.  They  create  equations  in  the  algebra  of  life, 
or  they  are  letters  to  people  sorrowful  or  joyful  over 
bad  or  good  fortune.  Frost's  poems  are  figures  of  speech, 
synecdoches  he  calls  them:  "  a  synecdoche  is  a  figure  of 
speech  whereby  a  part  is  made  to  stand  for  the  whole." 
Probably  every  visionary  who  writes  would  say  he  was 
a  synecdochist,  but  each  one  would  differently  define  the 
specifications. 

Frost  might  say:  For  a  passage  of  words  to  describe 
the  whole  of  which  a  single  birch  leaf  is  a  part  the  words 
have  to  be  aware  of  the  shape,  the  veins,  the  color,  the 
weight  and  position  in  space,  according  to  the  moment 
of  the  season  of  the  birch  leaf.  Then  the  words  convey 
the  relation,  dramatic  or  lyrical,  of  leaf  to  tree,  tree  to 
forest,  forest  to  region,  region  to  the  universe.  .  .  . 
Sandburg  might  say:  There  are  likenesses  and  differences 
between  osage  leaves  in  Illinois,  palm  leaves  in  India, 
cactus  leaves  in  Arizona  which  a  poet  apprehends.  In 
thinking  of  a  single  leaf  he  creates  a  symbol,  an  image,  a 
flash  of  words  to  convey  the  leaves  of  many  trees,  and 
of  life  analogous  to  trees,  or  by  differences  opposed  to 
trees,  from  which  initial  symbol  secrets  of  life  and  death 
will  invade  you,  provided  you  have  ears  to  hear,  eyes 
to  see.  .  .  .  Dreiser  says  to  himself  and  others :  Shucks, 
no  one  leaf  is  enough  to  even  suggest  the  multiplicity  of 
nature,  shrouded  in  a  mist  no  one  has  penetrated.  For 
me  I  must  make  leaves,  leaves,  leaves.  The  more  I  make, 
no  matter  how  imperfectly  in  a  harried  lifetime,  the  more 
multiple  facts  there  will  be  from  which  others  may  try 
to  guess  the  evasive  riddle. 

Being  of  similar  strength  they  were  not  so  different  in 
scope.  The  universe  was  not  too  big  for  them.  They  have 
a  flair  for  the  infinite.  Compare  three  statements  from 
the  three : 
422 


Dreiser,  when  asked  in  1929  what  people  he  liked  to  talk 
to  in  New  York,  answered :  "  The  scientists  dealing  with 
reality  and  mystery.  Front  line  trench  of  an  army  facing 
wild  nature.  On  the  firing  line  where  I  want  to  be."  Then 
a  year  later:  "  I  am  through  with  scientists.  They  don't 
see  mysticism.  .  .  ." 

Frost  when  confronted  in  conversation  with  new  marvels 
of  science,  less  gullible  than  Dreiser,  said:  "  Isn't  science 
just  an  extended  metaphor;  its  aim  to  describe  the  un- 
known in  terms  of  the  known?  Isn't  it  a  kind  of  poetry,  to 
be  treated  as  plausible  material,  not  as  cold  facts?"  When 
reminded  of  Einstein's  theory  of  relativity  he  is  quoted  as 
saying:  "Wonderful,  yes,  wonderful  but  no  better  as  a 
metaphor  than  you  or  I  might  make  for  ourselves  before 
five  o'clock."  * 

Sandburg  too  might  make  such  metaphors  before  morn- 
ing. Here  may  be  one  of  them: 

"  History  is  a  living  horse  laughing  at  a  wooden  horse. 
History  is  a  wind  blowing  where  it  listeth. 
History  is  a  box  of  tricks  with  a  lost  key. 
History  is  a  labyrinth  of  doors  with  sliding  panels,  a  book 
of  ciphers  with  the  code  in  a  cave  of  the  Sargossa  Sea." 

Three  views  of  knowledge  possessing  similar  gravity  and 
an  immense  difference  of  manner.  No  one  would  have 
expected  or  wanted  these  writers  to  go  arm  in  arm.  But  it 
is  surprising  that  they  have  never  even  challenged  each 
other.  It  must  have  been  that  so  vast  and  scattered  is  the 
United  States,  so  brutal  the  gaps  between  races  and 
classes,  and  then  between  individuals  of  any  one  class, 
that  men  with  original  work  to  do  felt  the  futility  and 
even  the  danger  of  personal  relations. 

Then  minds  with  less  to  create  or  lose  read  them  and 
ran  and  interpreted  them.  In  this  way  American  thought 
was  placed  on  a  plane  suitable  to  universal  upper  medioc- 
rity. Thereby  for  example  Europeans  scarcely  know  that 
we  have  had  original  vintages  of  more  body  to  give 
them  than  the  second  drawings  from  the  mash,  like  Sin- 
clair Lewis,  Ezra  Pound,  or  Ernest  Hemingway.  The 
last  two  are  from  both  native  and  exotic  fermentation. 
They  are  tourists,  Hemingway  a  gifted  youth,  writing  to 
the  folks  back  home  in  words  of  one  syllable  easy  for 
them  to  understand.  Such  men  have  come  to  be  a  sudden 
unexplained  background  for  new  America. 

*  Reported  by  Genevieve  Taggurd. 

423 


Is  this  owing  to  a  complex  in  the  more  adult  American 
minds,  without  whom  these  adolescents  would  not  have 
existed  —  the  unwillingness  to  analyse  or  explain?  What- 
ever the  reason,  criticism  after  Poe  and  the  Concord 
school  went  out  of  fashion,  and  has  been  handled  by 
inferiors.  Walt  Whitman  led  the  fashion  against  critical 
distinctions,  for  all  his  talk  of  growth  and  savor : 

"  To  elaborate  is  no  avail,  learn'd  and  unlearn'd  feel  that 

it  is  so." 

"  Encompass  worlds  but  never  try  to  encompass  me. 
I  charge  you  forever  reject  those  who  would  expound  me." 

Undeniably  he  spoke  here  in  keeping  with  a  pioneer 
sentiment  that  action  was  better  than  thought;  and  that 
the  act  of  a  critic  was  not  action.  Nor  did  it  help  mat- 
ters when  the  behaviorist  Watson  came  along  proving 
that  what  had  been  named  thought  was  merely  action. 
This  discovery  served  all  the  more  to  exalt  action.  There 
is  the  fable  of  the  general  at  headquarters  who  wrote  to 
the  officer  at  the  front,  "  Here  are  the  specifications  for 
the  bridge";  and  the  answer:  "Thanks,  the  bridge  is 
already  constructed."  A  story  that  pleases  every  hundred- 
percent  American!  .  .  .  "  Don't  criticize  your  country," 
a  well-known  New  York  painter  said  to  me,  "  Leave  it 
alone,  do  your  own  work."  —  "  But,"  I  asked,  "  what  if 
my  work  is  that  of  a  critic?  " 

Americans  abominate  criticism,  as  much  as  a  room 
without  a  bath.  Poe  was  the  one  high-geared  critic  of  the 
past,  the  one  ancestral  precedent  for  any  stray  moderns 
still  believing  that  analysis  is  a  civilizing  force.  Whitman 
contradicted  him.  In  the  next  generation  Ambrose  Bierce, 
by  temper  a  live  critic,  cherished  such  a  hatred  for  his 
country  that  he  used  his  talent  to  destroy  American 
writers.  Once  however  someone  brought  him  Crane's 
Red  Badge  of  Courage,  thinking  that  surely  Bierce,  a 
veteran  in  war  and  letters,  would  demolish  the  book: 
"  This  young  man,"  Bierce  said,  "  has  the  power  to 
feel.  .  .  .  He  knows  nothing  of  war  but  he  is  drenched 
in  blood.  .  .  .  Most  beginners  .  .  .  spatter  themselves 
merely  with  ink."  *  Of  A  Farewell  to  Arms  I  think  of 
Bierce  as  saying:  "  Here  is  a  writer  who  knows  something 

*  Bitter  Bierce:  Hartley  Grattan. 
424 


of  war,  but  the  typewriter  separates  him  from  blood- 
shed." Three  Soldiers  and  The  Enormous  Room  seem 
to  care  less  for  chic  and  more  for  grief. 

Of  course  always  the  country  contained  critics  in  spite 
of  themselves.  No  great  work  is  ever  done  without  the 

frace  of  judgment  watching  over  it  like  a  holy  ghost. 
y  this  token  Melville,  Thoreau,  Whitman  and  Mark 
Twain,  contemporary  with  Bierce,  were  critics.  From 
Mark  Twain  finally  came  an  anonymous  work  and  a  post- 
humous work,  fearfully  critical  —  What  is  Man?  and  The 
Mysterious  Stranger,  though  they  analysed  society  more 
than  art.  A  generation  later,  overlapping  the  life  of 
Bierce,  Edwin  Arlington  Robinson  burned  with  selective 
fire,  turned  in  toward  his  own  poems,  as  if  he  were  a  good 
Christian  and  preferred  not  to  suffer  hell-fire.  Over  his 
work  he  maintained  a  close  discipline,  not  even  released, 
it  is  said,  in  talk. 

Always  interested  in  experts  and  heroes  I  have  some- 
times asked  what  Robinson  talks  about  when  he  talks. 
I  have  not  heard  from  anyone  that  he  talks  outside  of 
his  poems.  He  is  enveloped  in  the  legend  of  a  recluse. 
Once,  it  is  said,  he  lived  with  another  poet,  but  got  tired 
of  him  and  left.  Years  later  he  rang  the  doorbell;  his 
friend  answered  the  ring  and  asked,  "  What  do  you 
want?  "  —  "I  thought,"  said  Robinson,  "  that  I  wanted 
to  come  back,  but  now  that  I  see  you  again  I  don't  be- 
lieve I  do."  No  chance  of  concourse  from  this  poet !  Yet 
he  is  one  of  the  few  Americans  to  explore  human  minds 
more  than  external  events.  In  his  poems  he  uses  for 
themes  the  tangle  of  thoughts  of  the  heart.  His  themes 
issue  from  Americans  with  enough  leisure  to  think  at  all; 
and  the  tangle  of  psychic  events  takes  place  in  the  dead 
wood  and  underbrush  and  new  growth  in  which  unwit- 
tingly his  characters  have  come  to  live.  Robinson,  the 
hermit  thrush  of  cerebral  thickets  and  swamps ! 

Suppose  however  that  our  history  had  been  slightly 
different.  It  might  have  been  a  shade  different  with  fewer 
English  and  Germans,  more  French,  Spanish  and  Indians 
surviving.  Every  if  is  a  big  if.  Imagine  just  enough  dif- 
ference so  that  these  mineral  "  moderns  "  of  fifteen  years 

425 


ago  had  felt  a  native  relation  one  to  the  other,  and  to  writ- 
ers producing  before  them  and  around  them.  If  they  had 
felt  the  background  of  Bierce,  Mark  Twain,  Henry  James, 
and  Robinson  (who  though  younger  was  yet  related  to 
the  past  in  point  of  view),  they  would  then  have  made  a 
figure  denoting  creation;  the  parts  held  together  as 
much  by  repulsion  as  by  attraction,  the  way  of  all  units 
in  conjunction.  To  such  a  constellation  might  have  been 
joined  Masters  and  Lindsay,  and  then  Sherwood  Ander- 
son, Carlos  Williams,  the  unknown  Carnevali.  Out  of 
such  a  figure,  changing  from  year  to  year,  dropping  one 
unit  attracting  another,  out  of  the  antagonisms  and  agree- 
ments of  such  brains,  if  even  for  brief  moments  they  had 
crossed  to  agree  or  disagree,  civilization  in  the  United 
States  might  recently  have  had  more  iron  of  thought,  and 
more  specifically  the  steel  needle  of  direction.  I  use  these 
names  of  writers  as  not  the  most  widely  known,  but  as 
those  most  tinctured  with  the  salts  and  phosphates  of  life, 
as  those  nearest  in  speech  to  the  earth. 

To  imagine  such  concourse  in  the  United  States  is  so 
unreal  as  to  be  laughable.  Yet  a  human  geometry  like 
this  has  happened  in  the  creative  epochs  of  other  coun- 
tries. Take  France  in  the  time  just  preceding  the  War: 
the  critic  Apollinaire  is  said  to  have  brought  men  of 
different  ages  and  of  different  styles  and  races  into  re- 
lation; as  different  as  Cocteau,  Picasso,  Satie,  and  Bran- 
cusi.  And  this  period  hung  upon  a  previous  period, 
through  recognition  expressing  differences  —  Zola,  Ana- 
tole  France,  Rodin,  Toulouse-Lautrec,  Renoir,  Degas, 
Cezanne,  none  of  them  unacknowledged  by  the  other. 
Back  of  this  was  the  epoch  of  Baudelaire.  ...  Or  take 
a  vast  country  like  Russia.  Consider  what  intimate  re- 
lations and  savage  contradictions  would  come  to  play 
their  part,  if  one  should  evoke  the  story  of  Dostoevsky. 
In  the  recent  United  States  one  does  not  find  evidence  of 
such  complicated  engagements. 

I  have  not  heard  that  those  most  actuated  by  faith  in 
art  ever  met  except  in  twos,  scarcely  ever  in  threes,  never 
in  fours.  "  Americans  are  infinitely  repellent  particles." 
Dreiser  and  Masters  for  a  time,  Masters  and  Sandburg 
for  a  while,  Lindsay  and  Sandburg  for  a  minute,  Frost 

426 


and  Sandburg  for  a  walk  or  two  in  the  country,  Williams 
and  Sandburg  for  a  second,  and  the  two  of  them  together 
with  Anderson  taking  note  of  Carnevali  until  he  left  the 
scene  for  Italy!  Few  others  knew  or  cared;  yet,  since 
Poe,  Carnevali  was  the  first  intimation  of  a  critic  in 
America  who  did  not  separate  poetry  and  criticism : 

"Art  theories  are  ages  old  .  .  .  the  only  newness  that 
can  be  brought  into  such  topics  may  be  the  weight  of  a 
personally  suffered  tragedy,  or  a  golden  gift  of  song,  torn 
out  of  a  man's  own  heart,  his  heart  of  today,  of  today's 
sorrow  and  today's  laughter.  .  .  .  Only  a  very  personal 
emotion  validates  and  differentiates  a  man's  art  theories. 
Then  ...  it  matters  little  that  similar  things  have  been 
said  by  someone  else  before;  then  indeed  one  may  rejoice 
that  they  have  been  said  by  someone  else;  then  one  no 
longer  strives  for  originality,  but  for  a  communion  .  .  . 
for  the  frenzy  of  the  extreme  loneliness  of  being  together 
with  the  great.  .  .  .  Such  loneliness  is  perhaps  what  is 
meant  by  originality.  .  .  .  Only  eyes  of  fire  may  look  at 
the  sun.  .  .  ." 

Belief  in  such  timeless  communion  was  not  shared  by  his 
colder  friends,  Waldo  Frank,  Kreymborg,  Bodenheim,  or 
even  Carlos  Williams,  who  especially  was  seeking  a  new 
fresh  language  and  technique  by  which  to  save  America. 
There  remained  only  the  democratic  Sherwood  Ander- 
son with  a  sense  of  communion.  His  Latin  blood —  Ital- 
ian, he  thinks  —  mingled  with  Northern,  appeared  to 
value  human  beings,  as  if  they  might  be  friends  and  would 
like  to  know  each  other.  He  too  was  after  the  "  Splendid 
Commonplace  "  proclaimed  by  Carnevali,  but  without 
the  ardor  and  the  hurry.  He  was  an  American  with  more 
patience.  He  could  stand  delays.  In  fact  he  derived  from 
other  natives,  Dreiser,  Sandburg,  and  Gertrude  Stein,  as 
well  as  from  Freud  and,  one  would  think,  Tchekov.  Keep- 
ing always  his  own  voice,  a  new  voice,  as  derivatives  do  in 
civilized  countries,  he  felt  for  a  time  a  kind  of  debt  to 
those  to  whom  he  bore  this  relation.  In  1923  one  of  his 
finest  books,  Horses  and  Men,  is  dedicated  to  "  Theo- 
dore Dreiser  in  whose  presence  I  have  sometimes  had 
the  same  refreshed  feeling  as  when  in  the  presence  of  a 
thoroughbred  horse."  And  this  book  of  an  Ohioan  who 
had  known  race  horses,  Ohioans,  Chicagoans  and  many 
people,  makes  reference  to  Masters,  Sandburg  and 

427 


Mencken.  A  foreigner  reading  the  stories  might  think  that 
already  thought  and  imagination  as  well  as  oil  were  go- 
ing the  rounds  of  the  United  States.  The  foreword  called 
Dreiser  belongs  in  this  history. 

Edgar  Lee  Masters  had  paid  as  great  a  tribute  before 
in  a  poem  published  in  The  Great  Valley,  1916: 

"One  eye  set  higher  than  the  other, 

Mouth  cut  like  a  scallop  in  a  pie, 

Aslant  showing  powerful  teeth. 

Swaying  above  the  heads  of  others. 

Jubilant  with  fixed  eyes  scarcely  sparkling. 
m  Moving  about  rhythmically,  exploding  in  laughter. 

And  the  eyes  burn  like  a  flame  at  the  end  of  a  funnel. 
'  Or  else  a  gargoyle  of  bronze 

Turning  suddenly  to  life 
*  Full  of  questions,  objections, 

Distinctions,  instances. 

Contemptuous,  ironical,  remote, 

Cloudy,  irreverent,  ferocious, 

Fearless,  grim,  compassionate,  yet  hateful, 

Old,  yet  young,  wise  but  virginal. 

To  whom  every  thing  is  new  and  strange; 

Whence  he  stares  and  wonders, 

Laughs,  mocks,  curses. 

Disordered,  yet  with  a  passion  for  order 

and  classification  —  hence  the  habitual 

Folding  into  squares  of  a  handkerchief. 

Or  else  a  well  cultivated  and  fruitful  valley, 
t  But  behind  it  unexplored  fastnesses, 
]  .  .  Gorges,  precipices,  and  heights 

Stirring  up  terrible  shapes  of  prey 

That  slink  about  in  the  blackness. 
.  The  silence  of  it  is  terrifying 
t  The  look  of  his  eyes  makes  tubes  of  the  air 

He  needs  nothing  of  you  and  wants  nothing. 

Self-mastered,  but  beyond  friendship, 

You  could  not  hurt  him. 

If  he  would  allow  himself  to  have  a  friend 

He  could  part  from  that  friend  forever 

And  in  a  moment  be  lost  in  wonder 

Staring  at  a  carved  rooster  on  a  doorstep, 

Or  at  an  Italian  woman 

Giving  suck  to  a  child 

On  a  seat  in  Washington  Square. 

Soul  enwrapped  demi-urge 

Walking  the  earth, 

Stalking  Life! 
428 


A  year  or  so  before  on  the  threshold  of  modern  times, 
Harris  Merton  Lyon  made  an  equally  violent  tribute,  au- 
thentic by  its  wording : 

"  In  many  ways  .  .  .  the  one  man  writing  in  this  coun- 
try today  .  .  .  worth  the  lot  of  them.  .  .  .  The  Tarking- 
tons,  Beaches,  Londons  and  the  rest  may  play  their  little 
light-hearted  game  and  fare  on  into  the  dusk.  .  .  .  They 
are  for  the  most  part  dead  before  they  die,  and  so  no 
mystery.  But  here  is  a  fellow  who  now  shows  as  if  he  may 
never  die  at  all.  .  .  .  This  man  is  mysterious.  .  .  . 

"A  huge  rootabaga;  a  colossal,  pith-stricken  radish.  In 
this  body  dwells  this  amazingly  fascinating  mind.  ...  He 
sits  articulating  with  a  drone  .  .  .  folding  a  pocket  hand- 
kerchief eternally  into  a  strip,  folding  the  strip,  accordion- 
wise. 

"For  such  a  writer  we  may  well  concoct  a  paradox: 
everything  is  really  so  unimportant  that  it  might  well  be 
treated  as  important.  .  .  .  Every  hour  in  a  day  is  so  im- 
portant to  every  character  that  [he]  must  feel  like  a  clock 
with  a  conscience. 

"  Yet  patience  alone  does  not  explain  him.  .  .  .  What 
does  this  recluse  keep  from  us,  behind  those  lolling,  un- 
initiated eyes?  .  .  . 

"  That  he  keeps  poetry  is  one  thing  sure.  ...  To  a  man 
who,  in  the  backward-running  holes  of  his  mind,  keeps 
caves  for  poetry  any  inappropriateness  of  genius  is  credi- 
ble. .  .  . 

"  He  was  the  first  man  who  taught  me  to  think.  He 
would  .  .  .  make  some  comment  ...  so  clear  and  arrest- 
ing that  I  used  to  gasp.  But  .  .  .  there  was  no  sustained 
flow.  .  .  .  From  him  too  I  learned  that  there  are  always 
two,  and  possibly  three  or  a  dozen  sides  to  everything. 
This  is  enough  to  make  anybody  tongue-tied.  .  .  . 

"  Dreiser  is  important.  There  is  no  American  writing  to- 
day the  condition  of  whose  health,  vigor  and  spirits  is  more 
important.  .  .  ." 

Here  is  the  kind  of  statement  presupposing  a  premise 
from  which  life  may  become  "  intensely  active. "  The 
premise  is  a  simple  one,  very  shocking  to  Americans :  The 
arts  are  important.  Ten  years  later  Sherwood  Anderson's 
foreword  to  his  Horses  and  Men  gave  the  same  kind  of 
importance  to  the  same  man  in  relation  to  the  arts  and  in 
their  same  shocking  relation  to  life  —  retrospective  now  as 
to  Dreiser  and  roseate  concerning  the  American  future. 

"Theodore  Dreiser  is  old.  ...  I  do  not  know  how 
many  years  he  has  lived,  perhaps  forty,  perhaps  fifty,  but 

429 


he  is  very  old.  Something  grey  and  bleak  and  hurtful,  that 
has  been  in  the  world  perhaps  forever,  is  personified  in 
him. 

"  When  Dreiser  is  gone  men  shall  write  books  .  .  .  and 
in  the  books  .  .  .  there  will  be  so  many  of  the  qualities 
Dreiser  lacks  ...  a  sense  of  humor.  .  .  .  More  than  that 
.  .  .  grace,  lightness  of  touch,  a  dream  of  beauty  breaking 
through  the  husks. 

".  .  .  That  is  a  part  of  the  wonder  and  beauty  of  Dreiser, 
the  things  that  others  shall  have  because  of  him.  .  .  . 

"  Heavy,  heavy,  the  feet  of  Theodore.  How  easy  to  pick 
some  of  his  books  to  pieces,  to  laugh  at  him  for  so  much 
of  his  heavy  prose. 

"The  feet  of  Theodore  are  making  a  path,  the  heavy 
brutal  feet.  They  are  tramping  through  the  wilderness  of 
lies.  .  .  .  Presently  the  path  will  be  a  street,  with  great 
arches  overhead  and  delicately  carved  spires  piercing  the 
sky.  Along  the  street  will  run  children  shouting,  "  Look  at 
me.  See  what  I  and  my  fellows  of  the  new  day  have  done  " 
—  forgetting  the  heavy  feet  of  Dreiser. 

".  .  .  the  prose  writers  in  America  will  have  much  to  do 
that  he  has  never  done.  Their  road  is  long  but,  because  of 
him,  those  who  follow  will  never  have  to  face  the  road 
through  the  wilderness  of  Puritan  denial,  the  road  that 
Dreiser  had  to  face  alone." 


430 


Interval  of  departures  more  than  arrivals 


JLt  looks  now  as  if  "  those  who  followed  "  have 
merely  a  desert  to  face  made  out  of  their  parents'  in- 
experience and  out  of  their  own  indifference  —  that 
Wasteland  which  the  first  of  them,  T.  S.  Eliot,  lifted  into 
a  sound  film.  "  Those  who  followed,"  were  no  longer 
denied ;  but  as  much  because  they  found  themselves  with- 
out desire  as  that  the  way  was  free.  Or  they  only  fol- 
lowed with  the  faint  desire  of  being  snobs,  of  getting  to 
Europe  and  into  "  New  Composition,  World  Lore  To- 
tality, Magic  Synthesism."  *  Or  else  the  desire  was  to  get 
religion  and  join  with  Soviet  Russia  in  a  world  revolu- 
tion, an  equally  cabalistic  motive.  The  desire  today  is  to 
join,  not  to  be  free.  Those  who  followed  were  like  chil- 
dren whose  parents  were  too  busy  fighting  for  liberty  to 
teach  them  what  to  do  with  it.  Or  they  were  like  the 
family  who  saved  for  years  and  bought  a  piano,  but  for- 
got they  had  not  learned  to  play.  Take  the  Puritanic  lid 
off  the  kettle  of  American  Desire,  easily  removable  now, 
and  you  will  find  that  ambrosia  for  the  moment  boiled 
away.  The  fire  is  out. 

Appetite  is  gone.  Nothing  new  to  eat,  nothing  fit  to 
drink.  They  drink  whatever  is  brought  to  them  from 
over  their  frontiers.  A  nation  drinks  without  appetite 
to  cook  a  meal.  They  smoke  cigarettes  made  out  of  list- 
lessness  and  indifference.  They  should  care !  Is  that  why 
in  time  we  might  cease  to  be  a  world  power?  "  Where  the 
power  to  think  is  lacking  ...  ?  "  And  the  power  to 
love  .  .  .  ? 

What  Sherwood  Anderson  prophesied  in  1923  came 
partly  true.  The  younger  men  of  any  creative  spirit  who 

*  Bywords  of  the  journal  transition  published  in  Paris  from  1927  to 
1930. 

431 


followed,  not  beneath  his  arches  and  delicate  spires,  but 
beneath  innumerable  sky-scrapers  and  elevated  tracks, 
hurrying  in  and  out  of  taxis,  subways,  publishers'  and 
speak-easies,  did  forget  the  heavy  feet  of  Dreiser;  forgot 
the  catlike  step  of  Sandburg  and  Frost  as  well,  forgot 
Lindsay,  Masters,  Robinson,  forgot  their  past  (although 
some  of  them  still  imitated  these  writers).  They  remem- 
bered only  Anderson.  Enough  to  laugh  at  him.  His  books 
like  Dreiser's  are  easy  to  laugh  at,  though  not  for  care- 
lessness of  diction.  But  while  Dreiser  is  ruthless,  un- 
sparing, formidable,  Anderson  is  so  tender,  so  sorry  for 
everyone  of  his  countrymen  warped  by  repression,  that 
sometimes  his  words  seem  to  keep  a  nursing  home  for 
nervous  cases.  It  is  easy  to  laugh  at  his  records  of  in- 
sanity and  death,  especially  for  those  who  have  gone  far 
from  it  into  World  Lore  Totality,  Magic  Synthesism, 
Montparnasse  and  other  cures.  None  the  less  the  com- 
mitments and  the  funerals  go  on,  Sherwood  Anderson 
the  last  near  relative  to  mourn. 

It  is  often  said  that  Dreiser  as  much  as  anyone  blocked 
intellectual  exchange  in  the  years  of  its  promise.  His 
victorious  battles  had  defeated  him.  He  had  become  the 
veteran  general  not  the  equal  he  could  have  been.  I  have 
heard,  for  example,  that  he  resented  Anderson's  tribute. 
To  be  called  old,  very  old,  heavy  and  humorless  dis- 
pleased him.  He  could  laugh  and  did,  and  he  was  not  so 
old  or  clumsy  either.  He  would  show  them  .  .  .  and  did 
with  An  American  Tragedy  coming  two  years  after  An- 
derson's epitaph.  Yet  consciously  as  much  as  anyone  he 
had  hoped  and  worked  for  tone  and  flavor  as  essential  to 
America.  In  1919  after  The  Seven  Arts  was  killed  by 
the  War  he  started  to  create  a  similar  magazine,  but 
found  that  no  one  wanted  it  as  coming  from  him.  The 
Little  Review,  Contact,  Others,  and  still  others  were  un- 
der way  in  a  new  direction,  seeking  an  exotic  sophistica- 
tion. For  the  rest  Mencken  was  already  planning  his 
Mercury,  about  as  much  as  unsociable  natives  would  be 
able  to  swallow.  There  would  be  plenty  of  kidding  and 
snickering  in  it;  it  would  be  manly. 

Failing  that  project  Dreiser  tried  again  in  the  same 
year,  1919,  to  inaugurate  a  society  endowed  to  help 
432 


those  too  daring  or  too  subtle  to  arrive  through  regular 
channels.  He  wanted,  he  said,  to  make  it  less  possible 
for  genius  to  be  lost  or  prostituted  in  the  United  States. 
He  thought  of  a  long  list  of  artists  he  had  known  through 
the  years  back  of  him,  too  sensitive  to  stand  up  against 
commercialism.  The  uncommercial  Reedy's  Mirror  in 
St.  Louis  was  apparently  the  one  vehicle  he  could  find 
to  advertise  his  scheme,  and  only  two  writers,  one  un- 
known, responded  publicly.  He  gave  up  "  concourse  "  for 
a  time  and  went  to  California.  Ten  years  later  I  asked 
him  what  had  become  of  this  society :  "  Nothing,"  he  said. 
"  We  had  a  meeting.  But  no  one  seemed  to  care  what 
happened  to  the  other  fellow.  Each  one  was  out  for 
himself." 

America's  foremost  novelist  for  a  time  after  the  War 
was  strangely  lacking  in  prestige.  Or  was  it  magnetism? 
Had  a  life  of  neglect,  of  attacks  and  reprisals  destroyed 
the  original  talent  he  had  for  mingling  with  others?  In 
truth  he  had  long  had  a  name  for  boorishness,  although 
he  prized  above  everything,  outside  of  his  right  to  live 
and  create,  the  hope  of  a  social  fabric,  backed  by  learning 
and  imagination  —  what  he  called  "  artistic  vision."  To 
this  end  he  would  talk  to  anyone,  known  or  unknown,  who 
professed  an  interest  in  expression,  whether  reporters, 
editors,  beginners  or  arrivists,  if  they  wanted  to  talk.  He 
gave  in  these  years  many  interviews,  made  many  articles, 
wrote  a  number  of  prefaces  for  books  he  liked.  He  was 
near  to  becoming  a  publicist,  not  so  much  for  money  or 
publicity,  I  think,  as  out  of  hunger  for  society.  A  book  of 
his  prefaces  would  show  him  as  a  critic  who  has  made 
subtle  and  vigorous  distinctions,  hastily  written  but  the 
outcome  of  difficult  contemplation. 

No,  it  was  not  merely  bad  manners  that  destroyed  pres- 
tige for  this  giant.  It  was  a  question  of  changing  fashions. 
The  mere  fact  of  poets  bent  on  the  just  word  as  well  as 
the  just  theme  convinced  the  new  Americans  that  a  fused 
native  art  was  at  hand,  as  bold  as  Dreiser's  and  more 
choice  in  manner.  First  Frost,  then  Masters,  then  Sand- 
burg, then  Anderson  and  Eliot  in  turn  seemed  to  shine  for 
sophisticated  eyes.  Now  Dos  Passos,  Jack  Lawson,  E.  E. 
Cummings,  Hemingway  were  swinging  into  view,  and 

433 


probably  others.*  As  each  light  was  turned  on,  the  one  be- 
fore was  dimmed  a  little  more.  By  the  year  1923  all  the 
earlier  lights  were  nearly  extinguished.  Disgraceful  to 
speak  of  them!  They  were  dark;  save  for  the  constant 
glow  of  Frost's  poems  like  particles  of  radium  easily  lost 
but  potent,  the  unacknowledged  mazda  lamp  of  Carlos 
Williams,  and  the  night-light  of  Sherwood  Anderson. 
Those  who  followed  were  ashamed  of  those  who  had  led 
the  way.  Did  the  leaders  care,  as  they  went  out  of  momen- 
tary fashion  —  Masters  with  his  rhythmic  sensitive 
Domesday  Book,  Sandburg  not  long  after  his  great  work 
Lincoln,  the  Prairie  Years?  The  Spoon  River  anthologist, 
who  kept  count  more  than  the  others,  must  have  cared  and 
dwelt  in  bitterness,  which  culminated  in  Lincoln  the  Man. 
Was  it  a  revenge  against  Sandburg's  greater  love  of  Lin- 
coln and  wider  popularity? 

Did  Dreiser  the  initial  voice  know  or  care?  Difficult 
to  guess.  Outside  of  his  books  he  is  a  man  of  secrets,  and 
in  native  fashion  rarely  personal.  Asked  once  what  he 
thought  of  his  apostle  Anderson,  who  had  somewhat  taken 
his  place  as  pioneer,  his  answer  may  have  been  a  kind  of 
reprisal,  or  else  was  it  truly  critical?  "  I  admire  him/'  he 
said,  "  but  there's  one  thing  I  don't  get  about  him.  He 
harps  too  much  on  one  subject."  —  "  Sex,  you  mean?  "  — 
"  No,  that  would  be  impossible.  He  glorifies  day  laborers 
and  mechanics  to  the  exclusion  of  all  other  classes.  I  can't 
see  it  that  way.  There  must  be  something  to  the  intellect, 
to  the  upper  classes.  If  not,  we're  done  for." 

What  made  these  quick  changes  of  fashion?  Stars  ex- 
tinguished almost  before  they  had  been  signalled  in  Ameri- 
can skies?  Quite  true  that  in  France  in  these  years  Anatole 
France  and  Rodin  were  dethroned  the  minute  they  died, 
but  not  before  they  had  led  long  lives  correcting  the  ages 
before  them,  clearing  the  way  less  for  children  than  for 
great-grandchildren.  Moreover  in  their  day  and  in  epochs 
before  them,  going  back  to  the  time  of  Voltaire  and 
Diderot,  such  leaders  knew  each  other  as  individuals,  not 
as  movements  or  schools.  Personal  distinction  ruled. 
Whereas  in  the  United  States  there  was  not  save  by  mo- 
ments any  faith  at  all  in  the  leaders  of  this  period. 

*  Let  the  reader  supply  the  others*  names. 
434 


It  was,  I  think,  because  when  the  road  was  finally 
cleared  for  younger  people  to  think  for  themselves,  they 
were  faced  with  a  contradiction  made  poignant  to  them 
by  recent  letters.  The  tragic  isolation  of  Americans  and 
their  living  language  shaped  now  out  of  their  own  soil 
were  two  phases  of  the  country  difficult  for  them  to  recon- 
cile. It  was  something  to  cry  over  —  the  prodigal  beauties 
discovered  by  the  new  poets,  and  always  wasted  and  lost 
through  the  return  to  American  dogma,  banks,  offices,  and 
Christian  Endeavor.  In  the  meantime  some  of  them  had 
through  world's  fairs  and  then  through  the  War,  the 
greatest  world's  fair  of  all,  crossed  the  ocean  to  Europe, 
the  Near  East,  Russia,  the  Orient.  They  could  not  ever 
again  go  the  impervious  way  of  American  pioneers.  They 
were  young  and  impatient.  They  asked  themselves  what 
was  it  that  separated  their  country  from  other  countries? 
Unconsciously  they  knew  it  was  lack  of  manner.  We  had 
no  wisdom  of  manner.  This  must  be  corrected  at  once 
from  the  outside,  if  necessary.  The  new  generation  in- 
voluntarily became  snobs  in  pursuit  of  fashion.  It  was 
then  that  Manner  or  Style  was  set  up  as  a  god  to  worship, 
just  as  theme  or  statement  ten  years  before  had  been  the 
refreshing  distant  goal,  not  yet  fully  realized.  To  this 
new  end  a  number  of  writers  seemed  to  pledge  themselves, 
Bodenheim,  Kreymborg,  Marianne  Moore.  ...  It  must 
have  been  however  that  William  Carlos  Williams,  the  one 
vital  creative  brain  among  them,  was  their  chief  stimulus. 
To  their  crusade  he  contributed  his  lingual  metaphysics. 

As  much  as  Dreiser  he  lamented  the  absence  of  women 
in  the  United  States,  and  more  than  that  novelist  the 
vacuum  between  men  and  women;  since  Dreiser  had 
managed  to  cross  over  and  explore  and  exult.  Williams' 
poems  rarely  exult.  He  is  partly  Spanish,  partly  Virginian, 
partly  Puritan,  or  why  has  he  protested  so  much?  Or  why 
been  so  wistful,  as  if  at  odds  with  himself?  Or  why  pinned 
such  faith  to  doctrine?  He  practises  medicine  in  Ruther- 
ford, New  Jersey,  apparently  against  his  wishes.  Asked 
by  the  Little  Review  to  answer  their  dying  questionnaire 
in  1929  as  to  his  likes  and  dislikes,  he  writes :  "  I'd  like  to 
be  able  to  give  up  the  practice  of  medicine  and  write  all 
day  and  all  night."  In  an  article  published  in  This  Quarter 

435 


1925  his  fears  for  America  equal  Dreiser's  and  Masters', 
and  go  beyond  them  in  swifter  hatred  and  scorn : 

"  We  believe  that  life  in  America  is  compact  of  violence 
and  the  shock  of  immediacy.  This  is  not  so.  Were  it  so, 
there  would  be  a  corresponding  beauty  of  the  spirit  —  to 
bear  it  witness;  a  great  flowering,  simple  and  ungovern- 
able as  the  configuration  of  the  rose  —  that  should  stand 
with  the  gifts  of  the  spirit  of  other  times  and  other  nations 
as  a  standard  to  humanity.  There  is  none.  .  .  . 

"Here  through  terror,  there  is  no  direct  touch;  all  is 
cold,  little  and  discreet: — save  just  under  the  hide. 

"'  Don't  let's  have  any  poor,'  is  our  slogan.  .  .  .  Cults 
are  built  to  abolish  them,  as  if  they  were  cockroaches,  and 
not  human  beings  who  may  not  want  what  we  have  in 
such  abundance.  .  .  .  Let  everybody  be  rich  and  so  equal. 
But  what  a  farce!  What  a  tragedy!  It  rests  upon  false 
values  and  the  fear  to  discover  them.  Do  not  serve  another 
for  you  might  have  to  touch  him  and  he  might  be  a  Jew 
or  a  Nigger. 

"  Machines  were  not  so  much  to  save  time  as  to  save 
dignity  that  fears  the  animate  touch.  .  .  . 

"  We  fear  simplicity  as  the  plague.  Never  to  allow  touch. 
What  are  we  but  poor  doomed  carcasses,  anyone  of  us? 
Why  then  all  this  fury,  this  multiplicity  we  push  between 
ourselves  and  our  desires.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  the  women  above  all  —  there  never  have  been 
women,  save  pioneer  Katies;  not  one  in  flower  save  some 
moonflower  Poe  may  have  seen.  .  .  .  Emily  Dickinson 
starving  of  passion  in  her  father's  garden,  is  the  very 
nearest  we  have  ever  been  —  starving. 

"  Never  a  woman:  never  a  poet.  That's  an  axiom.  Never 
a  poet  saw  sun  here  .  .  . 

"  We  have  no  feeling  for  the  tragic  "  [just  what  Henry 
Adams  knew  and  Frost  and  Dreiser].  "  Let  the  sucker  who 
fails  get  his.  What's  tragic  in  that?  It's  funny.  ...  He 
didn't  make  good  that's  all.  .  .  ." 

The  cry  of  all  the  rebels  since  Herman  Melville  who 
have  tried  to  write  in  and  about  America.  In  this  sense  he 
belongs  among  them;  he  has  their  mineral  quality. 

But  what  after  all  is  Carlos  Williams'  solution?  In  one 
of  these  years  between  1915  and  1921  he  published  a 
journal  called  CONTACT.  Was  it  like  the  old-time  Ro- 
tarian  —  "  Mr.  Sims,  Mr.  Jones,  touch  flesh  "  ?  No,  it 
was  not  a  fleshly  way  out.  He  pointed  to  another  road: 
We  have  gone  so  far  away  from  elements  through  cliches 
and  public  language,  we  shall  never  get  back  unless  we  are 
436 


willing  to  search  for  ourselves,  however  ugly  we  are,  and 
for  our  immediate  equivalents  in  words,  however  surpris- 
ing they  are.  He  was  an  apostle  of  the  stark,  immediate 
word.  He  preached  immediacy  as  a  cure  for  American 
delay.  In  the  name  of  contact  he  broke  with  everyone 
found  guilty  of  a  cliche,  except  Ezra  Pound,  in  whom  he 
chose  to  ignore  years  of  exhorting  freshness  in  stale  lan- 
guage. Williams'  idea  was  to  revive  and  reform  language 
and  then  morals  would  take  care  of  themselves,  and  come 
up-to-date. 

What  happened?  In  a  land  of  advertising  this  adver- 
tisement to  end  advertising  could  not  sell.  To  ask  people 
to  use  a  naked  live  language,  free  of  euphemism,  free  of 
optimism,  was  to  indict  the  texture  of  American  society. 
A  publisher  advertising  such  a  pure  scheme  would  have  no 
selling  talk  at  all,  no  ready  stereotypes.  What  to  do,  pub- 
lish with  Les  Imagistes  under  Pound  and  Amy  Lowell, 
until  that  journal  became  stale?  With  Others,  until  that 
became  affected?  With  The  Dial  through  Marianne 
Moore,  until  it  died?  Make  a  journal  of  his  own  with  his 
friend  McAlmon,  until  there  was  no  money  to  make  it? 
Publish  in  the  Little  Review?  But  the  girls  had  gone  to 
Europe.  Go  to  Europe,  that  was  the  thing  to  do  for  publi- 
cation. "  The  struggle  to  get  the  principle  of  modern 
writing  accepted  in  America  is  too  difficult,  especially 
when  the  tools  are  only  a  spoon  handle,"  Williams  wrote 
to  a  wondering  admirer. 

Off  to  Europe  they  must  go,  all  the  purists  in  the  wake 
of  this  poet  and  the  few  who  shared  his  belief.  Off  to 
Europe,  to  Broom,  to  This  Quarter,  to  Transition,  to 
McAlmon's  Contact  Editions.  There  was  an  exodus  in  the 
name  of  modern  writing.  There  at  least  the  devotees 
would  be  in  touch  with  moderns,  with  the  founders,  James 
Joyce  and  Gertrude  Stein,  who  had  little  in  common,  with 
Ezra  Pound,  the  propounder.  And  all  around  them  would 
be  the  modern  French,  oblivious  of  them.  But  no  matter ! 

They  went,  and  have  finished  by  making  a  very  exclu- 
sive order  of  mystics  with  pass-words,  codes  and  signs,  a 
certain  etiquette  in  writing,  an  academic  correctness.  They 
have  become  a  school,  careful  of  their  verbal  manners 
in  print.  Williams  himself  remained  in  America  one 

437 


of  the  solitary  peaks,  one  of  the  exclamation  points  de- 
noting separation.  If  he  is  not  so  high  or  wide  as  the  others 
it  may  be  because  he  has  had  to  write  immediate  poems 
and  prose  between  office  hours;  and  like  Dreiser  has  spent 
much  of  his  time  fighting  for  a  native  speech.  Only  unlike 
Dreiser  he  was  too  proud  to  make  a  contact,  except  with 
emigrants  to  Europe. 

It  was  a  curious  departure  —  this  return  of  young 
Americans  to  the  old  country.  They  have  accomplished  a 
group,  but  has  the  group  accomplished  fusion?  Are  they 
"  vibrating  through  and  through  with  intensely  active 
life?  "  Or  were  they  so  bent  on  the  wrappings  of  their  art, 
as  first  inspired  by  Matisse,  Picasso,  Brancusi,  Joyce  and 
Gertrude  Stein,  that  they  came  to  forget  the  contents. 
Like  children  with  Christmas  presents  do  they  still  hold 
on  to  the  bright  wrappings  —  new  and  newer  esoteric 
papers,  mottoes  and  strings?  Today  one  gets  the  uneasy 
feeling  that  the  presents  have  some  of  them  slipped  out 
of  the  covers  and  disappeared.  In  the  revolution  of  the 
written  word  could  it  be  that  exteriority,  the  old  American 
vice,  has  come  to  the  top  of  the  wheel  again?  Between 
theories  and  technique  have  these  younger  writers  like 
their  Victorian  ancestors  forgotten  what  they  want  to 
say?  An  outcome,  never  proposed  by  the  mordant  Carlos 
Williams,  hunting  herbs,  roots,  tinctures,  and  hot-house 
flowers  1 

On  a  New  York  afternoon  in  May,  ten  years  ago,  I 
happened  to  invite  a  situation  which  caught  the  crossing 
of  these  two  periods.  Something  which  had  seemed  new- 
born, strong  and  eager  and  not  completely  grown  was 
passing.  Another  cleavage  was  on  its  way,  a  break  from 
individual  thought,  a  return  to  group  thought.  The  scene 
was  a  still  older  Victorian  room  on  Twelfth  Street,  high 
cornices,  marble  mantels;  tea,  cocktails  and  jokes;  plane 
trees  through  the  backyard  windows  —  a  twilight  propi- 
tious to  a  frivolous  meeting  of  libertines.  They  included 
Dreiser  and  a  formation  of  newer  writers.  Several  of 
them  Communists,  one  or  two  of  them  aesthetes,  none  of 
them  "  bourgeois,"  most  of  them  novelists,  nostalgic  for 
Europe,  protesting  the  superiority  of  America.  .  .  .  Like 
the  moralists  of  the  Nineties  they  did  not  want  to  meet 

438 


the  youthful,  boisterous  Dreiser.  They  shied  away  from 
him;  he  was  literary,  they  said;  at  the  moment  laughing 
immoderately  at  a  quaint  story  told  by  Carl  Van  Vechten. 
They  had  no  glimmer  of  curiosity  to  bestow  on  the  ep- 
ochal Dreiser.  Curiosity  was  indelicate. 

If  however  Sandburg  ever  came  to  town  they  would 
not  mind  meeting  him  —  he  was  old-fashioned  now,  sub- 
jective, but  he  knew  moulders,  type-setters,  dishwashers, 
he  knew  the  working  men  of  America.  A  flood  of  sym- 
pathy had  just  spread  from  Russia  to  New  York  and  had 
become  confused  with  art.  Frost?  No.  He  knew  nothing 
about  Freud  or  sex  or  communism.  Psycho-analysis  had 
likewise  spread  to  New  York  and  been  confused  with  art. 
Robinson?  He  was  a  back-number  belonging  to  a  bour- 
geois society.  Carlos  Williams?  Perhaps  —  he  believed  in 
sex,  in  contact,  in  modern  technique.  Did  he  believe  in 
communism  ?  They  were  not  sure,  but  he  believed  in  James 
Joyce.  What  of  Sherwood  Anderson?  He  was  all  right, 
but  why  pursue  the  subject?  Chiefly  they  hated  to  meet 
celebrities ;  they  liked  ordinary  people  "  ! 

It  seemed  to  me  that  these  talented  young  men  were  as 
loose  as  that  in  their  talk.  No  thread  to  the  screw.  They 
were  like  boys  out  on  a  raft  on  the  Atlantic  vaguely  pad- 
dling toward  Europe.  Not  very  old  myself,  yet  I  felt  the 
futility  of  effort  in  the  United  States  as  if  it  were  a  drug 
whose  fumes  invaded  the  room,  the  city,  the  country.  It 
was  effort  without  complication  or  contrast.  Numerical! 
Inorganic!  Moreover  if  in  1923  these  not-ordinary  be- 
ginners disdained  to  meet  extraordinary  predecessors,  that 
in  itself  divorced  them  from  their  immediate  past.  The 
heroes  of  that  date  were  excused.  The  period  of  the  un- 
known hero  was  begun. 


439 


65 

"  I  am  an  enormous  commonplace  roll- 
ing over  your  delicate  miniatures,  I'm  an 
enormous  lady  with  large  feet,  such  large 
feet  that  she  can't  help  but  step  over  your 
little  flowers.  I  am  the  same  enormous  lady 
crying  as  sincerely  as  she  can  over  the  beau- 
tiful flowers  that  her  feet  destroyed" 

CARNEVALI 

"  To  be  shut  of  from  beauty  entirely  is 
what  makes  us  suffer  most  poignantly. 
Even  a  scrubwoman  finds  beauty  in  the  pot 
of  geraniums  on  the  fire  escape.  This  alone 
will  penetrate  her  dreams  as  nothing  else 
she  meets  all  day"  DREISER 


.ad  the  oldest  actor  in  this  American  renais- 
sance of  letters  ever  dramatized  himself,  he  might  like  the 
youngest  one  have  done  it  in  the  name  of  "  the  shattered 
enormous  truth  of  which  sophistication  is  only  the  chips." 
But  without  theatrical  ease,  such  as  belonged  to  Whitman, 
Sandburg  and  Lindsay,  Dreiser  was  too  American  to 
dramatize  himself.  He  was  audience  as  much  as  actor. 
Carnevali,  young  by  years,  old  by  race,  came  from  a  coun- 
try where  sophistication  and  vanity  were  in  the  air.  Every- 
one, obscure  or  important,  was  capable  of  drama  in  his 
peninsula.  He  was  an  immigrant  at  sixteen  looking  for 
a  new  wilderness  of  people  to  whom  he  might  be  prophet 
and  poet,  in  the  company  he  hoped  of  a  few  others  to  be 
discovered  on  the  way,  who  would  be  his  friends.  It  would 
make  an  adventurous  voyage  from  periphery  to  center. 

Dreiser,  on  the  contrary,  at  the  age  of  sixteen  had  come 
from  the  center  of  American  village  life,  and  had  fought 
his  way  gradually  to  the  periphery  in  search  of  electric 
individuals,  men  and  women  to  make  the  years  important 
440 


to  him.  He  found  a  few,  but  not  enough.  In  the  last  of  his 
novels  I  imagine  him  as  deliberately  going  back  into  the 
depths  of  the  Commonplace.  He  would  discover  if  he 
could  the  whole  substructure  of  ordinary  American  life, 
which  above  ground  could  be  beautiful,  and  dramatic,  but 
was  for  such  far  distances  humdrum  and  banal.  He  would 
find  the  wide  dark  pools  of  tragedy  in  which  the  founda- 
tions stood. 

Unlike  the  young  writers,  he  wanted  as  much  as  ever 
to  meet  extraordinary  people,  if  there  were  any.  But, 
it  seemed  to  him,  for  the  most  part  Americans  were  re- 
markable only  in  one  sense  —  the  power  to  make  money. 
The  pioneers  like  Yerkes  had  come  and  gone;  had  flung 
their  railroads  and  lighting  systems,  their  bridges  and 
skyscrapers  into  air,  across  deserts  —  an  old  story.  Time 
was  when  he  had  celebrated  their  creative  use  in  history. 
The  rulers  were  different  now.  They  were  bankers  con- 
serving in  terms  of  dollars  the  dreams  of  pioneers,  or  they 
were  speculators  imitating  them;  shooting  higher  and 
higher  buildings,  multiplying  the  machinery  of  motion  pic- 
tures, deluging  the  market  with  cars,  chewing-gum,  tooth- 
paste, radios,  victrolas,  cigarettes,  not  for  use  or  for  art, 
but  for  more  and  more  easy  money.  Greed,  not  adventure, 
controlled  the  country.  Dreiser,  on  the  watch  for  drama, 
saw  it  now  in  the  masses  preyed  upon  by  capital.  Obscure 
individuals  were  in  turn  the  strugglers  and  dreamers,  just 
as  before  the  financiers  had  been  fighters  and  dreamers. 
The  tremendous  Commonplace  so  betrayed  by  money  had 
become  heroic  to  this  novelist.  He  could  see  the  hungry 
story  in  individual  eyes,  in  restless  shoulders  and  hands 
and  legs  that  would  not  be  still.  He  could  see  it  in  any 
subway,  any  street;  and  could  hear  it  in  the  voices.  After 
years  of  contemplation,  in  three  years'  time  he  wrote  their 
story,  840  pages  —  An  American  Tragedy,  standing 
really  for  rich  as  well  as  for  poor. 

Sister  Carrie,  The  Hand  of  the  Potter,  and  this  great 
structure  appear  to  me  the  most  intense  and  intimate  of 
Dreiser's  list  of  powerful  works.  The  three  share  to  a 
high  degree  that  particular  style,  that  personal  distilla- 
tion, by  which  one  has  to  call  a  work  of  art  perfect,  since 
one  is  without  the  wish  or  the  skill  to  improve  it.  This  last 

441 


novel  concerned  with  basic  America  however  shifting  and 
uncertain,  is  yet  not  a  repudiation  of  art.  It  is  made  for 
the  sake  of  absolute  verities.  By  structure,  by  balance,  by 
intensity  it  will  stand  with  great  documents  of  other  mod- 
ern nations,  which  cause  in  a  few  readers  the  desire  for 
revolution;  but  in  most,  cause  only  nostalgia  for  reality. 
In  the  very  days  in  Los  Angeles  when  Dreiser  was  first 
shaping  his  Tragedy,  to  reporters  who  interviewed  him, 
to  whom  habitually  he  talked  freely  as  if  to  intimates,  he 
was  always  proclaiming  his  one  aim,  Art: 

"  I  want  to  be  back  where  there  is  struggle  ...  I  like  to 
wander  around  the  quarters  of  New  York  where  the  toilers 
are.  .  .  .  That's  health.  I  don't  care  about  idlers  or  tour- 
ists, or  the  humdrum,  or  artistic  pretenders  that  flock  out 
here,  or  the  rich  who  tell  you  —  and  that  is  all  they  have 
to  tell  —  how  they  did  it.  They  would  have  interested  me 
when  they  were  struggling.  .  .  . 

"  There  is  no  art  in  Los  Angeles  and  Hollywood.  And 
never  will  be.  ... 

"  We  are  not  an  artistic  nation.  All  we  care  about  is  to  be 
rich  and  powerful.  .  .  .  The  one  aim  of  existence  is  the 
ease  of  life.  .  .  . 

"  There  is  no  place  for  the  artist.  Mention  anyone  from 
Sappho  to  Shakespeare.  .  .  .  They  would  have  a  lovely 
scramble  to  get  a  meal  ticket.  .  .  . 

"  It  is  wrong  and  it  can't  be  righted.  When  you  know  that 
the  unalterableness  isn't  going  to  cause  you  any  tears. 
I  don't  worry  about  it.  One  could  lose  his  mind  if  he  took 
it  to  heart. 

"  I  don't  care  a  damn  about  the  masses.  It  is  the  indi- 
vidual that  concerns  me." 

When  he  got  back  to  New  York  the  trip  across  country 
had  not  cut  the  connection  of  his  thoughts.  He  said  to 
another  reporter  and  friend,  David  Karsener,  in  answer 
to  an  editorial  question: 

"  The  task  of  leading  minds  in  this  crisis  is  to  stop  aim- 
less population  .  .  .  and  to  organize  mankind  so  that  the 
intelligent  shall  survive." 

So  after  all  he  did  worry.  What  individuals  there  might 
be  among  the  masses  haunted  him.  He  must  have  been 
sometimes  near  to  losing  his  mind  not  over  himself  now 
but  over  his  country.  Eagerly  he  watched  every  sign  of 
"  letters  of  a  liberal  and  artistic  character,"  toward  which 
he  said  "  the  same  slick  Americans  who  can  build  a  moving- 
442 


picture  concern,  a  great  popular  magazine,  a  bank,  a  real 
estate  concern,  are  as  dull  as  oxen."  He  found  hope  in 
the  very  young  who  did  not  want  to  meet  so  "  literary  and 
old-fashioned  a  leader."  Asked  by  a  reporter  in  1923  what 
he  thought  of  contemporary  writing,  what  he  thought  of 
Willa  Gather,  for  example,  he  conveyed  in  a  flash  what 
he  thought : 

"Enormously  clever.  .  .  .  Material,  which  done  in  an- 
other way  would  be  significant.  As  it  stands  it  is  ...  full 
of  things  intended  to  comfort  the  average  American.  James 
Branch  Cabell?  His  method,  his  style  is  fascinating  to  me. 
Mencken?  I  think  he's  a  great  force.  For  what  God  only 
knows.  A  force  to  cause  people  to  revalue  what  values  they 
happen  to  be  conscious  of.  ...  Sherwood  Anderson?  Es- 
sentially a  great  poet.  He  would  like  to  be  a  novelist;  he 
will  never  escape  being  a  poet.  .  .  . 

"  One  thing  astonishes  me  ...  the  score  of  little  publi- 
cations like  Broom  and  The  Double  Dealer  ...  in  almost 
every  town,  Indianapolis,  Milwaukee,  New  Orleans  .  .  . 
always  written  by  a  group,  not  just  by  one  man.  .  .  . 
Way  back  from  1894  to  l%97  there  was  just  such  a  burst 
of  publications,  only  they  were  individual  efforts  .  .  .  El- 
bert  Hubbard,  Vance  Thompson,  William  Marion  Reedy. 
It  seems  to  me  that  this  present  burst  is  more  sincere  .  .  . 
and  more  determined.  ...  If  even  a  percentage  of  these 
people  find  themselves  in  the  next  fifteen  years  we  can 
look  forward  to  a  literature.  .  .  . 

"  I  think  the  movement  is  too  forced,  too  radical  and  too 
obvious  an  attempt  to  be  different,  but  that  radicalism 
will  freshen  the  traditional  methods  of  writing.  It  might 
even  develop  a  new  form  of  writing,  just  as  free  verse 
is  ...  the  one  thing  that  this  generation  has  given  to 
literature.  .  .  . 

"  Perhaps  it  is  a  manifestation  of  a  new  spirit  arising  in 
America." 

Two  years  later,  to  a  reporter  again,  he  says  pondering 
over  new  writers :  "  Literally  thousands  of  people  have  an 
amazing  desire  to  write  realistic  books.  The  odd  thing  is 
that  most  of  them  want  to  indict  life,  not  picture  it  in  its 
ordinary  beauty.  .  .  .  What  is  lacking  in  the  experience 
of  these  young  writers  to  make  them  think  there  is  no 
beauty?  "  So  we  see  Dreiser  already  isolated  from  the 
new  intelligentsia,  though  some  of  them  were  near  to 
his  own  age.  Of  course  he  had  satellites,  mostly  from  the 
newspaper  world,  from  which  he  has  never  estranged 

443 


himself.  The  rest  were  sceptical.  For  one  thing,  here  was 
a  man  who  could  see  beauty  in  the  midst  of  stupidity  and 
monotony.  Such  a  stubborn  appetite  tried  the  patience  of 
the  moderns. 

Ezra  Pound,  their  European  trustee,  never  in  twenty 
years  returning  but  always  corresponding  with  his  country 
from  London,  Paris,  and  Rapello,  said  of  Dreiser  in  an 
interview:  "  If  he  is  so  eager  for  expression,  for  culture 
in  America,  why  has  he  never  given  a  cent  to  an  uncom- 
mercial journal?  "  —  "  How  do  you  know  he  hasn't?  " 
I  said.  —  "  Well,  never  a  penny  to  any  known  to  me !  " 
—  "  You  mean  your  Exile,  or  This  Quarter  or  Transi- 
tion? But  would  the  editors  have  accepted  any  of  his 
writings?  "  —  "  Probably  not.  Why  should  they?  "  was 
Mr.  Pound's  honest  enough  reply,  by  which  he  answered 
his  own  query. 

Dreiser  in  truth  was  cut  off  from  those  who  followed 
him,  those  for  whom  he  had  blazed  a  trail  into  publishers' 
offices.  He  spoke  of  them  as  hopeful  strangers.  He  himself 
was  one  of  the  three  or  four  Americans  able  to  live  in  the 
United  States  and  turn  it  into  words,  without  the  stimulus 
of  indicting  it,  without  the  cocktail  of  sophistication.  To 
do  this  he  divorced  himself  from  everything  fashionable, 
even  from  his  own  friend,  Mencken.  He  was  like  a  man 
who  had  taken  the  United  States  for  wife.  However  much 
he  fought  with  her  and  hated  her,  he  felt  forced  to  be  true. 
Again  he  was  like  a  man  who  had  taken  as  mistress  a 
stranger  to  his  country,  Art,  Creation.  He  would  not 
abandon  her  either. 

As  I  see  it  An  American  Tragedy  is  the  mournful 
changeful  building  he  made  for  himself  to  live  in  among 
his  own  people.  The  various  walls  of  this  book  separated 
him  sufficiently  from  the  streets  of  America  to  give  him 
peace,  and  yet  connected  him  enough  to  give  him  excite- 
ment as  none  of  his  previous  books  had  succeeded  in  doing. 

Other  epic  novels,  being  those  of  Melville  or  James, 
or  else  of  Europeans,  are  different.  The  Idiot,  The  Broth- 
ers Karamazof  lead  from  mansions  in  stately  parks,  or 
from  apartments  on  sophisticated  streets,  to  forests,  to 
deserts,  to  mountains,  and  then  to  precipices  of  the  mind, 
where  the  characters  we  have  come  intimately  to  know 

444 


topple  and  are  lost.  La  Peau  de  Chagrin  is  a  brilliant 
wilderness  in  the  midst  of  civilization,  which  was  Paris. 
Madame  Bovary  is  a  small  town  whose  lime  tree  shaded 
avenues  lead  to  the  country  and  to  the  unknown;  the 
design  of  a  landscape  gardener  turned  undertaker.  Moby 
Dick,  back  in  the  Fifties,  is  an  inhuman  world  shifting 
from  deep  oceans  to  the  decks  and  holds  of  ships,  whose 
human  beings  have  deserted  mankind,  finding  nothing  on 
earth  to  arrest  them.  Dreiser's  novels,  An  American 
Tragedy  in  particular,  are  structures  each  composed  of  a 
number  of  structures,  now  poor,  now  rich,  now  private, 
now  public,  doors  leading  to  doors  through  the  corridors 
of  his  close  imagination.  When  you  enter,  you  enter  in- 
teriors never  quite  personal,  since  the  country  aims  to  be 
impersonal.  Except  that  you  enter  solitary  rooms  and 
closets  of  the  hero's  mind,  where  his  secrets  speak,  as  if 
Dreiser  wrote  from  within  that  mind. 

Reading  this  book,  I  think  of  the  incessant  construction 
in  America  during  my  lifetime,  the  insane  wish  to  destroy 
wilderness ;  the  constant  chorus  of  saw  and  hammer,  and 
in  the  cities  of  pile-driver,  cement-mixer,  riveter,  and  of 
machinery  to  create  machinery.  Such  tools  have  made 
the  wooden  shanties,  the  drug  stores,  the  grand  hotels, 
the  whore-houses,  the  freight  cars,  the  exclusive  clubs,  the 
factories,  the  wealthy  residences,  the  pleasant  homes, 
the  boarding-house,  the  churches  and  church  parlors, 
the  amusement  park,  the  summer  homes,  the  summer  ho- 
tel, the  farm-houses.  They  have  made  the  camps,  the  side- 
walks, street  cars,  railroads,  depots  and  jails;  the  court 
houses,  the  prisons  and  death  cells,  the  politicians'  offices, 
the  haberdasheries  and  laundries,  the  automobile  roads, 
and  the  older  lumber  roads,  the  governor's  mansion  — 
which  altogether  spell  America  and  which  figure  in  the 
drama  of  this  book.  How  encompass  it  in  less  than  800 
pages?  Here  Dreiser  has  practised  economy. 

Or  rather  only  a  novelist,  a  man  of  creative  imagina- 
tion, who  comes  once  in  ages,  could  make  the  likeness  of 
so  vast  a  nation,  sounding  the  casual  trivial  voices  and  the 
momentous  trivial  voices  with  whom  the  story  is  con- 
cerned, in  that  space  of  pages.  By  selecting  a  single  atom, 
Clyde  Griffiths,  and  going  with  him,  not  detached  but 

445 


always  surrounded  by  young  and  old,  from  the  age  of 
twelve  to  the  age  of  twenty-three,  the  extent  of  his  life, 
Dreiser  has  synechdochized  America.  "  How  are  we  to 
write  the  Russian  novel  in  America  —  As  long  as  life  goes 
so  unterribly?  "  Frost  asks.  We  are  not,  is  Dreiser's 
answer  in  this  book,  unless  we  take  it  between  twelve  and 
twenty-three  years  or  thereabouts,  the  span  of  life  for 
genuine  natives;  and  then  take  it  unprotected  by  privi- 
leges of  money.  Up  to  a  certain  age  such  embryos  follow 
the  path  of  the  oldest  highways.  And  then  curiously  they 
are  forced  to  lose  their  way.  The  way  is  lost  in  guilt  and 
fears  for  failure  to  keep  the  impossible  contract  of  Ameri- 
can society.  The  tragedy  is  a  young  and  humble  one ;  since 
desires  are  sterilized  at  an  early  age  throughout  the  na- 
tion. Except  possibly  among  the  very  poor  who  sometimes 
escape  to  Gangland,  or  perhaps  for  the  inordinately  rich, 
who,  it  is  said,  escape  to  Speed.  Yet  is  not  speed  a  form  of 
sterilization? 

With  such  a  child  from  a  street  one  evening  in  Kansas 
City  Dreiser  goes  through  the  door  of  an  old  time  mission 
house  where  the  boy's  parents  save  the  souls  they  have 
corralled  with  prayers  and  hymns.  The  boy  and  his  sisters 
and  brother  perhaps  are  innocent  and  powerful,  since  who 
knows  what  may  come  of  children.  Only,  Dreiser  makes  it 
certain,  the  blight  of  a  fusty  religion  is  already  on  them. 
Unkindly  germs  are  in  the  faltering  air.  This  is  the  begin- 
ning. The  end  is  that  the  boy,  Clyde  Griffiths,  well-made 
as  to  body,  alluring  enough  as  to  soul,  slips  through  the 
last  door,  death,  strapped  to  the  electric  chair. 

Between  the  doors  of  the  mission  house  in  Kansas  City 
and  the  death  room  in  Sing  Sing  what  trivial  front  doors 
and  momentous  back  doors  and  secret  front  doors  are 
imagined  by  this  mystical  realist,  once  upon  a  time  born 
in  Terre  Haute,  Indiana!  Through  the  brightly-lighted 
revolving  door  of  a  great  hotel,  the  boy  escapes  from  his 
religious  parents  to  the  bell-hops'  bench.  Therein  were 
doors  and  doors.  Go  in  at  one  or  another  with  the  bag- 
gage of  a  guest  from  Europe,  the  Orient,  New  York, 
Honolulu,  and  a  bell-boy  learned  about  life,  grandeur,  sex. 

Then  out  of  the  back  door  of  hours-off  what  picnics  of 
bell-boys  with  their  girls,  what  joy  rides  in  borrowed  cars ! 
446 


At  length  one  night  in  the  hurry  to  get  back,  the  killing  of 
a  child  on  the  outskirts  of  the  city,  the  wrecking  of  the 
stolen  car!  Then  the  getaway  of  the  still  innocent  but 
implicated  hero  of  the  Commonplace,  by  the  back  door  of 
freight  cars.  In  at  the  employees'  door  of  the  Union 
League  Club  in  Chicago  —  a  respectable  oasis  of  wealth 
dating  back  to  the  time  of  Jennie  Gerhardt's  carriage 
manufacturer,  to  the  day  of  the  Titan,  Yerkes,  who  was 
never  quite  welcome  there.  A  transient  millionaire  uncle 
proves  that  melodrama  is  occasionally  realism.  He  is  a 
white-collar  manufacturer  of  Lycurgus,  or  Syracuse,  New 
York.  Like  a  chip  on  far-off  rivulets  the  son  of  his  dis- 
owned brother  is  carried  down  stream  into  markets  nearer 
the  sea. 

In  Lycurgus  two  doors  confront  him,  one  into  the  collar 
factory,  the  other  into  his  uncle's  residence  on  the  main 
boulevard  of  the  city.  Of  joys  within  the  house  the  Kansas 
nephew  gets  a  brief  view.  The  aunt  and  cousins  ignore 
him.  In  the  factory,  where  he  is  foreman  over  twenty-five 
women  who  stamp  the  size  and  trade  mark  of  collars, 
a  rule  forbids  him  to  be  seen  outside  with  any  of  these 
girls.  One  of  them  a  farmer's  daughter  is  so  alluring  he 
commits  this  business  crime. 

Not  to  lose  him  she  lets  him  in  at  the  door  of  her 
room.  Here  Dreiser  more  lyrically  than  before  leaves 
the  hustling  world  and  enters  with  two  lovers  into  their 
isolation  —  as  ecstatic  in  upper  New  York  state  as  else- 
where in  history.  Here  circles  and  ovals  of  lakes  and  poetry 
begin  to  interrupt  the  rectangles  of  buildings  and  prose. 
The  foreman  and  the  girl  had  first  met  by  chance,  one 
Sunday  afternoon,  on  a  lake  where  "  from  certain  marshy 
spots,  to  be  reached  by  venturing  out  a  score  of  feet  or 
more,  it  was  possible  to  reach  and  take  white  lilies  with 
their  delicate  yellow  hearts." 

An  American  Tragedy  is  a  geometry  of  conflicting 
circles,  ovals  and  rectangles,  expanded  into  figures  of 
three  dimensions,  crossed  and  re-crossed  by  the  wiry  paths 
of  delicious  desires  and  grievous  decisions.  The  book 
possesses  that  cubic  volume  which  modern  European  art 
has  insisted  on,  and  has  achieved  in  the  case  of  a  few  great 
artists.  Each  character,  and  there  is  a  stream,  a  host  of 

447 


characters,  is  made  with  his  or  her  difference  of  being; 
and  made  in  the  round  or  angularly,  according  to  age  and 
charm.  Years  are  the  deciding  factor  in  the  American 
Commonplace.  So  veritable  is  the  result  that  one  can 
walk  around  and  among  all  these  men  and  women  and 
children  in  the  air  of  the  United  States. 

Finally  and  by  chance  the  hero  goes  in  at  the  doors  of 
the  rich  houses  —  those  hierarchies  so  longed  for.  He 
is  taken  up  by  a  fashionable  beauty  in  the  same  set  with 
his  cousins,  and  through  his  talent  for  romance  becomes 
her  favorite.  What  more  natural  then  than  for  him  to 
wish  to  forget  the  factory  girl  who  could  never  take  him 
to  a  plane  above  his  beginning.  Suppose  she  has  conceived 
a  child,  and  by  him.  Why  should  that  destroy  his  whole 
chance  of  success  according  to  his  popular  theory  as  to 
what  life  should  be? 

Doors  of  drug  stores,  doors  of  doctors1  offices,  with 
the  hopes  of  contraceptive  means !  Nothing  to  be  done  1 
In  an  insane  frenzy  for  dreams  to  come  true  and  not  be 
thwarted  by  mere  circumstances,  slowly,  hypnotically  he 
half  plans  her  death,  suggested  by  a  double  drowning  he 
has  read  about  in  the  newspapers.  With  a  promise  of  mar- 
riage to  "  see  her  through  "  he  takes  her  from  her  father's 
dilapidated  farm  to  a  lake  again,  eerie  and  wild  in  the 
Adirondacks,  loses  courage  to  drown  her,  but  when  in  a 
quarrel  the  boat  capsizes,  he  lacks  courage  or  will  to  re- 
verse the  reflex  of  his  schemes  utterly  enough  to  save  her. 
Here  Dreiser,  called  lumbering,  follows  like  a  flexible 
wire  the  baffling  tangle  of  thought-prints  of  the  mind. 

To  the  society  girFs  summer  camp,  darting  with  canoes, 
riding  horses,  speed  boats,  dancing,  tennis,  and  all  the 
costumes  that  go  with  these,  the  pallid  young  man  makes 
his  escape  for  what  he  hopes  will  be  his  reward.  But  never 
after  the  drowning  able  to  decide  whether  swimming  away 
meant  that  he  was  a  murderer,  and  shaken  by  the  fear  of 
pursuit,  there  was  no  reward.  Afterwards  forced  away 
through  the  back  door  of  the  camp  by  the  revolvers  of 
sheriff  and  district  attorney  he  enters  the  door  of  fame 
and  the  county  jail.  Then  there  were  successively  the  doors 
of  court  houses  —  the  trial  in  the  Adirondacks,  the  appeal 
in  New  York.  And  the  doors  through  which  his  attorneys, 
448 


hired  by  his  uncle's  millions,  will  climb  to  importance  as 
criminal  lawyers ;  and  by  which  sheriff  and  district  attor- 
ney reach  high  political  prestige  in  the  county  of  Big  Bit- 
tern Lake.  Beyond  that  all  the  little  farm  houses  pour  out 
their  citizens  to  exhort  judge  and  jury  to  drive  the  mur- 
derer to  his  death. 

Now  the  door  of  the  mission  house  removed  to  Denver 
is  flung  wide  open  by  newspapers.  Out  of  it  his  mother 
walks,  determined  to  prove  his  innocence.  She  goes  even 
to  the  governor  of  New  York  imploring  pardon.  Obscure 
Evangelism  meets  high  officialdom  in  vain.  She  sends  a 
minister  of  the  faith  to  lead  her  son  through  the  last  door 
to  Christ.  Convinced  at  length  of  his  own  guilt,  since  he 
swam  away,  he  makes  his  final  effort  to  count  in  a  letter 
to  young  men  urging  them  to  follow  the  narrow  way,  his 
mother's  way,  through  Jesus  to  Heaven. 

The  waters  close  over.  The  newspaper  magnates,  the 
lawyers  and  politicians,  are  the  richer  for  this  tragedy. 
The  country  is  the  poorer  in  spirit,  whose  code  has  made 
life  impossible  for  two  young  people.  If  for  them,  for 
how  many  others !  Impossible  to  read  the  book  without 
tears !  In  one  passage  Dreiser  describes  the  temperament 
of  this  boy  as  "  fluid  and  unstable  as  water."  Yet  he  seems 
to  readers  not  more  unstable  than  any  other  element 
acutely  sensitive  to  the  vivid  world  outside.  He  seems  not 
more  unstable  than  Romeo  or  Hamlet,  merely  less  dis- 
tinguished, less  developed.  The  conclusion  is  that  human 
beings  endowed  with  full  senses  are  as  fluid  and  unstable 
as  water.  Sometimes,  dammed  up,  they  acquire  the  force 
of  torrents.  They  become  instruments  of  drama  and  de- 
struction. 

Here  then  is  An  American  Tragedy  —  the  apex  of  the 
experience  meeting  between  Dreiser  and  his  country. 
What  did  it  do  for  America,  what  did  it  do  for  Dreiser? 
As  for  the  public  the  book  went  into  seven  printings  be- 
tween December  1925  and  December  1926,  and  then  on 
through  other  years.  Thousands  of  people  read  it;  debu- 
tantes and  news-stand  dealers  —  I  have  seen  them.  Yet 
just  for  sensation  they  did  not  have  to  read  the  book. 
They  had  always  the  tabloids,  which  every  day  superfici- 

449 


ally,  but  more  and  more,  copied  Dreiser's  method  of  pre- 
senting crime;  just  as  blurbs  and  advertisements  imitated 
Sandburg's  and  Anderson's  ways  of  presenting  pleasures. 
Great  Americans  are  often  accused  of  journalism  in  their 
art.  I  think  it  is  the  other  way  around.  The  journalists 
and  copy  writers  have  imitated  the  poets,  being  them- 
selves would-be  artists.  Wasn't  Dreiser  in  newspaper  days 
exhorted  to  study  Zola,  Loti,  Kipling?  And  then  there 
were  men  like  Eugene  Field,  George  Ade,  O.  Henry,  Ring 
Lardner.  Hard  to  know  which  they  were,  poets  or  jour- 
nalists. But  one  thing  is  sure,  they  left  their  mark  on 
American  journalism  more  than  they  were  branded  by  it. 
The  populace  did  not  have  to  read  this  tragedy  for 
mere  excitement.  Dreiser  himself  was  amazed  at  the  sales 
and  the  reclame.  He  had  built  the  work  to  please  himself, 
and  as  he  says  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  had  begun  it  with 
"  the  damnedest  qualms  and  struggles  " : 

"I  have  written  and  written  —  and  at  last  I  hope,  if  I 
don't  change  it  again,  gotten  a  fair  start.  .  .  .  When  I  set 
out  to  write  a  novel  I  worry  so  over  the  sure  even  progress 
of  it.  What  I  ought  to  have  is  someone  who  could  decide 
for  me  when  I  have  the  right  start,  when  I  am  going  ahead, 
or  one  who  would  take  all  the  phases  I  pen  down  and 
piece  them  together  into  the  true  story  as  I  see  it.  That 
is  eventually  what  I  do  for  myself.  But  oh,  the  struggles 
and  the  flounderings ! " 

Two  and  a  half  solitary  years  more  of  these,  and  the  work 
pleased  him  —  he  called  it  complete.  But  why  should  it 
please  anyone  else,  save  for  a  few  adherents?  It  was  more 
drab,  more  grim,  more  tragic,  more  salacious  in  material 
than  The  "  Genius"  The  Titan,  The  Financier,  Jennie  or 
Carrie.  If  those  novels  were  questionable,  this  one  surely 
would  be  hateful  to  Americans.  It  was  long  and  uncom- 
promising! 

Yet  An  American  Tragedy  sold  and  sold.  Almost  as 
much  as  an  electric  refrigerator,  or  a  radio  set.  It  was 
deluged  with  praise  by  both  simple  and  sophisticated 
critics;  by  the  very  young  who  used  to  think  that  Dreiser 
was  old-fashioned;  by  his  old  enemy,  Professor  Stuart 
Sherman,  who  enlisted  the  interest  of  churches  and  col- 
leges and  good  people  in  behalf  of  the  "  naturalist."  In 
some  universities  the  novel  became  part  of  required  read- 
450 


ing.  Why?  Its  author,  an  authority  on  his  country,  himself 
did  not  know.  He  thought  perhaps  that  the  book  was 
popular,  "  not  because  it  is  a  tragedy,  but  because  it  is 
American  " : 

"The  type  of  life  that  produced  it  has  not  changed. 
For  years  I  have  been  arrested  in  stones  and  plays  by  the 
poor  young  man  who  marries  the  rich  man's  daughter. 
I  have  had  many  letters  from  people  who  wrote:  ' Clyde 
Griffiths  might  have  been  me/" 

For  myself  I  think  the  interest  cut  deeper  than  that. 
The  year  was  turning  into  1926.  There  had  been  fifteen 
years  of  superfine  and  less  fine  intellects  saying  to 
America,  the  child  of  the  melting  pot :  "  Look  at  yourself. 
See  how  beautiful  and  promising  you  are,"  or:  "  See  how 
ugly  and  adolescent  you  are."  The  United  States,  the  most 
spiritually  ambitious  nation  of  earth  in  modern  times,  but 
busy  with  this  invention  or  that,  this  improvement  or 
that,  finally  acquired  enough  curiosity  between  "  business 
deals  "  to  look  at  itself,  as  portrayed  by  the  high-brow. 
Already  they  had  looked  at  negatives  within  the  covers 
of  Main  Street  by  Sinclair  Lewis,  Red  Lewis  —  with  that 
nickname  he  might  be  a  football  player.  But  he  wasn't. 
They  found  out  that  all  he  had  to  say  to  virile  America 
was  what  their  mothers  and  sisters  had  been  exhorting  for 
years:  "  Get  culture,  get  culture,  we're  ridiculous  without 
it."  The  masculine,  sometimes  weary,  answer  had  been : 
"  Okay,  go  and  get  culture !  Here's  a  letter  of  credit  and 
a  ticket  to  Europe.  Bring  it  back  if  you  can." 

Or  some  night  when  they  couldn't  sleep  at  some 
goddamn  house  party  they  might  have  picked  up  the 
plaintive  poems  of  Edna  Millay :  "  Sure  they  were  beauti- 
ful, as  good  as  Keats  or  Shelley  or  maybe  Shakespeare  or 
Marlowe,  remembered  from  college  days.  Good  old  col- 
lege days  I  "  What  were  the  women  nagging  them  about 
anyway?  We  had  culture  ...  we  had  this  dame  who 
could  write  poems  as  good  as  anyone,  and  "  sleep  with 
them  "  probably,  if  they  wanted  her.  Yet  after  all  there 
were  plenty  of  girls  who  would  do  that  —  next  week  in 
fact,  when  the  wife  was  in  Europe  and  the  kiddies!  Or 
instead  of  an  Edgar  Wallace,  they  might  pick  up  a  Joseph 
Hergesheimer,  maybe  a  Jew  but  a  good  fellow,  and  to 


their  consternation,  by  gosh,  he  seemed  to  think  their 
wives  were  attractive.  Even  those  over  forty,  even  those 
over  fifty.  Really,  the  man  knew  no  age  limit.  Hell,  it 
wasn't  the  wife,  come  to  think  of  it,  this  kike  fell  for. 
It  was  that  French  perfume,  those  clothes  which  he  had 
paid  for,  bought  last  year  in  Paris.  .  .  .  Heigho,  the 
money  went  out  as  fast  as  it  came  in.  ...  Just  the  same 
better  give  the  little  woman  a  look.  .  .  .  Anyhow  she 
was  refined.  Yet  how  did  he  know?  Hergesheimer  made 
a  man  think. 

But  now  on  the  guest  room  table  another  book.  God 
help  us,  wouldn't  Americans  ever  stop  printing  books  no 
one  had  time  to  read?  An  American  Tragedy!  by  a  fel- 
low who  wrote  about  Yerkes.  He  knew  a  thing  or  two 
about  finance  anyway.  .  .  .  Christ,  it  was  long.  .  .  . 
But  the  boy  in  it  was  pretty  well  done  .  .  .  exactly  like 
himself  thirty  years  ago,  only  he  went  to  the  chair. 
Why?  It  didn't  seem  quite  right,  a  nice  enough  boy  just 
about  like  himself  twenty  years  ago.  What  seemed  to 
be  the  matter?  He  got  into  trouble  with  one  girl  be- 
neath him  socially,  and  wanted  to  marry  another  above 
him.  Both  beauties!  He  himself  had  done  nothing  like 
that.  Never  in  his  life !  Not  so  weak,  or  else  could  it  be 
that  he  was  not  so  strong?  .  .  .  Long  ago  there  had 
been  a  girl  he  wanted,  beneath  him.  He  dreamed  of  her 
still  sometimes.  He  had  run  away  from  her :  there  would 
have  been  hell  to  pay.  He  would  have  lost  his  friends,  his 
job.  And  didn't  he  use  to  dream  too  about  millionaires' 
daughters  ?  But  he  knew  enough  to  marry  a  nice  girl  from 
his  own  set,  not  very  exciting  .  .  .  but  there  had  been 
banquets  and  conventions ;  he  had  had  his  fun.  And  now 
that  he  and  the  Missus  both  had  money  they  went  where 
the  liked ;  they  met  millionaires'  wives  by  the  dozen,  too 
old  of  course  to  have  a  good  time  with.  But  it  wouldn't  be 
long  before  they  got  into  that  class  themselves,  if  the 
boom  lasted,  and  it  would.  .  .  .  On  the  whole  a  pretty 
fair  book  this  American  Tragedy!  The  same  cities,  the 
same  hotels,  the  same  people  he  came  in  contact  with  daily. 
Everything  the  same  except  for  the  lake  and  the  electric 
chair  I  Pretty  tough  on  the  girl  even  if  she  did  go  wrong, 
and  on  the  young  fellow  too.  A  hell  of  a  note!  A  god- 
452 


damned  country !  Well,  he  himself  would  change  all  that 
after  he  had  made  a  couple  of  million. 

It  is  for  this  that  I  imagine  Dreiser's  tragedy  made  a 
mad  success.  It  was  like  your  own  fortune  told  by  a 
wizard,  your  own  photograph  taken  by  a  master  camera. 
And  the  overtones  produced  were  irresistible  to  serious 
Americans.  The  author  was  not  a  reformer,  but  the  book 
made  them  wish  for  the  world  to  be  different.  The  book 
was  not  ironic,  and  yet  the  effect  of  it  stabbed  them  with 
that  indescribable  torment  called  the  irony  of  fate.  After 
years  of  evasion  finally  Americans  wanted  to  look  at 
themselves. 


453 


"  A  work  of  art  reuniting  the  qualities 
of  freshness  and  of  emphasis  risks  being 
too  round,  and  rolling  at  all  speed  toward 
the  black  hole  of  the  great  public." 

JEAN  COCTEAU:  Le  Mystere  Laic 


.n  American  Tragedy  rolled  into  the  maw 
of  the  public.  For  some  days  readers  congratulated  them- 
selves on  this  work  of  genius,  which  made  them  im- 
portant even  if  it  seemed  to  prove  them  part  of  a  great 
catastrophe.  What  on  the  other  hand  did  "  the  Mount 
Everest  of  American  fiction  "  do  for  Dreiser?  He  be- 
came with  incredible  swiftness  "  the  outstanding  literary 
figure  of  America."  Since  the  Colonial  days  of  Emerson, 
and  then  Howells,  we  had  always  wanted  a  "  national 
man  of  letters  "  but  had  been  unable  to  find  one  suited 
to  our  needs.  Mark  Twain  was  u  outstanding,"  but  as 
a  clown,  not  a  sage.  Dreiser  came  back  from  Florida 
where  he  had  gone  to  rest  after  the  labors  of  his  book, 
to  find  himself  wrapped  in  editorial  superlatives.  This 
ogre,  vulgarian,  behemoth,  lobscause,  pachyderm,  viola- 
tor of  American  womanhood,  slaughterer  of  the  King's 
English,  dangerous  citizen,  hated  genius,  found  himself 
"  great  "  like  Edison,  Rockefeller  or  Ford.  His  publishers 
saw  to  it  that  now  he  should  be  dressed  from  head  to 
foot  in  illustrious  adjectives.  Reviews  of  his  book  were 
broadcast  over  the  country  in  that  synthetic  voice  of  the 
radio  announcer,  abasing  himself  before  some  miracle  of 
pancake  flour,  bedtime  story  or  washing  machine.  Royal- 
ties came  in  as  never  before.  The  book  was  made  into  a 
play  by  Patrick  Kearney,  to  be  produced  by  Liveright. 
It  was  a  chain  on  which  were  strung  like  beads  the  more 
salacious  and  terrifying  episodes,  and  it  kept  none  of  the 
architecture  of  the  original.  Yet  Dreiser,  now  a  little  way 

454 


down  the  public  throat,  after  thirty  years  of  struggle  to 
be  read  at  all,  to  live  at  all,  in  this  moment  of  success 
was  too  tired  or  too  dizzy  to  protest.  Presented  to  packed 
houses,  while  he  was  in  Europe,  the  play  brought  in  more 
royalties  and  more  prestige.  Although  retaining  some  of 
the  iron  of  the  novel,  it  counted  as  Dreiser's  initial  and 
unintentional  sacrifice  in  exchange  for  the  "  public  pour- 
boire."  He  was  being  turned  as  if  blindfolded  from  a 
great  writer  into  a  public  character. 

There  is  no  blame  attached  to  Dreiser  or  the  public. 
It  was  not  his  fault  or  theirs  that  he  went  now  among 
prosperous  inferiors,  rather  than  among  his  own  kind. 
There  was  no  society  of  equals  to  engage  him,  and  he 
craved  society  —  a  sign  of  being  civilized!  The  men  of 
like  voltage  were  the  solitary  peaks  of  the  last  chapter 
of  these  computations.  Puritanism  in  truth  had  been  de- 
feated, but  the  reward  of  victory  was  promiscuousness, 
not  distinction!  There  was  but  rarely  as  on  Dreiser's 
part,  a  desire  for  distinction;  and  probably  for  the  simple 
reason  that  most  people  were  too  humble  to  wish  for  the 
moon.  For  one  thing  the  women  who  came  out  of  the 
melting  pot  —  and  on  women,  too,  civilization  depends 
—  were  as  incapable  of  projecting  any  far-reaching  com- 
plications as  those  before  them.  There  were  no  women, 
except  always  for  the  wives  and  business  agents,  stage 
favorites  and  Harlem  yellows,  as  yet  insoluble  elements. 
Dreiser  himself  knew  it,  and  yet  reached  for  the  moon. 

He  knew  too  that  already  he  had  lost  friends  most 
eager  for  civilization,  for  whom  in  other  days  his  Tenth 
Street  apartment  had  made  a  meeting  place.  Yet  he  could 
not  believe  this  crazy  truth  of  his  country  —  that  it  was 
too  numerical  for  personal  relations.  He  rented  a  large 
apartment  on  Fifty-seventh  Street,  somewhat  Jacobean 
according  to  the  naive  taste  of  New  York  architects  and 
decorators,  yet  beautiful  with  a  big  window  framing 
theatre  signs  and  skyscrapers  in  snow,  rain  or  blue  night 
sky.  There  surely  he  could  realize  his  lifelong  dream  — 
an  intellectual  artistic  society  in  his  own  city.  For  five 
winters  on  many  Thursday  nights  there  poured  into  this 
studio  intelligent  and  expensive  New  York;  novelists, 
poets,  singers,  dancers,  scientists,  actresses,  editors,  crit- 

455 


ics,   publishers,   and   a   painter  or  two;   once  Nigerian 
dancers  bearing  with  them  a  mask  of  their  crocodile  god. 

But  it  seemed  that  the  procurers  of  the  arts  dominated 
his  room  with  their  tactile  eyes  and  hands  and  inhuman 
silences,  exactly  as  they  dominated  New  York  City.  If 
one  looked  hard  there  might  be  a  poet  from  the  Argen- 
tine or  Mexico  or  a  turbaned  friend  of  Ghandi,  or  a 
scientist  from  the  Rockefeller  Institute,  or  one  or  two 
old  friends  of  Dreiser's,  genuine  and  native.  But  they 
were  lost  among  the  owl-like  dealers  who  silently  drank 
and  petted,  coming  up  to  breathe  now  and  then  in  mo- 
ments of  literary  politics.  The  difficulty  was  that  this 
cherished  scheme  lacked  any  kind  of  medium  of  exchange. 
Not  even  that  violent  current  of  excitement  between  men 
and  women  when  the  work  of  day  is  over  could  unite 
them.  Scarcely  a  look  passed  between  one  and  another 
save  that  of  New  York  hatred  and  distrust.  The  engineer 
of  these  parties  was  wonderfully  alive  and  real  among 
his  guests  with  an  air  of  earthly  experience;  as  if  some 
day  with  enough  rehearsals  these  figures  would  perform 
together  as  he  had  seen  it  done  years  before  in  London 
drawing  rooms  and  again  recently  in  Europe.  He  seemed 
to  be  saying  to  himself:  You  can't  get  all  these  interesting 
people  together  for  an  evening  without  some  kind  of  a 
plot  evolving  from  it.  He  did  not  yet  know  how  mentally 
aseptic  and  timid  the  intelligentsia  of  New  York  could 
be. 

Also  in  January  1926  a  meeting  took  place  which  en- 
gulfed him  further  in  publicity.  Since  their  advent  he 
had  had  his  eye  on  the  movies,  and  yet  had  been  afraid 
of  their  happy  endings  and  their  ignorant  liberties  with 
authors.  Now  Liveright  told  him  that  Famous  Players 
was  after  his  Tragedy,  just  as  it  stood.  By  this  his  pub- 
lisher, according  to  a  contract  dating  from  1923,  would 
get  IQ%  of  the  transaction.  The  idea  was  exciting  to 
both  of  them.  Yet  on  the  same  day  when  he  signed  away 
the  theatrical  rights  to  his  novel,  Liveright  had  corrected 
this  news :  after  all  Lasky  was  not  interested  until  the 
play  had  been  produced;  and  his  offer  would  not  be  more 
than  $35,000,  if  that  much.  In  that  hour  Dreiser's  in- 
stinct for  business,  so  remarkable  in  Delineator  days, 
456 


which  for  fifteen  years  he  had  neglected  in  order  to  write 
about  life  as  it  is,  came  to  the  front.  He  negotiated  a 
clause  in  his  contract  by  which  the  publisher  should  get 
nothing  at  all  in  the  event  of  his  selling  the  movie  rights 
for  $30,000  or  more,  before  the  play  was  produced. 
Then  they  ambled  out  together  to  lunch  at  the  Ritz  with 
Mr.  Lasky  and  Mr.  Wanger.  How  much  did  Dreiser 
intend  to  ask?  Liveright  inquired  on  the  way  —  $100, 

000  —  He  would  never  get  it !  —  Perhaps  not,  but  that 
or  nothing!  Well,  whatever  he  got  over  $60,000  would 
he  give  it  to  Liveright,  since  he  had  opened  negotiations 
with  the  movie  kings?  Certainly  not?  But  would  he  take 
care  of  him  in  spite  of  the  new  clause?  Yes,  he'd  take 
care  of  him. 

According  to  Dreiser  the  lunch  at  the  Ritz  was  not 
smooth.  After  the  hors  d'oeuvres  Lasky  said:  "Liv- 
eright tells  me  you'll  sell  for  $35,000."  If  that  was  the 
idea,  the  author  replied,  the  party  was  agreeable  but  in 
no  sense  a  business  affair.  "  How  much  then  ?  "  —  "  $  100,- 
ooo."  —  At  this  point  Liveright  left  the  room  so  that 
the  others  might  talk  "  unconstrainedly." 

When  he  came  back  the  deal  had  gone  through: 
"  Then,"  he  said,  "  I  get  everything  over  $60,000?  "  — 
"No,"  said  the  novelist,  "you  get  your  io%." —  "I 
knew  you'd  throw  me  —  you  said  you'd  take  care  of  me," 
he  remembers  Liveright's  anguished  words.  —  "I  said 
I'd  take  care  of  you  up  to  our  original  agreement,  and 

1  don't  even  have  to  do  that."  —  "  You're  a  liar!  "  was 
what  he  heard  from  his  liberal  publisher.  And  then  it  was 
that  Dreiser  fulfilled  one  of  those  legends   that  have 
grown  up  about  him.  He  threw  his  cup  of  coffee,  some 
say  hot,  and  some  say  cold,  in  his  benefactor's  face.  That 
is    the    story    according   to    Dreiser    and    according    to 
Liveright  in  his  own  repentant  letters  to  his  star  author. 
Such  was  high  finance  in  literary  circles  in  the  United 
States.  The  sequel  to  it  is  the  still  more  terrible  rumor 
that  Liveright  in  revenge  shot  Dreiser's  cow  in  the  coun- 
try place  he  had  bought  in  Mt.  Kisco.  .  .  .  But  Dreiser 
says  no,  he  has  never  at  any  time  owned  a  cow. 

There  were,  however,  intrinsic  rewards  out  of  An 
American  Tragedy.  There  were  reviews  and  letters  from 

457 


extraordinary  men  and  women;  prisoners,  business  mag- 
nates, crusaders  and  artists.  Of  these  he  resented  Stuart 
Sherman's  praise  which  made  him  into  a  moralist.  But 
two  notices  especially  must  have  pleased  him,  one  from 
Clarence  Darrow,  another  from  H.  G.  Wells.  Darrow, 
ten  years  older,  had  a  philosophy  not  identical  to 
Dreiser's,  but  parallel!  He  had  always  said:  No  one  is 
guilty,  unless  the  hypocrite,  and  I  doubt  if  he  is  guilty. 
Dreiser  had  always  said:  Everyone  is  important  and  even 
beautiful  unless  it  be  the  hypocrite,  and  sometimes,  curi- 
ously he  appears  to  be  the  most  important  of  all.  So  these 
two  men  threw  pebbles  into  the  wide  American  sea  which 
made  ripples.  It  is  silently  believed  that  we  have  gotten 
rid  of  their  influence  and  gone  back  to  older  ethics,  but 
I  doubt  it.  It  is  more  likely  that  their  national  visions  will 
come  to  life  in  younger  genius,  just  as  the  visions  of 
Lovejoy  and  John  Brown  were  finally  lyricised  by 
Lincoln. 

Wells,  visiting  America  in  1926,  selected  Dreiser  for 
praise  the  way  that  Heinemann  and  Bennett  had  done 
twenty  years  before.  He  wrote  a  review  of  An  American 
Tragedy  less  poetic  than  Darrow's,  and  yet  the  certificate 
of  one  giant  to  another: 

"  Dreiser  is  in  the  extreme  sense  of  the  word  a  genius.  He 
seems  to  work  by  some  rare  and  inexplicable  impulse  enor- 
mously. .  .  .  His  American  Tragedy  is,  I  agree  with  Ben- 
nett, one  of  the  very  greatest  novels  of  this  century.  It  is  a 
far  more  than  life-size  rendering  of  a  poor  little  representa- 
tive corner  of  American  existence,  lighted  up  by  a  flash  of 
miserable  tragedy  .  .  .  but  I  would  disagree  with  Ben- 
nett's condemnation  of  its  style.  It  is  raw,  full  of  barbaric 
locutions,  but  it  never  fatigues  ...  it  gets  the  large,  harsh 
superficial  truth  that  it  has  to  tell  with  a  force  that  no 
grammatical  precision  and  no  correctitude  could  at- 
tain. .  .  ." 

Here  the  great  Englishman  himself  forgot  precision. 
How  can  truth  be  large,  harsh  and  superficial?  Isn't  it 
agreed  that  truth  is  the  most  delicate,  profound  and 
evasive  of  all  abstractions?  Of  course  in  a  mere  news- 
paper article  it  is  only  fair  to  interpret  Wells  as  meaning 
that,  after  his  trip  across  the  American  continent,  our  life 
appeared  to  him  large,  harsh  and  superficial,  exactly  as  in 
458 


Dreiser's  Tragedy.  His  review  betrays  also  a  racial  dif- 
ference between  the  two  men.  I  imagine  that  to  Dreiser 
"  one  little  corner "  of  existence  is  not  necessarily 
"  poorer  "  than  another,  when  lighted  by  tragedy  or 
emotion.  Yet  beyond  these  British  words  Wells  proves 
himself  here  a  great  spirit,  one  who  understands  foreign 
values  better  than  most  natives,  better  than  most  English 
intellectuals  choose  to  do.  A  letter  of  his  to  Dreiser  in 
1929,  championing  the  importance  of  the  individual, 
contradicts  some  of  his  own  books  which  propose  "  group 
consciousness."  He  writes  in  answer  to  a  question  of 
Dreiser's: 

"  To  hell  with  editors !  .  .  .  I  don't  know  whether  your 
phrase  is  true  ...  or  actionable.  But  I'm  whole-heartedly 
for  your  resolve  to  say  what  you  damn  please  about  it! 

"  You  are  a  great  man,  Dreiser,  and  I  send  you  a  twenty- 
one  gun  salute,  my  homage,  and  all  the  best  wishes  in  the 
world." 

In  the  second  year  of  Dreiser's  splendor  the  Soviet 
Government,  in  the  same  sense  agreeably  inconsistent, 
acknowledged  him.  They  invited  him  to  come  to  Russia 
and  see  for  himself  if  theirs  was  not  the  one  right  way  to 
conduct  society.  Here  is  something  which  few  govern- 
ments, certainly  not  the  United  States  in  recent  years, 
ever  ask  of  any  intellect,  known  as  such.  Especially, 
American  intellectuals  and  governors  do  not  meet.  For- 
merly gentlemen  were  used  abroad  and  business  men  at 
home  to  take  the  place  of  brains  in  government  positions. 
Recently  business  men  only  need  apply. 

Dreiser  in  Russia  was  both  repelled  and  attracted; 
delighted  to  find  a  country  whose  newspapers  were  free 
of  scandals  about  sex  and  money;  desolate  to  be  told  that 
Tchekhov,  Shakespeare's  tragedies  and  his  own  Hand  of 
the  Potter  could  not  be  played  in  Moscow.  The  proleta- 
rians, they  explained,  would  be  over-sensitized  by  such 
portrayal  of  reality.  The  senses  for  a  time  had  to  be 
atrophied.  How  else  to  make  a  Communist  government? 
That  sounded  to  Dreiser  tragically  like  home.  He  did  not 
know  what  to  think.  He  sent  back  his  articles  as  he  wrote 
them  to  the  North  American  Newspaper  Alliance,  like 
any  other  reporter.  He  was  fascinated  by  this  crossing 

459 


of  most  ancient  and  most  modern  thought  and  custom. 
But  on  his  return,  March  1928,  he  hesitated  to  make  a 
book  about  Soviet  Russia.  Why  should  he?  It  was  too 
soon;  it  was  an  experiment;  and  what  could  he  know  in 
eleven  weeks  ?  His  articles  in  the  World  and  other  news- 
papers were  merely  letters;  a  book  would  be  pretentious. 
Yet  somehow  in  October  1928,  between  publishers  and 
publicity  his  papers  did  appear  in  book  form,  called  by 
the  hackneyed  title  of  Dreiser  Looks  At  Russia,  an  out- 
sider's title. 

In  due  time  it  was  discovered  that  passages  in  this 
book  were  identical  with  parts  of  another  book  about 
Russia  by  Mrs.  Sinclair  Lewis  (Dorothy  Thompson). 
Her  cries  of  plagiarism  made  headlines.  She  filed  a  com- 
plaint with  Dreiser's  lawyers  asking  that  the  book  be 
withdrawn.  They  replied  they  were  ready  at  any  time  for 
her  to  bring  suit.  The  novelist  himself  made  no  explana- 
tion to  friends  or  reporters  except  to  deny  plagiarism. 
Cryptically  he  said  that  gallantry  forbade  explanation;  he 
thought  it  was  a  case  of  persecution.  It  was  a  rule  of  his 
never  to  explain  except  in  court.  He  said  they  had  met 
in  the  same  hotel  in  Moscow  and  in  lazy  journalist  fash- 
ion had  exchanged  and  used  common  sources  of  material. 
Miss  Thompson  to  avoid  publicity,  she  said,  never  actu- 
ally brought  suit.  The  passages  remain  identical;  the 
matter  remains  as  much  a  mystery  to  her,  she  insists,  as 
to  the  public.  It  is  curious,  however,  to  discover  among 
files  that  one  of  Dreiser's  articles  sent  in  February  to 
the  syndicate  while  he  was  still  in  Europe,  published  in 
March  on  his  immediate  return,  contains  one  of  the  of- 
fending passages,  published  likewise  by  Miss  Thompson 
a  few  weeks  before  in  the  New  York  Evening  Post.  One 
wonders  exactly  how  Dreiser  had  access  to  that  news- 
paper while  still  travelling  in  Europe  ? 

Here  was  the  first  break  imputed  to  Dreiser  after  he 
had  become  "  foremost  and  outstanding."  There  would 
be  more  to  follow.  The  newspapers,  which  could  some- 
times tolerate  him  as  a  martyr,  began  to  hate  him  as  a 
conqueror,  especially  with  his  fortune  out  of  the  movies, 
for  which  apparently  he  had  not  sold  his  integrity.  Other 
eminent  writers  joined  in  this  wave  of  jealousy.  Critics 
460 


and  columnists  combed  his  books  for  specimens  of  pla- 
giarism. They  found  three.  The  drummer  in  Sister  Carrie 
had  been  suggested  by  one  of  George  Ade's  Fables  in 
Slang.  Certainly,  Dreiser  admitted  it.  George  Ade  told 
the  papers  he  was  flattered: 

"  While  some  of  us  have  been  building  chicken  coops,  or 
possibly  bungalows,  Mr.  Dreiser  has  been  erecting  sky- 
scrapers." 

Then  they  found  a  "  lively  parallel "  between  a  poem  in 
Moods  and  the  description  of  a  woman  in  Winesburg, 
Ohio  by  Sherwood  Anderson.  Again  Dreiser  did  not 
explain,  but  Anderson  telegraphed  from  his  farm  in 
Virginia : 

"  Mr.  Dreiser  is  not  the  kind  of  man  who  needs  to  take 
lines  from  me  or  anyone  else.  It  is  one  of  those  accidents 
that  occur.  The  thought  expressed,  I  am  sure,  has  come  to 
a  great  many  men.  If  Mr.  Dreiser  has  expressed  it  beauti- 
fully it  is  enough." 

These  last  two  transgressions  appear  to  me  natural 
for  two  reasons.  First,  Dreiser's  originality  is  not  that 
of  language,  but  of  structure;  of  emphasis  and  relations, 
not  between  words  but  between  events,  both  psychic  and 
external  events.  Second,  perhaps  no  novelist  has  ever  had 
a  more  prodigious  memory  than  this  American.  Ask  him 
the  names  and  dates  of  hotels  and  towns  where  he  has 
stayed,  and  of  people  he  has  met  up  with  in  fifty  years; 
his  answers  are  immediate  and  have  the  ring  of  precision. 
His  books  contain  the  exact  names  of  things  belonging 
to  an  endless  variety  of  life;  and  always,  he  says,  he 
remembers  without  the  aid  of  note  books.  Such  a  ware- 
house of  words  and  phrases  and  rhythmic  images  can- 
not always  know  if  the  source  is  his  or  another's;  and 
will  be  too  hypnotized  by  the  work  of  the  moment  to 
care. 

But  the  enemies  of  this  great  somnambulist  among 
words,  who  wakes  up  at  the  right  moments  to  bring  them 
into  action,  into  an  engagement  with  life,  were  not 
through  yet.  They  looked  again  and  found  the  final  proof 
of  his  duplicity  in  An  American  Tragedy.  They  accused 
him  of  piecing  his  novel  together  from  excerpts  of  the 
court  records  of  the  tragedy  that  happened  in  1906  in 

461 


Herkimer  County,  New  York,  and  from  the  accounts  of 
this  story  as  reported  in  the  New  York  World. 

This  on  the  face  of  it  was  absurd.  It  was  like  saying 
that  Rodin's  Age  of  Bronze  was  a  cast  from  a  living 
model.  Or  that  Shakespeare's  plays  were  plagiarisms  from 
older  Italian  stories,  or  that  Gide's  or  Proust's  novels 
contained  men  and  women  who  have  actually  lived.  It 
was  accusing  Dreiser  of  the  inaccusable;  unless  to  write 
about  life  as  it  is  constitutes  a  crime.  In  such  an  event 
only  a  fantasy  like  Alice  in  Wonderland  or  the  myth  of 
the  Trinity  could  be  a  work  of  art,  and  these  might  be 
plagiarisms  from  the  dreams  of  children  who  have  really 
lived. 

Dreiser  according  to  custom  never  protested  or  ex- 
plained. Yet  insidiously  this  rumor  began  to  destroy  the 
bloom  of  his  last  big  work.  It  was  the  fashion  to  say, 
even  among  intellectuals :  "  Mere  journalism !  Any  star 
reporter  could  have  done  a  better  job;  he  would  have 
made  it  briefer."  In  1928  Morris  Ernst  and  William 
Seagle  printed  in  their  study  Obscenity  and  the  Censor, 
often  quoted  as  authority,  the  following  libelous  informa- 
tion, which  Mr.  Ernst  admitted  referred  to  Theodore 
Dreiser: 

"  The  Elizabethan  tragedies  based  upon  contemporary 
murders  set  a  fashion  which  has  been  continued  to  our  day. 
Only  nowadays  the  reports  of  the  press  need  no  rewriting. 
...  A  great  American  novelist  ...  took  the  newspaper 
account  of  an  actual  sexual  crime  as  the  basis  of  his  trag- 
edy. The  reviewers  praised  particularly  the  remarkable 
realism  of  a  series  of  letters  in  the  novel  .  .  .  supposed  to 
have  passed  between  the  lover  and  his  mistress.  The  truth 
was  that  the  letters  had  not  only  been  copied  almost  ver- 
batim from  the  newspaper  columns  but  had  been  made  up 
by  the  reporter  to  tide  over  the  public  craving  for  news  in 
the  dull  days  when  nothing  happened  on  the  assignment." 

Interviewing  Mr.  Ernst  I  was  told  that  he  could  not 
remember  where  he  had  heard  this  story.  It  might  have 
been  Franklin  Adams,  it  might  have  been  Joe  Anthony; 
he  thought  it  was  the  latter.  Mr.  Anthony  however  dis- 
claimed knowledge  of  the  incident  and  of  the  reporter, 
except  that  it  was  one  of  those  rumors  floating  about 
town,  emanating  he  supposed  from  the  Algonquin  or  the 
462 


Coffee  House.  He  thought  it  was  a  mere  yarn  of  what 
might  have  happened  or  might  happen  to  any  writer. 
Dreiser  himself  said  that  it  was  sheer  fiction;  the  book 
was  his,  quite  his,  but  what  difference!  If  An  American 
Tragedy  survived  him  and  became  a  remembered  book, 
then  such  stories  would  fade  from  memory.  If  not,  again 
what  difference!  But  since  I  was  attempting  not  merely 
a  biography,  but  the  analysis  of  the  relation  of  a  re- 
markable figure  to  his  country  and  his  time,  the  value  of 
the  rumor  interested  me.  Within  it,  at  least,  there  seemed 
to  grin  that  flippancy  toward  all  serious  artistic  work, 
which  is  singularly  typical  of  American  history.  In  pur- 
suit of  accuracy  I  read  the  court  records  of  the  People  of 
New  York  State  vs.  Chester  Gillette,  and  also  the  briefer, 
less  absorbing  sob-stories  in  the  New  York  World  of  the 
year  of  that  trial.  In  both  newspaper  and  court  records 
the  love  letters  were  identical,  except  as  abridged  by 
newspaper  delicacy.  The  letters  had  not  been  invented  by 
the  World  reporter. 

Dreiser  on  the  other  hand  had  copied  nothing  "  verba- 
tim "  from  either  newspapers  or  courts  into  this  book. 
In  fact  to  have  done  so  would  only  have  impeded  the 
progress  of  his  drama.  A  perusal  of  these  three  chronicles 
concerning  what  Mr.  Wells  calls  "  one  poor  little  corner 
of  American  life,"  proves  once  for  all  how  differently 
court  stenographers,  newspaper  reporters,  and  creative 
minds  work  —  that  is,  when  working  as  such.  A  court 
stenographer,  a  newspaper  reporter  outside  of  hours 
might  yet  be  a  great  artist.  But  while  on  the  job  the 
stenographer  has  got  to  be  a  formal  droning  musician 
at  best,  about  like  a  bee;  in  fact  abrupt,  trivial,  elo- 
quent, endless  as  nature  through  a  dictaphone.  A  news- 
paper man  has  got  to  be  as  coherent,  optimistic,  evasive, 
inventive  as  the  politician  who  dictates  the  policy  of  his 
paper.  The  poet  or  novelist  has  no  obligations;  except 
that  the  tradition  of  art  demands  a  personal  selection 
of  material  toward  a  more  terrific  understanding  of 
reality. 

The  letters  between  Dreiser's  characters,  Roberta 
Alden  and  Clyde  Griffiths,  do  borrow  phrases  from  the 
letters  of  Grace  Brown  to  Chester  Gillette,  buried  now  in 

463 


dusty  files  or  perhaps  in  the  hearts  of  a  sister  or  brother 
still  living.  There  are  phrases  like:  "I  have  cried  my 
eyes  out  —  it  never  rains  but  it  pours  —  please  write  me 
even  though  you  don't  want  to  —  I'm  so  blue,  I  need 
somebody  to  talk  to  and  I  can't  tell  anybody  —  If  you 
don't  come  I  don't  know  what  I  shall  do  —  I  wish  I  could 
die  —  I  have  been  bidding  goodbye  to  some  places  today 
—  I  feel  as  though  I  were  never  going  to  see  my  home 
again  —  And  Mamma  ...  I  love  her  so.  Sometimes  I 
think  if  I  could  tell  her  but  I  can't.  She  has  had  enough 
trouble.  .  .  ."  The  phrases  that  many  girls  in  despair  and 
solitude  must  still  use  to  distant,  unprotecting  lovers! 
The  phrases  of  so  many  popular  songs !  But  the  drift  and 
the  weight  of  Dreiser's  letters  are  as  different  from  the 
court  records  as  the  tempers  of  his  American  boy  and 
girl  are  different  from  those  of  the  actual  tragedy  in 
Herkimer  County  in  1906.  The  difference  lies  in  the  in- 
tention and  deliberation  of  the  book  as  contrasted  with 
the  haphazard  incident  of  everyday  life.  Sometimes  the 
biographies  of  great  people  read  like  works  of  art,  though 
Lytton  Strachey  persuades  that  even  the  great  in  crucial 
moments  fail  of  what  they  hoped  to  be.  But  An  American 
Tragedy  is  drama  selected  out  of  the  commonplace. 
There  is  no  better  proof  of  Dreiser's  mastery  of  speech 
than  to  compare  the  inchoate  photographic  court  records 
and  the  newspaper  romancing  of  this  tragedy  with  his 
novel;  all  three  of  which  are  concerned  with  the  same 
framework  of  circumstances  —  that  is,  up  to  the  event  of 
the  drowning.  Within  this  frame  Dreiser  enlarges  his 
characters  so  that  they  become  universal.  Especially  the 
drowned  girl  and  electrocuted  boy  for  Dreiser's  purposes 
are  less  scatterbrain,  less  trivial  than  those  revealed  by 
courts  and  newspapers.  The  young  man  he  has  created 
could  not  flippantly  "  get  rid  "  of  his  girl,  as  if  life  were 
nothing.  They  are  more  like  Dreiser  himself,  more  eager, 
determined  lovers  of  life.  The  court  records  of  this 
case  are  like  an  endless  menu  card  or  the  time-table  of  a 
vast  railroad.  Different  authors  going  to  them  could  come 
away  with  different  meals  or  different  journeys  according 
to  their  various  palates  or  tickets.  One  can  imagine 
O.  Henry  or  Ring  Lardner,  had  they  ever  been  coura- 

464 


geous  enough  to  engage  with  tragedy,  coming  away  with 
stories  nearer  to  what  happened  in  Herkimer  County. 
Their  genius  in  fact  is  American  surfaces !  As  for  the 
newspapers,  artists  have  sacrificed  themselves  to  their 
columns,  but  these  columns  have  not  the  structure  of  art. 


465 


65 

"  Each  spirit  acclaimed  as  powerful  be- 
gins by  the  fault  that  makes  him  known. 
In  exchange  for  the  public  pourboire  he 
gives  up  enough  of  his  time  to  make  him 
perceptible  —  dissipated  energy  in  order 
to  transmit  himself  and  to  prepare  gratifi- 
cation among  strangers.  I  have  dreamed 
that  the  strongest  people,  the  wisest  in- 
ventors, the  most  exact  connoisseurs  of 
thought,  would  be  misers,  men  who  die 
without  confession" 

PAUL  VALERY:  Monsieur  Teste 


Jl  he  reels  turned  over  and  over.  Within  them 
Dreiser  published  Moods  Cadenced  and  Declaimed, 
1926;  Chains,  a  book  of  short  stories,  1927;  his  book 
about  Russia,  1928;  A  Gallery  of  Women,  1929;  Dawn, 
an  autobiography  of  early  youth,  1931.  Most  of  these 
had  been  written  through  the  years  before,  many  of  them 
already  printed  in  magazines.  They  belong  to  his  intellec- 
tual life  of  the  period  preceding  An  American  Tragedy. 
Many  of  the  poems  and  stories  represent  him  at  his  best, 
having  his  own  economy  of  direction,  his  thrust,  his  in- 
timacy with  his  project.  But  A  Gallery  of  Women  as  a 
whole  is  more  remote.  The  details  and  episodes  are  in- 
viting but  colder.  They  have  not  that  intense  desire  for 
verbal  creation  which  marks  most  of  Dreiser's  previous 
work.  One  would  have  expected  the  maker  of  Sister 
Carrie,  The  Titan,  the  Tragedy,  to  have  keyed  these  en- 
terprising stories  into  a  closer  relation  with  himself,  be- 
fore they  went  into  book  form.  What  else  in  truth  height- 
ens style  but  a  concise  intimacy  between  speaker  and 
speech? 

A  Gallery  of  Women  tells  about  fifteen  women  worth 


noticing,  but  does  not  contain  that  many  live  figures.  Ida 
Hauchawout,  Olive  Brand,  Ellen  Adams  Wrynn  are  im- 
mediate living  creatures,  but  not  all  the  others.  Ellen 
Adams  was  a  painter  who  went  to  France  in  the  early 
days  of  Matisse  and  Picasso.  It  was  she  apparently  who, 
on  his  first  trip  to  Europe  in  1912  not  only  cured  the 
Hoosier  of  Bouguereau  but  unintentionally,  it  seems,  made 
him  discover  his  own  relation  to  other  moderns,  whether 
writers  or  painters  —  a  relation  still  ignored  by  critics : 

"  After  a  while  I  asked  myself:  What  about  these  things? 
Are  they  not  somewhat  in  step  with  what  I  actually  see 
here  and  there  in  life?  Not  all  is  as  Ingres  would  do  it,  say, 
or  Vermeer.  There  are  strange,  trying,  gloomy,  rancid  ef- 
fects on  every  hand  .  .  .  what  is  it  that  I  am  personally 
trying  to  do?  A  smooth  countess  with  a  white  book  in  a  long 
green  lap?  A  lady  absorbed  by  a  Persian  bowl  rilled  with 
orchids?  Not  at  all!  By  degrees  I  came  to  see  that  however 
offensive,  (like  war,  say,)  here  was  something  new,  vigor- 
ous, tonic.  .  .  .  These  things,  I  said,  are  destined  to  blow 
the  breath  of  life  into  older  forms.  They  will  have  a  great 
effect." 

Over  this  painter,  when  I  asked  about  her,  Dreiser  re- 
vealed something  of  himself:  "  She  was  one  of  those 
women  where  I  lost  out.  She  didn't  want  me,  that  is,  not 
until  years  later,  and  then  I  wouldn't  have  her."  — 
"  Why  not ;  was  she  old  and  unattractive  ?  "  —  "  No,  she 
was  just  the  same.  But  it's  a  rule  with  me  not  to  moon 
around  over  anyone.  Besides  I  don't  want  a  woman  who 
has  known  a  lot  of  men.  I  felt  the  same  way  about  Olive 
Brand."  —  "  Isn't  that  unreasonable,  considering  your 
own  code,"  surprise  forced  me  to  ask —  "  I  suppose  so.  I 
know  it's  illogical,  but  it's  a  rule  with  me.  Without  it  I 
should  have  been  destroyed  long  ago  by  this  or  that 
woman  "  —  "  It  must  be  an  easy  rule  for  you  or  you  would 
have  often  broken  it?  "  —  "  No,  it  hasn't  always  been  so 
easy."  —  "  Have  you  yourself  ever  been  possessed,  anni- 
hilated, like  your  own  *  Genius  '  by  the  girl  who  ruined  his 
career?  "  I  asked,  expecting  not  to  be  answered.  —  "  Yes, 
four  times,"  was  Dreiser's  quick  reply.  —  "  How  long  did 
it  take  you  to  get  over  it?  A  year  or  two  each  time?  "  — 
"  I  have  never  gotten  over  it,  not  in  any  of  those  cases.  I 
still  feel  the  scars.  There  is  a  certain  discoloration,  don't 

467 


you  know,  after  being  knocked  out  by  a  woman.  .  .  .  Per- 
haps to  be  happily  in  love  is  even  more  unfortunate;  it 
makes  you  ignorant.  In  failure  there  is  always  under- 
standing. .  .  .  But  that  particular  kind  of  failure  is  one 
of  the  deadliest  things  that  can  happen  to  a  man.  .  .  . 
Once  it  just  about  swallowed  me  up,  devitalized  me.  I 
made  it  a  rule  then  to  break  at  once  before  I  was  done 
for!  A  clean  break!  How  could  I  have  done  any  work 
otherwise?  " 

This,  it  appeared  to  me,  though  said  to  a  mere  biog- 
rapher, to  be  written  down  if  I  wanted  to,  was  more  like 
the  Dreiser  of  other  days,  so  close  to  life  that  he  could 
touch  it.  To  this  conversation  he  added:  "  Love  requires 
as  well  as  emotion  a  mental  flare  —  at  least  for  me,  just 
as  it  does  in  art.  There  has  to  be  some  beauty  of  the  mind, 
some  personal  appeal;  otherwise  I  care  almost  nothing 
for  it.  It  is  in  fact  repellent.  Beauty  is  not  enough ;  there 
has  to  be  the  gift  of  passion  which  in  some  sense  is  related 
to  wit.  ...  I  remember  a  young  girl  in  Pittsburgh 
when  I  was  a  reporter  and  starved  for  friends,  as  beauti- 
ful as  any  Greek  figure.  She  lived  near  me  in  a  cabin 
up  in  the  hills  .  .  .  the  daughter  of  working  people, 
not  conventional;  she  seemed  to  like  me.  But  she  didn't 
know  what  it  was  about.  To  take  hold  of  her  was  no 
more  than  to  take  hold  of  this  glass.  ...  I  moved 
away." 

It  was  the  same  with  books :  "  Most  people  can't  write ; 
they  lack  the  magnetism  that  draws  readers.  Christ  Al- 
mighty, it's  insane,  the  number  of  useless  novels  written 
today.  Mary  Squeaks  from  Indiana  finds  life  difficult  and 
that's  supposed  to  make  a  novel.  Or  all  this  talk  about 
style,  what  does  it  amount  to  ?  Just  so  much  straw !  There 
must  be  something  wrong  with  the  publishers'  minds  to 
put  these  books  on  the  market,  and  with  the  readers' 
minds  to  stand  for  them."  Yet  when  asked,  he  has  never 
dared  to  refuse  to  read  a  book  or  get  some  competent 
judge  to  read  it  for  him,  for  fear  that  genius  might  get 
lost  in  the  shuffle. 

So  Dreiser  in  talk  still  returns  into  his  strong  clear 
mind,  but  in  action  lately  goes  out  into  the  market  place. 
Even  lets  his  publisher  surround  his  books  with  an  atmos- 
468 


phere  belying  them,  as  he  did  with  A  Gallery  of  Women. 
During  the  winter  of  1929  an  almost  nauseating  blow  to 
the  eye  was  the  Liveright  delivery  car  on  which  were 
papered  fifteen  Miss  Americas,  supposedly  the  novelist's 
favorites,  and  above,  an  ecstatic  appeal  to  read  Theodore 
Dreiser  who  "  bares  the  heart  and  mind  of  womanhood  "  1 
One  was  a  morphine  addict,  another  a  maundering  for- 
tune teller,  another  a  blowsy  Irish  cleaning  woman,  an- 
other a  stark  Missouri  farm  woman.  But  Liveright  repre- 
sented them  all  as  bonbons!  Nor  was  there  a  hint  of 
passages  as  delicate  as  this : 

"  It  was  the  thing  that  was  never  flatly  characterized  by 
either  of  us,  yet  was  always  present,  as  real  as  any  floor  or 
door;  in  short  the  absolute  thing  out  of  which  floors  and 
doors  are  made  and  from  which  primarily  they  take  their 
rise.  And  it  was  the  jeopardy  of  this  relationship  which  was 
now  causing  us  this  thought  and  worry." 

Success  was  making  Dreiser  the  victim  of  modern  ad- 
vertising, instead  of  the  novelist  of  human  relationships. 
He  was  in  the  market  place  now,  almost  the  property 
of  others.  After  years  of  working  at  a  desk  to  create 
worlds  of  people,  or  prowling  the  streets  to  find  them, 
perhaps  it  was  a  relief  to  become  part  of  the  actual  world; 
if  always  he  might  be  a  useful  part.  For  one  thing  he 
wanted  to  import  the  official  Ballet  and  Pantomime  of  the 
Soviet  Government  to  the  United  States  —  an  old  and 
new  form  of  art,  he  believed,  which  would  renew  the  life 
of  our  opera  and  theatre ;  bring  the  two  most  modern  peo- 
ples into  relation,  exchanging  their  specialties,  art  and  in- 
dustry. He  organized  the  project  on  a  grand  scale  as  if  to 
unite  art,  money  and  fashion  —  his  lifelong  belief  in  a 
fused  society.  Among  other  potentates  he  solicited  Henry 
Ford  in  a  letter  synthesizing  the  relation  of  Ford  to  Rus- 
sia, and  of  Russia  to  art.  But  he  was  soon  to  know  that  this 
financier  was  not  Cowperwood,  craving  aesthetic  and  so- 
cial victories.  Nor  did  it  evidently  interest  Ford  to  be  told 
by  Dreiser  that  he,  Henry  Ford,  was  enormously  in  the 
minds  of  the  poorest  Russians :  that  his  name  like  Lenin 
was  part  of  their  religion.  The  River  Rouge  king  did  not 
answer  his  letter.  I  doubt  whether  he  or  Edison  or  Harvey 
Firestone  had  ever  read  The  Titan  or  the  Tragedy,  or 

469 


heard  of  any  American  writer  of  importance  younger  than 
Mark  Twain. 

Whether  brilliant  or  not,  this  project  failing,  Dreiser 
was  persuaded  to  organize  the  Film  Art  Guild,  whose 
black  glass  and  steel  circular  theatre  on  Eighth  Street  in 
New  York  had  been  especially  constructed  to  give  pictures 
as  modern  as  in  Berlin  or  Moscow.  It  would  rival  commer- 
cial Hollywood  with  silent  movies.  Much  of  the  propa- 
ganda for  this  theatre  Dreiser  wrote.  He  shared  the  mod- 
ern dream  that  the  movie  camera  would  become  an 
instrument  of  the  imagination  in  the  United  States ;  that 
the  silver  sheet  would  say  what  could  not  be  said  otherwise 
and  create  a  new  form  of  art;  just  as  before  the  theatre 
and  then  the  novel  had  come  into  being  to  make  life  more 
vivid.  All  these  public  works  were  turned  toward  what  he 
hoped  would  be  the  refinement  of  America ;  none  of  them 
purely  selfish  any  more  than  his  books.  The  film  project 
failed,  probably  for  lack  of  genius  in  that  medium.  I  do  not 
know  then  how  many  outside  enterprises  seduced  this 
writer ;  all  his  life  caught  half-way  between  what  was  inti- 
mate and  what  was  extensive.  I  feel  certain  that  his  exit 
into  the  world  was  not  one  of  mere  self-importance,  like 
that  of  the  great  French  romanticist,  as  according  to  Coc- 
teau:  "  Victor  Hugo  was  a  madman  who  believed  he  was 
Victor  Hugo."  Dreiser  did  not  perfectly  believe  in  his  di- 
vinity. He  had  hoped  for  it  certainly,  but  had  never  been 
allowed  the  assurance  of  it.  Just  recently  an  eminent 
wag,  Chesterton,  had  reviled  him  in  print,  in  revenge, 
it  might  be,  for  the  Hoosier's  hatred  of  the  Catholic 
Church  : 

"  Exponent  of  a  philosophy  not  bright  enough  to  be 
called  a  nightmare  .  .  .  without  wit,  without  will,  without 
laughter  or  uplifting  of  the  heart;  too  old  to  die;  too  deaf 
to  leave  off  talking;  too  blind  to  stop,  too  stupid  to  start 
afresh,  top  dead  to  be  killed,  and  incapable  of  being 
damned,  since  in  all  its  weary  centuries  it  has  never  reached 
the  age  of  reason." 

Ring  Lardner,  asked  by  a  producer  to  serve  with 
Dreiser  and  Robert  Frost  as  one  of  three  founders  of  an 
American  theatre  for  only  American  plays,  refused  on  the 
ground  that  Dreiser  was  both  ridiculous  and  immoral. 
470 


Frost  on  the  other  hand  appeared  to  be  seriously  amused 
by  the  scheme,  and  would  give  his  name  and  a  play,  if  he 
could  finish  it  without  being  hurried,  on  one  condition: 
The  policy  of  the  theatre  must  be  "  daring."  The  plan 
remained  only  a  plan. 

There  were  plenty  of  others  to  whom  Dreiser  was 
ludicrous,  nearly  any  sophisticated  New  Yorker,  especially 
one  with  a  humorous  column  to  conduct,  loved  to  say  so. 
After  these  many  years  of  ridicule  the  novelist  had 
learned  to  laugh  at  himself  or  else  take  small  notice  of 
his  deriders.  Sometimes  he  excused  them:  "Well,  they 
are  jealous  of  me,  or  they  can't  stand  my  morals.  What 
difference,  I  have  my  following."  Or  again  he  might  say: 
"  In  a  measure  they  are  right;  I  am  vulgar  and  uncouth." 
It  was  not,  then,  for  the  fanfare  due  a  great  man  that  he 
neglected  creative  work  and  became  a  publicist.  It  was, 
I  think,  in  search  of  space  and  action,  even  of  under- 
standing. 

In  May  1930  he  went  on  a  vacation.  He  was  tired,  he 
said,  of  the  trespasses  on  his  time;  of  his  apartment  and 
his  Thursday  nights.  .  .  .  Money  was  nothing,  vitality 
everything.  Taste  was  all  that  counted.  He  would  as  soon 
go  back  to  a  hall  bedroom,  give  up  his  quarters  on  Fifty- 
seventh  Street.  They  oppressed  him.  .  .  .  During  this 
vacation,  traveling  west  to  San  Francisco  by  El  Paso  and 
Santa  Fe,  north  to  Seattle,  and  back  to  New  York  by  way 
of  Dakota,  this  man,  who  over  and  over  had  written  that 
he  was  never  certain  of  anything,  took  sides.  And  the 
sides  he  took  were  those  of  the  now  dwindling  army  out 
to  fight  Capitalism.  As  he  traveled  he  became  delirious 
over  the  physical  beauty  of  the  United  States,  and  after 
thirty  years  of  suspicion,  increasingly  sure  of  its  ruin 
at  the  hands  of  the  great  corporations  and  the  ignorant 
moralists.  This  double  hypocrisy  was  more  than  the 
country  could  stand.  He  said  this  to  any  reporter  who 
would  listen: 

"  Modern  business  has  made  American  citizens  into 
nothing  but  trudging  asses.  There  is  no  great  contemporary 
literature.  If  there  is  to  be  any  in  the  future  it  will  have  to 
take  the  form  of  satire  or  expressions  of  despair.  .  .  .  Big 
business  movements  are  making  it  impossible  for  men  to 
express  themselves  as  individuals.  Because  they  cannot 

471 


hope  to  succeed  in  small  enterprises  they  have  lost  their 
initiative  and  their  power  to  think. 

"  There  is  hardly  any  such  thing  as  an  individual  left  in 
America.  Just  name  a  single  great  writer.  Supposing  there 
were  one,  what  chance  would  he  have  of  becoming  popu- 
lar? .  .  . 

"  And  why  do  we  have  all  this  legislation  of  morals,  all 
this  snooping?  Movies,  radios  and  newspapers  contribute 
their  share  of  setting  millions  of  plastic  minds  in  a  mold 
which  produces  the  same  sort  of  figurative  marbles  run- 
ning down  a  trough  —  until  they  fall  off.  .  .  . 

"  All  that  financiers  think  about  is  money.  They  get  so 
much  they  don't  know  what  to  do  with  it.  ... 

"  The  government  has  ceased  to  function  .  .  .  the  corpo- 
rations are  the  government.  .  .  . 

"The  difference  between  the  four  Wall  Street  banking 
houses  that  run  this  country  and  the  Soviet  Central  Control 
Committee  is  the  difference  between  Tweedledum  and 
Tweedledee.  The  breakdown  of  individual  enterprise  is 
pointing  the  way  to  communism,  no  matter  what  we  call 
it." 

With  such  denunciations  and  many  of  them  Dreiser 
made  newspapers  ring  for  the  two  or  three  months  dur- 
ing his  survey  of  the  country,  and  after  his  return.  His 
words  screamed  sometimes  the  way  that  Debs  and  Hay- 
wood  must  have  wanted  to  yell,  had  they  thought  it  wise 
or  possible ;  and  the  way  Upton  Sinclair  would  have  done, 
had  God  given  him  so  reckless  a  voice.  But  no  one  was 
afraid  of  Dreiser.  He  was  only  our  national  man  of 
letters. 

Why  was  it  that  he  allowed  himself  this  blowout?  He 
who  continually  had  said:  "  I  want  only  to  write  about 
life  as  it  is;  it  is  not  the  place  of  an  artist  to  judge  or  to 
fight,  except  for  the  right  to  publish  unabridged,  unde- 
leted." Did  he  become  in  this  fashion  forensic  because  it 
was  easier  to  be  a  public  character  than  to  concentrate  on 
a  great  project  —  his  Bulwark,  a  novel,  partially  written, 
for  example,  or  the  last  volume  of  his  Trilogy  of  Desire 
concerning  the  Financier  after  he  had  taken  his  millions 
from  New  York  to  Europe  ?  Or  was  it  sheerly  in  accord- 
ance with  the  sudden  conviction,  after  thirty  years  of 
optimism,  that  there  were  no  readers  in  the  United 
States?  How  could  there  be  readers  where  there  were 
almost  no  individuals,  none  with  "  the  initiative  or  the 
472 


power  to  think?"  From  Sister  Carrie  to  An  American 
Tragedy,  through  books  of  short  stories,  poems,  philoso- 
phy, portraits,  plays  and  novels,  had  he  not  described 
substantially  the  same  thing  —  tragic  America ;  yet  with 
its  compensations,  bright  hopes,  great  moments  for  indi- 
vidual actors,  as  became  an  artist  occupied  with  the  par- 
ticular as  opposed  to  the  general?  Had  anyone  effectively 
noticed  these  creations,  or  those  of  other  authentic  minds 
in  his  lifetime?  Wasn't  the  country  less  civilized  today 
than  ever  before?  What  was  there  now  to  do  but  gener- 
alize, to  go  to  war,  which  is  a  form  of  generalization? 

Two  episodes  belonging  to  this  date  support  such  a 
theory  as  to  why  he  should  turn  publicist.  In  the  summer 
and  fall  of  1930  the  boy  who  was  born  in  Terre  Haute, 
and  had  gone  to  school  in  Warsaw,  then  on  to  Chicago 
with  various  mean  jobs  to  keep  him  going,  with  a  year  of 
college  in  Bloomington  —  this  boy,  now  acclaimed  a 
great  writer,  completed  the  first  volume  of  his  autobiog- 
raphy. It  was  a  review  of  the  country  and  of  himself  in 
these  early  days.  He  made  the  book  out  of  a  number  of 
previous  efforts  to  think  back,  and  he  honestly  saw  to  it 
that  now  he  should  reap  the  reward  of  years  of  battle 
with  censors.  The  account  is  full  and  unashamed  as  to  his 
family  and  bringing  up;  and  gives  in  detail  his  initial 
knowledge  of  the  act  of  sex,  and  other  experiences  of  the 
kind  in  these  years.  It  contains  a  structural  account  of  his 
mother,  the  one  heroic  woman  of  Dreiser's  larger  novels; 
and  it  contains  events  delightful  as  to  the  manner  of  tell- 
ing them.  But,  and  there  is  a  but,  the  record  as  a  whole 
lacks  complexion.  Almost  the  book  lacks  skin  to  hold  the 
separate  items  and  organs  together.  One  keeps  thinking: 
here  is  an  enormous  tract  to  the  cultivation  of  which  a 
writer,  freed  from  the  pressure  of  making  a  living,  should 
have  devoted  further  months.  He  let  it  go  too  soon  to  that 
realm  of  publicity  where  authors  abandon  their  works. 
Why?  Was  he  so  much  interested  in  his  tragic  country, 
which  he  thought  he  could  help  to  save,  that  he  had  no 
time  to  complete  his  book?  Or  was  it  merely  that  style 
such  as  he  could  achieve  did  not  seem  to  matter  any  more? 

In  the  great  cataclysm  which  was  taking  place  after 
many  migrations  from  the  old  to  the  new,  from  this  land 

473 


to  that,  from  Christianity  to  Science,  did  readers  today 
care  only  for  one  aspect  of  a  book,  that  it  should  release 
secrets,  especially  those  of  sex,  and  those  against  inept 
religion?  There  seemed  to  be  truth  in  the  last  premise. 
A  New  York  writer,  known  as  a  connoisseur  of  art  for 
art's  sake,  spoke  of  Dreiser's  Dawn  as  his  greatest  work. 
"  But,"  I  objected,  "  manner  is  so  neglected  there  that 
for  once  the  meaning  really  suffers."  —  "  Oh,  I  don't 
know,"  was  the  aesthete's  delicate  rejoinder,  "  the  man 
can't  write  anyway,  but  he  found  adequate  words  to  tell 
about  several  engagements  of  his  from  the  age  of  four- 
teen to  twenty-one  —  every  variation,  every  afterthought 
of  girl  and  boy  —  his  most  important  book  by  all 
means !  "  What  really  did  drama,  what  did  style  mean 
to  this  reader  who  was  yet  by  name  more  than  most  expe- 
rienced in  matters  of  art:  yet  less  than  most,  apparently, 
in  matters  of  sex ! 

Again  in  the  fall  of  1931  a  talking  film  was  finally 
made  from  An  American  Tragedy,  produced  by  Para- 
mount under  the  direction  of  the  imported  Von  Stern- 
berg,  through  the  scenario  of  a  friend  of  Dreiser's, 
Samuel  Hoffenstein.  The  picture  lied  so  patently  as  to 
the  meaning  of  the  novel,  was  certainly  no  more  pro- 
found than  any  other  "  murder  film,"  that  Dreiser  after 
futile  protests  in  Hollywood  appealed  to  the  courts  to 
prevent  its  release.  What  was  the  answer  of  the  lawyer 
for  Paramount,  and  of  a  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of 
New  York  State?  The  lawyer  smirkingly  argued  that  the 
book  was  just  a  lot  of  crap,  taken  from  court  records; 
the  novelist  had  written  it  to  get  himself  on  the  front 
page.  The  judge  in  his  final  decision  seemed  to  accept 
this  opinion  and  further  ruled  against  the  author,  since 
Paramount  pitifully  had  spent  so  many  thousands  of 
dollars  on  its  production.  Arthur  Garfield  Hays,  at- 
torney for  Dreiser,  pointedly  wondered  in  court  why 
Paramount  had  not  gone  direct  to  the  records  of  the 
'*  The  State  vs.  Gillette,"  rather  than  pay  a  large  sum 
for  the  rights  of  the  novel.  But  no  one,  least  of  all  the 
newspapers,  wondered  with  him.  More  than  usual  they 
laughed  at  their  foremost  novelist.  What  was  he  kicking 
about  now?  Didn't  he  have  the  dough?  Paramount  was 
474 


paramount.  Authors  dead  and  living  had  no  rights  against 
their  millions.  ...  I  read  the  story  in  the  papers  with- 
out much  wonder  that  Dreiser  had  deferred  writing  as 
an  art  and  was  out  to  fight  the  great  corporations  of 
America,  so  hostile  to  civilization  —  that  is,  to  civiliza- 
tion as  it  has  ever  been  known  or  described  before. 

The  journey,  then,  for  an  outsider,  from  the  obscure 
beginning  in  Terre  Haute  to  this  stage  of  triumph  in  New 
York  reveals  heroism,  substance,  gaiety  and  power  as 
belonging  to  the  United  States.  But  no  use  to  deny  that 
along  with  these  assets  the  journey  symbolizes  the  trag- 
edy of  America;  in  truth  explains  the  reasons  why 
Americans  leave  home.  It  suggests  to  those  who  worship 
intimacy,  which  is  art  or  love,  that  there  are  two  paths, 
one  into  isolation  and  neglect;  the  other  into  publicity. 
Take  the  first  and  a  genius  is  victim  to  loneliness;  take 
the  second  and  he  is  victim  to  that  very  condition  he  most 
abhors  —  impersonality. 

Hot  summer  of  1931  in  New  York:  one's  thoughts 
had  to  wander  from  the  flatness  of  the  bodies  on  benches 
in  Washington  Square,  Bryant  Park,  Central  Park,  to 
the  sharpness  of  towers  of  lighted  skyscrapers  the  length 
of  Manhattan,  spilling  over  into  Brooklyn.  There  was 
no  other  path  for  thoughts  to  take.  One  wondered  as  to 
the  world  of  people  between  these  extremes.  Were  they 
sensitized,  were  they  rotarian,  were  they  gangsters?  What 
were  they?  Surely  they  were  impotent  or  they  would 
never  allow  this  contrast  between  lighted  skyscrapers, 
reaching  to  eighty  stories,  and  bags  of  bodies  like  dead 
men  without  song  or  laughter  on  the  benches  of  city 
parks  —  without  jobs  and  without  women  as  well.  Times 
were  hard,  the  crash  was  brutal;  but  not  too  hard  or  too 
brutal  for  officials  to  observe  American  segregation, 
American  chasms.  For  the  matter  of  that  the  buildings 
seemed  septic  too.  Each  indecent  tower,  indecent  because 
excessive,  seemed  lighted  with  the  unfulfilled  desires  of 
some  magnate,  maybe  Jew,  maybe  German,  Syrian  or 
Yankee,  who,  having  in  his  lifetime  in  spite  of  millions 
been  definitely  excluded  from  the  socially-elect  of  his 

475 


home  town,  out  West,  down  South,  up  State,  had  built 
his  bungalow  on  the  roof  of  his  business  building.  There, 
by  God,  he  could  be  king,  he  could  exclude  whom  he 
pleased.  So  I  used  to  imagine  in  the  summer  of  1931  the 
life  of  terraced  towers  and  of  lowly  bodies  on  park 
benches. 

Certainly  it  seemed  to  me  that  we  knew  nothing  of 
ourselves  unless  by  words,  voices,  gestures;  and  these 
were  lost  in  the  explosion  of  traffic.  We  knew  nothing  of 
actual  life  from  earth  to  stars,  from  gutter  to  skyscraper. 
It  might  even  be  that  the  gutters  went  up  some  nights  in 
the  elevator  to  the  drunken,  lonely  isolation  of  the  twen- 
tieth story  or  more.  I  wished  for  writers  to  give  us  the 
voices  and  gestures  of  the  country.  Where  had  they 
gone?  To  their  retreats  in  the  country,  to  the  sand  dunes 
of  Michigan,  the  hills  of  New  Hampshire,  a  village  in 
Rhode  Island  or  Virginia,  and  always  Paris  or  St. 
Tropez? 

To  make  matters  worse  I  knew  that  if  one  entered  the 
great  market  place  from  New  Jersey  or  Long  Island, 
day  or  night,  mammoth  painted  or  electric  signs  proved 
that  the  American  language  had  gone  over  from  im- 
plication into  declaration  and  command: 

Take  the  Golden  Trail  Tour;  Richfield  Oil!  Get  a 
Home  in  Rego  Park!  Eat  More  Vitamines:  Sunkist 
Oranges!  Shift  for  Freedom:  Royal  Typewriter! 
Use  Paragon  Paints  for  Economy!  Buy  Wrigley's 
Juicy  Fruit!  Buy  Chrysler  Eights  with  Dual  High 
Gears !  Mother  Says  Use  Quaker  Oats. 

Why  should  eyes  used  to  words  performing  like  these 
read  any  others,  unless  the  super-narratives  of  crime  in 
fiction  or  tabloids?  Entering  the  Subway,  headlines  told 
you  that  "  Baby  Bandits  Must  Go  To  Chair,"  or  that 
"  24  Miners  in  Harlan  County  Face  Chair  for  Crime 
They  Claim  They  Did  Not  Commit!  "  or  that  Gangsters 
two  hours  before  had  shot  down  innocent  bystanders,  in- 
cluding Children,  in  Booze  War. 

With  the  Land  of  the  Free  thus  printed  on  my  mind 
one  afternoon  I  had  a  final  call  from  Theodore  Dreiser 
as  to  my  account  of  this  experience  meeting  between  him 
and  his  country,  to  which  he  had  once  agreed  to  lend 

476 


himself.  His  first  question  was  like  that  of  a  ship-news 
reporter  to  one  returned  from  Europe :  "  Well,  what 
do  you  really  think  of  this  city  now  that  you  are  back?  " 
—  "  For  me,  I  think  of  it  as  sinister,  but  since  everyone 
else  seems  to  think  of  it  as  brilliant  and  beautiful,  I  don't 
suppose  I  count."  To  my  surprise  the  man  who  had 
written  volumes  over  the  seduction  New  York  had  for 
him,  who  had  boasted  he  could  look  at  anything,  and 
always  proposed  the  acceptance  of  change  as  the  one 
sure  virtue,  said  quite  simply:  "  I  think  it  is  sinister  too. 
More  than  that  I  think  it's  ugly.  I'm  through  with  it. 
I'm  going  to  give  up  my  apartment  and  leave  it.  ...  I 
used  to  love  to  walk  these  streets,  but  now  they  are  too 
miserable.  They  are  meaningless.  I  can't  bear  the  brick 
or  the  cement  or  the  color  or  lack  of  color  that  goes  to 
make  up  the  city.  New  York  is  a  handsome  woman  with 
a  cruel  mouth.  The  people  are  like  sawdust;  there  can  be 
only  impact  from  the  outside,  none  from  them  toward 
anyone  else." 

Here  finally  seemed  to  be  the  divorce  between  these 
two,  Dreiser  and  his  city,  which  was  a  symbol  of  the 
country.  Amazed,  I  said,  "  But  is  it  so  much  worse  than 
it  used  to  be  in  the  Nineties?  What  about  your  own 
character  Hurstwood  carried  down  stream  to  suicide  on 
a  wave  of  greed  and  misery?  "  —  u  Yes,  it's  much  worse 
today,  and  I  ought  to  know.  Then,  I  was  one  of  the 
starving  myself,  and  yet  I  felt  something  adventurous 
and  exciting  about  New  York,  about  the  whole  country; 
if  not  for  me  then  for  others  luckier  than  me.  There  was 
a  hope  for  individuals.  Today  I  have  plenty  to  live  on, 
and  I  see  no  hope  anywhere.  For  one  thing  in  the  Nine- 
ties, and  really  up  to  a  few  years  ago,  there  were  great 
personalities  in  New  York.  Mark  Twain  meant  some- 
thing to  this  city.  There  were  young  men  like  Norris, 
Crane,  O.  Henry.  There  was  a  promise  of  competition, 
of  wit  and  understanding.  And  for  that  matter  we  have 
had  a  few  years  of  it.  Today  I  don't  see  it,  unless  it  is  in 
the  youngsters  who  want  to  change  the  whole  face  of  the 
country  and  follow  Russia."  —  "  What  good  would  that 
do?  "  I  asked.  —  "  It  would  make  a  change  at  any  rate, 
like  a  change  of  woman  for  a  man,  or  lover  for  a 

477 


woman."  —  "  A  change  of  government  would  be  nothing 
without  a  change  of  heart,  a  change  of  mind,  and  you  if 
anyone  must  know  it." — Yes,  he  supposed  he  knew  it. 
Then  he  added:  "I  would  do  anything  if  the  moment 
came  and  asked  for  it,  an  important  moment,  one  that 
asked  for  sacrifice."  —  "I  thought  every  moment  was  an 
important  moment?  "  —  "  For  what?  "  —  "  For  expres- 
sion, of  course !  In  your  case,  for  the  books  that  only  you 
could  make.  I  think  we  need  intellect  more  than  Com- 
munism in  the  United  States.  I  think  we  need  to  become 
sensitive,  critical,  in  the  sense  of  the  word  crisis.  Critical 
judgment  is  rooted  in  the  senses,  isn't  it?  "  Dreiser's  an- 
swer was :  "  I  can't  see  it  that  way.  It  has  gone  so  far  that 
there  can  be  no  change  except  a  violent  one  from  the  out- 
side. People  have  forgotten  how  to  read.  Besides  how 
can  a  man  write  or  read  with  thousands  of  people  starv- 
ing both  mentally  and  physically?  " 

Unanswerable  question  for  an  outsider!  Yet  some  day 
it  may  be  that  what  with  war  and  starvation  and  read- 
justments, possibly  communism,  Americans  will  again 
escape  the  miserable  extremes  of  poverty  and  wealth. 
New  America,  finally  born,  may  become  an  organized 
society.  Dreiser  in  the  meantime  might  retire  from  in- 
vestigations of,  and  framings  by,  the  "  Interests  "  and 
might  turn  again  to  the  even  more  difficult  task  of  de- 
scribing the  inner  circles  of  human  lives.  If  he  does,  it  is 
my  belief  that  he  will  not  fall  short  of  the  far  limits  of 
thought  he  reached  in  the  years  before.  He  might  in  fact, 
having,  pioneer-like,  prepared  the  way,  broken  barriers 
and  made  roads,  become  an  indisputable  libertine,  savage, 
aristocrat,  artist. 


478 


INCONCLUSIVELY 


JLhe  strongest  desire  known  to  human  life  is  to 
continue  living.  The  next  strongest  is  to  use  the  instrument 
by  which  life  is  generated  for  its  own  rewards,  not  for  the 
sake  of  generation.  The  third  potent  desire  is  to  excel  and 
be  acknowledged.  In  Western  countries  the  first  of  these 
has  become  an  abstract  virtue.  Suicide  is  looked  down  on 
as  a  feeble  way  out.  The  third  likewise  has  been  placed 
among  the  virtues,  provided  always  that  one  man's  excel- 
lence does  not  interfere  with  that  of  another  endowed 
with  greater  strength.  Then  the  dogged  pursuit  of  fame 
becomes  a  crime  or  at  least  a  nuisance.  The  motive  second 
in  degree  of  force  arising  out  of  sex,  has  mysteriously 
turned  through  Christian  centuries  into  a  hated,  secret 
vice,  and  nowhere  more  so  than  in  liberal  America.  The 
very  words  to  describe  it,  whether  popular  or  technical, 
used  to  be  forbidden  in  print  and  are  as  yet  awkward. 
Spoken  words  as  common  as  daylight  —  fine  crisp  words 
among  them  —  are  just  beginning  to  be  printed  and  then 
out  of  bravado  by  impatient  or  discourteous  writers.  And 
the  technical  terms  for  these  pleasures  and  instruments 
are  equally  out  of  place  in  art.  Those  who  seriously  have 
tried  to  give  back  to  the  English  language  rightful  speech 
fall  sometimes  into  diffidence.  D.  H.  Lawrence  has  re- 
sorted to  the  third  person  he,  and  Ernest  Hemingway  to 
the  neuter  it,  to  avoid  two  simple  terms.  In  truth  IT  is  the 
American  equivalent  for  all  that  is  seductive  in  man  or 
woman.  The  French  use  plenty  of  other  words  to  describe 
what  to  us  is  indescribable.  Their  Catholicism  has  not 
subdued  them  and  shamed  them,  as  the  Church  has  done 
to  people  more  Northern  in  their  wit.  The  French  con- 
tinue to  be  a  nation  with  a  frontage  on  the  Mediterra- 
nean. They  keep  facets  which  correspond  with  facets  of 
ancient  races. 

This  journey  from  1870  to  1930  is  lined  with  evidence 
that  we  are  in  the  extreme  a  people  afraid  of  the  two 

479 


elements  of  being,  male  and  female.  And  any  other  rec- 
ord could  return  the  same  evidence.  Our  literature  is 
cramped  with  this  fear.  Walt  Whitman  is  dyed  with  the 
fear  of  this  fear.  Mark  Twain  is  permeated  with  the 
forced  approval  of  this  fear.  This  fascinating  enigma, 
fear  of  sex,  has  brought  about  among  Americans  fear  of 
mystery  of  every  kind,  and  therefore  fear  of  union;  has 
brought  about  our  now  accepted  separations.  Henry 
James  in  an  early  novel  lets  one  of  his  characters  define 
the  fear  of  mystery : 

"I  like  the  beginning  —  I  delight  in  the  approach  of  it  — 
I  revel  in  the  prospect.  .  .  .  But  now  the  thing  has  come 
I  don't  revel.  To  be  fascinated  is  to  be  mystified.  Damn 
it,  I  like  my  liberty  —  I  like  my  judgment." 

The  historian,  Henry  Adams,  wrote  in  1905  : 

"Without  understanding  movement  of  sex  history 
seemed  to  him  [Adams]  mere  pedantry." 

"Neither  of  them  [St.  Gaudens  or  Matthew  Arnold] 
felt  goddesses  as  power.  .  .  .  They  felt  railway  train  as 
power;  yet  .  .  .  they  complained  ...  all  the  steam  in 
the  world  could  not,  like  the  Virgin,  build  Chartres." 

"Adams  began  to  ponder,  asking  himself  whether  he 
knew  of  any  American  authors  who  had  insisted  on  the 
power  of  sex,  as  every  classic  had  done;  but  he  could  think 
only  of  Walt  Whitman.  .  .  ." 

When  sometimes  a  writer,  harnessed  though  he  was  to 
American  prose,  let  his  five  senses  take  him  back  to 
primal  experience  it  might  be  that  initial  strength  leaped 
free  in  him.  Out  of  words  came  shapes  that  symbolized 
the  meaning  of  building  and  door,  of  lock  and  key,  of 
explorer  and  wilderness,  of  horse  train  ship  airplane  and 
the  destination  in  space  —  the  meaning  of  man  and 
woman.  Then  this  occasional  poet  frightened  nearly 
every  one.  Poe  was  such  a  poet,  and  it  is  said  was 
"  thrown  out  of  the  houses  of  gentlewomen  for  making 
obscene  advances."  *  He  was  the  image  of  a  stranger  in 
his  own  country. 

Take  on  the  other  hand  a  native  lingual  genius, 
O.  Henry.  Consider  what  he  says  of  himself: 

"  If  I  could  have  a  thousand  years  —  just  one  little  thou- 
sand years  —  more  of  life,  I  might  in  that  time  draw  near 
enough  to  true  Romance  to  touch  the  hem  of  her  robe." 

*  Krutch:  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
480 


And  then  to  belie  his  own  ambition: 

"  I  have  been  called  the  American  Maupassant.  Well,  I 
never  wrote  a  filthy  word  in  my  life,  and  don't  like  to  be 
compared  to  a  filthy  writer." 

What  then  was  all  his  brilliant  American  idiom  worth 
if  he  thought  the  hem  of  true  Romance  was  eternally 
clean;  if  to  him  no  "filthy"  word  ever  came  up  from 
"  men  on  ships,  waste  places,  forest,  road,  garret,  and 
cellar  "  ?  Or  Eugene  O'Neill  —  what  of  the  philosophy 
of  his  famous  play,  Strange  Interlude,  whose  heroine 
says,  as  if  he  approved  of  her: 

"  Let  you  and  me  forget  the  whole  degrading  episode, 
regard  it  as  an  interlude  ...  in  which  our  souls  have  been 
scraped  clean  of  impure  flesh  and  made  worthy  to  bleach 
in  peace." 

The  more  modern  Dos  Passes  in  a  late  novel  says  of 
two  lovers,  "  There  was  something  tight  and  electric  and 
uncomfortable  in  the  way  their  thighs  ground  against 
each  other  as  they  walked."  The  italics  are  mine  to  de- 
note surprise. 

It  is  a  prime  refreshment  in  the  works  of  Theodore 
Dreiser  that  he  is  free  of  the  mysterious  sense  of  degra- 
dation, of  filth  and  discomfort  into  which  most  Ameri- 
cans and  many  Europeans  have  translated  one  of  the 
three  elements  of  desire.  Life  then  in  his  books  is  free  to 
assert  its  own  volume,  where  the  huge  desire  to  live,  the 
wild  desire  to  love,  the  insane  desire  to  excel,  variously 
mingled,  produce  various  action.  And  they  disclose  the 
special  chasms  that  have  come  about  because  in  some  hid- 
den way  we  have  sacrificed  the  second  to  the  first  and 
third  of  these  angles.  But  without  dogma :  "  They  can't 
put  me  down  as  a  liberal  or  free  thinker,"  he  insists.  "  I 
don't  know,  I  wouldn't  say  I  knew.  I  know  nothing." 

Perhaps  it  required  an  America  to  make  souls  as  un- 
trammeled  by  custom  as  this.  The  same  trait  of  mind 
cnce  sparked  American  financiers,  inventors  and  politi- 
cians, and  made  our  restless  informality,  and  the  by- 
words, "  Let's  go,"  "  Push  on."  Before  we  forget  them, 
if  their  boldness  were  to  take  root  and  branch  in  the  field 
of  the  intellect,  projects  more  exciting  than  mechanical 
playthings  might  come  to  life  here.  Dreiser's  story  gives 

481 


and  takes  away  this  hope.  There  are  chapters  that  hint  at 
a  reason  for  the  long  distrust  of  sex  and  slow  dying  of  the 
senses.  And  between  the  lines  one  wonders,  may  not 
nerves  and  muscles  follow  this  death?  Is  it  Nature  on  its 
way  to  destroy  human  nature  —  a  revenge  on  Thought, 
and  that  last  child  of  thought,  Machinery? 

Dreiser  by  moments  denies  and  affirms  the  chance  of 
this,  according  to  opposite  moods  out  of  his  doctrine  of 
acceptance  of  change.  When  thereby  fortified  he  projects 
a  brave  concept  of  life,  which  once  in  talk  he  described : 
"  Men  and  women  get  to  living  as  if  in  a  cave  like  crimi- 
nals, outcasts,  mad  people.  A  crust  has  formed  about 
them.  Then  waters  well  up,  the  crust  gives  way,  the  cave 
is  gone.  You  see  them  alive  again  in  a  new  medium.  I  be- 
lieve life  holds  such  revaluations,  a  breaking  down,  a 
welling  up  of  strange  waters. " 

When  disheartened  by  sordidness  of  change,  he  re- 
tracts, and  leans  like  a  native  toward  confusing  what  is 
American  or  modern  with  universal  values.  In  his  Credo 
denying  all  belief,  published  in  the  Forum  1930,  he  de- 
scribes New  York  today  as  if  it  stood  for  all  cities  and  all 
time: 

"  For  here  we  have  what?  Bricks,  stone,  glass,  wood, 
plaster,  paints  of  the  surrounding  buildings.  .  .  .  But  rep- 
resenting what?  " 

In  older  cities  often  representing  beauty,  balance,  under- 
standing—  his  own  concern.  It  is  certain  that  neither  he 
nor  any  modern  of  the  machine  age  has  yet  forced  the  is- 
sue here  involved  —  the  new  victory  of  ignorant  material 
over  the  ancient  skilful  investment  of  material  with  spirit. 
The  newest  of  modern  problems,  it  is  but  dimly  recog- 
nized as  a  terrifying  phase  of  history.  Or  it  is  recognized 
to  be  ignored.* 

But  of  issues  known  to  him  he  has  evaded  none,  and  of 
limits  accepted  none ;  which  adventure  places  him  outside 
of  criticism  for  his  forms  of  speech.  A  mimic  may  imitate 
another  who  has  that  something  called  style,  and  critics 
will  say,  "  Superb  writing."  A  pioneer  or  an  original  is 
committed  to  his  own  style  with  exactly  his  faults  and 

*  A  matter  even  of  persecution,  as  in  the  case  of  Georges  Duhamel 
following  his  analysis  of  American  civilization. 

482 


exactly  his  virtues.  Dreiser's  fault  is  a  careless  over-bur- 
dened ear :  his  virtue  a  careful  triumphant  brain  or  im- 
agination. There  is  in  him  a  gross  precision;  foreign  mat- 
ter surrounds  it.  There  is  in  Poe,  for  one,  a  fine  precision. 
Dreiser  has  pith,  Poe  is  pith.  Many  writers  acclaimed  as 
stylists  have  not  center  and  are  not  centers.  They  have 
color,  shape,  line,  but  not  that  force. 

American  speech,  when  engaged  with  song  or  talk  of 
railroad  men,  teamsters,  taxi-drivers,  base-ball  players, 
salesmen,  chorus  girls,  bartenders,  song  writers  and  rack- 
eteers, is  alive  and  sufficient.  But  here  is  a  writer  who  has 
sought  to  describe  analyses,  formulas,  infinite  relations,  in 
brief  the  drama  of  civilization.  Without  the  ear  to  con- 
trive loans,  he  has  had  to  use  for  these  intricacies  Ameri- 
can as  he  knows  it  —  a  medley  of  English  archaisms, 
technical  terms,  newspaper  cliches  and  slang.  The  coun- 
try, an  expanse  with  small  philosophic  or  critical  inter- 
course, has  yet  to  perfect  a  language  for  philosophers  and 
critics.  Our  wisdom  will  not  be  native  until  it  finds  native 
expression. 

With  our  vagrant  speech  as  guide  he  has  looked  back 
into  a  remote  past,  days  of  dinosaurs,  glaciers,  savages, 
through  the  centuries  of  pagans,  mystics  and  puritans, 
and  forward  to  modern  days  of  physicists  and  metaphysi- 
cists;  out  of  which  have  come  the  man  and  the  brain,  the 
woman  and  the  child  of  human  history.  Facts  and  fabrica- 
tions, those  that  came  his  way,  he  has  handled  and  re- 
handled  hoping  to  discover  which  were  which.  For  solace 
he  has  been  ruled  by  a  compassion  that  might  help  to 
make  fertile  some  of  the  chasms  between  our  peaks  and 
precipices.  A  number  of  years  ago  I  remember  saying  to 
Dreiser :  "  I  imagine  tragic  art  would  not  have  been  ex- 
cept for  maladies  like  indigestion  and  unrequited  love?  " 
His  reply  was  unforgettable:  "  How  can  you  say  that? 
Neither  one  nor  the  other  has  anything  to  do  with  trag- 
edy. Grief  comes  from  separations  too  hard  to  bear." 

Edgar  Allan  Poe,  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  Theodore 
Dreiser  are  the  three  Americans  who  to  me  have  made 
most  unbearable  the  sense  of  separations  dividing  Ameri- 
cans one  from  the  other.  Equally  Poe,  Masters  and 
Dreiser,  Whitman,  Frost,  Mark  Twain  and  Sandburg  are 

483 


Americans  who  have  given  me  the  opposite  sense,  that  by 
only  a  narrow  margin  these  separations  have  occurred. 
That  by  the  lifting  of  a  hand  all  might  be  different. 

Old  surfaces  have  cracked,  floods  enveloped  bewil- 
dered nations.  In  the  United  States  we  are  at  sea  on  our 
own  new  strange  ocean.  There  are  those  who  think  that  a 
second  revaluation  has  recently  occurred  —  a  return  to 
the  safer  past,  except  that  the  leaders  will  battle  as  never 
before  for  the  separation  of  body  and  mind;  as  against  the 
spirit.  But  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  this  reaction  will 
have  its  way  at  once.  It  is  unnatural  that  creative  minds, 
such  as  have  lately  appeared  in  the  one  realm  of  Ameri- 
can writing,  should  be  lost  before  their  word  has  had  time 
to  mature.  Their  enterprise  has  been  too  real  and  too 
verdant  to  run  out  so  soon. 

History  deposes  that  roots  are  not  in  vain. 


484 


SOURCES 

Fact  and  Document,  origin  of  which  is  not  each  time 
cited  in  the  body  of  the  book,  derived  from  talks  with 
Dreiser  and  with  people  who  have  known  him,  or  who 
have  been  concerned  with  the  same  literary  drama.  Or 
they  derived  from  his  files,  which  through  his  generosity 
were  open  to  me,  dating  from  1900  to  1931,  containing 
reviews,  interviews  and  letters.  Beside  these  A  Hoosier 
Holiday  and  Dawn  furnished  sources  for  the  years  1871 
to  about  1890;  Newspaper  Days,  formerly  called  A  Book 
About  Myself,  Twelve  Men  and  A  Gallery  of  Women 
for  the  Nineties;  the  last  two  books  and  A  Traveler  at 
Forty  for  later  years.  All  other  sources  are  acknowledged 
in  text  or  footnote. 

To  every  one  who  gave  me  time  in  pursuit  of  this  story 
I  am  deeply  grateful;  and  perhaps  especially  to  those  who 
shared  my  belief  that  the  salvage  of  yesterday  is  essen- 
tial to  the  flowering  of  tomorrow. 

D.  D. 

Paris,  1932 


485 


The  Three  Pelicans 

Archbishop  Cranmer 
and  the   Tudor  Juggernaut 

Here  is  a  superior  book, —  an  imaginative 
biography  of  that  enigmatic  and  powerful 
figure  of  Tudor  England,  Thomas  Cran- 
mer, Henry  the  Eighth's  famous  Arch- 
bishop. The  author  has  treated  his  narra- 
tive somewhat  as  Merezhkovsky  treated  his 
historical  novel  of  Da  Vinci,  with  much  the 
same  fullness  of  canvas  and  meticulous  ac- 
curacy of  details.  The  subject  is  an  excel- 
lent one  for  the  purpose.  Cranmer's  life  was 
full  of  drama  from  the  time  that  Henry 
VIII,  wishing  to  divorce  Katherine  of 
Aragon  in  favor  of  Anne  Boleyn,  heard  of 
the  plan  suggested  by  the  obscure  young 
churchman  and  sent  for  him  with  the  re- 
mark that  "he  has  got  the  right  sow  by  the 
ear";  it  covered  three  reigns,  Henry's,  Ed- 
ward's and  Bloody  Mary's  j  and  it  came  to 
a  fine  climax  in  his  heroic  death  at  the 
stake. 

Provocative  and  stimulating,  the  book  is 
likely  to  be  attacked  as  pro-Catholic,  as  pro- 
Protestant,  and  as  cynical,  but  the  truth  is 
that  it  is  neither;  it  is  satirical,  but  satirical 
in  the  best  literary  sense.  The  reader  will 
discover  in  Mr.  Styron  gifts  of  an  unusual 
kind — imagination,  power  of  animated  nar- 
rative, descriptive  ability,  and  the  power  to 
write  interesting  and  truthful  dialogue. 
That  the  author  also  knows  his  subject  is 
evident,  for  he  writes  not  merely  with  a 
surface  knowledge,  but  as  one  long  inter- 
ested and  widely  read  in  the  history  of 
England  and  the  Church.  The  Three  Pell- 
cans  is  a  compelling  book  which  will  at- 
tract wide  attention  for  its  gripping  story,  its 
study  of  a  character  unusual  in  both  its 
strength  and  weakness,  and  its  detailed  pic- 
ture of  Tudor  life.  $4.00 


To  many  good  people  Dreiser  seems  to  be  a  Nihilist,  a  No-sayer  rather 
than  a  Yes-sayer  to  life.  As  he  himself  indicates,  he  is  neither.  He  is  a 
figure  frozen  in  mist  and  muck  half  way  between  Yes-yes  and  No-no. 
Ask  him  if  he  wants  to  live  and  he  answers  like  the  ancient  Anglo-Saxon 
witness,  "I  stands  mute."  Ask  him  whether  he  wants  to  die  and  you  get 
the  same  answer  —  nothing.  He  was  born,  as  he  says,  "confused  and 
dismayed,"  and  will  leave  the  scene  likewise— tongue-tied.  As  Dorothy 
Dudley  sees  him  he  is  a  type  and  embodiment  of  this  country  in  certain 
phases— huge,  living,  groping,  lugging  deep  and  inarticulate  hopes  — 
sudden,  changeful,  treacherous.  The  riddle  of  Dreiser  is  a  good  deal  the 
riddle  of  the  U.  S.  A.,  of  "the  American  Experiment,"  of  the  heavy 
two-word  inquiry,  "Whither  America?"  For  he  has  the  resources,  the 
raw  materials,  the  stuff  and  the  stature  to  make  something— but  what, 
when  and  how?  Thus  she  questions  and  attempts  some  answers.  It  is  a 
grand  treatment  of  the  American  scene,  with  the  analytical  research  of 
a  Henry  Adams— plus  colors  of  style,  occasional  sentences  that  send  up 
little  red  and  yellow  balloons.  For  those  who  find  Dreiser's  volumes 
lumbering  and  lugubrious,  this  book  is  a  godsend. 

-CARL  SANDBURG