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PROCEEDINGS I
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
1909-1910
THE DE VINNE PRESS
NEW YORK
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE ACADEMY
Sessions in Washington, December 14 and 16, 1909
PAGE
Opening Address of the President
IVilliam Dean Howells .... $y^
The Evolution of Style in Modern Architecture
Thomas Hastings 9
In Praise of Poetry
I "I Marvel Not"
II Refuge
III "He Came so Be.\utifully Clad*'
Richard Watson Gilder ... 16
The Actual State of Art Among Us
Edwin Howland Blashfield . . 17
RusKiN and Norton
Thomas Wentworth Higginson . 22
The Molly Maguires in the Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania
James Ford Rhodes 25
The Capitol
Julia Ward Howe 35
Concerning Contemporary Music
Horatio William Parker ... 36
Sketch of the Academy and List of Members and Officers . . 44
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Published at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U. Johnson,
35 East 17th Street, New York Price per annum $1.00
Vol. I
New York, June id, 19 10
No. I
THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
First Public Meetings held in Washington, D. C, December
14 and 16, 1909
Opening Address of the President,
William Dean Howells
It might very well be expected that the
President of the American Academy of
Arts and Letters, in opening its first
public session, would say something of
its origin and its object, its nature and
its function, so far as these can be de-
clared or conjectured.
Not wholly to disappoint such an ex-
pectation, if it exists, I will state as
briefly as may be that this Academy
derives from the National Institute of
Arts and Letters, which in turn was
originally a section of the Social Sci-
ence Association. Several years after
the Institute had become an independent
body, certain of its members felt that
an Academy chosen from it could more
succinctly represent to the country what
had been accomplished in literature, in
music, in painting, in sculpture, and in
architecture. The group of artists and
authors, so chosen to the number of
thirty, became thereafter elective, and
enlarged itself to the number of fifty,
always drawing its members from the
Institute, but no longer sharing their
selection with that body.
So far as the disinterested will of
either the Institute or the Academy
could effect the end in view, this Acad-
emy is representative. It is possible
that, by an oversight, which we should
all deplore, some artist or author or
composer whose work has given him
the right to be of us is not of us. It is
also possible that time will decide that
some of us who are now here were not
worthy to be here, and by this decision
we must abide. But until it is ren-
dered, we will suffer with what meek-
ness, what magnanimity, we may the
impeachments of those contemporaries
who may question our right to be here.
Concerning our affinity with like
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
bodies in different countries, I shall not
try to make out a case. The French
Academy is the first of the august com-
panies with which the American Acad-
emy would wish not to claim kindred
or challenge comparison. The Spanish
Academy, the Berlin Academy, the
Academy of St. Petersburg, as well as
the academies of the other European
nations and those of the Spanish-
American republics, have each an au-
thoritative structure and an authorita-
tive office to which we do not pretend,
and would not wish to pretend. The
law of our being, however voluntary,
is tempered by the arbitrary cast of our
race, and we cannot hope to shape
American arts and letters by our col-
lective action. But if each one of us, as
I trust, stands for something distinctive
in his kind, it is reasonable to hope that
our aggregation will make for standing
in all our different kinds. In our Amer-
ican community, whose average intelli-
gence is unsurpassed, not to say un-
equaled, the appreciation of permanent
achievement in literature and art is less
constant than in any other. The gen-
eral eye follows the sweep of the comet
across our skies, and when the comet
sinks from sight in the pale ether where
the modest planets and the patient stars
are shining, the general eye seeks an-
other comet. By and by there will be
one, but in those intercometary moments
which must ensue, I have the belief
that our Academy may make itself felt
as an influence in behalf of luminaries
which have or seem to have planetary
and stellar qualities.
The place of many of these has been
or will be fixed by time, and it might be
supposed that any academic influence
would be superfluous in holding them
there. But this is one of those popular
fallacies in which our indolence too
willingly reposes. The classics, the best
things, the greatest things, the stellar
and planetary things, do not keep them-
selves from being forgotten; it is the
zeal of those who love beauty and truth
which from age to age renews them in
secular effulgence. For those lights
which swim into our ken from the
bounds of mystery where the promise
of beauty and truth abides, ready to
fulfil itself when the hour strikes, still
more is a favoring and fostering wel-
come needed.
It is my own hope, and I think it will
be the opinion of those who listen to
the papers about to be read here, in the
first public sessions of the Academy, that
this influence can now make itself felt
as it could not before. If it should re-
main simply atmospheric, with no direct
tendency, it seems to me that all those
who love the arts and long to devote
themselves to their service will find it
vital. They must be aware of a kin-
dred passion, a like worship, a common
aspiration, where before there might
have seemed at the best a friendly irony
or a tolerant doubt in the measureless
space about them.
In our vast, striving world of ma-
terial enterprises and activities, the
Academy, as I imagine it, seeks to em-
body a fraternal consciousness of those
who dedicate themselves to the arts,
and a promise of affectionate recogni-
tion, prompt, hopeful, and encouraging.
It should count for something ; it should
count for much, in the service and the
love of the arts, that there is an asso-
ciation of those who have done things
in them, and are always thinking of
them, and desiring their greater honor
among us. The proof of such a fact
will be apparent in the essays which I
will not long delay you from hearing,
and which will form the proceedings
of the Academy on this occasion. I
may say that each of the Academicians
who speaks will speak with an author-
ity in his sort which the Academy col-
lectively is not willing to claim. To-
gether they will affirm for the present
the effectivity of the Academy, and if
no more specific action of it testified
in its behalf, I think their testimony
in its behalf would be enough. But
still I hope for something else here-
after, some direct, if not immediate,
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OPENING ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT
effect of that potential usefulness which
I like to imagine in it.
What I really think we might do,
would be somediing actual, something
approximately advisable and applicable.
I shall not answer for the arts, but I
venture to say for the letters that, if
at each annual reimion of our society
some member of it would speak of a
^ new American book which he had
read with a sense of its peculiar ex-
cellence in its sort, he would be doing
our literature a very helpful service. I
should not care at what large or little
length he spoke his praise, so that he
did it with a single devotion to the
honor of letters and the recognition of
a novel gift in the author. His praise
would serve with us the purpose of
that coronation which is the supreme
act of the French Academy, and yet
would not commit our whole number to
his opinions, or infringe that individu-
ality which, whether we will or no, will
probably always remain our distin-
guishing characteristic, in virtue of our
being by origin and circumstance
Anglo-Saxon. As has been expressed
to me by one of the first among us, we
can never hope to take that concordant
attitude toward examples of literature
and art which in the Continental acad-
emies responds to the Latin impulse
originating and animating them ; and I
have the feeling that we American
Anglo-Saxons will probably act even
less than British Ajiglo-Saxons as a
whole. So deeply do I realize that our
membership may at some time or on
some point prove, like the sentences of
Emerson, an association of "infinitely
repellent particles," that I have a pre-
science of such difference among us even
as I had vaguely forecast our possible
functioning; I am aware of speaking
rather for myself than for all my fel-
low-Academicians or for any of them.
But this feeling liberates me, as I hope
its expression will liberate them, to any
bolder prevision of our duty to the
esthetic life of the nation. It enables
me to entertain with a livelier hospi-
tality the hope that what I have imag-
ined one of our literary section doing
for some signal performance each year
in literature, some member of our sev-
eral artistic sections will do for what he
thinks the best work in painting or
sculpture or architecture or music,
always without committing the others
to his opinion, but trying his best to
make known, with what authority his
own standing gives, the merits of the
work he praises.
If the American Academy of Arts and
Letters did no more than this, I am ready
to say that it would serve a great and
worthy end. It would do something
to establish a criterion of esthetic criti-
cism, and not leave this to every wind
that blows too lullingly or too blight-
ingly through the avenues where young
talent has so often drowsed or shivered.
The very nature of such criticism,
which should never be mere praise and
never mere blame, would save our ver-
dicts from the contempt which has
phrased itself in a word drawn from
the name of the judgment-seat itself.
Our verdicts would not be a choice
arising from indifference or complai-
sance, but springing from the duteous
pleasure of the critic, and, offered
freely, gladly, in payment of a debt of
delight, would save us from the last
and sharpest reproach of academies : it
would not be academic.
Perhaps it is too fond a fancy, but it
does not appear to me impossible that
in some such way our judgments of
the arts might be commensurate with
others' achievements in them. We
might in this way make our criticisms
distinctively American, though I hazard
the word with reluctance, with misgiv- ,
ing. If the Academician whom the
duty and pleasure of appreciation
moved should respond in the love of
such beauty as the American condi-
tioning of the universal arts had fos-
tered, he would perhaps also be moved
to accept an American conditioning for
his analysis and synthesis, and praise
the work in hand from as fresh an ar-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
dor as stimulated the poet or novelist or
historian, the painter or sculptor or
architect or composer who created it.
We dwell in a New World, but it is
the unaging youth of the Old World in
our hearts and brains, the inherent dis-
cipline of the soul, the immemorial civ-
ilization of the conscience, which will
make us equal to our opportunity. So
far as we shall spread some perception
of this, and from our light, if we have
it, enlighten the dark places of patri-
otism by inculcating a self-esteem based
only upon worthy achievement in the
arts and letters, so far we shall serve
our generation well and deserve well of
it. If we do nothing of this kind, then
I am afraid we shall not outlast our
generation. Our power of continuous
immortality through our collectivity
will not avail us; we shall be forgot-
ten, at least as Academicians, even
before we are dead, and we shall
sit time-bound ghosts awaiting our dis-
embodiment in the chairs from which
no envious competitors will wish to
push us.
At present we are here for what we
have unitedly or severally done. If I
consider the things accomplished in lit-
erature and art by the gentlemen pres-
ent, I think that such provisional exis-
tence as we claim is fully, is amply,
authorized. If some or any of my fel-
lows should hold that we had done
enough to let our work work for us, and
be that influence which I have been
imagining, without our further effort, I
might have my moments of agreeing
with them; but I do not know of such
a disposition in our number. I believe
that each of us is sensible in himself,
and in the rest, of that inward call to
further endeavor which is the supreme
joy of work done, and I am sure that
out of this longing for perpetual use,
this molecular stir of the universal ac-
tivity in our wills, something more and
more will come to justify us in calling
ourselves the American Academy.
Without fulfilling any specific wish,
or lending ourselves, however provi-
sionally, to the promise of definite ac-
tion, we can still practise an enlight-
ened, I trust the most enlightened, op-
portunism. If we hold this attitude
frankly, honestly, occasion will not be
wanting to us, and I believe we shall
not be wanting to occasion. To relate
itself to the esthetic life of the nation,
which in the last analysis is its ethical
life, will be the instinctive impulse, and ,
will become the conscious purpose of
an association which through its expe-
rience has been constructive, and from
its condition is critical. If we are here,
in the first place, because we have each
of us done something, we can remain
only because in the next place we desire
others to do something yet more sig-
nificant and important.
I shall not delay you further by these
wandering and, I hope, inconclusive
guesses at our office from the series of
papers which will now be read by mem-
bers of the different sections of the
Academy, and which by their scope and
range will tend to give dimension to
the design from which I have shrunk
from trying to give precision.
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THE EVOLUTION OF STYLE IN
MODERN ARCHITECTURE
By Thomas Hastings
The architectural style or language of
any time in history is, and always has
been, a universal language common to
all peoples. In solving problems of
modem life, the essential is not so much
to be national or American as it is to
be modem and of our own period.
The question of supreme interest is,
What influence life in its different
phases has upon architectural style?
Style in architecture is that method of
expression in the art which has varied
in different periods, almost simultane-
ously throughout the civilized world,
without reference to the different coun-
tries beyond slight differences of na-
tional character mostly influenced by
climate and temperament. Surely mod-
em architecture should not be the
deplorable creation of the would-be
style-inventor, or that of the illogical
architect living in one age and choos-
ing a style from another !
The important and indisputable fact
is not generally realized that from pre-
historic times until now each age has
built in one, and only one, style. Since
the mound-builders and cave-dwellers,
no people, until modem times, ever at-
tempted to adapt a style of a past epoch
to the solution of a modem problem:
in such attempts is the root of all mod-
em evils. In each successive style there
has always been a distinctive spirit of
contemporaneous life from which its
root drew nourishment. But in our
time, contrary to all historic precedents,
there is a confusing selection from the
past of every variety of style. Why
should we not be modem and have one
characteristic style expressing the spirit
of our own life? History and the law
of development alike demand that we
build as we live.
One might consider the history and
development of costumes to illustrate
the principle involved. In our dress to-
day we are modern, but sufficiently re-
lated to the past, which we realize when
we look upon the photographs of our
ancestors of only a generation ago. We
should not think of dressing as they
did, or of wearing a Gothic robe pr a
Roman toga; but as individual as we
might wish to be, we should still be
inclined, with good taste, to dress ac-
cording to the dictates of the day.
The irrational idiosyncrasy of mod-
em times is the assumption that each
kind of problem demands a particular
style of architecture. Through preju-
dice, this assumption has become so
fixed that it is common to assume that,
if building a church or a university, we
must make it Gothic; if a theater, we
must make it Renaissance. One man
wants an Elizabethan house, another
wants his house early-Italian. With this
state of things, it would seem as though
the serious study of character were no
longer necessary. Expression in archi-
tecture, forsooth, is only a question of
selecting the right style.
The two parties with which we must
contend are, on the one hand, those who
would break with the past, and, on the
other, those who would select from the
past according to their own fancy.
Style in its growth has always been
governed by the universal law of devel-
opment. If from the early times, when
painting, sculpture, and architecture
were closely combined, we trace their
progress through their gradual devel-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
opment and consequent differentiation,
we can but be impressed by the way in
which one style has been evolved from
another. This evolution has always
kept pace with the progress of the po-
litical, religious, and economic spirit of
each successive age. It has manifested
itself unconsciously in the architect's
designs, under the imperatives of new
practical problems and of new require-
ments and conditions imposed upon
him. This continuity in the history of
architecture is universal. As in nature
the types and species of life have kept
pace with the successive modifications
of lands and seas and other physical
conditions imposed upon them, so has
architectural style in its growth and de-
velopment until now kept pace with the
successive modifications of civilization.
For the principles of development
should be as dominant in art as they are
in nature. The laws of natural selec-
tion and of the survival of the fittest
have shaped the history of architectural
style just as truly as they have the dif-
ferent successive forms of life. Hence
the necessity that we keep and cultivate
the historic spirit, and that we respect
our historic position and relations, and
that we more and more realize in our
designs the fresh demands of our time,
more important even than the demands
of our environment.
What determining change have we
had in the spirit and methods of life
since the revival of learning and the Re-
formation to justify us in abandoning
the Renaissance or in reviving medieval
art, Romanesque, Gothic, Byzantine, or
any other style ? Only the most radical
changes in the history of civilization,
such as, for example, the dawn of the
Christian era and of the Reformation,
and the revival of learning, have
brought with them correspondingly
radical changes in architectural style.
Were it necessary, we could trace two
distinctly parallel lines, one the history
of civilization, the other the history of
style in art. In each case we should
find a gradual development, a quick
succession of events, a revival, perhaps
almost a revolution, and a consequent
reaction, always together, like cause
and effect, showing that architecture and
life must correspond. In order to build
a living architecture, we must build as
we live.
Compare the Roman orders with the
Greek and with previous work. When
Rome was at its zenith in civilization,
the life of the people demanded of the
architect that he should not only build
temples, theaters, and tombs, but baths,
palaces, basilicas, triumphal arches,
commemorative pillars, aqueducts, and
bridges. As each of these new prob-
lems came to the architect, it was sim-
ply a new demand from the new life of
the people, a new work to be done.
When the Roman architect was given
such varied work to do, there was no
reason for his casting aside all prece-
dent. While original in conception, he
was called upon to meet these exigencies
only with modifications of the old
forms. These modifications very grad-
ually gave us Roman architecture. The
Roman orders distinctly show them-
selves to be a growth from the Greek
orders, but the variations were such
as were necessary in order that the
orders might be used with more free-
dom in a wider range of problems.
These orders were to be brought in con-
tact with wall or arch, or to be super-
imposed upon one another, as in a
Roman amphitheater. The Roman rec-
ognition of the arch as a rational and
beautiful form of construction, and the
necessity for the more intricate and
elaborate floor-plan, were among the
causes which developed the style of the
Greeks into what is now recognized as
Roman architecture.
We could multiply illustrations with-
out limit. The battlements and machic-
olated cornices of the Romanesque,
the thick walls and the small windows
placed high above the floor, tell us of
an age when every man's house was in-
deed his castle, his fortress, and his
stronghold. The style was then an ex-
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THE EVOLUTION OF STYLE IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE
II
pression of that feverish and morbid
aspiration peculiar to medieval life.
The results are great, but they are the
outcome of a disordered social status
not like our own, and such a status
could in no wise be satisfied with the
simple classic forms of modem times,
the architrave and the column.
Compare a workman of to-day build-
ing a Gothic church, slavishly following
his detail drawings, with a workman of
the fourteenth century doing such detail
work as was directed by the architect,
but with as much interest, freedom, and
devotion in making a small capital as
the architect had in the entire structure.
Perhaps doing penance for his sins, he
praises God with every chisel-stroke.
His life interest is in that small capital ;
for him work is worship ; and his life is
one continuous psalm of praise. The
details of the capital, while beautiful,
may be grotesque, but there is honest
life in them. To imitate such a capital
to-day, without that life, would be af-
fectation. Now a Gothic church is built
by men whose one interest is to increase
their wages and diminish their working-
hours. The best Gothic work has been
done, and cannot be repeated. When
attempted, it will always lack that kind
of medieval spirit of devotion which is
the life of medieval architecture.
We might enumerate such illustra-
tions indefinitely. If one age looks at
things diflFerently from another age, it
must express things differently. With
the revival of learning, with the new
conceptions of philosophy and religion,
with the great discoveries and inven-
tions, with the altered political systems,
with the fall of the Eastern Empire,
with the birth of modem science and
literature, and with other manifold
changes all over Europe, came the dawn
of the modem world; and with this
modem world there was evolved what
we should now recognize as the modem
architecture, the Renaissance, which
pervaded all the arts and which has
since engrossed the thought and labor
of the first masters in art. This Re-
naissance is a distinctive style in itself,
which, with natural variations of char-
acter, has been evolving for almost four
hundred years.
So great were the changes in thought
and life during the Renaissance period
that the forms of architecture which
had prevailed for a thousand years were
inadequate to the needs of the new civi-
lization, to its demands for greater re-
finement of thought, for larger tmth-
fulness to nature, for less mystery in
forms of expression, and for greater
convenience in practical living. Out of
these necessities of the times the Re-
naissance style was evolved,— taking
about three generations to make the
transition,— and around no other style
have been accumulated such vast stores
of knowledge and experience, under the
lead of the great masters of Europe.
Therefore, whatever we now build,
whether church or dwelling, the law of
historic development requires that it be
Renaissance, and if we encourage the
tme principles of composition, it will
involuntarily be a modem Renaissance.
Imagine the anachronism of trying
to satisfy our comparatively realistic
tastes with Gothic architectural sculp-
ture or with painting made by modem
artists ! Never until the present genera-
tion have architects presumed to choose
from the past any style in the hope to
do as well as was done in the time to
which that style belonged. In other
times, they would not even restore or
add to a historic building in the style
in which it was first conceived. It is
interesting to notice how the architect
was even able to complete a tower or
add an arcade or extend a building, fol-
lowing the general lines of the original
composition, without following its style,
so that almost every historic building
within its own walls tells the story of
its long life. How much more inter-
esting alike to the historian and the
artist are these results !
In every case where the medieval
style has been attempted in modem
times, the result has shown a want of
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
life and spirit simply because it was an
anachronism. The result has always
been dull, lifeless, and uninteresting.
It is without sympathy with the present
or a germ of hope for the future— only
the skeleton of what once was. We
should study and develop the Renais-
sance, and adapt it to our modem con-
ditions and wants, so that future gene-
rations can see that it has truly inter-
preted our life. We can interest those
who come after us only as we thus ac-
cept our true historic position and de-
velop what has come to us. Without
this we shall be only copyists, or be
making poor adaptations of what was
never really ours.
The time must come, and, I believe,
in the near future, when architects of
necessity will be educated in one style,
and that will be the style of their own
time. They will be so familiar with
what will have become a settled convic-
tion, and so loyal to it, that the entire
question of style, which at present
seems to be determined by fashion,
fancy, or ignorance, will be kept sub-
servient to the great principles of com-
position, which are now more or less
smothered in the general confusion.
Whoever demands of an architect a
style not in keeping with the spirit of
his time is responsible for retarding the
normal progress of the art. We must
have a language, if we would talk. If
there be no common language for a peo-
ple, there can be no communication of
ideas either architectural or literary. I
believe that we shall one day rejoice in
the dawn of a modem Renaissance,
^ and, as always has been the case, we
shall be guided by the fundamental
principles of the classic. It will be a
modem Renaissance, because it will be
characterized by the conditions of mod-
em life. It will be the work of the
Renaissance architect solving new prob-
lems, adapting his art to an honest and
natural treatment of new materials and
conditions. Will he not also be uncon-
sciously influenced by the twentieth-cen-
tury spirit of economy and by the appli-
cation of his art to all modem industries
and speculations ?
Only when we come to recognize our
tme historic position and the principles
of continuity in history, when we allow
the spirit of our life to be the spirit of
our style, recognizing first of all that
form and all design are the natural and
legitimate outcome of the nature or
purpose of the object to be made, only
then can we hope to find a real style
everywhere asserting itself. Then we
shall see that consistency of style which
has existed in all times until the present
generation; then shall we find it in
every performance of man's ingenuity,
in the work of the artist or the artisan,
from the smallest and most insignificant
jewel or book-cover to the noblest
monument of human invention or cre-
ation, from the most ordinary kitchen
utensil to the richest and most costly
fumiture or decoration that adoms our
dwelling.
We must all work and wait patiently
for the day to come when we shall work
in unison with our time. Our Renais-
sance must not be merely archaeological,
the literal following of certain periods
of the style. To build a French Louis
XII or Francis I or Louis XIV house,
or to make an Italian cinquecento de-
sign, is indisputably not modem archi-
tecture. No architect until our times
slavishly followed the characteristics of
any particular period, but he used all
that he could get from what preceded
him, solving such new problems as were
the imperatives of his position.
What did a man like Pierre Lescot,
the architect of the Henry II Court of
the Louvre, endeavor to do? It would
have been impossible for him actually
to define the style of his own period.
That is for us, his successors, to do.
For him the question was how to meet
the new demands of contemporaneous
life. He studied all that he could find
in classic and Renaissance precedents ap-
plicable to his problem. He composed,
never copying, and always with that art-
istic sense and the sense of the fitness of
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THE EVOLUTION OF STYLE IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE 13
y :
things, which were capable of realizing
what would be harmonious in his work.
In the. same way all architects, at all
times, contributed to a contemporaneous
architecture, invariably with modifica-
tions to meet new conditions. This
must be done with a scholarly apprecia-
tion of that harmonious result which
comes only from a thorough education.
So, with freedom of the imagination
and unity of design, an architecture is
secured expressive of its time.
How is it with us in this country?
Not only do many architects slavishly
follow the character of some selected
period, but they also deliberately take en-
tire motives of composition from other
times and other places to patch and
apply them to our new conditions and
new life. Every man's conscience must
speak for itself as to whether such pla-
giarism is right; but while the moral
aspect of this question has very little to
do with art, yet intellectually such imi-
tative work, though seemingly success-
ful, positively stifles originality, imagi-
nation, and every effort to advance in
the right direction.
The way is now prepared for us to
endeavor to indicate what are some of
the principal causes of the modern con-
fusion in style. With us Americans, an
excessive anxiety to be original is one
of the causes of no end of evil. The
imagination should be kept under con-
trol by given principles. We must have
ability to discern what is good among
our own creations and courage to reject
what is bad. Originality is a spontane-
ous effort to do work in the simplest
and most natural way. The conditions
are never twice alike; each case is new.
We must begin our study with the floor-
plan, and then interpret that floor-plan
in the elevation, using forms, details,
and sometimes motives, with natural
variations and improvements on what
has gone before. The true artist leaves
his temperament and individuality to
take care of themselves.
Some say that if this is all that we
are doing, there is nothing new in art ;
but if we compose in the right way,
there can be nothing that is not new.
Surely you would not condemn nature
for not being original because there is a
certain similarity between the claw of
a bird and the foot of a dog, or between
the wing of a bird and the fin of a fish.
The ensemble of each creature is the
natural result of successive stages of
life, with variations of the different
parts according to the principles of evo-
lution. There are countless structural
correspondencies in the skeletons of or-
ganic life, but these show the wonderful
unity of the universe ; and yet, notwith-
standing this unity, nature is flooded
with an infinite variety of forms and
species of life.
We must logically interpret the prac-
tical conditions before us, no matter
what they are. No work to be done is
ever so arbitrary in its practical de-
mands but that the art is elastic and
broad enough to give these demands
thorough satisfaction in more than a
score of different ways. If only the
artist will accept such practical impera-
tives as are reasonable, if only he will
welcome them, one and all, as friendly
opportunities for loyal and honest ex-
pression in his architecture, he will find
that these very conditions will do more
than all else besides for his real progress
and for the development of contempo-
raneous art in composition.
The architects in the early history of
our country were distinctly modern, and
closely related in their work to their
contemporaries in Europe. They seem
not only to have inherited traditions, but
to have religiously adhered to them. I
believe that it is because of this that the
genuine and naive character of their
work, which was of its period, still has
a charm for us which cannot be imi-
tated. McComb, Bulfinch, Thornton,
Letrobe, L'Enfant, Andrew Hamilton,
Strickland, and Walters were suffi-
ciently American and distinctly modern,
working in the right direction. Upjohn
and Renwick, men of talent, were mis-
led, alas ! by the confusion of their times.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
the beginning of this modern chaos, the
so-called Victorian-Gothic period.
Gifted as Richardson was, and great
as his personality was, his work is al-
ways easily distinguished, because of its
excellent quality, from the so-called
Romanesque of his followers. But I
fear the good he did was largely undone
because of the bad influence of his work
upon his profession. Stumpy columns,
squat arches, and rounded corners, with-
out Richardson, form a disease from
which we are only just recovering. Mc-
Comb and Bulfinch would probably have
frowned upon Hunt for attempting to
graft the transitional Loire architecture
of the fifteenth century upon American
soil, and I believe all will agree that the
principal good he accomplished was due
to the great distinction of his art, and
the moral character of the man himself,
rather than to the general influence and
direction of his work.
McKim's name at this time we men-
tion almost with bated breath. Whether
he was right or wrong, whether we
agree with him or not, in wanting to re-
vive in the nineteenth century the art
of Bramante, St. Galo, and Peruzzi, he
had perhaps more of the true sense of
beauty than any of his predecessors.
His was the art of the man who loved
the doing of it without thought of
credit, and this makes itself felt in every
example of his work, which was always
refined, personal, and with a distinctly
more classic tendency in his most recent
work.
We have seen that the life of an epoch
makes its impress upon its architecture.
It is equally true that the architecture of
a people helps to form and model its
character. If there is beauty in the
plans of our cities, and in the buildings
which form our public squares and high-
ways, its good influence will make itself
felt upon every passer-by. Beauty in
our buildings is an open book of invol-
untary education and refinement, and it
uplifts and ennobles human character:
it is a song and a sermon without words.
It inculcates in a people a true sense of
dignity, a sense of reverence and a re-
spect for tradition, and it makes an
atmosphere in its environment which
breeds the proper kind of contentment
—that kind of contentment which stimu-
lates ambition.
But, above all, it cultivates the sense
of beauty itself, which is as important a
factor in a well-formed character as is
the sense of humor, and almost as neces-
sary as the sense of honor. It is, I be-
lieve, a law of the universe that the
forms of life which are fittest to sur-
vive—nay, the very universe itself —are
beautiful in form and color. Natural
selection is beautifully expressed, ugli-
ness and deformity are synonymous;
and so, in the economy of life, what
would survive must be beautifully ex-
pressed.
If a story is to live, it must be told
with art, and a message of truth will
carry further and be of more lasting
service if beautifully expressed. There
is literary style in every good book,
however personal or simply written.
Beauty of design and line in construc-
tion builds well, and with greater econ-
omy and endurance than construction
which is mere engineering. The quali-
tative side of construction should first
be considered, then the quantitative
side. The practical and the artistic are
inseparable. There is beauty in nature
because all nature is a practical problem
well solved. The truly educated archi-
tect will never sacrifice the practical side
of his problem. The great economic as
well as architectural calamities have
been performed by so-called practical
men with an experience mostly bad and
with no education.
Construction should first be designed,
then calculated. Know where you want
to go before seeking a way to go there.
The separation of the architect and the
modem engineer has been brought about
principally because of the innovation of
railroads and steel construction.
The engineer and architect should
work hand in hand at the very incep-
tion of the structural design. The
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THE EVOLUTION OF STYLE IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE
15
architect should not be called in, as is
generally the case, to decorate badly de-
signed construction with useless orna-
ment. We should meet these new
conditions of life in construction with
art in the very skeleton of the construc-
tion itself; and even so, with this unfor-
tunate separation of engineering and
architecture, something should be done
to bring them closer together, and they
should join forces at the very beginning
of every important undertaking. Other-
wise we shall suffer for it even as we
have already, and it is only by being
forewarned that we can forestall the
consequences.
When we think of what the past ages
have done for us, should we not be
more considerate of those that are yet
to come? A great tide of historic in-
formation has constantly flowed through
the channel of monuments erected by
successive civilizations, and we can al-
most live in the past through its monu-
ments.
The recently discovered buried cities
of Assyria give us a vivid fdea of a
civilization lost to history. The Pyra-
mid of Cheops and the temples of
Karnak and Luxor tell us more of that
ingenuity which we cannot fathom, and
the grandeur of the life and history of
the Egyptian people, than the scattered
and withered documents or fragments
of inscriptions that have chanced to
survive the crumbling influences of time.
The Parthenon and the Erechtheum be-
speak the intellectual refinement of the
Greeks as much as their epic poems or
their philosophy. The triumphal arches,
the aqueducts, the Pantheon, and the
basilicas of Rome tell us more of the
great constructive genius of the early
republic and the empire of the Caesars
than the fragmentary and contradictory
annals of wars and political intrigues
can tell.
The unsurpassed and inspiring beauty
of the Gothic cathedrals which bewilders
us, and the cloisters which enchant us,
impress on our minds a living picture of
the feverish and morbid aspiration of
medieval times— a civilization that
must have had mingled with its mys-
ticism an intellectual and spiritual gran-
deur which the so-called Dark Ages of
the historian have failed adequately to
record ; and here, in and around Wash-
ington and in our own country in gen-
eral, even amid the all-absorbing work
of constructing a new government, our
people found time to speak to us to-day,
in the silent language of their simple
architecture, of the temperament and
character of our forefathers.
Consider the time in which we are
now living. Will our monuments ade-
quately record the splendid achievements
of our contemporaneous life— the spirit
of modern justice and liberty, the
progress of modern science, the genius
of modern invention and discovery, the
elevated character of our institutions?
Will disorder and confusion in our
architecture express the intelligence of
this twentieth century? Would that
those in authority might learn a lesson
from the past, and awaken in their wis-
dom to build our national monuments
more worthy of the dignity of this great
nation, and more expressive of this won-
derful contemporaneous life !
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IN PRAISE OF POETRY
By Richard Watson Gilder
I MARVEL NOT*'
I MARVEL not that thy blest votaries,
O spirit of Song, from time's beginning,
thee
Imaged a woman, loveliest of all,
A goddess dearest of gods, service of
whom
Was rapture ; nor can I— least worthy,
though.
Of all thy far-off passionate worship-
ers-
Image thee less than wbman-Gbd. For
thee
To worship, to commune with, thee to
know,
Even for a moment of consummate joy,
Means to be noble, aye, to be divine.
Perpetual beauty and immortal youth—
These, these thou art ; and something
even of these
Enters in flame the soul of those who
seek
With humble heart the splendor of thy
shrine.
REFUGE
I KNOW, I know.
The momentary and the dateless woe
That haunts the heart of man from birth
to death—
From pain-wrapt birth, to the slow, sad
ending breath.
I know it all, and yet shall not earth's
sorrow
Encompass and unman the day or mor-
row:
For I, the bard, shall with my singing
still
The trouble of the world, the world with
music fill ;
And through that heavenly art
From every soul the anguish shall
depart.
And even the singer shall restore his
heavy heart.
II
Even if the world be wrong,
This shall be right— the music of the
song.
This shall create within the vast, uncer-
tain.
Electric whirl of things that people
space
A little isle of grace,
A home behind the dark, mysterious
curtain,
A haunt of beauty and of rest
Wherein to gentle souls are manifest
All loveliest thoughts and best.
Ill
Then thrill, thrill, thrill,
Thrill, my song, till thou dost shatter ill.
If but for an instant! Oh, annihilate
The cosmic cruelty that men call fate !
Let all be well, as thou art well ;
Sing thou and soar like tones of a well-
tuned bell !
With thy perfection all the evil drown
That taints wild nature and the ensan-
guined town !
Thrill, my song, thrill !
Till all the world forgets the endless ill !
HE CAME SO BEAUTIFULLY CLAD"
He came so beautifully clad.
They did not see the strength he had.
His eye so gentle, they not knew
That violet beam could pierce them
through.
His voice so sweet, how could they think
Its music reached creation's brink?
'Neath that young brow how could they
deem
All the world's wisdom, all its dream ?
16
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THE ACTUAL STATE OF ART AMONG US
By Edwin Howland Blashfield
Some of us here, looking backward, can
remember well the output of American
artists fifty years ago, the art galleries
and museums of what Mr. Henry James
called medieval New York. . In those
days, long, open sleighs plied as winter
buses on Broadway. The snow was
banked in a wall down the middle of the
thoroughfare, for there were no "white-
wings" to carry it away, and upgoing
and downgoing people caught sight of
one another only as they passed the side
streets. The pictorial art which was
most to be seen between the Battery
and Grace Church— an art dear to
my childish heart— was that which pre-
sented, upon oval panels, giraffes, os-
triches, elephants, and all the rest, on
the front of Barnum^s Museum, big and
imposing for its time, upon the site of
the present Saint Paul Building. For
real art one went away up-town, nearly
to Union Square, to Williams & Stevens,
or to the pictures in the Diisseldorf
gallery, or, while the great exhibition
lasted, one fared on to the terminus of
bus-lines, the jumping-off place of
Forty-second Street, to the Crystal
Palace, where one might visit that cyno-
sure and sensation, the bronze "Amazon
and Tiger." In those days we strained
our eyes across seas toward the prom-
ised land, the streets of Diisseldorf and
Antwerp, the ateliers of the Latin Quar-
ter, the studios of the Via Margutta.
As late as the spring of 1867, William
Morris Hunt said to one very young
student: "Go straight to Paris. Any-
thing which you learn here you will
have to unlearn.'*
We have changed all that. We have
parted with the Italian image-vender's
tray, borne upon his head down area-
steps of brownstone houses, and the
negotiations for a plaster woolly lamb
or a "Little Samuel Woke" have risen
to Barbediennes bronzes. We are up to
date, and the Undines and kobolds of
Diisseldorfers of half a century ago
have become the Manets and Monets of
to-day; indeed, with some people, Manet
is already demode. Our change of heart
was first effected along the lines of the
least resistance: the sleek porcelain
sheep of Verboeckhoven were received
into our fold before we could tolerate
the shaggy real ones of later artists ; in
our collections the little wax maidens of
Meyer von Bremen grew only very
gradually into the flesh-and-blood ones
of French canvases. We imported much
sculpture which now seems to all of us
less fit for the auctioneer's hammer than
for the road-mender's. We grew per-
haps by fits and starts, but we did grow,
and at last swiftly and mightily. Wil-
liam Morris Hunt was wise as well as
great in his own generation, when one
had "to unlearn American art teaching,"
but no one would glory more than he in
the fact that to-day our young people
may learn in America as well as in any
schools in the world the spelling and
grammar of their art, and may stand as
firmly and squarely here upon their
technic as ever they could in the streets
of Paris. Our landscape school may
take its place beside any, and as for por-
trait-painting, there is an American in
London to-day whom Frans Hals, could
he come back to us, would call brother,
standing shoulder to shoulder with him.
And yet, though achievement is ours,
though momentum has been attained
and well directed, though our public is
prodigal of purse and praise, your
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
fingers, gentlemen, the fingers of the
practitioners of that wider art which in-
cludes literature and music, are alAiost
as much needed upon the pulse of that
same public as they were in the days of
the medieval New York aforesaid.
We buy enormously, we praise much,
but we also neglect much ; we love per-
haps not too well, but surely at times
not too wisely. We have worn out
many fashions in admiration, and in
wearing them out we have learned from
each ; but we have not yet learned steadi-
ness of purpose, or quite acquired the
fair-mindedness which should be sheet-
anchor to the omnivorous collector we
seem destined to become among nations.
It is likely that we tire only temporarily
of the really good, but we tire often.
For a few seasons we will have in music
only gods and giants, dragons and swan
maidens. Then all at once "La Travi-
ata" or "Lucia" pushes "Brunhilde" out
of the saddle, and "Madama Butterfly"
sings "Elsa" off the boards. We have
gone into and out of phases that may
almost be labeled Harbison School
phase; Munich phase of bitumen;
Monet phase of blue shadows ; worsted-
sampler phase of little vibrant streaks of
color; Carriere phase, where the house
is always on fire, and the family group
poses peacefully in a room filling with
smoke. In each of these phases is
beauty, in some marvelous beauty; but
do we not go through them too com-
pletely, and then abandon them too ut-
terly?
Names have become potent to con-
jure with, and are growing greater and
greater. Hoppners, Romneys, Rey-
noldses. and, wonderful to tell, Van-
dykes, Halses, even Rembrandts, are al-
most pouring into the country ; fifty years
ago so many aeroplanes from the Conti-
nent would hardly have seemed more
unlikely visitors than these pictures,
darlings of collectors in old castles and
manors, and coveted by the museums of
all Europe. For in our enthusiasm and
our art growth we have waxed so fat and
kicked so mightily that we have kicked
out the timbers of the dam of protection,
so that the frightened amateurs of Eng-
land and the Continent, who fifty years
ago could look down upon us from the
height of justified patronage, are pro-
claiming their apprehension through
their press in shrill, prophetic cries.
Our opportunity, thanks to our great
collectors, is indeed splendid, invalua-
ble; and yet the very greatness of it
should breed caution.
It is when the magician conjures with
his most fascinating material that we
most easily forget to watch his sleeves ;
when he says Rembrandt, how Eeck-
hout and Bol and Flinck drop out of
our remembrance ! And when the scrap
surely is by the great man, how large it
looms to us in comparison with the size
which it would have assumed for his
contemporaries, above all, for him!
You say that is right: any scraps by
certain men are priceless. Granted,
but such men are very rare; the per-
sonalities which were so divine as to
hallow all that came from them are
almost more than rare. One may even
discount Homer's nodding to the extent
of admitting that. Great men do much
work which they reject. Then comes,
let us say, Corot's model. "I found
this sketch behind the coal-box, M.
Corot, covered with dirt. May I have
it ?" "Yes, my child," (for Corot was a
notable example as giver,) and so later
the public, like the model, begs for it
and obtains it, but not, like the model,
at the price of a "Thank you."
It would probably not be possible to-
day for a Homer Alartin to watch his
canvases selling for twenty-five dollars
at an auction, those canvases which now
bring thousands; a Millet could not
long remain undiscovered, because dis-
covery has grown to mean fortune, and
we have cultivated the eyes of lynxes
and the noses of hunting-dogs. But we
mistake and exaggerate, nevertheless,
and often in the direction most opposed
to what one would expect. We not only
worship the atelier rubbish of the dead
artist; we cultivate the idiosyncrasies
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THE ACTUAL STATE OF ART AMONG US
'9
and mannerisms of the live artist.
"But don't you think," said a woman
artist to me, "that Puvis de Chavannes
would be much less interesting if he
drew better?" I understood her, and
knew that she did not mean what she
said; but her opinion, so enounced,
could hardly have been useful to pupils.
It is just such people as worship the
limitations before the potentialities, who
wear blinders, and are held up only by
the shafts, — the shafts of the admira-
tion of the moment,— who pave the way
for straying in the wrong direction, and
make the lay public forget those who
follow the right road. For such people
the accident is the essential, the normal
is negligible, and nothing but caviar is
worth eating; if they could see a play
on a house roof, or in a cellar, they
would value it far more highly than in
a theater; they tilt head down at any
one who makes a rule and keeps it, and
they call all that is not amorphous aca-
demic. It is their outcry which imposes
upon the great, indifferent general public,
and which occasionally, when a question
of genuine expediency arises, does real
harm. To this little group, straining
for the exotic, it seemed not unreason-
able that a dozen cities should surpass
New York utterly in provision for exhi-
bitions, and that the current work of
the greatest of American producers,
New York, should remain unhoused.
To these people, again, any academy,
quia academy, is objectionable. They
admire eccentricity not as a manifesta-
tion of possibilities, but just as eccen-
tricity, and to them is coming some day
regret for their inculcation of technic as
end, not means, and, far worse, for their
limitation of technic to manipulation of
pigment. To cry out against labored
canvases, to put on paint in a dashing
manner, and cry, "Live Frans Hals and
Vitality !" is fine, certainly ; but it must
not be forgotten that the strength of
Hals and his vitality, his viability as
artist, lie not in the width of his brush-
strokes, but in the fact that his broad
strokes are of the right size and shape
and value, and put in exactly the right
place.
Yet in spite of exaggerations and
what, though it seems almost perversity,
we must admit to be sincere, if mis-
taken, the great trend of our art is to-
ward sanity, and a sanity which is
become yearly less and less a derivation,
more and more an American product.
For the last fifteen years especially we
have been moving forward with aston-
ishing swiftness over the field of art,
and as we moved we have to a consid-
erable extent surveyed and leveled and
cleared the ground; but there are still
unexpected holes in which we trip, quag-
mires in which we flounder, unsus-
pected chasms, like the sunken road at
Waterloo, into which our cavalry-
charge of enthusiasm tumbles pell-mell,
checking all advance till the latter again
becomes possible over the bridge of
thwarted endeavor made by the bodies
of the fallen. All this we expect ; deci-
mation and more than decimation of our
combatants we must discount; but you
can help us. You, the Academy, can be
like that marvelous general staff of the
German army: you may not fight the
battle of the allied arts yourselves, but
you may make it possible for us, the
active army, to fight successfully.
I am told by those who travel in
America that the awakening of interest
in what we call the arts is almost in-
credible throughout the length and
breadth of the Union. There are exhi-
bitions, permanent and recurrent and
ambulant. There are societies for the
encouragement of municipal art, of
decorative art, and of applied art.
Senator Newlands has told us that in
tiny towns of Nevada and Montana
musical societies work single-heartedly
and effectively toward a higher level of
culture ; all over the country, boys leave
the plow for the palette. To the door of
my own studio in the Carnegie Building
comes a steady stream of young fellows
who want to be my assistants for a
small salary— in many cases for no re-
muneration at all save the instruction to
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
be derived from work. Blue-aproned
girls, caked with paint and clay and fired
with enthusiasm, flock from the schools
of the little cities to the schools of the
big ones, and pass onward overseas
until they tell me that in Paris the term
"art student" has come to mean Ameri-
can girl. This condition is phenomenal ;
it is going to be alarming, if not rightly
handled, and so to handle it is our busi-
ness, and in a wider and higher sense,
your business, gentlemen of the Acad-
emy. The mill that in the Northern
story, at the bottom of the ocean, grinds
out the salt that savors all the seas, is
hardly more active than are our schools
in the production of boys and girls in
possession of a fair technic. We have
high ideals, and with admirable and, I
fully believe, justifiable courage, our in-
fant industry asks not to be protected,
and lets down the bars to foreign art of
all kinds. In the welter which is sure
for some time at least to follow this
wave of enthusiasm, this stream of pro-
duction from West to East, what need
there is of a tribunal such as yours, gen-
tlemen, what need of an arbiter, by
no means always elegantiarum! And
you are an arbiter which the great
universal client called the public will re-
spect ; you are the gods of the machine,
the men from higher up, from our Par-
nassus. In you that many-headed client
has, relatively, confidence. True, you
do not in every case rise to the alti-
tude of being, first of all, business men,
but you are scholars, writers; you are
thinkers, not unpractical dreamers,
and there have not yet been imputed
to you, as the necessary conditions of
greatness, even of genuineness, that you
never keep your appointments or pay
you bills.
Therefore, in the ever-recurring dis-
cussion between the great public and the
great body of artists, if you will throw
your authority into the scales for us, it
shall be as the sword of Brennus to
weigh, as the sword of Alexander to cut
the Gordian tangle of our difficulties.
And so strong are the analogies be-
tween our arts that we are trained to
understand and help one another. As
every French soldier had in his knapsack
the possible baton of a marshal, so every
one of us has among his professional
tools the potential pass-key to the ady-
tum, the inner sanctuary, of the other
arts. Among us every man's mystery,
as they said in the Middle Ages, may
become so clear to his fellows that we
all may join hands.
Our Academy and Institute, made up
of men who rub against the issues of
the day, yet live a kind of cloistered
mental life of their own, given to the
pursuit of knowledge and the attempt
to create the beautiful, has more than
once reminded me of an excursion
which I made to the great monastery of
Monte Oliveto Maggiore, sixteen miles
above Siena, in the hills. It is now nearly
empty, but once it was a microcosm
in its activities. There the brothers, the
thinkers and writers and recorders of
the time, shut up in church and cloister
and scriptorium, opened their outbuild-
ings to the world, and there, especially
upon certain fixed days of festival or
council, of papal or imperial progress,
the world was harbored in the vast
courtyard. The latter was a caravan-
sary, where provinces were pigeonholed.
The names are still upon the pigeon-
holes, big, bare, echoing, vaulted rooms,
with yards tor the beasts. Here you
read over the entrance, Lombardy, here
Tuscany, there and yonder Genoa,
Venice, Romagna. Here the laymen
paused for a day from their business
and listened to the teaching of those
who thought and planned.
And note— and here is my point to-
ward which we have journeyed among
the Tuscan hills— note that this was
neutral ground, the territory not only of
the church, but of the arts.
Perhaps while the monastery court-
yard held these people safe and quiet,
outside there was fighting; very likely
while Lombards and Venetians were
cooking their meals or foddering their
beasts with only a party-wall between
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THE ACTUAL STATE OF ART AMONG US
21
ihem, Lombardy and Venetia were cut-
ting each other's throats. But with the
quarrelsome laymen there entered one
group of people who were not quarrel-
some, and whose names were entered
upon the lists of the major crafts. They
were the artists,--the architects, squlp-
tors, painters,— sure of a warm welcome
from their tonsured hosts, who were
artists also — poets, musicians, histo-
rians, calligraphers, illuminators.
And the power of these artists went
afield ; if within the monastery was the
truce of God, the artist, as far as his
personal security went, carried the truce
of God with him. Through the four-
teenth century, Italy was a battle-field,
but Giotto and his painters, Giovanni
Pisano and his sculptors, Arnolfo and
his architects, went up and down the
battle-field unharmed, and entered
through the breached walls of cities to
paint allegorical pictures of the blessings
of peace in the town halls.
And these artists were a little band of
men knit together, as we should be now,
by the closest bonds of interdependence
and mutual comprehension. They un-
derstood one another's specialties, and
in the days when Dante tried to draw an
angel, or, later, when Raphael scrawled
rhymes for sonnets on the backs of his
studies, the artist was ambidextrous,
holding the chisel in one hand, the brush
in the other, and taking up now and
again lute or pen or compass.
The world calls artists jealous (I use
the word "artists" in its largest sense),
but a better freemasonry has existed
among us for eighteen hundred years
tlian anywhere else outside the church,
and our freemasonry dates from before
Christianity. To-day is like yesterday :
war, commercial war, is bitter all about
us. We are neutral, and if the ideal en-
lightened layman needs a breathing-
spell, he interests himself in helping a
museum or backing the improvement
of a city's topographical ordering. He
joins hands with us for our good and
his good and everybody's good, and yet
we speak a language of our own, and
there are times when we belong together,
and only together. We need the contact
of the world, too, that is certain ; and if,
like the monks aforesaid, each of us
withdraws into his individual cell during
the period of meditation, later we must,
like them again, work altogether in the
monastery garden's sunshine for our
mental health. I do not mean that we
should confuse our works, but that they
should proceed pari passu under the
mutual, stimulating general influence.
A picture does not look better because
it is called a "nocturne," nor does a
musical movement seem more lovely, to
me at least, because it is called a "study"
in some color or other. There are peo-
ple who tell me that names mean colors
to them; that Lucy is pink, and Mary
blue, and Jane brown, and so on. I
am not subtle enough for that. But we
do have our signs that pass current
among us only. We have much to say
to one another that we are not ready to
say to other men until our work is com-
plete and fit for presentation. When
Babel was building and the confusion of
tongues came upon man, two languages
remained common to all— the language
of the emotions and our language, that
of the arts. This latter tongue, spoken
intimately among ourselves, is under-
stood broadly by all. By reason of this
possession, we, the writers, musicians,
architects, sculptors, painters, if but
struck aright, sound in the great sym-
phony of the world's activities as one
harmonious chord. By reason of it the
artist is a citizen of the world, at home
urbi et orbi.
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RUSKIN AND MORTON
A Link Between the Old and New Worlds
By Thomas Wentworth Higginson
Has there ever been a personal tie be-
tween the Old and the New Worlds
which was stronger and tenderer than
that between the English Ruskin and
our American Norton ? It began with a
half -accidental meeting of strangers ; it
was interrupted by ten years of separa-
tion during a war ; it was followed by a
long correspondence, ending with the
sad chronicle, by the younger author, of
the gradual waning of the older man's
mind. All this was recorded, step by
step, with singularly delicate and accu-
rate narration, by Professor Norton in
the issues of "The Atlantic Monthly"
ranging from May to September, 1904,
under the simple name of "Letters of
Ruskin." Now that Norton himself has
followed Ruskin out of this world, the
correspondence, in the re-reading, be-
comes more and more profoundly inter-
esting. We see there the close personal
intercourse between two of the most
highly cultivated men of two nations;
and it is well to make a careful survey,
at this distance of time, as to the relative
attitude of each.
For myself, I never saw Ruskin, al-
though I was familiar with the first issue
of his "Modern Painters" more than
sixty years ago. But Norton, though a
few years younger than I, was born
on the same street with me in Cam-
bridge, Massachusetts ; our fathers were
alike officers of Harvard College, and
as early as I can remember I had gone
to dancing-school and various other
gatherings in the Norton residence.
Any intercourse between Charles Nor-
ton and Ruskin was most interesting to
me, and I must begin by describing it a
little.
Charles Norton, on voyaging to Eng-
land in October, 1855, received from a
fellow-passenger, not known to him
previously, a letter of introduction to
Ruskin, who was at that time thirty-six
years old, Norton being twenty-eight.
Ruskin had got as far in publication as
the "Stones of Venice" and the fourth
volume of "Modern Painters/' while his
younger acquaintance had got only far
enough to aid his father in his "Transla-
tion of the Gospels." Yet from this
time on to the end of their lives the two
became close friends, with the pathetic
separation brought on by political differ-
ences. Each was meanwhile developing
rare powers in his own way, combined
with very decided opinions, Norton
absolutely persisting in stanch Ameri-
canism, beneath Ruskin's sharpest dis-
approval, and hardly visiting England
until he went unwillingly to take charge
of his friend's literary remains.
During this period, we see Ruskin en-
gaged in delightful, but formidable un-
dertakings, as when, in 1857, he had to
arrange the nineteen thousand sketches
by Turner in the National Galler>' and
to make a facsimile of one of these to be
sent to Norton; or when, in 1859. dis-
agreeing with everybody, he bemoaned
his loss of friends. It was a time when,
it would seem, he had lost alike his
Protestant and Catholic acquaintances,
being also regarded by his Tory friends
as worse than Robespierre, while his
Roman Catholic neighbors thought he
ought to be burned. His domestic
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RUSKIN AND NORTON
23
kindred counted him as a Bluebeard,
and his artistic allies as "a mere packet
of quibs and crackers," whatever that
may be. In his despair, he wrote to
Norton : "I rather count on Lowell as a
friend, although I 've never seen him.
He and the Brownings and you. Four !
well, it 's a good deal." Certainly it
was.
Thirty years later, in 1889, after writ-
ing his "Praeterita," Ruskin was no
longer able to take up the broken thread
of his story, and the last nine or ten
years of his life were spent in retire-
ment, though he still enjoyed nature and
art, loved to hear his favorite books read
aloud, and listened with pleasure to
simple music. At length Norton re-
ceived, after forty years of friendship,
a few words of farewell in pencil, writ-
ten November i, 1896, and signed,
"from your loving J. R."
I well remember the time, although I
cannot give the precise date, when I re-
sumed my acquaintance in maturity with
my childish playmate, Charles Norton.
After twenty years or more of separa-
tion, I found him sitting beside me at a
public dinner, probably in Boston. He
had but lately returned from Europe,—
in 1856, or thereabouts, I think,— to be-
come a permanent resident, not having
yet attained prominence as a public
leader. During these years of absence
he had been mainly in foreign countries,
and I had not yet crossed the ocean, so
that we soon found ourselves comparing
notes.
I remember vividly how his conversa-
tion gratified me from the very first, he
taking emphatically the ground that this
nation was the most interesting in the
world in which to live, were it only for
the sake of seeing the mass of people
comfortable— "probably more so," he
said, "as a whole, than any nation in the
world had ever been." The drawback
was, he went on to say, that the American
continent was not destined to achieve
any real distinction at any time in litera-
ture or in art.
When I asked why not, he tranquilly
said that it would be a geographical im-
possibility. No nation on the American
continent, which stretched from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, could ever be in-
tellectually great, but only physically
comfortable. For science and art, he
said, we must look to countries pene-
trated by gulfs, bays, and rivers, and
interrupted by mountains, so that all
could communicate easily with one an-
other, as in Europe. Here, on the other
hand, was a vast continent not provided
by nature with such internal communi-
cations except to a very limited extent,
and separated by a whole ocean from all
European countries; while i(i those
countries the opportunity for mutual in-
tercourse was abundant. Here, on the
contrary, there was only a wide interior
region, as yet uninhabited except by
savages, and much of it probably a
desert, and destined to remain such for-
ever. This appeared to be his sole point
of view at that day. How shall we
explain the fact ?
We shall begin to understand it by
remembering the statement made by
Charles Godfrey Leland in the year
1848, which was somewhat before the
time of my talk with Norton. Leland
boasted that it had taken him forty-three
days to cross the Atlantic on an ordinary
voyage. That tells a large part of the
story. Now it takes less than a week to
cross the ocean, and only the same time
to cross the continent. It was long after
this that Emerson made his partly con-
soling suggestion, "Europe stretches to
the Alleghanies." There was, however,
a period when Emerson himself, in his
first lecturing tour in what was then
called the Far West, found printed on
the tickets of admission at one place,
"Tickets to Emerson and the ball, one
dollar," so that men, women, and chil-
dren, coming from a long distance, could
all have something to amuse them. It
was at a period when I myself saw a
handbill printed in Indiana on which
Mr. J. Jackson offered to read "Hamlet"
for twenty-five cents, ladies free, with
the understanding that after the reading
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
he would develop a plan for the forma-
tion of a company for the manufacture
of silk handkerchiefs, and would relate
some incidents of his early life in con-
nection with "this particular article."
Norton's limitation was that he was
speaking more than ten years in advance
of the first overland railway train,
which crossed in 1869 ; and Gail Hamil-
ton was more foreseeing than he when
she said that "if there were never to be
railroads, it would have been a real im-
pertinence for Columbus to have dis-
covered this continent."
All this truth was for Norton to
discover, and he lived to show that he
had done just that, and accepted so
nobly the work devolving upon him that
he stayed in his native land for the rest
of his life, with only one brief absence.
He even went so magnificently and al-
most incredibly far as to write to a
Western friend, when in his eightieth
year, that if his life were to be lived
again, he thought that he should like to
live it in Chicago. He gave as a reason
that, in all the welter of vulgarity and
commercialism, there was visible there
a power for good that would in time
come to its own. Words of more utter
self devotion than this, I suspect, none
of his early playmates could rival. I
know one of them who never got so
far; but such were Norton's words.
The New World had learned much
from him, and in its turn had taught
him much.
With all his varied and delightful
culture, the more we study this man's
career, the more we find it based on
the simplest and clearest foundations,
resting, as in Wordsworth's formula,
on "a few strong instincts and a few
plain rules."
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THE MOLLY MAGUIRES IN THE ANTHRACITE
REGION OF PENNSYLVANIA
By James Ford Rhodes
Holding a brief for the Historic Muse,
it might seem fitting that I should treat
in a general way of the study and writ-
ing of history; but in a number of ad-
dresses before learned societies and to
university students I have gathered
everything in my power from this well-
reaped field. To recombine and restate
what I have already said would in no
way be worthy of this occasion, and I
think that I can better serve my Muse.
Some one asked Jowett, "Is logic a
science or an art?" "Neither," he said;
"it is a dodge." And some scoffers, im-
pressed with the saying attributed to
Napoleon that "History is lies agreed
upon," have answered likewise the same
question when applied to history. Na-
poleon, indeed, struck at two of the
masters when he said that Tacitus
writes romances, and Gibbon is no better
than a man of sounding words. There-
fore it has seemed to me that the rela-
tion of an episode that has been investi-
gated according to the modern method
will better show our aim at the truth
than a laudation over results that have
been accomplished. And I have chosen
an episode into which no question of
party politics intrudes— the operations
of the Molly Maguires in the anthracite
coal-region of Pennsylvania between
1865 and 1876.
The name and organization of this
hidebound secret order— the Molly
Maguires— came from Ireland; no one
but an Irish Roman Catholic was eligi-
ble for membership. During the Civil
War there had been an enormous de-
mand for anthracite coal at high prices,
and this had caused a large influx of
foreigners,— Irish, English, Welsh,
Scotch, and Germans,— so that the col-
liery towns were under their control;
and the Irish, from their number and
aggressiveness, were the most important
single factor. Many of the Mollies
were miners, and the mode of working
the mines lent itself to their peculiar
policy. Miners were paid by the cubic
yard, by the mine-car, or by the ton,
and, in the driving of entries, by the
lineal yard. In the assignment of
places, which was made by the mining
boss, there were "soft" jobs and hard.
If a Molly applied for a soft job, and
was refused, his anger was great, and
not infrequently, in due time, the of-
fending boss was murdered. If he ob-
tained employment, there was constant
chance for disagreement in measuring
up the work and in estimating the
quality of the coal mined; for it was
the custom to dock the miners for bad
coal, with too much slate and dirt, and
a serious disagreement was apt to be
followed by vengeance. Little wonder
was it that, as the source of the out-
rages was well understood, mining
bosses refused to employ Irishmen ; but
this did not insure their safety, as they
might then be murdered for their re-
fusal. In his quality of superior officer,
a good superintendent of any colliery
would support an efficient mining boss,
and would thus fall under the ban him-
self.
The murders were not committed in
the heat of sudden passion for some
fancied wrong; they were the result of
a deliberate system. The wronged per-
son laid his case before a proper body,
demanding the death, say, of a mining
boss, and urging his reasons. If they
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
were satisfying, as they usually were,
the murder was decreed; but the deed
was not ordered to be done by the ag-
grieved person or by any one in his and
the victim's neighborhood. Two or
more Mollies from a different part of
the county, or even from the adjoining
county, were selected to do the killing,
because, being unknown, they could the
more easily escape detection. Refusal
to carry out the dictate of the conclave
was dangerous and seldom happened,
although an arrangement of substitu-
tion, if properly supported, was per-
mitted to be made. The meeting gen-
erally took place in an upper room of a
hotel or saloon, and after the serious
business came the social reunion, with
deep libations of whisky.
During the decade beginning in 1865,
a great many men were killed to satisfy
the revengeful spirit of the Molly Ma-
guires. Some of the victims were men
so useful, conspicuous, and beloved in
their communities that their assassina-
tion caused a profound and enduring
impression.
While the murders were numerous,
still more numerous were the threats of
murder and warnings to leave the coun-
try, written on a sheet of paper with a
rude picture of a coffin or a pistol, and
sometimes with both. One notice read,
"Mr. John Taylor— We will give you
one week to go but if you are alive on
next Saturday you will die." Another,
to three bosses charged with "cheating
thy men,'' had a picture of three pistols
and a coffin, and on the coffin was writ-
ten, "This is your home." In other
mining districts and in manufacturing
localities, during strikes and times of
turbulence, similar warnings have been
common, and have been laughed at by
mining bosses, superintendents, and
proprietors ; but in the anthracite region
between 1865 and 1876 the bravest of
men could not forget how many of his
fellows had been shot, or suppress a
feeling of uneasiness when he found
such a missive on his door-step, or
posted upon the door of his office at the
mine. Many a superintendent and min-
ing boss left his house in the morning
with his hand on his revolver, wonder-
ing if he would ever see wife and chil-
dren again.
For the commission of murder, the
young men of the order were selected ;
above them were older heads holding
high office and in a variety of ways dis-
playing executive ability. They were
quick to see what a weapon to their
hand was universal suffrage, and with
the aptitude for politics which the Irish
have shown in our country, they de-
veloped their order into a political
power to be reckoned with. Number-
ing in Schuylkill County only 500 or
600 out of 5000 Irishmen in a total
population of 116,000, the Molly Ma-
guires controlled the common schools
and the local government of the to>Mi-
ships in the mining regions of the
county. They elected at different times
three county commissioners, and one
of their number who had acquired
twenty thousand dollars worth of prop-
erty they came near electing associate
judge of the Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner. In one borough a Molly was
chief of police ; in Mahanoy Township,
another. Jack Kehoe, was high consta-
ble. In the elections were fraudulent
voting, stuffing of ballot-boxes, and
false returns; in the administration of
the offices, fraud and robbery.
Despite the larg^ number of murders
by Molly Maguires from 1865 to 1875,
there were few arrests, few trials, and
never a conviction for murder in the first
degree. The defense usually relied on was
an alibi, made fairly easy to establish,
as the men who did the killing were un-
known in the locality of it, and as there
were Mollies in abundance equal to any
amount of false and hard swearing at
the dictation of their order.
During the summer and autumn of
1874, the Molly Maguires were at the
height of their power; yet, while there
was nothing in sight menacing their
dominion, operations against them had
been begun by Franklin B. Gowen.
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THE MOLLY MAGUIRES IN THE ANTHRACITE REGION
2^
Shortly after coming of age, Gowen, in
company with others, had worked a
mine in Schuylkill County; but owing
to the aftermath of the panic of 1857,
his venture had not been successful. He
turned to the study of law, was ad-
mitted to the Schuylkill County bar, was
elected district attorney, and later, se-
curing a large and lucrative practice,
became attorney for the Philadelphia
and Reading Railroad, and in 1869, at
the age of thirty-three, its president.
He organized the Philadelphia and
Reading Coal and Iron Company, which
secured an immense amount of coal-
land and became the largest producer
of anthracite coal. He knew Schuylkill
County through and through, and made
up his mind that a regular and profita-
ble conduct of mining operations would
become impossible if the terror of
the Molly Maguires continued to grow.
As the guardian of the great Reading
property, he felt it his duty to break up
the criminal organization, and in addi-
tion to his local knowledge and ex-
perience, he possessed peculiar qualities
for the work. With restless ability and
indomitable energy, he combined in a
remarkable degree both physical and
moral courage. He was convinced that
the Molly Maguires could be exposed
only by the employment of detectives.
With this view, he applied to Allan
Pinkerton of Chicago, "an intelli-
gent and broad-minded Scotchman."
Pinkerton chose James McParlan, a
native of Ireland and a Roman Catholic,
who, coming to Chicago in 1867, had
been a teamster, the driver of a meat
wagon, a deck-hand on a lake steamer,
a wood-chopper in the wilds of Michi-
gan, a private coachman in Chicago, a
policeman and detective, then an em-
ployee in a wholesale liquor establish-
ment, developing from this into the pro-
prietor of a liquor store and a saloon.
The store burned down in the great fire
of 1871, and, as the saloon was no
longer remunerative, he sold it out and,
in April, 1872, went into the employ of
Allan Pinkerton. In October, 1873, ^^
the age of twenty-nine, he reported to
the Pinkerton agent in Philadelphia for
orders, with the understanding that he
was to receive twelve dollars a week as
his salary and, in addition, his expenses.
After preliminary observation of his
field, McParlan took up his residence in
the anthracite region in the following
December, first at Pottsville, then at
Shenandoah. Under a disguise, and the
assumed name of James McKenna, Mc-
Parlan was a "broth of a boy" who
could sing a song, dance a jig, pass a
rough joke, and stand treat, apparently
taking his full share of whisky, which
was the usual beverage. Still other
qualities were needed, so he said he had
killed his man in Buffalo and was a
fugitive from justice. Supposedly a
workman, he got a job, but found this
too confining and laborious, and soon
appreciated that it was unnecessary for
his object. But he had to account for
the money which he spent freely, and
quickly learning that honest labor was
no recommendation to the Molly Ma-
guires, he concocted the story that he
was in receipt of a pension from the
United States Government, fraudulently
obtained, and that he was also a coun-
terfeiter engaged in "shoving the queer."
This latter proved a clever device, .as it
explained both his ready command of
money and his frequent journeys from
place to place, which were necessary in
his work of detection, warning, and
prevention of crime. The tale, as Mc-
Parlan told it on the witness-stand, is
better than any detective story, for it is
based on a diary of actual happenings
in the shape of regular written reports
to a superior officer in Philadelphia.
He gained the confidence of his
brother Irishmen and Catholics and, on
April 14, 1874, was initiated into the
order and became a full-fledged Molly
Maguire. Loud, brawling, boastful of
crimes, and in education superior to
most of his fellows, he was soon chosen
secretary of his division, the duties and
privileges of which office made him a
local leader, gave him an insight into
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
the secret workings of the order, and
imparted to him a knowledge of their
past crimes and projected murders.
While he was working with zeal and
discretion, learning each week some-
thing more of their practices and plans
of operation, other events were tending
toward the end.
In 1875 there was a recrudescence
of Molly Maguire outrages. As the re-
sult of a certain feud, a Molly, in
accordance with the rule of the organ-
ization, brought his case before a con-
vention held in a second-story room of
a hotel in Mahanoy City. He main-
tained that he had been shot at, and
that it was the intention of two brothers
named Major and of one "Bully Bill,"
otherwise William M. Thomas, a
Welshman, to kill him. !H[e therefore
asked his society to put these three men
out of the way. The meeting to con-
sider this request was opened with
prayer, and presided over by Jack
Kehoe, the county delegate of Schuyl-
kill, the highest officer in the county
organization. There were also present
the county delegate of Northumberland,
three body-masters,— the body-master
was the chief officer of the division, —
three other officers, and James McPar-
lan (McKenna), our detective, who was
also secretary of the Shenandoah divi-
sion. The matter was discussed, and
after some consideration a motion was
made that Thomas and the Major
brothers be killed. It was carried. The
mode of the killing caused some discus-
sion, but there seemed to be no lack of
men ready and willing to do the job.
In the end, certain Mollies were agreed
upon and selected for the murders, Mc-
Parlan being one of those assigned for
the despatch of Thomas. There being
no further business before the meeting,
it adjourned in due form. Having
doubtless taken many drinks of whisky,
the Mollies dined at the tavern, when,
1 Although Thomas was not killed, his doom and
the assault on him formed a characteristic incident.
The limit of this paper, however, does not permit
me to enlarge upon its importance. In the Court
of Quarter Sessions, Schuylkill County, Jack Kehoe
SO the account reads, other matters were
sociably discussed.
On the morning of June 28, four
Mollies from Shenandoah, of ages from
nineteen to twenty-three, started out to
kill Thomas, expecting to shoot him as
he walked toward the drift-mouth of
Shoemaker's colliery, a mile from Ma-
hanoy City. Thomas was in the stable
talking to the stable-boss. The hour of
half-past six arrived, and the Mollies,
becoming impatient that he did not
come out, started toward the stable.
When they reached the door,, one fired
at Thomas, hitting him in the breast.
Thomas jumped toward the man and
grasped the revolver, when a second
bullet took effect. Then another Molly
shot him twice in the neck, one wound
being within a quarter of an inch of the
jugular vein; the other two fired, but
apparently did not hit the victim.
Thomas, covered with blood, fell and
crawled under the horses that had not
been hit. One horse was killed, and an-
other wounded. Thinking that Thomas
was dead, the assassins fled to Shenan-
doah and, "wet with sweat," found Mc-
Parlan, and reported what they had
done.*
Jimmy Kerrigan, the body-master of
the. Tamaqua division, Schuylkill
County, and his chum, Thomas Duffy,
hard drinkers, reckless and quarrelsome
in their cups, had been arrested and im-
prisoned more than once by the police.
They had therefore conceived a violent
hatred against Policeman Yost, who,
with an associate, constituted the night
watch of Tamaqua, and on one occa-
sion had overcome the resistance of
Duflfy by beating him on the head with
his club. Yost was a man of good char-
acter, kindly nature, and much liked in
the community, but the Tamaqua divi-
sion decided that he must die.
At the same time the Mollies of
Storm Hill, Carbon County, had deter-
and a number of other Molly Maguires were con-
victed for aggravated assault and battery with in-
tent to kill William M. Thomas, and, in a trial
immediately thereafter, for conspiracy to murder
the Majors.
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THE MOLLY MAGUIRES IN THE ANTHRACITE REGION
29
mined upon the murder of John P.
Jones, a mining boss in the employ of
the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre Coal Com-
pany, because it was supposed that he
had blacklisted William Mulhall and
Hugh McGehan. An exchange of
"Mollie courtesies" was at once sug-
gested and decided upon. Carbon
County Mollies were to be sent over for
the murder of Yost, and in return
Schuylkill Mollies would undertake to
put Jones out of the way. Yost was to
be assassinated first, and the time fixed
upon was the early morning of July 6,
at the hour when he should extinguish
the last gas-light in the town. Mulhall,
who was a married man with a la/ge
family, was relieved from the work,
and James Boyle, being conveniently at
hand, was substituted in his place.
McGehan and Boyle, the Carbon
County representatives, came to Tama-
qua, and were guided by Kerrigan and
Duffy. About midnight, DuiTy took
the two to the cemetery and returned to
the Union House, an inn kept by a
prominent Molly, so that he might prove
an alibi when, as was highly probable,
suspicion fell upon him. Somewhat
later, Kerrigan took a bottle of whisky
to the cemetery ; but the drink was for
himself and Boyle, as McGehan, who
was a tall young man of about twenty-
two, of powerful frame, with brawny
arms, never touched a drop of liquor.
Kerrigan led the two to the street-lamp,
and placed them under the shade-trees
near by. After a while Yost and his
associate watchman appeared, and went
into Yost's house to get something to
eat. Coming out at a little after two
o'clock, Yost went at once to the lamp-
post, placed his ladder against it, began
to climb the ladder, heard footsteps be-
hind him, and turned to see who was
coming from under the trees. As he
turned, McGehan reached up and shot
him in the right side. Yost fell off the
ladder, exclaiming: "Oh, my God! I
am shot! My wife!" His wife, lean-
ing out of the window, saw him climb-
ing the ladder, saw the flash of the pis-
tol, heard that and a second report, the
scream of her husband, the sound of re-
treating footsteps, and, rushing down-
stairs and out, found him mortally
wounded. "Give me a kiss," he said;
"I am shot, and have to die." Later to
his brother-in-law he said : "This is the
last of me ; I must die. I have been so
long in the army and escaped, and now
I must be shot innocently." He died
that day, but not before stating that he
had seen his murderers plainly. They
were both Irishmen, but neither was
Kerrigan or Duffy, who were the only
enemies he had in the world.
Kerrigan piloted McGehan and Boyle
away to a point whence they could
easily return to their own county. Mc-
Gehan boasted to Kerrigan of the
deed. "I dislike," he said, "to draw
Irish blood; but I want no better sport
than to shoot such men as Yost. When
he was shot he ^hollered' like a panther."
The murderers reached their homes
without apprehension. Not until seven
months afterward were they arrested.
McGehan became a hero. All the
Mollies admired his "clean job," for
which it was generally recognized a
suitable reward should be given. Camp-
bell, a leading Molly of Carbon County,
bestirred himself in his behalf, and
started him in a saloon • near Storm
Hill.
I pass over two murders by Mollies
in August to the murder of Thomas
Sanger. An Englishman, thirty-three
years old, of good character and amiable
disposition, a mining boss at Raven-
run colliery, he had somehow incurred
the ill-will of some of the Molly Ma-
guires, and he was doomed to die. On
the morning of September i, a little
before seven o'clock, as he walked to-
ward the mine to set the men to work,
he was attacked by five Mollies, shot,
and killed, as was also William Uren, a
young man who was with him and in-
terfered in his defense. Although a
hundred men and boys witnessed the
assault, they were so terrified by the
promiscuous firing that they made no
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30
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
attempt to arrest the Mollies, who
escaped to the mountains.
The sensation in Schuylkill and Car-
bon counties was profound. The vic-
tims had been Welsh, Pennsylvania-
German, or English, and the feeling of
their blood-brothers toward the Irish
Catholics was growing into a keen de-
sire for vengeance.
But the day of reckoning was at
hand, although the Mollies, arrogant in
their success, drunk with deeds of vio-
lence, and thirsting for blood, little
recked that the period of their dominion
was drawing to an end.
It will be remembered that in return
for the murder of Yost, the Schuylkill
County Mollies had promised to kill
John P. Jones, a Welshman, a mining
boss at Storm Hill, Carbon County.
Through McParlan, he had been
warned, and for a number of weeks
had slept at the house of his superin-
tendent under guard of Coal and Iron
Police. The changes of design and
shifting of plans were so frequent that
the detective was unable to trace them
all, and he was hoping that this project
had been abandoned when the commu-
nity received another shock in the fol-
lowing manner.
Jimmy Kerrigan, who knew the by-
paths in this difficult mountainous
country, led Edward Kelly, whose selec-
tion had been by lot, and Michael J.
Doyle, who had volunteered to take the
place of a married man with a family,
into Carbon County, and they stopped
all night with Campbell, in whose saloon
they were well entertained. Jones, pass-
ing the first night for a long while in his
own house, left it, after taking break-
fast and chatting with his family, at a
little after seven on the morning of
September 3 to go to the mining super-
intendent's office near the railroad sta-
tion. As the train from Tamaqua was
nearly due, a hundred men— miners and
railroad employees— were about the
place. As Jones approached them, two
strange men suddenly stepped forward
and fired a number of balls into his
body, killing him almost instantly. At
once they fled to the mountains. Wild
excitement prevailed at the station, but
the mining superintendent kept his head
and organized a party for pursuit Jimmy
Kerrigan led his two men by unfre-
quented roads and by-paths, and, elud-
ing all pursuers, got them safely by
Tamaqua, five miles from the scene of
the murder. Had he kept on, instead
of stopping to show his hospitality, he
could have taken them to Tuscarora,
where there was a nest of Molly Ma-
guires. Some of these could easily
have conducted the assassins to Potts-
ville, where, merged in the crowd, de-
tection would have been impossible.
But when they had left Tamaqua be-
hind and were near his own house, Ker-
rigan left them in the bush, and went
home to get them whisky and something
to eat.
Meanwhile Beard, a young law stu-
dent who had seen the dead body of
Jones immediately after the murder
and was one of the first to bring the
news of it to Tamaqua, happened to
hear that Jimmy Kerrigan with two
strange men had been seen west of the
town. Going to a hill whence with a
spy-glass a pretty good view of the sur-
rounding country could be obtained, he
saw Kerrigan wave a handkerchief,
whereupon two other men appeared,
and the three went to a spring on the
side of the mountain. Hurrying back
to town. Beard, together with an elder
brother, mustered a force of twenty,
went out to the bush, captured Kerrigan
and his associates, and, bringing them
to town, had them confined in the Tama-
qua lock-up. They were surrendered
to the deputy sheriff of Carbon County
on his properly supported demand.
The trial of the murderers of Jones,
which had been fixed for October 19,
was postponed on sufficient ground;
and, as it was well understood that
strong evidence for an alibi was being .
manufactured, and as the Molly Ma-
guires were at the height of their politi-
cal power, fears were entertained by
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THE MOLLY MAGUIRES IN THE ANTHRACITE REGION
31
many that the assassins would escape
the punishment which was justly their
due. But these people had no concep-
tion of the impending doom of the
terrible order, owing to the irrefragable
evidence gathered by McParlan, the
energy and discretion of Gowen and
Parrish,* and the high character of the
bench and bar of Carbon and Schuylkill
counties.
On January 18, 1876, the trial of the
three assassins of Jones began at
Mauch Chimk before Judge Dreher.
Assisting the district attorney in the
prosecution were Charles Albright and
F. W. Hughes, one a Democrat, the
other a Republican, who had clasped
hands in the determination to root out
the Molly Maguires by process of laV.
Five attorneys appeared for the de-
fense, of whom two at least were able
lawyers, and a third was the Republican
member of Congress for Schuylkill
County. The prisoners demanded sepa-
rate trials, and the commonwealth
elected to begin with Michael J. Doyle.
The testimony presented on its part was
complete. The defense was a carefully
manufactured alibi ; but as it was evi-
dent that the commonwealth stood ready
to prosecute for perjury as well as for
murder, the counsel for Doyle, either
too timid or too honorable to put upon
the stand men who they knew would
swear falsely, did not call their wit-
nesses, and let the case go to the jury
on the evidence of the commonwealth.
Three arguments were made by the
prosecution; two "stirring appeals to
the jury" on behalf of the prisoner. On
February i, the jury brought in a ver-
dict of guilty of murder in the first de-
gree, the first conviction in the anthra-
cite region of a Molly Maguire for a
capital crime. Later the judge refused
a motion for a new trial, and sentenced
Doyle to be hanged.
Kerrigan decided to turn state's evi-
dence, and, before the conviction of
Doyle, told Albright and Hughes, who
were accompanied by a stenographer,
1 President of the Lehigh and
the story of the murders of Jones and
Yost, and disclosed the inside workings
of the society of Molly Maguires. On
February 4, Campbell was arrested as
accessory before the fact to the murder
of Jones, and on the same day the two
principals and three accessories to the
murder of Yost were committed to the
Pottsville jail. On February lo, two
men were arrested for the murder of
Sanger and Uren at Ravenrun.
The Molly Maguires were much
alarmed. They knew that the arrests of
Campbell and of the murderers of Yost
were due to the disclosures of Kerrigan,
and they were bitterly indignant at his
treachery ; but they did not believe that
the arrest of Sanger's assassin could be
laid to his charge, as Kerrigan was in a
different division, and had no intimate
connection with the murder. It was
rumored that a detective was among
them, and suspicion fell upon McParlan.
Having heard the report more than
once. Jack Kehoe, one of the most
adroit men in the society, became con-
vinced of its truth, and sent the word
around that McParlan (McKenna) was
a detective, and that members must be-
ware of him. Hearing this, McParlan
went to Kehoe and demanded, "Why do
you spread these reports about me?"
"I heard it from a conductor on the
Reading Railroad," was the answer.
"He called me into the baggage-car, and
said that I might be certain that you
were a detective. I told him it was not
the first time I had heard the charge
made against you."
McParlan denounced the charge as a
slander, and demanded a convention of
the order to investigate the matter. "I
will let the society try me," he said,
"and if I find out the man who is lying
about me, I will make him suffer. It
is a terrible thing to charge a man like
me with being a detective."
They agreed that a county convention
should be called, and as Kehoe was too
nervous to write the notices, he asked
McParlan to write them in his name,
Wilkesbarre Coal Company.
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32
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
who therefore summcmed in proper
form all the body-masters of the county
to convene at Shenandoah, about March
I, for his own trial.
Meanwhile the report concerning Mc-
Parlan gained force, helped on by the
assertion of the leading attorney for
the defense of Doyle that, in some un-
accountable way, the attorneys for the
commonwealth had obtained minute de-
tails of their line of defense. On the
day before the one fixed for the conven-
tion, McParlan, while at Pottsville, was
charged with being a detective by an-
other Molly, who further asserted that
the convention at Shenandoah was a
game of his to get all the body-masters
and officers together and have them ar-
rested by Captain Linden * and his Coal
and Iron Police. To allay this suspi-
cion, McParlan went at once to see Lin-
den, and asked him not to have the
police there at all. "I believe," he said,
"I can fight them right through, and
make them believe I am no detective."
Linden reluctantly consented, but told
McParlan that he was running a very
great risk.
Linden was right. Earlier in the day,
McParlan had seen Kehoe, and the two
arranged to travel together to Shenan-
doah that evening that they might be
there for the convention early on the
morrow. But Kehoe stole away tfiither
on an earlier train, got together Mc-
xA.ndrew, the body-master of the Shen-
andoah division, and a number of the
Mollies, telling them that beyond doubt
McParlan was a detective and must be
killed. "For God's sake, have him
killed to-night," he added, "or he will
hang half the people in Schuylkill
County." The men consented, McAn-
drew with reluctance, as he was fond
of McParlan. Kehoe went home, but
a dozen men assembled a little below the
station, armed with axes, tomahawks,
and sledges, and waited for the coming
of McParlan, intending to inveigle him
I Linden, the assistant superintendent of the
Pinkerton Agency in Chicago, was sent to the
anthracite region, and became captain of the Coal
down the track and kill him, avoiding
the use of firearms in order not to at-
tract the attention of policemen about
the station.
Meanwhile McParlan was traveling
toward Shenandoah on the evening
train, his suspicions aroused from Ke-
hoe^s failure to join him as agreed.
They grew stronger when he was not
met as usual at the station by five or six
comrades to discuss the news and have
a drink. He went into the saloon of a
member, whom he found so nervous
and excited that he could hardly open
the bottle of porter called for. Walk-
ing on, he met another member, ordi-
narily friendly, who hardly spoke to
him; then another, Sweeney, who was
less cold, but of whom he was so sus-
picious that, as they went on together,
he invented some excuse to make
Sweeney walk ahead lest he should re-
ceive a blow from behind. He kept his
hand on his revolver, ready to meet an
attack. Arriving at Mc Andrew's, he
noticed two Mollies on guard and that
his friend was nervous and uneasy.
Sweeney went out, came back again,
and threw a little piece of snow at Mc-
Andrew as a signal for action, to which
the latter replied: "My feet are sore. I
guess I will take off my boots," which
was as much as to say, "I have aban-
doned the project." With truth Mc-
Andrew told McParlan next day, "I
saved your life last night"
McParlan, on the alert, knew some-
thing was up, and after a question about
the meeting, said good night and started
for his boarding-house, but not by his
usual route, taking, instead, a byway
through a swamp. He slept little, for
he was constantly on his guard against
an attempt at assassination.
Next morning there was no sign of a
convention, and McParlan made up his
mind to go to Girardville and demand
of Kehoe the reason. Hiring a horse
and cutter, he took Mc Andrew with
and Iron Police, his calling of detective being
known only to the few whose guiding hands were
in the enterprise.
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THE MOLLY MAGUIRES IN THE ANTHRACITE REGION
33
him ; and two other Mollies, in a similar
conveyance, started after them.
'*What does this mean?" asked Mc-
Parlan.
**Look here," was the reply, "you had
better look out; for that man who is
riding in that sleigh behind you calcu-
lates to take your life. Have you got
your pistols ?"
**Yes," said McParlan.
'*So have I," returned Mc Andrew,
."and I will lose my life for you. I do
not know whether you are a detective
or not, but I do not know anything
against you. I always knew you were
doing right, and I will stand by you.
Why don't they try you fair?" Then
Mc Andrew told of the plot of the pre-
vious day, adding, "You will find out
that you are in a queer company this
minute."
"I do not give a cent," replied Mc-
Parlan ; "I am going down to Kehoe's."
To Kehoe's they went. Kehoe was
surprised to see McParlan still alive and
in company with the men who had
agreed to kill him. Yet they fell to dis-
cussing the burning question when
Kehoe intimated to him that he had
learned his true character from Father
O'Connor. On McParlan's determin-
ing to go to see the priest at M^ahanoy
Plane, a number of Mollies went along.
The one to whom the killing of the de-
tective was assigned got too drunk to
make the attempt ; but on their return to
Shenandoah, McAndrew would not per-
mit McParlan to go to his boarding-
house for fear of assassination, but
insisted that he should sleep in his (Mc-
Andrew's) quarters.
Having failed to find Father O'Con-
nor when he left Kehoe's, McParlan
made a second unsuccessful attempt on
the next day ; but not caring to pass an-
other night at Shenandoah, he went on
to Pottsville.
"There," he said to Captain Linden,
'*I have come to the conclusion that they
have had a peep at my hand and that
the cards are all played."
Shadowed by Linden, on the follow-
ing day he went to Mahanoy Plane, and
had a long talk with Father O'Connor,
learning that not only O'Connor, but
two other Catholic priests as well, be-
lieved that he was a Pinkerton detective
in the employ of the Reading Company.
Satisfied that his mission was generally
known, he returned to Pottsville that
evening, and next morning (March 5
or 6) left for Philadelphia, ending his
experience of nearly two years as a
Molly Maguire.
A word here should be said concern-
ing the position of the Roman Catholic
clergy. Father O'Connor's aversion to
McParlan was not due to any love for
the Molly Maguires. On the contrary,
he had denounced them from the pulpit,
and read, only a short time previous,
the pastoral letter of Archbishop Wood
excommunicating all lawless societies
and especially the Molly Maguires. But
Father O'Connor looked upon McPar-
lan as a stool-pigeon, egging his asso-
ciates on to crime in order to enhance
his own glory and profit as a detective.
Wood was the archbishop of Phila-
delphia, and had almost from the first
been cognizant of and sympathetic with
the means which Gowen employed to
bring the Molly Maguires to justice.
In the trial of the murderers of Yost
McParlan was the chief witness for the
commonwealth. The Molly Maguires
knew Jim McKenna, a man with
bushy red hair and rough dress, a
brawler and a roysterer, "the biggest
Molly of us all." They saw before
them in the witness-box James McPar-
lan, a man slightly built, but muscular,
of fair complexion, closely cut dark-
chestnut hair above a broad, full fore-
head, and gray eyes. Dressed plainly in
black, wearing spectacles, with an intel-
ligent and grave countenance and gentle-
manly bearing, he resembled a college
professor rather than a rowdy, fre-
quenting bar-rooms and saloons.
McParlan told his wonderful story
slowly, without an attempt at theatrical
display, and he was listened to with
breathless interest by judges, attorneys,
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34
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
prisoners, and officers of the law. He
remained upon the witness-stand for
four days, and instead of being shaken
by the searching cross-examination to
which he was subjected, he was able to
add evidence which told against the
prisoners and which had been objected
to on his examinatioil-in-chief. Accu-
rate and truthful, he excelled as wit-
ness, as he had as detective, and when
he finished his testimony, the case of
the commonwealth was won.
McParlan testified in a number of
subsequent cases. More of the Mollies
turned state's evidence, and proof was
piled upon proof. Conviction after con-
viction for murder followed, and death-
sentences were pronounced. Many of
the cases were taken up to the Supreme
Court on writs of error, with the result
that the sentences of the lower courts
were affirmed.
On June 21, 1877, at Mauch Chunk,
four Molly Maguires were hanged,
three for the murder of Jones, one for
the murder of Powell in 1871. At
Pottsville six were hanged, five for the
murder of Yost, and one for the murder
of Sanger. In the meantime arrests
had been made of Mollies who had com-
mitted murders previous to 1875. For
the killing in Columbia County of a
mine superintendent in 1868, three were
convicted, and on March 25, 1878, were
hanged at Bloomsburg. For killing a
breaker-boss in 1862, the mighty Jack
Kehoe was found guilty of murder in
the first degree, and on December 18,
1878, was hanged at Pottsville.
In all, nineteen Mollie Maguires were
hanged; a greater number for lesser
crimes than murder received various
sentences of imprisonment. The maj-
esty of the law was vindicated. The
Molly Maguires were crushed. Never
did the society reappear in the anthra-
cite region. The weapon of coolly de-
vised and violent assassination was
never afterward employed on the part
of labor. The region did not again suf-
fer from the lawlessness which had pre-
vailed there from 1865 to 1875. That
this result was accomplished not by vigi-
lance committees and lynchings, but by
the regular, patient, and considerate
process of law, was due to Gowen, Mc-
Parlan, Parrish, the bench of Carbon,
Schuylkill, Columbia, and Northumber-
land counties, and the lawyers who
acted for the commonwealth.
The racial characteristics shown in
this story are worth a passing note. All
the Molly Maguires were Irish. Mc-'
Parian, who exposed them and served
his employer with stanch fidelity, was
Irish, and Gowen, to whom the greatest
credit is due for the destruction of the
society, was the son of an Irishman.
A peculiar feature stands out, differ-
entiating the Molly Maguires from any
criminal organization, so far as I know,
of any other peoples of the Indo-Euro-
pean family. We read of strong drink
and carousing, of robbery and murder,
but nowhere, during the orgies of
whisky, of dissolute women. We read
of wives and families, of marriage and
the giving in marriage, of childbirth,
but nowhere of the appearance of the
harlot. The Irishman, steeped in crime,
remained true to the sexual purity of
his race.
The characteristic failings of the
Celts, as the ancient Romans knew them,
were intensified in their Irish descend-
ants by the seven centuries of misgov-
ernment of Ireland by England.
Subject to tyranny at home, the Irish-
man, when he came to America, too
often translated liberty into license, and
so ingrained was his habit of looking
upon government as an enemy that,
when he became the ruler of cities and
stole the public funds, he was. from his
point of view, only despoiling the old
adversary. With his traditional hos-
tility to government, it was easy for him
to become a Molly Maguire, while the
English, Scotch, and Welsh immigrant
shrank from such a society with horror.
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THE CAPITOL
By Julia Ward Howe
Where shall our nation's temple stand ?
Center of counsel and command ;
A Mecca of unfailing faith;
A Zion of unwavering hope ;
A fortress that with grim assault
And deadly stratagem may cope ;
A Rome that weaves no slavish bond,
But wins allegiance firm and fond.
I see the noble structure rise,
The dome descending from the skies
To lofty station, that the eye
And will of man may aim so high,
While walls of hospitable space
The people's judgment-seat embrace.
Here shall avail the argument
Of just endeavor and intent;
Here shall the widow's prayer be
brought,
The orphan's sacred claim be sought ;
The heavenly sisterhood of art
Keeping unstained a nation's heart ;
An altar for each honest creed,
A court where each just cause may
plead.
A sentence of eternal lore
Uttered in whispers heretofore,
But now with silver trump proclaimed
To men and regions newly named,
That right with right may fitly join.
The weal of each for all combine ;
No need to snatch, no need to slay.
For a republic's holiday.
The chief who gave our shrine his name
Barred it thenceforth from evil fame.
Upon his laureled tomb doth lie
The pledge of immortality.
For all his way was writ of Fate
In holy footsteps consecrate.
Where the sad spoils of warfare rest
Nirvana sits, a solemn guest.
Safeguard of rule that may not cease,
Sponsor of righteousness and peace.
How shall we overmatch the past
With merits, shaming each the last ?
Fast holding each illustrious theft
Old Time has patterned in his weft.
Losing no touch of hero song.
Yielding no step of vanquished wrong.
No conquering grace that marks the line
Where human beauties grow divine.
Let him who stands for service here
With deeply reverent soul draw near.
Intent irom every season's youth
To pluck the new commissioned truth ;
To lift the weight that most offends,
The need that other needs transcends ;
In distant prisons, sad and drear.
The captive's lonely heart to cheer,
And in earth's wildest wastes arouse
The music of the Father's house —
Home for the homeless, priceless rest.
Heaven's seal of promise, dearest, best.
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CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
By Horatio Parker
A FAMOUS orchestral conductor once
told me that he was glad he would be
dead in fifty years, so that he would not
have to hear the music of that time. It
is needless to say that he was conserva-
tive, but it should be stated that he was,
and is, one of the best-known and most
efficient conductors we have ever had in
this country. Although his remark is
typical of the critical attitude of many
who have to do with new music, yet it
does not in the least represent the atti-
tude of the public, which is interested
and pleased as never before with the
music of our own time. There have al-
ways been people to declare that the
particular art in which they were inter-
ested, at the particular time in which
they lived, was going to the dogs, and
there seem to be peculiar excuses for
this belief in music-lovers just now.
But there ought to be some way of
reconciling the pessimism of the critics
and the optimism of the public, which
expresses itself eloquently in the buying
of many tickets. By critics I do not
mean merely the journalists. I mean
rather essayists and those accustomed to
give well-deliberated judgment on mat-
ters of permanent importance. The
journalists have been so often, so rudely
shocked that they not only fear to tread,
but fail to rush in, and at a first hearing
of new things are fain to give forth an
uncertain sound, which, in the light of
subsequent developments, may be taken
for approval or censure.
The pursuit and enjoyment of music
call for the exercise, on the part of its
devotees, of three principal functions
widely diflferent. These are the func-
tions of the composer, of the performer,
and of the listener.
The composer is the source and
motive power of all art-music, the pro-
ducer who draws his inspiration from
the recesses of his inner artistic con-
sciousness, whose desire and aim are to
realize as well as possible the ideals with
which his brain is filled. He seeks to
give expression to musical ideas which
shall call forth sympathetic feeling in
those to whom the utterance is ad-
dressed. Although in some cases it is
apparently meant for an ideal audience
which has no existence, nevertheless, if
the utterance be true and skilfully made,
it will in no case fail of audience or of
effect, even though the time be delayed.
The second function necessary to the
practice of music is that of the per-
former or reproducer. This activity is
closely allied to the first, which is in
truth dependent upon it. It is of high
importance, and in ideal instances may
be artistic activity of a kind hardly
lower than that of the composer, though
wholly different in character. This also
is at root a manifestation of a desire for
utterance, of the craving to awaken
sympathetic feeling in others; but it is
different in that it seeks and gives ex-
pression to ideas which are already in
existence. The composer seeks those
which do not yet exist. The performer
gives utterance to the thought of an-
other; the composer, to his own. But
the work of the performer is for most
people the only actual embodiment of
the results of the first function, and he
frequently clarifies and enhances the
composer's work in a measure beyond
expectation. It calls for self-control as
well as for self-abandonment, for sym-
pathy in the highest degree, and a two-
fold sympathy, —with the composer and
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CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
37
with the audience,— and for personal,
magnetic power to such an extent that
it is wholly quite natural that people
should frequently, even usually, lose all
sight and sense of the composer or pro-
ducer, who is remote from them, and
admire the work of the reproducing
artist, who is always near.
The third function is of equal im-
portance with the other two, but differs
from them more than they do from each
other. It is the function of the audi-
ence or the listeners. This function is
largely misunderstood and usually un-
dervalued. It is the exact opposite of
the other two essentials of music-mak-
ing in that it calls for receptive activity,
if one may so express it, for intelligent,
passive sympathy. This sympathy of
the audience is the mark at which both
composer and performer are aiming. It
has no public or open reward, though it
well deserves one. Audiences certainly
should receive credit for intelligent lis-
tening, though it is hard to know just
how or when to give it. The quality of
sympathy is elusive and difficult to ap-
preciate. To most audiences it seems
unimportant whether it be given or
withheld; the only matter of conse-
quence is the applause. Genuine appre-
ciation is often hard to identify or
recognize. It is quite impossible to
know whether a smooth, impassive, self-
restrained Anglo-Saxon face hides the
warmest appreciation or the densest
ignorance or indifference. Such emo-
tions often resemble one another. Nor
can one ever tell whether the heightened
color and brightened eyes are caused by
the long hair and hands of the performer
or by beautiful music. A particularly
good luncheon or dinner preceding the
concert may have the same outward ef-
fect. So the successful listener is a
mystery, but a pleasing and very neces-
sary one. His work is as important as
that of the composer or performer, and
his rewards are none the less real be-
cause they are not counted out to him
in cash, because he pays and does not
receive a tangible medium of exchange.
They lie in the listening itself and in
the consciousness of improvement
which is the result of his effort.
In speaking of modern music, we can
omit personalities concerning classical
composers. Their works fall entirely to
the exercises of the second and third
functions mentioned ; but since the bulk
of contemporary music is by classical
composers, it may be well to speak
briefly of the attitude of performers and
audiences toward music of this kind.
In an ideal world the performer and the
listener would have the same kind and
degree of pleasure in music except in so
far as it is more blessed to give than to
receive. "We are all musicians when
we listen well." It may be laid down
as a general principle that performers
of classical music have more enjoyment
than listeners. Palestrina is a pre-
classical composer with distinct limita-
tions, and it is quite reasonable that he
should appeal under ordinary conditions
to a small audience, and to that imper-
fectly. He is a religious composer, and
most audiences prefer to keep their re-
ligious feelings for Sunday use. He is
a composer of church music to be sung
in church, so that his work must miss its
effect in a modern concert-room. We
have very few churches in our country
fit for the performance of Palestrina*s
music. I know a jail or two where it
would sound wonderfully effective, but
there are obvious reasons for not going
so far in the pursuit of art. It follows,
therefore, that Palestrina in a concert-
room is enjoyed by the average listener
only by means of a lively exercise of
the imagination, with frequent, perhaps
unconscious, mental reference to what
he has read or heard about it.
If there is enthusiasm, it is surely for
the performance, because the music it-
self is so clear, so pure, so absolutely
impersonal, that it is hardly reasonable
to expect it to appeal to the listener of
to-day. He is too remote from it, and
should not think less of himself because
he does not feel an immediate response.
In proper circumstances, in a real
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
church, he would surely respond at once.
For this music is the summit of a great
wave of musical development. Nothing
exists of earlier or later date which may
be compared with it. It is ideal church
music, ideal religious music, the greatest
and purest ever made ; and it can never
be surpassed, for we have gone by the
point in the history of the art at which
such effort as Palestrina's can bring
forth such fruit.
The public attitude toward Bach is
much more natural and unconstrained.
He is nearer to us and is an instru-
mental composer. Although in some-
what archaic terms, his music is personal
expression in a much higher degree than
that of the absolutely impersonal Pales-
trina. The vigor, the life, and the ani-
mation which inform the whole texture
of his work are so obvious that we can-
not miss them. Again, in his greatest
work the feeling of design is so clear,
the upbuilding and the resulting mas-
siveness are so faultless, that the devout
and habitual lover of music has the re-
poseful and at the same time exciting
conviction that he is hearing the inevita-
ble. Enjoyment is easy even to the un-
learned. In those works which are less
massive than the greatest, the pleasure
we have from Bach is more subtle, more
refined, and perhaps less acute, but we
always feel that we listen to a master.
Bach gives, perhaps, the highest satis-
faction in his chamber-music. Much of
his work is so very intimate that we find
the balance of expression and form
most easily when we are near enough
to hear every note. The church can-
tatas in church, the great organ works
in a comparatively small place, or the
orchestral music in a hall of moderate
size, are among the keenest enjoyments
for performers and audience. Ap-
plause, if it is given, must be for the
performers or for their work. The
compositions are above approval. To
praise them is like speaking well of the
Bible.
In the work of his contemporary
Handel, whose texture is less purely
polyphonic and instrumental, the en-
joyment of performer and listener
comes nearer to a point of coincidence.
The audience can love it more nearly
as a performer does. We feel that the
vitality in Handel is of a more human
kind; that it is nearer our level, less
supernal : but it is convincing and satis-
fying even when most popular, and is
not disappointing upon intimate ac-
quaintance, even though it lack the
nearly superhuman fluidity and the mar-
velous texture of Bach.
The music of Beethoven is so well
known, so frequently heard, and so
clearly understood that we may take it
for granted, and go on to music which
is modern in every sense, made in our
own time, and addressed to our own per-
sonal feelings. Our present-day music
is twofold in character, a direct result
of the labors of Beethoven and his suc-
cessors in pure music, and of Wagner
and the romanticists in music which is
not absolute. The symphony or sonata
form is now archaic in the same sense
that the fugue is archaic. Beautiful
music may be, will be, made in both
forms, but that is no longer the general
problem.
It is probably true that since the four
symphonies of Brahms, no symphonic
works carry the conviction of the sym-
phonic poems of Richard Strauss. Al-
though these are cast in a modification
of the symphonic form of Beethoven,
they always have a psychological basis
or an original impulse outside of music.
They are intended to characterize in
musical speech or language things which
can only by vigorous effort be brought
into any connection with music itself.
The question naturally arises. Has the
power of making absolute music en-
tirely disappeared ? I am loath to think
so, but surely the practice has dwindled
in importance.
We need not be concerned to examine
these extra-musical bases. Granting
them to be necessary, one is much the
saiTie as another. But that is just what
many are reluctant to grant. Many are
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CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
39
brazen enough to enjoy program-music
frequently in spite of, not on account
of, the program; and some people pre-
fer the advertisements, which are usually
in larger print. Both save thinking.
But the underlying program is not what
most critics object to. The commonest
criticisms which we hear of strictly
modefn music charge it with a lack of
economy, amotmting to constant ex-
travagance; a lack of reserve, amount-
ing almost to shamelessness ; and a
degree of complexity entirely incompre-
hensible to the average listener, and, if
we are to believe careful critics, out of
all proportion to the results attained.
Of course economy is a great and essen-
tial virtue in' art, but it is not incom-
patible with large expenditures. It
depends on the size of the fund which
is drawn upon. Nor is explicit and
forceful utterance incompatible with re-
serve. As for complexity, it may some-
times be beyond the power of any
listener to appreciate. Perhaps only the
composer and the conductor can see or
hear all the subtleties in an orchestral
score. But is such complexity a waste ?
Not necessarily, for good work is never
wasted. Although beauties in a viola
part or in the second bassoon may not
be obvious to the casual listener, how-
ever hard he may listen, they are not
necessarily futile. They may, perhaps,
be noticed only by the composer, the
conductor, and the individual per-
former, but they are there and they
constitute a claim on the respect and
affection of future musicians. If all
the beauties were hidden, they would
be useless, but as gratuitous additional
graces they call for approbation. But
one may not admire complexity for its
own sake. It is far easier to achieve
than forceful simplicity.
At a recent performance of a modem
symphonic work which was very long
and called for nearly all possible fa-
miliar musical resources, I recall won-
dering whether or not it is a bad sign
that a composer gets respectful hearing
for pretentious trivialities and vulgari-
ties uttered at the top of the many
times reinforced brazen lungs of an
immense orchestra. There were, in-
deed, a few minutes of exquisite beauty,
but after more than an hour of what
seemed an arid waste of dust and dull-
ness. Meanwhile, there were long cres-
cendos, with new and cruel percussion
instruments working industriously ever
louder and faster, but leading up time
after time to an absolute musical
vacuum. One*s hopes were raised to
the highest point of expectation; but
they were raised only to be frustrated.
It is such unsatisfying work as this
which elicits pessimistic forebodings as
to the future of music as an independent
art. Serious critics and essayists have
made vigorous attempts to oust the
music of the future from existence as
an independent art and to relegate it to
the position of a sort of language which
is to be used, when it is quite grown up,
to express more or less pictorially hu-
man happenings or emotions. And there
have not been wanting composers to
support this hopeless view. The appli-
cation of pure reason to such emotional
phenomena as our pleasure in music re-
sults occasionally in something very like
nonsense. The arts have different
media of expression, but excepting the
art of literature, the medium is no
spoken or written language. Indeed,
artists are apt to regard with some de-
gree of suspicion one who expresses
himself well in any other than his own
peculiar medium. Amateur is a dread
term often applied to such men, and
they are very likely to be amateur
artists or amateur writers, perhaps both.
It is consoling to think that all the words
written and spoken about art have never
yet influenced creative artists to any dis-
cernible extent. Their inspiration or
their stimulus must come from within,
and, after the preliminary technical
progress over the well-trod paths of
their artistic forefathers, which progress
no great artist has ever yet evaded or
avoided, their further advancement is
always by empirical and not by logical
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
processes; not logical except in an
artistic sense, for logic in art, although
very real, is not reducible to words until
after it has already become an accom-
plished fact through empirical or in-
stinctive practice. The evolution of
logic in art cannot be foreseen or fore-
told.
The opera is just now the largest
figure on our musical horizon, and
opera, always responsive to the latest
fashion, has undergone very important
typical changes of late years. "Sa-
lome," by Richard Strauss, for instance,
is more an extended symphonic poem
than opera in the older sense. It is as
if scenery, words, and action had been
added to the musical resources of such
a work as Strauss's "Zarathustra." It
is only about twice as long as "Zara-
thustra." Strauss*s "Salome'* and De-
bussy's "Pelleas and Melisande" are
typical modem musical achievements.
In spite of the suavity and popularity
of Italian operas of our time and of the
• operatic traditions of the Italians as a
nation, they do not appear to have the
importance of the German and French
works just mentioned. The two men
mentioned seem just now the most
active forces in our musical life, and it
may throw light upon the music of our
own time to compare the two operas
with each other, not with other classic
or modern works of the same nature;
for from such they differ too widely for
a comparison to be useful. Old-fash-
ioned people seek in opera a union of
speech and song, and each of these two
composers has renounced the latter defi-
nitely. No human voice gives forth any
musically interesting phrase in "Pelleas
and Melisande." In "Salome" the
voices, when used melodically, which is
seldom, are treated like instruments, and
it is no exaggeration to say that song is
relegated entirely to the orchestra. The
voices declaim, the orchestra sings.
Each opera is a natural continuation of
its composer's previous work. Each is
•an independent growth. Neither com-
poser has influenced the other to a dis-
cernible extent. Yet it seems impossi-
ble to find any other notable musical
work of our own day which does not
show the influence of one or the other
of these two men.
"Salome" is in one act and lasts an
hour and a half; "Pelleas and Meli-
sande" is in five acts and lasts about
three hours. The difference in time is
largely due to the underlying play which
determines the form and length of each
opera. It may be granted that each of
these two works reflects conscientiously
the spirit of the text. The shadowy,
wistful people of Maeterlinck's drama
are faithfully portrayed in the uncertain,
keyless music of Debussy, as are the
outrageous people of Wilde's play in
the extravagant, vociferous music of
Strauss. "Pelleas and Melisande" as a
play is perhaps the extreme of mystic
symbolism. When reduced to its sim-
plest terms in every-day speech, it may
mean anything, everything, or nothing.
The motive of the play "Salome" is
frankly an attempt to shock Herod, as
tough a sinner as ever was drawn. The
object is attained, and it is small wonder
that the audience is moved. There
seems to be throughout Debussy's work,
to speak pathologically, a preponder-
ance of white blood-corpuscles. In our
day and generation we want red blood
and plenty of it, and we find it in
"Salome," a whole cistern spattered
with it. At its first performance in New
York so much got on the stage that
ladies had to be led out and revived.
There is a great diflFerence in the mat-
ter of pure noise. Throughout the
whole of "Pelleas and Melisande" one
feels that the orchestra has its mouth
stuffed with cotton wool lest it should
really make a noise. Most people want
a healthy bellow from time to time to
show that the orchestra is alive. And in
"Salome" we have an orchestra with its
lid entirely removed. The hazy, inde-
terminate, wistful vagueness which is so
much admired in Maeterlinck's poem
some people resent in the music. That
is too much like an ^Eolian harp, too
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CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
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purely decorative, too truly subordinate.
Tlie orchestra never gets up and takes
hold of the situation as it often so
frankly does in Strauss's "Salome/*
**Pelleas" is a new sensation, perhaps a
new art ; but it is a little like looking at
the stage through colored glass. Un-
doubtedly the play is the thing.
The musical vocabulary of the two
men differs immensely. Many admirers
of the modem French school think
Strauss's music vulgar because it really
has tunes, and because one can almost
always tell what key it is in. In the
French music the continual evasion of
everything we consider obvious becomes
monotonous and after an hour or tWo
furiously unimportant. One longs in
vain for a tonal point of departure, for
some drawing; but there is only color.
In passing it may be said that the play
in its form and vocabulary is the exact
opposite of the music. Points of de-
parture are not lacking in its construc-
tion, and the language is marvelously
simple, lucid, and direct.
The matter of tonality remains. The
six-tone scale which Debussy loves and
uses so much divides the octave into six
equal parts. The augmented triad,
which he uses with the same frequency,
divides the octave into three equal parts.
Both devices constitute a definite nega-
tion of tonality or the key sense; for
we used the recurrence of semitones in
any scale which is to be recognizable as
having a beginning and an end. It may
be that our grandchildren will not want
tonality in our sense, and again it may
well be that they will prize it more
highly than we do. It is hard to imagine
what can take its place; certainly there
is no substitute for it in music, for the
essence of musical form consists chiefly
in a departure from and a return to a
clearly expressed tonality. A substitute
for tonality outside of music would
seem a hopeless abandonment of nearly
all that makes the music of Beethoven,
Bach, and Wagner great to us. Com-
pare Strauss and Debussy in this re-
spect. Each composer has a rich, indi-
vidual, personal, melodic, and harmonic
vocabulary; each offers new and satis-
fying rhythmic discoveries ; each shows
us a wealth of new and beautiful color.
The differences in melody lie in the
greater directness of Strauss's work.
His tunes are sometimes garish in their
very baldness and simplicity. This is
never true of Debussy, to whom a plain
tune like the principal dance tune in
"Salome'' would seem utterly common
and hateful. Polyphony is regarded as
the highest, the ultimate development.of
melody. There seems to be vastly
more polyphonic and rhythmic vitality
in Strauss's work than in Debussy's.
"Salome" is as alive as an ant-hill.
"Pelleas" is more like an oyster-bed,
with no actual lack of life, but not much
activity.
Harmony has become an attribute of
melody, and our harmonic sense, a re-
cent growth, furnishes the only means
we have of definitely localizing formal
portions of musical structure. Total
absence of form is inconceivable in
music, and form implies inevitably some
degree of formality. This element is
always clearly present in Strauss and
always purposely absent in Debussy,
who steadfastly avoids the indicative
mood and confines himself apparently
to the subjunctive. At great climaxes
Strauss ordinarily seeks a simple triad,
Debussy some more than usually ob-
scure and refined dissonance. The har-
monic element in Strauss is, perhaps,
less refined, but it is less subtle. In
Debussy this element is less direct and
perhaps less beautiful, but quite dis-
tinctly less obvious or common, even if
less varied.
Fully aware of inviting the warmest
kind of dissent, I venture to suggest
that Strauss may be a positive and De-
bussy a negative force in music, the one
greatest in what he does, the other in
what he avoids. After all, we cannot
get on without the common things of
daily life, and, admitting his occasional
lapses into the commonplace or some-
thing lower, Strauss is the most con-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
summate master of musical expression
the world has ever seen ; not the greatest
composer, but the one most fully able to
realize in sound his mental musical con-
ceptions. In the last analysis it is, of
course, what a man has to say, not en-
tirely how he says it, which furnishes
the basis for a sound judgment of him.
We should not be too much impressed
by Strauss's skill in writing for great or-
chestral masses. In itself that signifies
little more than ability to use the wealth
of orchestral material now available
in Germany. Strauss's appetite for or-
chestra is a little like the Eastport man's
appetite for fish. It is easily satisfied
and not too extravagant. Much more
convincing is the accuracy with which
he finds rhythm, melody, harmony, and
color to express just the shade of mean-
ing he wishes to convey. To repeat, no
musician was ever so well equipped to
give to the world his musical creations,
and yet since he was a very young man
Strauss has produced no pure music,
nothing without an extra-musical foun-
dation; and although many of his
friends and admirers hope still that he
will, he admits frankly that he does not
intend to.
Are we, therefore, to believe that
music must be pinned down henceforth
to its illustrative function ? One prefers
to think that our living composers are
unconsciously intoxicated by the luxu-
riance and wealth of new and beautiful
musical resources which have only re-
cently been placed at their command.
They confuse the means with the end.
They have not ytt learned to use their
wealth. They are nouveaux riches.
The more perfect performers, the more
intelligent listeners, the new riches on
every side tempt them to concrete
rather than to abstract utterance. I be-
lieve that in the future the highest
flights of composers will be, as they have
been in the past, into those ideal, imper-
sonal, ethereal regions where only im-
agination impels, informs, and creates.
As for illustrative music, it must always
have one foot firmly fixed on earth.
How, then, can it rise to the heavens?
Although not yet with us, the new vision
will come in the fullness of time; and
when it does, the whole world will know
and follow it.
I HAVE been asked to suggest some
way by which the Academy can be use-
ful to the art of music. It has occurred
to me that if we were well-established
and wealthy, something like the French
Prix de Rome might be offered and
awarded, not necessarily every year, but
perhaps once in five, ten, or even twenty
years, to one of an age and of promise
to profit by it. Wisely planned provi-
sions for its use should accompany such
a prize. We know that good work is its
own reward, but there is no reason why
it should be its only reward. Whether
such a prize might properly go forth
from such a body as ours, supposing we
had it to give, I do not know. Better
from us, however, than not at all. The
Academy can surely help to give weight
and dignity to the enthusiasm which to
the man in the street, when he thinks of
it casually, seems rather useless, perhaps
silly, but which we know to be holy and
illuminating. And the Academy can
help to quicken public insight into the
problems of all those who seek beauty
and truth in art and letters. It may well
help to keep alight the fires of the old
days, a task to which our universities,
for instance, seem insufficiently sensitive
just at present.
In this democratic country we are
theoretically adverse or inimical to mere
decorations. We seem fain to have our
rewards counted out in cash or in cash-
bringing celebrity ; but virtually we are,
in truth, idealists. The approval of the
Academy, however expressed, when its
constitution, its aims, and ideals are gen-
erally known among us, may be, and
should be in time, one of the most stimu-
lating of the rewards held out for crea-
tive artists. We cannot create creators,
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CONCERNING CONTEMPORARY MUSIC 43
but we can recognize them before the group as ours, and its judicious and gen-
world. We can approve them and their erous exercise will justify our organiza-
work, and we can encourage them to tion. I believe such exercise cannot
higher flights. This seems the most im- fail to benefit and elevate our country
portant function conceivable for such a through the class we seek to represent.
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SKETCH OF THE ACADEMY AND LIST OF
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
The American Academy of Arts and
Letters was founded in 1904 as an in-
terior organization of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters, which in
turn was founded in 1898 by the
American Social Science Association.
In each case the elder organization left
the younger to choose the relations
that should exist between them. Ar-
ticle XII of the Constitution of the
Institute provides as follows :
In order to make the Institute more effi-
cient in carr>'ing out the purposes for which
it was organized,— the protection and further-
ance of literature and the arts,— and to give
greater definiteness to its work, a section of
the Institute to be known as the ACADEMY
OF ARTS AND LETTERS shall be organ-
ized in such manner as the Institute may pro-
vide; the members of the Academy to be
chosen from those who at any time shall
have been on the list of membership of the
Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of
thirty members, and after these shall have
organized it shall elect its own officers, pre-
scribe its own rules, the number of its mem-
bers, and the further conditions of mem-
bership; provided that no one shall be a
member of the Academy who shall not first
have been on the list of regular members of
the Institute, and that in the choice of mem-
bers individual distinction and character, and
not the group to which they belong, shall
be taken into consideration; and provided
that all members of the Academy shall be
native or naturalized citizens of the United
States.
The manner of the organization of
the Academy was prescribed by the
following resolution of the Institute
adopted April 23, 1904 :
Whereas, the amendment to the Consti-
tution known as Article XII, providing for
the organization of the Academy of Arts and
Letters, has been ratified by a vote of the
Institute,
Resolved: that the following method be
chosen for the organization of the Academy
—to wit, that seven members be selected by
ballot as the first members of the Academy,
and that these seven be requested and cm-
powered to choose eight other members, and
that the fifteen thus chosen be requested and
empowered to choose five other members,
and that the twenty members thus chosen
shall be requested and empowered to choose
ten other members,— the entire thirty to con-
stitute the Academy in conformity with
Article XII, and that the first seven mem-
bers be an executive committee for the pur-
pose of insuring the completion of the
number of thirty members.
Under Article XII the Academy has
effected a separate organization, but,
at the same time it has kept in close
relationship with the Institute. On the
seventh of March, 1908, the membership
was increased from thirty to fifty mem-
bers, and on the seventh of November,
1908, the following Constitution was
adopted :
CONSTITUTION OF THE ACADEMY
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
is an association primarily organized by the
National Institute of Arts and Letters. Its
aim is to represent and further the interests
of the Fine Arts and Literature.
II. MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS
It shall consist of not more than fifty mem-
bers, and all vacancies shall be filled from
the membership of the National Institute of
Arts and Letters. No one shall be elected a
member of the Academy who shall not have
received the votes of a majority of the mem-
bers. The votes shall be opened and coimted
at a meeting of the Academy. In case the
first ballot shall not result in an election a
second ballot shall be taken to determine the
choice between the two candidates receiving
the highest number of votes on the first bal-
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SKETCH OF THE ACADEMY AND LIST OF MEMBERS AND OFFICERS 45.
lot. Elections shall be held only on due
notice under rules to be established by the
Academy.
III. AIMS
That the Academy may be bound together
in community of taste and interest, its mem-
bers shall meet regularly for discussion, and
for the expression of artistic, literary and
scholarly opinion oh such topics as are
brought to its attention. For the purpose of
promoting the highest standards, the Acad-
emy may also award such prizes as may be
founded by itself or entrusted to it for
administration.
IV. OFFICERS
The officers shall consist of a President and
a Chancellor, both elected annually from
among the members to serve for one year
only; a Permanent Secretary, not necessarily
a member, who shall be elected by the Acad-
emy to serve for an indeterminate period,
subject to removal by a majority vote ; and a
Treasurer. The Treasurer shall be appointed
as follows: Three members of the Academy
shall be elected at each annual meeting to
serve as a Committee on Finance for the en-
suing year. They shall appoint one of their
number Treasurer of the Academy to serve
for one year. He shall receive and protect
its funds and make disbursements for its ex-
penses as directed by the Committee. He
shall also make such investments, upon the
order of the President, as may be approved
by both the Committee on Finance and the
Executive Committee.
V. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
It shall be the duty of the President, and in
his absence of the Chancellor, to preside at
all meetings throughout his term of office,
and to safeguard in general all the interests
of the Academy. It shall be the duty of the
Chancellor to select and prepare the business
for each meeting of his term. It shall be the
duty of the Secretary to keep the records ; to
conduct the correspondence of the Academy
under the direction of the President or Chan-
cellor; to issue its authorized statements;
and to draw up as required such writings as
pertain to the ordinary business of the Acad-
emy and its committees. These three officers
shall constitute the Executive Committee.
VI. AMENDMENTS
Any proposed amendment to this Constitu-
tion must be sent in writing to the Secretary
signed by at least ten members ; and it shall
then be forwarded by the Secretary to every
member. It shall not be considered until
three months after it has been thus sub-
mitted. No proposed amendment shall be
adopted unless it receives the votes in writing
of two-thirds of the members.
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
Following is the list of members in the
order of their election:
* William Dean Howells
♦Augustus Saint-Gaudens
♦Edmund Clarence Stedman
^John La Farge
♦Samuel Langhome Clemens
♦John Hay
♦Edward MacDowell
^ Henr>'^ James
♦Charles Follen McKim
^Henry Adams
♦Charles Eliot Norton
♦John Quincy Adams Ward
* Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury
/^Theodore Roosevelt
♦Thomas Bailey Aldrich
♦Joseph Jefferson
John Singer Sargent
♦Richard Watson Gilder
>» Horace Howard Furness
«iJohn Bigelow
■^'Winslow Homer
♦Carl Schurz
•♦Alfred Thayer Mahan
♦Joel Chandler Harris
Daniel Chester French
*John Burroughs
James Ford Rhodes
** Edwin Austin Abbey
-♦Horatio William Parker
William Milligan Sloane
♦Edward Everett Hale
Robert Underwood Johnson
George Washington Cable
♦Daniel Coit Gilman
* Thomas Wentworth Higginson
♦Donald Grant Mitchell
^Andrew Dickson White
Henry van Dyke
William Crary Brownell
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve
,:J^Julia Ward Howe
^Woodrow Wilson
Arthur Twining Hadley
Henry Cabot Lodge
* Francis Hopkinson Smith
♦Francis Marion Crawford
♦Henry Charles Lea
Edwin Howland Blashfield
« William Merritt Chase
Thomas Hastings
* Deceased.
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46
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
Hamilton Wright Mabic
♦Bronson Howard
Brander Matthews
Thomas Nelson Page
* Elihu Veddcr
George Edward Woodberry
^William Vaughn Moody
i Kenyon Cox
* Deceased.
George Whitefield Chadwick
A Abbott Handerson Thayer
*John Muir
'Charles Francis Adams
'Henry Mills Alden
George DeForest Brush
William Rutherford Mead
* John White Alexander
Bliss Perrv
J.
THE OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1910/ARE
President, Mr. Howells. Chancellor, ^
Permanent Secretary, M». Joh>
Committee on Finance: Messrs. Rhodes, Hastings^
The meetings of the Academy re-
corded in this "Volume of the Pro-
ceedings" are the first which have been
open to the public ; but there have been
many conferences for discussion, for
elections, and for deliberation as to th^ in private audience.
/
/
R. Sloane.
Sloane (Treasurer).
scope oft work to be undertaken in the
inter^ of letters and the arts.
the 15th of December, 1909, the
ademy had the honor of a reception
y President Taft at the White House
( i
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
Number II: 1 909-1 910
Mew York
! ■
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Pa 3o./«>'
■ ^ \\
1* FEB 2 1912 J
Copyright, 191 1, by
The American Academy op Arts and Letters
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
MEETIHG AT THE FINE ARTS SOCIETY, HEW YORK, NOVEMBER 30, I9O9, TO CONFER UPON THE WORK OF
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS THE GOLD MEDAL OF THE INSTITUTE
DESIGNED BY ADOLPH A. WEINMAN
PAGB
Thb Influbncb of Saint-Gaudbns
Royal Cortissoz 5
PRBSBNTATION OF THB MbDAL TO MrS. SaINT-GaUDBNS
Henry van Dyke 8
PresU^mi of tbt InstihOe
Rbsponsb
Homer Saint'Gaudens .
Odb: *'Saint-Gaudens'
Robert Underwood Johnson . 10
Music
The Kneisel Quartet . . .
FroHT Kmeiul Louis Svocenski
JuUiuRonUgtn WiUemWitUhe
17
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Published at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U. Johnson,
35 East 17th Street, New York Price per annum $1.00
Vol. I
New York, November i, 1911
No. 2
THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Meeting at the Fine Arts Sodety, New York, November 20, 1909
THE INFLUENCE OF SAINT-GAUDENS
By Royal Cortissoz
It is always difficult to put into
words the exact nature of the service
which a great artist renders to his con-
temporaries. There is a good saying
of Lowell's about a lecture of Emer-
son's that he had heard. He could not
tell, he said, precisely what the philoso-
pher had talked about. He simply felt,
as he came from the lecture, that some-
thing beautiful had passed that way.
So Saint-Gaudens, I think, has left us
feeling that something beautiful has
passed our way. Reflecting more in
detail on what this means to us, the
first thing I think of is the special char-
acter of his work as an artist, the par-
ticular gift of genius with which he en-
riched American sculpture.
This was the gift of charm. Look-
ing back over his career and remember-
ing the works with which he began it,
one is struck by what I can only de-
scribe as a kind of gracious and beguil-
ing note in them. Those early por-
traits of his are not only very intimate
and realistic; they are enveloped in an
atmosphere of beauty, of originality, of
charm. And the important thing is
that this charm rests upon the purest
sculptural basis, that it belongs to the
very grain of his technic. The secret
of his success was just a secret of mod-
eling. Since modeling has gone to the
making of every piece of sculpture that
ever existed, I may seem for a moment
to be talking about one of the rudi-
ments; but there is, of course, model-
ing and modeling. With Saint-Gau-
dens it was the kind in which every
touch spells knowledge and genius and
a definite purpose. Consider especially
this matter of purpose. We have
seen a good deal in recent years
of the modeling that spends itself
in virtuosity. The example of one
brilliant French master has set any
number of his juniors at play-
ing a sort of game with form. They
place a figure in some strained position,
and then attempt to "show off" by mod-
eling it with prodigious subtlety. They
call the result "Love and the Infinite,"
or by some such high-sounding title,
and then expect us to tell them that
they are indeed worthy of Rodin. I
do not deny that their work is often
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE
very clever, but neither do I hesitate to
afiirm that much of it is weak, for the
simple reason that the modeling in it is
meaningless and tricky and quite with-
out personal character. The influence
of Saint-Gaudens was always against
this sort of thing. In looking at his
surfaces, you realize how lovingly and
how thoughtfully he caressed them, how
he modulated them not for the sake
of a "pretty" effect, but to express the
beauty of nature through the beauty of
art. He could not have been tricl^r if
he had tried. Beneath that delicacy of
touch which gives an exquisitely sen-
suous charm to his surfaces there was
a deep rectitude, a great artist's passion
for truth. His modeling is not only
beautiful, but sound. It is this quite as
much as his flair for low relief which
links him to Mino da Fiesole and other
masters of the Italian Renaissance.
I do not mean to-night to engage up-
on an exhaustive analysis of his work ;
but there is another specific phase of
it to which I must briefly refer. I mean
his composition. Survey the whole
body of his sculpture, — ^his portrait me-
dallions, his busts, his monuments, —
and see if you find anywhere a trace of
uncertainty or restlessness or sensation-
alism. Perhaps, in a single instance —
that of the angel in the upper part of
the "Shaw" — he would have reconsid-
ered his design after it was put into
the bronze. But the dominating char-
acter of his composition is found in per-
fect simplicity and balance. When he
is working in the round h^ finds just
the natural and artistic arrangement for
his figure. When he is working in
relief he finds just the right placing for
his portrait, and gives it in its back-
ground just the right proportions. Con-
sider, too, the restraint and the felicity
of his decoration; how his lettering is
in itself beautiful and is always so dis-
posed that It is really part and parcel
of the whole design. He put his sig-
tiature on a relief with the same care
that Whistler used in putting the fa-
mous butterfly on one of his paintings.
I remember once talking with him in
his studio in Paris while the "Steven-
son" for Edinburgh was going forward.
You know what a great quantity of let-
tering forms part of that design. Saint-
Gaudens was "all worked up" over it
He told me of his anxiety about it,
and I may say now, without violating
any confidence, that the lettering on
the "Stevenson" was ultimately done
over and over again an almost incredi-
ble number of times. It is an instance
of the pains he was always taking. He
was himself the severest of his critics,
and he was almost never satisfied with
what he had done. He worked for
years over the "Shaw." One day I got
a note from him saying that it was fin-
ished. I went up to his studio, and I
found him positively unhappy. He felt
the joy of release from a long task, but
he was half inclined to do it all over
again.
It is at this point that I want to relate
the qualities of his work to his quali-
ties as a man and to speak of the tan-
gible thing that his influence has been
among the sculptors of to-day. I know
pupils of his, — ^pupils whom he consid-
ered creditable to his teaching, — and
one of the things I have noticed about
them is the fact that they are not try-
ing to be little Saint-Gaudenses. They
are not trying to reproduce his manner.
They are not trying to handle draperies
as he handled them or to copy his deco-
rative motives. What crops out in their
personalities, and what you can see in
their work, is simply that he got them
into the way of being honest about their
modeling and composition, into the
habit of trying for the right and seri-
ous qualities of sculpture. It was a
fine thing that he was generous in en-
couragement, that he went out of his
way to praise and help; but I think it
was even finer that he created around
himself a stimulating atmosphere, and
somehow made one feel that what he
must take as a matter of course was
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THE INFLUENCE OF SAINT-GAUDENS
the hardest kind of hard work and the
highest possible standard of excellence.
I do not know how better to express
the ideal that he stood for than to say
that from the Saint-Gaudens point of
view the doing of a scamped or insin-
cere piece of work was a fairly shame-
ful performance, a kind of moral
wrong. Work yourself to death, he
seemed to say, but give the world your
very best. He had the true artist's con-
fidence in himself, and no consideration
for outside influences could move him
from what he believed to be right. But
he had a keen sense of what he owed
to the world. I wonder if any one in
this room can claim to have seen much,
if anything, outside of his studio or in
exhibitions arranged since his death, of
his sketches and fragments? It is the
fashion nowadays to make much of
the morceau, and there are some sculp-
tors who think it worth while to let
the public see unfinished work or the
odds and ends with which they have
amused themselves. Personally, I con-
fess to being interested in these things,
as I am in an artist's sketch-book or
his studio drawings. Nevertheless, I
like the pride and the principle which
will lead a man to show the pub-
lic nothing save that which rep-
resents the fullest and finest expres-
sion of his genius. Saint-Gaudens had
that pride and that principle. He stood,
if ever a man did, for the dignity of
art.
His pupils felt this, and so, as I have
said, did everybody else who came in
contact with him, and, what is more,
his influence was acknowledged con-
sciously or unconsciously in a thousand
different directions. If the young
sculptor, working under Saint-Gaudens
or not, strove the harder at his task, in
the hope that he might be worthy of
the leader of his profession in this
country, architects and committees
everywhere also insensibly came to ad-
mit the obligation that he had done so
much to lay upon them. Everybody
knows how the character of our public
monuments has been improving and
how the sculpture on our public build-
ings is greater in quantity and better in
quality every year. This is because we
have been developing a competent
school of sculpture, filled with able men
of Saint-Gaudens's generation and with
younger artists trained by him and by
them. I think that all these sculp-
tors and their fellows in painting and
architecture will unite in agreement up-
on the great impetus that he gave to
the standard they uphold. By precept
and example, as an artist and as a man
of character, he exerted an influence
making for progress. This medal that
brings us here to-night is not simply in
honor of a man who is gone ; it is in
honor of an artistic force that is still
working.
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The Gold Medal
( Designed and Executed by Adolph A. Weinman)
PRESENTATION OF THE MEDAL TO MRS. SAINT-GAUDENS
BY HENRY VAN DYKE
President of the Institute
Ruskin says that the only real weahh
is life, and a greater Master tells us that
the end of divine revelation is "that ye
might have life and have it more abun-
dantly/' But the true life is not some-
thing that ends with death; it is that
which conquers and survives death, be-
ing beyond the power of mortality to
dissolve.
Here, then, is the highest ministry of
art : to enrich the world by giving an
enduring life, to thoughts, emotions,
ideals, characters, which are in them-
selves strong and clear and beautiful
enough to be
Immortalized by Art's immortal praise.
In the bestowal of this wealth
through the medium of sculpture, Au-
gustus Saint-Gaudens was a master
and a prince. In youth he fought his
w^ay through poverty to enter into his
kingdom. In maturity he wrestled with
the stubborn matter in bronze and mar-
ble to subdue it to his royal thought,
his generous purpose. And so he gave
to his country, in visible forms of noble
humanity, larger and richer gifts than
if he had been a thousand times a mil-
lionaire.
What strong simplicity in his ex-
quisite medallions! What incorporate
spirituality in his symbolic figures!
What personal significance in his silent-
speaking heads ! What poised and im-
perishable vitality in his monuments of
national heroes!
It is the strength and glory of a
great country to cherish the memory of
4ier noble dead. America, in the rush
of her work, in the pride of her power,
must not forget, else will she sink into
the shame and weakness of an oblivi-
ous and ungrateful land.
Honor to the arts which help her to
remember. Among the great Ameri-
cans stands the great sculptor whose
ardent, patient, skilful hand has given
to their faces, forms, and souls "a life
beyond life" for the enrichment of his
country.
The National Institute of Arts and
Letters, holding this faith in regard to
literature and the other fine arts, has
caused its first medal to be made in
honor of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. To
you, Madam, as its natural custodian,
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RESPONSE BY HOMER SAINT-GAUDENS
this medal is given. We appreciate your
presence here in this time of sorrow.*
But the grief that rests upon us all for
the loss of an artist but lately gone
should not stay this tribute to one who
has gone before. Let us remember the
words which Gilder wrote of the stat-
ues of Saint-Gaudens :
Once, lo! these shapes were not, now do
they live.
And shall forever in the hearts of men;
And from their life new life shall spring
again,
To souls unborn new light and joy to give.
"Victory, victory, he hath won the fight!"
Dr. van Dyke, President and Members
of the National Institute of Arts and
Letters :
You have presented to the memory
of Augustus Saint-Gaudens this medal
by his admired pupil Adolph Weinman.
With this s)rmbol of your appreciation
you have bestowed upon my father the
final honor in a series unprecedented in
the case of any American who has la-
bored at his art. Were he here to ac-
knowledge his personal feeling, you
would surely find it of the character
expressed in this, his letter, written to
Mr. E. A. Abbey, on the occasion of
Mr. Abbey's congratulating him on his
election to the English Royal Academy :
It is a big honor that the Royal Academy
has done me, and one that I appreciate a
very great deal. All the more for the sur-
prise of it At the same time, I feel
almost ashamed when I think that I step
into Dubois's shoes and that I follow in the
orocession with such a lot of other swells.
I don't know how these thinp^ make you
feel, but they overpower me with a sense of
humility, and I feel like a fraud.
More than for the sake of individual
satisfaction at the significance of this
gift, however, my father would have
welcomed your offering because of his
understanding of the merit your action
would confer upon the growing art of
the United States. For, with att the
sincerity of which he was capable,
Augustus Saint-Gaudens believed that
the arts of painting and sculpture have
become vital to the mental development
of our nation. And their chief require-
ment to-day, he felt, was that respect
should be tendered them to foster the
self-confidence needed to provide them
with final strength.
You are a body of men with special
gifts, whose distinction is established
by the strong, though unformulated, de-
sire of the men and women passing on
the sidewalk that the place of art be-
come defined in their lives. My father
has been accepted as the leader in mod-
em American sculpture. Yet my father
existed only because his fellow-country-
men, having built their homes, wished
to make them beautiful. Your gift
adds rich honor to the memory of
Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Above that,
this recognition by the American peo-
ple adds great prestige to American art.
•This cerenony took place on the day of the funeral of
Richard Watson Gilder.
In the absence of the author, extracts from the ode which follows were read by Hamilton
Wright Mabie.
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SAINT-GAUDENS
Bom in Dublin, Ireland, March i, 1848— Died in Cornish, New Hampshire.
August 3, 1907.
By Robert Underwood Johnson
I
Uplands of Cornish ! Ye that yesterday
Were only beauteous, now are consecrate.
Exalted are your humble slopes, to mate
Proud Settignano and. Fiesole,
For here new-bom is Italy's new birth of Art.
In your beloved precincts of repose
Now is the laurel lovelier than the rose.
Henceforth there shall be seen
An unaccustomed glory in the sheen
Of yonder lingering river, overleant with green,
Whose fountains hither happily shall start,
Like eager Umbrian rills, that kiss and part.
For that their course will run
One to the Tiber, to the Amo one.
O hills of Cornish ! chalice of our spilled wine.
Ye shall become a shrine.
For now our Donatello is no morel
He who could pour
His spirit into clay, has lost the clay he wore,
And Death, again, at last,
Has robbed the Future to enrich the Past.
He who so often stood
At joyous worship in your Sacred Wood,
He shall be missed
As autumn meadows miss the lark.
Where Summer and Song were wont to keep melodious tryst.
His fellows of the triple guild shall hark
For his least whisper in the starry dark.
Here, in his memory, Youth shall dedicate
Laborious years to that unfolding which is Fate.
By Beauty's faintest gleams
She shall be followed over glades and streams.
And all that is shall be forgot
For what is not ;
And every common path shall lead to dreams.
II
Poet of Cornish, comrade of his days :
When late we met,
With his remembrance how thine eyes were wet!
Thy faltering voice his praise
More eloquently did rehearse
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SAINT-GAUDENS n
Than on his festal day thy liquid verse.
Since once to love is never to forget,
Let us defer our plaint of private sorrow
Till some less unethereal to-morrow.
To-day is not the poet's shame
But the dull world's ; not yet
Shall it be kindled at the living flame
Whose treasured embers
Ever the world remembers.
Not so the sculptor — his immediate bays .
No hostile climate withers or delays.
Let us forego the debt of friendly duty ;
A nation newly is bereft of beauty.
Sing with me now his undef erred fame, —
For Time impatient is to set
This jewel in his country's coronet;
When all men with new accent speak his name,
And all are blended in a vast regret,
There is no place for grief of thee or me:
One reckons not the rivers in the sea.
Sing not to-day the hearth despoiled of fire :
Ours be the trumpet, not the lyre.
Death makes the great
The treasure and the sorrow of the State.
Nor is it less bereaved
By what is unachieved.
Oh, what a miracle is Fame !
We carve some lately unfamiliar name
Upon an outer wall, as challenge to the" sun ;
And half its claim
Is deathless work undone.
Although the story of our art is brief.
Thrice in the record, at a fadeless leaf.
Falls an unfinished chapter; thrice the flower
Qosed ere the noonday glory drank its dew;
Thrice have we lost of promise and of power —
The torch extinguished at its brightest hour —
His comrades all, for whom he twined the rue.
But though they stand authentic and apart
This is in our new land the first great grief of Art.
Ill
Yet, sound for him the trumpet, not the lyre —
Him of the ardent, not the smouldering, fire :
Whose boyhood knew full streets of martial song
When the slow purpose of the throng
Flamed to a new religion, and a soul.
He knew the lure of flags ; caught first the far drums' roll ;
Thrilled with the flash that runs
Along the slanted guns ;
Kept time to the determined feet
That ominously beat
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12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE
Upon the city's floor
The finn, mad rhythm of war.
With envious enterprise
He saw the serried eyes
That, level to the hour's demand,
Looked straight toward Duty's promised land.
Then to be boy was to be prisoned fast
With the great world of battle sweeping past,
While every hill and hollow
Heard the heart-melting music, calling "Follow!"
The day o'er-brimmed with longing and the night
With beckoning dreams of many a dauntless fight,
As though doomed heroes summoned us to see
Thermopylaes and Marathons.
— Ah, had he known who was to be
Their laureate in bronze !
But who 'can read To-morrow in To-day?
Fame makes no bargain with us, will not say
Do thus, and thou shalt gain, or thus and lose ;
Nay, will not let us for another choose
The trodden and the lighted way.
She bums the accepted pattern, breaks the mould.
Prefers the novel to the old.
Revels in secrets and surprise;
And while the wise
Seek knowedge at the sages' gate
The schoolboy by a truant path keeps rendezvous with Fate,
IV
This is the honey in the lion's jaws :
That from the reverberant roar
And wrack of savage war
Art saves a sweet repose, by mystic laws
Not by long labor learned
But by keen love discerned ;
For this it bears the palm :
To show the storms of life in terms of calm.
Not what he knew, but what he felt.
Gave secret power to this Celt.
Master of harmony, his sense could find
A bond of likeness among things diverse,
And could their fornis in beauty so immerse
That to the enchanted mind
Ideal and real seem a single kind.
Behold our gaunt Crusader, grimly brave,
The swooping eagle in his face.
The very genius of command.
And her not less, with her imperious hand, —
The herald Victory holding equal pace.
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5A1NT-GAUDENS ij
Not trulier in the blast
Moves prow with mast;
Line mates with flowing line, as wave with following wave —
Rider and homely horse
Intent upon their course
As though she went not with them. Near or far
One is their import: she the dream, the star —
And he the prose, the iron thrust — of War.
V
So, on the traveled verge
Of storied Boston's green acropolis
That sculptured music, that immortal dirge
That better than towering shaft
Has fitly epitaphed
The hated ranks men did not dare to hiss !
When Duty makes her clarion call to Ease
Let her repair and point to this :
Why seek another clime?
Why seek another place?
We have no Parthenon, but a nobler frieze, —
Since sacrifice than worship nobler is.
It sings — the anthem of a rescued race ;
It moves — the epic of a patriot time.
And each heroic figure makes a martial rhyme.
How like ten thousand treads that little band,
Fit for the van of armies I What command
Sits in that saddle ! What renouncing will !
What portent grave of firm-confronted ill!
And as a cloud doth hover over sea,
Bom from its waters and returning there.
Fame, spnmg from thoughts of mortals, swims the air
And gives them back her memories, deathlessly.
VI
I wept by Lincoln's pall when children's tears.
That saddest of the nation's years.
Were reckoned in the census of her grief;
And, flooding every eye,
Of low estate or high,
The crystal sign of sorrow made men peers.
The raindrop on the April leaf
Was not more unashamed. Hand spoke to hand
A universal language; and whene'er
The hopeful met 't was but to mingle their despair.
Our yesterday's war-widowed land
To-day was orphaned. Its victorious voice
Lost memory of the power to rejoice.
For he whom all had learned to love was prone.
The weak had slain the mighty ; by a whim
The ordered edifice was overthrown
And lay in futile ruin, mute and dim.
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14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE
O Death, thou sculptor without art,
What didst thou to the Lincoln of our heart ?
Where was the manly eye
That conquered enmity?
Where was the gentle smile
So innocent of guile —
The message of good-will
To all men, whether good or ill ?
Where shall we traqe
Those treasured lines, half humor and half pain,
That made him doubly brother to the face?
For these, O Death, we search thy mask in vain!
Yet shall the Future be not all bereft :
Not without witness shall its eyes be left.
The soul, again, is visible through Art,
Servant of God and Man. The immortal part
Lives in the miracle of a kindred mind.
That found itself in seeking for its kind.
The htlmble by the humble is discerned;
And he whose melancholy broke in sunny wit
Could be no stranger unto him who turned
From sad to gay, as though in jest he learned
Some mystery of sorrow. It was writ :
The hand that shapes us Lincoln must be strong
As his that righted our bequeathed wrong;
The heart that shows us Lincoln must be brave,
An equal comrade unto king or slave;
The mind that gives us Lincoln must be clear
As that of seer
To fathom deeps of faith abiding under tides of fear.
What wonder Fame, impatient, will not wait
To call her sculptor great
Who keeps for us in bronze the soul that saved the State I
VII
Most fair his dreams and visions when he dwelt
His spirit's comrade. Meager was his speech
Of things celestial, save in line and mould;
But sudden cloud-rift may reveal a star
As surely as the unimpeded sky.
The deer has its deep forest of retreat :
Shall the shy spirit have none? Be, then,
The covert unprofaned wherein withdrew
The soul that 'neath his pensive ardor lay ?
Find the last frontier — Man is still unknown ground.
Things true and beautiful made a heaven for him.
Childhood, the sunrise of the spirit world,
Yielded its limpid secrets to his eye.
He was in Friendship what he was in Art —
Wax to receive and metal to endure.
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SAlNT-GAUDbNS 15
Looking upon his warriors facing death.
Heroes seem human, such as all might be —
Yet not without the consecrating will !
Age is serener by his honoring;
And wheii he sought the temple's inmost fane
The angels of his Adoration Jent
Old hopes new glory, and his reverent hand
Wrought like Beato at the face of Christ.
But what is this that, neither Hope nor Doom,
Waits with eternal patience at a.tc»nb?
A brooding spirit without name or date,
Or race, or nation, or belief ;
Beyond the reach of joy or grief,
Above the plane of wrong or right ;
A riddle only to the sorrowless ; the mate
Of all the elements in calm — still winter night,
Sea after tenipest, time-scarred mountain height ;
Passive as Buddha, single as the Sphinx, —
Yet neither that sweet god that seems to smile
On mortal good and guile,
Nor wide-eyed monster that into Egypt sinks
And Beast and Nature links ;
But something human, with an inward sense
Profound, but nevermore intense;
And though it doth not stoop to teach,
It will with each
Attuned to beauty hold a muted speech;
In its Madonna-lidded meditation
Not more a mystery than a revelation ;
Listen ! It doth to Man the Universe relate.
O Sentinel before the Future's Gate!
If thou be Fate, art thou not still our Fate?
For those who fain would live, but must breathe on
Prisoners of this prosaic age —
Ah, who for them shall read that page
Since winged Shelley and wise Emerson are gone?
VIII
How shall we honor him and in his place
His comrades of the Old and Happy Race
Whose Art is refuge Sorrow comes not nigh.
Though Art be twin to Sorrow ? They reply
From all the centuries they outsoar,
From every shore
Of that three-continented sea
To which the streams of our antiquity
Fell swift and joyously:
'*How, but to live with Beautyf"
Across our Western world without surcease
How many a column sounds the name of Greece !
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t6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE
The sun loth-lingering on the crest of Rome,
Finds here how many an imitative dome!
O classic quarries of our modem thought.
What blasphemies in stone from you arc wrought I
For though to Law, Religion, or the State,
These stones to Beauty first are dedicate.
Yet to what purpose, if we but revere
The temple, not the goddess? — if whene'er
The magic of her deep obsession seem
To master any soul, we call it dream ?
Come, let us live with Beauty!
Her name is ever on our lips ; but who
Holds Beauty as the fairest bride to woo?
The gods oft wedded mortals : now alone
May man the Chief Immortal make his own.
To Time each day adds increment of age
But Beauty ne'er grows old. There is no gauge
To count the glories of the counted hours.
Flowers die, but not the ecstacy of flowers.
Come, let us live with Beauty!
What infinite treasure hers! and what small need
Of our cramped natures, whose misguided greed,
Hound-like, pursues false trails of Luxury
Or sodden Comfort! Who shall call us free^ —
Content if but some casual wafture come
From fields Elysian, where the valleys bloom
With life delectable? Such happy air
Should be the light we live in ; unaware
It should be breathed, till man retrieves the joy
Philosophy has wrested from the boy.
Come, let us live with Beauty!
Who shall put limit to her sovereignty?
Who shall her loveliness define ?
Think you the Graces only three? —
The Muses only nine?
Beyond our star-sown deep of space
Where, as for solace, huddles world with world
(A human instinct in the primal wrack) ,
Mayhap there is a dark and desert place
Of deeper awe
With but one outer star, there hurled
By cataclysm and there held in leash by law :
If lonely be that star, 't is not for Beauty's lack.
She was ere there was any need of Truth,
She was ere there was any stir of Love ;
And when Man came, and made her world uncouth
With sin, and cities, and the gash of hills
And forests, and a thousand brutish ills.
Regardless of his ruth
She hid her wounds and gave him, from above,
The magic all his happiness is fashioned of.
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SAINT-GAUDENS 17
IX
Knights of the five arts that our sculptor prized :
How shall ye honor him and, in his place,
Those others of the Old and Happy Race
Who lived for beauty, and the golden lure despised?
Painter of music, Architect of song,
Sculptor in color, Poet in clay and bronze,
And thou whose unsubstantial fancy builds
Abiding symphonies from stone and space!
Mount ye to large horizons : ever be
As avid of other beauty as your own.
As nations greater are than all their states.
More than the sum of all the arts is Art.
High are their clear commands, but Art herself
Makes holier summons. Ever open stand
The doors of her free temple. At her shrine
In service of the world, whose hurt she heals,
Ye, too, physicians of the mind and heart —
Shall ye not take the Hippocratic oath?
Have ye not heard the voices of the night
Call you from kindred, comfort, sloth and praise.
To lead into the light the willing feet
That grope for order, harmony and joy? —
To reach full hands of bounty unto those
Who starve for beauty in our glut of gold ?
How shall we honor him whom we revere —
Lover of all the arts and of his land ?
How, but to cherish Beauty's every flower? —
How, but to live with Beauty, and so be
Apostles of Rejoicing to mankind?
MUSIC
Beethoven's Quartet in E Minor, Opus 59, No. 2
The Kneisel Quartet
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THE INSTITUTE MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Institute is
annually awarded to any citizen of the
United States, whether a member of
the Institute or not, for distinguished
services to arts or letters in the crea-
tion of original work.
The conditions of the award are
these :
(i) 'That the medal shall be awarded for
the entire work of the recipient, without
limit of time during which it shall have been
done; that it shall be awarded to a living
person or to one who shall not have been
dead more than one year at the time of the
award; and that it shall not be awarded
more than once to any one person.
(2) **That it shall be awarded in the fol-
lowing order: First year, for Sculpture; sec-
ond year, for History or Biography; third
year, for Music; fourth year, for Poetry;
fifth year, for Architecture; sixth year, for
Drama; seventh year, for Painting; eighth
year, for Fiction; ninth year, for Essays or
Belles-Lettres, — returning to each subject
every tenth year in the order named
(3) *That it shall be the duty of the Secre-
tary each year to poll the members of the
section of the Institute dealing with the sub-
ject in which the medal is that year to be
awarded, and to report the result of the poll
to the Institute at its Annual Meeting, at
which meeting the medal shall be awarded
by vote of the Institute."
The medal was designed by Adolph
A. Weinman, of the Institute, in 1909.
The first award — for sculpture — was
to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The
medal was presented to Mrs. Saint-
Gaudens at the meeting held in memory
of her husband on Nov. 20, 1909.
The second medal — for history —
was awarded to James Ford Rhodes.
^
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CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF ARTS AND LETTERS
(Founded 1898 by the American Social Science Association)
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
This society, organized by men nominated
and elected by the American Social Science
Association at its annual meeting in 1898,
with a view to the advancement of art,
music and literature, shall be known as the
National Institute of Arts and Letters.
II. MEMBERSHIP
1. Qualification for membership shall be
notable achievement in art, music or litera-
ture.
2. The number of members shall be limited
to two hundred and fifty.
III. ELECTIONS
The name of a candidate shall be proposed
to the Secretary by three members of the
section in which the nominee's principal
work has been performed. The name shall
then be submitted to the members of that
section, and if approved by a majority of
the answers received within fifteen days
may be submitted by a two-thirds vote of
the council to an annual meeting of the In-
stitute for formal election by a majority
vote of those present. The voting shall be
by ballot.
IV. OFFICERS
1. The officers of the Institute shall consist
of a President, six Vice-Presidents, a Secre-
tary and a Treasurer, and they shall consti-
tute the council of the Institute.
2. The council shall always include at least
one member of each department.
V. ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Officers shall be elected by ballot at the
annual meeting, but the council may fill a
vacancy at any time by a two-thirds vote.
VI. MEETINGS
1. The annual meeting of the Institute shall
be held on the first Tuesday in September,
unless otherwise ordered by the council.*
2. Special meetings may be called by the
President on recommendation of any three
members of the council, or by petition of at
least one-fourth of the membership of the
Institute.
VII. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
1. It shall be the duty of the President to
preside at all meetings of the Institute and
of the council.
2. In the absence of the President, the senior
Vice-President in attendance shall preside.
*For convenience the annual meeting: Is usually called |fbr
January or February.
3. The Secretary shall keep a minute of all
meetings of the Institute and of the council,
and shall be the custodian of all records.
4. The Treasurer shall have charge of all
funds of the Institute and shall make dis-
bursements only upon order of the council.
VIII. ANNUAL DUES
The annual dues for membership shall be
five dollars.
IX. INSIGNIA
The insignia of the Institute shall be a bow
of purple ribbon bearing two bars of old
gold.
X. EXPULSIONS
Any member may be expelled for unbecom-
ing conduct by a two-thirds vote of the
council, a reasonable opportunity for defense
having been given.
XL AMENDMENTS
This Constitution may be amended by a
two-thirds vote of the Institute upon the
recommendation of the council or upon the
request, in writing, of any five members.
The Secretary shall be required to send to
each member a copy of the proposed amend-
ment at least thirty days before the meeting
at which such amendment is to be consid-
ered.
XII. THE ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
In order to make the Institute more efficient
in carrying out the purposes for which it
was organized, — the protection and further-
ance of literature and the arts, — and to give
greater definiteness to its work, a section
of the Institute to be known as the Academy
OF Arts and Letters shall be organized in
such manner as the Institute may provide;
the members of the Academy to be chosen
from those who at any time shall have been
on the list of membership of the Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of thirty
members, and after these shall have organ-
ized it shall elect its own officers, prescribe
its own rules, the number of its members,
and the further conditions of membership;
Provided that no one shall be a member
of the Academy who shall not first have
been on the list of regular members of the
Institute, and that in the choice of members
individual distinction and character, and not
the group to which they belong, shall be
taken into consideration: and Provided that
all members of the Academy shall be native
or naturalized citizens of the United States.
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
Department of Literature
Adams, Brooks
Adams, Charles Francis
Adams, Henry
Ade, George
Alden, Henry M.
Aldrich, Richard
Allen, James Lane
Baldwin, Simeon E.
Bates, Arlo
Bi^elow, John
Bridges, Robert
Brownell, W. C.
Burroughs^ John
Burton, Richard
Butler, Nicholas Murray
Cable, George W.
Carman, Bliss
Cawein, Madison J.
Chambers, R. W.
Channing. Edward '
Cheney, John Vance
Churchill, Winston
Connolly, James B.
Cortissoz, Royal
Cross, Wilbur L.
Crothers, Samuel McChord
de Kay, Charles
Dunne, Finley P.
Egan, Maurice Francis
Femald, Chester Bailey
Finck, Henry T.
Finley, John Huston
Ford, Worth ington C.
Fox, John, Jr.
Furness, Horace Howard
Fumess, Horace Howard, Jr.
Garland, Hamlin
Gildersleeve, Basil L.
Gillette. William
Gilman, Lawrence
Gordon George A.
Grant, Robert
Greenslct, Ferris
Griffis. W. E.
Hadlcy, Arthur Twining
Hardy, Arthur Sherburne
Harper, George McLean
Herford, Oliver
Herrick, Robert
Hitchcock, Ripley
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe
Howells, William Dean
Huntington, Archer M.
James, Henry
Johnson, Owen
Johnson, Robert Underwood
Kennan, George
Lloyd, Nelson
Lodge, Henry Cabot
Loiig, John Luther
Lounsbury, Thomas R.
Lovett, Robert Morss
Lowell^ Abbott Lawrence
Lummis, Charles F.
Mabie, Hamilton Wright
Mackaye, Percy
Mahan, Alfred T.
Markhanu Edwin
Martin, Edward S.
Matthews, Brander
McKelway, St. Clair
McMaster, John Bach
Miller, Joaquin
Mitchell, John Ames
Mitchell, Langdon E.
MorCj Paul Elmer
Morris, Harrison S.
Morse, John Torrey, Jr.
Muir, John
Nicholson, Meredith
Page, Thomas Nelson
Payne, Will
Payne, William Morton
Peck, Harry Thurston
Perry, Bliss
Perry, Thomas Sergeant
Phelps, William Lyon
Pier, Arthur S.
Rhodes, James Ford
Riley, James Whitcomb
Roberts, Charles G. D.
Robmson, Edward Arlington
Roosevelt, Theodore
Royce, Josiah
Schelling, Felix Emanuel
Schuyler, Montgomery
Scollard, Ginton
Sedgwick, Henry D.
Seton, Ernest Thompson
Sherman, Frank Dempster
Shorey, Paul
Sloane, William M.
Smith, F. Hopkinson
Sullivan, Thomas Russell
Tarkington, Booth
Thayer, A. H.
Thayer, William Roscoe
Thomas, Augustus
Tooker, L. Frank
Torrence, Ridgely
Trent, William P.
van Dyke, Henry
Van Dyke, John C.
Wendell, Barrett
West, Andrew F.
White, Andrew Dickson
White. William Allen
Whiting, Charles G.
Williams, Jesse Lynch
Wilson, Harry Leon
Wilson, Woodrow
Wister, Owen
Woodberry, George E.
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
21
Department of Art
Adams, Herbert
Alexander, John W.
Babb, George F.
Ballin, Hugo
Barnard, George Gray
Bartlett, Paul W.
Beckwith, J. Carroll
Benson, Frank W.
Bitter, Karl
Blashfield, Edwin H.
Brooks, Richard E.
Brown, Glenn
Brush, George de Forest
Bunce, William Gedney
Bumham, Daniel Hudson
Carlsen, Emil
Chase, William M.
Cole, Timothy
Cook, Walter
Cox, Kenyon
Crowninshield, Frederic
Dannat, William T.
Day, Frank Miles
De Camp, Joseph
Dewey, Charles Melville
Dewing, Thomas W.
Dielman, Frederick
Donaldson, John M.
Dougherty, Paul
Duveneck, Frank
Foster, Ben
French, Daniel C.
Gay, Walter
Gibson, Charles Dana
Gilbert, Cass
Grafly, Charles
Gu^rin, Jules
Hardenbergh, Henry J.
Harrison, Alexander
Harrison, Birge
Hassam, Childe
Hastings, Thomas
Henri, Robert
Howard, John Galen
Howe, William Henry
Isham, Samuel
Jones, Francis C.
Jones, H. Bolton
Kendall, W. Sergeant
La Farge, Bancel
Low, Will H.
MacMonnies, Frederick
Mac Neil, Hermon A.
Marr, Carl
McEwen, Walter
Mead, William Rutherford
Melchers, Gari
Metcalf, Willard L.
Millet, Francis D.
Mowbray, H. Siddons
Ochtman, Leonard
Parrish, Maxfield
Peabody, Robert S.
Pearce, Charles Sprague
Penncll, Joseph
Piatt, Charles A.
Post, George B.
Potter, Edward Clark
Pratt, Bela L.
Proctor, A. Phimister
Redfield, Edward W.
Reid, Robert
Roth, Frederick G. R.
Ruckstuhl, F. W.
Ryder, Albert P.
Sargent, John S.
Schofield. W. Elmer
Shrady, Henry M.
Simmons, Edward
Smedley, William T.
Taft, Lorado
Tarbell, Edmund C.
Tryon, Dwight W.
Vedder, Elihu
Walden, Lionel
Walker, Henry Oliver
Walker, Horatio
Warren, Whitney
Weinman, Adolph A.
Weir, J. Alden
Wiles, Irving R.
Department of Music
Bird, Arthur
Brockway, Howard
Chadwick, George Whitfield
Converse. F. S.
Damrpsch, Walter
De Koven, Reginald
Foote, Arthur
Gilchrist, W. W.
Hadley, H..K.
Herbert, Victor
Kelley, Edgar Stillman
Loeffler, Charles M.
Parker, Horatio W.
Shelley, Harry Rowe
Smith, David Stanley
Van der Stucken, F.
Whiting, Arthur
DECEASED MEMBERS
Department of Literature
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain)
Conway, Moncure D.
Crawford, Francis Marion
Daly, Augustin
Dodge, Theodore A.
Eggleston Edward
Fawcett, Edgar
Fiske, Willard
Ford, Paul Leicester
Frederic, Harold
Gilder, Richard Watson
Gilman, Daniel Coit
Godkin, E. L.
Godwin, Parke
Hale, Edward Everett
Harland, Henry
Harris, Joel Chandler
Harte, Bret
Hay, John
Heme, James A.
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23
PROCEEDINGS OF THK INSTITUTE
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
Howard, Bronson
Howe, Julia Ward
Hutlon, Laurence
Jefferson, Joseph
Johnston, Richard Malcolm
Lea, Henry Charles
Lodge, George Cabot
Mitchell, Donald G.
Moody, William Vaughn
Munger, Theodore T.
Nelson, Henry Loomis
Norton, Charles Eliot
Perkins, James Breck
Schurz, Carl
Scudder, Horace
Shaler, N. S.
Shirlaw, Walter
Stedman, Edmund Clarence
Stillman, William J.
Stockton, Frank R.
Stoddard, Charles Warren
Thompson, Maurice
Tyler, Moses Coit
Vielc, Herman K.
Warner, Charles Dudley
Department of Art
Abbey, Edwin A.
Bierstadt, Albert
Blum, Robert Frederick
Carrere, John M.
Collins, Alfred Q.
Homer, Winslow
La Farge, John
Lathrop. Francis
Loeb, Louis
McKim, Charles FoUen
Porter, Benjamin C.
Pyle, Howard
Remington, Frederic
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
Twachtman, John H.
Vinton, Frederick P.
Ward, J. Q. A.
White, Stanford
Wood, Thomas W.
Department op Music
Buck, Dudley
MacDowell, Edward
Nevin, Ethelbert
Paine, John K.
OFFICERS
President
John W. Alexander
Vice-Presidents
Arthur Whiting
Brander Matthews
Hamlin Garland
Robert Underwood Johnson
Hamilton W. Mabie
Harrison S. Morris
Secretary
Jesse Ljmch Williams
Princeton, N. J.
Treasurer
Samuel Isham
471 Park Avenue, New York
[November, 191 1]
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Pa 30. y^"
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
No. Ill: 1910-191 1
NEW YOR K
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FAZc^'fii'
^J
Copyright, 191 1, by
The AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
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CONTENTS
PUBLIC MEETING UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE ACADEMY IN MEMORY
OF SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN)
Held at Carnegie Hall, New York, November 30, 1910
ADDRESSES
PAGB
The President, William Dean Howells 5
Hon. Joseph H. Choate 6
Rev. Joseph H. Twichell 12
Hon. Joseph G. Cannon 15
Hon. Champ Clark 18
George W. Cable 21
Col. Henry Watterson 24
POEM
Henry van Dyke 29
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
IHtblished at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U. JOHNSON,
33 East 17th Street, New York Price per annum $1.00
Vol. I
New York, November i, 191 i
No. 3
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
Public Meeting held in Carnegie Hall, New York,
November 30, 19 10
IN MEMORY OF MARK TWAIN
Mr. Howells, President op the
Academy:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Fellow Aca-
demicians and Guests of the Academy :
At other times and in other places
I have said so much of the friend whom
all the world has lost in the death of
Samuel Langhome Clemens that I
need say very little of him here to-
night. It is my official privilege to
ask you rather to hear what shall be
said by the distinguished men whom
the Academy of Arts and Letters has
invited to join us in our commemora-
tion of him. It is they who will de-
termine what the mood and make of
this commemoration shall be. If the
question could be left to him, with the
hope of answer, I could imagine his
answering :
** Why, of course, you mustn't make
a solenmity of it; you mustn't have it
that sort of obsequy. I should want
you to be serious about me — ^that is,
sincere; but not too serious, for fear
you should not be sincere enough. We
don't object here to any man's affec-
tions; we like to be honored, but not
honored too much. If any of you can
remember some creditable thing about
me, I shouldn't mind his telling it,
provided always he didn't blink the
palliating circumstances, the mitigat-
ing motives, the selfish considerations,
that accompany every noble action. I
shouldn't like to be made out a miracle
of humor, either, and left a stumbling-
block for any one who was intending
to be moderately amusing and instruc-
tive, hereafter. At the same time, I
don't suppose a commemoration is
exactly the occasion for dwelling on
a man's shortcomings in his life or his
literature, or for realizing that he has en-
tered upon an immortality of oblivion."
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
So, I believe, or in some such terms,
I imagine, he might deliver his prefer-
ence, if indeed it were his preference.
He would put it in the lowest terms,
for the soul of the man was modest.
Yet no man loved more to bask in the
sunshine of full recognition. He loved
the limelight of life's stage, and for
long years he sought it. The time
came when physically he could not
bear it. But now again, when all
physical inadequacy is past for him,
I cannot help thinking how he would
have glowed, how he would have
gloried, in such a magnificent presence
as this, where every man and woman
of it is his loving and praising friend.
I must speak of him as if he was still
alive, with a living interest in this
occasion. He is indeed alive, as part
of the universal life we shared with
him and share with one another here.
But he is living for us in yet another
sense. In that microcosm which each
man is there will remain till he dies
such an image of his epoch as he has
been capable of receiving. The great
men he has known by living in sight
and hearing of them abide his con-
temporaries as long as he lives after
them. For him they do not become
of the past; through his unsevered as-
sociation they continue of the present.
The man whom we commemorate sur-
vives in us our contemporary, because
in our several measure or manner we
personally knew him. Others here-
after may prove him the greatest
humorist, the kindest and wisest mor-
alist. We alone who were of his
acquaintance can best offer by our
remembrance a composite likeness of
him which will keep him actual in
the long time to come.
In certain details our respective im-
pressions of him must vary one from
another, but in the large things, the
vital traits that characterize, they
must be alike. What he would do
next no man could forecast from what
he had done last; but he could be
unerringly predicted from what he was
and he could be expected wherever
a magnanimous word, or a generous
deed, or a sanative laugh was due. He
was not only a lover of the good, but
a lover of doing good. If you were of
his mere acquaintance you could not
help seeing this; if you were of his
intimacy, you felt in your heart a
warmth, a joy. Then you understood
how he could be one of the subtlest
intelligences, because he was one of the
openest natures. Sanguine, sorrowful;
despairing, exulting; loving, hating;
blessing, cursing; mocking, mourning;
laughing, lamenting; he was a con-
geries of contradictions, as each of us is ;
but contradictions confessed, explicit,
positive; and I wish we might show him
frankly as he always showed himself.
We may confess that he had faults,
while we deny that he tried to make
them pass for merits. He disowned
his errors by owning them; in the very
defects of his qualities he triumphed,
and he could make us glad with him
at his escape from them. We can be
glad with him now at his escape from
them to that being, hoped for in our
faltering or unfaltering faith, where
the cosmic defects of the cosmic quali-
ties, the seeming aberrations of the
highest Wisdom and the primal Love
which so daunt and bewilder our rea-
son here, shall haply or surely be justi-
fied to all doubting souls, and a world
where death is shall be retrieved by
a world where death is no more.
The first speaker whom we shall hear
to-night is one whose name indefinitely
simplifies my chief function as chair-
man. In this city, in this country, on
this continent — not to mention the British
Isles and their colonies in all the shores
and seas — one does not introduce him;
one merely stands aside for Mr. Choate.
Mr. Choate;
It is very kind in Mr. Howells to
introduce me, but after he has read
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
it (pointing to his notes) all through
from beginning to end, I don't see
how I can possibly make any use of
it (laughter). Certainly we are not
here to-night to mourn for Mark Twain
nor to lament his death. In all his
later years he always said that he en-
vied the dead, and to him they were
better and happier as they were:
** Better are the dead that are already
dead than the living that are not yet
alive." So when we heard Gilder was
dead, he said, ** Ah! no such good luck
comes to me!" No; this great assem-
blage, itself a splendid tribute to his
memory, has gathered here to-night to
glory and exult in his noble life and
character, in his prolonged and benef-
icent career, in all the triumphs he
achieved, and in all that he did to
make his fellow men and women hap-
pier and better, and no man in the last
thirty years, I think, has done more
or as much. His success in delighting
the world was as unique as his per-
sonality, and grew directly out of it.
For nearly half a century I had been
in the habit of appearing with him on
the same platform, speaking for public
and charitable causes which seemed
to him to be good. He never failed
to respond, and was the shining light
of every such occasion, and when we
last met on such an occasion he said
that we had been familiar acquaint-
ances in that way for forty-seven years;
and so I could not fail to respond to-
night in this hall, where we have often
so labored together, for good, I hope.
No matter what the cause was, whether
for charity or good government, for
reform or education, or for Hampton
or Tuskegee, those great schools which
appeal so strongly to the conscience of
the nation, he was always the same —
as direct as he was quaint, and as ear-
nest as he was droll, always bringing
in no end of fun and satire to the aid
of the cause, and generally chaffing
its other advocates with unfailing good
humor. I remember his last words to
me on such an evening, when I had
been indulging in reminiscence : *'Yes,
Choate is full of history, and some of
it is true, too.*' (Laughter.)
I believe that I am expected to say
something of his success abroad, and
particularly in England, where he came
at last to be a popular idol, quite as
much so as at home. Well, it was
sixty years to a day, almost, from the
time he was apprenticed to a printer
in Hannibal for his clothes and board
— **more board than clothes," as he
said — until the crowning triumph of
his life at Oxford. At the beginning
of that long period English people had
no idea that any good could come out
of Missouri (laughter), or that a bom
humorist was then getting his educa-
tion by setting type on the banks of
the Mississippi who would live to chal-
lenge comparison, and perhaps the
leadership, in wit and humor with
their own Chaucer and Fielding and
Swift and Dickens.
It must be admitted that they are
sometimes a little slow at first over
there at recognizing American humor.
They have to get used to it and under-
stand it, and then they are quite ready
to claim it as the common property
of the English-speaking race. When
Charles Darwin, greatest of naturalists,
first read The Jumping Frog of Cala-
veras County, I do not know how seri-
ously he took it as a new fact in natural
history; but what a charming sequel
it would have made to his Variation
of Animals and Plants under Domestic
cation, which was just going to the
press. The frog was certainly do-
mesticated, and did undergo the most
wonderful variations. However that
may be, that great philosopher soon
became an ardent admirer of Mark
Twain, and so continued to the end of
his life, which accounts for his telling
Professor Norton that for sleeplessness
he had two cures, under the headlight
by his bedside, the Bible and The
Innocents Abroad, and on the whole
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
he didn't know which he used the
most.
Certainly no other short story that
was ever told or written made such an
impression on the English-speaking
world, or won for its author such last-
ing fame as that. It is one of the
shortest on record; for after he has
introduced Smiley and his fifteen-
minute mare, and the bull-pup* and
his rat-terriers and chicken-cocks and
tomcats, and before he comes to the
frog, there are but two short pages
left to tell the story in. Not even
Lincoln's immortal two-minute speech
at Gettysburg has found so many
readers, or is known so thoroughly by
heart wherever our common tongue
is spoken. And in England it soon
became familiar not only to men of
the highest culture, like Darwin, but
to the man and the boy in the street.
I wish I knew whether it were a real
fact or only one of the author's yams.
But I have read that once at a dinner
in London the gentleman who sat next
him said: **Do you know, sir, how
old that story of yours about the
Jumping Frog is?" and he replied:
*'Why, yes; I can tell you exactly.
I picked it up in the mining camp just
forty years ago. It is just forty-five
years old." **No, it isn't," said he:
**no, it isn't; it's two thousand years
old, at least." And after that this
fellow showed him a Greek text-book,
and he exclaimed: **Thereitis; there
it is — my Jumping Frog in Bopotia two
thousand years ago." But the mystery
of the Boeotian was soon solved, for
it turned out that Prof. Henry Sidg-
wick, Arthur Balfour's brother-in-law,
had admired it so much that he had
translated it into the Greek text-book
to take its place among the other an-
cient fables; and before the author's
first visit to England it had been trans-
lated into French and German. How
the French or German mind could ever
master such a wonderful narrative
passes all comprehension, and it was
impossible: for Mark Twain himself
imdertook to translate it back literally
into English, and was wholly unable
to identify his original frog, and loud-
ly protested against its slaughter by
foreign hands.
Well, before he ever made his per-
sonal appearance among them all
Englishmen who read at all had de-
voured that wonderful book of travel.
The Innocents Abroad, and his name
was as well known among them as
that of any of their own great authors,
so that they were well prepared to
welcome and honor him when he came
for his first visit, in 1872. On that
occasion he gave some lectures and
made a number of those inimitable
speeches, one at the Savage Club, an-
other at the Mitre Tavern in honor of
Stanley and Livingstone, and another
at the Annual Festival of the Scottish
Corporation in London, in response to
a toast to ** Woman," which was one
of his most impossible extravaganzas.
He studied well the English people
and their customs, and made hosts of
friends; and although, both before and
after, he indulged in no small amount
of good-natured satire at their tepense.
he learned to appreciate most thorough-
ly their great qualities, their unfalter-
ing love of liberty, and the great things
that England had accomplished for the
world. He was there again in 1879,
and again his great and groi^nng repu-
tation followed him and attracted uni-
versal attention.
I remember meeting him on a hot
summer day in that year in St. George's
Chapel, evidently exhausted by sight-
seeing; and while we were admiring
the beauty of the sacred structure, by
which, however, he didn't seem to be
much impressed, he — and I supposed
some solemn reference to the buried
kings was coming — whispered in my
ear, *' How awful it is to be in a place
where it isn't possible to smoke." But
I remembered his devotion to tobacqo,
how much it helped him in his work.
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
and was not surprised that he was im-
patient to get back to it.
These repeated visits to London,
and the wide acquaintance he acquired
after the pubUcation of his earUest
works, created an appetite for his
books which was always on the in-
crease there. It grew by what it fed
on. and I think the statistics will show
a wonderful market for his wares
among English readers. As volume
after volume, rich in humor and in
human sympathy, issued from his pro-
lific pen, they were eagerly devoured,
and the names of the unique and fas-
cinating characters which he created,
Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and
Colonel Sellers, became equally famil-
iar, and were household words on both
sides of the water. Of course, it was
chiefly for their wit and humor, so
racy, so fresh from the soil, so ex-
travagant and uncompromising, so
American, so unlike everything that
England had ever produced or enjoyed,
that these wonderful books chiefly ap-
pealed to them. It was the fascina-
tion of success. Nothing succeeds like
success on either side of the water.
They saw a poor and friendless boy,
^ born and bred in humble circumstances
and with no advantages whatever,
thrown on his own resources at twelve,
leaving the most meager schooling be-
hind him, and starting in life as an
apprentice to a poor printer, then for
four years a pilot, and one of the best
pilots, most sure and most safe, on
the River. The River — the supreme
and ultimate ambition of his boyish
dreams.
It is quite impossible to exaggerate
the charm and influence which that
great river — ^the Father of Waters —
exercised upon his whole life and
character. To him it was a great liv-
ing creature, full of action and passion
and whim and caprice; now overwhelm-
ing him by its power, and again ab-
sorbing his soul by its irresistible
charm. Until he was twenty-five years
old it was the boundary of his ambi-
tion and the center of his life, as it is
now, and is bound always to be, the
center of the life of America.
These four years that he spent in
studying and mastering it were his
University career — more fniitful and
inspiring than Harvard or Yale could '
ever have been. He had absolutely
to know every inch of the river for
twelve hundred miles, by night and
by day, up-stream and down-stream,
its surface and its shore, its depths
and its shallows, its banks and its
bars, its moods and its ever-changing
temper and movement. It was not
enough for him to think — ^he must
know it all exactly; and no student
at any university ever studied any-
thing so hard and to so much purpose.
It developed all his powers and facul-
ties as no books could ever have done
— patience, observation, memory, judg-
ment, courage, undying tenacity of
purpose — and these entered into and
governed all his subsequent work, and it
opened his eyes to the world beyond. As
he said some twenty years afterward:
** I am to this day profiting by that
experience, for in that brief, sharp
schooling I got personally and fa-
miliarly acquainted with about all the
different types of human nature that
are to be found in fiction, biography,
or history. My profit is various, in
kind and degree; but the feature of
it which I value most is the zest which
that early experience has given to
my later reading. When I find a
well-known character in fiction or
biography I generally take a warm
interest in him, for the reason that
I have known him before — I met him
on the River."
Next, upon the outbreak of the war,
when he quit piloting, he was a Second
Lieutenant in the Confederate Army —
for two weeks — ^the most anomalous
episode of his whole career; for no
man was a more ardent patriot, a
truer lover of his country, more de-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
voted to the memories of Lincoln and
Grant, and to what they achieved for
their country and the world than he.
Now again a hopeless miner, fetch-
ing water while his comrade washed for
gold, but protesting that each pailful
was his last. ** Bring one more pail-
^ful," Jim pleaded. "I won't do it,
Jim. Not a drop. Not if I knew
there was a million dollars in that
pan!" But then and there he picked
up the greatest single nugget ever
found in pocket mining, in the Jump-
ing Frog, that started him on the
highroad to victory, and from that
day, and from those squalid begin-
nings, how swift and sure his flight
was to the great and undreamt-of prize
of world-wide fame — ^translated into
many languages, read by countless
millions, keeping the whole world
laughing and in good spirits for thirty
years. Whoever could do that is just-
ly counted among the world*s greatest
benefactors. Such success, so dear
to himself, was justly appreciated by
all who spoke his tongue. And it an-
swered forever to Englishmen Sydney
Smith's cynical question: **In all the
four quarters of the globe who reads
an American book?*'
To the average Englishman — ^the
middle classes as they are called over
there — a misnomer nowadays, perhaps
— his works had one irresistible charm.
I mean the plain English in which they
were written. Not since Robinson
Crusoe came out, about one hundred
and fifty years before, had Englishmen
read anything in such plain, clear, and
simple language as we have in Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, The
Prince and the Pauper, and most of his
other books. Not a trace of Greek
or Latin; for he had none of either,
except what was imbedded and rooted
in the common speech of the people.
In every sentence he meant what he
said, and meant it so clearly and
strongly that every one who read could
understand every word — ^in striking
contrast to some authors whose sen-
tences you have to read over three
or four times to discover what they
thought they meant, and can only
guess at it then.
One other trait of our hero — ^for he is
one of the greatest of our heroes — dear
to the British heart, was his indomitable
courage: never to submit or yield to
illness, or bereavement, or debt, or
any other calamity or adversity, but
to take up his burden and fight his
way through to the end. They had
seen their own great novelist, under
almost identical circumstances, at
about the same age, in the full tide of
his success, suddenly ruined — buried
under a mountain of debt, incurred
by no fault of his own — starting out
in Ufe anew, refusing all compromise,
and determined to devote all that re-
mained of life to paying the whole
debt, dollar for dollar. It was this
heroic self-sacrifice that embalmed the
memory of Scott forever in the hearts
of his countrymen. So when they saw
our own great humorist following
exactly in his footsteps, inspired with
the same lofty spirit, leaving home
and much that he held dear behind
him and starting out on that wonder-
ful reading tour — to Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa — and arriving
in England again with the money to
pay the whole debt, they recognized
him as the true and worthy successor
to their own Sir Walter Scott, an
honor which they had never expected
to pay to any man.
No wonder, then, that after his sev-
entieth birthday had been duly cele-
brated by his own countrymen, as life
was drawing to its destined end, the
scholars and statesmen and authors of
England should desire to pay him the
highest tribute within their gift; and
to this end Lord Curzon, the newly
elected Chancellor of Oxford, himself
one of England's most accomplished
scholars and statesmen, invited him
to come over and receive the Honor-
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
ary Degree of Doctor of Letters.
Nothing ever touched his heart like
that. He said he would gladly have
walked to Mars and back to get that
degree. During the thousand years
that Oxford had been the nursery and
seat of the learning and culture of
England^ the Mississippi had been
pouring its mud to the sea, to lay the
foundations of that crude civilization
in which he had been bom and bred.
Starting from that humble beginning,
with no adventitious aids whatever,
with no education but that which he
had given himself, fighting his way
against fearful obstacles and odds, he
had come to be recognized and pro-
claimed by the highest academic au-
thority as America's greatest living
author and the world's greatest humor-
ist, and on the 26th of June, 1907, he
stood in the Sheldonian Theater, sur-
rounded by the flower of England's
scholarship, to receive, in common with
the Prime Minister, the Lord Chan-
cellor, and the Lord Chief-Justice of
England, Rudyard Kipling, and others,
all men of great mark, the highest
honor that England had in her gift.
He received the greatest ovation of
the day, and never has there been
more vociferous applause in that fa-
mous hall than when his name was
called. Lord Curzon's words to him
in Latin were well chosen. Let me
translate them: *'0h, man, most
jocund, most pleasant, most humorous,
who shaketh the sides of the whole
world by the hilarity of thine own
nature, by my authority, and that of
the whole University, I pronounce you
Doctor of Letters, Honoris Causa.**
Not the University only, but all Eng-
land, seemed to give itself up for ten
days to reveling with him and over him.
The King and Queen entertained a dis-
tinguished company with him at Wind-
sor and paid him great honor. No
American, I think, was ever before so
applauded as he. The climax was
reached at the Pilgrims' Club, when
Mr. Birrell, himself one of the wittiest
of EngUshmen, presided, and ex-
changed felicities with the happy
American, and gave him a chance of
which he gladly availed himself.
Mr. Birrell had inadvertently said
that he hardly knew how he, the Chief
Secretary for Ireland, got there to
preside. When the guest's turn came,
he recalled this remark, with his
grimace and droUish humor: ** He says
he hardly knows how he got here, but
I have looked into his wine-glasses;
I can certify that he has drunk nothing
here, and can assure him that we will
see him safely home." But Mr. Birrell
spoke for all England in proposing his
health when he said: **Mark Twain is
a man whom English and Americans
do well to honor. He is the true con-
solidator of nations. His delightful
humor is of the kind which dissipates
and destroys national prejudices. His
truth and his honor, his love of truth,
and his love of honor, overflow all
boundaries. He has made the world
better by his presence."
Twain's last words in reply were
most touching and tender. He spoke
of the marks of affection that flowed
in upon him from men and women of
all sorts and conditions in England,
and said in taking his seat : ** All these
make me feel that here in England, as
in America, when I stand under the
English flag, I am not a stranger, I am
not an alien, but at home." In three
short years after this truly inter-
national jubilee he was laid in his
grave at Elmira, but for many gen-
erations yet he will live in the hearts
of all in both countries who honor
genius and a noble soul, and love good
English, good nature, and good fun.
Mr. Howells:
In those happy years when it was the
supreme joy of life to visit the Clemens
household in Hartford, the friend and
neighbor nearest and dearest to its hospi-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
table heart was the man who knew Mark
Twain best, and therefore loved him most.
For his own sake, not less than for Mark
Twain's sake, I am sure you will welcome
his comrade, his aUnoner, his pastor, the
Rev. Joseph H. TwichelL
Mr. Twichell:
My acquaintance with the beloved
man who is the theme of our memo-
ries to-night dates from the winter of
1867-68, when he was in Hartford at-
tending on the pubUcation there by a
parishioner of mine of The Innocents
Abroad, the book that first made him
widely known as an author.
We were nearly the same age — ^about
thirty — were, by grace of favoring cir-
cumstances, brought much together
from the start, and were soon launched
on a friendship that through the whole
more than forty succeeding years was
to me, from first to last, the source of
untold pleasure.
At that time, though he was rising
into notice, and coming to be some-
thing of a celebrity, no one dreamed of
the shining, world-wide fame he was
destined to achieve, himself least of
all. I distinctly recall the mingled as-
tonishment and triumph he manifested
at the reproduction of an extract from
his pen in an English periodical; and
the same again when he had a let-
ter from Mr. Osgood of The Atlantic
Monthly asking him to contribute to
that magazine. He could hardly be-
lieve his eyes when he read it. He did
not, as yet, rate himself properly a
member ot the literary guild. He was
hoping for permanent employment in
some capacity in the profession of
journalism, in which he had served
apprenticeship.
Unquestionably for the height and
extent of the distinction he attained,
his career is a phenomenon without
parallel in any day. To cite a few
things that illustrate and attest this:
How marvellous it was, for instance.
that the youth who quit the pilot-
house of a Mississippi River steamboat
at the age of twenty-six received, not
so many years after, from the Marquis
of Lome, Governor-General of Canada,
and the Princess Louise, his wife —
neither of whom had ever seen him —
an invitation soliciting a visit from
him at their house in Ottawa, because
they so wanted to see him; an invita-
tion which he accepted.
It chanced during his stay with them
that the opening of the Canadian Par-
liament took place, to which Mark
went in company with his host and
hostess, he occupying the same car-
riage with the latter, following those
that conveyed Lord Lome and the
principal dignitaries of state.
The approach to the Parliament
House was the signal for the firing of
the artillery salute appropriate to the
occasion, upon hearing which Mark
could not resist the temptation to say
— and wickedly did say — to the Prin-
cess, that he had had a great many
compliments paid him before, but none
came up to this; and the poor lady
had to explain to him that the salute
was for the Governor-General.
For another instance of later date,
the German Kaiser, learning that he
was in Berlin, sent an officer of his
household to bring him to the im-
perial residence, and upon Mark's being
presented to him he called out to the
Empress — using her first name — I for-
get what it is: **0h, come here! Come
here! Here is Mark Twain!"
And yet for another, more recent
still: How amazing it was that he, a
man of almost no schooling at all — for
the rest he was self-educated — was
summoned by the old University of
Oxford to cross the sea and take at
her hand the degree of Doctor of
Letters, one of the most valued honors
in her gift. A London publisher told
me, when I was in that city two years
since, that never in his life had he
seen universal England give such wel-
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
13
come to any other visitor whomsoever
as to Mr. Clemens on that occasion.
In the summer of 1892 I was with
him at Homburg, Germany, famed for
its medicinal springs, and, in the sea-
son, very much a resort of royalty. As
we stood the next morning after our
arrival watching the people at the
springs, a mile or so from the town,
taking the water, a gentleman ap-
proached us and, addressing Mark
with great politeness, explained that
he came from the Prince of Wales —
the late King Edward VII. — who was
near by, and that his Royal Highness
desired, if he pleased, to have speech
with him. Naturally I observed the
meeting of the two men with lively
interest. His Royal Highnesses man-
ner toward Mark was notably cordial,
and they at once fell to talking and
laughing together like old friends.
When, by-and-by, it was time to re-
turn to the town, the Prince took Mark
along, and side by side up the wide
promenade they headed the procession
of the Prince's attendants — a dozen,
perhaps, in number — presenting in
their persons a striking and even comi-
cal contrast — ^the Prince, solid, erect,
stepping with a firm and soldier-like
tread; Mark moving along in that
shambling gait of his, in full tide of
talk, brandishing, as an instrument of
gesture, an umbrella of the most scan-
dalous description — a sight never to
be forgotten. I have often wished that
a snap-shot of it might have been taken.
His comments on the adventure, when
we rejoined one another in our room
at the hotel, were, as you will believe,
highly entertaining. He said that he
found the Prince decidedly quick-
witted. But he couldn't forgive him-
self that he had not thought to say
anything to him about the visit to his
sister at Ottawa. The Prince was so
charmed with him, that shortly after
he had him to supper, and they passed
a whole evening in company.
It is nothing more than the truth to
say that the world over he had, before
he reached middle age, come to be re-
garded a Feature of America. For a
series of years visitors of eminence from
abroad, no matter of what class or
degree — statesmen, authors, artists,
divines — sought the opportunity of
meeting him, and many such were his
guests. Because I was his neighbor
and friend, it fell to my fortunate lot
to sit at his table with, or, at least, to
take the hand of, Matthew Arnold;
Stanley, the explorer; Sir Henry Irv-
ing, Moncure Conway, to name a few;
of numbers, also, of our own choicest
and best — Mr. Howells, here, and dear
Aldrich — would that he were with us
to-night — and Doctor Holmes, and Mr.
Lowell, and Bret Harte, and Richard
Gilder, and Joseph Jefferson. (I do
not include Mrs. Stowe and Charles
Warner, whose houses were within
sight of his, for them I knew before I
knew him.) And what a recognition
of his primacy was betokened by the
extraordinary tribute of honor and
affection that signalized the memorable
celebrations in this city of his sixty-
seventh and seventieth birthdays!
By such things, I say, to which more
of the like might be added, was indi-
cated the throne-place he had won in
the kingdom of letters; wholly unan-
ticipated— ^impossible to anticipate —
at the time I first saw his shaggy head,
in 1867.
Yet I am persuaded that it was not
alone or chiefly his work judged simply
as literature or as humor that ac-
counted for his so quickly accomplish-
ing the conquest of the world. It was
rather — and in this I am sure you will
agree with me — the genial, kindly,
friendly, human soul in him that was
everywhere expressed in it, and made
itself felt; and it was, above all, of
the general heart that he laid hold,
and his conquest was a spiritual one
in that sense. He had, indeed, the
keenest appreciation of the ignoble
side of human nature, and was wont,
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now and then, as Mr. Howells has told,
to rail at the human race accordingly.
He once broke out in a letter I had
from him: "Oh, this infernal Human
Race! I wish I had it in the Ark
again — with an auger!"
Still and notwithstanding, his pre-
dominant mood toward humanity was
that of sympathy. He commiserated
it far more than he despised it. He
was ever profoundly affected with the
feeling of the pathos of life. Contem-
plating its heritage of inevitable pain
and tears, he would question if to
any one it was a good gift.
** Would you,*' he demanded of me
once — ** would you, as a kind-hearted
man, start the human race? Would
you, now?" And I confess the inter-
rogation gave me a turn. Yet he was
not a cynic. He was not wanting in
high admirations and generous tolera-
tions. The theory of character, as
determined absolutely by the condi-
tions to which the individual is sub-
ject, with the deduction of man's total
moral irresponsibility, which some of
us had heard him maintain long before
he came out with it, as inconsistent
with those impeachments of mankind
that have been referred to, was, I truly
believe, a device of his charity.
He never applied to himself. He
was humble enough in that direction.
Years ago he said to me that nothing
besides made him feel so mean as his
wife's thinking so much better of him
than he deserved.
The impressions of Mark Twain that
rule my thought of him were acquired
in the intercourse of the fireside — his
and mine — in the course of a great
many long summer afternoon rambles
(we were both of the pedestrian habit),
and in travels at home and abroad, in
the close companionship of which we
usually slept in the same room, often
in the same bed, and hundreds of
times — as I trust it is not amiss for
me to recall here — said our prayers
together.
The memories of him that I most
value, that mean most to me, are of
those things in him that were lovable.
Intellectually he was always an en-
livening comrade. His talk, his com-
mon talk, was invariably fascinating.
It has seemed to me that nothing he
wrote came for richness quite up to it.
One evening when, at his own table,
he had been rehearsing at length in his
picturesque dramatic style incidents of
his early days in Nevada, I remember
that Mr. Howells, by whom I had sat,
said to me aside as we rose: ** What
could possibly be more delicious?
There is certainly no one else alive
who can equal it." But, after all, it
is the amiabilities of the man that are
dearest to recollection. And he aboimd-
ed in them. He was in some external
respects emphatically a ** man with
the bark on," yet there was no more
exquisite refinement of taste and senti-
ment. I have seldom known any one
so easily moved to tears.
He loved children, and children loved
him; the young folk of our time in
Hartford were all very fond of ** Uncle
Mark." He delighted in planning
amusements for them, getting up cha-
rades and tableaux, and himself taking
part as a performer in them.
He loved animals. He could scarce-
ly meet a cat on the street without
stopping to make its acquaintance.
Happiest of the tribe was she who
purred under his caress while he read
his book. He could never bear to
have a horse touched with the whip.
Repeatedly I have seen him put out
a restraining hand to a driver who was
reaching for that implement, and say,
"Never mind that; we are going fast
enough; we are in no hurry."
One day during our ' * Tramp Abroad , * '
when we were toiling up the long as-
cent above Chamouni, from the Riff el
Inn to the Gomer Grat, as we paused
for a rest, a lamb from a flock of sheep
near by ventured inquisitively toward
us; whereupon Mark rested himself on
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
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a rock, and with beckoning hand and
soft words tried to get it to come to
him. On the lamb's part it was a
struggle between curiosity and timid-
ity, but in a succession of advances and
retreats it gained confidence, though
at a very gradual rate. It was a scene
for a painter — ^the great American hu-
morist on one side of the game, and
that silly little creature on the other,
with the Matterhom for a background.
Mark was reminded that the time he
was consuming in that diversion was
valuable; but to no purpose. The
Gomer Grat could wait. He held on
with undiscouraged perseverance till
he carried his point: the lamb finally
put its nose in his hand; and he was
happy over it all the rest of the day.
Of what he was in his home, and of
what his home was to him, as it came
under my observation through all the
years of our friendship, I may not speak
at this time. The dearest place in
the world to him was ever his own fire-
side.
The supreme experiences of his life,
joyful and sorrowful alike, were do-
mestic. A tenderer, more affection-
ate heart never beat in human breast.
He who cheered and brightened the
spirit of his generation with laughter
had, himself, deep acquaintance with
grief.
With all .his splendid prosperity he
lived to be a lonely, weary-hearted
man, and a good while before he left
us the thought of his departure hence
had been welcome to him.
Gathered here, yet looking down as
in thought we all are upon the mound
of his new-made grave, we may, in
taking farewell of him and consigning
him to his last rest, fitly borrow the
requiem which a few years since he
brought home with him from the other
side of the world — ^it was in a burial-
ground in Australia that he came upon
it — and caused to be inscribed on the
headstone of a beloved daughter who
sleeps beside him:
" Warm summer sim,
Shine kindly here; ,
Warm summer wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good-night, dear heart;
Good-night; good-night 1"
Mr. Ho wells:
At a memorable copyright hearing of
authors before the joint Congressional
Committee in Washington, four or five
years ago, Mark Twain, white from head
to foot in complete flannels, launched
himself ai that iniquitous dragon of non-
property in ideas invented by Macaulay
for the conclusion of legislation, and
utterly demolished it. Then he put on
his long overcoat and said he was going
round to. the House to see the Speaker,
Somehow he knew that in that wise and
level head lay the hope of literature, as
a vocation, as a livelihood. What passed
when those two men, differently great, put
their cigars together, the eminent states-
man, whom we are so glad and so proud
to have with us here, alone can say. Per-
haps he will also tell us how much he liked
Mark Twain. I knew long ago how much
Mark Twain liked Joseph G. Cannon.
Mr. Cannon:
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentle-
men : I am glad to meet with the fellow-
workers of Mark Twain to honor his
memory. I was just a friend and ad-
mirer of this man who made his name
a household word, not only in America
but throughout the world. I was not
an intimate friend — and, perhaps, I
should use the word "acquaintance" —
but everybody who read Mark Twain
or heard him lecture felt that there was
a bond of friendship, and if they clasped
hands with him, and entered into
friendly conversation, they claimed in-
timate friendship, if not kinship. I
had that pleasure.
My friendly relations with Mark
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
Twain were those of a sympathetic ad-
mirer who tried to help him when he
was exercising his rights as a citizen,
and urging upon Congress legislation
that would give him greater protection
to the product of his labor.
In the eariy days in the West I
often heard this musical sound, " Mark
twain!" as sung out by the lineman
to the pilot on the old Mississippi
River boats, indicating two fathoms of
water, or no bottom; but I never ex-
pected then to see it made one of the
most popular names in the world of
literature, and given such a personality
as it has had for many years through
the genius of this man, whose real name
seems to have become secondary in his
work and reputation. The announce-
ment by the lineman was a most seri-
ous and hopeful fact for the pilot and
the captain, indicating plenty of water
and clear sailing. Mr. Clemens said
that he confiscated this name from one
of the oldest and most reliable pilots
on the Mississippi River, because with
that old man it was a sign and symbol
and warrant that whatever was found
in its company might be gambled upon
as being the petrified truth.
We call Mark Twain America's great-
est humorist, but I have taken him at
his word, and I have his own warrant
for accepting his characters as photo-
graphs rather than as creatures of fancy.
Tom Sawyer is the most natural boy
I ever met between the covers of a
book, and Col. Mulberry Sellers is a
daily visitor to the national capital.
In fact, the last time I met Mark Twain
he admitted that he was playing the
part of Colonel Sellers and trying to
make me see that "there's millions in
it," for he had come to Washington to
lobby for the Copyright Bill. He had
no aversion to the term ** lobbyist,"
but recognized his temporary vocation
while in the capital, just as he recog-
nized men in their various disguises all
through life.
He was an author asking protection
for his work. He took over a part of
the enthusiasm of Colonel Sellers as he
talked to members of Congress about
the benefits of the Copyright Bill, and
he showed some dissatisfaction, if not
disgust, when he discovered that other
people were taking advantage of his
efforts and his influence.
At the close of his visit he came into
the Speaker's Room, as he was accus-
tomed to do every morning, and said:
**See here. Uncle Joe; does every fel-
low who comes here get hitched up to
a train he does not want to pull? I
came down here to pull the Copyright
Bill through Congress, because I want
the copyright on my literary work ex-
tended so that I can keep the benefits
to myself and family, and not let the
pirates get it. I hitched my locomo-
tive to that car, which was to carry
literary efforts into longer protected
life, and just when the locomotive got
under way it had to be halted to at-
tach a new car, then another, and an-
other, until now the steam is getting
low and the train is so long I don't
know whether it will move or not.
And I don't know that I want to pull
it, now, with all sorts of cars attached
which have no possible relation to the
purpose I had in coming to Washing-
ton or the legislation I believe neces-
sary for the protection of my literary
work."
I told him he had the usual experi-
ence of men who wanted to reform the
world according to their own views by
legislation. There were so many peo-
ple ready to help him who did not
fully agree with him, that the product
of his effort soon became more or less
a stranger to its parent. I could have
given him many illustrations of good
intentions embarrassed by other good
intentions, and also of men placed in
charge of a locomotive becoming dis-
satisfied with some of the freight they
were pulling.
He had that understanding of hu-
man nature that made him quick to
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
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see the diflSciilties that surround legis-
lative effort without making him sus-
picious that the other fellow*s efforts
were not just Uke his own — wisely self-
ish— ^but he insisted that there ought
to be several classes of trains in legis-
lation, as there are on the railroads,
so that real inspiration and "canned
goods" should not be hooked up to-
gether in the same train. I agreed
with him, but those who were insisting
on co-operating with him did not.
They were all insisting on getting on
the same train with so popular a
leader.
He had more influence with the legis-
lators than others had, and he was
frank to admit a selfish interest. He
came to lobby for a bill, and was not
ashamed to admit that he had a self-
interest in the legislation he sought.
There was no ialtruistic humbug about
his effort.
He wanted to go on the floor of the
House to lobby, but those confounded
"Cannon Rules" prohibited him, and
they likewise so bound the Speaker
that he could not recognize another
member to ask unanimous consent to
admit Mark Twain or any other man
to the floor. Mark studied those rules
and discovered that the only excep-
tion made was in favor of those who
had received the thanks of Congress.
So he wrote to me, and, acting as his
own messenger, came into the Speaker's
Room one cold morning and laid the
letter on my desk. It was as follows:
** December 7, 1908.
"Dear Uncle Joseph, — Please get
me the thanks of Congress — not next
week, but right away! It is very nec-
essary. Do accomplish this for your
affectionate old friend — and right
away! By persuasion if you can, by
violence if you must.
"For it is imperatively necessary
that I get on the floor for two or three
hours and talk to the members, man
by man, in behalf of the support, en-
couragement and protection of one of
the nation's most valuable assets and
industries — its literature. I have ar-
guments with me — ^also a barrel. With
liquid in it!
"Get me a chance! Get me the
thanks of Congress. Don't wait for
the others — ^there isn't time. Fur-
nish them to me yourself, and let Con-
gress ratify later. I have stayed away
and let Congress alone for seventy-one
years, and am entitled to the thanks.
Congress knows this perfectly well; and
I have long felt hurt that this quite
proper and earned expression of grati-
tude has been merely felt by the House
and never publicly uttered.
" Send me an order on the Sergeant-
at-Arms.
"Quick!
"When shall I come?
"With love and a benediction,
"Mark Twain."
After reading that letter I repeated
what I have said about the embarrass-
ment of those rules not only as affect-
ing him, but as affecting the Speaker,
and he laughed as he said his joke
must have been pretty clear for me to
catch the point at the first reading.
I called my messenger — s, colored
man who has served every Speaker for
the last thirty years, and who knows
all the members — and I said to Mark
Twain: "1 am in full sympathy with
you, and will help you lobby. Neal
will take you to the Speaker's private
room, which is larger, more comfort-
able, and more convenient than this
one. That room and the messenger
are yours while you stay, and if you
don't break a quorum of the House it
will be your own fault."
He installed himself in that room,
and the messenger went on the floor
whispering to Champ Clark, Adam
Bede, and others on both sides of the
House, and in a few minutes there was
not a quorum on the floor. They were
all crowding into the Speaker's private
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
room to see Mark Twain and promise
him to vote for the Copyright Bill, for
he allowed ho admirer to escape.
After the day's session Mark came to
me to say that those confounded niles
were not so bad after all, and that he
didn't object to a "czar" who ab-
dicated and allowed him to occupy the
throne-room.
I have many pleasant recollections
of Mark Twain's literary work, which
I have enjoyed through the years since
he was in Washington as a newspa-
per correspondent ; but my pleasantest
recollections are of the man and his
straightforward way of meeting other
men, and, without pretense, present-
ing his views. The world recognized
him as a humorist, but he was also a
philosopher and a practical man.
Mr. Howells:
When the French people had kings
and one of their kings came to die, the
heralds shouted in one breath, ** The King
is dead: long live the King!'' Unlike
those French kings, American czars, when
they were good czars, never died; and
we can hail Mr. Cannon and his suc-
cessor with as much loyalty as those
fellows, and with far more logic in our
cry of, ''The Czar lives: long live the
Czarr
His successor has already imitated
Mr. Cannon in his friendship for the
calling of letters, and in his collaboration
with Mark Twain for their honor before
the law and prophets in the nation.
The man whom he has declared the great-
est Missourian who ever lived must re-
ceive adequate recognition front the great-
est living Missourian, the Hon. Champ
Clark.
Mr. Clark:
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentle-
men: It is in keeping with the eternal
fitness of things that a Missourian
should participate in paying honor
to the most famous Missourian that
ever lived. With me it is a labor of
love.
In his time Mark Twain played many
parts — Printer, Mississippi River Pilot,
Soldier, Office-holder, Reporter, Editor,
Lecturer, Author, Humorist, Philoso-
pher, Controversialist, Traveler, Hu-
manitarian, Satirist, Stump-speaker,
and Lobbyist. Mirabile dictu! he
played them all successfully. In ver-
satility he ranks with Thomas Jeffer-
son. Perhaps a busier man never
lived. He obeyed literally the Scrip-
tural injimction: "Whatsoever thy
hand findeth to do, do it with thy
might."
I consider it my good fortune to have
known this extraordinary and lovable
man personally at all, and my bad
fortune not to have known him for a
longer period. He was bom within a
few miles of my Congressional district,
at the confluence of the three forks
of Salt River, a stream of evil omen
to candidates, upon whose briny cur-
rent many of them sail into the Gulf
of Oblivion. He was reared at Hanni-
bal, which adjoins my district, and his
celebrated cave, rendered immortal by
his pen, is in Ralls Cotmty, the north-
ernmost coimty in the district iiMch
I have the honor to represent. I had
read with avidity every word he ever
wrote, and counted him among the
world's benefactors; but luck or fate
or fortune so ordered things that I
never beheld him in the flesh until
he was in the gorgeous sunset days of
his long, useful and glorious life; and
it was the most prosaic of business
matters that brought us together at
last — a happening which forms the
basis of one of the most fondly cher-
ished memories of my life. When I had
met him face to face and conversed
with him, or, speaking more exactly,
when I had heard with rapture his
fascinating monologue, I felt as did
the Queen of Sheba when, upon be-
holding the splendors of King Solo-
mon's temple, she exclaimed with won-
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
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der and enthusiasm, **The half hath
not been told."
The way I came to know Mark Twain
personally is that three or four years
ago he visited Washington as a lobby-
ist! Let not the prudish and squeam-
ish shudder at the term, for Mark Twain
was not only a lobbyist but a very
prince of lobbyists. He did honor to
both the lobbyists and those with whom
he lobbied. There are all sorts of
lobbyists, good, bad, and indifferent,
ranging in character from men who will
never find appropriate homes till the
doors of the penitentiary close upon
them, to men who deserve the fine
tribute which Thomas Jefferson paid to
James Monroe when he said: ** Monroe
is so pure that you might turn his soul
inside out and not find a blot upon it"
— a saying which I take it is equally
applicable to Mark Twain.
I am aware that the word ** lobbyist,"
like the word ** politician," has come
to have a sinister meaning, and that
divers good folks would incontinently
abolish all lobbyists and all politicians.
Nevertheless, a politician, considered
etymologically, is a practitioner of one
of the noblest of all sciences — ^the
science of government; and in a
country whose institutions are bot-
tomed on popular suffrage, every citi-
zen should be a politician. I do not
mean that he should be necessarily an
office-seeker. That is a poor business
when you succeed, and unspeakably
poor when you fail. In that respect
I have been tried by both extremes of
fortune, and speak by the card. What
I do mean is that in this puissant and
beneficent republic every citizen should
inform himself on the issues before the
people and take an active part, a man's
part, at the primaries and at the gen-
eral elections. No man should regard
himself as too good or too lofty to do
that, and he who fails to do it falls
short of his duty to his country and
his kind. That masterful great man,
Thomas Brackett Reed, voiced his bit-
ter scorn of the cant about poUticians
in his famous fnot: "A statesman is a
politician who is dead!"
A lobbyist is a person who seeks by
letter or personal interview or other-
wise to influence legislators, municipal.
State, or national. Sometimes the
measures which they advocate are bad
and their methods reprehensible, im-
moral, even criminal. At other times
the measures urged are of the best,
and the methods of lobbying above
reproach, even highly laudable, while
the motives are as pure and unselfish
as ever animated any of the multitudi-
nous sons and daughters of Adam. Mr.
Speaker Reed, whose honesty was pro-
verbial, always insisted that a lobby
is a necessary part of our Congressional
machinery. He based his opinion on
the fact ftiat into each Congress there
are introduced some thirty thousand
bills, and that it is utterly impossible
for any Representative or Senator to
inform himself as to all of them.
Therefore, he contended that a lobby-
ist who was interested in a bill not
only had a perfect right to expoimd
it to Representatives and Senators,
but was conferring a benefit on them
by so doing. It is not the lobby per
se against which honest and patriotic
people protest, but a dishonest, a cor-
rupting lobby. That the corrupt and
corrupting lobby should be scourged
from every capital in the land with a
whip of scorpions goes without saying.
When Joseph Wingate Folk was Gov-
ernor of Missouri he issued a ukase to
the effect that all lobbyists visiting
Jefferson City during the sittings of
the Legislature should enroll them-
selves as such, stating what interests
they represented and what measures
they advocated, and his scheme worked
measurably well and might be put into
practice generally with good results.
While I have talked with many lobby-
ists on many subjects, ranging from
matters of international importance to
matters of narrow local or personal in-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
terest, and extracted more information
from them than they did from me, I
can truthfully say that during one
term in the Missouri Legislature and
sixteen years in Congress no mortal
man ever made to me a suggestion
that even squinted at corruption.
So it came to pass that on a memo-
rable day Mark Twain, Lobbyist, with
his world-wide reputation as his avanU
courier, descended upon the Capitol
in dazzling attire, sweeping every-
thing before him. Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed as was this great
Missourian, for in the dead of winter
he wore a suit of white flannels, white
as the snow which filled the air, while
all the world wondered. He created
a profound sensation — as he, no doubt,
intended to do — a sensation which, so
far as he was concerned, was strictly
utilitarian in character and cunningly
planned for effect upon hard-headed,
matter-of-fact, unimaginative Solons.
The newspapers were filled with Mark
Twain and his unseasonable raiment.
He was the theme of every tongue from
White House to police-station, from
Porto Rico to far Cathay. Since
Joseph's coat of many colors, no article
of apparel of any other male person
was ever so extensively advertised —
not even excepting the wonderful
coronation robes of George IV., or the
cocked hat and gray overcoat of
Napoleon, or the white plume of Na-
varre. With his snowy flannels, snowy
hair and snowy mustache, he made a
superb picture, one on which affection
loves to linger.
The subject-matter of his lobbying
was improvement in the copyright
laws, which were sadly in need of im-
provement. It was a subject near his
heart. He was intensely in earnest —
persistent, enthusiastic, optimistic. He
sent for me for three reasons: (i) We
had had some correspondence on that
vexed and vexing subject; (2) for
years I had been a member of the
Committee on Patents, which has
jurisdiction in copyright matters; (3)
he and I were both Missourians, in-
effably proud of that imperial com-
monwealth. I was delighted to be
of service to this remarkable man,
who had delighted millions and who
will deUght millions yet unborn. Mr.
Speaker Cannon gracefully and gra-
ciously turned over one of his rooms to
Mark Twain, and in it he held his
court, somewhat, it must be confessed,
to the demoralization of business in
the Congress, for so long as he re-
mained in the Capitol it was almost
impossible to maintain a quorum in
the House, so eager were members to
look into his face, shake his hand,
form his acquaintance, and listen to his
conversation. All men and all women,
and even the little children in the
street, vied with each other to do him
honor. It pleased him mightily, and
in those halcyon days he was undoubt-
edly happy, and being happy was **at
his best** — ^as James Steerforth begged
David Copperfield to remember him.
and as all of us would choose to be
remembered. No other man of let-
ters in the history of the world ever
received such a hearty welcome as
Mark Twain received in Washington,
except Voltaire upon his last visit to
Paris in his extreme old age. The
great-hearted Missourian enjoyed it to
the limit. He was as pleased as a lit-
tle child. His cordial reception warmed
the cockles of his heart. He extend-
ed the glad hand to everybody. He
made no effort to conceal his de-
light. He talked with perfect aban-
don on a multitude of subjects, and
all the while he lobbied — lobbied skil-
fully— lobbied in delightful manner —
lobbied with side-splitting yams — lob-
bied with philosophical remarks — ^lob-
bied with wealth of reminiscence —
lobbied with fetching arguments for
justice, and accomplished the sub-
stance of what he sought — a rich bene-
faction to American authors. Then,
quitting his country's capital forever —
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his country which he had honored in
every quarter of the globe — he might,
without exaggeration or bad taste,
have repeated the proud boast of
Caesar: ''Vent! Vidi! Vicir
I think myself happy to have been
able to aid him in his self-imposed task
of aiding American writers. They
have in their kindness done me honor
overmuch. The men to whom your
gratitude is primarily and in largest
part due are the members of the Com-
mittee on Patents, headed on the
Republican side by Hon. Frank D.
Currier, of New Hampshire, and on the
Democratic side by Hon. William
Sulzer, of New York.
Mr. Chairman, we honor ourselves in
honoring Mark Twain.
Mr. Howells:
If some finer andnoblernovelthan ** The
Grandissimes'* has been written in this
land, any time, I Itave not read it. From
Mark Twain himself I learned to love the
literature of the delightful Master who
wrote that book, and it is with a peculiar
sense of fitness in his presence here to-
night that I ask you to join me in listen-
ing to George W. Cable.
Mr. Cable:
The great man whose memory to-
night we give ourselves the tender joy
to honor was one whom, I venture to
say, no one who knew him personally
and well ever thought of for a moment
long enough to pass beyond a contem-
plation of the vast grotesqueness of his
wit and humor without being impressed
with the rare beauty of his mind.
I do not mean a beauty consisting
in great structural symmetry or finish,
as of some masterpiece of Greek or
Gothic elaboration. I mean a beauty
such as the illimitable haphazard of
Nature a few times in our planet*s his-
tory has hit upon, where angels would
seem to have builded in a moment of
careless sport, as in the Grand Cafton
of the Colorado, or some equal wonder
of supernal color and titanic form in
that great West which had so much
to do with the shaping of his genius
— ^in so far as his genius was ever
really shaped.
The beauty of that mind was a beauty
of form and color, so to speak, rather
than of mechanism. The marvellous
union of rudeness and grace in those
vast natural formations in the West
symbolizes well the energy of his pur-
poses, as the marvellous variety and in-
tensity of their colors do the many pas-
sions of his spirit. Many, I say, for
he was a packed cluster of passions.
His passion for the charms of Nature
compelled him to blindfold himself to
them, as it were, whenever he would
use his pen. Every one knows how
he had to renounce the beautiful study
lovingly built for him and furnished
with every appointment for ease and
convenience because of the enthrall-
ing views of hill, vale and stream to be
seen from its windows. As I repic-
ture him in his housetop study at Hart-
ford I see him sitting at a table where
every time he lifted his eyes from
pencil and paper they met only the
blank stare of the wall against which
it was set, and I remember one morn-
ing when, some time after he had
started up to his work in that third-
story room, I came upon him at a
half-way stair-landing, gazing out of
its window close into the vivid red
and yellow depths of a maple steeped
in autumn sunlight. Fastened to the
spot he was, as he confessed himself
in a burst of praise which I wish yet
I had written down.
No less a passion was his feeling for
humankind at large, and all his hot
scoldings at it were only an outcome
of elder - brotherly solicitude. On a
certain evening some twenty-six years
ago it was my fortune to be included
with him in a very small group of
men with whom he was particularly
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
at ease — Osgood, Aldrich. O'Reilly —
all now at rest. Dining with them in
Boston, his unrestrained wit and ti-
tanic grimness of mirth kept them for
hours wild with parrying cut and
thrust, and literally beside themselves
with jollity. Yet that is but the back-
ground of the complete picture which
is fresh in my memory to this day.
Early next morning, as he and I left
the city by train together, I was some-
how emboldened to point out to him
how the beauty of a sunrise on the
river Charles was enhanced in poetic
charm through the human interest
given it by two or three especially
slender and graceful factory chimneys
distantly overtowering the flat land
and low mists; and for half an hour
it was my privilege to hear him set
forth the poetry of toil with an elo-
quence so free from false sentiment,
yet so reverential to all the affections
and upward strivings of lowliest hu-
manity, that I saw then what has
never been hidden from me since —
that he was made of a finer clay than
the common type of men, if not the
common type of great men.
It seems to me evident to all of us,
if not to all the critical world, that
that great human kindness of his was
one of the foundations, the funda-
mental element, of his humor, and by
it he gained the heart of the world.
But I was warned in the first place
that this was not to be an occasion
for elaborate oratory, and that it
would be better for us all if we should
spend these moments as nearly as
possible as if we sat at the fireside and
talked of the friend who has lately
gone from us to some other place to
better his condition — whom we should
some day rejoin. So I do not care
how little coherence I shall have from
this time on, through the few minutes
I purpose occupying your time with
a reminiscence or two of Mark Twain.
These shall be in one or two cases at
least to show, to illustrate, the re-
ciprocation of this human kindness
from the human race to Mark Twain
in his goings and comings.
It was down in New Orleans that
one day we were about sending him
back up the Mississippi with Captain
Bixby, his old captain, to complete
his observations for the writing of his
Old Times on the Mississippi Rii^er.
There was a great crowd around him
to shake his hand. Men wished to
shake his hand as they might have
been glad to shake the hand of a king.
It was in a worshipful spirit, in an
affectionate spirit, that they crowded
around, to have as they counted it
that great privilege. And when we
were all ordered off the boat, Osgood,
who was with us, said that he had
traveled through this countr>' with
Charles Dickens, that idol of his time
in the hearts of all English-speaking
readers, and that not even Charles
Dickens had commanded the outward
demonstration of affection which Mark
Twain did at every turn, and which he
received from every possible class and
species of the people. As we were
going down on the narrow stage- work
that is characteristic of Mississippi
steamboats, in a group of friends that
included myself, we heard a man talk-
ing behind us, who I supposed must
have represented and voiced the senti-
ments of hundreds who had spoken of
Mark Twain in that way. This man
said: *'I have read every page he ever
wrote, but I was so rattled and knocked
to pieces with my opportunity when I
came to shake his hand that I could
not think of anything in the world to
thank him for that he had written,
except the * Heathen Chinee'!"
It is because of that hold he has on
all our hearts — and I speak for the
whole American people — ^it was that
spirit that caused an audience once in
Paris, Kentucky, who had applauded
him until their palms were sore and
until their feet were tired, and who
had laughed as he came forward for
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
23
the fourth alternation of our reading
together — ^the one side of him drag-
ging, one foot limping after the other
in the peculiar way known to us all —
the house burst into such a storm of
laughter, coming from so crowded a
house, that Mark Twain himself, grim
controller of his emotions at all times,
burst into laughter and had to ac-
knowledge to me, as he came off the
platform: **Yes, yes'* — still laughing
with joy of it himself — **yes; they got
me off my feet that time."
I remember the hold he had upon
children's hearts, another field of his
human kindness to all humankind.
It is illustrated in an experience he
had in Cincinnati when certain chil-
dren were brought by their aunt to
hear Mark Twain read from his pages
in that great city, brought down from
the town of Hamilton, and who went
back home in the late hours of the
night, beside themselves with the de-
' light of their clear understanding and
full appreciation of his humor, saying
to their kinswoman : "Oh, Auntie ! Oh,
Auntie ! it was better than Buffalo Bill !'*
One point I should like to make to
indicate the conscientiousness with
which he held himself the custodian
of the affections of the great mass of
the people who loved him in every
quarter of the land. It was the rigor
of his art, an art which was able to
carry the added burden beyond the
burden of all other men's art, the bur-
den of absolutely concealing itself and
of making him appear, whenever he
appeared, as slipshod in his mind as he
was in his gait. We were at Toronto,
Canada. The appointment was for
us to read two nights in succession,
and he had read one night. The vast
hall was filled to overflowing. I heard
from the retiring-room the applause
that followed every period of his utter-
ance, heard it come rolling in and
tumbling like the surf of the ocean.
Well, at last, as we were driving home
to our hotel, I found him in an abso-
lutely wretched condition of mental
depression, groaning and sighing, and
all but weeping, and I asked him what
in the world justified such a mood in
a man who had just come from such
a triumph. "Such a triumph?" he
said. "A triumph of the moment;
but those people are going home to
their beds, glad to get there, and they
will wake up in the morning ashamed
of having laughed at my nonsense."
"Nonsense?" I said. "How is it
nonsense?"
" I have spent the evening and their
time, and taxed them to the last of
their ability to show their apprecia-
tion of my wit and humor, and I have
spent that whole time simply spin-
ning yarns."
I said: "Don't mind; you are going
to meet virtually the very same au-
dience to-morrow, and to-morrow night
you shall give them good literature, if
any living writer in a living language
has got that chance." I don't know
if he slept that night, but I know
he did what he did not often relish.
He rehearsed, and rehearsed, and re-
hearsed, and the next night he gave
them a programme which he chose to
begin, at my suggestion, with the *'Blue
Jay's Message." He left that house as
happy as any one ever saw Mark
Twain, and that was with a feeling of
acute joy because he had won friends
he considered worthy, he had won
every handclap and applause with a
programme worthy of honor.
One more point: Every one knows
that one of his passions was for his-
tory, and I assume that that passion
for history was one of the demonstra-
tions of his human kindness. It was
the story of the human heart, and he
loved history, because it was the story
of humanity.
One night we were in Rochester to-
gether. It was Saturday night, and
for a wonder we were without an en-
gagement that night, and we started
out for a walk, and we had gone a few
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
steps when we found a bookstore, and
at the same moment it was beginning
to rain. I said: **Let us go in here."
He said: *' I remember I have not pro-
vided myself with anything to read
all day to-morrow.*' I said: "We will
get it here. I will look down that
table, and you look down this one."
Presently I went over to him, and said
I had not found anything that I
thought would interest him, and asked
him if he had found anything. He
said no, he had not; but there was a
book he did not remember any pre-
vious acquaintance with. He asked
me what that book was.
'*\Vhy," I said, "that is Sir Thomas
Mallory's Mort d'Arthur.** And he
said: "Shall we take it?*' I said:
" Ves; and you will never lay it down
until you have read it from cover to
cover.'* It was easy to make the
prophecy, and, of course, it was ful-
filled. He had read in it a day or
two, when I saw come upon his cheek-
bones those two vivid pink spots
which every one who knew him in-
timately and closely knew meant that
his mind was working with all its
energies. I said to myself: "Ah, I
think Sir Thomas Mallory*s Mort
d' Arthur is going to bear fruit in the
brain of Mark Twain.*' A year or two
afterward, when he came to see me in
my Northampton home, I asked him
what he was engaged in, and he said
he was writing a story of A Yankee in
the Court of King Arthur. I said : "If
that be so, then I claim for myself the
godfathership of that book." He said :
"Yes; you are its godfather.** I can
claim no higher honor than to have the
honor to claim that here and now, to-
night, and to rejoice with you that we
are able to offer a tribute of our affec-
tion to the memory of Mark Twain.
Mr. Howells:
Not only as a soldier whose fame the
North may well envy the South, not only
as a leading American journalist, not
only as a publicist whose patriotism can
instruct us all in the love of country, but
as the friend and brother of the man who
was a friend and brother of everybody, do
I now invoke the welcome which I know
you have been keeping warm for CoL
Henry Watterson, of Kentucky,
Colonel Watterson:
Although when Mark Twain first ap-
peared east of the Alleghanies and
north of the Blue Ridge he showed
the weather-beating of the West — the
stigmata alike of the pilot-house and
the mining camp very much in evi-
dence— he came of decent people on
both sides of his house. The Clemenses
and the Lamptons were of good old
English stock. Toward the middle of
the eighteenth century three younger
scions of the Manor of Durham mi-
grated from the County of Durham to
Virginia, and thence branched out into
Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri.
Mark Twain*s mother was the love-
liest old aristocrat, with a taking drawl
— 2l drawl that was high-bred and
patrician, not rustic and plebeian —
which her famous son inherited. All
the women of that ilk were gentle-
women. The literary and artistic in-
stinct which attained its fruition in
him had percolated through the veins
of a long line of silent singers, of
poets and painters, unborn to the
world of expression till he arrived
upon the scene.
Although Mark Twain and I called
each other "cousin," and claimed to
be blood-relatives, the connection be-
tween us was by marriage. A great-
uncle of his married a great-aunt of
mine; his mother had been named
after and reared by this great aunt;
and the children of the marriage were,
of course, his cousins and mine. An
exceeding large, varied, and pictu-
resque assortment they were. Though
the family became widely separated.
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
25
we were lifelong and very dear friends;
passed much time together at home
and abroad; and had many common
ties and memories.
Just after the successful production
of his play, The Gilded Age, and the
uproarious hit of the comedian, Ray-
mond, in its leading r61e, I received
a letter from him in which he told me
he had made in Col. Mulberry Sell-
ers a close study of a certain mutual
kinsman, and thought he had drawn
him to the life — "But for the love
of Heaven," he said, "don't whisper
it; for he would never understand or
forgive me; if he did not thrash me
on sight.*'
The pathos of the part, and not its
comicality, had most impressed him.
He designed and wrote it for Edwin
Booth. From the first and always he
was disgusted by the Raymond por-
trayal. Except for its popularity and
money-making, he would have with-
drawn it from the stage, as, in a fit
of pique, Raymond himself did while
it was still packing the theatres. The
original "Sellers" had partly brought
him up and been very good to him;
a second Don Quixote in appearance
and not unlike the knight of La Mancha
in character. It would have been safe
for nobody to laugh at him — nay, by
the slightest intimation, look or ges-
ture, to treat him with inconsideration,
or any proposal of his — however pre-
posterous— with levity. He once came
to see me upon a public occasion and
during a function. I knew that I must
introduce him, and with all possible
ceremony, to my colleagues. He was
very queer: tall and peaked, wearing
a black swallow-tailed suit, shiny with
age ; a silk hat, bound with black crepe
to conceal its rustiness, not to indicate
a recent death; but his lineu as spot-
less as new-fallen snow. I had my
doubts. Happily, the company, quite
dazed by the apparition, proved dec-
orous to solemnity, and the kind old
gentleman, pleased with himself and
proud of his " distinguished young kins-
man," went away highly gratified.
^ Not long after this one of his
daughters — pretty girls they were, too,
and in charm altogether worthy of
their cousin Sam Clemens — was to be
married, and "Sellers" wrote me a
stately summons, all-embracing, though
stiff and formal, such as a baron of
the Middle Ages might have indited to
his noble relative, the Field-Marshal,
bidding him bring his good lady and
his retinue to abide within the castle
until the festivities were ended —
though in this instance the castle was
a suburban cottage scarcely big enough
to accommodate the bridal party. I
showed the bombastic but hospitable
and sincere invitation to the actor
Raymond, who chanced to be playing
in Louisville when it reached me. He
read it through with care and re-read
it. "Do you know," said he, "it
makes me want to cry. That is not
the man I am trying to impersonate
at all." Be sure it was not; for there
was nothing funny about the spiritual
being of Mark Twain's Colonel Mul-
berry Sellers; he was as brave as a
lion, and as upright as Sam Clemens
himself.
When a very young man living in
a woodland cabin down in the " Penny-
rile" region of Kentucky, with a wife
he adored and two or three small chil-
dren, he was so carried away by an
unexpected windfall that he lingered
overlong in the near - by village, dis-
pensing a royal hospitality — in point
of fact, he "got on a spree." Two or
three days passed before he regained
possession of himself. When at last
he reached his home, he found his wife
ill in bed and the children nearly
starved for want of food. He said
never a word, but walked out of the
cabin, tied himself to a tree, and was
dangerously horsewhipping himself
when the cries of the frightened family
summoned the neighbors, and he was
brought to reason. He never touched
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
an intoxicating drop from that day to
the day of his death.
Another one of our fantastic mu-
tual cousins was the " Earl of Durham."
I ought to say that Mark Twain and I
grew up on old wives* tales of estates
and titles, which — maybe it was a
kindred sense of humor in both of us —
we treated with shocking irreverence.
It happened some forty years ago that
there turned up, first upon the plains
and afterward in New York a^d Wash-
ington, a lineal descendant of the old-
est of the Virginia Lamptons — he had
somehow gotten hold of or had fabri-
cated a bundle of documents — who
was what a certain famous American
would call **a corker." He wore a
sombrero, with a rattlesnake for a
band, and a belt with a couple of six-
shooters, and described himself and
claimed to be the Earl of Durham.
"He touched me for a tenner the
first time I ever saw him," drawled
Mark Twain, "and I coughed it up,
and have been coughing them up,
whenever he*s around, with punctual-
ity and regularity."
The "Earl" was indeed a terror —
especially when he had been drinking.
His behef in his peerage was as abso-
lute as Colonel Sellers's in his millions.
All he wanted was money enough "to
get over there" and "state his case."
During the Tichbome trial Mark Twain
and I were in London, and one day
he said to me: "I have investigated
this Durham business down at the
herald's office. There's nothing to it.
The Lamptons passed out of the de-
mesne of Durham a hundred years ago.
They had long before dissipated the
estates. Whatever the title, it lapsed.
The present earldom is a new creation
— not the same family at all. But, I
tell you what, if you'll put up five
hundred dollars, I'll put up five hun-
dred more; we'll fetch our chap across
and set him in as a claimant, and, my
word for it, * Kenealy's Fat Boy' won't
be a marker to him."
He was so pleased with his conceit
that afterward he wrote a novel and
called it The Claimant, It is the only
one of his books — ^though I never told
him so-ythat I could never read. Many
years after, I happened to see upon a
hotel register in Rome these entries:
"The Earl of Durham." and in the
same handwriting just below it, " Lady
Anne Lambton" and "The Hon. Regi-
nald Lambton." So the Lambtons —
they spelled it with a "b" instead of
a "p" — were yet in possession. A
Lambton was Earl of Durham. The
next time I saw Mark Twain I rated
him on the deception. He did not
defend himself — said something about
its being necessary to perfect the joke.
"Did you ever meet this present
peer and possible usurper?" I asked.
"No," he answered, "I never did;
but if he had called on me I should
have had him come up."
His mind turned ever to the droll.
Once in London I was hving with my
family at 103 Mount Street. Between
103 and 102 there was the parochial
workhouse — quite a long and imposing
edifice. One evening upon coming in
from an outing I found a letter he had
written on the sitting-room table. He
had left it with his card. He spoke of
the shock he had received upon finding
that next to 102 — presumably 103 —
was the workhouse. He had loved
me, but had always feared that I would
end by disgracing the family — ^being
hanged or something — ^but the "work-
*us," that was beyond him; he had not
thought it would come to that. And
so on through pages of horse-play; his
relief on ascertaining the truth and
learning his mistake; his regret at not
finding me at home; closing with a
dinner invitation. Once at Geneva,
in Switzerland, I received a long, over-
flowing letter, full of buoyant oddities,
written from London. Two or three
hours later came a telegram: "Bum
letter. Blot it from your memory.
Susie is dead."
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
^7
How much of melancholy lay hidden
behind the mask of the humorist it
would be hard to say. His griefs were
tempered by a vein of philosophy. He
was a medley of contradictions. Uncon-
ventional to the point of eccentricity,
his sense of his own dignity was all-
sufficient. Though lavish in the use
of money, he had a full realization of
its value, and made close contracts
for his work. Like Sellers, his mind
soared when it sailed financial currents.
He lacked sound business judgment in
the larger things, while an excellent
economist in the lesser.
His marriage was the most brilliant
success of his life. He got the woman
of all the worid he most needed — a
truly lovely and wise helpmeet — who
kept him in bonds and headed him
straight and right while she lived; the
best of housewives and mothers, and
the safest of counsellors and soundest
of critics. She knew his worth; she
understood his gentus; she clearly saw
his limitations and angles. Her death
was a grievous disaster as well as a
staggering blow. He never quite sur-
vived it.
It was in the early seventies that
Mark Twain dropped into New York,
where there was already gathered a
congenial group to meet and greet
him. John Hay described this as "of
high aspirations and peregrinations."
It radiated between Franklin Square,
where Joseph W. Harper — "Joe Brook-
lyn," we called him — reigned in place
of his uncle, Fletcher Harper, the
literary man of the original Harper
Brothers — and the Lotus Club, then
in Irving Place, and Delmonico's, at
the comer of Fifth Avenue and Four-
teenth Street; with Sutherland's, in
Liberty Street, for a down-town place
of luncheon resort, not to forget Dor-
Ion's, in Fulton Market. The Harper
contingent, besides the chief, embraced
Tom Nast and Col. William A. Seaver,
whom John Russell Young named
"Papa Pendennis," and described as
"a man of letters among men of the
worid, and a man of the world among
men of letters" — a very apt por-
trayal, albeit appropriated from Doctor
Johnson — and Major Constable, a giant
who looked like a dragoon, and not a
bookman, yet had known Sir Walter
Scott, and was sprung from the family
of Edinburgh publishers. Bret Harte
had but newly arrived from California.
Whitelaw Reid, though still subordi-
nate to Greeley, was beginning to make
himself felt in journalism. John Hay
played high priest to the revels. I
used to make periodic and pious pil-
grimage to the delightful shrine.
Truth to tell, it emulated rather the
gods than the graces — though all of us
had literary leanings of one sort and
another — especially late at night-^-
and Sam Bowles would come over from
Springfield and Murat Halstead from
Cincinnati to join us. Howells, living
in Boston, held himself at too high
account; but often we had Joseph
Jefferson, then in the heyday of his
great career, with, once in a while,
Edwin Booth, who could not quite
trust himseljF to go our gait. The fine
fellows we caught from over the sea
were innumerable, from the elder
Sothem and Sala and Yates to Lord
Dufferin and Lord Houghton. Things
went very well those days, and, while
some looked on askance — notably Cur-
tis and, rather oddly, Stedman — and
thought we were wasting time and con-
vivializing more than was good for
us, we were mostly young and hearty,
ranging from thirty to five-and-forty
years of age, with amazing capacities,
both for work and play, and I cannot
recall that any harm to any of us
came of it. Although robustious, our
frolics were harmless enough — ebulli-
tions of gayety sometimes, perhaps un-
guarded— ^though each shade, or sur-
vivor, referring to those Nodes Am-
hrosiancB, might repeat to the other
the words of Curran to Lord Avon-
more:
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
"We spent them not in tojrs, or lust, or
wine;
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence and poesy,
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend,
were thine."
Mark Twain was the life of every
company and all occasions. I remem-
ber a practical joke of his suggestion
played upon Halstead. A party of us
were supping after the theatre at the
old Brevoort House. A card was
brought to me from a reporter for The
World, I was about to deny myself,
when Mark Twain said: ** Give it to me.
ril fix it." and left the table. Presently
he came to the door and beckoned
me out.
** I ifepresented myself as your secre-
tary and told this man,*' said he, **that
you were not here, but that if Mr.
Halstead would answer just as well, I
would fetch him. The fellow is as
innocent as a lamb, and doesn't know
either of you. I am going to intro-
duce you as Halstead, and we'll have
some fun."
No sooner said than done. The re-
porter proved to be a little, bald-
headed cherub, newly arrived from
the isle of dreams, and I lined out to
him a column or more of ** very hot
stuff," reversing Halstead in every ex-
pression of opinion. I declared him
in favor of paying the national debt
in greenbacks. Touching the sectional
question, which was then the burning
issue of the time, I made the mock
Halstead say: "The * bloody shirt' is
only a kind of Pickwickian battle-cry.
It is convenient during political cam-
paigns and on election day. Perhaps
you do not know that I am myself of
dyed-in-the-wool Southern and Se-
cession stock. My father and grand-
father came to Ohio from North Caro-
lina just before I was bom. Naturally,
I have no sectional prejudices, but I
live in Cincinnati, and I am a Repub-
lican."
There was a good deal more of the
same sort. How it passed through the
World office I know not, but it actually
appeared. On returning to table I
told the company what Mark Twain
and I had done. They thought I was
joking. Without a word to any of
us, next day Halstead wrote a note to
the World repudiating the ** interview,"
and the World printed his disclaimer
with a line which said: '*When Mr.
Halstead talked with our reporter he
had dined." It was too good to
keep. John Hay wrote an amusing
"story" for the Tribune which set
Halstead right and turned the laugh
on me.
They are all gone now. Only the
American Ambassador in England and
my.self are left to tell the tale. I am
warned by the terms of the summons
which has brought us together against
anything sorrowful, especially any-
thing lachrymose. Yet when my mind
goes back to those bygone days and
nights, the lines of the Irish bard spring
unbidden to my heart:
** The walks we have roamed without tiring.
The songs that together we've sung.
The jests to whose merry inspiring
Our mingling of laughter hath rung;
Oh, trifles like these become precious,
Embalmed in the memory of years;
And the smiles of the past so remembered.
How often they waken our tearr!"
Mark Twain's place in literature it
is not for us to fix. We are here the
rather to commemorate his character
and his personality; his courageous and
upright manhood as strong as Scott's,
as primitive as Carlyle's. as unassum-
ing and simple as Irving's and Whit-
tier's; integrity the bedrock, hard and
fast, quite hidden under the verdure
of sentiment and the flora of the loyal
and the gentle.
With the fine, unerring phrasing of
penetrative insight, Mr. Howells calls
him **the Lincoln of our literature."
It is a striking title, and as suggestive
and apposite as striking. The genius
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MARK TWAIN MEMORIAL CEREMONIES
29
of Clemens and the genius of Lincoln
possess a kinship outside the circum-
stances of their early lives: the com-
mon lack of tools to work with; the
privations and hardships to be en-
dured and to overcome ; the way ahead
through an unblazed and trackless
forest ; every footstep over a stumbling-
block, and each effort saddled with
a handicap. But, they got there —
both of them — they got there; and
mayhap somewhere beyond the stars
the light of their eyes is shining down
upon us here to-night.
Mr. Howells:
Now in our full cup, before we drain
it to the memory of the man so dear to
us, we dissolve the pearl which a poet
gives us from the richness of his head
and heart. Poet, humorist, divine, by
which natne shall we best thank our
honored and beloved Henry Van Dyke?
Dr. Van Dyke:
MARK TWAIN
We know you well, dear Yorick of the
West,
The very soul of large and friendly jest,
That loved and mocked the broad grotesque
of things
In this new world where all the folk are
kings.
Your breezy humor cleared the air, with
sport
Of shame that haunts the democratic court ;
For even where the sovereign people rule,
A human monarch needs a royal fool.
Your native drawl lent flavor to your wit ;
Your arrows lingered, but they always hit;
Homeric mirth around the circle ran,
But left no wound upon the heart of man.
We knew you kind in trouble, brave in pain;
We saw your honor kept without a stain.
We read this lesson of our Yorick's years:
True wisdom comes with laughter and with
tears.
Mr. Howells:
Here ends our part in the memorial to Mark Twain: it is for the ages to take up
the task and carry it on. You may trust them.
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T/4 3<5,/b~
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
Number IV: 1910-1911
New York
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^ FEB 2 1912
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Copyright, 191 1, by
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AN
LETTERS, and of THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Sessions at the New Theatre, New York, December 8-9, 1910
December 8: Morning
William Dean Howells,
President of the Academy, in the Chair
PACB
A Breakfast with Alexandre Dumas
John Bigelow 5
Criticism
William Crary Brownell . . 11
The Revolt of the Unfit: Reflections on the Doctrine of
Evolution
Nicholas Murray Butler . . 21
The Living Past in the Living Present
Henry Mills Alden .... 25
December 8: Afternoon. Henry Van Dyke,
President of the Institute, in the Chair
Music and the Americans
Waller Damrosch .... 31
The Worker in Poetry
Percy Mackaye 37
Local Color as the Vital Element of American Fiction
Hamlin Garland 41
Recent Tendencies in Sculpture
Lorado Taft 46
December 9: Morning
Commemorative Papers:
Saint-Gaudens, Stedman, Clemens, Hay, MacDowell
Brander Malthews .... 55
McKim. Norton, Ward, Aldrich, Jefferson
William Milligan Shane . . 59
Gilder, Harris, Hale, Schurz, Homer
Hamilton Wright Mabie . . 65
Reading from Shakespeare*s ''Henry V*'
Horace Howard Furness
Sketch of the Academy and List of its Members
and Officers 69
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Published at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary ol the Academy. Mr R. U Johnson,
33 East 17th Street, New York Price per annum $1.00
Vol. I New York, November i, 191 i No. 4
THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Public Meetings held at the New Theatre, New York, December 8-9, 1910
William Dean Howells
President of the Academy in the Chair
A BREAKFAST WITH ALEXANDRE DUMAS
ByJJohn Bigelow
In the month of October, 1864, a my acceptance of his invitation, and the
gentleman called at my apartment in following morning took the train from
Paris, and failing to find me there, left the St. Lazare station, which brought
his card, on which the following lines me to Enghein at twelve o'clock,
were inscribed with pencil: whence I took a cab for St. Gratien.
Si Monsieur etait rhomme aimable que ^'^^^er driving about a quarter of an
I'on dit, il viendrait dejeuner demain avec hour, I remarked, at the roadside we
moi a St Gratien, Avenue du Lac, en pre- ^yere approaching, a large and rather
nant le chemm de fer du Nord a 11 heures . ^ 1 1 • . j-
moins 10 minutes. picturesque-lookmg man standmg m a
Je lui serre bien cordialement la main. gateway opening into the front yard
Alex. Dumas. of a modest wooden cottage. He was
In other words that standing, with his head uncovered and
If Mr. Bigelow is the amiable man he is a book in his hand, talking to a passer-
said to be, he will come and breakfast with by. I recognized at once, from bis re-
me at St. Gratien, Avenue du Lac, taking the ^^^ui^„^^ 4.^ ^u^ t^^w.r.^ ..u^^.^^- Ur,
du Nord railway at 10 minutes before 11. I semblance to the familiar photographs,
cordially press his hand. the author of "Monte Cristo."
Alex. Dumas. While exchanging with him ,the
As I had never met or seen this, the commonplaces which usually inaugju-
most popular French romancer of his rate acquaintance made by strangers,. I
time, of course I promptly telegraphed took a hasty but careful survey of my
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
host and his surroundings. Dumas
himself, I discovered to my surprise,
was over six feet high, and, but for an
inclination to corpulency, well propor-
tioned. He had all the more distinc-
tive characteristics of the African
race: the brown complexion of the
quadroon, crisp, bushy hair which no
comb could straighten, a head low and
narrow in front, but enlarging rapidly
as it receded, thick lips, a large mouth,
and a throat, all uncovered, of enor-
mous proportions.
But for the retreating in all direc-
tions of his forehead, his face would
have been handsome for one of its
kind, in which the animal nature was
in full force. He was dressed in dark
trousers, a spotted muslin shirt un-
buttoned at the throat, no cravat, and
a white flannel roundabout with a ca-
pote attached, all scrupulously neat.
He moved with the alertness of a
school-boy, talked all the time and rap-
idly. The cottage which he occupied
was simply furnished, and suggested
nothing of interest except the great
change in his fortunes since he built
his famous villa at St. Germain, and
"warmed" it with a festival of six hun-
dred covers, in the days when his in-
come is reported to have been over one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
year.
As we had never met before, he took
an early opportunity of letting me
know his purpose in calling upon me
the previous day. He had been told,
he said, that if he would go to America
and write a story, it would have a great
sale there. He wished to know what
I thought about it. I replied that he
was scarcely better known in France
than in America; that he could not
write a book that would not sell, and
that his welcome in the United States
would be enthusiastic. He said that a
lawyer in New York of French origin,
whose name I did not distinctly hear,
had recommended him to come, and
promised him a great success if he
would go at that time; that he pro-
posed, if I thought well of it, to leave
in about two months, and to be absent
four. It occurred to me at once that
in view of the critical contest still wag-
ing in America, in which the African
race had so much at stake, and where
the question of emancipation as a war
measure was under discussion, the ap-
pearance of one who had done more,
perhaps, than any other person of
African descent to vindicate the intel-
lectual capabilities of that race, would
be interesting and perhaps useful to
my country people, and, without doubt,
lucrative to him.
I remarked that the time seemed
short to see so large a country, and
asked him whether, instead of making
a story, or, as he called it, a roman, he
had not better give the world the bene-
fit of his personal observations ; that it
was an historical epoch with us, and
that the events occurring every week
transcended in interest and importance
anything legitimately available for ro-
mance.
To this he made of course no direct
reply, but went on to say that the idea
he had formed was to enter into rela-
tions with some bookseller to write a
four-volume romance, and sell it by
subscription. He said also that he had
received several invitations to corre-
spond with the press. I advised him
to enter into no arrangement with any
bookseller till his book was completed,
for he could scarcely tell till he had
done it what sort of book it would be,
nor, therefore, how it could be most
profitably marketed. I recommended
him to keep his pen free to make such
a book as a brief visit to the United
States might inspire, and, when made,
to sell it in the best market he could
find; and I invoked the example of De
Tocqueville, who, in his private letters,
frequently congratulated himself that
he had forborne to publish his first
impressions about America, but had
waited till they had had time to ripen.
Time and reflection, I said, will often
suggest to the most experienced trav-
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A BREAKFAST WITH ALEXANDRE DUMAS
eler things to add and correct which
sometimes determine the fortunes and
usefulness of a book.
In reply to these remarks he for the
first time betrayed to me his African
blood. He said he never corrected
anything; he wrote dans I'abondance,
and sent his manuscript to the printer
without looking it over; that he had
never reread an)rthing he had written
in his life except in proof. "My manu-
script," he said, "is without an era-
sure; if I get to altering and correcting,
I always end by throwing it into the
fire and beginning anew. I will show
you one of my manuscripts." With
that he called his secretary, a dark-
eyed, dark-haired, and intellectual-
looking young gentleman of some
twenty-two years, and requested him
to bring him a chapter of San Felice."
The secretary presently returned with
fifty or sixty pages of quarto manu-
script, which he placed in my hands.
There was not a single erasure or cor-
rection in it from beginning to end,
and, what surprised me more, the writ-
ing was in a clear, round hand, and not
at all like the current French chirog-
raphy. It was as legible as print.
I subsequently learned some facts
about Dumas's literary habits which
render it a little less than absolutely
certain that I really saw his own manu-
script in the package that was shown
to me. His secretary, it is said, wrote
so much like the great romancer that
no one but an expert could distinguish
the manuscript of one from that of the
other. His son and, indeed, many oth-
ers were said to possess this accomplish-
ment as well. In other words, Dumas
was in the habit of putting his name to
romances he had scarcely read, much
less written; he sometimes published in
a single year more volumes than the
most rapid penman could copy in twice
that time. For example, in 1845, sixty
volumes purporting to be the work of
his pen were issued from the Parisian
press. The copying alone of them
could not have been done by a single
man in a year. The remainder, be they
more or less, were done by others, at
first under his name alone, and later
under the joint name of himself and
their authors. I have been assured that
Dumas had a sort of manufactory of
plays and romances in Paris at one
time. His part of the work consisted
in giving it his name and perhaps its
title. One of his most faithful and fer-
tile collaborators, Auguste Maquet, is
said to have contributed not less than
eighty volumes to the stock of the con-
cern. Dumas is reported to have taken
yet greater liberties with printed
works. His appropriations, in one
way or another, of other writers' la-
bors got him into several duels and as
many lawsuits, from none of which
was he so fortunate as to retire with
quite all the character with which he
embarked in them.
In showing me his manuscript he
may have had it in his mind to disabuse
mine of any impression I might have
received of his plowing with other
people's heifers by showing the manu-
script of a work which he had but re-
cently finished. I had no doubt then
that it was his, nor have I much doubt
now, though unhappily his calling it his
was in itself by no means conclusive
proof. Whether his or not, I fully be-
lieve that he wrote dans I'abondance,
as he said, and did not revise. There
was where the African came in. He
had no reflective faculties. The mo-
ment be began to correct he became
confused, and the train of his thought
was irrecoverably broken. He had to
run down, like a clock, as he was
wound up, and without stopping. It is
the peculiarity of the African that, for
want of the reflective and logical facul-
ties, he is incapable, except in rare in-
stances, of measuring distance, size, or
time, or of thoroughly mastering the
common rules of arithmetic. Dumas's
blood was not sufficiently strained — or
shall I say corrupted? — to be an excep-
tion in this respect. At school he could
never be made to learn arithmetic, and
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
the greatest di£Bculty was found in get-
ting a little Latin into his head. He
excelled, however, in hunting birds'
nests, snaring game, poaching, riding
horses, fencing, and pistol-shooting,
and it was in gratifying these propen-
sities that he acquired the hardy consti-
tution which three-score years of a by
no means exemplary life had failed in
the least to impair.
In view of his contemplated excur-
sion to America I asked him if he spoke
English. He replied that he read it
a little, but he added, "Ma maitresse
est Anglaise, et elle me fera parler
tout de suite!' I looked at him again
to see if I had not misunderstood him,
and if he had not meant his valet, but
he went on to say that he had taught
her French, and that she was only
waiting till her accent was perfect to
appear at the opera.
He wished to know how much he
would require for his expenses during
his absence, and if 2,000 francs a
month would be enough. I told him
that if he took but one servant and no
woman it would.
While discussing these matters, the
door opened, and in walked a young
woman whom he addressed cordially
as '^Madame," and presented to me.
She saluted me in idiomatic English.
A glance at her convinced me that she
was the maitresse who was to endow
him with the requisite English for his
transatlantic excursion. She seemed
to be about twenty years of age, of
regular features, and but that her head
over the forehead was too flat would
have been beautiful. I did not hear
her name, if it was pronounced, but
she told me, I think, that one of her
parents was Irish, that she had given
concerts in America; and she showed
me a letter from a Mr. Thompson of
Cincinnati to her in which she was
addressed as "Picciola."
Matrimony is an institution the true
nature of which Dumas, I fear, never
<romprehended either the necessity or
the propriety. He was once mar-
ried, but not in obedience to any con-
viction that there was any fitness in
such formalities. It happened in this
wise, say the Paris gossips. When
about eighteen years of age, upon the
recommendation of General Foy, who
took him tmder his protection, he was
appointed to a secretaryship under the
Duke of Orleans, afterward Louis
Philippe, at a salary of about $250 a
year. When the duke had become
king, Dumas, with the same insensi-
bility to the distinction between a wife
and a mistress which he showed in
proposing to take his "Picciola" with
him to America to teach him English,
escorted a yotmg actress, who had fig-
ured at several of the minor theaters
of Paris, to a ball given by the young
Duke of Orleans, the king's eldest son.
After they had presented themselves
and been received by the duke, he said
in a dignified tone to his chivalric
guest:
'7/ est entendu, mon cher Dumas,
que vous n'avez pu me presenter que
votre femme."
These words were equivalent to an
order, a disregard of which would have
involved his disgrace. They were
married at once; all the literary nota-
bilities were invited on the occasion,
and even the austere Chateaubriand
was one of the official witnesses. They
soon, however, discovered that as mar-
ried people they got on better separate
than together; he remained in Paris,
and she went to Florence, where she is
reported to have died of an epidemic.
We waited breakfast till one o'clock
for the arrival of Mr. Genesca, the
editor of "UEurope*' from whom a
telegram then arrived informing us
that he had missed the train by two
minutes. The proprietor of the cot-
tage and a professional musician wxre
the only other guests. The honor of
conducting Madame to the table fell to
me. The breakfast was admirably
served, though it did not escape the
criticism of our host. A carp, cold and
more than two feet long, taken from
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A BREAKFAST WITH ALEXANDRE DUMAS
the neighboring lake, with a sauce pi-
quante, was followed by a hot roasted
leg of delicious mutton. Then came a
riz de veau, with tomato sauce. When
Dumas was handed some he declined,
saying, *'Je me defie de la sauce tomate
que je ne fais pas moi-meme." One of
the guests insisting that the sauce was
very good, "Ah," replied Dumas in a
tone between a sigh and a grunt, "it is
not as I like it." He afterward re-
marked of another dish not entirely to
his taste, "I can't quit the kitchen five
minutes without something going
wrong." After the riz de veau we had
ecrevisses, of which he ate enormously.
By this time his breathing had become
as distinctly audible as if it had been
effected by the aid of a high-pressure
engine. I never saw a person eat so
much like an animal. Grapes and pears
concluded our repast, which was con-
ducted to its destination with cham-
pagne, claret, and excellent burgundy.
Soon after we had made an end of
our eating and drinking, our host re-
lapsed into a state of stertorous somno-
lency against which he struggled for a
while manfully, but in vain. I ob-
served, however, that this was a famil-
iar experience with the household, and
was not to be noticed. Though some-
what reassured by the tranquil air of
my commensales I could not help feel-
ing a little as if I were the guest of
honor at one of La Fontaine's feasts
of the animals. In about half an hour,
however, he overcame his drowsiness,
and then talked on rapidly, and some-
times eloquently, and the more he
talked, the better looking he became.
His smile was very sweet, and there
was not a sordid, or mercenary, or
selfish trait in one of his features. He
spoke of topics of current interest like
a man of decided opinions, but evi-
dently saw them from a very restricted,
rather than from a philosophic or na-
tional, point of view. He said some
things that were striking. The em-
peror, he remarked, was un vrai con-
spirateur and not a brave man, hence
he did everything requiring courage in
the night, and then enumerated several
of his important nocturnal perform-
ances. He compared him to those
beasts of prey that seek their food only
at night, such as foxes, wolves, jackals,
etc., and said that he had the eye of
that class of animals.
The Franco-Italian Convention of
September nth, which had then been
recently signed, and of which the world
had just witnessed the auspicious con-
sunmiation, he pronounced very in-
genious and quite sure to restore Italy
to Rome. He spoke with great admi-
ration of our novelist Cooper, whose
works were lying on his table, and
whom he professed to have known,
which was probably true.
Before leaving St. Gratien I re-
turned to the subject of his projected
American expedition, made proffer of
such letters and counsel as might prom-
ise to be of service to him, and re-
peated the advice I had given him be-
fore, to make a book about the United
States, and not to sell it until it was
written. It was obvious that for some
reason, then not intelligible to me, this
advice was not altogether palatable.
During my ride home, reflecting
upon what had passed, I came to the
conclusion that his hope was that our
government, following the example of
several European states when in trou-
ble, might desire to enlist his pen in its
service, and that perhaps I was pre-
pared, under the cover of a bookseller's
engagement, to take him into the ser-
vice of the republic.
Speaking of his proposal, a few days
later, to Mr. Laboulaye, a distinguished
member of the Institute, he told me
that I should caution all to whom I
gave him letters not to lend him
money; for, said he, he will levy upon
every one of them, '*il est un grand
mangeur, and always in want of
money." This, he added, is so notori-
ously his character that I feel no re-
morse in warning you of it. He
thought, however, Dumas might make
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
a good book, and perhaps, in the cir-
cumstances, a useful one.
I need hardly add that I never of-
fered Dumas any special inducements
to visit America, nor that he ever exe-
cuted the project about which he con-
sulted me. That he did not I think
may be regarded as a matter for our
joint congratulations. For years Dumas
had been adored in France; his books
were to be found on the table of every
Paris salon, and he was recognized
ever)rwhere as one of the literary pa-
tricians of the world. In America he
would have found none of his race
with whom he or even his maitresse
would have associated. No President
of the United States had ever yet
dared to welcome a descendant of Ham
to his table. Booker T. Washington
was then only a lad, racially
"Born
r th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark."
In Washington, or indeed in iany of
our great social centers, Dumas would
soon have discovered that he was
among people many of whom publicly
avowed that to the race to which he
belonged none of the promises of the
Christian Bible were extended. It is
highly probable that both would have
abruptly left our country for their
homes, furious and vindictive. In
what way and to what extent they
would have made us expiate what to
them would have seemed our brutal in-
hospitality I shrink from trying to
imagine. But it is safe to say that it
was as fortunate for us at that crisis
in our national life that Mr. Dumas did
not come to us as, if he were still liv-
ing, his coming might exert a healing
influence upon our much ameliorated
racial dissensions.
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CRITICISM
By William Crary Brownell
I
Criticism itself is much criticized,
which logically establishes its title. No
form of mental activity is commoner,
and where the practice of anything is
all but universal, protest against it is
as idle as apology for it should be
superfluous. Indeed, I should be con-
scious of slighting just proportion and
intellectual decorum in laying any par-
ticular stress on the aspersions of the
sciolists of the studios, such as, for
example, the late Mr. Whistler, and of
literary adventurers, such as, for an-
other instance, the late Lx)rd Beacons-
field. As a matter of fact, these two
rather celebrated disparagers of criti-
cism were greatly indebted to the criti-
cal faculty, very marked in each of
them.
More worth while recalling than
Disraeli's inconsistency, however, is
the fact that, in plagiarizing, he dis-
torted Coleridge's remark, substituting
"critics" for ''reviewers," as those who
had failed in creative fields. The sub-
stitution is venial in so far as in the '
England of that day the critics were
the reviewers. But this is what is es-
pecially noteworthy in considering the
whole subject; namely, that in Eng-
land, as with ourselves, the art of criti-
cism is so largely the business of re-
viewing as to make the two, in popular
estimation at least, interconvertible
terms. They order the matter diflfer-
ently in France, where even in the lit-
erary reviews what we should call the
reviewing is apt to be consigned to a
few back pages of running chronique,
or a supplementary leaflet. With us,
even when the literature reviewed is
eminent and serious, it is estimated by
the anonymous expert, who at most,
and indeed at his best, confines himself
to the matter in hand and delivers a
kind of bench decision in a circum-
scribed case, whereas in France this is
left to subsequent books or more gen-
eral articles, with the result of releas-
ing the critic for more personal work
of larger scope. Hence there are a
score of French critics of personal
quality for one English or American.
Even current criticism becomes a
province of literature instead of being
a department of routine. Our own
current criticism, anonjrmous or other,
is, I need not say, largely of this rou-
tine character, when it has character,
varied by the specific expert decision
in a very few quarters and only occa-
sionally by a magazine article de fond
of real synthetic value. This last I
should myself like to see the Academy,
whose function must be mainly criti-
cal, encourage by every means open to
it by way of giving more standing to
our criticism, which is what I think it
needs first of all.
The critics of reviewing, however,
deem it insufficiently expert, and I dare
say this is often just. But the objec-
tion to it which is apparently not con-
sidered, but which I should think even
more considerable, is its tendency to
monopolize the critical field, and estab-
lish this very ideal of specific expert-
ness, which its practice so frequently
fails to realize, as the ideal of criticism
in general. This involves, I think, a
restricted view of the true critic's field
and an erroneous view of his function.
Virtually it confines his own field to
that of the practice he criticizes and
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PROCEEDINGS OF. THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
his function to that of estimating any
practice with reference to its technical
standards. In a word, expert criticism
is necessarily technical criticism, and,
not illogically, those whose ideal it is
insist that the practitioner himself is
the only proper critic of his practice.
This was eminently the view of the
late Russell Sturgis, who had an inex-
haustible interest in technic of all
kinds, and maintained stoutly that art
should be interpreted from the artist's
point of view, assuming, of course, the
existence of such a point of view. As
a matter of fact, there is none, and
v/hen it is sought, what is found is
either an artist's point of view, which
is personal and not professional, or
else it is that of every one else suffi-
ciently educated in the results -which
artists could hardly have produced for
centuries without sooner or later at least
betraying what it is their definite aim
distinctly to express. The esoteric in
their work is a matter not of art, but
of science ; it does not reside in the
point of view, but in the process.
All artistic accomplishment divides
itself naturally, easily, and satisfac-
torily, however loosely, into the two
categories, moral and material. The
two certainly overlap, and this is par-
ticularly true of the plastic arts, the
peculiarity of which is to appeal to the
senses as well as to the mind. A cer-
tain technic, therefore, — that is to say,
the science of their material side. — ^is
always to be borne in mind. But a far
less elaborate acquaintance with this
than is vital to the practitioner is am-
ple for the critic, who may, in fact,
easily have too much of it, if he have
any inclination to exploit rather than
subordinate it. The artist who exacts-
more technical expertness from the
critic than he finds, is frequently look-
ing in criticism for what it is the prov-
ince of the studio to provide: he re-
quires of it the educational character
proper to the class-room or the quali-
fications pertinent to the hanging-com-
mittee. Millet, who refused to write
about a fellow-painter's work for the
precise reason that he was a painter
himself, and therefore partial to his
own different way of handling the
subject, was a practitioner of excep-
tional breadth of view, and would
perhaps have agreed with Aristotle,
who, as Montaigne says, *'will still
have a hand in everything," and who
asserts that the proper judge of the
tiller is not the carpenter, but the
helmsman. Indeed, 'The wearer knows
where the shoe pinches" is as sound a
maxim as ''Ne sutor ultra crepidant,"
and the authority of the latter itself
may be invoked in favor of leaving
criticism to critics.
It is true that we have in America —
possibly in virtue of our inevitable
eclecticism — sl considerable number of
practising artists who also write dis-
tinguished criticism. But to ascribe its
excellence to their technical expertness
rather than to their critical faculty
would really be doing an injustice to
the felicity with which they subordi-
nate in their criticism all technical
parade beyond that which is certainly
too elementary to be considered eso-
teric. As a rule, indeed, I think they
rather help than hinder the contention
that criticism is a special province of
literature, with, in fact, a technic of its
own in which they show real expert-
ness, instead of a literary adjunct of
the special art with which it is vari-
ously called upon to concern itself.
And in this special province, material
data are far less considerable than
moral, with which latter, accordingly,
it is the special function of criticism
to deal. Every one is familiar with
plastic works of a perfection that all
the technical talk in the world would
not explain, as no amount of technical
expertness could compass it. However
young the artist might begin to draw
or model or design, whatever masters
he might have had, however long he
might have practised his art, whatever
his skill, native or acquired, whatever
his professional expertness, in a word,
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CRITICISM
U
no artist could have achieved the par-
ticular result in question without those
qualities which have controlled the re-
sult and which it is the function of
criticism to signalize, as it is the weak-
ness of expert evaluation to neglect.
Criticism, thus, may not inexactly be
described as the statement of the con-
crete in terms of the abstract. It is its
function to discern and characterize
the abstract qualities informing the
concrete expression of the artist.
Every important piece of literature, as
every important work of plastic art, is
the expression of a personality, and it
is not the material of it, but the mind
behind it, that invites critical interpre-
tation. As it is the qualities of the
writer, painter, sculptor, and not the
properties of their productions that are
his central concern, as his fimction is
to disengage the moral value from its
material expression, — I do not mean
of course in merely major matters, but
in minutiae as well, such as even the
lilt of a verse or the drawing of a
wrist, the distinction being one of kind,
not of rank, — qualities, not properties,
are the very substance, and not merely
the subject, of the critic's own expres-
sion. The true objects of his contem-
plation are the multifarious elements
of truth, beauty, goodness, and their
approximations and antipodes, under-
lying the various phenomena which ex-
press them, rather than the laws and
rules peculiar to each form of phe-
nomena) expression, which, beyond ac-
quiring the familiarity needful for
adequate appreciation, he may leave to
the professional didacticism of each.
And in thus confining itself to the art,
and eschewing the science of whatever
forms its subject, — mindful mainly of
no science, indeed, except its own, —
criticism is enabled to extend its field
in restricting its function, and form a
distinct province of literature, in re-
linquishing encroachments upon the
territory of more exclusively construc-
tive art. Of course thus individualiz-
ing the field and the function of criti-
cism neither • predicates universal ca-
pacity in, nor prescribes tmiversal
practice to, the individual critic, who,
however, will specialize all the more
usefully for realizing that both his field
and his function are themselves as
special as his faculty is universally
acknowledged to be.
II
The critic's equipment, consequently,
should be at least commensurate with
the field implied by this view of his
function. But it should really even ex-
ceed it on the well-known principle
that no one knows his subject who
knows his subject alone. And this
implies for criticism the possession of
that cognate culture without which
specific erudition produces a rather
lean result. If, which is doubtful, it
achieves rectitude, it misses richness.
The mere function of examining and
estimation can hardly be correctly con-
ducted without illumination from the
side-lights of culture. But certainly if
criticism is to have itself any opulence
and amplitude, any body and energy,
it must bring to its specific business a
supplementary fund of its own.
Obviously, therefore, that general
culture which is a prerequisite to any
philosophy of life is a necessity of the
critic's equipment, without which he
can neither estimate his subject aright
nor significantly enrich his treatment
to the end of producing what consti-
tutes literature in its turn, an ideal
which, as I have already intimated, ex-
hibits the insufficiency of what is
known as expert criticism. And of this
general culture, I should call the chief
constituents history, philosophy, and
esthetics. "The most profitable thing
in the world for the institution of hu-
man life is history," says Froissart,
and the importance of history to any
criticism which envisages life as well
as art and letters certainly needs no
more than mention. Nor can a modi-
cum of philosophic training be consid-
ered superfluous in a matter so explic-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
itly involving the discussion of prin-
ciples as well as of data.
Esthetics, however, in their broader
aspect may be especially commended
to even the purely literary critic as an
important part of his ideal equip-
ment at the present day. They consti-
tute an element of cognate culture
which imposes itself more and more,
and literary critics who deem them
negligible are no doubt becoming fewer
and fewer. No one could maintain
their parity with history as such an
element, I think, for the reason that
they deal with a more restricted field.
On the other hand, the extent rather
than the particularity of this field is
now increasingly perceived, and the
prodigious part played by the plastic in
the history of human expression is re-
ceiving a recognition long overdue. I
remember once many years ago a num-
ber of us were wasting time in playing
one of those games dear to the desul-
tory, consisting of making lists of the
world's greatest men. We had dis-
cussed and accredited perhaps a dozen,
when Homer Martin, being asked to
contribute, exclaimed, "Well, I think
it 's about time to put in an artist or
two." The list was revised, but less
radically, I imagine, than it would be
to-day. In France to-day no literary
critic with a tithe of Sainte-Beuve's
authority would be likely to incur the
genuine compassion expressed for
Sainte-Beuve when he ventured to talk
about art by the Goncourts in their
candid diary. In England such a critic
as Pater probably owes his reputation
quite as much to his sense for the plas-
tic as to his Platonism. In Germany,
doubtless, the importance of esthetics
as a constituent of general culture has
been generally felt since Lessing's time,
and could hardly fail of universal
recognition in the shadow of Goethe.
With us in America progress in this
very vital respect has notoriously been
slower, and it is not uncommon to find
literary critics who evince or even pro-
fess an ignorance of art more or less
consciously considered by them a mark
of more concentrated literary serious-
ness. And if an academy of art and
letters shoqld contribute in the least
to remove this misconception, it would
disclose one raison-d' etre and justify
its modest pretensions.
For so far as criticism is concerned
with the esthetic element, the element of
beauty, in literature a knowledge of es-
thetic history and philosophy, theory
and practice, serves it with almost self-
evident pertinence. The principles of
art and letters being largely identical,
esthetic knowledge in the discussion of
belles-lettres answers very much the
purpose of a diagram in a demonstra-
tion. In virtue of it the critic may
transpose his theme into a plastic key,
as it were, and thus get nearer to its
essential artistic quality by looking be-
yond the limitations of its proper tech-
nic. Similarly useful the art critic of
any distinction has always found lite-
rary culture, and if this has led him
sometimes to overdo the matter, it has
been due not to his knowledge of litera-
ture, but to his ignorance of art. But
this ignorance is measurably as inca-
pacitating to the critic of belles-lettres,
whose ability to deal with the plastic
that can only be felt must manifestly be
immensely aided by an education in the
plastic that can be seen as well. And
for the critic of thought as well as of
expression, the critic who deals with
the relations of letters to life, the cul-
ture that is artistic as well as literary,
has the value inherent in acquaintance
with the history and practice of one of
the most influential, inspiring, and illu-
minating fields that the human spirit
has cultivated almost from the begin-
ning of time.
Examples in abundance fortify the
inherent reasonableness of this general
claim for what I have called cognate
culture. The "cases'* confirm the
theory, which of course otherwise they
would confute. The three great mod-
ern critics of France show each in his
own way the value of culture in the
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CRITICISM
>5
critical equipment. Sainte-Beuve's criti-
cism is what it is largely because of his
saturation with literature in general,
not belles-lettres exclusively, of the
sensitiveness and severity of taste thus
acquired, or at least certified and in-
vigorated, and of the instinctive ease
and almost scientific precision with
which he was thus enabled to apply in
his own art that comparative method
already established in the scientific
study of linguistics and literary history.
Moreover, the range within which his
exquisite critical faculty operated so
felicitously acquired an extension of
dignity and authoritativeness quite be-
yond the reach of belles-lettres in the
production of his massive and monu-
mental history of Port Royal. His cul-
ture, in a word, as well as his native
bent, was such as considerably to ob-
scure the significance of his having
"failed" in early experimentation as a
novelist and as a poet.
How predominant the strain of
scholarship and philosophic training
is in the criticism of Taine it is super-
fluous to point out; the belletristic
fanatics have been so tireless in its dis-
paragement that at the present time,
probably, his chief quality is popularly
esteemed his characteristic defect. But
the apt consideration for our present
purpose is the notable service which his
philosophy and history have rendered
a remarkable body of criticism both
esthetic and literary, not the occasional
way in which they invalidate its con-
clusiveness. Almost all histories of
English literature seem inconsecutive
and desultory or else congested and
casual compared with Taine's great
work, whose misappreciations, as I say,
correct themselves for us, but whose
stimulus remains exhaustless. And one
may say that he has established the
criticism of art on its present basis.
The "Lectures" and the "Travels in
Italy" first vitally connected art with
life, and demonstrated its title by recog-
nizing it as an expression rather than
as an exercise. Certainly the latter
phase demands interpretative treatment
also, and it would be idle to ignore in
Taine a lack of the sensuous sensitive-
ness that gives to Fromentin's slender
volume so much more than a purely
technical interest. Just as it would be
to look in him for the exquisite appre-
ciation of personal idios)mcrasy pos-
sessed by Sainte-Beuve. But in his
treatment of art, as well as of litera-
ture, the philosophic structure around
which he masses and distributes his de-
tail is of a stability and significance of
design that amply atone for the mis-
application or misunderstanding o£
some of the detail itself.
Another instance of the value of cul-
ture in fields outside strictly literary
and esthetic confines, though, as I am
contending, strictly cognate to them, is
furnished by the essays of Edmond'
Scherer. To the comparative, per-
sonal, and circumstantial judgments of
Sainte-Beuve, to the systematic his*
torical and evolutionary theory o£
Taine, there succeeded in Scherer the
point of view suggested rather than
defined in the statement of Rod, to the
eflfect that Scherer judged not with his
intelligence, but with his character.
Rod meant his epigram as a eulogy.
Professor Saintsbury esteems it a be-
trayal, his own theory of criticism
being of the art-for-art's-sake order,
finding its justification in that "it helps
the ear to listen when the horns of Elf-
land blow," and denying to it, or to
what he calls "pure literature," any but
hedonistic sanctions — ^piquant philoso-
phy, one may remark, for a connoisseur
without a palate. Character, at all
events, forms a signal element in the
judgments of Scherer's austere and
elevated criticism, and if it made him
exacting in the presence of the frivol-
ous, the irresponsible, and the insincere,
and limited his responsiveness to the
comic spirit, as it certainly did in the
case of Moliere, it undoubtedly made
his reprehensions significant and his
admirations authoritative. He began
his career, you remember, as a pasteur^
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16
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
and though he gradually reached an
agnostic position in theology, he had
had an experience in itself a guarantee,
in a mind of his intelligence, of spiritu-
ality and high seriousness in dealing
with literary subjects, and as absent
from Sainte-Beuve's objectivity as it is
from Taine's materialistic determinism.
Without Renan's sinuous charm and
truly catholic open-mindedness, this
Protestant-trained theologian turned
critic brings to criticism not merely the
sinews of spiritual centrality and per-
sonal independence, but a philosophic
depth and expertness in reasoning that
set him quite apart from his congeners,
and establish for him a unique position
in French literature. Criticism has
never reached a higher plane in litera-
ture conceived as, in Carlyle's words,
'The Thought of Thinking Souls," and
it holds it not only in virtue of a na-
tive ideality and a perceptive penetra-
tion that atone in soundness for what-
ever they may lack in plasticity, but
also, it is not to be doubted, in virtue
of the severe and ratiocinative culture
for which Geneva has stood for cen-
luries.
Ill
Its equipment established, criticism
calls for a criterion. Sainte-Beuve says
somewhere that our liking anything is
not enough ; that it is necessary to know
further whether we are right in liking
it— one of his many utterances that
show how thoroughly and in what clas-
sic spirit he later rationalized his early
romanticism. The remark judges in
advance the current critical impres-
sionism. It involves more than the
implication of Mr. Vedder's well-
known retort to the time-honored phil-
istine boast, "I know nothing of art,
but I know what I like," "So do the
leasts of the field." Critical impres-
sionism, intelligent and scholarly, such
as that illustrated and advocated by M.
Jules Lemaitre and M. Anatole France,
for example, though it may, I think, be
strictly defined as appetite, has certain-
ly nothing gross about it, but, contrari-
wise, everything that is refined. Its
position is, in fact, that soundness of
criticism varies directly with the fas-
tidiousness of the critic, and that con-
sequently this fastidiousness cannot be
too highly cultivated, since it is the
court of final jurisdiction. It is, how-
ever, a court which resembles rather a
star chamber, in having the peculiarity
of giving no reasons for its decisions.
It has therefore at the outset an ob-
vious disadvantage in the impossibility
of validating its decisions for the ac-
ceptance of others. So far as this is
concerned, it can only say, "If you are
as well endowed with taste, native and
acquired, as I am, the chances are that
you will feel in the same way." But it
is of the tolerant essence of impres-
sionism to acknowledge that there is
no certainty about the matter. And in
truth the material to be judged is too
multifarious for the criterion of taste.
The very fact that so much matter for
criticism still remains matter of contro-
• ersy proves the proverb that tastes
diflFer, and the corollary that there is
no use in disputing about them. It is
quite probable that M. France would
find M. Lemaitre's plays and stories
insipid, and quite certain that M. Le-
maitre would shrink from the strain of
salacity in M. France's romance. High
diflFerentiation and the acme of aristo-
cratic fastidiousness, which both of
these writers illustrate, manifestly do
not serve to unify their taste. An ap-
peal to taste as a universal arbiter is
vain, since there is no universal taste.
And criticism, to be convincing, must
appeal to some accepted standard. And
the aim of criticism is conviction.
Otherwise actuated, it must be pursued
on the art-for-art theory, which, in its
case, at least, would involve a loss of
identity.
Feeling the unsatisfactoriness of the
impressionist's irresponsibility, the late
Ferdinand Bruneti^re undertook a
campaign in opposition to it. He be-
gan it, if I remember aright, in his
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CRITICISM
'7
lectures in this country a dozen years
ago. These lectures, however, and the
course of polemics which followed them
excelled particularly, I think, in at-
tack. They contained some very eflFec-
tive destructive criticism of mere per-
sonal preference, no matter whose, as
a final critical criterion. Constructively,
on the other hand, Brunetiere was less
convincing. In a positive way he had
nothing to offer but a defence of aca-
demic standards. He harked back to
the classic canon — that canon in ac-
cordance with which were produced
those works designed, as Stendhal says,
"to give the utmost possible pleasure
to our great-grandfathers." Whereas
criticism is a live art, and contempo-
raneousness is of its essence. Once
codified, it releases the genuine critic
to conceive new combinations, — ^the
'*new duties*' taught by "new occa-
sions,"— ^and becomes itself either ele-
mentary or obsolete. Whatever our
view of criticism, it is impossible at
the present day to conceive it as for-
mula, and the rigidity of rules of taste
is less acceptable than the license per-
mitted under the reign of taste unreg-
ulated, however irregular, individual,
and irresponsible. In spite of the
logical weakness of the impressionist
theory, it is to be observed that a high
level of taste uniform enough to consti-
tute a very serviceable arbiter is practi-
cally attainable, and, as a matter of
fact, is, in France at least, often at-
tained.
For in criticism, as elsewhere, it is
true that we rest finally upon instinct,
and faith underlies reason. The im-
pressionist may properly remind us
that all proof, even Euclidian, proceeds
upon postulates. The postulates of
criticism, however, are apt unsatisfac-
torily to differ from those of mathe-
matics in being propositions taken for
granted rather than self-evident. The
distinction is radical. It is not the fact
that everybody is agreed about them
that gives axioms their validity, but
their self-evidence. Postulates that
depend on the sanction of imiversal
agreem^t, on the other hand, are con-
ventions. Even sound intuitiops, fun-
<iamental as they may be, do not take
us very far. Pascal, who, though one
of the greatest of reasoners, is always
girding at reason, was obliged to admit
that it does the overwhelming bulk of
the work. "Would to God," he ex-
claims, "that we had never any need
of it, and knew everything by instinct
and sentiment ! But Nature has refused
us this blessing; she has, on the con-
trary, given us but very little knowl-
edge of this kind, and all other knowl-
edge can be acquired only by reason-
ing." But if intuitions had all the
importance claimed for them, it would
still be true that conventions are ex-
tremely likely to be disintegrated by
the mere lapse of time into what every
one sees to have been really inductions
from practice become temporarily and
more or less fortuitously general, and
not genuine intuitive postulates at all.
So that, in brief, when the impres-
sionist alleges that a correct judgment
of a work of literature or art depends
ultimately upon feeling, we are quite
justified in requiring him to tell us why
he feels as he does about it. It is not
enough for him to say that he is a
person of particularly sensitive and
sound organization, and that his feel-
ing, therefore, has a corresponding
finality. In the first place, as I have
already intimated, it is impossible to
find in the judgments derived from
pure taste anything like the uniformity
to be found in the equipments as re-
e^ards taste of the judges themselves.
But for all their fastidiousness, they
are as amenable as grosser spirits to
the test of reason. And it is only
rational that the first question asked of
them when they appeal to the arbitra-
ment of feeling should be, Is your
feeling the result of direct intuitive
perception or of unconscious subscrip-
tion to convention ? Your true distinc-
tion from the beasts of the field surely
should be not so much in your superior
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
organization resulting in superior taste,
as in freedom from the conventional,
to which even in their appetites the
beasts of the field, often extremely
fastidious in point of taste, are never-
tlieless notoriously enslaved. In a word,
even though impressionism be philo-
sophically sound in its impeachment of
reason unsupported by intuitive taste,
it cannot dethrone reason as an arbiter
in favor of the taste that is not intui-
tive, but conventional. The true cri-
terion of criticism, therefore, is to be
found only in the rationalizing of taste.
There is nothing truistic at the pres-
ent time in celebrating the thinking
power, counseling its cultivation and
advocating its application, at least with-
in the confines of criticism where the
sensorium has decidedly supplanted it
in consideration. Nor, on the other
hand, is there anything recondite in so
doing. It is as true as it used to be
remembered, that it is in "reason" that
a man is "noble," in "faculty" that he is
"infinite," in "apprehension" that he is
"like a god." The importance of his
exquisite sensitiveness to impressions
is a post-Shaksperian discovery.
In America I think our star exam-
ples illustrate the soundness of the ra-
tional rather than the impressionist
standard, and point the pertinence of its
recommendation to those who have per-
haps an idea that it died with Macaulay
and is as defunct as Johnson, having
given place to that which perhaps dis-
counts its prejudices, but plainly ca-
resses its predilections as warrant of
^'insight" and "sympathy." Certainly
American literature has one critic who
so definitely illustrated the value of the
thinking power in criticism that he may
be said almost to personify the princi-
ple of critical ratiocination, I mean
Poe. Poe's reasons were not the
result of reflection, and his ideas were
often the "crotchets" Stedman calls
them, but he was eminently prolific in
both, and his handling of them was ex-
oertness itself. His ratiocination here
has the artistic interest it had in those
of his tales that are based on it, and
that are imaginative, as mathematics
are imaginative. And his dogmas were
no more conventions than his conclu-
sions were impressions. His criticism
was equally* removed from the canoni-
cal and the latitudinarian. If he stated
a proposition, he essayed to demon-
strate it; and if he expressed a pref-
erence, he told why he had it.
The epicurean test of the impression-
ist, let nie repeat, is of course not a
standard, since what gives pleasure to
some gives none to others. And some
standard is a necessary postulate not
only of all criticism, but of all discus-
sion or even discourse. Without one,
art must indeed be "received in si-
lence," as recommended by the taciturn
Whistler. In literature and art there
are, it is true, no longer any statutes;
but the common law of principles is as
applicable as ever, and it behooves criti-
cism to interpret the cases that come
before it in the light of these. Its func-
tion is judicial, and its business to
weigh and reason rather than merely to
testify and record. And if it belongs
in the field df reason rather than in that
of emotion, it must consider less the
pleasure that a work of art produces
than the worth of the work itself. This
is a commonplace in ethics, where con-
duct is not approved by its happy re-
sult, but by its spiritual worthiness.
And if art and literature were felt to
be as important as ethics, the same dis-
tinction would doubtless have become
as universal in literary and art criti-
cism. Which is of course only another
way of stating Sainte-Beuve's conten-
tion that we need to know whether we
are right or not when we are pleased.
And the only guide to this knowledge,
beyond the culture which however im-
mensely it may aid us, does not auto-
matically produce conformity or secure
conviction, is the criterion of reason
applied to the work of ascertaining
value apart from mere attractiveness.
The attractiveness will take care of it-
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CRITICISM
19
self, as happiness does when we have
done our duty.
Finally, — ^and if I have hitherto
elaborated to excess, here I need not
elaborate at all, — no other than a ra-
tional criterion so well serves criticism
in the most important of all its func-
tions— that of establishing and deter-
mining the relation of art and letters to
the life that is their substance and their
subject as well.
IV
And a rational criterion implies a
constructive method. In itself analysis
reaches no conclusion, which is the end
and aim of reason. Invaluable as is its
service in detail, some rational ideal
must underlie its processes ; and if these
are to be fruitful, they must determine
the relations of the matter in hand to
this ideal, and even in dissection con-
tribute to the synthesis that constitutes
the essence of every work of any in-
dividuality. A work of criticism is in
fact as much a thesis as its theme, and
the same thematic treatment is to be
exacted of it. And considered in this
way as a thesis, its unity is to be se-
cured only by the development in de-
tail of some central conception prelim-
inarily established and constantly re-
ferred to, however arrived at, whether
by intuition or analysis. The detail thus
treated becomes truly contributive and
constructive in a way open to no other
method. We may say, indeed, that all
criticism of real moment, even impres-
sionist criticism, has this synthetic as-
pect at least, as otherwise it must lack
even the appearance of that organic
quality necessary to effectiveness. And
when we read some very interesting
and distinguished criticism, — such as
the agglutinate and amorphous essays
of Lowell, for example, — and compare
it with concentric and constructive
work, — such as par excellence that of
Arnold, — ^we can readily see that its
failure in force is one of method as
well as of faculty.
It is true that the monument which
Sainte-Beuve's critical essays constitute
is, in spite of their disproportionate
analysis, far otherwise considerable
than the fascinating historical and evo-
lutionary frame-work within which
Taine's brilliant synthesis so hypnotizes
our critical faculty. But in detail it
is itself markedly synthetic, showing in
general at the same time that the wiser
business of criticism is to occupy itself
with examples, not with theories. For
with examples we have the unity
"given" ; it is actual, not problematical.
And in criticism of the larger kind, as
distinct from mere reviewing or expert
commentary, by examples we mean,
virtually, and excluding topics of
more comprehensive scope, personali-
ties. That is to say, not "Don Juan,"
but Byron; not the Choral Symphony,
but Beethoven. I mean, of course, so
far as personality is expressed in work,
and do not suggest invasion of the field
of biography, except to tact commensu-
rable with that which so notably served
Sainte-Beuve. There is here ample
scope for the freest exercise of the
synthetic method without issuing into
more speculative fields. For person-
ality is the most concrete and consistent
entity imaginable, mysteriously unify-
ing the most varied and complicated at-
tributes. The solution of this mystery
is the end of critical research. To state
it is the crown of critical achievement.
The critic may well disembarrass him-
self of theoretical apparatus, augment
and mobilize his stock of ideas, sharp-
en his faculties of penetration, and set
in order all his constructive capacity
before attacking such a complex as any
personality worthy of attention at all
presents at the very outset. If he takes
to pieces and puts together again the
elements of its composition, and in the
process or in the result conveys a cor-
rect judgment as well as portrait of
the original thus interpreted, he has ac-
complished the essentially critical part
of a task demanding the exercise of all
his powers. And I think he will achieve
the most useful result in following the
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
line I have endeavored to trace in the
work of the true masters of this branch
of literature, the born critics whose
practice shows it to be a distinctive
branch of literature, having a function,
an equipment, a standard, and a method
of its own. For beyond denial criti-
cism is itself an art and, as many of its
most successful products have been en-
titled ''portraits," sustains a closer
analogy at its best with plastic portrait-
ure than with such pursuits as history
and philosophy, which seek system
through science. One of Sainte-
Beuve's studies is as definitely a por-
trait as one of Holbein's, and, on the
other hand, a portrait by Sargent, for
example, is only more obviously and
not more really a critical product than
are the famous portraits that have in-
terpreted to us the generations of the
great. More exclusively imaginative
art the critic must, it is true, forego.
He would wisely confine himself to
portraiture and eschew the panorama.
In essaying a "School of Athens," he
is apt, rather, to produce a "Victory of
Constantine." His direct aim is truth
even in dealing with beauty, forgetting
which his criticism is menaced with
transmutation into the kind of poetry
that one "drops into" rather than at-
tains.
I have dwelt on the esthetic as well
as the literary field in the province of
criticism, and insisted on the esthetic
element as well as the historic in the
culture that criticism calls for, because
it is eminently pertinent to do so in
addressing the Academy and Institute
of Arts and Letters. But there is the
additional and intrinsic pertinence, im-
plied in the title itself of these institu-
tions, that in a very true and funda-
mental sense art and letters are one.
They are so, at all events, in so far as
the function of criticism is concerned,
and dictate to this the same practice.
Current philosophy may find a prag-
matic sanction for a pluralistic uni-
verse, but in the criticism of art,
whether plastic or literary, we are all
"monists." The end of our eflFort is
a true estimate of the data encountered
in the search for that beauty which from
Plato to Keats has been identified with
tiuth, and the highest service of criti-
cism is to secure that the true and the
beautiful, and not the ugly and the
false, may in wider and wider circles
of appreciation be esteemed to be the
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THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT
Reflections on the Doctrine of Evolution
By Nicholas Murray Butler
There are wars and rumors of wars
in a portion of the territory occupied
by the doctrine of organic evolution.
All is not working smoothly and well
and according to formula. It begins to
appear that those men of science who,
having derived the doctrine of organic
evolution in its modem form from ob-
servations on earthworms, on climb-
ing-plants, and on brightly colored
birds, and who then straightway ap-
plied it blithely to man and his affairs,
have made enemies of no small part of
the human race.
It was all well enough to treat some
earthworms, some climbing-plants, and
some brightly colored birds as fit, and
others as unfit, to survive; but when
this distinction is extended over human
beings and their economic, social, and
political affairs, there is a general
pricking-up of ears. The consciously
fit look down on the resulting discus-
sions with complacent scorn. The
consciously unfit rage and roar
loudly; while the unconsciously unfit
bestir themselves mightily to overturn
the whole theory upon which the dis-
tinction between fitness and unfitness
rests. If any law of nature makes eo
absurd a distinction as that, then the
offending and obnoxious law must be
repealed, and that quickly.
The trouble appears to arise primar-
ily from the fact that man does not
like what may be termed his evolution-
ary poor relations. He is willing enough
to read about earthworms and climb-
ing-plants and brightly colored birds,
but he does not want nature to be mak-
ing leaps from any of these to him.
The earthworm, which, not being
adapted to its surroundings, soon dies
unhonored and unsung, passes peace-
fully out of life without either a coro-
ner's inquest, an indictment for earth-
worm slaughter, a legislative proposal
for the future protection of earth-
worms, or even a new society for the
reform of the social and economic state
of the earthworms that are left. Even
the quasi-intelligent climbing-plant and
the brightly colored bird, humanly
vain, find an equally inconspicuous fate
awaiting them. This is the way nature
operates when imimpeded or unchal-
lenged by the powerful manifestations
of human revolt or human revenge. Of
course if man understood the place as-
signed to him in nature by the doctrine
of organic evolution as well as the
earthworm, the climbing-plant, and the
brightly colored bird understand theirs,
he, too, like them, would submit to na-
ture's processes and decrees without a
protest. As a matter of logic, no doubt
he ought to; but after all these centu-
ries, it is still a far cry from logic to
life.
In fact, man, unless he is conscious-
ly and admittedly fit, revolts against the
implication of the doctrine of evolu-
tion, and objects both to being consid-
ered unfit to survive and succeed, and
to being forced to accept the only fate
which nature offers to those who are
unfit for survival and success. Indeed,
he manifests with amazing pertinacity
what Schopenhauer used to call "the
will to live," and considerations and ar-
guments based on adaptability to en-
vironment have no weight with him. So
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22 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
much the worse for environment, he
cries ; and straightway sets out to prove
it.
On the other hand, those humans
who are classed by the doctrine of evo-
lution as fit, exhibit a most disconcert-
ing satisfaction with things as they are.
The fit make no conscious struggle for
existence. They do not have to. Be-
ing fit, they survive ipso facto. Thus
does the doctrine of evolution, like a
playful kitten, merrily pursue its tail
with rapturous delight. The fit sur-
vive ; those survive who are fit. Noth-
ing could be more simple.
Those who are not adapted to the
conditions that surround them, how-
ever, rebel against the fate of the
earthworm and the climbing-plant and
the brightly colored bird, and engage
in a conscious struggle for existence
and for success in that existence despite
their inappropriate environment. Stat-
utes can be repealed or amended ; why
not laws of nature as well? Those
human beings who are unfit have, it
must be admitted, one great, though
perhaps temporary, advantage over the
laws of nature ; for the laws of nature
have not yet been granted suffrage, and
the organized unfit can always lead a
large majority to the polls. So soon
as knowledge of this fact becomes com-
mon property, the laws of nature will
have a bad quarter of an hour in more
countries than one.
The revolt of the unfit primarily
takes the form of attempts to lessen
and to limit competition, which is in-
stinctively felt, and with reason, to be
part of the struggle for existence and
for success. The inequalities which na-
ture makes, and without which the proc-
ess of evolution could not go on, the
unfit propose to smooth away and to
wipe out by that magic fiat of collective
human will called legislation. The
great struggle between the gods of
Olympus and the Titans, which the an-
cient sculptors so loved to picture, was
child's play compared with the strug-
gle between the laws of nature and the
laws of man which the civilized world
is apparently soon to be invited to wit-
ness. This struggle will bear a little
examination, and it may be that the laws
of nature, as the doctrine of evolution
conceives and states them, will not have
everything their own way.
Professor Huxley, whose orthodoxy
as an evolutionist will hardly be ques-
tioned, made a suggestion of this kind
in his Romanes lecture as long ago as
1893. He called attention then to the
fact that there is a fallacy in the no-
tion that because, on the whole, animals
and plants have advanced in perfection
of organization by means of the strug-
gle for existence and the consequent
survival of the fittest, therefore, men as
social and ethical beings must depend
upon the same process to help them to
perfection. As Professor Huxley sug-
gests, this fallacy doubtless has its
origin in the ambiguity of the phrase
"survival of the fittest.** One jumps
to the conclusion that fittest means best ;
whereas, of course, it has in it no moral
element whatever. The doctrine of
evolution uses the term fitness in a hard
and stern sense. Nothing more is
meant by it than a measure of adapta-
tion to surrounding conditions. Into
this conception of fitness there enters
no element of beauty, no element of
morality, no element of progress toward
an ideal. Fitness is a cold fact ascer-
tainable with almost mathematical cer-
tainty.
We now begin to catch sight of the
real significance of this struggle be-
tween the laws of nature and the laws
of man. From one point of view the
struggle is hopeless from the start;
from another it is full of promise. If
it be true that man really proposes to
halt the laws of nature by his legisla-
tion, then the struggle is hopeless. It
is only a question of time when the
laws of nature will have their way. If,
on the other hand, the struggle between
the laws of nature and the laws of man
is in reality a mock struggle, and the
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THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT
23
supposed combat merely an exhibition
of evolutionary boxing, then we may
find a clue to what is really going on.
It might be worth while, for exam-
ple, to follow up the suggestion that in
looking back over the whole series of
products of organic evolution, the real
successes and permanences of life are
to be foimd among those species that
have been able to institute something
like what we call a social system. Wher-
e\er an individual insists upon treating
himself as an end in himself, and all
other individuals as his actual or po-
tential competitors or enemies, then the
fate of the earthworm, the climbing-
plant, and the brightly colored bird is
sure to be his ; for he has brought him-
self under the jurisdiction of one of
nature's laws, and sooner or later he
must succumb to that law of nature,
and in the struggle for existence his
place will be marked out for him by it
with unerring precision. If, however,
he has developed so far as to have risen
to the lofty height of human sympathy,
and thereby has learned to transcend
his individuality and to make himself
a member of a larger whole, he may
then save himself from the extinction
which follows inevitably upon proved
unfitness in the individual struggle for
existence.
So soon as the individual has some-
thing to give, there will be those who
have something to give to him, and he
elevates himself above this relentless
law with its inexorable punishments for
the unfit. At that point, when indi-
viduals begin to give each to the other,
then their mutual cooperation and in-
terdependence build human society, and
participation in that society changes the
whole character of the human struggle.
Nevertheless, large numbers of human
beings carry with them into social and
political relations the traditions and in-
stincts of the old individualistic strug-
gle for existence, with the laws of or-
ganic evolution pointing grimly to their
several destinies. These are not able
to realize that moral elements, and
what we call progress toward an end
or ideal, are not found under the op-
eration of the law of natural selection,
but have to be discovered elsewhere
and added to it. Beauty, morality, prog-
ress have other lurking-places than in
the struggle for existence, and they
have for their sponsors other laws than
that of natural selection. You will read
the pages of Darwin and of Herbert
Spencer in vain for any indication of
how the Parthenon was produced, how
the Sistine Madonna, how the Ninth
Symphony of Beethoven, how the "Di-
vine Comedy,'' or "Hamlet" or "Faust."
There are many mysteries left in the
world, thank God and these are some
of them.
The escape of genius from the cloud-
covered mountain-tops of the unknown
into human society has not yet been ac-
counted for. Even Rousseau made a
mistake. When he was writing the
"Contrat social" it is recorded that his
attention was favorably attracted by
the island of Corsica. He, being en-
gaged in the process of finding out how
to repeal the laws of man by the laws
of nature, spoke of Corsica as the one
country in Europe that seemed to him
capable of legislation. This led him
to add: "I have a presentiment that
some day this little island will astonish
Europe." It was not long before Cor-
sica did astonish Europe, but not by
any capacity for legislation. As some
clever person has said, it let loose Na-
poleon. We know nothing more of the
origin and advent of genius than that.
Perhaps we should comprehend these
things better were it not for the persis-
tence of the superstition that human be-
ings habitually think. There is no more
persistent superstition than this. Lin-
naeus helped it on to an undeserved per-
manence when he devised the name
Homo sapiens for the highest species
of the order primates. That was the
quintessence of complimentary nomen-
clature. Of course human beings as
such do not think. A real thinker is
one of the rarest things in nature. He
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
comes only at long intervals in htipian
history, and when he does come, he is
often astonishingly unwelcome. In-
deed, he is sometimes speedily sent the
way of the unfit and unprotesting earth-
worm. Emerson understood this, as
he understood so many other of the
deep things of life. For he wrote: "Be-
ware when the great God lets loose a
thinker on this planet. Then all things
are at risk."
The plain fact is that man is not
ruled by thinking. When man thinks
he thinks, he usually merely feels ; and
his instincts and feelings are powerful
precisely in proportion as they are ir-
rational. Reason reveals the other side,
and a knowledge of the other side is
fatal to the driving power of a preju-
dice. Prejudices have their important
uses, but it is well to try not to mix
them up with principles.
The underlying principle in the wide-
spread and ominous revolt of the un-
fit is that moral considerations must
outweigh the mere blind struggle for
existence in human aflfairs.
It is to this fact that we must hold
fast if we would understand the world
of to-day, and still more the world of
to-morrow. The purpose of the re-
volt of the unfit is to substitute interde-
pendence on a higher plane for the
struggle for existence on a lower one.
Who dares attempt to picture what will
happen if this revolt shall not suc-
ceed?
These are problems full of fascina-
tion. In one form or another they will
persist as long as humanity itself.
There is only one way of getting rid of
them, and that is so charmingly and
wittily pointed out by Robert Louis
Stevenson in his fable, "The Four Re-
formers," that I wish to quote it:
"Four reformers met under a bram-
ble-bush. They were all agreed the
world must be changed. *We must
abolish property/ said one.
" 'We must abolish marriage,' said
the second.
" 'We must abolish God,' said the
third.
" 'I wish we could abolish work,' said
the fourth.
" T)o not let us get beyond practical
politics,' said the first. The first thing
is to reduce men to a common level.'
" The first thing,' said the second, 'is
to give freedom to the sexes.'
" 'The first thing,' said the third, 'is
to find out how to do it.'
" 'The first step,' said the first, 'is to
abolish the Bible.'
"'The first thing,' said the second,
'is to abolish the laws.'
" 'The first thing,' said the third, 'is
to abolish mankind.' "
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THE LIVING PAST IN THE LIVING PRESENT
By Henry Mills Alden
The mind of man is prophetic and
reflective — "looking before and after."
The soul dreams and remembers. But
if we would comprehend what it really
is to dream or to remember, we must
give back to time the integrity which
belongs to it as a term of life, but which
is formally divided by our understand-
ing. Seen as sections, apart from life,
past, present, and future are not real,
but notional. The past is not realiza-
ble, if we think ^of it as having wholly
passed; the future is not, if we think
of it as yet to come ; and the present is
least of all realizable, for while we have
memory or record of the past, and hope
or dream of the future, the present
wholly eludes our grasp — one part of
it gone and the other not yet come.
Past and future have no continent, yet
there only can we dwell, and the pres-
ent, which alone is a continent, waits
not for our dwelling. The passing
alone is real, and there is no time except
in our sense of this passing — b. living
and immediate sense of it not as me-
chanical motion, but as pulsation. Life
is creative, and the only reality is the
forever becoming.
At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, thinkers were turning to Kant,
who presented a scheme of the Under-
standing in which the ideas of time,
space, and causation were seen as sub-
jective. At the beginning of the twen-
tieth century, we are turning to Berg-
son, who, by the substitution of crea-
tive procedure for Kant's subjective
scheme, has solved all the problems
which the formal and inadequate Kan-
tian system left to vex the minds
of his successors. The moment we re-
gard life as creative, all problems dis-
appear. We no longer seek explica-
tion, but rest upon implication through
a living reason, itself as creative as life
is. The real excludes the notional. Life
is qualitative, not quantitative. We see
flux and persistence as complementary.
In what are called practical aflFairs —
where we consider everything with ref-
erence to antecedence and consequence,
thus acquiring a mechanical view of
causation — ^we regard experience as
static. In creative life — where we are
freed from the fixed nexus of sequence,
where we live intensively, and do not
ask of any quality "Why?" or ''What
for?" — experience is wholly dynamic.
Here we touch the pulse of vibrant,
enduring life, intensive and persistent.
We see what the historic sense — the
sense of the integrity and continuity of
life — really is, and what sensibility it-
self is, being a response, in a rhythmic
living organism, to rhythmic vibrations,
and that there is no reality outside of
the pulsing life. Here we arrive at true
transvaluations — from static and me-
chanical to dynamic. Life is creative,
crescent and, in its incessant mutations,
renascent. Memory is not a storehouse,
but a resurgence, and there is nothing
of vital importance to us in the record
which registers memory save as we feel
in it a living pulse coherent with pres-
ent impulse. That is what I mean by
the "living past in the living present."
The more intensively a people lives,
with swift mutations of its creative
life in art and literature, the deeper is
its curiosity concerning the past and the
greater its capacity to hold the past in
dynamic coherence with its present.
Our twentieth-century present has a
quicker pulse of creative life than has
ever been felt before in the world. Yet
there has never been an age in which
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
the living past has been so deeply in-
volved in the creative realization of its
ideals. This is so because our present
civilization is more intensively dynamic
than that of any previous age, therefore
more crescent, more vitally assimilative,
more quickly eliminative, rejecting the
non-living and the unreal. In our use
of the subtle and imponderable physical
forces, our mechanism simulates the
processes of life. The electric dynamo
is, in. its responses and inhibitions, al-
most physiological. We have not so
much to say about the inevitable **vice
of system" as we had twenty years ago,
because our vibrant life has entered in-
to our systems, giving them heart and
nerve and sensibility. In the field of
imagination the pulse of a creative hu-
man life dominates the creations of art
and literature, discarding the notional
and artificial and the dimensionally im-
pressive, and emphasizing the inten-
sive quality.
Ours is indeed a living present. Its
swift mutations give a new measure to
time itself — the measure of our forever
renascent purpose and sensibility, the
•measure of our human consciousness,
expanding with each new moment of
the more and more intensive life.
When we consider the forward-looking
purpose of our time, we are sensibly
impressed by immense achievements
and undertakings furthering our mate-
rial progress, and we know that in this
field the modem man is self-sufficient.
But the organization of our twentieth-
century life, apart from its practical
side, where we aim at efficiency, is com-
ing to participate in our creative ideals.
We take note of this especially, of
course, in associate altruistic work,
prompted not by conscience, but by sen-
sitive sympathy. But our creation of
a new politics springs from the same
beautiful motive, in full harmony with
that vital altruism which desires to
effect, in so far as possible, the equali-
zation of social opportunity. The or-
ganization of business on a non-com-
petitive basis, working hand in hand
with this new politics, promises to
reach a rhythmic harmony which will
not only transcend arbitrary industrial
control, but connote brotherhood and
expel war from Christendom.
In this survey of mutations by
which our consciousness is at once ex-
panded and transformed, we have only
noted the manifest alliance between
ultra-modem organization and ultra-
modern ideals; we have not touched
upon these ideals thertiselves, which are
not defined by any of these manifes-
tations, and which are, indeed, inex-
plicable, always beyond us, eluding
even their fairest embodiments.
But when we consider this human
consciousness of bur time, so diflferent
from the old heroic consciousness and
from the most developed consciousness
of Greek, Roman, or barbarian, do we
not naturally ask what it can possibly
want of the past? From a so superior
point of vantage why look back ?
It is not a question of what attitude
we need to take, or ought to take, to-
ward the past. There are no practical
utilities to be derived from the study of
Hebrew, Greek, or Latin; and in the
field of our ideals the knowledge of
history, as mere information, does not
serve us. If we confine ourselves and
our living experience to the aims and
motives stimulated by present-day
needs and prompted by present-day as-
pirations, we shall have practical effi-
ciency in everything relating to material
progress, and shall not lack in scientific
research or in the arts of painting, mu-
sic, and poetry. Fiction will lose noth-
ing of its power and charm, and our
human sympathies will have abundant
opportunity for wide and noble exer-
cise. But the disposition thus to con-
fine ourselves would imply a lack in
our human nature itself such as would
shame our content and self-sufficiency.
The historic sense is to humanity
what gravitation is to the physical uni-
verse— the reflex of its expansion. The
earth's orbit is its confession of solar
attraction, of harmonious coherence
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THE LIVING PAST IN THE LIVING PRESENT
27
with its source. So the historic sense,
too often apparent to us merely by its
gravities, is really an attraction, a con-
tinuing dynamic factor in the evolution
of himianity. Physiologically, racially,
and psychically humanity is spherical
and orbital, as a result of this attrac-
tion, bound together in its severalties,
remembering religiously a creative
source, feeling in its own pulsations the
beat of the fountain.
Our culture, in so far as it is a cul-
ture of the humanities, is the stun of
our cults — ^that is, of the things we
cherish because of this attraction,
which, as we have said, is inseparable
from htunan nature. We try to explain
this attraction to ourselves in definite
terms. We say that it is curiosity, the
desire to include all knowledge within
our mental domain; or that it is ro-
mance, the charm of that strangeness
which is associated with the antique:
but it existed before there was any
mental awakening, almost as a human
instinct, and in that long period of
primitive naturalism when man, in a
provincially intensive life, had only the
backward and downward look, it was
a sense of familiarity rather than of
strangeness, the close bond of kinship
holding the souls which death had
strengthened and magnified in intimate
communion with the living in the near
and friendly darkness. The only cul-
ture then was made up of two cults, —
that of the earth-mother and that of
ancestors, — each too immediate to be
called worship. This period of what
may be called an insulated historic
sense is especially interesting to us who
are growing into a new realism, a sec-
ond naturalism, the terms of which
correspond to those of the first, though
a whole world apart. The truth of life,
after complex brokenness, is reintegrat-
ing, felt again as real, freed from no-
tional distortions, from polemical dis-
cussions, and fanciful apprehensions —
all this as in that primitive seclusion,
but a luminous intuition instead of a
sealed instinct. Our historic sense is
not insulated, but open — a. sense of kin^
ship raised to a psychical plane. It is
as inexplicable as our idealism is, rest-
ing upon no logical grounds; like our
forward-looking ideals, it springs from
the very heart of desire. Therefore it
gathers into the present, by vital, rather
than by arbitrary, selection, the radiant
moments of the creative life and art of
the past, however diverse from our own
their outward investment. These mo-
ments are notes in a rhythmic harmony
not just in our key, perhaps, but re-
sponsive, and cherished — as old songs
are — for the human music in them.
We are not considering here the in-
evitable participation of the past in the
present as a matter of biology or hered-
ity. Cultures have blended where races
have not. Thus Buddhism came to
Japan from India. Thus Greece and
Rome and, in the course of a few cen-
turies, all Europe received from Judea
a spiritual principle which the Hebrews
as a race repudiated, and which, con-
fined to the East, would have had only
a degenerate development. This prin-
ciple, embodied in the living experience
of men and women for generations
before its official recognition, trans-
formed Europe from pagandom to
Christendom. This most creative of all
cultures was even more a living heri-
tage from one Christian generation to
another than if it had been racial. And
it is significant that the spirit of He-
brew prophecy and of the gospel was
not less potently operative or less eflfec-
tively transmitted when the peoples ac-
cepting these could not read the He-
brew or the Greek texts through which
they were conveyed, and that when they
came to read the Bible at all, they read
it in their own vernacular.
But the whole Hebrew movement
culminating in Christianity was so sin-
gular, so distinct from all other cur-
rents that have vitalized civilization,
that it refuses classification.
Looking back, then, to those ancient
races from which such heritage as we
may have is indirect or, as in the case
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
of the Indo-European races, hidden in
the lowest strattim of our language, we
find ourselves dependent upon texts,
montunents, and surviving examples
for any knowledge of their creative art
and literature. This whole field is open
to special scholarship, aided by archaeo-
logical discoveries, and is deeply in-
teresting to the philosopher. It is all
human, and our knowledge of it is an
important contribution to the expansion
of our modern consciousness. No part
of it — Egyptian, Phoenician, Accadian,
Babylonian, Assyrian, or Aryan — is
alien to human interest and curiosity.
But of all these races the Hellenic
alone presents a distinctively creative
ideal which, with all its limitations, is
vibrantly responsive to our own.
Greek culture, as compared with the
Roman, is detached from us — from our
language, our laws, our institutions,
and the texture of our literature. Our
debt to the Roman is immense, and es-
pecially to those qualities of the Roman
which the Greek lacked, — justice and
sincerity, — without which armies and
navies innumerable would have been
ineffectual and world-empire impossi-
ble. The genius of the Roman for the
building of institutions, including that
of the family, was almost creative; it
was architectonic, without the Hellenic
sense of beauty. The emperor's
title of Pontifex Maximus was might-
ily significant not only for the old po-
litical empire, but as prophetic of the
ecclesiastic pontificate. The Greek edi-
fication was psychically expansive, fol-
lowing the lines of the creative imagi-
nation, and manifest, therefore, chiefly
in the achievements of her mighty
poets, philosophers, sculptors, archi-
tects, and painters — a kind of empire
which could not be overthrown.
Rome knew no dawn ; we behold her
only in lier maturity and decline. But
she died for the world. Greece is for-
ever young — ^immortal, as genius is.
She lived in the world which over-
whelmed her in such measure as its
principle of selection would allow.
Her culture became the elegant orna-
ment of Eastern princes ; the equipment
of Cicero, to some purpose, and of
Oesar — to what issue it is as impossible
to divine as to conjecture what Chris-
tianity could have meant to Constan-
tine three centuries later. In the Ro-
man aedification of the Catholic Church,
at least in the matter of doctrine, Hel-
lenism was not silent. Augustine, the
chief of the Latin Fathers, was finally
converted to the faith through the epis-
tles of St. Paul, the Hellenist, and had
come to these by way of Plato, though
doubtless in a Latin version, as he was
not a master of the Greek tongue. But
the ecclesiastic fabric was as distinc-
tively Roman as that of the empire
had been; the Greek spirit forever
eluded its formal lines.
The medieval cosmopolitanism which
the Church fostered by pilgrimages and
crusades, developing European rather
than separately national consciousness,
helped to bring on the Renaissance, but
threatened to overwhelm Europe with
Latinity, and would have succeeded but
for the resolve of the several Gothic
peoples to develop independent nation-
alities and to maintain their vernacular
speech. But this reaction did not help
to a true revival of the Hellenic spirit.
Latinity was the recognized bulwark of
uniformity and established authority.
The new art found its stimulus in Greek
examples, a poetic exaltation of love in
select circles fed upon Plato; but in
education and literature generally Ro-
man traditions were dominant.
The Elizabethan era produced a
drama which was the only parallel of
Greek tragedy in the age of Pericles;
but its glory was not a direct response
to its antetype. yEschylus did not live
in Marlowe's mighty line, and Shaks-
pere knew him not. It was only such
another time come to England as
Greece had known — a time of awaken-
ing, of youth and buoyancy; such an-
other people, with the sense in them of
the sea ; such another renascence of cre-
ative genius.
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THE UVING PAST IN THE LIVING PRESENT
H
. The jeighteenth-century literature, be-
fore the Romantic revival, in no way
reflected Greek genius. The nineteenth
century began and continued in a dif-
ferent mood, reflective, and interpreta-
tive as no previous century had been,
prompted by high curiosity in scientific
investigation, with those swift muta-
tions of sensibility and ever-widening
expansions of consciousness which
deepen the historic sense. The Napo-
leonic wars, by reaction, stimulated and
strengthened European nationalities
and the development of an international
policy. The romantic note of revolt
against artifice and convention, against
merely traditional and hereditary privi-
lege and power, was dominant, stimu-
lating individualism.
It was in the historic sense deter-
mined by such an attitude that made it
not only possible, but inevitable, that
Hellenism should be revived in its own
essential quality and form, eliminated
from its Latin habiliments and affilia-
tions. It began to be creatively inter-
preted by vital assimilation in the
poetry of Shelley and Keats and,
later, in that of Tennyson and Brown-
ing, and by the greatest imaginative
prose-essayists of the century, such as
De Quincey and Pater and Symonds.
No disclosures made by archaeology
have been deemed so precious as those
which have brought to light new exam-
ples of Greek art or new texts of the
Greek poets.
It is because Hellenism, as it is pre-
sented to us, is capable of so complete
detachment, and can be regarded in its
integrity, that its distinctive charm and
imaginative values may be clearly ap-
prehended by us and enter into our cul-
ture of the humanities for just what
they are, not for spiritual exaltation or
for any profound suggestiveness of the
mystery of our human life, but as real-
izing in utmost visible perfection the
forms of beauty and the rhjrthmic har-
mony of united physical and mental ac-
tion. It is perhaps chiefly as illustrat-
ing the play of life, even in its agonism,
that Greek culture is our inspiration.
Here at least our youth might derive
frcmi that culture an uplifting sugges-
tion. The Hellenic games and public,
spectacles were inseparably associated
with poetry and the plastic arts... The.
love of joy was jpinefl to the love of
beauty. Athletic exercise made the
human body the inspiration of the sculp-
tor, and it was fitting that the most emi-
nent sculptors should niake statues of
Olympic victors. When we think of
the Olympic gaines, we think also of
Pindar and Herodotus, and of the art-
ists who made these games the occa-
sion for an exhibition of their paintings.
We can hardly think of these affairs as
amusements, since the Muses were so
conspicuously present.
But while Hellenic more largely than
any other ancient culture contributes
to the expansion of our modem con-
sciousness, yet, as a part of our edu-
cational curriculum, it should not be
compulsory, but elective — elective be-
cause only as a dilection has it any liv-
ing significance in our culture. There
is nothing incongruous in the blending
of culture with practical efficiency. Our
most eminent financier is a man of fine
scholarly tastes and a connoisseur and
promoter of art. But the youth whose
sole aim is practical efficiency is not in
the mood to enjoy Greek literature or,
for that matter, to get much good out
of Latin. Culture is dependent upon
individual desire and aspiration. Bryant
had barely two years of a college
course, but from choice he became a fit
translator of the ''Iliad" and the "Odys-
sey." Americans have attained a fore-
most place in literature, have received
the highest degrees from Oxford, and
have assimilated more of ancient and
modern culture than one out of a thou-
sand college graduates, though they had
no university training. Scholarship, in
the special sense, is not to be depre-
ciated. Horner and Pindar, Aristo-
phanes and the Greek tragedians, are
more intimately known by those who
read them in the original, as Dante is to
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
those who read him in the Italian ; but
the best prose of any language is acces-
sible, in adequate perfection, through
translations. Much time would be saved
by reading Plato in Jowett's translation,
and the reader would thereby know
Plato better, without any appreciable
loss. Not only all the known facts,
but the most subtle phases of ancient
life, art, and literature, are open in his
own language to any ardent student
who has the passion for knowledge. If
he has not the passion, there cannot
be, from any source, a living past in his
present, or any living present to feel
the pulse of that past.
The nearer past invites us as allur-
ingly as the remote. Tennyson's dream,
happily realized, was to write "The
Idylls of the King." Browning felt the
Gothic enchantment. The Romantic
revival led Keats that way. Among the
most interesting creative interpretations
yet to come will be those tracing the
evolution of the barbarian races of
Europe along native lines before and
after their blending with Christianity,
and illuminated from the present or,
rather, the coming moment.
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MUSIC AND THE AMERICANS
By Walter Damrosch
This shall not be an effort to give you
a thirty-minutes' history of music in
this country. If that were my object,
I could begin by telling you how that
uncannily omniscient Benjamin Frank-
lin played the guitar with taste and
skill; how Boston once welcomed
George Washington with a choral can-
tata, especially composed for the occa-
sion, and performed with great eclat
with trumpets and drums, quite in the
Handelian fashion. But while all this
is no doubt interesting, it can be found
in various books and monographs on
this subject. I shall endeavor, however,
to speak of all this only in so far as it
relates to the present and future state
of music in this country — a country we
all love passionately, whether it be ours
by birth or adoption.
For to the artist this love of country
may be a religion, and no socialistic
dream of a universal brotherhood can
as yet offer us a satisfactory substitute
for a bond that at present unites ninety
million people sprung from all races
and creeds into an empire which is, at
least politically, already an accom-
plished fact. I say politically only, for
if the real proof of a racial and na-
tional union can be found only in a
country's art, its literature, sculpture,
painting, and music, we can as yet
claim to be only on the threshold of
such a lovely vision.
There seems to be no doubt that at
the end of the eighteenth and the be-
ginning of the nineteenth centuries
music was cultivated in simple fashion
by Americans as a real part of their
home life. Then came the opening of
the West, the discovery of gold in Cali-
fornia, and the influx of thousands,
nay, millions of immigrants. The stu-
pendous commercial possibilities thus
opened before them seem to have
killed for many years nearly all artis-
tic aspirations. The real object of life,
the cultivation and adoration of the
beautiful, was lost in a general unrest
and a mad lust for wealth. For a
time it seemed as if the national soul
had been drowned in an ocean of ma-
terial prosperity or in the desire for it.
The possibility of acquiring wealth
quickly became so great and so allur-
ing that true patriotism seemed to have
been lost in individualism become ram-
pant. Those were the brag and bluster
days of ''American Patriots," whose
sneers at everything European and bla-
tant praise of everything American
made "America" a byword abroad.
They carried the Stars and Stripes
everywhere in noisy acclaim, perhaps
even pinning the sacred emblem some-
where about their august person as
they reluctantly climbed into the Euro-
pean four-poster, in order to register
a perpetual protest against the Euro-
pean feather-bed.
It is an ugly picture that writers and
historians present to us of life
in America during the twenty-five years
preceding the War of the Rebellion.
There was no sculpture or painting, no
architecture, no music worthy the
name, but such faces as Hawthorne,
Longfellow, and Emerson loom up as
proof that in literature at least
the national spirit was being nursed
and fostered to burn again into brighter
flame when better conditions should
arise. Then came the internecine war
of the North and the South, which by
reawakening a love of country merged
the individual into a greater whole, and
through suffering and sacrifice devel-
oped the higher aspirations of the coun-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
try, and kindled a torch the light of
which has ever since illuminated the
pathway of our art and literature.
Such music as we have developed
since then seems to have come to us in
different fashion than in Europe. There
it has sprung for centuries from the
people and from the people's songs.
There folk-songs blossomed like flowers
from the soil, and were carried into
the homes of the people, to be guarded
there, and cultivated as a precious pos-
session, until the simple folk-song
gradually became a Beethoven symph-
ony or a Wagner opera. America has
had no folk-songs, and therefore no
home music, and what music we now
have has been acquired by education
atone, and only among that class that
had not only the yearning for the beau-
tiful, but also the time to develop it. I
mean the American woman.
For teachers and performers, these
women naturally turned to Europe,
where music had been cultivated for
centuries, and soon these began to arrive
in a steady stream. Singers, instru-
mentalists, teachers, and orchestral
players came by the hundreds, and for
a long time, even into our day, every-
thing that had a European trade-mark
was considered far superior to any-
thing that could be produced here. A
musician had to speak with a foreign
accent to be accepted. If he had long
hair, so much the better. American
singers had to study in Milan or Paris,
and if they could boast of certain ro-
mantic episodes there, though they
might not be invited to dinner, it cer-
tainly made them more interesting on
the stage. Europe alone was supposed
to give them that delightfully wonder-
ful and mysterious something called an
"artistic temperament," which of course
could not be acquired in New York or
Brooklyn, Kokomo or Walla Walla.
But let us not rail too much at these
first inchoate yearnings of the Ameri-
can women for an emotional uplift, for
we owe to them in the main whatever
support music has received. These wom-
en, together with a long line of illus-
trious foreign musicians who made
America their home, worked wonders
in a comparatively short time, and as
one of the results of this work we now
have many American musicians who
can hold their own against the world.
But if New York, with a population of
four million, can number only, perhaps,
a paltry fifty thousand who may be con-
sidered musical, and of these fifty thou-
sand at least forty thousand are women,
we can hardly claim as yet to be a
musical people, no matter how great
the progress from nothing.
Even to-day a timid public may dis-
criminate against the American in paint-
ing or music because the old idea that
only Europe can produce real art still
prevails, and it is true that the Ameri-
can artist has often suffered cruelly be-
cause of this discrimination and injus-
tice. Our singers have had to make a
success abroad before they could be ac-
credited here, and American instnuncn-
talists and conductors have sometimes
been pushed aside to make room for
visiting foreigners, birds of passage,
who, no matter how high their artistic
ideals in tlieir own country, have come
over here for greed alone. Artistic
temperament ? No ! Commercialism
run riot, though masquerading under
high-sounding phrases about art. What
a long procession of avaricious foreign-
ers wends its way to our hospitable
shores every autumn ! Behold them as
they approach! Portrait-painters, of-
ten no better than their American
rivals, but more suave, keen, and com-
mercial, fawning with foreign gallan-
try at the feet of our rich men's. wives,
and always with an eye toward possible
sitters. Singers, demanding four times
the wage they could obtain abroad, and
often exaggerating their art into gro-
tesque sensationalism such as they
could not display in Berlin or Paris
without being hooted oflF the stage. Cele-
brated or notorious composers, who
even cynically sell their services to de-
partment stores for large sums of
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MUSIC AND THE AMERICANS
33
money because, as they declare, "It
makes no difference what you do in
America." Guest-conductors, blandly
ignorant of the glorious orchestral tra-
ditions which at least New York and
Boston can claim for the last forty
years, who think that they can instruct
us in the classics by presenting them in
distorted fashion or by impiously rein-
strumentating pages and pages of the
master works of the classic composers
on the plea that if these unfortunates
had lived in our time, they certainly
would have used the modem orchestra.
Just as if a modern painter would
take a Botticelli Madonna and say:
"Yes, the drawing is good, but the
colors of the fifteenth century are so
crude that I will repaint it in modern
style."
All this motley crew returns to
Europe with bulging pockets the mo-
ment their season here is over, and the
moment that they have squeezed the
very last dollar out of a credulous pub-
lic. America and its development in
art is nothing to them, and money
seems to be their only reason for com-
ing here.
Yet we need not despair. For con-
ditions are slowly but surely improv-
ing not only in New York, but all over
the country. Where forty years ago
there were only two S3miphony orches-
tras, and those but poorly supported,
there are to-day well endowed S3miph-
ony-orchestras in New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, St
Paul, St. Louis, and Seattle. Many of
these are conducted by musicians who,
if not bom Americans, have made
America their home and hope, and a
constantly growing percentage of the
orchestral players were either born or
educated in this country. We have
well endowed operas in New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, and,
above all, it is no longer necessary for
a musical student to go abroad for his
education. Musical schools with ex-
cellent instructors are to be found in
most of our musical centers.
Formerly our students in composition
had to go abroad for proper instruction,
with the result that having spent their
most impressionable years in a foreign
country, they came back as a more or
less good imitation of a German or
French composer, as the case may be.
To-day they can study in New York or
Boston, and draw their inspiration
from their native soil. Surely the place
for the American artist is in his own
country, and it is better for him to
be unhappy here than happy else-
where, even though his only reward be
a martyr's crown. We now estimate
those Americans at their proper worth
who have voluntarily left this country
to live abroad not for purposes of
study or research or for the education
of their children, but because, as they
will tell you, gloves are five francs
cheaper than in America, and one can
get a splendid cook there for eight dol-
lars a month. These people, having
given up their own country and not
really made themselves part or parcel
of another, are truly exiles in a foreign
land, men without a country. And, as
Orestes says in Euripides's "Electra,"
"though he have bread to eat, an exile
is a helpless man at best."
As a fact, the American man has gen-
erally held aloof from the entire mu-
sical development. He looks on music
as something foreign, something like an
accomplishment which his wife and
daughters can acquire, or buy, if they
wish it, but too effeminate for his sons ;
and as for himself, why, of course he
has no time for anything of that kind.
And so, partly owing to the constant
pressure of competition in business, the
perpetual harping on the one idea of
business, of desire for wealth, or of
feverishly developing the resources of
this country, he has gradually become
that dreadful modern product, "the
tired American business man."
If you should wander through the
residential quarters of this city, you
would see rows and rows of nice, re-
spectable, often palatial-looking houses
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
which repeat themselves on dozens and
dozens of streets, and you may wonder
who lives in them. The inmates do not
seem to figure largely in the social life
of the city; they are not seen much at
the opera or at concerts, and yet they
must be well to do, for real estate is
valuable and rents are high. These
houses are comfortably, perhaps even
luxuriously, furnished; but there is
something curiously silent about them.
They are like a forest without singing
birds, melancholy and lifeless. Just as
in such a forest you may hear occasion-
ally the raucous croakings of a crow, so
in these houses, when the piano is
opened, it is only to be used either for
the mechanical and predigested paper
rolls of the piano-player or for some
vulgar or platitudinous song of the day,
which, clad in gaudy red covers, has
been brought home by the daughter of
the house. There is no family life as
we understand it, no gayety, no chaff,
no joy of living. All that the great mas-
ters of the world have fashioned for us
in art and literature does not exist for
these people. They are like corpses
going drearily through the mere sem-
blance of life.
Who, then, are they and what do
they get out of this semblance? I
will tell you the terrible secret. All
these hundreds and hundreds of
nice houses are inhabited by the
"tired American business man'* and
his family. Every morning at seven-
thirty he drags himself from his weary
couch, and after a breakfast much too
heavy for his needs, he goes to that
dreadful region of the city called
"down-town," where he begins his
daily round of business at nine o'clock,
and continues it until five or six. Noth-
ing but business, business all day long.
For, as he will tell you, competition,
like a fiend, is always at his flanks,
driving him on, or beckoning to him
with alluring gestures that the great
natural resources of the country
must be developed. If you argue with
him that there is no inner necessity why
these resources should be developed so
immediately and so feverishly, and that
there is nothing that can possibly make
up to him for what he loses in the
real enjoyment of life, which is percep-
tion of beauty, whether in the lines of
a Rodin, the tints of a Turner, or the
symphonies of a Beethoven, he will look
at you in amazement. He has no time
for such foolishness, and of course the
country has to be developed, and more-
over, if he did not do it, his rival
would.
He may have had four years of rol-
licking, care-free college life — a life of
some ideals, of contact with things ar-
tistic ; but, alas ! under the grind of this
devil business, most of these finer per-
ceptions and aspirations have been
smothered or atrophied from lack of
use. No wonder that under such pres-
sure, from which there seems no re-
lease, he becomes — tired. He can no
longer read a book which makes de-
mands on the esthetic side of his na-
ture. To go to a concert would bore
him; for his mind is not capable of
following the development of a musical
idea into symphonic woof and struc-
ture. When he comes home in the
evening, he seems fitted for nothing
perhaps but a visit to the lightest of
farce-comedies, or, better still, an early
bed. And mind you, this condition is not
peculiar to New York, but repeats itself
in every city of the Union. And most
strange, this unnatural life of dreary
drudgery is accepted by every good
wife as a perfectly normal and universal
condition, which is even further accen-
tuated in summer, when she and the
children go to the country. Small won-
der that family life cannot exist where
there is so little community of interest,
and the desire for the joy of living,
which is so strong and so natural in
young hearts, may degenerate in the
case of the son into a life of dissipation,
and in the daughter into the silliest of
silly amusements. Is this necessary
and inevitable?
I have seen something of the young
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MUSIC AND THE AMERICANS
35
men of our country. I have often
played with my orchestra at Princeton,
Cornell, and in the miiversities of Illi-
nois, California, Oregon, and so on. I
have looked into thousands of their en-
thusiastic young and manly faces. Must
they all endure the same fate? Is this
curse on our country so powerful that
they all must become forever and aye
"tired American business men?*' Can
nothing be done to lift that fatigue
from the tired business man's heavy
eyes and brow ? Must his first smile of
content appear only as he snuggles
into his coflSn with the blissful certainty
that he can at last sleep without that
terrible round of work devoted only to
money-getting beginning again the next
day?
When I was a very yotmg man I had
the pleasure and honor of taking many
walks with John Morley over the
Scotch moors, and I remember his once
telling me that his great friend Glad-
stone asserted that the only real relaxa-
tion for a man of affairs and intellect
was not to be fotmd in cessation of
work, but in change of work. He found
relaxation, as you all know, in chopping
trees, translating Homer from the orig-
inal Greek, and quarreling with theo-
logians about the early Christian fa-
thers. I do not know how good his
translations were nor how sound his
theology, but we do know that he kept
his intellectual vigor, and therefore his
enjoyment of life up to the day of his
death at a ripe old age.
Now, it occurs to me that here is
where music could and should step in
and take the creases out of the tired
business man's brain, which has been
so strained by overmuch attention to
business matters.
But here the gentle, anxious wife ex-
claims: "My husband does not like to
go out in the evening. He is too tired.
I have to go alone to the opera and
concert-matinees, as I cannot find any
one to go with me in the evening." My
remedy is of a different nature, and is
intended not only as a cure for the
tired business man, but as a wonderful
cementing and strengthening of the
family ties. Let us call it a drama en-
titled, "The Salvation of the Tired
Business Man." There are in New
York literally dozens and dozens of fine
pianists, men and women, trained here
and abroad, who cannot get public ap-
pearances owing to the glut in the mar-
ket. But they love to play. They are
enthusiastic musicians, who are com-
pelled to devote most of their days to
the drudgery of teaching. This is also
true of many violinists. There is not
a violinist or 'cellist in my orchestra,
or in any other S3miphony orchestra,
who cannot sustain his part in a
Beethoven trio or sonata or quartet with
skill. He loves chamber-music, but has
little or no way of gratifying this love.
Chamber-music, written for a combina-
tion of a few instruments, possesses a
wonderfully rich literature by the
greatest masters, and is intended to be
performed in the home primarily ; but,
alas ! there is very little of this form of
entertainment to be found in our coun-
try.
Now, having produced some of the
actors for my little domestic drama, let
me set the scenes and properties, and
give you the plot. The tactful wife of
the tired business man must tell him
that she wants to have chamber-music
at her house once a week or perhaps
once a month. The children are grow-
ing up, and it is more and more diffi-
cult to keep them at home. Even the
pathetic billiard-table which the mother
has had placed in the basement does
not seem to be a sufficient inducement
for son Jack. She has found out that
the musicians can be obtained for a very
small outlay, for they are glad of the
opportunity to play their beloved cham-
ber-music ; and even this expense could
be divided among two or three fami-
lies, if desired. Then the tactful wife
must accomplish the rest.
Let us assume that she has prevailed
upon her husband (for American hus-
bands are proverbially gentle and yield-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
ing), the few guests have been selected,
the musicians have been arranged for,
and the tired business man has reluc-
tantly put on his dinner-jacket, while
the wife has eagerly donned her best
gown. For these evenings are to be
gala occasions, and there is a fine sym-
bolism in holiday clothes. The children
are of course allowed to sit up; but
the mother has swept away from the
piano the pile of disgusting and stupid
so-called popular songs of the day
which the children have acctmiulated.
The electric lights have been turned off,
and candles lit in their place. There is
nothing like candle-light with music.
Then the guests arrive, among them
perhaps, the family doctor, who, as a
matter of course, is musical. Did he
not take a post graduate medical course
in Vienna, where he went to the opera
and concerts almost every day, and is
he not suspected of secretly harboring
a violincello in his bedroom?
Then the musicians tune their in-
struments (delicious moment), and a
Beethoven trio begins. The tired busi-
ness man sits hunched up in an arm-
chair, at first a little uneasy at what he
has been "let in for." What has he to
do with classical music? That is some-
thing for women. He is a business
man, and he, sir, is developing the coun-
try. But gradually, as the lovely
adagio begins, his senses as well as
his muscles begin to relax. After
all, it is nice to have his family all
together, he sees them so little. He
looks at the piano, and there sits his
boy Jack next to the performer, for
whom he is eagerly turning the pages-
He cannot follow the notes readily, but
with a boy's cleverness he watches the
face of the performer at the critical
places, and at his agitated nod over goes
the page.
On the other side of the room sits
the daughter, looking sweet and happy;
and so she ought, as she has her best
young man devotedly at her side.
And then the tired business man
looks at his wife. Yes, her hair has
grown a little gray, but her face? It is
easily the most beautiful in the room,
even more beautiful than when he first
courted her. And then the music of the
adagio and his own musings seem to be-
come one. They seem literally to melt
tenderly one into the other. — How
sweet it all is ! — ^And how far removed
from bills of lading and the "develop-
ment of the country !" Let the country
wait a little while. — ^And as his eyelids
close, and perhaps, for a few minutes
only he nods into Dreamland, — shall
we blame him?
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THE WORKER IN POETRY
By Percy MacKaye
"Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine."
The room may be a low-raftered
kitchen; the worker, broom in hand,
may bestir himself among familiar pots
and kettles, rag carpets and plain
stools ; or he may motmt his implement
and be whisked away "ninety times as
high as the moon" to a room impan-
eled with worlds, where the fire-flaked
ceiling has no zenith, and the star-tiled
floor no nadir. It is all one to the
worker "as by God's laws." One con-
cern is his: If his action is to be fine,
it must accord with the laws of the
master of the house wherein he serves.
Thus the work in hand chiefly con-
cerns the worker, whether in poetry or
in so-called more practical things. The
nature of the work, its possibilities in
his hands, its infinite possibilities in the
hands of his successors, this, the poten-
tial in his work, interests him far more
than the actual. But about this he says
little, he works much. How he sweeps
the room, how he writes the poem, he
is probably glad to leave to those ex-
pert guides to good housekeeping, the
critics, to point out or dispute. Or,
questioned by the idly curious as to
the way he does his work, he may find
relief in that unexpurgatable reply
which Saint-Gaudens once made to the
persistent inquiries of an esthete, and
answer, "Any old damned way."
Why he does his work he knows, for
he knows he is the willing servant of
the master, or, in housekeeping phrase,
the mistress, of his labors, the Muse.
How and why, then, important
though these may be in themselves, are
questions of his work which do not
greatly concern the worker in poetry
to talk about.
One question, however, does concern
him to ask, and all others whom his
work affects to answer: Has he the
practical opportunity to work "as by
God's laws"?
We all know too well to-day that,
for sweepers of rooms, for makers of
bread, for diggers of coal and iron, for
the countless workers of the world,
man's laws, by which they must work,
do not tend to jibe with God's laws.
To the laws of beauty and joy there are
impediments in practical conditions.
The worker in poetry shares in these
conditions. To the poet's ideal work,
as to all ideal work, there are practical
restrictions. But as it is perhaps em-
phatically the function of the poet to
devote his energies to ideal work or
none, the practical restrictions of his
work become the more important.
As a worker in that field, I shall
try, therefore, to point out, in the very
brief space of this paper, a few of those
restrictions as they appear to me, and
to suggest how possibly some may be
surmounted.
But first. What is a worker in
poetry? I have spoken of workers in
coal and bread and iron ; these are spe-
cific things. Poetry is a vaguer term.
Roughly, then, to define it, I mean by
poetry the perennial stuff of the racial
imagination. Poets are molders of that
stuff in useful forms. And by useful
forms I mean forms serviceable to the
happiness of the race.
Under such a definition, the great dis-
coverers of the world, in science, art,
engineering, medicine, religion, agricul-
ture, what you will, may be called g^eat
poets; and such they are, for they are
constructive imaginers, or inventors,
who serve the race by their work. But
^7
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
a special class of these has usually
claimed the name of poet ; to wit, writ- '
ers in verse. Obviously, that special
class is my subject, but, not to limit this
class by any misleading distinction be-
tween verse and prose, I shall mean by
a poet an inventor of useful images in
the emotional cadences of speech; in
brief, a singer of imagination. Among
such, of course, singers in verse are
dominant, and their work is chiefly to
be emphasized.
Now, ladies and gentlemen, if I
should escort you to the nearest busi-
ness directory of our great metropolis,
turn to the letter P, and scan the pages
carefully, from pasteboard-makers,
through plumbers to publishers, we
should search in vain for the profes-
sional address of a poet. For this prob-
ably we would smilingly thank God,
but we would do well to think why we
thank him. Our thanks and our smiles
are perhaps our truest compliment to
the poet's calling; but they are likewise
our truest condemnation of human so-^
ciety as we are pleased to accept it. It
is of course simply natural that a call-
ing whose office is to mold the stuff of
the racial imagination in the emotional
cadences of speech should find no place
in a society organized not primarily for
the state or the race, but for individu-
als. It is also far better for the poet to
fill no recognized vocation than any rec-
ognized one which should debase his
true calling to commercial ends. For
this reason the poet becomes a worker
chiefly by avocation, and therefore he
is often popularly conceived as a spe-
cies of human papilio, subsisting pre-
sumably on ambrosia, culled from the
flowers of his own fancy. The fact,
, however, that the poet has no profes-
sional vocation is a real restriction to
his work. It is a restriction because,
unless he is supported by income or pat-
ronage, it compels him to make an avo-
cation of his highest powers. The main
current of his being is deflected and
consumed in waste products. He can
serve the Muse relatively in moments,
not in hours, of labor. Yet the poet's
work peculiarly requires concentration
and continuity.
Other workers in the fine arts, paint-
ers, sculptors, musicians, architects,
may make their art their recog^zed
calling. They may combine their dis-
tinctive labor with their livelihood. To
them society offers a vocation; not so
to the poet. In his case, except in the
rarest instances, his means of living
are derived from other sources than his
work in poetry. Where such sources
are lacking, either his work ceases, or is
debased by purely commercial uses, or
the poet himself starves. Perhaps the
most notable modem exception to this
is the work of Mr. Alfred Noycs,
whose poetry is said to be self-sustain-
ing ; yet even in his case, the significant
announcement is made that a play by
Mr. Noyes will soon be produced.
Let us remember, therefore, when the
dearth of true poets is bemoaned, that
society provides no vocation for the
poet.
But this restriction to his work leads
to another. Having failed to provide
him a livelihood for his work, society
proceeds to judge his work by the re-
sults. The results are what might be
expected from such failure to provide:
a wholesale driving out and killing out
of poets.
First, the driving-out. Thousands, I
had almost said millions, of poets are
born every year. I mean the little
children of the world. Bom "as by
God's laws" with divine curiosity and
eager imagination, they are maturely
confronted with man*s laws. Then the
most eager imaginers among them, see-
ing no vocation in the song which
springs to their lips, seek expression
elsewhere; and so they become the
poets of science and law and medicine
and industry — the captains of the
world.
Next, the killing-out. The great mass,
with no choice except between death
and mere life, ply the vast loom of
songless labor and unimaginative hope.
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THE WORKER IN POETRY
39
Lastly, the few singers left are of two
sorts, those with incomes and those
without. Among the former are found
most of the excellent names in English
poetry, a fact which is hardly a compli-
ment to our civilization. Among the
latter are the few remaining ones who
excel in spite of adversity, and the far
greater number whom the life of the
hack deteriorates or poverty reduces to
join those
"Derelicts of all conditions,
Poets, rogues and sick physicians."
Around both classes swarm the para-
sites of true poetry : the dilettantes and
the esthetes. Judging, then, by the re-
sults of its own ineptitude, society com-
forts itself by repeating two compla-
cent proverbs: "Well, well, after all,
*poets are bom and not made' " ; and
**You see, 'true genius always suc-
ceeds/ "
Another misconstruction of society is
an obstacle to the poet's work: its pas-
sionate nature. The dilettante and the
esthete are easily tolerated, if not vm-
derstood, by society, for their pseudo-
passion does not disturb its conven-
tions. But living passion for the beau-
tiful is usually preferred — posthu-
mously. Moreover, those long accus-
tomed to work without joy or passion
find it hard to conceive of the singer
as a worker at all. For them, "to loaf
and invite one's soul" is an invitation to
laziness, not to labor; "the poet's eye
in a fine frenzy rolling" is the merry
symbol of a numskull.
Nevertheless, the poet is perhaps the
most laborious of toilers:
•*For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
The martyrs call the world."
Thus modem society has organized
often for temperance, but hardly for
temperament. Yet recognition of the
function of temperament is essential to
recognition of the poet. Perhaps, for
this instance, it is sufficient to mention
the names of Walt Whitman and Edgar
Allan Poe.
There are other restrictions. By the
nature of his work, the poet seeks to
stir the elemental in man, the racial
imagination. This all artists seek more
or less to do. But the singer must ac-
complish this by means of the uttered
word. It is not sufficient, it is not even
essential, that his poem be written. To
fulfil its object it must be spoken or
sung. It is as reasonable to expect an
architect to be content with a specifica-
tion of his building, or a painter with
a photogravure of his painting, as a
poet with the printed page of his poem.
The cadences, the harmonies, the seiz-
ure by the imagination upon conso-
nants and vowels, of sounds which
subtly evoke the hiunan associations of
centuries — these are addressed to the
ears, not to the eyes, of his audience.
Originally his audience was not a
person, but a people. Homer sang to
all Hellas, not from the printed page,
but from the mouths of minstrels.
Thus the very craftsmanship of the
poet is based upon two assumptions
which are seldom granted him to-day:
the sung or chanted word, a convened
audience.
It is not surprising, therefore, that
his power with the people has waned.
The inspiration of the ancient bards
has never passed from the earth. It is
perennial in the poet's heart. But it
can never pass effectively into the
hearts of the people through their eyes
from the pages of printed volumes or
magazines. No; a partial renascence
of those older conditions of poetry is
needed for the work of the poet. Is
such a renascence feasible ? Is it prob-
able?
Not to invoke the millennium or the
golden age, I think the worker in poetry
may find true encouragement in the
promise of the present, and the present
here in Anierica.
Foremost, there exists for him one
vocation, whose object, like his own, is
to evoke the racial imagination by the
uttered word. There exists the drama.
To the drama the noblest poets of the
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
past have turned for livelihood and the
fruition of their labor. At the Globe
Theater, in London, Shakspere earned
both daily bread and immortality;
Sophocles both at the theater in
Athens.
To-day in America, the theater, it-
self but half aware, is being stirred by
mighty forces of re-birth, and the
drama is awakening to fresh and
splendid horizons. For the poet, then,
in verse or prose, the craftsmanship of
the dramatist already offers an actual
vocation.
Besides this, a revived form of
democratic drama outside the theater
is rapidly developing new opportunities
for the singer. The pageant has come
to stay. Participated in by the people
from town to town, the civic pageant is
being welcomed as a constructive form
of expression for our national and local
holidays. For this. Memorial Day, the
Fourth of July, Labor Day, Columbus
Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Lin-
coln's and Washington's birthdays, pre-
sent magnificent opportunities for the
noblest imaginings of poets and artists.
In particular these festivals give prom-
ise of vocation to the poet as such in
the revival and growth of the masque,
the ballad, and the choral song.
Unique in respect to these begin-
nings, last summer, the MacDowell
Pageant at Peterborough, devised by
Professor George Pierce Baker of Har-
vard, gave scope for the admirable
lyrics of one of our best younger poets,
Hermann Hagedom. His songs, set to
the music of MacDowell, and sung with
simple charm by those New Hampshire
country people, made history for work-
ers in poetry.
Another form excellent in possibility
is the occasional poem, recording mo-
ments of public importance. Largely
because of the equivocal vocation of
poets, this form has fallen into semi-
repute. It has even been urged by su-
perficial persons that special commis-
sions for works of poetry are beneath
the dignity of true poets to accept. The
same persons should, I think, urge true
painters never to paint special por-
traits or decorations for particular
places, and true sculptors never to ac-
cept commissions for particular stat-
ues. However, to the worker in poetry,
mindful of his art, a possible revival
of the vocation of Pindar gives no
shock to dignity and taste. He calls
to mind, without esthetic pain, the spe-
cial commissions of the Greek occa-
sional poet for songs of encomium,
hymns, paeans, choral odes, dance-songs,
epinicia, dirges, drinking-songs ; and he
recalls also with gratitude the lofty oc-
casional poem composed by our Ameri-
can poet William Vaughn Moody, "In
Time of Hesitation."
In presenting, then, some problems
and promises of his work to the pub-
lic, the worker in poetry to-day sum-
mons to mind not merely to-day, but
yesterday and to-morrow, for his work
deals with the long continuity of the
racial imagination.
Briefly, his ideal is the child ideal,
and his work is based in that. Like a
child, he demands opportunity to work
"as by God's laws": that is, to play.
Yet to play in no immature sense. For
to the perfecting of play, the poet
brings the ripest powers of his will and
imagination, and in consecration to play
he puts aside all merely unconstructive
pleasures, happy
"To scorn delights and live laborious days."
Thus, even though for him to play
may be to imagine intensely the bitter-
est sorrows of life, and to burden his
songs with "saddest thought" ; yet free-
dom and joy in his work are the axioms
of its execution, even as with the play
of childhood.
By that ideal of work, then, he re-
jects the arguments of the fatalist, that
childhood is a lovely condition of the
soul, necessarily to be outgrown ; of the
sophist, that it is forever impractical in
a practical world; of the commercial-
ist, that its only use is to renew the
foundations of sordid facts as they are.
To all such he replies, with the Master
of poets, "Unless ye be as a little child."
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LOCAL COLOR AS THE VITAL ELEMENT
OF AMERICAN FICTION
By Hamlin Garland
No one can run through even the
briefest collection of books written in
America without coming to a realiza-
tion that the history of our literature is
the history of provincialism slowly be-
coming less all-pervasive.
By provincialism, I mean of course
that dependence upon a mother-country
which marks a colony. This is the
sense in which the critic of compara-
tive literature would use the word. The
case may be epitomized thus: here on
the shore of America, one hundred and
fifty years ago, lay a chain of colonies
predominantly English — offshoots of the
Old World, whose citizens naturally
looked back to the mother-country for
intellectual support, precisely as they
imported their household furniture and
the cloth from which their finer gar-
ments were cut. They did not presume
to manufacture for themselves; how
could they transmute the hard and re-
pellent features of their environment
into art? Their very preachers were
imported, and for the most part took
their exile sadly.
In all that dreary mass of stuflF writ-
ten between 1700 and 1812 you will find
little that is distinctive, little that is
hopeful, and nothing with the accent
of joyous life. There is not in all that
time a single line to delineate the
song of a bird, the bloom of a flower,
the laugh of a child. The wilderness
was an enemy, the near at hand pro-
saic or repellent, the life of the colo-
nist without literary grace or color.
It is true that during the Revolution
the political paragrapher turned verse-
writer, and in some sort attempted a
statement of the time, but nothing in
what might be called art-form is record-
ed till Philip Freneau in verse and
Brockden Brown in prose fumblingly
touched upon certain phases of their
physical environment. Freneau wrote
one or two poems of graceful flow and
easy rhyme, and William Qiffton, a
young Quaker, published a poem on a
robin, and Brockden Brown put into
"Arthur Mervyn" some vivid prose de-
scriptions of the streets of Philadelphia
during the plague.
The War for Independence strength-
ened the colonist's love for his native
land and convinced him of the
necessity of iseparation from Eng-
land, liberating him in fact from the
political sovereignty of the Old World,
but left him timid and provincial in
literary affairs. Beginning shortly af-
ter the War of 181 2, we may detect the
first signs of an awakening literary
and artistic perception of the value of
native themes and near-by landscape.
Here and there a song was sung from
a sincere wish to embody some tender
experience, some sweet or epic phase of
nature, but it was not till Cooper, of
deliberate intent, wrote "The Spy" that
we may claim for America an Ameri-
can writer worthy to be studied.
I do not think the eflFect of Cooper's
work can be overestimated. His suc-
cess proved not merely that the local
novel could be written, but that it
would be read. His successive studies
of the red man and the primeval forest
taught not merely America but the
world the epical quality of the west-
ward march of American pioneers, and
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42 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
he was followed (at a respectable dis-
tance) by Sims, Hoffman, Bird, Web-
ber, and other cruder chroniclers of
"the dark and bloody ground" of the
West.
These story-writers were hardly
more than dime-novelists, and yet they
were at close-hand grapple with life,
and were honestly trying to put into
permanent literary form the characters
• and incidents they knew and found of
greatest interest. They were rough and
ragged, without grace or charm, and
yet in those books was the hint of
something native and true.
As the settlements increased in size,
as the pressure of the forest and wild
beast became less oppressive, expres-
sion rose to a higher plane. Men sof-
tened in speech and manner, yet re-
tained a certain quality which was
American. This border literature, how-
ever, did not attain widely acceptable
form till after the Civil War, though
New England and New York had taken
up the local movement, carrying it for-
ward to illustrious achievement through
Bryant, Hawthorne, Whittier, Lowell,
and Emerson. In Lowell and Whittier
especially are to be found the begin-
nings of the vernacular in American
verse, and in Whitman rose the song
of the American democrat in love with
the thousand aspects of his physical en-
vironment.*
Then came the Civil War, which may
be taken to mark the line between the
nation as a youth and the nation as a
man. Its epic story, its passion, came
near to freeing American writers from
slavery to Old World models and
themes, its experiences certainly broad-
ened and deepened the currents of our
national life.
Not merely did this struggle give rise
to a splendid body of ballads and short
stories ; it created historians and proph-
ets. It gave us perspectives on our
colonial wars and chieftains. Up to
this time American social movements
had not been to any considerable extent
embodied in art. American landscape
was but feebly reflected on canvas. Na-
tive utterance was for the most part
artless or timid and academic, and the
great interior of the nation, the border-
land, the plains, and the mountains,
were as yet unrepresented by poets and
novelists.
Nevertheless, two young men were
being prepared for this great work, and
when Bret Harte and Joaquin Miller
united to depict the epic march of the
Forty-niners and their absorbingly in-
teresting life on the Pacific Slope, local
color came into the power and signifi-
cance which Whitman had prophesied.
The success of these men, their instant
recognition at home and abroad, gave
inspiration and direction to the up-
springing writers of other parts of the
States.
One by one recruits joined the col-
umn. "Mark Twain" of Missouri,
George W. Cable of New Orleans,
Joel Chandler Harris of Georgia,
Thomas Nelson Page of Virginia,
James Lane Allen of Kentucky, Mary
E. Wilkins of Massachusetts, and
others almost equally representative, be-
gan to bring to New York, our great
central mart and exchange, their pic-
turing of the particular part of the na-
tion which they knew best, and so an
American school of local fiction was
established. Deeply considered, Wil-
liam Dean Howells, Charles Dudley
Warner, and others of what might be
called the urban g^oup, were in effect
parts of the local movement; for they,
too, were engaged in imparting local
color to their stories of life in Ameri-
can cities, and to-day we have groups
of writers all over America engaged in
delineating the life they love best, and
know the best, whose work bears very
little trace of Old- World prejudices,
Old World flavor. "The com has
flowered, the cotton-boll has broken
into "bloom."
Local color— what is it ? To me it is
the spontaneous reflection of life, the
natural and unstrained art which fol-
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LOCAL COLOR IN AMERICAN FICTION
43
lows upon a man's love for what he
sees clearest and loves deepest.
It is a settled conviction with me that
our nation must produce its own lit-
erary record, utter its own songs, paint
its own pictures in its own way, and
that no other race or nation can do
these things for us ; and when Fenimore
Cooper said, *'Why should we look
away to England, to Greece, and to
Rome for our themes? Why not take
our own men, our own scenes, as sub-
jects of fiction?" he laid the comer-
stone of our literature. That he failed
of fineness, or fervor, or imagination,
is beside the point. He made a brave
beginning, and a conscious beginning.
It is not my purpose to proceed fur-
ther along the historical line. I have
said this much to prepare the way for
my real contention, which is that
American literature, so far as it is crea-
tive, so far as it is distinctive, is an
embodiment of local color.
Mark well that I do not say that lo-
cal color is the only element of
vital importance in American fiction,
merely claim for it supreme value and
importance at this stage of our
social evolution. It is possible that
some of you may disagree with me
when I say that local color is demon-
strably the most hopeful and distin-
guishing characteristic of our best
painting, as well as of our best music,
because by local color I mean the native
element, the differentiating element, the
quality which corresponds to the subtle
divergence which sets one person apart
from his fellows. It is the difference
which interests us, not the similarities.
Historically the local, the realistic,
has gained in power and suggestion
from Chaucer down to the present day.
Each successive generation seems to
have been able to embody a little more
of its daily trials, defeats, and victories
than its predecessors, until to-day every
nation in Europe is filled with novelists
and dramatists whose pages drip with
local color.
All over the world men and women
are writing of the life close about them
as naturally as the grass grows. They
are looking at the earth and sky as
Whitman would have them to do. ''Stop
this day and night with me, and I will
show you the origin of all poems. You
shall not look through my eyes either,
nor through the eyes of the dead. You
shall look with your own eyes, and
filter the world for yourself." And in
America the movement of these local
novelists is already like the drift of an
army.
Not all our writers are of this mind.
Some of them still despise or fear the
local, the democratic; but they seem to
me to stand outside the normal devel-
opment of our art. Is it not in a sense
unnatural and sterile when an Ameri-
can steps aside to write novels of the
Old World, of distant lands? Can
there be lasting vitality, national sig-
nificance in such work? What sort of
figure would we present to the histori-
an, if all our writers were still compos-
ing poems, dramas, and novels upon
French or English or Russian themes?
I assert that it is the most natural
thing in the world for the young writer
to love his birthplace, to write of it, to
sing of it. All the associations of his
youth and early manhood naturally ap-
pear in his art, or would appear, were
he not in some way warped by educa-
tion or blinded by criticism. *From this
it follows that the local color which I
am describing is not put in, or should
not be put in, for the sake of local
color. It should go in because the writ-
er cannot help it, because he carries
with him consciously or unconsciously
a compelling sense of its power, its
beauty, its significance. If the novelist
is profoundly sincere, he will not stop
to consider whether the work will sell
largely or not. He will make his ap-
peal irrespective of success, irrespec-
tive of the dollar.
What we, as readers, should demand
of our writers, is not universality of
theme, but beauty and strength of
treatment, leaving the novelist, the poet.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
the dramatist, to work out his theme in
his own way, in his own time. I agree
with all those who say American art
should be raised to the highest level in
its technic, but I think the critic should
be careful, very careful, not to cut into
the creative man's spontaneous and in-
dividual quality.
To one who believes that each age is
its own best interpreter the idea of de-
cay in literature never comes. That
which the absolutist takes for decay is
merely change. The conservative fears
change, and the radical welcomes it.
The absolutist argues that fundamen-
tals cannot change, that the life of man
is essentially the same yesterday, to-day
and to-morrow; and yet if this were
true, the future to the creative artist
would be hopeless.
As a matter of fact, the minute dif-
ferences which the absolutist calls
''non-essentials" are the saving elements
of every art. All promise, all growth,
are in these non-essentials. It is the
difference between characters, the dif-
ference between writers, the difference
between nations, which forever allure
the fictionist.
To perceive the hopelessness of abso-
lutism in literature we have only to con-
sider for a moment. To admit that the
past rules, that models are to be rig-
idly followed, that there are forms to
which every young writer must refer
his work, is to commit ourselves to a
hopeless round of repetition.
There are no blind alleys in art. Each
artist is bom into the world with the
right to change, to affirm, or to deny.
Each writer stands accountable only
to himself, first, and to the facts of
life last.
Life is always changing, never the
same, and art and the artist, the paint-
er and the poet, change with it. Poetry
— ^that is to say, impassioned outlook on
life — is in no greater danger of extinc-
tion to-day than it was in the days of
Shakspere, but its manner, of expres-
sion is changing. Consciously or uncon-
sciously the point of view of the mod-
ern writer is that of the truth-stater.
Criticism of things as they are is al-
most universal, and this is at once an
expression of democracy and the out--
come of spontaneous art. We of
America do not look to the past, but
to the future.
It is natural for youth to break from
bonds, to overleap barrier^. The man
of to-day naturally discards the wig and
the shoe-buckles of his grandfather.
They amuse him as relics, but he does
not wear them. In the same way
he comes to reject, perhaps a little too
brusquely, the literary forms and artis-
tic models which accompanied the shirt-
frills and the snuff.
He respects the past as history, but
he loves the life of to-day, the abound
ing, irreverent, ttunultuous life of
America, the life that stings and smoth-
ers like the salt surf — life with its ter-
rors and triumphs, its familiar words
and ways, its loves and its hates.
In all the best art of our day life is
the model, truth, the master, the red
heart of the artist, the motive power.
Of what avail, then, the attempt to
turn back the wave of democracy, the
flood of fire ? The child will become a
man, the strong will become weak, the
old will be forgotten, for such is the
law of life.
To him who sees that difference, va-
riation from the past is the vitalizing
quality of art; there comes no rebel-
lion against change. The artist of the
future will take care of himself, pre-
cisely as did Shakspere and Rembrandt,
Corot and Scott.
In this word difference therefore lies
the highest hope of American art. It
is to me not only false, it is self-de-
structive, to say that humanity is the
same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow.
To say that the writer is committed to
the humble restatement of life in terms
of the past is to stop the river in its
flow, the grass in its season.
Some elements of life are compara-
tively unchanging, just as certain facts
of nature seem to maintain inflexible
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LOCAL COLOR IN AMERICAN FICTION
45
routine. The snow will fall, spring will
come, men and women will wed, the
stars will rise and set, and the grass re-
turn a thousand years hence, much the
same as now; but society will not be
what it is to-day. The men and women
of that far cycle will be only remotely
related to the men and women of our
time.
The physical face of this continent is
changing — changing so swiftly that few
are able to follow its transformations,
and these changes will certainly go on.
Our mountains will lose their wildness,
their austerity. Our dun plains will
take on green robes; roses will bloom
where now the hot sands drift. Cities
will rise and pleasure-walks be laid
in canons where only the savage pan-
ther prowls. Swifter means of trans-
portation will make the distant seem
very near. The States of South and of
North will be drawn closer together.
The physical and mental characteristics
of our citizens East and West will
change, the relation of sex to sex and
man to man will change, and our lit-
erature will chronicle these changes.
To me the present is the vital theme.
The past is a tale that is told, the
future a mountain in the mist. My
sympathies are with the iconoclast who
asserts that there is no traditional cri-
terion by which to judge men whose
aim is not to conform to conventions,
but to ignore them, who claim for the
artist perfect freedom to express him-
self in his own way, in his own time.
Realism, Americanism, local color,
do not spring from a theory so much as
from a condition of mind, — that is to
say, faith in the freedom of art. The
American writer needs only one fun-
damental rule — to be true to his time.
He should recognize but one master —
life. He may fail of allegiance now and
again, and fall below the level of his
highest hope; but that does not alter
the law, nor check the advance of the
column. American art cannot be the
reproduction of art; it must be, and it
will be, the creation of a new art.
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RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCULPTURE
By Lorado Taft
The most ancient and enduring of
the arts has, like all things human, its
fashions. Styles come and go in the
sculptors' studios, as in the millinery
shops; the changes, however, are
slower, and the discredited products of
the chisel remain inexorably permanent
for the diversion of new generations.
Now and then a work conquers our
esteem through sheer beauty or disarms
us by reason of its quaintness ; but out
of the "weed-like crop" of any period
little there is that survives the ephem-
eral moment which gives it birth.
In the story of France, Gothic art
was developed from the Romanesque,
and gave way in turn before the in-
sinuating appeal of the Italian Renais-
sance. This new gift of the South,
transplanted to Gallic soil, developed
unforeseen qualities of adaptability,
and delighted the world with its charm
in the hands of Jean Goujon and Ger-
main Pilon, followed by Puget and
Coysevox, but faded utterly before
Italy's next invasion under the banner
of Canova.
And so it is to-day. To some of us
whose memories hark back lovingly to
halcyon student days in the early
eighties, when France's modem school
was in its prime, making Paris the
Mecca of all the world — to us it seems
that no such nobility of united purpose
and grandeur of concerted result is to
be found in the story of the centuries
since the nameless cathedral-builders
made real their splendid dreams all
over northern France. The medieval
sculptors carved "to the glory of God"
and of their native towns. This later
group may have been less directly con-
cerned in the glory of God, but was
certainly inspired by a lofty sense of
citizenship and a desire to uphold the
fair fame of France. To one who has
known and revered Paul Dubois, Henri
Chapu, and Barrias, who has delighted
in the ingenuity of St. Marceaux, the
magic touch of Falguiere, the fire and
grace of Merde's "Efeivid" and "Gloria
Victis," the ethereal charm of the "Au-
rora" of Delaplanche, and who after
all these years cannot think of the ear-
nestness and integrity of these men
without a thrill of emotion — to such
a pilgrim a visit to the Paris of to-day
brings grievous disappointment. The
giants are all gone. Frcmiet, the last
of that early brotherhood, died this
year. Mercie, a younger man, long
since succumbed to fatty degeneration
of the imagination and rises no more
to those youthful heights. Even Rodin,
the great insurgent, has become harm-
less now. Old and prosperous, he has
done nothing of interest in the last ten
years.
In place of a self-respecting art
worthy of its ancient lineage, we find
in Paris to-day the puerile effronteries
of Matisse and of Maillot, delighting
through their very ineptitude a public
avid of new sensations. Realism and
unbridled cleverness have run their
course, and the jaded <:ritics find re-
freshment in willful bungling and pre-
tence of naivete.
One protests that these things are
merely the froth of the annual exhi-
bitions, that there is always a great body
of admirable work, less obtrusive, be-
cause decent. This is doubtless true,
but the fact remains that the general
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RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCULPTURE
47
trend is pretty clearly indicated by the
character of recent public monuments.
Can you recall a single distinguished
work erected in Paris since 1900? On
the other hand, the ignoble "stunts"
given hopeless eternalization there
within the last few years are too many
to catalogue. Rodin is undoubtedly
the greatest sculptural genius of our
time, but this master of form has taken
nearly two decades to complete a form-
less monument to Victor Hugo. Even
his vivid fancy has its limitations; he
proved early in his **Claude Lorraine"
that he ignored the most elementary
requirements of a work to be seen from
a distance. Like the two French sculp-
tors who, under the very shadow of
the Athenian Acropolis, erected that
strange white confusion to the memory
of Lord Byron, this mighty dreamer has
neglected more than once to make his
work legible, and though constantly
seeking, as he tells us, "to find the la-
tent heroic in every natural movement,"
he has often failed to express himself
in nobility of line. We should not
hold him personally responsible for the
present decadence any more than we
can charge the decline of the Italian
Renaissance to Michelangelo. The
eminence of the master makes his in-
fluence all-powerful. His weaknesses
and peculiarities are more easily copied
than his real inherent strength, the
growth of a lifetime. So the lesser
men follow, developing with enthusi-
asm any license encouraged by such
high example. Rodin's carelessness of
the silhouette has been gratefully emu-
lated by an army of young sculptors
and by not a few of the older men as
well. Dalou's tribute to Delacroix in
the Luxembourg Gardens is an un-
happy tribute to Rodin also in that it
is one of the most offensive and perni-
cious examples of the new method.
The stolid bust of the painter is as-
sailed by a nude female of adventurous
mien, who endeavors to climb his slen-
der pedestal in order to decorate him.
Her voluptuous form is precariously
supported by a violent figure of
*Time," who, taxed to the utmost, is
encouraged by Apollo with out-
stretched, applauding hands. The
impression of tumultuous acrobatics
is undignified and irritating beyond
words. There is no sense of eternity
where Time plays such pranks.
The present generation follows pell-
mell. M. Puech, once so promising,
showed steady decline after that early
and truly beautiful work, "The Muse
of Andre Chenier," in the Luxembourg.
His "Siren" was all wings and waves
and fish-tails picturesquely incoherent.
His famous relief, "The Nymph of the
Seine," was too true to be good, too
faithful to fact to be very noble sculp-
ture— a dainty and fragile nude of
most personal look. Such things may
perhaps be excusable in relief, pro-
tected, as they are, by the conventions
of that delicate form of sculpture, but
they point a dangerous tendency. Two
recent works of a public character by
M. Puech are lamentable. A class me-
morial in a manual training school
shows a saucy Parisienne, quite nude,
of course, seated upon an anvil and toy-
ing with a pair of pincers. The union
of assurance and inadequacy suggested
by the blithe young lady of the up-to-
date coiffure is symbolic of the mental-
ity of an artist who could design such
a work as a fit personification of intel-
ligent toil. This popular sculptor has
done one thing even more ludicrously
unfortunate. His monument to a cer-
tain admiral, on the Avenue de I'Ob-
servatoire, shows the portrait bust of
a hero of Oriental seas rising from a
surging tangle of Tritons and mer-
maids, waving arms, palm branches,
and carved paddles. Confusion reigns.
The very commonplace admiral, with
the Dundreary side-whiskers, seems to
find it impossible to conceal a look of
polite inquiry in the face of this sculp-
tural explosion.
M. Larche carved awhile back a de-
lightful group, "Les Violettes," three
little children, exquisitely tender and
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48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
poetic, in guise of violets. The same
sculptor's monument to Corot, recently
erected, is a pitiful conception: a bust
of the great painter upon a formless
pedestal built apparently of clouds ; then
the inevitable nude woman playing hide-
and-seek with the public, though osten-
sibly paying homage to the bust. She
is not one of Corot's vaporous idealiza-
tions, but evidently a portrait, face and
body, of the little minx who posed for
the figure. One feels that the honest
old paysagiste would have been embar-
rassed by the juxtaposition.
Roger-Bloche modeled a few years
ago his striking group **Le Froid," the
unhappy pair whom, on some torrid
July noon, you may have seen shivering
at the entrance of the Luxembourg.
Last year this artist employed his nota-
ble talents in "L'Accident,'* a gathering
of detached figures around a workman
fallen at a street corner; a bit of jour-
nalism of wonderful skill and charac-
terization, but having no more sculp-
tural intent than the most scattered of
our own Rogers's childlike groups.
Lefevre's relief, **Springtime,'* shows
three young couples in realistic modem
costume walking up the side of a great
block of marble. These are separated
by some distance, and have no relation
to one another. **Aux Champs" is a
peasant, with a wheelbarrow heaped
high with hay. He is followed by his
wife, and there is no structural reason
why the procession should not include
a dozen children, dogs, and farm ani-
mals strolling in as casually as a baby's
arrangement of its Noah's ark figures.
These things are significant because
they are not the work of ignorant be-
ginners, but are the presumably ma-
ture expressions of the leaders and men
of standing in modern sculpture.
Others emulate Rodin in eager portray-
al of the primitive passions, vulgarizing
with insistent ostentation the most sa-
cred things in life. Insensible to the
charm and poetry of suggestion, such
crude disciples of modernism picture
everything with a brutal frankness that
repels. Sculpture has become taxi-
dermy, and their stuffed men and wom-
en lack only color and real hair to vie
with the tableaux of ethnological and
surgical museums.
One understands now the warning
of that great artist and seer, Bartho-
lome, whose noble monument, **Aux
Morts," you have seen at Pere la
Chaise: "There will be no new renais-
sance of French sculpture until the
young modelers turn once more to the
limestone of which the cathedrals were
built, and carve great, simple figures in
it, as did the medieval masters." Out
of the exigencies of such a material
might be developed a grave and simple
art, a new school of sculpture.
Most of us think of modem Italian
sculpture as hopeless beyond redemp-
tion. We recall the plastic jokes and in-
decencies at our world's fairs, the pa-
tient carvings garlanded with the cards
of hundreds of purchasers ; we shudder
at memories of the Campo Santo of
Milan — and we dismiss them utterly.
At the Columbian Exposition the only
Interesting work in the Italian section
was made by a Russian, whose mother
was an American, and at the next fair
Prince Troubetskoy did not exhibit.
Biondi's "Satumalia" epitomized cmel-
ly, but not unjustly, the trend of con-
temporaneous sculpture in Italy, with
all its misplaced effort and its incredi-
ble, not to say fiendish, cleverness.
It is a joy to find that there are some
real sculptors there, after all, men of
high ideals and artistic conscience. The
great danger with even these is the
malaria which surrounds them, that at-
mosphere of perilous facility which
cannot withhold the hand, but embroi-
ders and accentuates until every square
inch of surface is tormented with a
perfect eczema of detail. One who es-
capes this malady upon occasions is
Signor Bistolfi of Turin, a great artist
who has been called "the sculptor-poet
of Death."
His relief, "Memories" and other
funereal works are exquisite in sugges-
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RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCULPTURE
49
tion. Now and then he falls from grace
and elaborates the marble to destruc-
tion, but in his **Christ in the Wilder-
ness," his Garibaldi, and his nude "The
Spirit of the Snowy Alps*' (in memory
of his friend Segantini), he divests
himself entirely of the things that are
petty, rising to a height of aloofness
that few modems ever attain.
There are others who show promise
of emergence from the shadow of com-
mercialism that has so long character-
ized Italian sculpture. Believe me, we
shall yet see new wonders from that
land of eternal youth, that immemorial
cradle of Beauty.
Perhaps one should apologize for in-
cluding England in a review like this,
since our ancestral home is certainly
not the nursery of sculpture and has
never produced a great master of the
chisel. Nevertheless, England shows an
occasional sporadic work of consider-
able interest. Some of her painters, like
Lord Leighton, were undoubtedly
sculptors at heart, and ability is by no
means rare. There is a form of artis-
tic atavism, however, to which her
sculptors almost inevitably succumb
sooner or later. No matter how great
the promise and the originality, they all
come in time to work in the same way,
unless, perchance, they die young, like
gifted Harry Bates.
Thomycroft surrendered long since
to this inscrutable fate; since *'The
Mower" and "Teucer" he has done lit-
tle that would interest the foreigner.
Even the colonists who come to the
English shore seem destined to lose
their originality and their skill. Bertram
McKennal, a brilliant Australian, re-
vealed in his *'Circe" and 'The Seats
of the Mighty" a promise of great
things. Since settling in England his
work has become distinctly common-
place.
Henry James observes somewhere
that if the English ever succeed in
art, it will be by virtue of their love
for overcoming difficulties. Industry
counts; they delight in ''takmg pains,"
and too often their sculpture reveals
little else. No man, for instance, could
be more serious than Sir George
Frampton, who has had many a sculp-
tural idea; but the effect is frequently
dissipated by his love of curious com-
binations of metals and stones, and his
insistence upon ornamental detail. Of
course beautiful results are possible in
such unions, as even modern art has
shown; Dampt and Riviere, among
many in Paris, and the young German
Emil Geiger, have produced charming
works in chryselephantine and poly-
chromatic sculpture. Max Klinger's
extraordinary "Beethoven," on the
other hand, seems to thwart its own
purpose. The central idea is clouded
by the clamorous appeal of many jar-
ring elements. Of course one looks for
no such exuberance in the products of
an English studio, yet there is one re-
markable exception, a very accom-
plished sculptor of pyrotechnic powers,
whose art has likewise become curious-
ly perverted through too generous an
admixture of the decorative crafts.
In the old Parisian school-days we
used to hear much of "Geelbert," a
gifted young Englishman who had just
left the Beaux-Arts and whose **Icarus"
was pronounced by the camarades as
good as they could do themselves. To-
day Alfred Gilbert is one of the promi-
nent figures in English art. His vari-
ous public works, like the statue of
Queen Victoria at Winchester, have
been creditably done and have given
him a great reputation.
However, a strange peculiarity re-
vealed itself early in his art, which
threatens to rob it of value. Perhaps
at some time he may have visited Ve-
rona and been impressed by the tombs
of the family Delia Scala. There, or
somewhere, at any rate, he became fas-
cinated with wrought-iron effects. They
appear first as a little spray of volutes
above the head of the Queen in the
Winchester memorial, but develop rap-
idly, in later productions, into a veri-
table jungle of thorn-apples and che-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
veaux'de-frise, which seem intended to
confuse and belittle the essentially
monumental features of his art. The
malady has recently attacked the stat-
ues themselves. His Saint Michael on
the Qarence tomb at Windsor contem-
plates with helpless gaze an incredibly
complicated sword, — a sort of Aaron's
rod that budded, — while the saint's ar-
mor is so overwrought that it fairly
peels off from the figure, giving the
limbs the look of shag-bark hickories.
A statuette of the Virgin is overgrown
with vines and blossoms, through which
its original beauty peeps out to tanta-
lize us. The culmination is reached in
his group of *'Saint George and the
Dragon.'' Here the actors have become
virtually indistinguishable in the gen-
eral mix-up. The effect is that of the
comic-supplement method of suggesting
a dog fight or a falling figure — b, whirl
of broken lines.
When shall we sculptors learn that
the greatest asset of our art is its hint
of eternity? That look of serene per-
manence which is so dependent upon
mass and simple contour is what im-
presses one in the great works. It is
not the feverish, gesticulating figure
that is convincing. Is it not, rather,
the quiet gesture of an Adams memori-
al, so still that it seems to move?
It is in Germany that we meet our
greatest surprise. Germany, the hope-
lessly academic, the land of belated sur-
vivals, where centaurs still pursue Ama-
zons, and where have flourished such
anachronisms as Schwanthaler and
Schiefelbein, Schilling and Rietschel;
where Drake was followed by Wolff,
and Briitt by Hundrieser, in deadly se-
quence; where the official sculptors of
to-day are led by such masters of or-
nate grandiloquence as Reinhardt Be-
gas, with his spectacular monument to
William I, "surrounded by floating vic-
tories, roaring lions, standards, cannon,
and chariots"; and Rudolf Slemering,
whose "Bismarck" at Frankfort leads
Germania's fiery steed with one hand
and grasps his sword with the other,
while the enemies of the Vaterland are
personified by a crawly dragon, to be
trampled under foot from time to time.
Siemering's monument to Washington
in Fairmount Park we know all too
well, though you may not have noticed
Washington himself, lost as he is amid
a comprehensive collection of American
fauna done into German bronze.
With vague, unhappy memories of
similar monuments glimpsed through-
out Germany and particularly abundant
in Berlin, one is amazed to discover
that the most interesting works of
sculpture and architecture now being
produced in Europe are to be found in
the growing cities of that land. There
is a saying that "When things become
as bad as they can, something has got to
happen." The something has happened
in Germany, and these pretentious alle-
gories are giving way before the
thoughtful work of a younger genera-
tion who have in mind first of all the
reasonable use of the medium con-
cerned; who treat stone as stone and
bronze as bronze, producing delightful
results with an astonishing economy of
effort.
Most remarkable, perhaps, of these
men is Hugo Lederer, whose Bismarck
memorial at Hamburg — a suggestion of
the protecting Roland statues of many
German cities — is one of the truly great
monuments of these later times. An
armored figure of colossal size standing
guard upon the hill-top and supported
by massive architecture of which it
forms a part, this statue is impressive
beyond words because it was "con-
ceived big," instead of being an ordi-
nary portrait enlarged. An appreciative
writer says of it : "No attempt has been
made to obliterate the fissures between
the granite blocks that compose the
mighty figure; each block is seen in
clear outline, and thus the whole struc-
ture appears almost as the result of the
up-building forces of Nature herself.
Power in calm repose — that is the im-
pression which forces itself irresistibly
upon the spectator."
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RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCULPTURE
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Another great monument, the Kyff-
hauser Memorial, owes its impressive-
ness to the architect rather than to the
sculptor's contribution. It is one of
several admirable works by Bruno
Schmitz, who has here evolved a mas-
sive tower, along with its protecting ar-
cades of heavy masonry, directly out of
the mountain quarry which gave them
birth. One looks through the arches
across a field of ragged rocks to where
reposes, in his subterranean refuge,
"Der alte Barbarossa, der Kaiser Fried-
erich." Above this recess, upon the
side of the tower, appears the gigantic
equestrian statue of the founder of the
new empire. Despite the inadequacy of
this portion of the sculpture, the con-
ception is grandiose.
One of the most interesting of recent
combinations of sculpture and architec-
ture is found in that extraordinary res-
taurant of Berlin called Rheingold
Haus, where Professor Franz Metzner
has produced a series of weird and
strikingly original effects, using the hu-
man figure as others employ plant
forms ; conventionalizing the body, am-
plifying it, and now and then compres-
sing it into unwonted spaces, but al-
ways with a pattern so essentially deco-
rative and a touch so sure that one is
compelled to recognize his authority.
He is master here, and these are his
creatures, to obey. Arbitrary and
whimsical uses of the figure which
might easily lead to eccentricities in
other hands or in other places seem ad-
mirably suited to this pleasure-resort,
where monstrous heads peer out from
shadowy corners, brawny giants up-
hold the fantastic masonry of the halls,
and lithe-limbed Rhine maidens gleam
through billows of tobacco-smoke. Yet
with all this prodigality of invention,
this bewildering versatility and power,
there is no effect of lawlessness, of riot-
ous excess. Bronze and stone and
wooden panels are treated according to
the dertiands of the materials and the
severe requirements of sculpture. The
directness and the thrift of means here
shown, the almost austerity of design,
contribute to a result which is legiti-
mately sculptural. .
To mention just one more instance
among many, the old-time city of Diis-
seldorf , associated in most of our minds
with an extinct school of romantic
painting, offers us to-day one of the
finest examples of modem architecture
and sculpture blended in happy union.
It is only a department store, a **Siegel
& Cooper's," called the Haus Tietz, but
its design is most admirable. Our own
architects, as a rule, seem possessed of
a desire to minimize the height of their
lofty structures by stratifying them,
cutting their fagades with as many
horizontal stripes or ruffJes as possible.
In the building under consideration the
designer has frankly acknowledged its
height, and, with a perfectly practica-
ble plan, has developed an effect of
soaring which is truly an Inspiration.
Its ranks of graceful piers suggest a
great pipe-organ. Its sculptural adorn-
ments are not the casual groups and
figures that are set upon shelves on our
fagades, but are like an efflorescence of
its rough stones, sparing in number, but
holding just the right proportion to its
restful surfaces. Like the design as a
whole, they are organic, growing out of
the very structure itself. An apprecia-
tive traveler remarks of this building:
"Its treatment seems, to have been dic-
tated by the stone that it is made of;
respecting its material, it is exalted by
it.''
Such work as this, so new, so inde-
pendent, and so delightful, recalls the
dictum of Mauclair that one should be
as concerned in how he is going to do a
thing as in what he is to do; in other
words, that the treatment merits no less
thought than the subject itself. This
is a consideration which we Americans
are disposed to overlook.
Of Professor Metzner's remarkable
pupil, that untamed young Dalmatian
Ivan Mestrovic, one scarcely knows
how to speak. This youth of twenty-
three seems to be obsessed by the crea-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
tive impulse and toils furiously to give
expression to his teeming fancies. He
keeps all artistic Europe wondering
what he will do next. One might say
of him, as was said of Balzac, "He is
not a man, but one of the forces of
Nature." His output gives one this
feeling not only because of its prodigal
abundance, but by reason of its con-
trasts. He produces indifferently beauty
and bestiality. These swarming chil-
dren of his are often weird beyond de-
scription, but they are always conceived
as sculpture and treated in a big, ele-
mental way. "Treated" seems hardly
the word ; they have no look of submis-
sion to treatment, but seem to have
evolved themselves out of the rock, like
the children of Deucalion and Pyrrha.
Some still struggle and clamor for re-
lease. They strain their giant limbs and
frown like demons. Yet others have
the serenity of the ages on their placid
brows.
The handsome youth who has called
them into existence, — he of the dark
mane and the flashing eyes, — is pro-
nounced by Rodin to be the most ex-
traordinary of living sculptors. One can
understand the sympathy: Mestrovic's
creations seem to have passed through
Rodin's "Gates of Hell."
More, doubtless, than any other man
did Saint-Gaudens contribute to the ele-
vation of American sculpture. His
beneficent influence was all on the side
of purity of line and perfection of
technic. His more personal artistic vir-
tues were, however, so involved in
that able craftsmanship of his that
they were but slightly transferable and
cannot be said to have left a marked
impress upon the work of his fellows
in the sense of developing a peculiarly
national art. Many have been but su-
perficially influenced, contenting them-
selves with the form, but forgetting the
spirit. Happily, however, there are
not a few who emulate our greatest
master in both his high ideals and his
skill, but who reaKze as well that they
must think their own thoughts and em-
ploy their own language. Upon these
the heritage of his exalted effort falls
as a precious benediction.
As has been so well pointed out by
Mr. Kenyon Cox, Saint-Gaudens was
essentially a designer and modeler ; his
compositions were nearly always des-
tined for the bronze, and never sug-
gested the wresting of imprisoned
forms from the stone. Few of our
sculptors are practical marble-cutters,
and there is almost always a hint of the
careful joiner, the patient cabinet-mak-
er, in all of our work. We have not
begun at the right end. Michelangelo
probably meant what he said when he
spoke of drinking in his art with his
foster-mother's milk in that stone-yard
of Settignano. Donatello's very first,
commissions, those foolish little proph-
ets over one of the side doors of the
cathedral at Florence, were, however
crude, the conceptions of a real sculp-
tor.
Mr. French's later works are turning
interestingly in this direction. He shows
us how it is possible for an artist, by
"taking thought," to acquire a new
point of view. The gain has been
great, as in the Parkman and Melvin
Memorials. The custom house groups,
particularly the "Africa," show like-
wise a feeling for the whole which is
not emphasized in the graceful composi-
tions of the Cleveland post-office. Mr.
French's relief in memory of Alice
Freeman Palmer is almost a classic not
only in general form, but in nobility of
thought and simple grace of execution.
The numerous ideal portraits of the
Brooklyn Institute, done under Mr.
French's direction, mark a decided
step in architectural sculpture. With
few exceptions they are successful stat-
ues, a very different thing from clever
counterfeits of men. How many
buildings are "decorated" with figures
that seem to have strolled out upon
their facades and roofs to take an air-
ing! There is nothing casual about
these Brooklyn marbles. They are ma-
terial abstractions, if one may be per-
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RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCULPTURE
33
mitted the paradox. They typify their
subjects, and yet they are frankly
images in stone. It was time that they
should come.
Another good work of this character
is Mr. Bitter's pediment for the new
State-house of Wisconsin. This is al-
most archaic in its severity, and gains
immensely by the restraint. Probably
no better architectural sculpture has
ever been done in this country.
Yet another pedimental group des-
tined to interest us all is the great un-
dertaking upon which Mr. Bartlett is
now engaged for the National Capitol.
Let us hope that Thomas Crawford's
naive effort may be allowed to remain
in the tympanum of the senate wing for
the value of the instructive contrast
thus afforded. The one was the work
of an ingenious, but untrained enthu-
siast, who had no glimmer of the re-
quirements of the problem; the other
will be the thoughtful effort of a pro-
found student and a consummate art-
ist. Mr. Bartlett's earlier experience in
carrying out Mr. Ward's design for the
stock exchange was of inestimable
value to him, but the rh3rthm of line
and the charm of light and shade that
he is putting into this new work will
set It in a class by itself. It is a most
gratifying sign of progress that a com-
mission of this importance should be
entrusted by congress to a sculptor of
high standing.
It is not too late to mention Mr. Bart-
lett's equestrian **Lafayette," which, af-
ter ten years or more of study and ex-
periment, has been crystallized into per-
manent form. The conscientious and
deliberate sculptor playfully completed
his work with a plodding tortoise, a
gentle taunt to his critics and an inti-
mation that he "got there just the
same." The monument is said to be a
masterpiece, completely worthy of its
exalted position within the court of the
Louvre.
Recurring once more to sculpture
purely architectural, may I not be per-
mitted to express a personal and never
diminishing gratification in those works
of Andrew O'Connor which adorn the
front of St. Bartholomew's Church in
New York? I seldom find myself in
the neighborhood of the Grand Central
Station without stepping over to Madi-
son Avenue to study and admire the
amazing craftsmanship of those sculp-
tured slabs. In their union of richness
and simplicity they are indeed trium-
phant works. It is carving reduced to
its "lowest terms," wherein every
chisel-stroke is made to count.
From among the many intelligent
men who are doing good work in this
country, we can select only two or three
more examples. Mr. MacNeil, the
president of the National Sculpture So-
ciety, is completing a very noble mili-
tary monument for Albany. A great
rectangular block of stone of impos-
ing mass, and decorated by an engir-
dling frieze of warriors, forms the
background for a stately figure of un-
usual beauty personifying the Republic.
Mr. Weinman has done an equal ser-
vice for Baltimore. His soldiers' me-
morial there is of extraordinary sig-
nificance and power, a work in every
way worthy of the Monumental City.
Mr. Shrady's superb lions guard in
Washington the empty pedestal which
awaits his great Grant monument. If
the remainder of the sculpture is as
good as those creatures, the monument
will be a decidedly new note in Wash-
ington.
The great event, however, of the
sculptors' year in this country, as in
France, has been the completion of
George Barnard's heroic groups for
Harrisburg. The ill-famed state-house
is to have its adornments in spite of
tragic delays and disappointments. Two
visits to Moret while these magnificent
dreams were taking shape convinced
me that they were among the great
works of modern times. The French
are not doing such things to-day. One
is not surprised to learn that these two
enormous processional groups, epito-
mizing the joys and burdens of human-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
ity, held the place of honor at the Salon
this year. The eulogies written and
spoken by such men as Jean-Paul
Laurens, Rodin, Mercie, Boucher, and
many others of eminence, must have
done something toward atoning for
the sacrifices that this gigantic work has
cost. Such reward is doubly sweet, for
it belongs not only to the artist, but to
the land that gave him birth. He
brings it home to us, asking only that
we share it with him.
Thus the work goes on, as it always
will. We are doing well, and we ought
to do much better. Most of us lade
style, and always shall. We have little
conception of real architectural sculp-
ture. We need to study the demands of
the various materials that we handle.
Above all, we need to remember that
our work lives after us, that it is our
privilege to convey a message of cour-
age and good cheer to millions of men
— to generations that follow one an-
other like the waves of the sea.
Mr. Chairman, "your committee re-
ports progress."
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SAINT-GAUDENS, STEDMAN, CLEMENS, HAY, MacDOWELL
By Brander Matthews
Three score years ago and more
Emerson declared that in this country
literature suffered from a lack of com-
panionship. "If something like the
union of like-minded men were at-
tempted, as formerly at Will's or But-
ton's coffee-houses, or in the back room
of the bookseller's shop, where scholars
might meet scholars without passing the
picket and guard-post of etiquette, it
would add happy hours to the year."
What Emerson asserted of literature
was equally true of the other arts which
adorn life. Perhaps we may go fur-
ther and say that if it is wholesome
for the practitioners of any single craft
to get together and thus to create an
atmosphere of common endeavor, it is
beneficial also for men of varied in-
terests to be drawn closer for that un-
conscious stimulus which one art may
exert upon another. The poet may
thus borrow color from his commerce
with the painter, and the historian may
find his imagination stirred by associa-
tion with the sculptor.
All arts are one, — all branches on one
tree, —
All fingers, as it were, upon one hand.
The necessity for that union of like-
minded men which Emerson wished
for was felt by many of us; and in
time it led to the organization of the
National Institute of Arts and Let-
ters, wherein every one of the arts
was fully represented. The Institute
was established in 1898; and year by
year its membership was enlarged un-
til in time it enrolled almost every one
of the leaders in their several callings.
Then in 1904, in order to give greater
definiteness to its work of protecting
and furthering literature and the other
arts, the Institute believed itself strong
enough at last to found the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. It con-
fided the election of the later associates
to a chosen seven of its own members,
whose right there was none to dispute,
— William Dean Howells, Augustus
Saint-Gaudens, Edmund Clarence Sted-
man, John La Farge, Samuel Langhome
Clemens, John Hay, and Edward Mac-
Dowell, — a seven-branched candlestick
on the altar of art.
These seven accepted the duty of
adding to themselves eight others, and
to these fifteen was intrusted the fur-
ther obligation of extending their num-
bers to twenty. Then this first score,
thus cautiously selected, slowly expand-
ed our membership to half a hundred,
which is to be the limit for the present.
It was upon the first seven that lay the
major part of the responsibility ; and if
this American Academy is to endure,
if it is to accomplish its honorable pur-
pose, and if it is to become a power for
good in the land, we shall stand eter-
nally indebted to the seven men who
bore the burden and heat of the day
and who laid the solid foundation for
the future.
It was Joseph de Maistre who once
declared that "the fatherland — la
pairie — is an association on the same
soil of the living and the dead, with
those who are yet to be born." We hold
that every man should be loyal to his
fatherland ; and by this word we do not
mean merely so much of the earth's
surface arbitrarily set off by political
boundaries; we have in mind ever the
men who have made our country worth
living in and worth dying for. We
mean also and always the lofty tradi-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
tions they have transmitted to us, the
high ideals they cherished, and the
noble examples they have bequeathed.
This American Academy of Arts and
Letters is already an association of the
living and the dead ; and we have a firm
hope that it will abide to be an associa-
tion with those yet to be born. Of the
seven men to whom the task of its or-
ganization was intrusted only six years
ago, six have already left us. They
died full of years and also full of hon-
ors, for they had survived long enough
to win wide recognition for their ser-
vices to their fellow-countrymen and to
the world outside our borders.
As we draw nearer to the end of the
journey of life, we find that every mile-
stone is a tombstone, with a friend
buried beneath it. One by one they
have left us; we are the lonelier for
their departure, as we are also the
richer for what they did and for what
they were. We may have recognized
their worth while they were still with
us, and yet a false shame may have pre-
vented the adequate expression of our
appreciation. Now they are gone, and
it is too late for them to learn the high
esteem in which we held them and to
savor the grateful incense of our praise.
None the less is it now our duty to ex-
press this esteem, to voice this appro-
bation, and to declare our ample regard
for their achievements. Here we can
take pattern by the French, who pre-
serve the classical standard of propri-
ety. For more than two centuries and
a half it has been the honored custom
of the French Academy to require that
every man elected to its membership
shall pronounce the eulogy of the de-
ceased member to whose seat he has
succeeded. Perhaps in the future this
worthy tradition may establish itself in
the American Academy of Arts and
Letters.
To-day, however, it is my solemn
task to commemorate five of the seven
founders of this Academy. Their
fame is secure. To them it matters lit-
tle what may now be said in praise of
them or of their achievements; and it
is not for their sake, but for ours, that
we pay them this tribute. They were
chiefs in their several callings, Saint-
Gaudens the sculptor and MacDowell
the musician, Stedman the poet-critic
and Mark Twain the humorist-moral-
ist, John Hay the historian, who was
also a statesman. They were all my
friends, and on me is laid the sad duty
of tendering to them our last greeting.
Saint-Gaudens, like so many Ameri-
cans, came of commingled stocks. He
was at once French and Irish, and per-
haps he drew from ancestors so dis-
similar some part of his varied endow-
ment. He acquired at first the delicate
craft of the cameo-cutter; and it may
be that he owed to this early training
the exquisite quality of his later por-
traits in low relief. Then he underwent
a strenuous apprenticeship as a sculp-
tor. He was able to achieve the union
of strength and refinement. There is
a stark virility in his single figures,
standing or seated, and a masculine
vigor in his mounted men. He was an
insatiable artist, resolutely grappling
with technical problems and untiring in
seeking a fit solution. He was not
easily satisfied with what he had
wrought, being ever hungry for an in-
tangible perfection. Sir Joshua Reyn-
olds, having in mind his own art of
the portrait-painter, so closely akin to
that of the sculptor, once asserted that
a man could put into a face only what
he had in himself. And this test Saint-
Gaudens withstood triumphantly, for
the faces he modeled have power and
beauty and grace.
Stedman was a poet who was pre-
vented by adverse circumstances from
giving his whole heart to poesy. In the
battle-years of half a century ago he
served for a season as a war-correspon-
dent, and for the rest of his life he bore
himself valiantly on the firing-line of
another battle-field, where the fighting
was as fierce, even though the weapons
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COMMEMORATIVE PAPERS
=^7
were bloodless. He allowed himself to
be tempted from poetry to prose, and
the larger part of the scant leisure he
could snatch from the turmoil of the
market he surrendered to literary criti-
cism. He devoted loyal and laborious
years to the evaluation of contemporary
poets, his masters and his rivals. This
criticism was the more intimate, the
more searching, the more inspiring, be-
cause he was himself a poet with an in-
stinctive understanding of the aims of
the lyric artist and of the secrets of the
art. To poetry, which he worshiped,
he could give only the remnants of his
busy life; and it is a marvel that he
was able to achieve what he did. He
hung an ode upon Hawthorne, like Or-
lando in the Forest of Arden; and he
evoked the quaint figure of Pan in Wall
Street, piping like Orpheus to charm
the strange beasts which roam at large
through that disenchanted thorough-
fare. If we apply to him the loftiest
standard, as he would have wished us
to do, he may not have been a great
poet; but he was a true poet, with a
true poet's directness of vision and cer-
tainty of touch.
Mark Twain — for it is idle to give
him any other name than that which he
had made for himself — grew up in the
Middle West, settling at last in the
East while he was yet young. With his
own eyes he saw many aspects of
American life, and what he had seen he
recorded with unforgetable felicity. He
had a sturdy simplicity of phrase.
Abundant humor was his as well as
abundant good humor. From faithful
transcripts of travel and adventure he
turned in time to story-telling, to a fic-
tion as faithful and as immitigably
veracious as his earlier descriptions of
things actually seen by himself. With
the advancing years he ripened and
mellowed; and the melancholy which
sustained the fun of Cervantes and Mo-
liere and Swift was his also. He re-
vealed the same piercing insight into the
weakness of human nature which they
possessed. A master of narrative, he
was also a master of style; and under-
lying his stories there was a deep feel-
ing for the meaning of life. A great
humorist he was, beyond all question,
controlling the springs of laughter ; but
he was also a profound moralist, with
a scorching contempt for many of the
meannesses of our common himianity.
John Hay led a career of unusual
variety, and revealed a versatility char-
acteristic of America. He began as the
secretary of Lincoln. Then he went
abroad to fill a minor post in the dip-
lomatic service. He returned to write
a graphic description of Spain and to
labor awhile on a newspaper. He
dropped into poetry, and composed a
group of Pike County Ballads, vigor-
ous in episode, picturesque in charac-
ter, and racy in vernacular terseness.
Then, like the earlier American his-
torians, Parkman and Motley, he ad-
ventured himself in fiction; and his
story, anonymous as it was, met with
a wider approval than theirs. But he
devoted the full strength of his ma-
turity to the life of the great chief he
had served in his youth, to the history
of the American who had made his-
tory. Finally he came back to the ser-
vice of the nation and took charge of
our foreign affairs at a critical moment.
By a striking coincidence, the author
of the life of him who had saved this
country from disunion was able him-
self to preserve from dismemberment
an ancient Oriental empire.
MacDowell was the youngest of the
seven founders of this American Acad-
emy, and he was also the youngest to
die, untimely taken off before his work
was done and perhaps even before his
genius had achieved its fullest expan-
sion. He was the foremost of Ameri-
can composers, with a fragrant origi-
nality of his own. He was also the first
to win wide recognition abroad. His
compositions had marked individuality ;
they were modern and yet classic. His
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
music was poetry, for he had the vision
and the faculty divine. He had the
sensitiveness of the poet, and the poet's
delicacy of perception as well; and he
possessed also the structural simplicity
which we discover in the masterpieces
of the major poets. The true lyrist's
integrity of workmanship he had in ad-
dition, doing nothing in haste or at ran-
dom, and holding himself always to the
severest standard of artistic perfec-
tion. Although he had early reaped the
reward of his work, and although suc-
cess had come to him, he was not led
astray by it. He went on his lonely
way uncontaminated by applause, as
though he had taken to heart the wise
saying of Confucius which bids us
"rate the task above the prize."
Such they were, the five men of va-
ried achievement whom it is my privi-
lege to commemorate to-day. They as-
pired each in his own way to an Attic
excellence, and they left us examples
of Attic urbanity. The Athenians, so
Dionysius of Halicarnassus declared,
"made gentle the life of the world."
And this praise might be bestowed also
on these five Americans. They differed
widely in their accomplishments and in
their aims, but they had the grace of
urbanity. And they had in common one
other characteristic: they had all of
them the full flavor of the soil of their
nativity ; they were intensely American.
Perhaps their careers were most of
them possible only in this New World,
cut off from ancient Europe by the
wide leagues of the Western Ocean.
They were American in nothing more
than in their avoidance of overt eccen-
tricity and in their desire to be judged
by standards not local, but cosmopolitan
and universal. Stedman once told me
that he had prepared his volume on the
Victorian poets so that he might feel
free afterward to write his book on
the American poets; and MacDowell
refused to allow his works to be per-
formed in a concert of exclusively
American music, insisting that it had
to hold its own without any adventi-
tious support of patriotic prejudice in
favor of a native composer.
Washington Irving was the earliest
of our men of letters to win acceptance
abroad, and he explained modestly that
some part of the welcome he received
from our kin across the sea was due to
the surprise of the British at discover-
ing an American with a quill in his
hand instead of a feather in his hair.
It is always difficult for Europeans to
perceive that although we may be a
young nation, our artists have had as
many forebears as those of any other
stock. We are the legitimate inheri-
tors of the best of the past; and to be
ourselves, to be intensely American, we
do not need to assert any violent and
freakish originality. We are the heirs
of the ages; and we have all the
mighty men of old as our artis-
tic ancestors. Sometimes the kinship
with the foreigner is very close; it is
scarcely too much to say that Rousseau
was a collaborator of the writer of the
Declaration of Independence and that
Montesquieu was one of the authors of
the Constitution.
These five Americans, the sculptor,
the musician, and the three authors,
were glad to continue the transmitted
traditions of their several arts and to
labor in honorable rivalry with their
fellow-craftsmen in other lands. And
yet, although they might profit by all
that had been wrought by those who
had gone before both here and abroad,
they were rooted in the land of their
birth. They proved by their works that
the arts can flourish here in our own
new country ; and they themselves were
"new births of our new soil."
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McKlM, NORTON, WARD, ALDRICH, JEFFERSON
By William Milligan Sloane
The keenest enjoyment of a finer
mind is in whatever makes the absent
and unreal present and apparent. This
emotion is basic to all the fine arts with-
out exception, for it gives almost un-
hampered play to the imagination, to
the representative faculties, which em-
body without the limit and clog of mat-
ter that subtle essence which in suc-
cessive stages of social development is
felt to be beautiful. Poetry, painting,
and sculpture, the imitative arts, do this
manifestly; less patently, but even
more poignantly, do likewise music and
architecture. Whatever the inner struc-
ture of the music, the resultant voice of
its production arouses emotions which
in their very vagueness are universal
and to the initiated almost articulate,
which entrance because they summon
thoughts and visions from sources
never before tapped and often unsus-
pected to exist. Architecture, aside
from the categorical imperative of util-
ity to which it is subject, presents to
the eye, as music to the ear, intricate
combinations that likewise afford a uni-
tary resultant free from the trammels
of imitation, which abstractedly and
vaguely lures the mind into a sense of
proportion and sublimity that awakens
spiritual aspiration.
These familiar and generally accept-
ed views are recalled to connect the
commemoration of Charles Follen Mc-
Kim with those of the founders who
preceded him in their passage to the
beyond. It is noteworthy as an aid to
memory that our great composer and
our great architect were in recollection
left to us and to posterity as comrades
in time and activity, the one with world
renown for his appeal to humanity
through the trained ear, the other with
similar fame through his command of
the trained eye. Both have been honored
in other lands than this, their local
fame has been carried to the stars by
appreciative fellow-laborers and by a
national public. What posterity may
decide we know not, but the test of
genius is as fully in the inspiration and
stimulus given to the present age as it
is in the instruction and the plaudits of
succeeding ones. In this respect Mc-
Kim stands forth a preeminent figure.
His life began in a heroic epoch of
tumult and national reform, and ended
in an age of struggle for emancipation
from materialism and its complemen-
tary tension of nervous exaltation.
Throughout he stood apart, a citizen of
the nation and of the world, detached
from the popular movement, as had
been his ancestry, but keenly observant
of the slowly forming aspiration of so-
ciety toward permanence of institutions
and the equilibrium of mind and mat-
ter, of soul and body, of social and per-
sonal balance. Historically minded in
the highest degree, he marked the mo-
ment of his nation's birth, the stock of
which it was a mighty bough, the forms
in which its already ancient civilization
had then expressed itself. His intense
interest in the divagations of national
taste, in the evidences of contrition for
structural faults in politics and art, in
the eclecticism which was proof of a
search for garments that would fit, in
the freaks of selection or abortion
which were misnamed pure American,
in the totality of effort, conscious or
unconscious, for a place in the proces-
sion of nations and ages. In short he
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was a profound student, a shrewd ob-
server, a man of meditation and phi-
losophy before he became the poetic
creator which he finally was. This was
the spiritual and intellectual training
which drew upon him the attention of
his fellows, of his own people, of
craftsmen and artists beyond the sea.
The sincerity and vigor of his art made
him the prophet of a school, much,
there is reason to believe, against his
will. But the greatness which was his
own having once been recognized and
leadership having been thrust upon him,
he did not shrink from the responsibil-
ity. During his ripest years he was hos-
pitable to collaboration, receptive to all
assistance from the ancillary arts,
catholic in association and taste. Com-
manding his clients, personal, corpo-
rate, or national, he dominated them
and their commissions by force of
character and the array of proof. It
was thus that he made the capital city
of his country one focus of his ellipse,
her metropolis the other. In both the
lines of architectural development in
present and future work were convin-
cingly set forth by weighty argument.
And for one generation at least the
public taste was directed* toward the
beginnings of national architecture in
those modifications of Georgian and
classical style which seemed to him in
further evolution likely to furnish the
perfect garb for the faith and ambition
of his land, the solid substance of the
vision vouchsafed to a people who had
asserted partnership in the affairs of
the world. For politics, for commerce,
and for the fine arts he left symbolic
structures : the War College, the Penn-
sylvania station, the Morgan library,
all of which exhibit complicated unity,
sensibility in structure, refinement in
decoration, and adequacy in mass.
These alone would suffice as permanent
foundation for his fame as a creative
artist. Space forbids the enumeration
of his works in other fields of human
life : they are quite as illustrious each in
its own way — his homes for the club,
the family, the church.
The wary writer does not venture in
these days tu give any positive defini-
tion of beauty. Men do many, many
things in play solely because they
choose to do them. In pleasing them-
selves, they give permanent delight to
many others. The elect few or many
have the instinct of these, but the mul-
titude yearns to have the matter set
forth in syllogism. The average taste
is not the best, somehow; the average
man desires to know both why he
should admire the compositions of
MacDowell, the buildings of McKim.
He ought to be told, he ought to hear,
how the born artist or poet is further
trained, to what point this training is
general, where it becomes individual,
and finally the secret mystery of per-
sonal liberty, the emancipation at last
from tradition, rule, maxim, the portal
through which genius alone may enter
and bring forth for common use that
which is fine and is art, the fine arts
of music or architecture, of sculpture,
painting or poetry, all which lift us
into the realm of imagination. This is
the work of the critic. Put flatly, it is
his business to point out alike the faults
and beauties of each. Long since in
the fine arts, as in every other sphere of
human activity, authority reigned su-
preme, and within the memory of man
it was discarded. The critic dare no
longer deal in positive standards: high
and low alike flout them. He can ap-
peal to the indefinite and negative, the
cautious groping of superior minds, to
the enthusiasms of one generation, to
the reactions of the next.
This was the sense in which Charles
Eliot Norton was preeminently a critic.
In every fiber of his being he was sen-
sitive and alive. Like McKim, he was
of reforming stock, he of the English
Puritan type, the other of the Scotch ;
both rebels bom against complacency
and sham, both intense, impatient, fe-
cund. The one was a devotee of fine
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art in literature, just as the other was
in architecture. Norton from the be-
ginning exhibited in his attitude the
furthest degree of revolt from spiritual
and intellectual authority. His Uni-
tarian ancestry made him an ultra pro-
tester, his fine education made him ex-
quisite in taste, his strength as a rea-
soner made him both a cautious and
somewhat precious writer as well as a
caustic and convincing critic. Nothing
argues higher training in a fertile mind
than the capacity for substitution and
for the transubstantiation of itself.
This Norton could do. He was a man
of the Renaissance projected into the
nineteenth century, an Italian in subtle-
ty, a Briton of the Preraphaelite type,
an American in his innate contempt for
medievalism. His profession was the
research and the instruction of history
as revealed in the long, unsophisticated
record of the human soul manifesting
itself through art. Since art is the un-
trammeled play of the spirit, men have
evolved what pleased them for the time
in ornament, in drawing, in form gen-
erally, and in color. The record of the
fine arts, pure or applied, is therefore
truer and more legible than any other.
What Norton taught about this was
fascinating, his transmutation of him-
self at every epoch was alchemy. He
was Hellenist in the Greek air when he
breathed it ; his Italian was impeccable ;
his Dante scholarship not only rich, but
supreme; he was so Victorian that
Ruskin and Carlyle were under his
spell, and so American that he was a
motive power in the Boston school of
letters at its apogee. This must not be
mistaken for versatility. On the con-
trary, the basic concept of a Puritan
soul is immediacy, and to every exhibit
of the man-power in action he was
subtly sensitive and sensible. It was
the comprehensiveness of the scholar.
What he had not, and what he dis-
dained, was spiritual feeling; for those
who groped after the unknown he was
intolerant, for the exercise of finite
powers the finite world was quite a
sufficient field, and in that field the
relation of man to his environ-
ment was to him more important
than the learning of theology with
which he was saturated as a boy, and
against which in manhood he rebelled
with the distaste of satiety. They say
there are only three metropolitan cities,
London, Paris, and New York, since
the inhabitant of any one will gladly
abuse and join in abuse of his own, so
secure is he in its supremacy that he
fears no attack on it, and refuses to as-
sume the defensive. Norton was in
this very high sense a patriot : as a fel-
low-member wrote of him last year, he
became so convinced of his country's
place in history that to correct its
bumptiousness, prune its exuberance,
and train its powers, was to him a
cheerful duty. Its art and its litera-
ture expressed to him the degrees of his
people's civilization : to direct, to warn,
to stimulate he understood to be impera-
tive on all who had the trained gift,
and sloth in that regard he detested. He
was almost an academy in himself, au-
thoritative and fearless, a man of the
academic t)rpe.
In marked contrast to him was our
great sculptor John Quincy Adams
Ward. Put to the categorical question,
he would probably have admitted the
value of all the esthetic disciplines —
those of the amateur, the philosopher,
and the critic ; he would have admitted
also the existence and the validity of
rules and axioms. But neither the rule
nor the trained beholder was his first
concern. Each instance presented to
him a separate and absorbing problem,
to be solved only by the communings of
the individual artist with that particu-
lar task. The rule was well as far as
it goes, but the test of the rule is the
exception. Hence the interest of
Ward's work in its varied, widely
varied aspects.
Educated in American studios, un-
familiar in early life with great orig-
inal creations of any epoch, he studied
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castb or pictures, read descriptions, and
worked as opportunity came. As a
craftsman he secured a manual train-
ing so fine that it gave restraint to his
exuberant fancy. So far as he can be
identified with a school he was a Hel-
lenist and classical. To subjective, sug-
gestive, impressionist sculpture he was
utterly strange. In the pediments of
the Stock Exchange in New York his
genius reached its climax. He could
not bear the restraint of low relief,
scarcely of high, and those virile figures,
each a superb American type, stand out
full in the round with only a suggestion
of attachment to the architecture which
they adorn. His work is objective to
the highest degree, and stands in close
relation not only to the trained, but to
the average beholder by the conviction
of reality which it enforces on the hu-
man eye.
Ward thoroughly understood the
American public, and to that public he
addressed himself, and was understood.
Some of his ideas were no doubt alien
to those generally cherished by the
members of his gild, and it remains so
far true that in the heroic and monu-
mental he was not always at his best,
so instinctive was his feeling for meas-
ure and proportion; but in what was
purely statuesque, in breadth and scale,
in the realization of his vision, he could
and did accomplish what few have
done, and was thus defiant of criticism.
His knowledge and his sympathy were
comprehensive, and his gift of expres-
sion was uncommon. A true democrat,
he was not indiflferent to the noisy, in-
sistent self-assertion of mediocrity, for
he knew its power in forming public
opinion. Hence he never permitted him-
self to be silenced by its wearisome
iteration. To it he often addressed
himself with trenchant language, and
as a rule came off triumphant against
the cuckoo throng. There was noth-
ing of what is styled in art the precious
about his temperament or his work.
The man whose name is next on our
honor-roll was neither an interpreter of
national aspiration, nor a stem judge
of taste and manners, nor yet a prophet
with a message to the Philistine. His
was the joy of holding up the mirror
to three stages in a national evolution.
Our distinctively American literature
dates from 1830. For the most part the
books published this side the sea had
been cheap reprints of foreign writings.
The few native writers of importance
unconsciously found inspiration in the
European volumes which were their in-
tellectual nourishment. But two gen-
erations of repubUcan-democrats had
now produced a third, which was the
offspring of American tradition and
education. Insensibly the literary and
artistic output was more and more ex-
pressive of the environment in which it
was engendered, and, the process once
begun, the American quality grew more
and more intense, until even British
models were utterly neglected. There
is of course a common and enduring
element in all literature, especially in
poetry, but the fine essence becomes in
time peculiarly national, even local, and
sometimes parochial. The door-step
poet is often preeminently the more ex-
tensive in his art because so intensive
and penetrating in that mystery of
vision and insight which creates not
alone verse or rhythm or cadence
or musical regularity; but re-
creates, represents, and gives definition
to what was, but is not, to what is
imagined, but not yet found. Bom in
this transition, and nurtured in the new
American life, Aldrich became the
bond of union between the three co-
horts of American writers — those of
the early nineteenth century, those of
the later generation, which again were
finding inspiration amid novel condi-
tions subsequent to the Civil War, and
the very last, which discovers a people
imperious in temper, interested in itself
as never before, and aware of a nation-
ality that embraces the breeding-stocks
of every race and clime. To the soul
of this new people, to its abode, to its
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65
musing, to its energizing, present and
coming interpreters must direct their
attention and find for it some voice.
Throughout the long career of his
authorship Aldrich was an attentive lis-
tener to the men, a careful observer of
the nature, among whom and amid
which he found himself. His theme
was neither one nor the other, but the
interrelations of both, the man person-
ally and socially both in his home and
in his habitat. At twenty he published
a fugitive piece of verse which was so
appreciated that he was encouraged to
further literary effort, and for half a
century his pen was busy. Throughout
that long period he was the exemplifi-
cation of the artist in literature. The
writing impulse was intermittent: his
genius was not in perpetual bloom, his
fruitage was irregular. But from first
to last he was intimate with his own
pr^uction, which, though never aca-
demic, was alert against crudity, and
careful in workmanship; he was him-
self a stem critic of what he made pub-
lic. The sense of spontaneity which his
readers felt was due to his art. In long
parturition he matured his thought, and
found the intimate connection between
conception in idea and the expression
of it in verbal signs which alone gives
reality through sight and hearing. Bom
in Massachusetts and by the accident of
his father's business demands a Louisi-
anian in childhood, it was New York
which made him an elect journalist, an
author of promise. Boston again sum-
moned him, and his powers ripened in
the soil whence he sprang. Conscien-
tious in his study of contemporary lit-
erature, he was sensitive also to Euro-
pean movements. Hence his work as
a whole possesses much variety in its
essential unity, and is marked by the
charm and grace of wide experience.
There is little that is polemic in it, and
most of it bears the stamp of Arcadian
lightness. There were times when he
ate his bread in tears, but his inborn
joyousness consigned the influences of
trial for the most part to oblivion. His
drama is never tragic, because melan-
choly of the sort that grips was not
natural, and, when insistent, was due
to causes which could be and were dis-
missed by force of will. Nor is either
his poetry or his prose stamped with
the hall-mark of passion. Prosperity
was essentially and peculiarly his bless-
ing, and the permanent elements of his
genius exhibit the temporary emergence
of American letters into the blithe up-
per air from out the storm-and-stress
period in which they began, and again
from beneath the desperate urgency in
which they struck the war-note during
the struggle of civic war.
Upon the question whether the true
actor is or is not the creator of his part
there will be long discussion in the fu-
ture as in the past. But in any case the
Actor who loses himself in his part is
lost indeed, for he is no longer the
master of that by which he creates, to
wit: his gesture, his speech, and his
costume. On the contrary, he has be-
come their slave, and is the creature,
not the creator. Into this pit Joseph
Jefferson, third and greatest of his name,
fourth of his stock likewise to be a
player, never fell. His personality was
so genial, his soul so kind and appre-
ciative, his quality so sensitive, his hu-
mor so good, and his heart so true,
that to outward and surface seeming his
heredity blended completely with his
environment, and the beholder felt as
if the actor and the character portrayed
were one. But those who were fa-
vored with his intimacy knew quite to
the contrary. Within that capacious
brow and in the convolutions of that
spacious brain was a mind of grasp
and penetration, its own severest critic,
sternest judge, and fairest jury. His
great roles were neither the imaginings
of the author nor his own. From the
powers of the playwright, the manager,
and the interpreter was made a careful
selection for securing the resultant
which we all saw and at which we all
wondered. The performances, more-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
over, were not iterations or repetitions :
each stood out by itself, marked by lit-
tle whimsical touches of genius which
made every presentation of the dra-
matic tale a new experience to the
playgoer. To have seen JeflFerson once
in a part was the sure inducement to
seeing him again and again and again
in the same part. Autopsies and the
use of the knife do not reveal genius,
nor does wordy analysis. To be great
in any line requires a great man. To
this the actor is no exception. Our
greatest American actors have been
great men off the stage as well as on
it, fit for any Olympian circle. Jeffer-
son could be judged by his intimacies
and by his avocation of painting almost
as well as by the art in which he was
so grand a master. He was a worthy
comrade in conversation with states-
men, with writers, with creative mind^
of every kind, thoroughly versed in the
ways of men throughout the past and
at the present hour. His amusements
were varied, and among other recrea-
tions was that of out-door sport: his
prowess as an angler admitted him to
high circles of the gentle art, and there
his lighter gifts found the freest play.
But his painting was almost a passion,
and while he remained an amateur to
the end, there was depth and breadth in
his composition, a revel of color in his
spaces, and great suggestiveness in the
moods of nature as he sought to present
them. Solitude in the forest, careless
ease in the use of brush and pigment*
a temperament disposed to gentle mel-
ancholy, given these, and you have the
design and purpose together with the
handicraft of the actor-painter. His
life was opulent in friends and in
worldly success ; his hand was open to
relieve the embarrassments of his fel-
lows; the reservoir of his gladness to
lend a hand was overflowing.
Of the five men thus briefly and in-
adequately commemorated, all belong
to the eight selected by the original
seven as coadjutors. But the fifteen
were equals in power on their respective
fields of activity, and the men of our
list were peers and compeers of their
contemporaries. Widely different in
vocation, they were strangely alike in
the Americanism which alone can and
does give quality to our Academy,
which seeks to associate men eminent
not in one, but in all of the fine arts.
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GILDER, HARRIS, HALE, SCHURZ, HOMER
By Hamilton W. Mabib
Of the five members of the Academy
whom it is my privilege to commemo-
rate, four showed how local is the
maxim of the specialists that a man
can do only one thing well, and rein-
forced the ancient opinion that talent
of a high order is a force that can be
applied successfully along several lines
of aptitude and interest. Richard Wat-
son Gilder was a poet, an editor, and
a man of those affairs which concern
the common welfare; and in each of
these capacities his work was memora-
ble. His formal education did not go
beyond the old-fashioned seminary, but
his vital education was a by-product of
all his activities. The bugle sounded
in his youth, but there were more com-
manding calls for him. Journalism af-
forded him a brief apprenticeship in
preparation for the editorial direction
of "Hours at Home," of "Scribner's
Monthly," and finally of the "Century
Magazine," a connection of life-long
duration and of effective service to the
rising art and widening literature of the
country. His nature was quick to re-
spond to the unspoken appeal of neg-
lected children and to the evil condi-
tions of over-crowded tenements; he
was a citizen whose ideals sent him into
most laborious and painstaking work,
and inspired him with the vision of a
city that should be clean, wholesome,
and beautiful. Organized decency and
organized art found in him an apostle
whose gifts of mind and of character
made him a leader; while the activity
of his hands and the deep stirrings of
his heart enriched his poetry and gave
it a fine sincerity, a moving sense of
brotherhood with men in their various
fortunes. The slender volumes of verse
in which his life and art find record
have been gathered into a single book of
lyrics; for he was a song-writer after
the older English fashion. His sensi-
tive imagination ; his delicate touch, in-
vigorated by conviction and thought;
his artistic temperament, enamoured of
the beautiful and drawn to new and
freer poetic forms, gave his verse vi-
tality and charm, half-pathetic and
half-prophetic of the better fortunes of
the race to come.
"Bom and bred in a pine-patch" in
middle Georgia, like Brer Rabbit, it
was the good fortune of Joel Chandler
Harris to play in the fields he was to
describe, to live with the characters
whose local traits piqued the curiosity
of the world, and to overhear a new
kind of fairy-tale, the romance of which
lay in natural cunning, in a humor
abounding, spontaneous, and original,
and in a philosophy so domestic and
familiar that it became an informal wis-
dom of life. His path to his vocation,
as in the case of many another man of
original gift, made credible the homely
adage that might have come from his
own cornfields — the longest way round
is the shortest way there. He set type,
read law, became an editor of a leading
Southern journal, and wrote books as
original in substance, quaint in style,
and rich in human interest as the coun-
tryside of which they form an authentic
and enduring record. Uncle Remus is
one of the real figures in American lit-
erature. He is a raconteur of legends
which are as classic in their way and
place as the "Arabian Nights." These
tales, full of appeal to the imagination
of children and to the memory of their
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
elders, preserve the humor and wis-
dom of a vanished social condition ; and
Uncle Remus, emerging from the ro-
manticism and tragedy of the ante-
bellum period and the cheap exaggera-
tion of the minstrel-show that followed
the war, attains the dignity of the pro-
tagonist of a vanished type — the plan-
tation negro. In apparent unconscious-
ness, Uncle Remus shows us the reac-
tion of slavery on the slave: his easy,
care-free attitude; his humorous phi-
losophy born of helplessness; his kind-
liness; his. homely sagacity of the cabin
and the cotton-field; his shrewd obser-
vation of the people he served, and his
keen thrusts at their foibles and weak-
nesses ; his sense of the mystery of the
animal world, and his primitive relation
with it; the pathos of the struggle of
the weak against the strong; and the
never-failing spirit of mischievous fun
in which the powerful and alert are out-
witted and disarmed. Uncle Remus,
Daddy Jake, Brer Rabbit, and Tiddy,
will be eX'Offi<:io members of the folk-
lore societies for all time to come; but
they belong to literature, and their cre-
ator to the group of those Americans
who have made original contributions
to literature.
The range of social and climatic con-
ditions in this country could hardly be
more strikingly brought out than in
the contrast between Joel Chandler
Harris, the faithful recorder of a cross-
section of Georgia life, and Edward
Everett Hale, the New Englander who
became neighbor to the whole country.
The stamp of New England education
was on Dr. Hale from the beginning.
He came of a family notable for intel-
ligence and individuality of character;
he was bom in Boston; he was pre-
pared for college in the Latin School;
he was graduated from Harvard; he
studied theology and entered the Uni-
tarian ministry. During a long life of
varied and tireless activities his home
was in Roxbury. He was predestined
to be an editor, and knew how to set
type almost as soon as his head was
level with the case. He loved history^
and wrote it as a journalist writes of
the events of the day. He was a story-
teller by nature, and wrote tales as if
he were writing history. He had some-
thing of Defoe's gift of giving fiction
the simple and convincing detail of
fact. He was never an exact writer;
but he had a genius for getting at the
truth. He was neither emotional nor
dramatic ; but his heart was in his work
of whatever kind, and he was a rare
preacher of the gospel of helpfulness.
His aim was practical, he was never a
student of style, his strength lay in in-
vention rather than in imagination ; but
it was his good fortune to write a
short story so close to the facts of hu-
man nature that it almost defies the en-
deavor to class it with fiction. "The
Man Without a Country" has the
pathos of a tragedy of personal life,
staged so simply that it escapes all sug-
gestion of artifice, and unless duly au-
thenticated as fiction, it will some day
be read as history. A citizen of one of
the centers of light and leading in the
New World, Dr. Hale was brother to
all men; in the informal, unconven-
tional society of America he accepted
the ultimate inferences of democracy
not with the timidity of the man of aca-
demic training, but with the joyful
courage of a serene faith in the spirit-
ual worth of humanity. He organized
helpfulness as if it were the chief bt|si-
ness of mankind, wrote its legends and
text-books, and spoke and acted as if
society were a league of men and wom-
en bent on helping instead of preying
upon one another. He had the saving
common sense, the habit of industry,
and the illuminating humor of one to
whom men as men were dear and com-
panionable.
The contributions of Germany to
thought and life in this country were
less evident in the early stages of our
history than those of England, Hol-
land, and France ; but since the awak-
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ening of American intelligence to its
intellectual isolation in the decade be-
tween 1820 and 1830, German philos-
ophy, poetry, and music have formed
probably the most powerful single
stream of influence that has come to us
from Europe. Quite as important has
been the addition to our population of
a host of men and women of German
blood and education, and foremost
among American citizens of German
breeding was Carl Schurz. He was a
student in the University of Bonn when
his love of liberty took him into the
ranks of the revolutionists in 1848. He
came to this country in 1852, and was
admitted to the bar; but he was irre-
sistibly swept into the anti-slavery
movement, and so into the field of po-
litical action. He was a convincing and
lucid speaker, and his advocacy was an
effective reinforcement of the anti-
slavery party. When the great debate
ended and the war began, he served
with credit as an officer in the field.
After a successful career as a journal-
ist, he entered the United States Sen-
ate, where his trained intelligence and
power of statement gave him both
popular reputation and legislative influ-
ence ; while his political idealism and in-
dependence made him the advocate of
reform in the civil service and in party
organization, of sound money, of tariff
for revenue only, and of the Indepen-
dent movement, which has raised the
standards of public service and political
action in this country.
Mr. Schurz's work as a writer was
marked by candor, intelligence, and dis-
tinction of tone and manner. His **Life
of Henry Oay" lacked the intimacy
with local conditions which a man bom
on the soil of which Clay was so char-
acteristic a product would have given
it; but it has genuine historical value
and marked narrative interest. He was
at variance with Lincoln on important
points of policy during the war, and
was not slow to express his dissent;
but his monograph, written in later
years and from riper knowledge, is an
interpretation of Lincoln's character
and career of permanent value. His
most important contribution to litera-
ture is his "Reminiscences, 1829-1863,"
written after his retirement from po-
litical and editorial activity, a memora-
ble addition to the small group of
American biographies which have the
double value of historical record and
personal narrative. The story of Mr.
Schurz's life is an adventure of the
spirit, told with clearness, vigor, and a
strong infusion of personal quality. He
was by training and breadth of inter-
est a man of cosmopolitan temper; but
he was an American in his devotion to
popular government and his ardent%er-
vice of what may be called applied free-
dom.
Winslow Homer was a great per-
sonal force poured into a single channel.
He was a painter by instinct and by in-
tention. He was born in Boston in
1836, and spent his boyhood in Cam-
bridge, which was then a New England
village with open spaces ample for the
out-of-door activities of a vigorous
boy. Unusual skill as a draftsman
gave him pleasure and training in child-
hood, and at the age of nineteen he was
doing the artistic work of a lithogra-
pher's office. Two years later he was
making illustrations; and in 1859 he
had his own studio in New York,
worked in the night class of the Acad-
emy of Design, and learned from Ron-
del how to set his palette and handle
his brushes. His chance for original
work came with the Army of the Po-
tomac in 1865; and the series of pic-
tures which he put on canvas, includ-
ing "Prisoners from the Front," made
a deep impression by their vigorous
technic and unaffected human feeling.
From this direct dealing with the facts
of life, Homer's work gained its dis-
tinctive note in American painting. He
was an authentic and authoritative re-
corder of three or four phases of
American life; daringly intimate, sin-
cere, and frank. Largely self-educated,
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68
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
and unaflfected by European associa-
tionSy he was a painter of the New
World whose clear vision made him an
uncompromising truth-teller, and whose
powerful imagination and vigorous
technic emphasized his rugged strength.
His studies of army life, of the mas-
sive ocean front of Maine, of Adiron-
dack scenery, of men of elemental oc-
cupation and vigor, — sailors, soldiers,
farmers, teamsters , negroes, — showed
uncompromising fidelity to the fact vi-
tally presented. He was an open-air,
out-of-door painter of real men in
primitive occupations and experiences;
but his range was neither narrow nor
one-sided. His later work was dra-
matic, powerful, at times almost brutal ;
but in earlier life he painted landscapes
of idyllic and shimmering charm, com-
bining at times the most vivid realism
with the subtle skill that records the
stir of the wind and the translucencc of
diffused sunlight.
No American painter has surpassed
him in the ease with which he lifts
great waves and sends them crashing
against the rocks with a force that fills
the imagination with a deafening roar.
Vigorous composition, bold use of
color, passion for the elemental strug-
gles of strong men, nature in moments
of intense action, lay well within
Homer's art ; and to him was given the
power to paint "The surge and thunder
of the Odyssey." His nature was in the
tone of his art: he was fearless, inde-
pendent, unconventional, and loyal.
On December 9th, at 11 a.m., the proceedings were continued at the New
Theatre, under the chairmanship of Mr. Howells, by
A READING FROM .SHAKESPEARE'S
BY
Horace Howard Furness.
HENRY V,"
On the same day at 4 p.m., a Reception was given to The Academy and
The Institute at the Lenox Library
BY
HIS HONOR, THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK,
William J. Gaynor.
On December 8th, the Gold Medal of The Institute was presented, in the
department of History, to
James Ford Rhodes,
Author of ''A History of the United States."
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SKETCH OF THE ACADEMY AND LIST OF
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
The American Academy of Arts and
Letters was founded in 1904 as an in-
terior organization of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters, which in
turn was founded in 1898 by the
American Social Science Association.
In each case the elder organization left
the younger to choose the relations that
should exist between them. Article
XII of the Constitution of the Insti-
tute provides as follows:
In order to make the Institute more effi-
cient in carrying out the purposes for which
it was organized, — the protection and fur-
therance of literature and the arts, — and to
give greater definiteness to its work, a sec-
tion of the Institute to be known as the
ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
shall be organized in such manner as the
Institute may provide; the members of the
Academy to be chosen from those who at
any time shall have been on the list of mem-
bership of the Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of
thirty members, and after these shall have
organized it shall elect its own officers, pre-
scribe its own rules, the number of its mem-
bers, and the further conditions of mem-
bership; provided that no one shall be a
member of the Academy who shall not first
have been on the list of regular members of
the Institute, and that in the choice of mem-
bers individual distinction and character, and
not the group to which they belong, shall
be taken into consideration; and provided
that all members of the Academy shall be
native or naturalized citizens of the United
States.
The manner of the organization of
the Academy was prescribed by the fol-
lowing resolution of the Institute adopt-
ed April 23, 1904:
Whereas, the amendment to the Consti-
tution known as Article XII, providing for
the organization of the Academy of Arts
and Letters, has been ratified by a vote of
the Institute,
Resolved: that the following method be
chosen for the organization of the Academy
— ^to wit, that seven members be selected by
ballot as the first members of the Academy,
and that these seven be requested and em-
powered to choose eight other members, and
that the fifteen thus chosen be requested and
empowered to choose five other members,
and that the twenty members thus chosen
shall be requested and empowered to choose
ten other members, — the entire thirty to con-
stitute the Academy in conformity with
Article XII, and that the first seven mem-
bers be an executive committee for the pur-
pose of insuring the completion of the
number of thirty members.
Under Article XII the Academy has
effected a separate organization, but
at the same time it has kept in close re-
lationship with the Institute. On the
seventh of March, 1908, the member-
ship was increased from thirty to fifty
members, and on the seventh of No-
vember, 1908, the following Constitu-
tion was adopted:
CONSTITUTION OF THE ACADEMY
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
is an association primarily organized by the
National Institute of Arts and Letters. Its
aim is to represent and further the interests
of the Fine Arts and Literature.
II. MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS
It shall consist of not more than fifty mem-
bers, and all vacancies shall be filled from
the membership of the National Institute of
Arts and Letters. No one shall be elected a
member of the Academy who shall not have
received the votes of a majority of the mem-
bers. The votes shall be opened and counted
at a meeting of the Acadeniy. In case the
first ballot shall not result in an election a
second ballot shall be taken to determine the
choice between the two candidates receiving
the highest number of votes on the first bal-
lot. Elections shall be held only on due
notice under rules to be established by the
Academy.
69
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III. AIMS
That the Academy may be bound together
in community of taste and interest, its mem-
bers shall meet regularly for discussion, and
for the expression of artistic, literary and
scholarly opinion on such topics as are
brought to its attention. For the purpose of
promoting the highest standards, the Acad-
emy may also award such prizes as may be
founded by itself or entrusted to it for
administration.
IV. OFFICERS
The officers shall consist of a President and
a Chancellor, both elected annually from
among the members to serve for one year
only; a Permanent Secretary, not necessarily
a member, who shall be elected by the Acad-
emy to serve for an indeterminate period,
subject to removal by a majority vote; and a
Treasurer. The Treasurer shall be appointed
as follows : Three members of the Academy
shall be elected at each annual meeting to
serve as a Committee on Finance for the en-
suing year. They shall appoint one of their
number Treasurer of the Academy to serve
for one year. He shall receive and protect
its funds and make disbursements for its ex-
penses as directed by the Committee. He
shall also make such investments, upon the
order of the President, as may be approved
by both the Committee on Finance and the
Executive Committee.
V. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
It shall be the duty of the President, and in
his absence of the Chancellor, to preside at
all meetings throughout his term of office,
and to safeguard in general all the interests
of the Academy. It shall be the duty of the
Chancellor to select and prepare the business
for each meeting of his term. It shall be the
duty of the Secretary to keep the records ; to
conduct the correspondence of the Academy
under the direction of the President or
Chancellor; to issue its authorized state-
ments; and to draw up as required such
writings as pertain to the ordinary business
of the Academv and its committees. These
three officers shall constitute the Executive
Committee.
VI. AMENDMENTS
Any proposed amendment to this Constitu-
tion must be sent in writing to the Secretary
signed by at least ten members; and it shall
then be forwarded by the Secretary to every
member. It shall not be considered until
three months after it has been thus sub-
mitted. No proposed amendment shall be
adopted unless it receives the votes in writ-
ing of two-thirds uf the members.
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
Following is the list of members in
the order of their election :
William Dean Howells
^Augustus Saint-Gaudens
♦Edmund Clarence Stedman
♦John La Farge
♦Samuel Langhome Clemens
♦John Hay
♦Edward MacDowell
Henry James
♦Charles Follcn McKim
Henry Adams
♦Charles Eliot Norton
♦John Quincy Adams Ward
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury
Theodore Rooseveh
♦Thomas Bailey Aldrich
♦Joseph Jefferson
John Singer Sargent
♦Richard Watson Gilder
Horace Howard Fumess
*John Bigelow
♦Winslow Homer
♦Carl Schurz
Alfred Thayer Mahan
♦Joel Chandler Harris
Daniel Chester French
John Burroughs
James Ford Rhodes
♦Edwin Austin Abbey
Horatio William Parker
William Milligan Sloane
♦Edward Everett Hale
Robert Underwood Johnson
George Washington Cable
♦Daniel Coit Gilman
♦Thomas Wentworth Higginson
♦Donald Grant Mitchell
Andrew Dickson White
Henry van Dyke
William Crary Brownell
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve
♦Julia Ward Howe
Woodrow Wilson
Arthur Twining Hadley
Henry Cabot Lodge
Francis Hopkinson Smith
♦Francis Marion Crawford
♦Henry Charles Lea
Edwin Howland Blashfield
William Merritt Chase
Thomas Hastings
Hamilton Wright Mabie
♦Bronson Howard
Brander Matthews
Thomas Nelson Page
Elihu Vedder
George Edward Woodberry
♦William Vaughn Moody
Kenyon Cox
George Whitefield Chadwick
Abbott Handerson Thayer
John Muir
Charles Francis Adams
Henry Mills Alden
George deForest Brush
•Deceased.
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William Rutherford Mead James Whitcomb Riley
John White Alexander Nicholas Murray Butler
Bliss Perry Paul Wayland Bartlett
Francis Davis Millet George Browne Post.
Abbott Lawrence Lowell
OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 191 1
President: Mr. Howells. Chancellor: Mr. Sloane.
Permanent Secretary: Mr. Johnson.
Finance Committee: Messrs. Sloane, Rhodes, and Hastings.
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Fa ^o.io
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS Av
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
Number V: 191 2
New York
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thmri College Library
FEB 20 1913
^ Gratis.
Copyright, 1912, by
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF
ARTS AND LETTERS and of THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Sessions at the Bellevue-Stratford (Clover Club Rooms), Philadelphia, January 26, 1912
First Session, 10:30 a.m.
William M. Sloane,
Chancellor of the Academy, Presiding
PACB
Opening Remarks of the Chancellor 5
Address of Welcome
His Honor ^ the Mayor 0/ PhiUuielphia —
Rudolph Blankenburg 8
Theocritus on Cape Cod
Hamilton Wright Mabie , 9
Shakespeare as an Actor
Brandet Matthews 18
Rousseau, Godwin, and Wordsworth
George McLean Harper 2
Musico- Dramatic Problems
Edgar Stillman Kelley 35
Second Session, "s p.m.
John W. Alexander,
President of the Institute, Presiding
The Trent Affair
Charles Francis Adams 44
The American Temperament
Birge Hart ison 52
Some of the Conditions of Architectural Design
Walter Cook 60
The Institute Medal 66
Data Concerning the Two Organizations 66-73
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Publkhed at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U. Johnson,
35 East 17th Street, New York Price per annum $1.00
Vol. 1 New York, October i, 1912 No 5
THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Public Meetings held at the Bellevue-Stratford, Philadelphia, January 25-26, 1912
William M. Sloane
Chancellor of the Academy, in the Chair
OPENING REMARKS OF WILLIAM M. SLOANE
At the First Session, January 26, Philadelphia
This is the fifth public meeting held the inclination for such service. The
by the National Institute and the National Institute is the child of the
Aimerican Academy of Arts and Let- American Social Science Association,
ters the proceedings of which either and when there are vacancies in its
have been or will be published. The number it chooses to fill them with
double name has a historical basis, such artists and men of letters as ap-
Although both are one, and that one ply for membership, and who are duly
the Institute, it was thought best some certified as to fitness by members of
years ago to select a section of it to their own group. The Academy se-
be styled the Academy. This action lects its members from those of the
has secured a very desirable clearness Institute.
in the minds of all who are interested, Our association is fifteen years old.
because of the manifest parallel with For many years its existence was that
the National Academy of Sciences, of a private club. Its meetings were
Both Academies desire to serve the fairly frequent and altogether delight-
country to the utmost of their ability ^"1 ; papers were read, and discus-
through the association of men emi- sions were held ; and as time passed, it
nent in their respective spheres — men grew manifest that it must and could
who have not only the leisure, but also become a public force. Accordingly
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
there is now annually at least one
public meeting, some years two. This
year our Philadelphia members are
our hosts, and we are proud to accept
the gracious hospitality so kindly ten-
dered by them by the great city itself
through His Honor the Mayor and
by the Franklin Inn. For many rea-
sons we feel entirely at home in this
splendid metropolis and common-
wealth. Creative art and literature,
criticism, music, and the drama are
represented in America by a great
throng of Pennsylvanians ; there are
no names of higher distinction on our
roll than those of members bom and
in great measure trained in this com-
monwealth, and for the most part in
this city. Boasting of them, we ren-
der just due to the State and the stock
which produced them; indeed, the
chief presiding officer last night and
to-day is in the land of his birth and
on his own soil.
That we are not more numerous in
our attendance is because of our zeal
in that for which we stand. Some of
us are weaker in body than in spirit
because of age; the younger absentees
are overwhelmed with the labors of
their professions, and cannot escape
stern necessity. Were American ben-
efactors, so wonderful in other direc-
tions, as disposed to endow creative
minds as they are to support eleemosy-
nary institutions, the two Academies
of the country could render services
to their members and to the nation
similar to the splendid examples af-
forded by like bodies in other lands.
So far the struggle for life by men
of science and men of art has pre-
cluded in America the close-knit as-
sociation which alone carries the real
force of the country in matters of dis-
covery, research, taste, and discipline.
What is done by them, and it is much,
is a free g^ft, a generous personal con-
tribution by those to whom arduous la-
bor, unremitting industry, and small
returns make such a largess as im-
portant as princely bequests of money.
You will remember that Lord Clive,
when charged with enriching himsdf
in India, retorted that in view of his
opportunities he was astonished at his
own moderation. Reversing this, I am
amazed at the participation our asso-
ciation secures from the busy men who
are its members. It proves that each
of us values at a cost as high as that
of living the stimulus we get from
one another and the sympathy of those
who honor us with their presence. In
the course of a fairly long life I have
not seen perish a single viable and
valuable ideal in the world of scien-
tific and humanistic endeavor. Simply
to exist is much for such an associa-
tion, and a long period of frugality in
production and consumption is not
only to be expected, but to be desired.
This we have had, and the time seems
approaching when, having displayed
devotion and persistency in serving
others, the world will give us the
means of serving our nation and man-
kind proportionate to our capacity.
As a writer of history I naturally
turn to those of my own profession
for an example, and in this case it is
that of a Philadelphian. Of those who
have gone before not one has left be-
hind him greater renown than he who
as yet is by experts of the world and
the nation considered the most eminent
.American in his combination of phil-
osophic, literary, and scientific histor>*.
Henry Charles Lea. May I say that
the interest he felt in this organization
was profound ; his letters bear witness
to the fact, and while he lived his con-
tributions of money and moral support
were second to those of no other.
What his fellow- workers owe to this
fact only those aware of the drudgery
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OPENING REMARKS OF WILLIAM M. SLOANE
and sacrifice incident to historical
work can know« and their recognition
of it has been generous. What our
other associates and this public owe
is a debt that cannot be repaid ex-
cept in the effort to emulate him, in
feeling the persistent sense of his wis-
dom, and in enjoying the conscious-
ness of his approval. Similar encour-
agement from men of his rank could
be adduced, but here and now this
may suffice.
It is therefore much that we are
alive and active and that we are more
and more widely known not as those
who assume a crown, but, on the con-
trary, as those who volunteer for serv-
ice when service is demanded. We
may go further, for we may even force
our services on an unwilling master,
should occasion arise, and experience
prove that our spoken words would
help in the great decisions that are so
often committed to the inexpert for
settlement. Voluntary association is
the law of Anglo-Saxon society, and
if we truly desire, as we assert to be
the case, to get the best in art and
letters for our material life, to keep
the public taste at the highest stand-
ard for public instruction and reproof,
we may have to cry aloud and spare
not. Who has a better right? The
noisy agitator for selfish purposes, the
leveler, the vulgar, who are a law
unto themselves? Surely not. As in-
dividuals or as groups of individuals,
thef members of this association have
always been courageous, most certain-
ly and successfully in the field of art
and architecture, and have reaped a
reward. Similar triumphs are possi-
ble in other fields, and whether as men
or an association of men, we may
hope to win more and more of them.
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ADDRESS OF WELCOME
By His Honor the Mayor of Philadelphfa, Rudolph Blankbnburg
It is a pleasure and a privilege for
me to greet you, members of the
American Academy of Arts and Let-
ters and of the National Institute of
Arts and Letters, and to extend to you
a warm welcome to the City of Broth-
erly Love. Among the many conven-
tions and meetings held here by or-
ganizations of all kinds and characters,
there is hardly any that deserves
greater attention and a warmer greet-
ing than yours. In this age of ma-
terialism, when in so many phases of
life the dollar is king, it is refreshing
indeed to meet a body of men who are
more interested in ethics, in science,
in arts, and in letters than in the pur-
suit of worldly riches. Unfortunately,
such movements for the higher aims
in life are not many; yet there seems
to be a new impulse of intellectual and
artistic improvement that bodes good
for the future and cannot fail to make
a lasting impression. Let me express
the hope that this impulse may in-
crease from day to day and extend all
over our country.
It can hardly be expected that I, a
plain business man, should deliver to
you an address on a subject in which
you are so much more at home than I,
but the spirit that prompts my thought
is one that should prevail among all
our people, leading to the promotion
of higher education and higher ideals,
and the encouragement of all those in-
terested in the uplift of mankind. 1
shall not detain you by delivering a
set speech, but I do extend to you a
welcome that is all the warmer because
it is real.
We all need an incentive to the
higher things in life, and your or-
ganizations are specially adapted to
arouse greater and nobler aspirations.
Who knows what talent or ambitious
spirit may lie dormant in the breast
of many an American artist ? Perhaps
to-day we harbor among us, unknown,
but ready to display his talents, a
Callicrates, an Apelles, or a Phidias,
Perhaps, also, we may have a counter-
part to Pericles, to whose encourage-
ment of art and literature, perhaps
more than to any other man, ancient
Greece is indebted for its fame. It
is possible that through meetings like
this a genius hitherto undeveloped may
arise and add luster to the name of our
great country, which is to-day known
mainly for its wonderful physical de-
velopment and its progress in material
wealth.
In this connection let me suggest
whether it would not be wise for your
institute to organize in America an
Academy something like the great
French Academy. This should be ac-
complished by national legislation
that would impress upon the creation
of such a body the seal of national ap-
proval. I hope to live to see the day
when we shall have an American
Academy equal, at least, to that which
has given France its prominent place
in the literary, scientific, and artistic
world. France has her forty im-
mortals living, her many times forty
immortals dead and yet living- Lei
us follow her example and create a
body equal to hers of truly American
genius and spirit.
It is my sincere wish and earnest
hope that your deliberations may lead
to these results and that the future of
your organizations may be even
brighter than the past.
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THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD
By Hamilton Wright Mabie
Cape Cod lies at the other end of
the world from Sicily not only in dis-
tance, but in the look of it, the lay
of it, the way of it. It is so far off
that it offers a base from which one
may get a fresh view of Theocritus.
There are very pleasant villages on
the Cape, in the wide shade of ancient
elms, set deep in the old-time New
England quiet. For there was a time
before the arrival of the Syrians, the
Armenians, and the automobile, when
New England was in a meditative
mood. But Cape Cod is really a ridge
of sand with a backbone of soil,
rashly thrust into the Atlantic, and as
fluent and volatile, so to sjjeak, as one
of those far Western rivers that are
shifting currents sublimely indifferent
to private ownership. The Cape does
not lack stability, but it shifts its lines
with easy disregard of charts and
boundaries, and remains stable only at
its center; it is always fraying at the
edges. It lies, too, on the western
edg^ of the ocean stream, where the
forces of land and sea are often at
war and the palette of colors is limit-
ed. The sirocco does not sift fine
sand through every crevice and fill the
heart of man with murderous im-
pulses; but the east wind diffuses a
kind of elemental depression.
Sicily, on the other hand, is high-
built on rocky foundations, and is the
wide-spreading reach of a great vol-
cano sloping broadly and leisurely to
the sea. It is often shaken at its cen-
ter, but the sea does not take from
nor add to its substance at will. It
lies in the very heart of a sea of such
ravishing color that by sheer fecundity
of beauty it has given birth to a vast
fellowship of gods and divinely fash-
ioned creatures; its slopes are white
with billowy masses of almond blos-
soms in that earlier spring which is
late winter on Cape Cod ; while gray-
green, gnarled, and twisted olive-trees
bear witness to the passionate moods
of the Mediterranean, mother of
poetry, comedy, and tragedy, often
asleep in a dream of beauty in which
the shadowy figures of the oldest time
move, often as violent as the North
Atlantic when March torments it with
furious moods. For the Mediter-
ranean is as seductive, beguiling, and
uncertain of temper as Cleopatra, as
radiant as Hera, as voluptuous as
Aphrodite. Put in terms of color, it
is as different from the sea round
Cape Cod as a picture by Sorolla is
different from a picture by Mauve.
Theocritus is interested in the magic
of the island rather than in the mys-
tery of the many-sounding sea, and to
him the familiar look of things is
never edged like a photograph; it is
as solid and real as a report of the
Department of Agriculture, but a mist
of poetry is spread over it, in which,
as in a Whistler nocturne, many de-
tails harmonize in a landscape at once
actual and visionary. There is no ex-
ample in literature of the unison of
sight and vision more subtly and elu-
sively harmonious than the report of
Sicily in the "Idylls." In its occupa-
tions the island was as prosaic as Cape
Cod, and lacked the far-reaching con-
sciousness of the great world which is
the possession of every populated
sand-bar in the Western world ; but it
was enveloped in an atmosphere in
which the edges of things were lost in
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10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
a sense of their rootage in poetic rela-
tions, and of interrelations so elusive
and immaterial that a delicate but per-
sistent charm exhaled from them.
Sicily was a solid and stubborn real-
ity thousands of years before Theo-
critus struck his pastoral lyre; but its
most obvious quality was atmospheric.
It was compacted of facts, but they
were seen not as a camera sees, but as
an artist sees ; not in sharp outline and
hard actuality, but softened by a flood
of light which melts all hard lines in
a landscape vibrant and shimmering.
Our landscape-painters are now re-
porting Nature as Theocritus saw her
in Sicily; the value of the overtone
matching the value of the undertone,
to quote an artist's phrase, "apply
these tones in right proportions,"
writes Mr. Harrison, "and you will
find that the sky painted with the per-
fectly matched tone will fly away in-
definitely, will be bathed in a perfect
atmosphere." We who have for a
time lost the poetic mood and strayed
from the poet's standpoint paint the
undertones with entire fidelity ; but we
do not paint in the overtones, and the
landscape loses the luminous and
vibrant quality which comes into it
when the sky rains light upon it. We
see with the accuracy of the camera;
we do not see with the vision of the
poet,, in which reality is not sacrificed,
but subdued to larger uses. We insist
on the scientific fact; the poet is in-
tent on the visual fact. The one gives
the bare structure of the landscape;
the other gives us its color, atmos-
phere, charm. Here, perhaps, is the
real difference between Cape Cod and
Sicily. It is not so much a contrast
between encircling seas and the sand-
ridge and rock-ridge as between the
two ways of seeing, the scientific and
the poetic.
The difference of soils must also be
taken into account. The soil of his-
tory on Cape Cod is almost as thin as
the physical soil, which is so light and
detached that it is tdown about by all
the winds of heaven. In Sicily, on the
other hand, the soil is so much a part
of the substance of the island that the
sirocco must bring from the shores of
Africa the fine particles with which it
tortures men. On Cape Cod there arc
a few colonial traditions, many heroic
memories of brave deeds in awful
seas, some records of prosperous dar-
ing in fishing-ships, and then the
advent of the summer colonists; a
creditable history, but of so recent
date that it has not developed the
fructifying power of a rich soil, out of
which atmosphere rises like an exhala-
tion. In Sicily, on the other hand, the
soil of history is so deep that the
spade of the archaeologist has not
touched bottom, and even the much-
toiling Freeman found four octavo
volumes too cramped to tell the whole
story, and mercifully stopped at the
death of Agathocles.
Since the beginning of history,
which means only the brief time since
We began to remember events, every-
body has gone to Sicily, and most peo-
ple have stayed there until they were
driven on, or driven out, by later com-
ers; and almost everybody has been
determined to keep the island for him-
self, and set about it with an ingenuity
and energy of slaughter which make
the movement toward universal peace
seem pallid and nerveless. It is safe
to say that on no bit of ground of
equal era has more history been en-
acted than in Sicily ; and when Theo-
critus was young, Sicily was already
venerable with years and experience.
Now, history, using the word as sig-
nifying things which have happened,
although enacted on the ground, gets
into the air, and one often feels it bc^
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THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD
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fore he knows it. In this volatile and
pervasive form it is diffused over the
landscape and becomes atmospheric;
and atmosphere, it must be remember-
ed,, bears the same relation to air that
the countenance bears to the face: it
reveals and expresses what is behind
the physical features. There is hardly
a half-mile of Sicily below the upper
ridges of MtnsL that has not been
fought over; and the localities are few
which cannot show the prints of the
feet of the gods or of the heroes who
were their children.
It was a very charming picture on
which the curtain was rolled up when
history began, but the island was not
a theater in which men sat at ease and
looked at Persephone in the arms of
Pluto; it was an arena in which race
followed close upon race, like the
waves of the sea, each rising a little
higher and gaining a little wider
sweep, and each leaving behind not
only wreckage, but layers of soil po-
tent in vitality. The island was as full
of strange music, of haunting pres-
ences, of far-off memories of tragedy,
as the island of the "Tempest" : it bred
its Calibans, but it bred also its Pros-
peros. For the imagination is nour-
ished by rich associations as an artist
is fed by a beautiful landscape ; and in
Sicily men grew up in an invisible
world of memories that spread a
heroic glamour over desolate places
and kept Olympus within view of the
mountain pastures where rude shep-
herds cut their pipes:
A pipe discoursing through nine mouths
I made, full fair to view;
The wax is white thereon, the line of
this and that edge true.
The soil of history may be so rich
that it nourishes all manner of noxious
things side by side with flowers of
glorious beauty; this is the price we
pay for fertility. A thin soil, on the
other hand, sends a few flowers of
delicate structure and haunting frag-
rance into the air, Uke the arbutus and
the witchiana, which express the
clean, dry sod of Cape Cod, and are
symbolic of the poverty and purity of
its history. Thoreau reports that in one
place he saw advertised, *'Fine sand
for sale here," and he ventures the
suggestion that *'some of the street"
had been sifted. And, possibly, with
a little tinge of malice after his long
fight with winds and shore-drifts, he
reports that **in some pictures of Prov-
incetown the persons of the inhabi-
tants are not drawn below the ankles,
so much being supposed to be buried
in the sand." "Nevertheless," he con-
tinues, "natives of Provincetown as-
sured me that they could walk in the
middle of the road without trouble,
even in slippers, for they had learned
how to put their feet down and lift
them up without taking in any sand."
On a soil so light and porous there is
a plentiful harvesting of health and
substantial comfort, but not much
chance of poetry.
In the country of Theocritus there
was great chance for poetry; not be-
cause anybody was taught anything,
but because everybody was born in an
atmosphere that was a diffused poetry.
If this had not been true, the poet
could not have spread a soft mist of
poesy over the whole island: no man
works that kind of magic unaided ; he
compounds his potion out of simples
culled from the fields round him.
Theocritus does not disguise the rude-
ness of the life he describes; goat-
herds and he-goats are not the con-
ventional properties of the poetic
stage. The poet was without a touch
of the drawing-room consciousness of
crude things, though he knew well
softness and charm of life in Syracuse
under a tyrant who did not "patronize
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the arts," but was instructed by them.
To him the distinction between poetic
and unpoetic things was not in the
appearance, but in the root. He was
not ashamed of Nature as he found
her, and he never apologized for her
coarseness by avoiding things not fit
for refined eyes. His shepherds and
goat-herds are often gross and unman-
nerly, and as stuffed with noisy abuse
as Shakespeare's people in "Richard
in." Lacon and Cometas, rival poets
of the field, are having a controversy,
and this is the manner of their argu-
ment:
LACON
When learned I from thy practice or thy
preaching aught that's right,
Thou puppet, thou mis-shapen lump of
ugliness and spite?
COMETAS
When? When I beat thee, wailing sore;
your goats looked on with glee,
And bleated; and were dealt with e'en as
I had dealt with thee.
And then, without a pause, the land-
scape shines through the noisy talk :
Nay, here are oaks and galingale: the
hum of housing bees
Makes the place pleasant, and the birds
are piping in the trees,
And here are two cold streamlets; here
deeper shadows fall
Than yon place owns, and look what
cones drop from the pine tree tall.
Thoreau, to press the analogy from
painting a little further, lays the un-
dertones on with a firm hand: **It is
a wild, rank place and there is no flat-
tery in it. Strewn with crabs, horse-
shoes, and razor-clams, and whatever
the sea casts up, — a vast morgue,
where famished dogs may range in
packs, and cows come daily to glean
the pittance which the tide leaves
them. The carcasses of men and
beasts together lie stately up upon its
shelf, rotting and bleaching in the sun
and waves, and each tide turns them
in their beds, and tucks fresh sand
under them. There is naked Nature,
— inhumanely sincere, wasting no
thought on man, nibbling at the cliffy
shore where gulls wheel amid the
spray."
It certainly is naked Nature with
a vengeance, and it was hardly fair
to take her portrait in that condition.
Theocritus would have shown us Ac-
teon surprising Artemis, not naked,
but nude; and there is all the diflFcr-
ence between nakedness and nudity
that yawns between a Greek statue
and a Pompeiian fresco indiscreetly
preserved in the museum at Nafdes.
Theocritus shows Nature nude, but
not naked ; and it is worth noting that
the difference between the two lies in
the presence or absence of conscious-
ness. In Greek mythology, nudity
passes without note or comment; the
moment it begins to be noted and com-
mented upon it becomes nakedness.
Theocritus sees Nature nude, as did
all the Greek poets, but he does not
surprise her when she is naked. He
paints the undertones faithfully, but
he always lays on the overtones, and
so spreads the effulgence of the sky-
stream over the undertones, and the
picture becomes vibrant and luminous.
The fact is never slurred or ignored;
it gets full value, but not as a solitary
and detached thing untouched by
light, unmodified by the landscape.
Is there a more charming impression
of a landscape bathed in atmosphere,
exhaling poetry, breathing in the very
presence of divinity, than this, in
Calverley's translation :
I ceased. He, smiling sweetly as before.
Gave me the staff, "the Muses'" parting
gift.
And leftward sloped toward Pyxa. We
the while
Bent us to Phrasydene's, Eucritus and I,
And baby-faced Amyntas: there we lay
Half-buried in a couch of fragrant reed
And fresh-cut vine leaves, who so glad
as we?
A wealth of elm and poplar shook o'cr-
hcad;
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THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD
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Hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling
on
From the Nymphs* grot, and in the som-
bre boughs
The sweet cicada chirped laboriously.
Hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away
The tree frog's note was heard; the
crested lark
Sang with the goldfinch; turtles made
their moan;
And o'er the fountain hung the gilded
bee.
All of rich summer smacked, of autumn
all:
Pears at our feet, and apples at our side
Rolled in luxuriance; branches on the
ground
Sprawled, overweighted with damsons;
while we brushed
From the cask's head the crust of four
long years.
Say, ye who dwell upon Parnassian
peaks.
Nymphs of Castalia, did old Chiron e'er
Set before Hercules a cup so brave
In Pholus' cavern — did as nectarous
draughts
Cause that Anapian shepherd, in whose
hand
Rocks were as pebbles, Polyphpeme the
strong,
Featly to foot it o'er the cottage
lawns: —
As, ladies, ye bid flow that day for us
All by Demeter's shrine at harvest-
home?
Beside whose corn-stacks may I oft
again
Plant my broad fan: while she stands
by and smiles,
Poppies and corn-sheaves on each laden
arm.
Here is the landscape seen with a
poet's eye; and the color and shining
quality of a landscape, it must be re-
membered, are in the exquisitely sen-
sitive eye that sees, not in the struc-
ture and substance upon which it
rests. The painter and poet create
nature as really as they create art,
for in every clear sight of the world
we are not passive receivers of im-
pressions, but partners in that creative
work which makes nature as contem-
poraneous as the morning newspaper.
It is true, Sicily was poetic in its
very structure while Cape Cod is
poetic only in oases, bits of old New
England shade and tracery of elms,
the peace of ancient sincerity and con-
tent honestly housed, the changing
color of marshes in whose channels
the tides are singing or mute ; but the
Sicily of Theocritus was seen by the
poetic eye. In every complete vision
of a landscape what is behind the eye
is as important as what lies before it,
and behind the eyes that looked at
Sicily in the third century, B.C.,
there were not only the memories of
many generations, but there was also
a faith in visible and invisible crea-
tures which peopled the world with
divinities. The text of Theocritus is
starred with the names of gods and
goddesses, of heroes and poets: it is
like a rich tapestry, on the surface of
which history has been woven in beau-
tiful colors; the fiat surface dissolves
in a vast distance, and the dull warp
and woof glows with moving life.
The "Idylls" are saturated with re-
ligion, and as devoid of piety as a
Bernard Shaw play. Gods and men
differ only in their power, not at all in
their character. What we call morals
were as conspicuously absent from
Olympus as from Sicily. In both
places life and the world are taken in
their obvious intention; there was no
attempt, apart from the philosophers,
who are always an inquisitive folk, to
discover either the mind or the heart
of things. In the Greek Bible, which
Homer composed and recited to
crowds of people on festive occasions,
the fear of the gods and their ven-
geance are set forth in a text of un-
surpassed force and vitality of imag-
ination ; but no god in his most disso-
lute mood betrays any moral con-
sciousness, and no man repents of sins.
That things often go wrong was as
obvious then as now, but there was
no sense of sin. There were Greeks
who prayed, but none who put dust on
his head and beat his breast and cried,
"Woe unto me, a sinner!" There
were disasters by land and sea, but
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
no newspaper spread them out in
shrieking type, and by skillful omis-
sion and selection of topics wore the
semblance of an official report of a
madhouse; there were diseases and
deaths, but patent-medicine advertise-
ments had not saturated the common
mind with ominous symptoms ; old age
was present with its monitions of
change and decay :
Age o'ertakes us all;
Our tempers first; then on o'er cheek
and chin.
Slowly and surely, creep the frosts of
Time.
Up and go somewhere, ere thy limbs are
sere.
Theocritus came late in the classical
age, and the shadows had deepened
since Homer's time. The torches on
the tombs were inverted, the imagery
of immortality was faint and dim ; but
the natural world was still naturally
seen, and, if age was coming down the
road, the brave man went bravely for-
ward to meet the shadow.
It was different on Cape Cod. Even
Thoreau, who had escaped from the
morasses of theology into the woods
and accomplished the reversion to pa-
ganism in the shortest possible man-
ner, never lost the habit of moralizing,
which is a survival of the deep-going
consciousness of sin. Describing the
operations of a sloop dragging for
anchors and chains, he gives his text
those neat, hard touches of fancy
which he had at command even in his
most uncompromising, semi-scientific
moments: 'To hunt to-day in pleas-
ant weather for anchors which had
been lost, — the sunken faith and hope
of mariners, to which they trusted in
vain; now, perchance it is the rusty
one of some old pirate ship or Nor-
man fisherman, whose cable parted
here two hundred years ago, and now
the best bower anchor of a Canton or
California ship which has gone about
her business."
And then he drops into the depths
of the moral subconsciousness from
which the clear, clean waters of Wal-
den Pond could not wash him: "If
the roadsteads of the spiritual ocean
could be thus dragged, what rusty
flukes of hope deceived and parted
chain-cables of faith might again be
windlassed aboard ! enough to sink the
finder's craft, or stock new navies to
the end of time. The bottom of the
sea is strewn with anchors, some
deeper and some shallower, and alter-
nately covered and uncovered by the
sand, perchance with a small length of
iron cable still attached, to whidi
where is the other end? ... So, if
we had diving bells adapted to the
spiritual deeps, we should see anchors
with their cables attached, as thick as
eels in vinegar, all wriggling vainly to-
ward their holding ground. But that
is not treasure for us which another
man has lost; rather it is for us to
seek what no other man has found or
can find." The tone is light, almost
trifling, when one takes into account
the imagery and the idea, and the sub-
consciousness is wearing thin; but it
is still there.
Thoreau*s individual consciousness
was a very faint reflection of an ances-
tral consciousness of the presence of
sin, and of moral obligations of an
intensity almost inconceivable in these
degenerate days. There was a time
in a Cape Cod community when cor-
poral punishment was inflicted on all
residents who denied the Scriptures,
and all persons who stood outside the
meeting-house during the time of
divine service were set in the stocks.
The way of righteousness was not a
straight and narrow path, but a ma-
cadamized thoroughfare, and woe to
the man who ventured on a by-path !
One is not surprised to learn that
"hysteric fits" were very common, and
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that congregations were often thrown
into the utmost confusion; for the
preaching was far from quieting.
**Some think sinning ends with this
life," said a well-known preacher,
**but it is a mistake. The creature is
held under an everlasting law; the
damned increase in sin in hell. Pos-
sibly, the mention of this may please
thee. But, remember, there shall be no
pleasant sins there; no eating, drink-
ing, singing, dancing; wanton dalli-
ance, and drinking stolen waters; but
damned sins, bitter, hellish sins; sins
exasperated by torments; cursing
God, spite, rage, and blasphemy. The
guilt of all thy sins shall be laid upon
thy soul, and be made so many heaps
of fuel. . . . He damns sinners
heaps upon heaps."
It is not surprising to learn that
as a result of such preaching the
hearers were several times greatly
alarmed, and "on one occasion a com-
paratively innocent young man was
frightened nearly out of his wits."
One wonders in what precise sense the
word "comparatively" was used; it is
certain that those who had this sense
of the sinfulness of things driven into
them were too thoroughly frightened
to see the world with the poet's eye.
In Sicily nobody was concerned for
the safety of his soul; nobody was
aware that he had a soul to be
saved. Thoughtful people knew that
certain things gave offense to the
gods; that you must not flaunt your
prosperity after the fashion of some
American millionaires, who have dis-
covered in recent years that there is
a basis of fact for the Greek feeling
that it is wise to hold great possessions
modestly ; that certain family and state
relations are sacred, and that the fate
of (Edipus was a warning: but no-
body was making observations of his
own frame of mind; there were no
thermometers to take the spiritual
temperature.
In his representative capacity as
poet, Theocritus, speaking for his peo-
ple, might have said with Gautier, "I
am a man for whom the visible world
exists." It is as impossible to cut the
visible world loose from the invisible
as to see the solid stretch of earth
without seeing the light that streams
upon it and makes the landscape; but
Gautier came as near doing the im-
possible as any man could, and the
goat-herds and pipe-players of Theo-
critus measurably approached this in-
stable position. On. Cape Cod, it is
true, they looked "up and not down,"
but it is also true that they "looked
in and not out" ; in Sicily they looked
neither up nor down, but straight
ahead. The inevitable shadows fell
across the fields whence the distracted
Demeter sought Persephone, and En-
celadus, uneasily bearing the weight of
Mtm, poured out the vials of his
wrath on thriving vineyards and on
almond orchards white as with sea-
foam; but the haunting sense of dis-
aster in some other world beyond the
dip of the sea was absent. If the hope
of living with the gods was faint and
far, and the forms of vanished heroes
were vague and dim, the fear of re-
tribution beyond the gate of death was
a mere blurring of the landscape by a
mist that came and went.
The two workmen whose talk Theo-
critus overhears and reports in the
"Tenth Idyll" are not discussing the
welfare of their souls; they are not
even awake to the hard conditions of
labor, and take no thought about
shorter hours and higher wages : they
are interested chiefly in Rombyca,
"lean, dusk, a gypsy,"
. . . twinkling dice thy feet.
Poppies thy lips, thy ways none knows
how sweet!
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i6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
And they lighten the hard task of the
reaper of the stubborn corn in this
fashion :
O rich in fruit and corn-blade: be this
field
Tilled well, Demeter, and fair fruitage
yield!
Bind the sheaves, reapers: lest one,
passing, say —
"A fig for these, they're never worth their
pay !"
Let the mown swathes fook northward,
ye who mow,
Or westward — for the ears grow fattest
so.
Avoid a noon-tide nap, ye threshing
men:
The chaff fles thickest from the corn-
ears then.
Wake when the lark wakes; when he
slumbers close
Your work, ye reapers: and at noontide
doze.
Boys, the frogs' life for me! They need
not him
Who fills the flagon, for in drink they
swim.
Better boil herbs, thou toiler after gain,
Than, splitting cummin, split thy hand
in twain.
In Sicily no reckoning of the waste
of life had been kept, and armies and
fleets had been spent as freely in the
tumultuous centuries of conquest as
if, in the over-abundance of life, these
losses need not be entered in the book
of account. Theocritus distils this
sense of fertility from the air, and the
leaves of the "Idylls" are fairly astir
with it. The central myth of the
island has a meaning quite beyond the
reach of accident; poetic as it is, its
symbolism seems almost scientific.
Under skies so full of the light which,
in a real sense, creates the landscape,
encircled by a sea which was fecund
of gods and goddesses, Sicily was the
teeming mother of flower-strewn fields
and trees heavy with fruit, trunks and
boughs made firm by winds as the
fruit grew mellow in the sun. De-
meter moved through harvest-fields
and across the grassy slopes where
herds are fed, a smiling goddess,
Poppies and corn-sheaves on each laden
arm.
Forgetfulness of the ills of life,
dreams of Olympian beauty and tem-
pered energy in the fields — are not
these the secrets of the fair world
which, survives in the "Idylls" ?
The corn and wine were food for
the gods who gave them as truly as
for the men who plucked the ripened
grain and pressed the fragrant grape.
If there was a sense of awe in the
presence of the gods, there was no
sense of moral separation, no yawning
chasm of unworthiness. The gods
obeyed their impulses not less readily
than the men and women they had
created ; both had eaten of the fruit of
the tree of life, but neither had eaten
of the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. Anybody might happen
upon Pan in some deeply shadowed
place, and the danger of surprising
Diana at her bath was not wholly im-
aginary. Religion was largely the
sense of being neighbor to the gods ;
they were more prosperous than men
and had more power, but they were
diflferent only in degree, and one
might be on easy terms with them.
They were created by the poetic mind,
and they repaid it a thousand-fold
with the consciousness of a world
haunted by near, familiar, and radiant
divinity. The heresy which shattered
the unity of life by dividing it between
the religious and the secular had not
come to confuse the souls of the good
and put a full half of life in the hands
of sinners ; religion was as natural as
sunlight and as easy as breathing.
There was little philosophy and less
science in Sicily as Theocritus reports
it. The devastating passion for
knowledge had not brought self-con-
sciousness in like a tide, nor had the
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THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD
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desire to know about things taken the
place of knowledge of the things
themselves. The beauty of the world
was a matter of experience, not of
formal observation, and was seen di-
rectly as artists see a landscape before
they bring technical skill to reproduce
it. So far as the men and women who
work and sing and make love in the
"Idylls" were concerned, the age was
delightfully unintellectual and, there-
fore, normally poetic. The vocabulary
of names for things was made up of
descriptive rather than analytical
words, and things were seen in wholes
rather than in parts.
From this point of view religion
was as universal and all-enfolding as
air, and the gods were as concrete and
tangible as trees and rocks and stars.
They were companionable with all
sorts and conditions of men, and if
one wished to represent them, he used
symbols and images of divinely fash-
ioned men and women, not philosoph-
ical ideas or scientific formulae. In
this respect the Roman Catholic
Church has been both a wise teacher
and a tender guardian of lonely and
sorrowful humanity. Homer was not
a formal theologian, but the harvest of
the seed of thought he sowed is not
even now fully gathered. He peopled
the whole world of imagination.
Christianity is not only concrete but
historic, and some day, when the way
of abstraction has been abandoned for
that way of vital knowledge, which is
the path of the prophets, the saints,
and the artists, it will again set the
imagination aflame. Meantime Theo-
critus is a charming companion for
those who hunger and thirst for
beauty, and who long from time to
time to hang up the trumpet of the
reformer, and give themselves up to
the song of the sea and the simple
music of the shepherd's pipe.
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SHAKESPEARE AS AN ACTOR
By Brander Matthews
It is one of the most curious coinci-
dences of literary history that the two
greatest dramatists of modem times,
Shakespeare and Moliere, should have
begun their connection with the the-
ater by going on the stage as actors,
without having at first, so far as we
can guess, any intention of becoming
playwrights. After having acquired
practical experience as performers,
both of them ventured modestly into
dramatic authorship, starting in the
most unpretending fashion by adapt-
ing the popular pieces of older con-
temporaries, and then essaying them-
selves in imitation of the more suc-
cessful playwrights of the time. At
first it was only tentatively that they
developed their own individuality and
revealed their own originality after
continual practice had given them a
more assured skill. But to the very
end of their careers in the theater they
continued to act; Shakespeare ceased
to appear on the stage only when he
left London and retired to Stratford
to live the life of a country gentleman,
and Moliere was stricken fatally while
taking part in the fourth performance
of his last play.
Moliere certainly, and quite possibly
Shakespeare also, was better known to
the playgoers of his own day as an
actor than as an author. Moliere
was the foremost comedian of
his day, and there is no dispute
about his supremacy as an im-
personator of humorous characters.
Indeed, his enemies were wont to
praise his acting and to disparage his
writing. They affected to dismiss his
plays as poor things in themselves,
owing the most of their undeniable
success to the brilliancy of the au-
thor*s own performance of the chief
parts. As actor, as author, and as
manager, Moliere was the center of
his company. Can as much be said
of Shakespeare? Great as Moliere is
as a dramatist, we cannot but feel that
Shakespeare is still greater. When
we note that Moliere was preeminent
among the players of his age in
France, we naturally wonder whether
Shakespeare was also foremost among
the performers of his time in England.
Moliere is the master of modern
comedy, and it was by the impersona-
tion of his own comic characters that
he won his widest popularity with the
playgoers of Paris. Shakespeare is the
mightiest of tragic authors. Was he
also chief of the tragedians who
held spellbound the gallants and the
groundlings thronging to London thea-
ters in the spacious days of Elizabeth ?
That the leader of English play-
wrights was also the leader of English
actors is what we should like to believe
in our natural desire to g^ive to him
that hath. This desire has led Sir
Sydney Lee to remark that when the
company of the Globe accepted the
royal summons to appear before the
queen at Christmas, 1594, Shakes-
peare was then "supported by actors
of the highest eminence in their gener-
ation." And yet Sir Sydney is frank
in expressing his own opinion that the
great dramatist "was nevec^o win the
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SHAKESPEARE AS AN ACTOR
19
laurels of a great actor." He honestly
admits that Shakespeare's "histrionic
fame had not progressed at the same
rate as his literary repute"; and he
informs us that when the officials of
the court invited the company to per-
form before Elizabeth, "directions
were given that the greatest of the
tragic actors of the day, Richard Bur-
bage, and the greatest of the comic
actors, WiUiam Kemp, were to bear
the young actor company." And he
adds that "with neither of these was
Shakespeare's histrionic position then,
or at any time, comparable," since
"for years they were leaders of the
acting profession."
This forces us to the conclusion
that in his pardonable longing to
glorify Shakespeare, Sir Sydney has
been led into giving us a wrong im-
pression. The queen did not summon
Shakespeare to appear before her ; she
summoned her whole company, to
which Shakespeare belonged, and
almost certainly it was Burbage and
Kemp whom she wanted to see on the
stage rather than Shakespeare. Bur-
bage and Kemp were the chief orna-
ments of the company, and although
Shakespeare was also a member, his
position in the ranks of the company
does not afford any warrant for the
assumption that Elizabeth gave any
special thought to him as an actor.
What she was desirous of witnessing
was a series of performances by a
famous company of which Burbage
and Kemp were the most famous
members. And in this series of per-
formances at court it was Shakes-
peare who supported Burbage and
Kemp.
It must be noted also that we do
not know the program of those per-
formances at court in the last week
of 1594, and we are left in doubt
whether Shakespeare was the author
of any one of , the plays then pre-
sented. Perhaps it is as well to point
out further that he had up to that
time produced no one of the major
masterpieces on which his fame as a
dramatist now rests securely.
While Moliere composed the chief
character in almost every one of his
plays for his own acting, Shakespeare
wrote the chief serious parts in his
pieces for Burbage and the chief
comic parts for Kemp, until that
highly dowered comedian left the
stage. For himself he modestly re-
served characters of less prominence;
in fact, in many of his plays, perhaps
even in a majority of them, it is diffi-
cult to discover any part which seems
to be specially adjusted to his own ca-
pacity as an actor. It is well known
that Burbage appeared as Hamlet
while Shakespeare humbly contented
himself with the subordinate part of
the Ghost. Who the original Orlando
may have been has not yet been as-
certained, but tradition tells us that
the author of "As You Like It" im-
personated Adam, the faithful old
servitor of the hero. And in Ben
Jonson's comedy of "Every Man in
his Humor," which is believed to have
been accepted for performance by the
company owing to Shakespeare's in-
fluence, the part of the elder Knowell
is said to have been taken by Shakes-
peare himself; and this seems quite
probable, since it was a character
which might very well be assumed by
the performer of Adam and of the
Ghost,
These are the only three parts'
which tradition, not always trust-
worthy, has ascribed to Shakespeare
as an actor. All three of them belong
to the line of business which is
technically known as "old men." And
this is the solid support of Sir Sydney
Lee's assertion that Shakespeare "or-
dinarily confined his efforts to old
men of secondary rank." r^^^^T^
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20 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Shakespeare, so Sir Sydney believes,
was twenty-two when he left his wife
and his three children at Stratford
and trudged up to London to seek his
fortune, and he was probably about
twenty-five before his first piece was
performed. We have no information
as to the means whereby he supported
himself when he first arrived in the
capital. He may have held horses at
the door of the theater, as one tradi-
tion has it, or he may have been able
to attach himself at once to one of
the half-dozen companies of actors in
London, since he might have won
friends among their members when
one or another of them had appeared
at Stratford in the summers imme-
diately preceding his departure from
his birthplace. Malone recorded a
tradition "that his first office in the
theater was that of prompter's attend-
ant"— that is to say, call-boy, as the
function is now styled. This may be
a fact, of course, but it seems a little
unlikely, since a man of twenty-two
would be rather mature for such work,
easily within the capacity of a lad of
fourteen.
If Shakespeare left Stratford in
1586, he had already established him-
self in London as an actor six years
later, when he was twenty-eight. It
was in 1592 that Chettle, the publisher,
apologizing for having issued Greene's
posthumous attack on Shakespeare,
declared that he was "excellent in the
quality he professes" — that is to say,
excellent as an actor.
This is high praise for so young a
performer; but Chettle's testimony
does not carry as much weight as it
might, since he is here seeking by frank
flattery to make amends for the attack
he had previously published. Yet this
praise may be taken as evidence that
Shakespeare by that time had suc-
ceeded in achieving a recognized po-
sition on the stage as an actor. A tra-
dition, that was first recorded in 1699.
declared that he was "better poet than
player."
Whether or not he began his career
in the theater as a call-boy, he seems
very early to have made choice of the
"line of business" which he wished to
play. He may have chosen it because
he believed himself to be best fitted
for parts of that kind, or he may have
drifted into the performance of "old
men" because there happened at that
moment to be a vacancy in the com-
pany for a competent performer of
these elderly characters. Although
the impersonator of these parts is said
to play "old men," the characters he is
to assume are not all of them stricken
in years, even if they are grave and
sedate, lacking in the exuberant vi-
vacity of youth. The Ghost, for ex-
ample, and Adam also, are technically
"old men." So are many of the dukes
and other chiefs of state, personages
of noble bearing and of emphatic dig-
nity. That Shakespeare appeared in
characters of this type in more than
one of his own plays is more than
probable. In fact, one John Davies
of Hereford recorded that Shakes-
peare "played some kingly parts in
sport." Just what the words "in
sport" may mean must be left to the
imagination.
That these austere and lofty char-
acters are known in the theater tcxlay
as "old men" does not imply tfiat the
actor who has choseh this line of busi-
ness is himself elderly. On the con-
trary, young actors have often deliber-
ately decided to devote themselves to
the performance of "old men." The
late John Gilbert, for example, long
connected with Wallack's Theater in
New York and celebrated for his un-
rivaled rendering of Sir Peter Teazle
and Sir Anthony Absolute, began to
impersonate elderly characters^ be forcj
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SHAKESPEARE AS AN ACTOR
21
he was twenty. If Shakespeare played
the Ghost and Adam, and if Gilbert
also undertook these characters, as he
did, then it is possible that certain
of the other Shakespearian parts as-
sumed by the American actor as the
**old man" of his company may have
been originally written by Shakes-
peare for his own acting. And this
leads us to the plausible supposition
that Shakespeare may have been the
original performer of ^geon in the
**C(Mnedy of Errors,*' of Leonato in
"Much Ado About Nothing," Baptista
in the "Taming of the Shrew," Friar
Lawrence in "Romeo and Juliet," the
King of France in "All's Well that
Ends Well," the Duke in "Othello,"
the Duke in the "Merchant of Ven-
ice," and possibly also the Duke in
"Measure for Measure," although in
this last somber comedy it may be
that the part which Shakespeare per-
formed was one or the other of the
two Friars,
The ascription of these characters
to Shakespeare as an actor may be
only a hazardous guess, but it is a
guess in accordance with the customs
of the theatrical profession, which are
as the laws of the Medes and Persians.
It is a guess which is supported by
all the known facts. A minute inves-
tigation of all his plays by an expert
in theatrical history and in histrionic
tradition would greatly increase the
number of the parts which we have
fair warrant for assuming to have
been written by Shakespeare with an
eye to his own acting.
The parts that have been here listed
tentatively, and those that may be
added to the catalogue, will be found
to have certain general characteristics.
They are all of them important and
they are none of them prominent.
The demands they severally made
upon the actor who undertook them
are not few and not insignificant.
For their proper representation most
of them required a dignified presence,
a courtly bearing, an air of authority,
and a large measure of elocutionary
skill. But the qualities these parts did
not necessitate are equally significant.
They called primarily for intelligence
and only secondarily, if at all, for any
large exhibition of emotion. Now, it
is by the power of expressing passion
at the great crises of existence and by
the faculty of transmitting his feel-
ing to his audience that the born actor
is revealed. If he has not this native
gift of communicable emotion, he can
never be intrusted with the moving
characters of a play. And apparently
this native gift was denied to Shakes-
peare, who had so many others. An
actor could acquit himself admirably
in the Ghost and in Adam and in all
the other "old men" which may have
been performed by Shakespeare, he
could have performed them to the en-
tire satisfaction of the most critical
spectators, without revealing the pos-
session of the vital spark which illum-
inates the creative work of the truly
great actor. In other words, these
parts do not demand that the per-
former of them shall possess more
than a moderate share of that mimetic
faculty, that fullness of feeling, that
amplitude of passion, which is the es-
sential qualification for histrionic ex-
cellence.
To say this is not to suggest that
Shakespeare had not a keen under-
standing of the fundamental principles
of the art of acting. Such an under-
standing was his beyond all question,
since that is a matter of the intelli-
gence, of intellectual appreciation. To
be assured of this we have only to re-
call the rehearsal of Bottom and his
fellows, and to read again Hamlet's
pregnant advice to the Players. This
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22
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
understanding of the art of acting a
playwright must always have or he
will fail to get the utmost out of his
actors. It is a condition precedent to
his success as a writer of stage-plays ;
and it is possessed by every successful
dramatist, by Racine and by Sheridan,
by Sardou and by Bronson Howard,
by Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones.
The playwrights must know what can
be done with every part in every play
of theirs, and they can then help the
performers to attain this. They know
what can be done, but it does not fol-
low that they can do it themselves.
Their grasp of the principles of the
art does not imply that they themselves
could act any one of their best parts as
they would wish to have this acted.
They may be the most skilful of train-
ers, and yet lack the histrionic gift
themselves.
And not merely dramatists, but
stage-managers — "producers," as they
are now styled — may have this faculty
of directing and guiding and inspiring
performers to achieve their utmost
without themselves being capable of
doing as actors what they feel ought to
be done. Any one at all familiar with
stage history can cite men who have
not been eminent as actors and yet
who were able to suggest to others how
to get the best out of themselves. It
was little Bowes who taught the Foth-
eringay the effects which so impressed
the youthful Pcndcnnis. It was Sam-
son, a withered comedian of limited
range, but of keen artistic intelligence,
who suggested to Rachel many of her
broadest and boldest strokes in
tragedy.
When we set Hamlet's speech to
the Players over against the remarks
which Moliere made in his own per-
son in the "Impromptu of Versailles,"
we cannot help seeing that these great
dramatists were alike in abhorring ar-
tificiality in acting, in abominating vio-
lence, in detesting rant, and in relish-
ing simplicity and apparent natural-
ness. Both of them inculcated the
necessity of truth in the portrayal of
character and of passion. Moliere at-
tained also to the highest levels of the
histrionic art; Shakespeare did not,
probably because he was lacking in
some one of the several physical quali-
fications which the actor of domi-
nating parts must have. Apparently
he was a well-proportioned man, even
if not positively good-looking. But
his body may have been rebellious to
his will, with the result that his ges-
tures, however well intentioned, would
be ineffective and even awkward. It
may be that it was his voice which was
at fault, and a noble organ of speech
is almost indispensable to a gp-eat
actor. In one of his papers on "Actors
and the Art of Acting," always full
of insight into the principles of that
little-understood art, George Henry
Lewes considered this possibility :
I dare say he declaimed finely, as far
as rhythmic cadence and a nice accentua-
tion went. But his non-success implies
that his voice was intractable or limited m
its range. Without a sympathetic voice,
no declamation can be effective. The tones
which stir us need not be musical, need
not be pleasant, even, but they must have
a penetrating, vibrating quality. Had
Shakespeare possessed such a voice he
would have been famous as an actor.
Without it all his other gifts were as noth-
ing on the stage. Had he seen Garrick,
Kemble, or Kean performing in plays not
his own he might doubtless have per-
ceived a thousand deficiencies in their con-
ception, and defects in their execution; but
had he appeared on the same stage with
them, even in plays of his own, the audi-
ences would have seen the wide gulf be-
tween conception and presentation. One
lurid look, one pathetic intonation, would
have more power in swaying the emotions
of the audience than all the subtle and
profound passion which agitated the soul
of the poet but did not manifestly express
itself: the look and the tone may come
from a man so drunk as to be scarcely able
to stand; but the public sees only the
look, hears only the tone, and is irresistibly
moved by these intelligible symbols.
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SHAKESPEARE AS AN ACTOR
23
A little earlier in this same sug-
gestive discussion of "Shakespeare as
an Actor and Critic," Lewes asserted :
Shakespeare doubtless knew — none knew
so well — how Hamlet, Othello, Richard, and
Falstaff should be personated; but had he
been called upon to personate them he
would have found himself wanting in
voice, face, and temperament. The deli-
cate sensitiveness of his organization, which
is implied in the exquisiteness and flexi-
bility of his genius, would absolutely have
unfitted him for the presentation of char-
acters demanding a robust vigor and a
weighty animalism. It is a vain attempt
to paint frescos with a camel's hair brush.
The broad and massive effects necessary to
scenic presentation could never have been
produced by such a temperament as his..
Probably it was because Shakes-
peare had the delicate sensitiveness
with which Lewes credited him that
he had also a distaste for acting,
if we may interpret any of the lines
of his sonnets as lyric revelations of
his own sentiment. The intrigue
which we think we can disentangle by
a minute analysis of these poems may
be feigned and unreal, a mere com-
pliance with a literary fashion of the
moment; but there is a sincerer note
of personal feeling in the sonnets in
which Shakespeare seems to be ex-
pressing his dislike for the calling by
which he made his living. In the hun-
dred-and-tenth sonnet he confessed:
"Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
And made myself a motley to the view."
And in the hundred-and-eleventh,
which links itself logically with its
predecessor, he appealed for a more
tolerant consideration of his char-
acter contaminated by the stage:
"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not for my life provide
Than public means what public manners
breeds.
Thence comes it that my nature receives a
brand ;
And almost thence my nature is subdued
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
Pity me then and wish I were renew'd,"
If Shakespeare is here speaking of
himself as an actor, if this lyric is
really wrung from the bottom of his
heart, then we have an ample explana-
tion for his failure to attain to the
higher summits of the histrionic art.
He did not like his profession, he did
not enjoy acting, and we may take
it as certain that no man ever won to
the front in a calling which he did not
love, just as no man ever despised the
art in which he excelled. Shakes-
peare's dislike of acting may have
been the consequence of this or it
may have been the cause of it. Of
course it is dimly possible that we are
reading into these sonnets more than
Shakespeare meant to put into them,
and that the quoted lines do not repre-
sent his own feelings. And even if
they do, they may voice what was only
a fleeting disgust for that personal ex-
hibition which is the inseparable con-
dition of acting and from which the
practitioners of all the other arts ex-
cept oratory are exempt — z personal
exhibition doubly disagreeable to a
poet of Shakespeare's "delicate sensi-
tiveness."
Perhaps it is not fanciful to find in
"As You like It" itself evidence in
behalf of the contention that Shakes-
peare was not greatly interested in
himself as an actor. Adam, who is
a character of some importance in the
first half of the comedy, most unex-
pectedly disappears out of it in the
second half. Now, if the author had
been anxious for ampler histrionic op-
portunity, it would not have been dif
ficult for him to bring on Adam agau
toward the end of the play, that h%
might Impress himself more securely
on the memory of the audience.
It was probably in 1598 that Shakes-
peare first appeared as Adam and as
the elder Knowell, and it was prob-
ably in 1602 that he first personated
the Ghost, being then thirty-eight
years old. He was to remain on the
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24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
stage ten or twelve years longer; but
there is no reason to suppose that the
parts he played in later life were any
more important. We do not know
what characters he undertook in the
plays which he wrote after "Hamlet,"
nor do we know what parts he as-
sumed in the many pieces by other au-
thors which made up the repertory of
the company. That he continued to
act we need not doubt; for instance,
he was one of the performers in Ben
Jonson's "Sejanus," probably pro-
duced in 1602 or 1603. But the ab-
sence of specific information on this
point is evidence that he did not im-
press himself upon his contemporaries
as an actor of power. As Lewes de-
clared, "the mere fact that we hear
nothing of his qualities as an actor
implies that there was nothing above
the line, nothing memorable to be
spoken of." The parts which we be-
lieve him to have played did not "de-
mand or admit various excellencies."
Shakespeare may have had lofty his-
trionic ambitions, but probably he was
not allowed to gratify his longings,
and certainly we have no tradition or
hint that he ever failed in what he at-
tempted in the theater. Perhaps we
are justified in believing that he had
gone on the stage merely as the easiest
means of immediately earning his liv-
ing, that he did not greatly care for
acting, and that he was satisfied to
assume the responsible but subordi-
nate parts for which he was best
fitted.
This view of his capacity as an
actor is sustained by another consid-
eration. Whatever Shakespeare's po-
sition as a performer may have been,
his later popularity as a playwright
is beyond dispute; indeed, his appeal
to the playgoing public was so potent
that it tempted more than one un-
scrupulous publisher to put Shakes-
peare's name to plays which were not
his. And his position as a member of
the company was equally solidly estab-
lished. All his plays, with one pos-
sible and unimportant exception, had
been written for this company, to
which he had been early admitted and
of which he soon became one of the
managers who had the responsibilities
and who shared the profits of the en-
terprise. He ranked high in the com-
pany, and when King James took it
under his direct patronage shortly af-
ter his accession in 1603, Shakes-
peare's name is the second on the list
of actors as it appears on the royal
warrant, and Burbage's is third.
There is ample evidence that he was
held in high esteem by his comrades
of the theater. That he had a warm
regard for them is shown by the fact
that in his will he left money to Bur-
bage, Condell, and Heming for the
purchase of memorial rings. That
they cherished his memory is proved
by the publication, seven years after
his death, of the folio edition of his
complete plays, due to the pious care
of Condell and Heming. Shakespeare
had the gift of friendship and he
bound his fellows to him with hooks
of steel. Outside of the theater also
he was widely liked ; and the personal
references to him which have been
gleaned from contemporary writers,
however inadequate they may seem to
us nowadays in appreciation of his
genius, are abundant in expressions of
regard for the man for his gentleness
and his courtesy.
Now, if Shakespeare was popular
with his fellow-actors, with the play-
going public, with those he met out-
side the theater, there is no other pos-
sible explanation of the fact that he
did not take the chief parts in at least
a few of his own plays except that he
was either incapable of so doing or
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SHAKESPEARE AS AN ACTOR
25
not desirous of attempting it. We
have only to consider the history of
the theater to discover that every
actor-playwright, from Moliere to
Boucicault and Mr. Gillette, who had
both ambition and ability, composed
the central characters of his own plays
for his own acting. This is what has
happened always in the past, and it is
what must happen whenever a gifted
actor takes to writing or whenever a
gifted writer takes to acting. If,
therefore, Shakespeare did not him-
self undertake Richard III or Hamlet
or Lear or any other of those over-
whelming parts, but devised them
rather for the acting of Burbage, we
are forced to the conclusion that he
knew himself incapable of them and
that his comrades in the theater, his
fellow-managers, knew this also. In
other words, Shakespeare appeared as
Adam and as the Ghost and he con-
fined his acting to "old men," because
these parts were well within his phys-
ical limitations. This conclusion, that
the greatest of dramatists was not also
great as an actor, may be unwelcome,
but there is no escape from it.
For Shakespeare himself, however,
if not for his modern admirers, there
was one obvious compensation. He
may not have been fond of the art;
he may even have disliked the prac-
tice of his profession, and he may not
have revealed himself as a performer
of more than respectable ability, but
he owed to acting the solid foundation
of his fortune. He went to London in
his youth with no visible means of
support, although already burdened
with a wife and three children; and
he went back to Stratford not only
well-to-do, but probably better off than
any other resident of the little town.
Even if Shakespeare was not a great
actor, it was as an actor that he
gained entrance into the theater, that
he acquired that intimate familiarity
with stage technic which is evident
in his masterpieces, and that he was
able to get his successive plays swiftly
produced by the very actors for whose
performance he had specially devised
them. It is because he was an actor
that he was able speedily to make his
way as a playwright, and it was be-
cause he was valuable to the company
as actor and playwright that he was
admitted partner in the undertaking
If he had not become an actor, he
might or he might not have written
"Hamlet" and "Julius Caesar" and
"As You Like It," but he probably
would never have been able to buy
New Place, to get a grant of arms for
his father, and to spend the final years
of his life in easy leisure. And we
may rest assured that Shakespeare
himself recognized all the advantage
it was to him to be an actor, even if
he did affect in one or another of his
sonnets to rail against the disadvan-
tages. Great poet as he was, he was
also a good man of business, with a
keen eye to the main chance.
Shakespeare had three sources of
income, as an actor, as an author, and
as one of the managers. Sir Sydney
Lee has calculated that in the earlier
years of Shakespeare's connection
with the theater he received at
least a hundred pounds a year as
a performer and at least twenty
pounds more as a playwright, with
possibly some slight additional in-
come from the sale of his
poems, which were repeatedly re-
printed. Allowing for the greater
purchasing power of money in those
days, we may assume that this gave
Shakespeare an annual income about
equivalent to five thousand dollars to-
day. Later the price paid for plays
rose, and by that time Shakespeare
had become one of the partners in the
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26 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
theater. There is a likelihood that than it is to-day, still it was worthy
Shakespeare took upon himself a por- of some remuneration. That Shakes-
tion of the labor of stage-management peare in his youth had gone on the
and of producing new plays ; and al- stage as an actor proved to be as profit-
though the customs of the Elizabethan able to his pocket as it was helpful to
theater made this task less burdensome his mastery of stagecraft.
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ROUSSEAU, GODWIN, AND WORDSWORTH
By George McLean Harper
Wordsworth's early life presents
a remarkable parallel to the position
of magnanimous youth to-day. His
world, like ours, was a scene of con-
flict between discredited institutions
and a new spirit, which sent men back
to first principles. He had not him-
self experienced the worst that the
old order could inflict, but he per-
ceived its injustice and sympathized
with its victims. He studied with an
open mind the new philosophy, which
rehabilitated the doctrines of human
perfectibility and equality, and the
doctrine of the supreme claim of rea-
son over habit. Yet he was fully con-
scious of the danger not only to pub-
lic tranquility, but to culture, which
was involved in abandoning settled
courses. It is true he came, or seem-
ed to come, at last to a conviction that
the old ways were best; but he never
really gave up the sympathies and
still less the intellectual method of
his young manhood.
He is most interesting, and to our
newly awakened age most instructive,
as he stood in the last decade of the
eighteenth century, with the light of
social hope beaming in his eyes. As
he was then most courageous, per-
haps, too, he was then nearest the
truth; for of that fair lady it may
certainly be affirmed that faint-heart
never won her. These years of
Wordsworth's personal history had
all the charm of adventure and
romance, together with a spice
of danger; and furthermore he
touched, as with his bare hand, the
mighty coils that were generating
light and heat for a world that was
to move faster than ever before and
through clearer spaces. His poetry
yields sustenance to old and young, to
the ignorant and the well-informed,
but can be really appreciated only by
those who have entered into its spirit
in two ways, by natural sympathy
with his mode of thought and by
knowledge of his life.
One of the most decisive periods of
that life was the thirteen or fourteen
months of his second visit to France.
From the seclusion of Hawkshead,
the sheltered luxury of Cambridge,
the slow pace and quiet tone of Eng-
lish and Welsh parsonages and
country-houses, he stepped, literally
in a single day, into the brilliancy,
the hardness, the externality, and peril
of revolutionary France. The con-
trast between the two countries would
have been stimulating to him at any
time; in 1791 it was overpowering.
His sojourn in France enabled him
to gather into the solidity of a sys-
tem those faint impulses of love for
humanity which were stirring in him
already. His doubts of the religion
in which he had been brought up were
now confirmed. His implicit republi-
canism was strengthened into an ex-
plicit political creed. His faith in the
paramount excellence of his own
country was shaken. Thus was im-
mensely widened the scope of his
"citism," to use a word more current
then than now.
Had those months of his life been
spent at Cambridge or in London or
in the Lake Country, he could never
have written the "Prelude"; there
would have been r^^;;M^^6g\e
28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
fragment of a "Recluse," and from all
his best poetry we should miss the
deepest note. Not only so, but the
underlying principle, which is pro-
foundly philosophical, which is polit-
ical, which is democratic, would be
lacking.
Wordsworth was not in his youth
a browsing reader. Books to him
were even then "a substantial world,"
very real, as real almost as living per-
sons, and therefore not to be treated
lightly. Amid their pressure, as amid
the unremitting urgency of friends,
he still preserved his independence.
He rather neglected reading during
his months of leisure after leaving
college. One author, however, he al-
most certainly read before the close
of 1791, and, curiously enough, this
was a writer who had himself been
completely indifferent to books. Rous-
seau it is far more than any other
man of letters either of antiquity or
of modern times whose works have
left their trace in Wordsworth's
poetry. This poor, half-educated
dreamer, just because he was poor,
half-educated, and a dreamer, found
his way to the center of his age —
the center of its intellectual and emo-
tional life. And here all original and
simple souls met him. They were
drawn thither by the same force that
drew him, by a desire to return to
nature. Exaggeration apart, and
thinking not so much of his system-
atic working-out of his views, which
was generally too abstract and spe-
ciously consistent, as of their origin,
purpose, and spirit, one must perceive
their truth. They are as obviously
true now as they were startlingly true
when first uttered.
They could not have seemed novel
to Wordsworth, who was prepared
for them by having lived with lowly
people of stalwart intelligence and
worthy morals in the village of
Hawkshead. Originality often con-
sists in having remained unconscious
of perverse departures from simple
and natural ways of thought. A per-
son who has been brought up to know
and speak plain truth appears original
in perverse and artificial society. We
can imagine Wordsworth becoming,
without the aid of Rousseau, very
nearly what he did become. Never-
theless, the points of agreement are
too numerous to be the result of mere
coincidence. Had Rousseau been less
occupied with general ideas, had he
been dominated by a poet's interest
in what Blake called "minute par-
ticulars," it is not too fanciful to sup-
pose that he would have chosen sub-
jects like those which Wordsworth
took from "familiar life"; and an
examination of Rousseau's language
shows the same tendency to use the
diction of common speech. Words-
worth's earliest poems, composed be-
fore he had read Rousseau, reveal
little of this tendency. It is quite
likely that he owes more in this re-
spect to Rousseau than has yet been
acknowledged. And in that case the
debt should be shared by Coleridge.
Whether it was he or Coleridge who
took the initiative in the metrical and
rhetorical reform which found its first
marked expression in "Lyrical Bal-
lads" has often been discussed. There
can be no doubt that Coleridge would
see more quickly than Wordsworth
the theoretical consequences and im-
plications of what they had done, and
would be the first to suggest formu-
lating a theory. But it may be that
certain philosophical principles de-
rived from Rousseau were already
lodged in Wordsworth's mind. For,
after all, Coleridge's native bent was
towards the uncommon, the mystical,
the abstruse, the splendid. He adaptad
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ROUSSEAU, GODWIN, AND WORDSWORTH
29
himself with cordial sympathy to the
new idea, of which he perceived the
importance. But affection, love of
fellowship, and zeal to confer kind-
ness may have carried him much
further than he would have ever
dreamed of going alone in the direc-
tion indicated by "Lyrical Ballads"
and the critical expositions which
form so large and noble a part of
"Biographia Literaria."
What, in fine, are the distinctive
elements in Rousseau? In the first
place, we recognize in him the prev-
alence of revery as a mode of
thought. Revery is an inactive, un-
systematic kind of meditation, distin-
guished from logical processes of dis-
course by the absence of consciously
perceived steps. It is in so far unsat-
isfactory that the results cannot be de-
termined beforehand and the move-
ment cannot be retraced backward,
as one would "prove" a result in
arithmetic. It has, however, an ad-
vantage over the ordinary kind of
philosophic speculation — ordinary at
least in the Occidental world — in that
it involves a more complete merging
of the thinker in his thought, en-
gaging his sentiment and giving him
a spiritual rather than a corporal ap-
proach to objects of sensation. In
revery a person seems to touch, taste,
smell, hear, and see by a reflex dis-
turbance of the organs, or physical
reminiscence. Revery is thus almost
sensuous. Furthermore, it is not dis-
cursive; it does not characteristically
tend to movement; it is static. It
discloses to the mind what the mind
already contains, but discovers no new
subjects of thought. It arouses, ar-
ranges, unifies the elements of one's
soul, and the dreamer may emerge
from his dream with a truer knowl-
edge of himself and a more definite
purpose. External events and objects
are not primarily essential of this
state, though they may induce or
stimulate it. This is truly the poetic
process, and Rousseau, in all his most
original, vital, and characteristic pas-
sages, is a poet. We are reminded
when we read them of Wordsworth's
remark, "Poetry is emotion recol-
lected in tranquillity."
A second element in Rousseau is
his desire to simplify, to reduce the
number and complexity of experi-
ences and ideals. The mode of revery
itself tends to concentrate and unite
the multitude of concepts which have
come into the dreamer's mind from
many and diverse sources. To one
who contemplates in this way, all dis-
persion of energy is painful and re-
pugnant. So it was with Rousseau.
The tragedy of his life and the cause
of his madness was an abnormal
shrinking from being torn asunder, as
all men must be continually torn
asunder, by the demands of other
people. Contrast with this Voltaire's
joy of combat, his enthusiastic readi-
ness to give his time and talents to
others, his radiant sociability. The
danger that besets a poetic tempera-
ment, the danger of excessive intro-
version, of shrinking from the ex-
pense of spirit in a waste of external
reality, was absent in Voltaire's case,
but lurked in the very heart of Rous-
seau. Nevertheless, when applied to
things outside himself, to the social
problem, the domestic life, the poli-
tics, the religion of his age, Rousseau's
desire to simplify gave him the master
touch. He laid his finger on the
racked nerves and prescribed quiet,
concentration, and simplicity.
But this meant revolution. For the
habits and laws of society had been
made on a different principle. "The
impulse to shake off intricacies is the
mark of revolutionary generations,"
says John Morleyg.J,;an^^iQ^^^^{;g
30
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
starting point of all Rousseau's men-
tal habits and of the work in which
they expressed themselves. * * * Sim-
plification of religion by clearing away
the overgrowth of errors, simplifica-
tion of social relations by equality, of
literature and art by constant re-
turn to nature, of manners by indus-
trious homeliness and thrift — this is
the revolutionary process and ideal,
and this is the secret of Rousseau's
hold over a generation that was
lost amid the broken maze of fallen
systems." Rousseau's discourses,
"Whether the Restoration of the Arts
and Sciences has tended to purify
Manners," and "On the Sources of
Inequality Among Men," show by
their very titles the sequence of his
thought, and how the idea of simpli-
fication leads to the idea of equality.
Now, inequality is a sign and a cause
of unstable equilibrium. Where ine-
quality exists there is constantly a
pressure to restore the balance. He
therefore who desires that life shall
be simple, and that men shall attain
as nearly as possible a level of op-
portunity, loves permanence and is
the true conservative. Moreover, one
who thinks by means of revery is by
this peculiarity inclined to prefer per-
manence to change. The ruminative
process is slow. Its objects are lov-
ingly retained and caressed. Self as
an active agent seems to the dreamer
to be of less consequence than self as
a receptive, passive organ, inwardly
transforming and assimilating what
comes to it. By this persistent asso-
ciation of self with the objects of con-
templation, the latter become infused
with life from the former. They lose
their difference. They become human-
ized. Harmony is thus established be-
tween the poet as dreamer and the
world which has so long been his
world. He endows it with his own
consciousness. He sympathizes with
it, after first projecting himself into
it. And by a dangerous turn the
world, or rather so much of it as he
has thus appropriated, may become his
accomplice, his flatterer. We have
here perhaps the clue to that practice
which Ruskin termed "the pathetic
fallacy" — ^the practice of reading into
nature feelings which are not prop-
erly nature's, but man's. Possibly, too,
we have here an explanation of the
calm egoism of many poets.
But, to continue our attempt to an-
alyze Rousseau, it must be apparent
that the permanent is the natural, the
truly permanent, I mean, which in
the long run holds out against all ar-
tifice. And the natural qualities of
human beings are common to nearly
all. To the many, then, and not to
the privileged or the perverted few,
must he go who would understand
life. This conviction, proceeding from
his habit of revery and his love of
simplicity, is the third characteristic
of Rousseau. Being a child of the
people, knowing their soundness and
vigor, he felt no surprise in connec-
tion with such a principle and set it
forth as self-evident in his books. But
it surprised Europe. To him it was
a matter of course that wisdom should
be justified of all her children : securus
judicat orbis terrarum. There was
nothing new in this conviction. It
has no doubt been held always by nine
tenths of the human race. But it was
new in a man of letters. It was not
the opinion of cultivated people. To
culture as a process of distinction
Wordsworth, too, showed repugnance
at Cambridge and in his London life.
He who was to write "of joy in widest
commonalty spread" scarcely needed
the formulas in which Rousseau
stated the instinctive faith that was in
them both. The social aspect of the
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ROUSSEAU, GODWIN, AND WORDSWORTH
31
French Revolution, its glorious recog-
nition of equal rights and common
brotherhood, seemed to him, so gra-
cious had been the influences of his
boyhood, only natural, and he conse-
quently sings:
If at the first great outbreak I rejoiced
Less than might well befit my youth, the
cause
In part lay here, that unto me the events
Seemed nothing out of nature's certain
course,
A gift that was come rather late than
soon.
A fourth quality of Rousseau is his
intense individualism. Men in a state
of nature, in close contact with the
earth, with animals, and with other
men not overpoweringly different
from themselves, have to rely on their
own resources. A brooding, introspec-
tive person in such circumstances is
liable to form a very high, if not an
exaggerated, estimate of his own con-
sequence. He is more likely to ac-
knowledge the dependence of man
upon nature than the solidarity of men
with one another. The political views
of Rousseau, as stated, for example,
in "The Social Contract," are ex-
tremely individualistic. They are
based on the assumption that society
was originally anarchical, a collection
of independent persons or families.
And the individual, not having been a
coordinate part of a preexisting
harmony, still retains, as it were, the
right of secession. He has merely en-
tered into a pact with other free and
independent beings, and his surrender
of some of his liberty may be only for
a time. As has often been pointed
out, this conception would hardly have
been possible in a Catholic. It was
ultra-Protestant. It was Calvinistic.
Wherever the influence of the Gene-
van republic has been strongest, the
spirit of independence has been most
active. The histories of the Nether-
lands, of Scotland, of the North of
Ireland, of England in the seventeenth
century, of the American Revolution,
and of the American Civil War, have
their beginnings in Geneva. Consider-
ing Rousseau's origin, it is easy to
understand his restiveness under re-
straint, his horror of patronage, his
association of human strength not
with union among men, but. with the
wild and stern aspects of nature.
Wordsworth, with his Anglican
training, never went to extremes in
his love of liberty. Even when most
rebellious against the spirit of his
bringing up and his environment, he
still felt that social ties had something
of the naturalness and permanence of
the external world. He thus acted the
mediating part of a true Englishman,
and even, one might say, of a true
Anglican, by trying to preserve his-
toric continuity without surrendering
the right of private judgment. Rous-
seau reasoned more trenchantly. But
trenchant reasoning in the complex
field of social relations is seldom
sound. The natural, which is perma-
nent, is also rational, and the rude pop-
ular way of arguing from analogy and
precedent is therefore, after all, a
sort of reasoning. Thus Wordsworth
was not less rational than Rousseau,
though in him pure reason was stead-
ily counterbalanced by instinct. In
Rousseau there was rarely an equi-
librium between the two. He was al-
ternately swayed by the one or the
other. He at times surrendered him-
self to revery and earned the name
of sentimentalist; and again he was
seduced by the speciousness of ab-
stract reason, and has therefore, per-
haps not undeservedly, been called a
sophist. Wordsworth, as became a
poet, did not thus separate his mental
processes. His revery was more like
reflection; it had more of a rational.
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32
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
discursive quality than Rousseau's;
and his reasoning was less abstract;
it never lost touch with things and
events. As Edward Caird, using the
method and language of Hegel, puts
the case, Wordsworth **transcends"
Rousseau, reconciling his contradic-
tions in a higher plane.
He who believes that tillers of the
soil and those in walks of life but
little removed from them — ^that is, the
majority of mankind — are leading
natural and therefore rational lives,
and that their social laws are per-
manent, and therefore not wanting in
authority, is not likely to be made
unhappy by the outbreak of a revolu-
tion which promises to restore the
artificially disturbed balance of human
power and happiness. Rousseau's
message, notwithstanding the final
gloom of his life, was one of glad-
ness. More than any other feature
of the Revolution, Wordsworth felt
its joy.
It is needless at this time to narrate
how public events in France disap-
pointed him. Suffice it to say that
modern readers who take their tone
from Burke are liable to overlook the
fact that the most generous souls in
England felt exalted where Burke
was depressed, and downcast where
Burke began to revive. In Words-
worth's case the discouragement was
profound, for his hopes had been
very high. But he stubbornly refused
to abandon the republican cause.
Through five or six years, in the face
of bad news and the martial rage of
his countrymen, he clung to his prin-
ciples, mastering his gloom as best he
could.
In truth, he rose above the storm of
circuriT^tance by establishino^ his life,
for a time, upon the principles of Wil-
liam Godwin. This is a fact which
no biographer of the poet has ven-
tured to deny, though many attempts
have been made to minimize its im-
portance. I am acquainted with no
account of Wordsworth's life that
does justice to the strength and at-
tractiveness of the philosophy upon
which he disciplined his powerful rea-
soning faculties and to which he yield-
ed a brave and obstinate allegiance
from his twenty-third to his twenty-
eighth year. When one considers that,
in the lives of nearly all poets, the
third decade stands pre-eminent as a
formative and productive period, it
seems impossible to exaggerate the
value of Godwin's ideas to Words-
worth. Wordsworth is admitted to
be a great philosophical poet. Yet all
his biographers have termed God-
win's system "preposterous." Words-
worth, on the other hand, even when
he renounced it, fully appreciated how
formidable was its character.
Godwin's "Enquiry concerning Po-
litical Justice" would have been an
epoch-making work if it had been
published in a year less unpropitious
to radical speculation than 1793. But
books have their fates, and this re-
markable treatise has fared ill, for it
was from the beginning covered with
obloquy, and probably no literary or
philosophical work of equal value has
been so little read in proportion to its
merit. Such is the force of organized
prejudice. The "patriotic" party were
not content with crushing the demo-
cratic movement in England ; they did
their best to smother even the memory
of it. Not only did they promptly
check overt acts of a revolutionary
tendency ; they entered into a century-
long conspiracy to suppress a number
of noble intellectual works. Contemp-
tuous disapproval was the means em-
ployed, and it succeeded. It seems
to me the poet Blake was right when
he declared that to clip the wings of
genius was to sin against the Holy
Ghost.
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ROUSSEAU, GODWIN, AND WOR.DSWORTH
3}
The share of Godwin's "Political
Justice*' in the intellectual movement
of the nineteenth century was not at
all considerable, if we set aside its in-
fluence on Wordsworth and Shelley
and the Utilitarian school of philos-
ophy. No other fact so strikingly
suggests the reactionary character of
political theory in that century. The
twentieth seems to have linked itself
more directly to the eighteenth than to
the nineteenth, which lies between its
neighbors like a great confused pa-
renthesis. More carefully stated, the
truth may be that, of two eternally op-
posed and equally indispensable types
of thought, one, represented by Locke
and Hume and Godwin, enjoyed
towards the close of the eighteenth
century a degree of general accept-
ance which it has until lately not
enjoyed since; while the other, elo-
quently preached by Burke and Car-
lyle, and always more openly, more
officially, more popularly held, has
been for a much longer time domi-
nant. There should be no illusions as
to the comparative attractiveness of
these two systems. It is enough to
observe that their merits have seldom
been fairly contrasted.
Wordsworth, while still seeing man
and nature very much as Rousseau
saw them, became a disciple of God-
win. This did not mean the accept-
ance of his master's political theory
alone, but of his S)rstem as a whole.
Godwin has this at least in common
with Locke, that his philosophy is in-
tegral. It is rigorously deduced from
a few chief principles. Thus its eth-
ics cannot be held separately from its
metaphysics, nor can its politics be
detached from its psychology. The
largest and the soundest parts of the
"Enquiry concerning Political Jus-
tice" are devoted to ethical and polit-
ical considerations, which can indeed
hardly be distinguished from one an-
other, as it is his dearest purpose to
show they should not be,
Godwin insists that his conclusions
in these departments of practical
conduct depend on his doctrines of
knowledge and will. He is a detcr-
minist, and the only weak element of
his book is his unsubstantial argument
for necessity. The many pleas in fa-
vor of free-will which suggest them-
selves even to j^ilosophers, as well as
to humbler thinkers, he almost wholly
fails to take into account.
Equally dc^^matic, though not so
audacious, because more widely
shared, is his belief that experience is
the source of all knowledge. "Noth-
ing can be more incontrovertible," he
asserts, *'than that we do not bring
pre-established ideas into the world
with us."
Justice, he contends, is the whole
duty of man. Aind it seems that his
criterion of justice is the greatest
good of the greatest number ; he says,
"Utility, as it regards percipient be-
ings, is the only basis of moral and
political truth." Reason is the only
organ whereby men can discover what
is just. "To a rational being, there
can," he says, "be but one rule of con-
duct, justice, and one mode of ascer-
taining that rule, the exercise of his
understanding." Intuition, and every
form of mystical illumination, togeth-
er with all authority, whether of num-
bers, antiquity, institutions, or "in-
spired words," are calmly set aside.
Morality is a matter of knowledge.
"The most essential part of virtue,"
he says, "consists in the incessantly
seeking to inform ourselves more ac-
curately upon the subject of utility
and right."
We see that, however individualis-
tic some of Godwin's doctrines may
look, his system is not indivi4ualistiC|
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34
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
at all when one comes to apply it
practically. For to construe justice
as that which secures the greatest
good of the greatest number is to
nourish another leviathan. It is
Wordsworth's great distinction as a
philosophical poet to have made a
synthesis of the views presented to
his mind successively by Rousseau
and Godwin. He indeed "reconciled
them in a higher plane." With Rous-
seau and Godwin he had looked be-
fore and after and pined for what
was not; and he saw absolute perfec-
tion neither in the past nor in the
future. He read deeply in books of
travel which told of primitive races;
he dreamed with philosophers who
predicted a new golden age, and in
neither case did he find what he
sought. But looking home to men as
they are, to life as it may be and often
is, here and now, he found,
A never-failing principle of joy
And purest passion.
He perceived "the unappropriated
good" in natural beauty, in the lan-
guage of every day, in the souls of
plain people; and he sang trium-
phantly
Of moral strength and intellectual Power;
Of joy in widest commonalty spread;
Of the individual Mind that keeps her
own
Inviolate retirement, subject there
To Conscience only, and the law supreme
Of that Intelligence, which governs all.
Let us not forget that to this recon-
ciled mood the poet came by way of
what is common to Rousseau and
Godwin, their trust in human nature,
their belief in equality. Joy is not
joy w^hich is not shared by all. For
a longer time than has been generally
admitted Wordsworth retained his
reverence for reason. In his young
manhood he clung with passionate
fervor to the pure word of the Revo-
lution.
Godwinism soon fell into deep and
undeserved disrepute. This was not
due wholly to its peculiar features,
some of which were beyond the com-
prehension of pragmatical minds, and
others objectionable on the very
grounds of general utility to which
Godwin sought to refer his thinking.
It was due chiefly to the inherent un-
attractiveness of the whole philosophy
of the Enlightenment, and to the in-
auspicious character of the times.
Pure .rationalism can perhaps never
be expected to win the favor of more
than a small minority even among
reflective men. Its voice is in no age
altogether silent, but the echoes near-
ly always come back mingled with
alien notes, the note of classicism,
the note of transcendentalism, the
note of romanticism. That Godwin's
system did, through Bentham and
Mill, for a while, at all events, and
in a limited degree, faire ecole, is in-
deed remarkable. The age, moreover,
was not propitious. The passion of
patriotism, lately starved by the dis-
approval with which thoughtful Eng-
lishmen viewed the conduct of their
government before and during the
American war throughout the period
of state trials between its disastrous
conclusion and the opening of the new
French w^ar, in 1793, the passionate
desire to justify the past of England
and her present course, made men
very impatient of Godwin's imper-
turbable criticism. This was no time,
they thought, for reform.
Wordsworth, one of the first, as he
was the greatest, of its converts, ad-
hered to the Godwinian system for six
years. He met the passion of the hour
wMth his own deep inward passion.
He conquered love of country with
love of mankind. He rebuked with a
reasoned hatred of war the elemental
instincts of a people in arms. For
six years his tenacious and inwardly
energetic nature held fast its own
religion.
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MUSICO-DRAMATIC PROBLEMS
By Edgar Stillman Kelley
The opinion is sometimes expressed
that Shakespeare's plays were in-
tended to be read, not acted. Cer-
tain connoisseurs maintain that a
higher degree of enjoyment is derived
from a perusal of one of his works
than is afforded by a stage perform-
ance. A similarly ascetic view is
maintained by those music-lovers who
prefer the contemplation of the silent
page of a Beethoven symphony to
the complete rendition by full or-
chestra.
In defense of these Platonic pleas-
ures, it may be urged that it is better
to rely on our imaginations for the
action, scenery, tone color, and other
accessories, than to permit our senses
to be harrowed by imperfect produc-
tions. But whosoever deliberately
absents himself from worthy presen-
tations of these masterpieces misses
much. Shakespeare himself more
than once assures us that the world
is a stage, and, furthermore, claims
that *'the play is the thing." Con-
cerning the musical phase of the ques-
tion, Richard Wagner is equally em-
phatic. In a letter to Liszt, thanking
him for his newly published sym-
phonic poems, he writes : "That they
are beautiful I can see from the
scores. Nevertheless, I long to hear
them, for, after all, the living tone is
the real salt, without which all music
is flavorless."
In spite of the austere sentiments
entertained by purists, it is a signifi-
cant fact that the longing to win the
s>'mpathy and affection of the general
public by means of a dramatic appeal
in theatrical form has been experi-
enced by many of the proudest poets
and most aristocratic composers. This
desire was felt by Milton, Byron,
Tennyson, Browning, Poe, and Long-
fellow, whose names are chiefly asso-
ciated with forms of art far removed
from the stage. Chopin, Schumann,
and Mendelssohn, composers identi-
fied with abstract or absolute music,
sought in vain for satisfactory opera
librettos. Chopin early abandoned the
project, but Schumann and Mendels-
sohn struggled with poor texts. As a
matter of fact, all three possessed
dramatic talent. Chopin was a gifted
amateur actor; Schumann, in supply-
ing music to Byron's "Manfred," gave
utterance to some of his most inspired
strains; while Mendelssohn's greatest
spontaneity is shown in his setting of
Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's
Dream."
Notwithstanding the fact that nu-
merous composers of the first rank
have devoted themselves to the elab-
oration of operas, many denounce this
art form as a jumble of effects, and
claim that abstract, absolute, or un-
mixed music is the only worthy spe-
cies of the art of tones. Undoubtedly
music, like others of the divine sister-
hood, should be able to express her-
self independently, but the ultra-par-
tizans of absolute music forget that
some of their favorite composer he-
roes were guilty of mixing arts when-
ever they wrote for the voice. Now,
the moment we combine poetry with
music, neither art appears in its essen-
tial purity. Certain critics have cen-
sured Beethoven for introducing bird-
notes in the "Pastoral Symphony."
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
And yet these same writers listen to
the "Eroica" with satisfaction despite
the fact that the first movement may
mean conflict, while the second cer-
tainly denotes the hero's passage to
the grave. Strictly speaking, the mo-
ment music suggests definite action,
emotion, or even the psychological
processes of a given character, it is
no longer absolutely absolute.
That the imaginative composer
should be fired with enthusiasm by a
good play or novel is only natural.
Witness the numerous opera texts
based upon the dramas and romances
of Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller,
Scott, Bulwer, and Victor Hugo. On
the other hand, the dramatists seem
to have derived no special impetus to
speak of from the symphonies or
other instrumental works of Mozart
or Beethoven, and few authors desire
to have their finished plays disinte-
grated and recast for operatic treat-
ment. True, Scribe, who possessed
a specifically theatrical genius, pro-
duced ad libitum plays or opera lib-
rettos, and even Goethe drafted a sec-
ond part of Mozart's ''Magic Flute,"
which he annotated with friendly sug-
gestions to the composer. But Victor
Hugo bitterly resented the employ-
ment of his dramas for opera texts,
and despised the trivial melodies with
which some of his most impressive
scenes were decorated. And yet one
morning at a rehearsal he heard the
orchestra play something that ap-
pealed to him as beautiful and sug-
gestive. He demanded its title. The
answer was, "The andante from a
Beethoven symphony." This and sim-
ilar incidents tend to prove that there
exists a stronger bond of sympathy
between the truly dramatic dramatists
and the genuinely creative composers
than they perchance may be aware
of.
In impartially reviewing the more
important attempts to solve the prob-
lem of joining music with the drama,
we shall find that special stress is laid
now upon this element, now upon
that, as in theology and philosophy,
a given truth may at one time be
overlooked, ignored, or forgotten.
Presently it is rediscovered, revivified,
and acquires such prominence that
complementary truths of equal impor-
tance are thrust aside, and in turn fall
into desuetude, until the inevitable re-
action brings them again to the fore.
This is the familiar history of the rise
and fall of sects and schools, of reli-
gion, philosophy, and art.
The series of solutions of the mu-
sico-dramatic problems which I now
venture to submit are not arranged
in the chronological order of their ap-
pearance in history, but rather ac-
cording to the importance attached to
the union of the respective arts, be-
ginning with the least intimate rela-
tionship.
When the composer provides each
act or scene of a play with an ap-
propriate instrumental prelude, we
have the simplest combination of mu-
sic with the drama. In this alterna-
tion of activities, each art is indepen-
dent, the music gives the mood, while
the text and actipn define what music
can only suggest. But, no matter how
satisfactory the result, we have as yet
no genuine art fusion. This attempt
resembles, rather, a mere mechanical
mixture as compared with a true
chemical union.
A step toward a closer connection
of the arts is taken when portions of
the text of a play assume the forms
of songs and choruses, and are treated
by the composer. This phase of mu-
sic and drama was known for centu-
ries in Germany as the SingspieL and
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MUSICO-DRAMATIC PROBLEMS
37
from this unpretentious beginning
was evolved the German opera.
Before proceeding, it will be well
to consider the advisability of joining
even words to music. When this is
eflFected with skill, not only is the
emotional power of the text enhanced,
but the very meaning is sometimes in-
tensified. Thus, in Schumann's set-
ting of Chamisso's series of poems
known as "Frauenliebe und Leben,"
the composer imparted to the words a
depth of feeling which the author
himself may not have experienced.
This is also true of Schubert's version
of the "Ave Maria" from Scott's
**Lady of the Lake," while the same
composer certainly keeps equal pace
with the poet in Goethe's "Erl King,"
and Shakespeare's **Hark, hark! the
lark."
Up to this point we are in favor of
musical settings. But, on the other
hand, it must be admitted that the
best of composers are sometimes
forced, when following a melodic out-
line, to indulge in a false quantity or
give undue accent to a weak syllable.
Robert Franz once wrote me that he
endeavored to follow the meaning of
each word in order to avoid this evil,
and let the melody be shaped by the
text throughout. Again, a familiar
specific difficulty, which militates
against the happy union of text and
music, is found in the fact that the
music demands variety in its dynamic
effects, and, in the forte passages, the
text, together with its meaning, is of-
ten wholly lost. Concerning the mul-
titude of unworthy versions of noble
poems where the original ideals are
given the semblance of platitudes I
need not speak.
Another means of appl)dng music
to the drama is the so-called melo-
drama, in which the text is spoken
through music. Although in vogue
among the Chinese for thousands of
years, and employed by the great
Greek poets in connection with their
dramas, the first instance of an en-
tire play thus treated was in 1774,
when Benda's "Ariadne" created such
a sensation that Mozart himself de-
termined to write in this form. Beet-
hoven has employed melodrama with
true dramatic insight in the prison
scene of his opera "Fidelio." Remi-
niscent strains of Florestan s aria pa-
thetically indicate the prisoner's long-
ing to see his wife once more. Were
this dialogue sung instead of spoken,
the effect would be ruined. The lu-
gubrious supernatural mood of the
Wolf's Glen in **Der Freischiitz," and
the fairy incantation of Oberon in
"Midsummer Night's Dream," have
been far more effectively suggested
through the melodramatic treatment
of Weber and Mendelssohn than by
means of the spoken text unaccom-
panied or by intoned recitative.
Like all other forms of art, how-
ever, melodrama has its limitations
as well as its mission, and its value
is often questioned. When a long
melodic phrase accompanies the text,
our attention is curiously distracted.
We either listen to the music and ne-
glect the text, or we follow the latter
and ignore the music. This doubtless
led Wagner to regard melodrama as
a hyDrid, neither opera nor play. But
we must not forget that Wagner, in
many of his declamatory passages,
has given the actors such unmelodious
intervals to recite that they frequent-
ly employ speech pure and simple,
so that in the "Nibelungen" itself we
hear considerable melodrama, espe-
cially in the speeches of the more gro-
tesque characters.
As a relief from these various at-
tempts to solve the problem of blend-
ing music with the text of the play.
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58
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
we may turn for an instant to the
opera without words. This we meet
with under the names of ballet or
pantomime, familiar instances of
which are Delibes's *'Coppelia," and
Tschaikowsky's "Lake of the Swans."
This art form has the advantage of
being equally intelligible to auditors
of all nationalities, although the finer
shades of meaning often escape one.
Nevertheless, pantomime, too, has a
worthy place in our group of arts.
There are moments in the opera
where pantomime, accompanied by ap-
propriate music, becomes a more
powerful agent in conveying the
thoughts and emotions of the actors to
the auditor than text spoken or sung.
Beethoven felt this when he planned
the close of the first scene in the
second act of *Tidelio." Wagner still
further developed its possibilities in
Act I of "Tristan and Isolde," where
the hero and heroine drink the love-
potion, action and music telling of the
potency of the philtre, and the change
from the anticipation of death to the
transport of love. A still more elab-
orate instance is the scene in the last
act of "Die Meistersinger," where
Beckmesser recalls the mishaps of the
previous evening. Wagner had a
great advantage over all other com-
posers of pantomime, because his au-
diences were aware of the import of
his leading motives, of which more
later. These themes enabled him to
suggest with great exactness the
meaning of the action. He has even
created significant episodes in the
"Ring" and in "Parsifal," where
music illuminates moving scenery.
In the construction of the grand
opera, the poet, the composer, and
the executive artists confront the
most complex of all the musico-dra-
matic problems. Here the entire
series of subordinate problems are
involved; namely, the union of music
with action, the union of music with
moving scenery, the union of music
with poetry, and the union of speech
with action. Having reviewed the
difiiculties encountered in solving
these individual problems, we can
readily understand that many who
appreciate each and every art sepa-
rately should view with disfavor the
attempt to group them all together.
Indeed, the timid might be easily
frightened into a belief that a part-
nership of the arts can lead only to
deterioration of the various members
and bring no compensating advan-
tages whatever.
In the numerous solutions of this
manifold problem, racial traits and the
influence of environment show them-
selves as in other lines of activity. In
Italy, where beautiful voices abound,
it was only natural that the vocal
element should predominate; hence
the aria, with its florid cadenzas,
which often impeded the action of
the drama. In France, where the
opera was an evolution from the bal-
let, plot and action formed interesting'
features, while the music, light, and
lyric were never symphonic. In Ger-
many, when the naive Singspiel began
to assume a more serious character,
composers felt the growing possibili-
ties of harmonic richness and orches-
tral coloring, and their music evinced
a leaning toward dramatic character-
ization. At length Wagner appeared,
and he pushed this dramatic quality
of the music to an unprecedented ex-
treme. In his solution of the musico-
dramatic problem, he seized the op-
portunity of welding the arts to a de-
gree of perfection possible only to a
master of all.
In order properly to estimate the
value of Wagner's solution of the
musico-dramatic problem, it will be
necessary to call attention to his career
as poet and dramatist as well as
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MUSICO-DRAMATIC PROBLEMS
39
musician. It is owing to the unfor-
tunate circumstance that Wagner is
catalogued with the specifically music-
al men of genius that neither he nor
his creations are appreciated at their
full value. His works doubtless are
convincing to the multitude who are
impressed with their marvelous emo-
tional and intellectual power, but,
wherein his true greatness lies, where-
in he has succeeded, and wherein he
has failed, can be revealed only when
he is studied as a poet, then as a play-
wright, then as a musician, noting his
achievements in each capacity inde-
pendent of the others.
That Wagner has proved his right
to be ranked with the great poets
there can be no doubt. The lofty sen-
timent, the stately lines, and the cu-
rious alliteration of the "Ring of the
Niebelung" create a wonderful mood
without the aid of music. The "Tris-
tan" poem, with its idealized pessimis-
tic philosophy, combines rhyme with
alliteration in a fascinating manner,
while in "Die Meistersinger" Wagner
shows his genius for the lighter vein
of verse. Happily characterizing the
various persons of the play, the tender
lyrics contrast strongly with those ex-
pressing the heroic and the grotesque.
In the humorous choruses in the last
act. where the guides assemble, he
proves himself a juggler with words
unsurpassed by W. S. Gilbert in the
"Mikado."
As a dramatist, Wagner showed
such consummate mastery of stage-
craft that throughout all Europe his
influence is now seen not only in the
mounting of operas other than his
own, but in the setting of plays where
the text is spoken. His musical gifts
led him to devise one invaluable ex-
pedient, the above mentioned leading
motive, by means of which the audi-
tor is made cognizant of the actor's
emotions and intent. This enabled
him to dispense with the conven-
tional "aside," where the actor talks
up his sleeve for the benefit of the
public.
Concerning Wagner as a musician,
few realize that he was a complete
master of all the phases of tonal struc-
ture, even those that are associated
with the older classical or scholastic
methods. Thus in "Tristan," "Die
Meistersinger," and the "Ring" are
to be seen splendid examples of coun-
terpoint (simple, double, and quad-
ruple), imitation, canon, fugue, rondo,
and sonata. But his most remarkable
achievements were in the creation of
harmonic designs and modulating
themes, together with their develop-
ment. This is a phase of modern mu-
sic which only men of the order of
Chopin, Schumann, Grieg, and Tschai-
kowsk}' have successfully grappled
with and conquered.
I beg permission at this point to
employ the terminology of those es-
theticians who contrast the moving
arts — music, poetry, and orchestique,
or pantomime — with the static arts —
architecture, painting, and sculpture. •
Of all attempts to unite the moving
arts, from the days of ^schylus and
Sophocles to the present time, that of
Wagner is the most remarkable. There
is no other triple genius of his di-
mensions in the realm of poetry and
music. To find his prototype, we
must search in the domain of the
static arts for an artist whose mind
showed a similar three-fold function.
Michaelangelo, architect, sculptor, and
painter, was so abundantly endowed
that it lay within his power to build a
church, adorn it with paintings, and
decorate it with sculpture of his own
creation.
It is obvious that the greater the
number of component factors pre-
sented by a given work of art, the
greater will be the difficulty experi-
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40 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
enccd by the bdiolder or auditor in
comprehending the purpose of the ar-
tist. Thus the inspection of the cathe-
dral at Ulm is now a far more com-
plicated matter than formerly, owing
to the additions of the stained-glass
windows and carvings. If this be true
of the static arts, where one can study
the details of a work at his leisure,
how much greater will be the nerve-
strain involved when eye and ear are
forced to seize on the instant the
fleeting features of the moving arts?
In the more elaborate music-drama, so
great at times is the accumulation of
details that no mortal being can grasp
them in their entirety. Numerous in-
stances of thi§ demand of the impos-
sible upon the capacity of the auditor
are aflForded by "Tristan und Isolde."
In the remarkable duo in Act II we
are expected to follow, aside from
scenery and action, passages in which
the subtle thought is expressed in fine-
ly wrought verse, characterized by a
liquid, rhythmic flow and a unique
combination of rh)ane and alliteration.
Simultaneously the music assumes
even more rarely original forms. The
potent themes suggesting Love,
Death, and Nirvana are so carefully
introduced that they fit the text to a
nicety. More than this, they belong,
for the most part, to that difficult and
involved class of motive known as the
harmonic design. If we are to do full
justice to this masterpiece, we must
follow intelligently the unusual or-
chestration, in which the lines of the
melodies and counter-melodies are so
interwoven that the printed page
looks like lacework. But despite
our consciousness of this wealth of
beauty surrounding us, to grasp it in
its entirety is as hopeless a task as
that of the child who endeavors to
follow all that takes place in a three-
ringed hippodrome. In order to en-
joy thorou^ly passages of such hy-
per-complexity, wc must memorize
entire pages of the score, a procedure
for which few have the time or in-
clination.
Not long ago, when "Tristan" was
given in the Prinz-Regcnten Theatre
in Munich, an attempt was made to
ameliorate the above mentioned dif-
ficulties. In order the better to pre-
serve the integrity of the text, the or-
chestra was greatly subdued. The
beauty of the diction was indeed more
apparent, but the power of the music,
the significance of the leading themes,
and the dramatic character of the or-
chestration, were reduced to a mini-
mum, and the result was far from
satisfactory. The failure of all at-
tempts to tamper with Wagner's solu-
tion of the musico-dramatic problem
shows that we must take his works
as we find them, with their unsur-
passed qualities in certain respects,
along with their less desirable fea-
tures.
But these unparalleled masterpieces,
with their almost supernatural glow
of exalted human passion, that take
us to realms of which the older poets
had merely dreamed — ^these very mas-
terpieces contain the seeds of discord
and the elements of dissolution. In
his very enthusiasm for the noble, the
beautiful, and the ideal, Wagner ex-
perienced a horror for the common-
place and the conventional, forgetting
that certain esthetical conventions
are as indispensable to art as are the
ethical conventions to society. In his
disgust for the customary cadence-
formulas and the trite recitatives of
old Italian opera, Wagner formed tfie
habit of modulating more and more
rapidly, whether the situation de-
manded it or not. He avoided full
cadences, those punctuation-marks of
musical sentences, in order to g^^e
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musico-dram5^tic problems
4«
greater continuity to the flow of his
thought. In many, perhaps most, in-
stances, this was effective, but often
one wishes he would come to a full
close that we might take breath and
that elsewhere we might be really de-
ceived by a deceptive cadence; for
when the unexpected always occurs,
we grow to expect it. This feature
has become greatly exaggerated by
those who adopt Wagner's style, so
that a simple cadence is a great rar-
ity. No wonder, then, that the multi-
tude long for a genuine, clear-cut mel-
ody, in which the harmony is not trite,
but tangible.
Wagner's vocal style, while homo-
geneous with the rest of his work,
and often wonderfully effective, is
very wearing on the voice, especially
where the accompaniment is full and
heavy. One can usually note the in-
fluence of his operas upon singers
when they give song-recitals, unless
they chance to be especially robust.
A friend of mine who greatly ad-
mired Wagner said that the story,
music, scenery, and orchestration en-
chanted him until the actors began to
sing. "That," said he, "was like a
crack in the china." Tschaikowsky,
too, speaks of Wagner's peculiar man-
ner of shaping the vocal part, "now
doubling the first violin, then again
the third horn, and so on."
Without doubt the constant surge
of the tide of harmony, unrelieved
except at rare intervals by truly lyric
moments, engenders a feeling of un-
rest. Composers who have made a
specialty of magnifying Wagner's
mannerisms might well consider Ed-
gar Poe's axiom^ that "after a period
of exaltation, the poem should descend
to the commonplace"; that is, to the
simple or naive.
Hanslick, usually bitterly unjust
toward Wagner, made one point wor-
thy of our consideration. In review-
ing the scene between Hans Sachs and
David in Act III of "Die Meister-
singer," he wrote : "On the stage they
speak of sausage and bread, in the
orchestra we hear gallows and wheel.
When such discords are employed to
express the sentiments of peaceful
burghers, with what shall we describe
the French Revolution?" Although
the limit seemed to have been reached,
later writers have devised new dy-
namic agents, so that where Wagner
drives tacks with a sledge-hammer,
others employ a pile-driver; where
Wagner mixes a love-potion of ab-
sinthe and opium, others prepare a
nepenthe of gin and sulphuric acid.
The influence of Wagner upon his
contemporaries and successors has
possibly never been better expressed
than by Carl Schurz in his "Reminis-
cences," where we find the following
tribute: "How long Wagner's works
will hold the stage as prominently as
they do now will of course depend
upon what may follow him. So far,
they are proving an embarrassing, if
not positively oppressive, standard of
comparison. If a new composer adopt
Wagner's conception of the music-
drama, he will be liable to be called
an imitator. If he adhere to old mod-
els or strike out on new lines of his
own, his music will be in danger of
being found thin and commonplace."
From the futility of following in the
footprints of Wagner it is obvious
that the Bayreuth solution of the mu-
sico-dramatic problem is not the final
one. The great master's series of
music-dramas stand forth with monu-
mental impressiveness, but to demand,
as he did, that all operatic expression
should take that form, and that com-
posers must write their own texts, is
as absurd as to claim that all churches
should be modeled after St. Peter's
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42 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
and all architects provide their own
decorations.
The static arts did not die with Mi-
chaelangelo, nor have the moving
arts passed away with Richard Wag-
ner. It is no discredit to Sir Chris-
topher Wren that he did not fresco
the interior of St. Paul's; nor do we
think less of Titian, Tintoretto, or
Rubens, because they did not build
the churches that they beautified.
It may well be doubted whether the
world will ever see Wagner's equal
in the triple role he played, but when
kindred talents unite, they may yet
produce music-dramas of merit and
magnitude. Thus the libretto of
"Carmen" involved the labors of four
men, Prosper Merimee, Meilhac,
Halevy, and Bizet himself. Neverthe-
less, the result was worth the effort,
for, combined with the rare music of
Bizet, it has become one of the most
valuable contributions to the litera-
ture of the stage. By preserving a
greater proportion of purely musical
features — ^lyric forms, subtle returns
from foreign tonalities to the main
key, refined orchestration so humane-
ly planned that the singer has a liv-
ing chance* — Bizet has done the world
of art a service of inestimable value.
Its influence is heard in the charming
"Lakme" of Delibes, "Pique Dame,"
and "Eugene Onegin" by Tschaikow-
sky, and many of the more refined
works of the French, Italians, and
Russians.
But the joining of music to poetry
and action is not the only instance of
troublesome art combination. A paral-
lel case may be found in the domain
of the static arts. In contemplating
a classic temple, a Gothic cathedral,
or a truly artistic modem public
building, we are impressed by the
symmetry of the architectural design
and the homogeneity of its various
members; we enjoy the composition
and coloring of the mural decorations
and the grouping of the sculptures.
We admire the manner in which these
details blend with one another, seem-
ing an outgrowth of the architectural
plan rather than so many separate
creations. But while the totality
contributes to our esthetic pleasure,
we rarely think of the many strug-
gles that it cost not only the archi-
tect, but the sculptors and painters, to
fuse all these elements into a har-
monious whole. The sculptor, in
planning a group for the pediment of
a classical structure, must conceive
the composition in which the central
figures rise to the apex of the trian-
gle, while those to the right and left
are appropriately adapted to the slop-
ing sides. The painter, in like manner,
must fill in spaces of peculiar and ob-
stinate shape, irregular ovals, trian-
gles, quadrangles, etc. Sometimes
these complex problems are happily
solved, but, again, the exigencies of
the case preclude the possibility. Wit-
ness the group of the Muses in the
New York Metropolitan Opera House,
where the classic number nine is re-
duced to the practical number eight,
four on one side of Apollo and four
on the other.
In concluding the rehearsal of these
attempts to unite the various arts, wc
are forced to admit that the demands
of each will conflict; that the dash-
ing of interests will develop friction,
and valuable features will be disin-
tegrated, now from this art, and again
from another, as a result of this at-
trition. But in spite of all these dif-
ficulties, it must be conceded that, un-
der favorable conditions, the union
may create moods far more powerful
than would be possible to the same
arts acting individually. Further-
more, that certain results may be ob-
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MUSICO-DRAMATIC PROBLEMS
43
tained impossible to effect in any
other manner.
The writers of opera or music-
drama at the present day have at
their command scenic decorations,
properties, lighting, costumes, and or-
chestral apparatus never before
equaled. The potentialities of mel-
ody, rhythm, and harmony are doubt-
less promising. There are still new-
possibilities of contrasting the dram-
atic episodes, symphonically treated,
with lyric moments, when the smaller
song forms and dances may be ap-
propriately introduced. To what ex-
tent the dramatic element shall pre-
dominate, and in how far the lyric or
tuneful shall become the main feature
— all this will depend upon the indi-
viduality of the author and composer.
In order, then, to produce a work of
art that shall worthily express the
spirit of the age, the writers of the
new music-dramas should absorb all
those fundamental principles that have
vitalized the standard works. There
then remains, as Taine says, only one
thing needful; that is, "that they be
born geniuses."
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THE TRENT AFFAIR
By Charles Francis Adams
As doubtless all of us have had
frequent occasion to observe, there
are few occurrences which in their
relative connection with other occur-
rences or with things at large do not
assume with the lapse of time aspects
strangely different. The passage of
fifty years is a great dissolvent and
clarifier. The international incident,
still memorable, known as the affair
of the Trent and the seizure by Cap-
tain Charles Wilkes, then command-
ing the San Jacinto, of Messrs. Mason
and Slidell, the two Confederate en-
voys, occurred on the eighth of No-
vember, 1861, and the fiftieth recur-
rence of that date has accordingly
been reached.
The course of events, briefly stated,
was as follows: Immediately after
the firing upon Fort Sumter, Jeffer-
son Davis, President of the then
newly organized Confederate States,
had sent out to Europe agents to for-
ward the interests of the proposed na-
tionality. These agents had there
spent some seven months, accomplish-
ing little. Disappointed at their fail-
ure, Davis determined upon a second
and more formal mission. The new
representatives were designated as
"Special Commissioners of the Con-
federate States of America, near the
Government," whether of Great
Britain or of France, as the case
might be. James Murray Mason of
Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana
were selected, the first named for Lon-
don, the second for Paris. Both, it will
be remembered, had recently been sen-
ators of the United States, Slidell
having withdrawn from the Senate
February 4, 1861, immediately after
the passage of the Ordinance of Se-
cession by the State of Louisiana;
while Miason, having absented himself
about March 20th, during the session
of the Senate for executive business,
did not again take his seat. Virginia
seceded April 17, and Mason, to-
gether with several other Southern
senators, was in his absence expelled
by formal vote (July 11) at the spe-
cial session of the Thirty- Seventh
Congress, which met under the call of
President Lincoln, July 4, 1861.
Probably no two men in the entire
South were more thoroughly obnox-
ious to those of the Union side than
Mason and Slidell. The first was in
many and by no means the best ways,
a typical Virginian. Very provincial
and intensely arrogant, his dislike of
New England, and especially of Mas-
sachusetts, was pronounced, and ex-
ceeded only by his contempt. It was
said of him at the time that when
trouble was brewing, and he was in-
vited to make a speech in Boston, he
had replied that he would not again
visit Massachusetts until he went
there as an ambassador. Slidell, on
the other hand, was considered one of
the most astute and dangerous of all
Confederate public characters. An in-
triguer by nature, unscrupulous in his
political methods, he was credited with
having fraudulently defeated by
secret manipulations the Clay ticket
in Louisiana in the 1844 Presidential
election, and was generally looked
upon as the most dangerous person to
the Union the Confederacy could se-
lect for diplomatic work in Europe.
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THE TRENT AFFAIR
45
The first object of the envoys was to
secure the recognition of the Confed-
eracy. The ports of the Confederate
States were then blockaded, but the
blockade had not yet become really
effective. The new envoys selected
Charleston as their port of embark-
ation, and October 12 as its date. The
night of the twelfth was dark and
rainy, but with little or no wind, con-
ditions altogether favorable for their
purpose. They left Charleston on the
little Confederate steamer Theodora,
evaded the blockading squadron, and
reached New Providence, Nassau,
two days later, the fourteenth. It had
been the intention of the envoys to
take passage for Europe at Nassau on
an English steamer ; but, failing to find
one which did not stop at New York,
the Theodora continued her voyage to
Cardenas in Cuba, whence the envoys
and those accompanying them pro-
ceeded overland to Havana. Arriv-
ing at Havana about the twenty-sec-
ond of October, Messrs. Mason and
Slidell remained there until the sev-
enth of November. They then em-
barked on the British steamer Trent,
the captain of the Trent having
full knowledge of their diplomatic
capacity as envoys of an insur-
gent community, and giving con-
sent to their embarkation. The Trent
was a British mail-packet, mak-
ing regular trips between Vera Cruz,
in the Republic of Mexico, and the
Danish island of St. Thomas. She
was in no respect a blockade-runner,
was not engaged in commerce with
any American port, and was then on
a regular voyage from a port in Mex-
ico, by way of Havana, to her adver-
tised destination, St. Thomas, all
neutral ports. At St. Thomas direct
connection could be made with a line
of British steamers running to South-
ampton. The envoys, therefore, when
they left Havana, were on a neutral
mail-steamer, sailing under the British
flag, on a schedule voyage between
neutral points.
At just that time the United States
war-steamer San Jacinto, a first-class
sloop mounting fifteen guns, was re-
turning from a cruise on the western
coast of Africa, where for twenty
months she had been part of the
African squadron engaged in sup-
pressing the slave trade. She was
commanded by Captain Wilkes, who
had recently joined her. Returning
by way of the Cape Verd Islands,
Captain Wilkes there learned from the
newspapers about the last of Septem-
ber of the course of public events in
the United States, and rumors reached
him of Confederate privateers, as they
were then called, destroying Ameri-
can vessels in West India waters. He
determined to make an effort at the
capture of some of these "privateers."
On October 10 the San Jacinto
reached the port of St. Thomas, and
subsequently touched at Cienfuegos,
on the south coast of Cuba. There
Captain Wilkes learned, also from the
newspapers, that the Confederate en-
voys were at that very time at Ha-
vana, and about to take passage for
Southampton. Reaching Havana on
the twenty-eighth of October, the
commander of the San Jacinto
further learned that the commis-
sioners were to embark on the
steamer Trent, scheduled to leave Ha-
vana on the seventh of November.
Captain Wilkes then conceived the de-
sign of intercepting the Trent, exer-
cising the right of search, and mak-
ing prisoners of the envoys. No ques- .
tion as to his right to stop, board, and
search the Trent seems to have entered
the mind of Captain Wilkes. He did,
however, take into his confidence his
executive officer. Lieutenant Fairfax,
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
46 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
disclosing to him his project. Lieu-
tenant Fairfax entered, it is said, a
vigorous protest against the proposed
action, and strongly urged on Captain
Wilkes the necessity of proceeding
with great caution unless he wished
to provoke international difficulties,
and not impossibly a war with Great
Britain. He then suggested that his
commanding officer consult an Ameri-
can Judge at Key West, an authority
on maritime law, which, however,
Captain Wilkes declined to do. Leav-
ing Key West on the morning of
November 5, Captain Wilkes di-
rected the course of the San Jacinto
to what is known as the Bahama
Channel, through which the Trent
would necessarily pass on its way to
St. Thomas, and there stationed him-
self. About noon on the eighth of
November, the Trent hove in sight,
and when she had approached suffi-
ciently near the San Jacinto, a round
shot was fired athwart her course;
the United States flag was run up at
the mast-head at the same time. The
approaching vessel showed the Eng-
lish colors, but did not check her speed
or indicate a disposition to heave to.
Accordingly, a few instants later, a
shell from the San JcLcinto was ex-
ploded across her bows. This had the
desired effect. The Trent immcr
diately stopped, and a boat from the
San Jacinto proceeded to board her.
It is unnecessary to go into the details
of what then occurred. For present
purposes it is sufficient to say that the
two envoys, together with their secre-
taries, were identified and forcibly re-
moved, being taken on board the San
Jacinto, which, without interfering
with the mails or otherwise subjecting
the Trent to search, then laid its
course for Fort Monroe. Arriving
there on the fifteenth, news of the
capture was immediately flashed over
the country. The Trent, on the other
hand, proceeded to St. Thomas, where
her passengers were transferred to
another steamer, and completed the
voyage to Southampton. They ar-
rived, and the report of the trans-
action was made public in Great Brit-
ain November 27, twelve days after
the arrival of the San Jacinto at Fort
Monroe and the publication of the
news of the arrest in the United
States.
Such were the essential facts in the
case, and, while a storm of enthusi-
astic approval was sweeping over the
northern part of the United States in
the twelve days between November
15 and November 27, a storm of
indignation of quite equal intensity
swept over Great Britain between
November 27 and the close of the
year. Most fortunately there was no
ocean cable in those days, and the
movement of the Atlantic steamers
was comparatively slow. Accordingly
the first intimations of the commotion
caused in Great Britain by the action
of Captain Wilkes did not reach
America until the arrival of the Hansa
at New York, December 12. Strange
as it now seems, therefore, almost an
entire month had elapsed between the
arrival of the San Jacinto at Fort
Monroe (November 15) and the re-
ceipt in America (December 12) of
any information as to the effect of
the seizure of the envoys on the
British temper, a most important
fact to be now borne in mind.
Such being the facts of the "affair"
and the dates of the occurrences in its
development, it is of interest now, and
certainly not without its value as mat-
ter of experience, to consider the
courses then possible to have been
pursued by the United States and to
contrast them coolly and reflectively
with that which was actually pursued.
Digitized by
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THE TRENT AFFAIR
47
And in so doing the thought which
first suggests itself is one not con-
ducive in us to an increased sense of
national pride. What an opportunity
was then lost! How completely our
public men, and through them our
community, failed to rise to the height
of the occasion! For, avowed in the
perspective of history, it is curious,
and for an American of that period
almost exasperating, to reflect upon
what a magnificent move in the critical
game then conducted would have been
made had the advice of Montgomery
Blair been followed to the letter and
in spirit.
Montgomery Blair, it will be re-
membered, was then Postmaster-Gen-
eral in the Cabinet of President Lin-
coln. According to Secretary Welles,
in his work subsequently (1874) pub-
lished, Montgomery Blair alone in tlie
Cabinet "from the first denounced
Wilkes's act as unauthorized, irregu-
lar, and illegal," and even went so far
as to advise that Wilkes be ordered
to take the San Jacinto and go with
Mason and Slidell to England, and de-
liver them to the British Government.
In view of the excitement and un-
reasoning condition of the public
mind, such a disposition of the ques-
tion was perhaps virtually impossible,
though even this admits of question.
Nevertheless, seen through the vista
of half a century, this would clearly
have been the wisest as well as the
most dignified course to pursue, far
more so than that ultimately adopted ;
for, as Secretary Welles a dozen years
later wrote, "the prompt and volun-
tary disavowal of the act of Wilkes,
and delivering over the prisoners,
would have evinced our confidence in
our own power, and been a manifesta-
tion of our indifference and contempt
for the emissaries, and a rebuke to
the alleged intrigues between the reb-
els and the English cabinet." Mr.
Welles might have further remarked
that such a disposition of the matter,
besides being in strict consistency
with a long-proclaimed international
policy, would have afforded for the
navy a most salutary disciplinary ex-
ample.
To revert to the chess simile, by
such a playing of the pieces on the
board as Blair here suggested, how
effectually a checkmate would have
been administered to the game
of both the Confederates and
their European sympathizers! In
the first place, the act of Wilkes,
as was subsequently and on bet-
ter reflection generally conceded,
was ill considered, improper, and in
violation of all correct naval usage.
It should have been rebuked accord-
ingly, and officers should have been
taught by example and at the be-
ginning that they were neither dip-
lomatic representatives nor judicial
tribunals administering admiralty law.
It was for them to receive instruc-
tions and implicitly to obey them. A
reprimand of much the same nature
was almost at this very time adminis-
tered to General John C. Fremont,
when in Missouri he undertook by vir-
tue of martial law to proclaim the
freedom of the slave throughout the
military department under his com-
mand. His ill-considered order was
revoked, and he was officially in-
structed that he was to confine himself
to his military functions, and that the
administration reserved to itself all
action of a political character. So
much for Captain Wilkes and the
reprimand he should have received
because of his indiscreet and unau-
thorized proceeding.
Next, such a line of conduct would
have been on the part of the Govern-
ment a severe and manly adjierence^
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
to the past contentions of the United
States. It would have recognized in
the action taken by Wilkes an attempt
to carry the right of search and power
of impressment far beyond any pre-
cedent ever established by the British
Government even in the days of its
greatest maritime ascendency and con-
sequent arrogance. In the strong and
contemptuous language of Mr.
Adams, America, in sustaining Wilkes,
was consenting "to take up and to
wear [Britain's] cast-off rags." If,
instead of so bedizening itself, the
United States had now boldly, defiant-
ly, and at once adhered to its former
contentions, its attitude would have
been simply magnificent ; and, as such,
it would have commanded respect and
admiration.
Nor was this aspect of the situation
wholly unseen by some at the time;
for, writing from his post in London
to J. L. Motley in Vienna on the
fourth of December, 1861, the
date at which the tension be-
tween the United States and Great
Britain was at the breaking-point,
Mr. Adams thus expressed him-
self: "It ought to be remembered
that the uniform tendency of our own
policy has been to set up very high
the doctrine of neutral rights, and to
limit in every possible manner the
odious doctrine of search. To have
the two countries virtually changing
their ground under this momentary
temptation would not, as it seems to
me, tend to benefit the position of the
United States. Whereas, a contrary
policy might be made the means of
securing a great concession of princi-
ple from Great Britain. Whether the
government at home will remain cool
enough to see its opportunity, I have
no means of judging." And a few
days later (December 7, 1861), John
Bright, writing to Charles Sumner,
expressed himself to the same eflFect:
"You may disappoint your enemies
by the moderation and reasonableness
of your conduct, and every honest and
good man in England will applaud
your wisdom. Put all the fire-eaters
in the wrong, and Europe will admire
the sagacity of your Government."
"Sagacity of your Government!"
That phrase expressed exactly what
the situation called for, and got only
in a very modified degree.
Taken immediately and openly in
the presence of the whole world, the
position advised by Blair would have
indicated, as Secretary Welles later
pointed out in the words I have just
quoted, the supreme confidence we
felt in our national power, and the
pronounced contempt in which we held
both those whom we called "rebels"
and those whom they termed their
"envoys." If reached and publicly
announced after mature deliberation
during the week which followed the
announcement of the seizure from
Fort Monroe (November 23), as
transatlantic communication was con-
ducted in those days the news would
scarcely have reached England be-
fore the third of December, just three
days after the peremptory and some-
what offensive despatch of Earl Rus-
sell demanding the immediate sur-
render of the arrested envoys was be-
yond recall or modification and well on
its way to America. A situation would
have resulted almost ludicrous so far
as Great Britain was concerned, but,
for the United States, most consistent,
dignified, and imposing. Excited,
angry, arrogant, bent on reparation or
war. Great Britain would have been
let down suddenly and very hard and
flat. Its position would, to say the
least, have been the reverse of im-
pressive. But for us it would have
established our prestige in the eyes of
foreign nations, and once for all si-
lenced the numerous emissaries v/hjp^
THE TRENT AFFAIR
49
were sedulously working in every part
of Europe to bring about our undoing
through foreign interference. In par-
ticular, the immediate delivery of the
envoys, in advance of any demand
therefor and on the very ship which
had undertaken to exercise the right
of search and seizure under the com-
mand of the officer who had thus ex-
ceeded his authority and functions,
would, so to speak, have put the Gov-
ernment of Great Britain thenceforth
imder bonds so far as the United
States was concerned. Thereafter any
effort either of the "envoys*' thus
contemptuously surrendered or of
other Confederate emissaries would,
so far as this country was concerned,
have been futile. Reciprocity would
from that moment have been in order,
and all question of foreign recognition
would have ceased. The whole course
of international events in the inmie-
diate future would probably have
been far different from what it was;
for with what measure we had used,
it would necessarily have been meas-
ured to us again.
Such a line of conduct, immediately
decided on and boldly declared, would
have been an inspiration worthy of a
Cavour or a Bismarck; but, though
actually urged in the Cabinet meetings
by Montgomery Blair, its adoption
called for a grasp of the situation and
a quickness of decision which very
possibly could not reasonably be ex-
pected under conditions then existing.
It also may even yet be urged that, if
then taken and announced, such a
policy would have failed to command
the assent of an excited public opinion.
That It would have failed to do so is,
however, open to question; for it is
more than possible, it is even probable,
that American intelligence would even
then have risen at once to the inter-
national possibilities presented, and in
that crisis of stress and anxiety would
have measured the extent to which
the "affair" could be improved to the
public advantage. The national van-
ity would unquestionably have been
flattered by an adherence so consistent
and sacrificing to the contentions and
policies of the past. The memories
of 1812 would have revived. How-
ever, admitting that a policy of this
character, now obviously that which
should have been pursued, was under
practical and popular conditions then
prevailing at least inadvisable, it re-
mains to consider yet another alterna-
tive.
Assuming that the course pursued
remained unchanged an entire month
after the seizure, and up to the twelfth
of December, when the news arrived
in America of the excitement occa-
sioned by the seizure in Great Britain
and the extreme seriousness of the
situation resulting therefrom — ^assum-
ing this, it is now obvious that the
proper policy then and under such
conditions to have been adopted, al-
though it could not have produced
the results which would have been
produced by the policy just consid-
ered if adopted and announced ten
days earlier, would still have been
consistent and dignified, and, as such,
would have commanded general re-
spect. It was very clearly outlined by
Mr. Adams in a letter written in the
following month to Cassius M. Clay,
then the representative of the country
at St. Petersburg. He expressed
himself as follows : "Whatever opin-
ion I may have of the consistency of
Great Britain, or of the temper in
which she has prosecuted her latest
convictions, that does not in my judg-
ment weigh a feather in the balance
against the settled policy of the United
States which has uniformly con-
demned every and any act like that, of
Captain Wilkes when authorized by
other nations. The extension of theg
50 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
rights of neutrals on the ocean and the
protection of them against the arbi-
trary exercise of mere power have
been cardinal principles in the system
of American statesmen ever since the
foundation of the Government. It is
not for us to abandon them under the
transient impulse given by the capture
of a couple of vmworthy traitors.
What are they that a country Hke ours
should swerve one hair from the line
of its ancient policy, merely for the
satisfaction of punishing them?"
If the advisers of Mr. Lincoln had
viewed the situation in this light when
his Secretary of State sat down to
prepare his answer to the English de-
mand, with a bold sweep of the hand
he would at once have dismissed as
rubbish the English precedents and
authorities, reverting to the attitude
and contentions uniformly and con-
sistently held during the earlier years
of the century by the Government for
which he spoke. The proceeding
of Captain Wilkes would then have
been pronounced inconsistent with the
traditions and established policy of
the United States, and the line of
action by it to be pursued in the case
immediately presented would have
been dictated thereby. The course to
be pursued on the issue raised was
clear, and the surrender of the envoys
must be ordered accordingly, and
this in no degree because of their small
importance, as suggested by Lord
Palmer ston in his talk with Mr. Ad-
ams, though unquestionably the fact
would have secretly exercised no little
influence on the mind of the Secre-
tary, and still less was it ordered be-
cause of any failure of Captain Wilkes
to seize the Trent as prize on the
ground of alleged breach of neutral-
ity ; but exclusively for the reason that
the seizure in question was unauthor-
ized, in direct disregard of the estab-
lished policy of the United States and
its contentions in regard to the rights
of neutrals, clearly and repeatedly set
forth in many previous controversies
with the Government represented by
Earl Russell. From that policy, to
quote the language of Mr. Adams,
"this country was not disposed to
swerve by a single hair's breadth." In
accordance with it, delivery of the so-
called "envoys" was ordered.
Again an <H)portunity was lost.
Such an attitude would have been dig-
nified, consistent, and statesmanlike.
It would have had in it no element of
adroitness and no appearance of spe-
cial pleading. It could hardly have
failed inmiediately to commend itself
to the good judgment as well as pride
of the American people, and it would
certainly have commanded the respect
of foreign nations.
Of the elaborate and in many re-
spects memorable dispatch addressed
by Secretary Seward to Lord Lyons
in answer to the categorical demand
for the immediate release of the two
envoys, it is not necessary here to
speak in detail. It is historical, and
my paper has already extended far
beyond the limits originally proposed.
Of this state paper I will therefore
merely say that, reading it now,
"clever," not "great," is the term
which suggests itself as best de-
scriptive. Much commended at the
time, it has not stood the test. In
composing it, the writer plainly had
his eye on the audience ; while his ear,
so to speak, was in manifest proximity
to the ground. Indeed, his vision
was directed to so many different
quarters, and his ear was intent on
such a confusion of rumblings, that it
is fair matter for surprise that he
acquitted himself even as successfully
as he did. In the first place, it was
necessary for him to persuade a Presi-
dent who had "put his foot down,"
and whose wishes inclined to a quite
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THE TRENT AFFAIR
5»
diflferent disposition of the matter.
In the next place, the reluctant mem-
bers of a divided Cabinet were to be
conciliated and unified. After this,
Captain Wilkes, the naval idol of the
day, must be justified and supported.
Then Congress, with its recent com-
mitments as respects approval, thanks,
gold medals, etc., had to be not only
pacified, but reconciled to the in-
evitable; and, finally, an aroused and
patriotic public opinion was to be
soothed and gently led into a lamb-
like acquiescence. The situation, in the
aspect it then bore, was, it cannot be
denied, both complicated and delicate.
Accordingly, in reading the Secre-
tary's commvmication to Lord Lyons
of December 26, 1861, one is aware
of a distinct absence therein of both
grasp and elevation. That '*bold
sweep of the hand" before suggested
is conspicuous for its absence. The
English and British precedents were
by no means dismissed as antiquated
"rubbish" ; while, on the contrary, our
own earlier and better contentions
were silently ignored. In their stead,
British principles were adopted as
sound and of established authority;
and thus the final action of the United
States in delivering the so-called en-
voys was rested on what the Duke of
Argyll presently, and most properly,
characterized in his letter to Mr.
Adams as "a narrow and technical
ground." Captain Wilkes, it was ar-
gued, while acting in strict accordance
with law and precedent, had failed to
seize the Trent as lawful prize, and
as such, send her into an American
port for adjudication. It was a com-
plete abandonment of the traditional
American contentions in favor of the
arrogant and high-handed policies
formerly pursued by Great Britain,
but now by her silently dismissed as
antiquated and inconvenient — "her
cast-off rags!"
It can, therefore, now hardly be
denied that there was more than an
element of truth in the criticisms
passed upon the Secretary's mo-
mentous reply to Lord Russell's de-
mand by Hamilton Fish, in a letter to
Charles Sumner, written at the time.
Mr. Fish, then in retirement, not im-
possibly entertained feelings of a na-
ture not altogether friendly toward
Mr. Seward, whose colleague he had
been in the Senate, and whom later he
was to succeed in charge of the De-
partment of State. They were both
from New York, and had been con-
temporaneously active in New York
politics. Those also whose attention
has been called to the grounds of com-
parison will perhaps hardly be dis-
posed to deny that for natural grasp
of the spirit and underlying principles
of international law, Hamilton Fish
was better endowed than either Sew-
ard or Sumner. Fish now wrote:
"In style [the letter] is verbose and
egotistical; in argument, flimsy; and
in its conception and general scope it
is an abandonment of the high posi-
tion we have occupied as a nation
upon a great principle. We are hum-
bled and disgraced, not by the act of
the surrender of four of our own
citizens, but by the manner in which
it has been done, and the absence of
a sound principle upon which to res.
and justify it. . . . We might and
should have turned the affair vastly
to our credit and advantage; it has
been made the means of our humilia-
tion."
The ultimate historical verdict must
apparently be in accordance with the
criticism here contemporaneously ex-
pressed. The Seward letter was in-
adequate to the occasion. A possible
move of unsurpassed brilliancv on the
international chessboard had almost
unseen been permitted to escape us.
Digitized by VjOOQ IC
THE AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT
By Birge Harrison
During a recent visit to America,
Mr. Henry James, the novelist, was
lunching with a party of friends at
one of the well-known New York
clubs. One of the company having
asked him if his present trip had re-
sulted in any particularly fresh and
vivid impression of things American,
he replied: "Had your question been
put to me yesterday, I should probably
have been obliged to answer it in the
negative. But this morning I had an
extraordinary experience, and re-
ceived an impression so compelling
and unexpected as almost to fill me
with terror. I had been invited to visit
the imjmigration station at Ellis
Island. Five huge ocean liners were
discharging their human freight simul-
taneously, and more than three thou-
sand immigrants were to pass inward
during the day. They were a strange
and picturesque lot, comprising speci-
mens of almost every nation in Eu-
rope, and of not a few of the tribes
of Africa and A^ia.
"While I stood there studying the
curious human types as they filed past
in endless procession, a feeling of un-
easiness gradually crept over me. It
seemed to me that there was some-
thing hostile, threatening, almost ap-
palling about this slow-moving, mur-
muring, never-ending throng; and
finally it burst upon me that this was
an invasion — silent and furtive, but
nonetheless sinister, formidable, and
irresistible. It is a disaster, gentle-
men; a flood, a human inundation,
which, if unchecked, is destined to sub-
merge the old Anglo-Saxon stock.
to engulf and utterly destroy the fine
old Anglo-Saxon civilization. In the
West we have closed our doors to the
Asiatic, but in the East we have
thrown them wide open to the oflF-
scourings of Europe and the Medi-
terranean. Is not this white peril of
the East as dangerous — as much to
be feared and deprecated — ^as the yel-
low peril of the West? What is to
become of all our cherished Puritan
ideals and traditions? Where are we
to look for our future Emersons and
Thoreaus ? In my opinion we are face
to face with a genuine racial tragedy."
"But," said Marble, "this tragedy
began long ago — k>ng before the tide
of European immigration assumed
any serious proportions. By that
time the decadence of our old Anglo-
Saxon stock was far advanced. If
you knew as well as I do the hinter-
lands of Maine, New Hampshire, and
Vermont, to say nothing of the moun-
tain regions of the Carolinas, Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, and Georgia, you
would welcome this influx of new
blood as a life-saving strain. Why,
there are counties in our own State
of New York where one third of the
inhabitants can neither read nor write,
where ninety-five per cent of the vote
is purchasable, and wliere the oflFer of
a free public library would be re-
garded as a huge and ineflFable joke.
To some of us it seems that our old
American stock is distinctly 'on the
toboggan,' and that it is sadly in need
of just such fresh blood as Europe is
providentially sending us. Isn't this
the history of nations ? Has not every
Digitized by
Google
THE AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT
53
truly great and vigorous people grown
out of some such graft of one race
upon the stock of another — some tri-
bal overflow resulting in a specially
happy racial blend? Was it not so
with Greece, with Rome, with Anglo-
Saxon England even, with — "
"Softy, softly. Marble,*' interrupt-
ed the chairman. "Your lecture on
ancient history will be in order at the
next monthly meeting of the club";
then turning to the pedagogic mem-
ber he inquired, "What is your view
of the question, Ellison?"
"Well," replied the latter, "it is at
least curious that this very morning
while Mr. James was observing the
future American on his first arrival,
I was studying his children at a great
public school down in one of the
worst of our East Side slum districts.
In this school I found nearly two
thousand pupils, nine tenths of whom
were aliens. In age they ranged from
six to twelve years, and they repre-
sented some twenty-seven different na-
tionalities. Nevertheless, the instruc-
tion was given exclusively in English,
and in spite of this handicap, the prin-
cipal assured me that the alien pupil
was as far advanced in his studies as
the American boy or girl of a like
age. When asked in what order he
would be inclined to class the two
great racial divisions as regards the
question of general intelligence, he re-
plied that the main difference between
them appeard to be that of the point
of view, which was certainly divergent
enough. The alien child was simply
voracious for knowledge ; for him the
hours of study were never sufficiently
long, while the American lad hailed
the sound of the closing gong with
unfeigned joy. To the alien this new
country of ours, with all its wonders,
was a fairy-land of untold possibili-
ties ; while to the American it was the
old workaday world where he would
one day succeed dad or Uncle Tom
or Uncle Joe as a huckster, an ice-
man, or a ward heeler. It was evi-
dent that my friend, the principal, was
inclined to be optimistic in regard to
his foreign-born charges. Their keen
ambition, their lively imagination, and
their industry were all in their favor ;
and as future citizens he believed that
more might reasonably be expected
of them than of the average Amer-
ican scholars."
"That," said the artist member, "re-
minds me of a recent experience of my
own. Last Sunday morning I dropped
in at the music-school settlement of
David Mannes, down in East Third
Street, and spent an hour listening to
his wonderful little orchestra of East
Side children. They played the Tann-
hauser' overture, a Brahms sonata,
and something by Grieg; and
they played those things with al-
most as much technical ability,
and fully as much musical com-
prehension, as the Philharmonic
up in Carnegie Hall. After the
performance I asked Mr. Mannes how
many Americans he had in his band.
*Not a blessed one,' he replied. The
American children who have tempera-
ment enough for this sort of thing live
in upper Fifth Avenue. You won't
find them in the slums. Rather cu-
rious, isn't it?' he added. *For the
chilren of well-to-do Americans are
temperamentally as sensitive to music
and all other artistic influences as any
in the world.' "
Here, it seemed to me, was the key
to the whole problem under discus-
sion, a solution which explained and
offered a reasonable basis for either
of the two widely divergent opinions
which had been advanced.
During Mr. James's visits to Amer-
ica he had come into contact mainly
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54 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
with the cultivated classes, the cream
of the old civilizations of New Eng-
land and the South. Marble had had
a wider experience and had touched
our varied American life at many
points. Ellison had first-hand knowl-
edge of the crude material out of
which the future American was to
be evolved, but Mr. Mannes alone had
touched upon both sides of the ques-
tion. If his statement was to be ac-
cepted, we must admit the apparent
anomaly of a people one half of which
is advancing in the intellectual scale,
while the other half is declining. And
this, I think, is precisely what we shall
be forced to admit. But in order to
comprehend fully the seeming para-
dox, we must inquire somewhat close-
ly into the nature of this thing called
temperament, without the coopera-
tion of which no great artistic creation
is possible; for, much as the word
is bandied about, the quality is one of
the least understood attributes of the
human mind. This lack of compre-
hension is clearly shown by the numer-
ous words which have been invented
to describe its functions, all of which
leave its true nature as much as ever
enshrouded in mystery. Leaving out
the word temperament we have gen-
ius, inspiration, intuition, imagination,
etc., all of which are virtually synoni-
mous and interchangeable terms, but
none of which does more than hint
at a vagfue and apparently supra-nor-
mal something, to which the words
God-given and heaven-sent are fre-
quently enough prefixed as elucidating
and explanatory adjectives.
And, indeed, at first sight tempera-
ment is certainly a most contradictory
quality, for while it often accompanies
the most perfect physical and mental
health, it is quite as likely to appear
in the mentally abnormal and un-
sound, and its function seems to be
nearly, if not quite, independent of the
pathologic condition of the upper con-
sciousness of the thinking, reasoning,
directing ego. We find it producing
great work, for instance, in such
undoubted neurasthenics as Heine and
Byron, and even in incipient para-
noiacs like Blake and Goya; while in
other cases, of which Shakespeare,
Burns, and Emerson may be cited as
examples, the temperamental artist
walks hand in hand with the normal
man. It is evident, therefore, that in
attempting to elucidate the true diar-
acter of temperament we attack one of
the most elusive of all psychological
phenomena, the interrelations of con-
scious and unconscious cerebration, of
reason and intuition; in a word, of
the conscious and the subconscious in-
tellio^ence. Now, there can be abso-
lutely no question that temperament
resides wholly in the subconscious
mind ; it might almost be claimed that
it is the subconscious mind, and that
the quality and amount of our genius,
our inspiration, our imagination, our
intuition, depends upon the activity
and wide-awakedness of our subcon-
scious selves.
That there is a very distinct line
of demarcation between these two
principal divisions of the brain hardly
admits of discussion. It even seems
demonstrable that one division may be
seriously aflFected by illness while the
other portion remains in sound and
perfect health. And in these cases it
is the so-called reasoning and control-
ling faculty which is most susceptible
to disturbance, while the deeper-lying
subconscious ego retains all its pow-
ers unaffected and undiminished.
I have known personally one artist
of distinction who became insane as
the result of a great and overwhdming
sorrow. He was very wisely permit-
ted to continue the practice of his art
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THE AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT
55
in the enforced seclusion of the asy-
lum, and his pictures show none of
the eflFects of the brain-storm which
destroyed his conscious intelligence.
They are just as simple, just as sane,
just as lovely as ever.
This line of demarcation is so clear-
cut and so sharply defined that accord-
ing to one of the latest theories of
advanced psychology the subcon-
scious never sleeps, but, like a watch-
ful sentinel, ever stands guard over
the slumbering master mind, which
alone needs the recuperative balm of
sleep. In support of this theory there
are well-authenticated cases where the
solution of some knotty problem which
had been long and unsuccessfully
studied by the conscious intelligence
was found clear-cut and perfect in the
mind on awakening from sound sleep.
In these cases the presumption is clear
that the subconscious had been at
work on the problem during the hours
of slumber and had solved the dif-
ficulty which had proved too much for
the conscious mind.
Recently I had a personal ex-
perience which may be worth citing
here, for it does at least prove definite-
ly and beyond question that the sub-
conscious mind may be wide-awake
while the conscious mind sleeps
soundly.
One cold and windy evening, on re-
turning from a walk, I seated myself
before the open fire and began read-
ing aloud to my wife. The comfort-
able glow of the fire, succeeding the
sharp cold without, produced its us-
ual effect, and shortly I fell into a
very deep and heavy slumber. From
this I was presently awakened by a
startled exclamation from my com-
panion. '*What is the matter, dear?*'
she cried. On regaining consciousness
I found that my eyes were still scan-
nmg the pages of the book and my
lips still forming and enunciating the
printed words. My wife assured me
that I had not for a moment ceased
reading, but that for some minutes my
voice had taken on a strange, uncanny
intonation, and that my sentences were
poured forth in a monotonous stream
without the slightest inflection or ex-
pression. I perused again the chapter
which I had been reading and foimd
that the point at which I had lost
consciousness — that is, gone to sleep —
was about four pages back. During
the time which was occupied by the
reading of these four pages, therefore,
the whole of the work must have been
done under the direction of the sub-
conscious part of my brain, which was
certainly wide-awake, while the con-
scious part of me slept soundly. Now.
a little consideration will show what
a very complicated process of mental
and physical action and reaction had
been carried through without any as-
sistance from the conscious mind. In
the first place the sensitive nerves of
the eyes had correctly received the
impression of the letters and words,
and had correctly transmitted their
message to the brain, whence again
the message had been forwarded to
the vocal organs, with directions to
form and enunciate the sounds which
the brain knew to correspond with
the printed characters; and, finally,
the vocal chords under this brain di-
rection had correctly performed their
office. Here were four distinct ac-
tions, each dependent on the preced-
ing movement, which had been car-
ried through without a slip or failure
of any kind. It would be difficult
to maintain that this complicated pro-
cess had been carried through with-
out intelligent control of some kind,
and as the conscious brain in this
case was most certainly asleep, there
seems no escape from the conclusion
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s6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
that the work was done wholly under
the direction of the subconscious in-
telligence. This little incident should
be sufficient to prove to even the most
hardened non-believer in the duplex
nature of the human consciousness
the possibility of independent cerebra-
tion on the part of the subconscious
mind. It seems rather a pity that
it should also dispose of the clever
aphorism of a certain famous profes-
sor of psychology who, when asked to
describe in a few words the nature of
the subconscious brain, replied,
'There is none."
Of course we can have no knowl-
edge of the more exalted activities of
the subconscious brain save through
a study of its intellectually tangible
results. But these results are so ap-
parent in every work of creative art
that it may be stated as an axiom that
art is not, and cannot be, the work
of the reasoning faculties alone and
unassisted. Any creative artist will
tell you that his best thoughts, his **in-
spirations," his happiest phrases are
not reasoned out. They simply **come"
to him, are thrust at him from he
knows not where; and he is often as
much surprised as any one at the com-
pleteness of the idea, the beauty of the
color scheme, the charm of the music-
al phrase which is thus handed to
him out of the void like a gift from
heaven. And this is true not only of
the artist, the writer, the musician, but
of any man of true creative genius
working in any line of human endeav-
or. Even in so exact a science as
mathematics the great discoveries have
been first diznned, and afterward
proved by weeks and months of la-
borious calculation. But the great
mathematician knew the result long
before he had proved it with figures.
The great man is always a seer; he
sees things in advance. The proved
conclusion is for him a foregone con-
clusion.
Now, just what is the nature of this
obscure cerebral action by virtue of
which the man of genius is enabled
,to grasp in an instant some great cer-
tainty, or to group together into some
conception of perfect artistic beauty
floating sounds or colors or words
which had in themselves no special
or transcendant worth — ^in other
words, "what is temperament?"
It is best described, I think, as an
extremely sensitive organization of the
subconscious ego, that portion of the
brain where the automatic or intuitive
reasoning process goes on free from
all interference on the part of our
conscious selves. Operating at the verj'
center and fountain-head of being,
its so-called ''instinctive" conclusions
may very well be the result of a finer
and more perfect form of reasoning
than is possible to the more or less
mechanical and blundering conscious
ego; and the "flash of genius" repre-
sents an instantaneous correlation and
organization of ideas in that perfect
adjustment to one another which could
be achieved only by the subconscious
intelligence.
But we must remember that tem-
perament is, after all, only a tool, and
although a very perfect implement, it
is worthless unless it have at its com-
mand the crude material out of which
the great conception is to be evolved
or the g^eat masterpiece is to be fash-
ioned. The poet, the painter, the mu-
sician, the mathematician must be able
to call at any moment upon a well-
stored memory for all the facts that
may be needed in the elaboration of
his work, and these facts must pre-
viously have been gathered by the
physical senses of sight and hearing,
and stored away in the brain like so
many negatives and records, all ready
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THE AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT
57
for instantaneous use whenever they
are called upon; for the senses are
the feeders of the mind. A brain as
finely organized as that of Shake-
speare wotild remain forever a blank
if its owner were blind and deaf and
devoid of the sense of touch. For
as nothing can come out of a barrel
that has not been previously put into
that barrel, so nothing can come out
of an empty mind. And the artist
who attempts to evolve a work of
art out of nothing will produce noth-
ing. The "mute, inglorious Milton'*
is doubtless a far more usual phenom-
enon than most of us realize.
Possession of temperament, there-
fore, is not the only essential for a
creative artist. He must love nature
and study her constantly, and he must
report his impressions with absolute
and disinterested honesty; for art is
the one himian profession in which
there can be no success without sin-
cerity. The reason for this is not far
to seek. Art, to be in any way distin-
guished, must be original; and origi-
nality presupposes sincerity — the naive
and fearless presentation of the ar-
tist's own personal vision of nature.
Indeed, in the final analysis art and
personality are synonymous terms.
Here we have the secret of all crea-
tive art: it is the intimate expression
of the personality of its creator; and
as no two brains were ever made alike,
so no two genuine artists could pos-
sibly produce an exactly similar pic-
ture or poem or symphony, even where
they used the same theme or motive
as the basis of their work. Here also
we have the reason why no combina-
tion of lenses, no mechanical device,
can ever be expected to produce a gen-
uine work of art. Even in the so-
called art photography the quality of
the production depends upon how
much of his own personality the artist
photc^apher has been able to infuse
into his work; and if color photog-
raphy should ever attain to mechanical
perfection, it would be found to
be mainly valuable as an adjimct to
the artist's equipment.
But although temperaments vary
vastly in different men, they do
nevertheless fall into certain large ra-
cial groups, each with distinct char-
acteristics of its own. The Germanic
temperament diflfers essentially from
the 'Spanish, and that again from the
English. This is so obvious that it
calls for no special pleading. It shows
clearly in the painting, the literature,
and the music of the countries men-
tioned. An English glee, a Spanish
ronda, and a German lied require no
label to tell the nationality of their
composers; and we know whether a
picture is of Dutch, Spanish, or Eng-
lish origin without inquiring the name
of the artist who painted it.
It is this unfailing law, assuring to
each nation its own racial temperamen-
tal characteristics, which gives to the
art of Japan its peculiar and distinc-
tive charm, which makes the art of
Persia just what it is, and which says
that each people shall express through
its art its own special ideals. Now,
admitting as we needs must, that the
American nation has finally developed
a distinct racial type of its own, we
at the same time recognize the Amer-
ican temperament, and concede to it
qualities and characteristics which dif-
ferentiate it from those of any other
race.
Before inquiring as to the exact na-
ture of these peculiarly American
traits, it will be well to devote a mo-
ment to a survey of the general condi-
tions which have produced them, the
sequence of forces and events which
have gradually molded and evolved
the American type as it stands to-day.
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58 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
If history teaches any one thing with
special clearness, it is that civiliza-
tions closely resemble individuals in
their manner of growth. Both
have their periods of childhood, of
adolescence, of full maturity, and of
senile decay. It shows us also that
every g^eat nation has its blossoming
time, when with an irresistible im-
pulse it bursts forth into art, and in
one glorious and reckless impulse ex-
pends its stored-up energy in the ef-
fort to put into permanent form its
own particular ideals of beauty. This
period invariably follows the day of
conquest, of great physical and mate-
rial prosperity, and precedes the final
and inevitable decline which is the
fate of races as it is of individuals.
The sequence is so unvarying that we
can predict with certainty the ap-
proaching end of any nation which has
just given birth to a great art move-
ment. I think, for instance, that we
are witnessing this phenomenon in
France at the present monrent. The
madness of their "post-impressionists'*
is simply one of the aberrations to be
expected of a decadent people in whom
the love of nature and of simple beau-
ty has been replaced by a morbid crav-
ing for strange mental and artistic
stimulants. In England, on the con-
trary, the dawn of art is only just be-
ginning. The sturdy old Anglo-Saxon
race has retained its youthful vital-
ity longer than most modem nations,
and the nervous strain and tension
which invariably accompany the
birth of temperament in a people are
with them only just beginning to show
themselves. But slow as has been this
movement in England, it is safe to
predict of a nation physically and
mentally as sound and vigorous as the
British that it will finally develop one
of the greatest schools of art that the
world has ever seen.
How is it with us in America? We
are of the same old Anglo-Saxon
stock; but three centuries ago this
stock was transplanted into a wilder-
ness where it was placed in strange
surroundings and face to face with
hitherto untried conditions. In this
new environment all of its old social
props were suddenly withdrawn, and
it had not only to subdue the wilder-
ness to its physical needs, but to evolve
a new social order and to build up a
new state that would suit the new
conditions. At the same time it was
subjected to the strain of a change-
able, trying, nerve-racking climate.
Under the stress of these strenuous
conditions the American offshoot
seems to have come to maturity more
rapidly than the parent stock; for
there is, I think, overwhelming evi-
dence that the American civilization
which is founded upon the old English
stock is approaching its high-water
mark, and that the period of its great
artistic production is near at hand. I
am very much mistaken if America
does not in the near future assume
the lead in all matters pertaining to
art; and it will be interesting, there-
fore, to inquire in what particulars the
new American art will differ from Ae
art which has preceded it. This, I
think, it is possible to forecast with
reasonable exactitude ; for we have al-
ready advanced far enough upon the
road to indicate the direction in which
we are going. In the first place,
American art will probably be marked
by great clarity and directness of vis-
ion, a forceful and at the same time
refined simplicity; for our sense of
humor as a nation will be sure to elim-
inate and preclude any tendency to
fad or peculiarity. It will also be
an art in which beauty and delicacy
of color will count for much, and this
strong racial tendency will show even
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THE AMERICAN TEMPERAMENT
59
in its sculpture. In regard to the ques-
tion of design and decorative arrange-
ment, it is more difficult to predicate.
In general the Germanic and Scandi-
navian races of the North, with their
strong underlying strain of mysti-
cism, have tended more to color and to
sentiment in their art than to design;
while the Southern races have shown
that marked predilection for form
which has given us the sculptures of
the Parthenon and the arabesques of
the Alhambra. Nevertheless, there are
indications in some of our recent
mural paintings of a very marked
feeling for decorative balance and ar-
rangement of form. It may be that the
long scientific training which has pre-
ceded the art expansion in America
has tuned us to demand correct bal-
ance and accurate adjustment of
forms, and that this will be reflected
in our art.
In some respects it seems to me that
the American art of the future will
more nearly approximate the great art
of the Italian Renaissance than any
more recent art development. Its san-
ity, its loving fidelity to nature and to
nature's beauty certainly point in that
direction; and its own original quali-
ties of delicacy and fine opalescent
color will only add a new grace and
charm to the old approved and be-
loved art of the past. Any art which
is to last must be built upon the broad
basis of sane and wholesome human
nature. However much its outward
manifestations may vary, its funda-
mental laws must remain the same so
long as the human race endures.
Finally, let me say that in my opin-
ion America in one respect holds a po-
sition absolutely unique in the histor>'
of the world. When the art move-
ment which is just now beginning has
reached its end, there is every proba-
bility that our country may look for-
ward at some later date to another and
still greater renaissance; and if this
occurs, we shall owe it to that very
foreign invasion which Mr. James so
deeply deplored. Out of the admix-
ture of so many and such diverse race
units, grafted upon the old Anglo-Sax-
on stock, there should develop during
the next century or two a new people
— a people more powerful perhaps
than any the world has heretofore
known. And in due season these new
Americans, following the universal
law, would develop an art of their
own which would be brilliant and
forceful and beautiful in proportion to
the force, the brilliancy, and the love
of beauty in the race itself.
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SOME OF THE CONDITIONS OF ARCHITECTURAL
DESIGN
By Walter Cook
The Institute of Arts and Letters,
which might perhaps be more prop-
erly called the Institute of Arts
including that of Letters, is composed,
it is true, of various kinds of ar-
tists; but all its members are sup-
posed to be artists in the broad and
true sense of the word. Whether a
man is working as a poet or a novelist
or a historian, as a painter, a musi-
cian, a sculptor or an architect, his
claim to be a member of this body
rests upon the fact that he has been
adjudged to be an artist. But the
conditions under which we exercise
our various arts differ very widely.
The writer sits down and composes his
poem or his essay or his novel pretty
much as he pleases and sees fit, and
prays Heaven for an enlightened pub-
lisher and an appreciative public ; and
the same is true in a way of the mu-
sician. The painter and sculptor have
set before them problems of which at
least the initial statement is of great
simplicity ; they are asked in each case
to produce a beautiful object, and if
they succeed in doing so, their mis-
sion is fulfilled. But with us archi-
tects, while we, too, strive toward the
same goal, the conditions are in many
ways so different that it seems inter-
esting to consider some of them to-
day.
It is hardly worth while, however,
to dwell in any detail on what we
may call the material difficulties of our
art, the ever present necessity of unit-
ing the utile and the dulce. Every-
one knows that we are called upon to
produce something which shall in the
highest degree fulfil many and com-
plicated material requirements, and at
the same time satisfy the highest es-
thetic ones. Perhaps this may not be
an unmitigated misfortune, and that
it is only another example of Theo-
phile Gautier*s oft-quoted sentiment:
Qui, I'ceuvre sort plus belle
D'une forme au travail
Rebelle,
Vers, marbre, onyx, email.
Certain it is that some of the ma-
terials we have to contend with —
some of our clients, for example — ^are
at least as hard as marble or onyx,
and as complicated as the most elabo-
rate verse that has been evolved since
the prosody of the Greek chorus.
But even if the poet's verse be ac-
cepted as a literal truth, we may be
pardoned for hoping devoutly that no-
body will ever make any further in-
ventions destined to make the lot of
man in general happier, and that of
the architect more miserable. For
each of these is one more stumbling-
block in the path that leads to beauty.
Of course every architect begins his
study with the plan of his building.
Now, it is difficult to explain to the
man on the street exactly what an
architect means when he talks of a
beautiful plan; for to him the plan
seems nothing more ihan a diagram
which shows how certaii\ requirements
are to be met and how .certain con-
veniences are to be obtained. But this
is not the architect's conception of it,
or only partly so; for in it he
sees at every point the possibility
of beautiful effects and artistic com-
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SOME OF THE CONDITIONS OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 6i
positions, and knowing and realizing
these, his plan becomes in itself a
thing of beauty, which only the spe-
cially trained eye can recogtiize and
appreciate. So that in this part of
his artistic work he is speaking a lan-
guage which is quite unintelligible to
the world at large, and can be entirely
understood only by a chosen few.
How many of you who are here to-
day, and to whom the beauty of the
great buildings of the world is a fa-
miliar word, have even heard of the
wonderful plan of the Baths of Cara-
calla, in antiquity — a plan which has
been said to contain all the elements
of all the plans made before or since,
or, in modem times, that of the opera-
house in Paris? For the architect
there is no part of any important plan
where he is not continually asking
himself how will this look when the
walls are built upon its lines, and how
can this or that motive be treated in-
side and outside. And these possiUli-
ties he learns to recognize instinctive-
ly from the aspect of the plan, — call it
diagram if you will, — which becomes
to him as distinctively beautiful or un-
beauitiful in itself as though it were a
picture of the Virgin, a statue of
Apollo, or an ode of Keats.
And then when he comes to the
study of his exterior, already more
or less distinct in his mind before a
line has been drawn, he remembers
rapturously that "Beauty is truth,
truth beauty." And then in the twin-
kling of an eye he is assailed by
doubt, and begins to question the
poet's words except in the broadest
sense. For in architecture, as in life
in general, there are a large number
of unpleasant truths, and if we are
to be compelled to proclaim them from
the housetops, we shall have to revise
all our preconceived notions of beau-
ty. If, for instance, we are compelled
by truth in regard to the water-pres-
sure of our cities to place a large tank
upon the roof of a building, we can-
not be blamed if we use all the means
in our power to conceal the fact; or
if we are unable to do so, to erect such
a monumental tower to contain it that
no one suspects the painful reality.
No, we can carry this principle only
to a certain point. We try to suggest
in the exterior of our building what-
ever we think significant or interest-
ing in the interior. But there may eas-
ily be an excess of outspokenness in
our architecture, as we often find to
be the case with our friends. Even
sincerity may become a vice; and one
has only to loc^ at some examples of
the present worship of the so-called
practical and utilitarian to be con-
vinced of it. After all, if we are really
architects, we are like the other ar-
tists in that we strive to create the
beautiful, and to tell all pleasant
truths in our work. .Architecture
at its best should be in all ways an
expressive art, and that is sometimes
the hardest part of it. If we are
building a house for some one, we
ought, paradoxical though it may seem,
to try to express in some way or other
the tastes and the personality of our
client. After all, a house is really a
kind of frame for the picture made up
of the people that live in it, and all
the painters will agree that the most
beautiful frame is not suited to every
picture. Really we ought to study
our man quite as carefully as the phy-
sician does his patient, the father con-
fessor his penitent, or as the portrait-
painter who seeks to read the char-
acter of the face he is depicting. It
is a matter of almost secondary im-
portance to know whether he prefers
brick or stone, Tudor rooms or those
of Louis XVI. These points we can
easily inform ourselves about; the
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
burning questions are whether he is
a devotee of Beethoven or of De-
bussy, whether he reads Shakespeare
or Alexandre Dumas, and what his
convictions are on the question of the
trusts. If we could really get an in-
sight into real character, we might
perhaps be able to build a house which
would reflect not only the individual-
ity of the architect, but that of the
people who are to live in it.
And of course this imperative desire
for a particular expression, apart
from our own, a particular appro-
priateness, we feel as much in our
other work as in the dwelling-house;
and the problem is perhaps even more
difficult, for here we are seeking for
some ideal to express, whether the
case be that of a church or a museum,
a court-house or a bank; and it is
not always easy to formulate the
ideal in our own minds. Some time
ago a certain foreigner, who was here
on a visit, criticized with some sever-
ity what he saw in New York, and
particularly the new Pennsylvania
Station, taking the ground that as a
railway station was a place of much
hurry and bustle, its architectural ex-
pression should above all be that of
unrest — quot homines, tot sententice.
Every important building which
has been erected for a specific pur-
pose tends, if it is an artistic success,
to establish a type for those which
succeed it. And it is only once in a
while that some new and original
wonder appears, the old monarch is
dethroned and a new regime begins.
And as the ideals are varied and
the individualities diflFerent, we are
forced to speak or to try to speak
various languages; we must, if a lit-
erary parallel may be used, turn from
a Sapphic ode to a history of bank-
ing in the nineteenth century, from
Pelleas and Melisande to a life of
Gladstone.
The art of any period, we are told,
always reflects the life of the period
itself, and always should do so. How
far this is a universal truth may per-
haps be questioned. Oscar Wilde in
his most amusing effusion, called
"The Decay of Lying," in which there
is contained a good deal of truth as
well as of amusement, causes his es-
sayist to say: "Life imitates Art far
more than Art imitates Life. We
have all seen, in our own day in Eng-
land, how a certain curious and fas-
cinating type of beauty, invented and
emphasized by two imaginative
painters, has so influenced Life, that
whenever one goes to a private view
or an artistic salon one sees, here the
mystic eyes of Rossetti's dream, the
long ivory throat, the strange square-
cut jaw, the loosened shadowy hair
that he so ardently loved; there the
sweet maidenhood of The polden
Stair,' the blossom-like mouth and
weary loveliness of the 'Laus Amo-
ris,' the passion-pale face of. Andro-
meda, the thin hands and lithe beauty
of the 'Vivien' in 'Merlin's Dream.'
And it has always been so. A great
artist invents a type, and Life tries to
copy it, to reproduce it in a popular
form, like an enterprising publisher.
Neither Holbein nor Van Dyck found
in England what they have given us.
They brought their types with them,
and Life with her keen imitative fac-
ulty set herself to supply the master
with models."
Whatever we may think in our
more analytical moments of this the-
ory, it is certainly an inspiring idea
that the artists are not merely pic-
turing the life of our epoch, but arc
actually in a measure creating it, and
if we could only be convinced of its
truth, a particularly inspiring one to
the architect. For his creations, his
pictures, are not shut up in galleries
where only the ar^-^^^^j^^ ^ose whoe
SOME OF THE CONDITIONS OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 63
are least in need of esthetic teach-
ing, go to see them, but are set forth
in full view of every passer-by in the
street, who has to look at them wheth-
er he will or not, and is, let us hope
at least, more or less affected by
them for good or evil. But unfortu-
nately for us, Mr. Wilde in a later
page modifies his dictum and says:
"The more abstract, the more ideal
an art is, the more it reveals to us
the temper of its age. If we wish
to understand a nation by means of
its art, let us look at its architecture
or its music" So that it appears that
we must after all be content to inter-
pret, to reflect, as it were, one age and
one country, in company with the mu-
sicians; that we cannot help doing
so, in the first place; and that, if we
try to do otherwise, we are working
in defiance of natural laws, and that
our efforts are predestined to failure.
"Whoever demands of an architect
a style not in keeping with the spirit
of his time," said Mr. Hastings in
his paper read before you last year, "is
responsible for retarding the normal
progress of the art. We must have
a language if we would talk. If there
be no common language for a people,
there can be no communication of
ideas, either architectural or literary.
I believe that we shall one day re-
joice in the dawn of a modern renais-
sance; and as has always been the
case, we shall be guided by the fun-
damental principles of the classic."
This is the particular reflection
which one of our distinguished men
sees in the mirror which he holds up
to nature. But there are a good many
different kinds of mirrors, and the
reflections seen in them differ accord-
ingly. I have in mind another of
my professional brethren, who holds
that the Renaissance — that which
began in the fifteenth century —
was in no sense a natural develop-
ment, but should properly be thought
of as a hideous calamity, a sort of
universal earthquake which shook the
mind of the world and left it in ruins ;
that only in the present age are we
beginning to recover from this dread-
ful day of wrath, and that we must
do our utmost to forget and ignore
it, to treat it as a hideous night-
mare. We should, he says, imagine
what the world would have done if
it had proceeded on its way peace-
fully and normally; for, Heaven be
praised, we are finally awakening to
the truth; and an art which takes up
the old story, the only true story, not
archaeologically, but with the earnest
endeavour to continue and to develop
according to our present conditions
the great ideas of the past, shattered
though they were by insane delusions,
is really reflecting in the truest sense
the best life of our time.
And there are yet others among us
who declare that when they hold up
their mirrors they see nothing which
reminds them in any way of the past,
and that if we really had any grand-
fathers, the best thing we can do is to
forget all about them. This is an age
of originality, they say, and only of
originality; and so they evolve an
architecture which we look upon with
unmixed wonder, uncertain in our
minds as to whether it pictures the
civilization of the twenty-fifth century
before Christ or the twenty-fifth
after.
Now, if we look at other phases of
life as we see it to-day, do we not
see various states of mind correspond-
ing in a measure with these divergent
ideas of the architects? In literature,
the realistic novel, the one written
for that important person, the
•*tired business man," and the psycho-
logical romance, glare at each other
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64
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
defiantly ; the French successors of the
English Preraphaelites, Maeterlinck
and Stephane Mallarme, sound quite
another note from — Mr. H. G. Wells,
let us say. In religion, one can never
be certain whether one is talking to
a stanch churchman or to an eso-
teric Buddhist. And in the field of
politics, even if we assume that we
are all Socialists, we have to begin
as Pontius Pilate did, and ask "What
is socialism?" with small chance of
agreeing upon an answer.
So it may well be that a certain in-
coherence in the architecture of to-
day, as we may call it, when viewed
as a whole, is in reality the most gen-
uine expression of our life and our
time. No cme of us can be condemned
as false to the truth of his art be-
cause his expression of it is quite dif-
ferent from that of his neighbour.
The individuality of the designer,
if he be fortunate enough to possess
one, he cannot well get away from,
even if he try to do so; and this in-
dividuality leads him to a preference
for certain forms, for a certain style.
But, as has already been said, the
architect must speak various lan-
guages; one of them will always re-
main his mother-tongue, and the
others will be spoken with some lit-
tle accent, some reminiscence of the
land native to his particular expres-
sion. Tamen u^que recurret. And it
sometimes happens that the adoption,
even unwillingly, of a style which the
conditions impose on him, influenced
as it is by his personal predilections,
results in something which possesses
a special charm of its own, and may
even be the beginning of something
new; just as the French architects of
the sixteenth century, starting with
the to them novel ideas of the Italians,
and being still saturated with their
own medieval style, evolved one of
the most charming and picturesque
mixtures that we know — a style of its
own, one possessing a true originality,
as all of us who have seen the castles
of Touraine will acknowledge.
I have kept for the end of this per-
haps rather desultory paper that con-
dition of architectural design which
differs most from those of the other
arts, and which would seem to show
that, of all the artists, imagination is
most necessary to the architect. Alone
among all, the architect never sees
what he has created until it is too
late to change it. We make our
drawings, we study everything about
them from every point of view we can
think of. We wonder, we question,
we criticize, we change; we have
models made of certain details, of cer-
tain motives, even sometimes of
the whole exterior of our build-
ing. Unfortunately we are unable
to make a real man of the
same relative size, who from his Lilli-
putian point of view can give us a
true artistic appreciation. The thing
itself, the real thing we create, re-
mains the creature of our imagina-
tion, and we never see it as we have
conceived it until the fatal words have
been spoken, *'No change is possi-
ble." We never see for the first time
what we have made without a cer-
tain feeling of surprise — of elation
when our expectations are realized, of
sadness when we note how this mo-
tive is too important or that one too
little so; how the attic is too heavy,
or the whole composition looks
forced.
Now, consider one by one the con-
ditions existing in the other arts.
When a book is written, the author
continually rewrites, and improves
and corrects. He labors over cer-
tain parts of it again and again until
he is satisfied. And when the book
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SOME OF THE CONDITIONS OF ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 65
is finished, he lays it aside for a while
and then comes back to it fresh and
almost as another person, and perhaps
recomposes parts of it entirely. And
it is not without having seen and con-
sidered it as a whole, without having
studied each part and its relation to
the other parts, that he finally sends
it forth to the world.
The painter proceeds in the same
way; he finishes, as he supposes, his
picture, and then wipes out and re-
paints sometimes a part, sometimes
the whole. And when what seems to
be the final result is reached, he still
returns and adds an effect here, an
accent there, even though it be on
varnishing day. The sculptor is
equally fortunate. He, too, sees and
criticizes; he, too, changes and modi-
fies at will. And the musician is the
most fortunate of all. He composes
his symphony or his opera, hears all
the rehearsals, and has abundant op-
portunities to judge of his own work
as though he were an outsider. And
then a year or two later he writes en-
tirely anew a movement or an act
which dissatisfies him, or composes a
new overture to his opera. Beethoven
wrote three different ones for "Fi-
delio."
"Ah, you who are without pity
for the mistakes of the architect, have
you ever thought of this," says M.
Gamier in his book on the Paris
opera-house — ^ book in which he
frankly points out and discusses his
own mistakes and his own successes
— ^"that alone perhaps among the ar-
tists and the producers they have to
succeed the very first time? Every-
.thing in this world is only done
through tryings-on : your boots and
your clothes are tried on before they
are sent home to you ; the cook tastes
his sauces before he serves them at
your table; only the architects have
to work without feeling their way,
and without any hesitation they must
hit the buirs-eye with their first shot !
"For my part, I have shot some-
times wide of the mark. Never mind.
In spite of it, I look back on my rec-
ord as a marksman, and do not blush
too deeply on account of my misses."
Happy those of us who can say as
much !
Why is it, then, may be asked, that
we all glory in our special art, when
so many of its conditions seem
fraught with difficulties? Why did
Brunelleschi, beginning as a sculptor
and winning no small renown in his
work, forsake it and devote his whole
life to the Cathedral of Florence?
We who are in the midst of the fray
can easily answer this in the light of
our own experience. The joy of vic-
tory is in proportion to the perils of
the combat. We have not only the
exultation which every artist has in
making something that is all his own,
but whenever we achieve any meas-
ure of success, we remember the
stones that beset our path, and re-
joice that, despite all, we, too, have
set up something in the light of day,
to be seen of all men, which may per-
haps add something to the beauty of
the world.
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THE INSTITUTE MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Institute is each subject every tenth year in the order
annually awarded to any citizen of 'JJ^^.I^^^^ .^ ^^^„ ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^j,^ gee-
the United States, whether a mem- retary each year to poll the members of the
ber of the Institute or not, for dis- section of the Institute dealing with the su^
» ject m which the medal is that year to be
tinguished services to arts or letters awarded, and to report the result of the
in the creatinn of nnVinfll wnrt P°" *° ^^^ Institute at its Annual Meeting,
m tne creation ot original work. ^^ ^j^j^^ meeting the medal shall be award-
The conditions of the award are ed by vote of the Institute."
these: The medal was designed by Adolph
(i) "That the medal shall be awarded for A. Weinman, of the Institute, in
the entire work of the recipient, without ,qqq
limit of time during which it shall have ^iA^'
been done; that it shall be awarded to a The first award — for sculpture —
living person or to one who shall not have „,^^ ^^ A,trT.,o*iie Qn;«f r^^^At^nc TVia
been dead more than one year at the time ^^^ ^^ Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The
of the award; and that it shall not be medal was presented to Mrs. Saint-
awarded more than once to any one person. Qaudens at the meeting held in mem-
(2) "That It shall be awarded in the fol- ^^„ ^r t ^^ u„cko«^ \t^„ <yr^ rrwv.
lowing order: First year, for Sculpture; ^ry of her husband Nov. 20, 1909.
second year, for History or Biography; The second medal — for history —
third year, for Music; fourth year, for jj^ t -cj-dlj
Poetry; fifth year, for Architecture; sixth ^as awarded to James Ford Rhodes,
year, for Drama; seventh year, for Paint- The third medal* — for poetry — ^was
ing; eighth year, for Fiction; ninth year, j j . t wti^'j. i. r>'i
for Essays or Belles-Lettres,-lreturning to awarded to James Whitcomb Riley.
On January 25, at 7.30 p.m., the Thirteenth Annual Meeting and Dinner of
the National Institute of Arts and Letters was held at the University
Club, Philadelphia, when the third Gold Medal of the Institute
was awarded in the department of Poetry to
James Whitcomb Riley
On January 26, the sessions of the Academy and Institute were opened by an
address of welcome (10.30 a. m.. Clover Room, Bellevue-Stratford) by
HIS HONOR, THE MAYOR OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA,
Rudolph Blankenburg
At the close of the momingf session a luncheon at the Franklin Inn was gfiven
to the members of the Academy and the Institute
BY
Mr. Harrison S. Morris
At the close of the afternoon session a Reception was given to the members of
the Academy and Institute at the Bellevue-Stratford through the courtesy
of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and the members of the Franklin Inn Club
* The third medal was to have been awarded for Music, but thoug:h several polls were taken In the Department of
Music, none of the nominees received a sufficient proportion of votes. It was therefore regrettably necessary to pass
over the award of the medal for Music until its turn recurs in due course.
« Digitized by Google
CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF ARTS AND LETTERS
(Founded 1898 by the American Social Science Association)
I. ORIGIN AND NAME.
This society, organized by men nominated
and elected by the American Social Science
Association at its annual meeting in 18^,
with a view to the advancement of art,
music and literature, shall be known as the
National Institute of Arts and Letters.
II. MEMBERSHIP.
1. Qualification for membership shall be
notable achievement in art, music or litera-
ture.
2. The number of members shall be limited
to two hundred and fifty.
III. ELECTIONS.
The name of a candidate shall be proposed
to the Secretary by three members of the
section in which the nominee's principal
work has been performed. The name shall
then be submitted to the members of that
section, and if approved by a majority of
the answers received within fifteen days
may be submitted by a two-thirds vote of
the council to an annual meeting of the In-
stitute for formal election by a majority
vote of those present. The voting shall be
by ballot.
IV. OFFICERS.
1. The oflficers of the Institute shall consist
of a President, six Vice-Presidents, a Sec-
retary and a Treasurer, and they shall con-
stitute the council of the Institute.
2. The council shall always include at least
one member of each department.
V. ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Officers shall be elected by ballot at the
annual meeting, but the council may fill a
vacancy at any time by a two-thirds vote.
VI. MEETINGS
1. The annual meeting of the Institute shall
be held on the first Tuesday in September,
unless otherwise ordered by the council.*
2. Special meetings may be called by the
President on recommendation of any three
members of the council, or by petition of at
least one-fourth of the membership of the
Institute.
VII. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
1. It shall be the duty of the President to
preside at all meetings of the Institute and
of the council.
2. In the absence of the President, the
senior Vice-President in attendance shall
preside.
• For convenience the annual meeting Is usually called
for January or Februarv.
3. The Secretary shall keep a minute of all
meetings of the Institute and of the council,
and shall be the custodian of all records.
4. The Treasurer shall have charge of all
funds of the Institute and shall make dis-
bursements only upon order of the council.
VIIL ANNUAL DUES
The annual dues for membership shall be
five dollars.
IX. INSIGNIA
The insignia of the Institute shall be a bow
of purple ribbon bearing two bars of old
gold.
X. EXPULSIONS
Any member may be expelled for unbecom-
ing conduct by a two-thirds vote of the
council, a reasonable opportunity for de-
fense having been given.
XI. AMENDMENTS
This Constitution may be amended by a
two-thirds vote of the Institute upon the
recommendation of the council or upon the
request, in writing, of any five members.
The Secretary shall be required to send to
each member a copy of the proposed amend-
ment at least thirty days before the meeting
at which such amendment is to be consid-
ered.
XII. THE ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
In order to make the Institute more efficient
in carrying out the purposes for which it
was organized, — the protection and further-
ance of literature and the arts, — ^and to give
greater definiteness to its work, a section
of the Institute to be known as the Acad-
emy OF Arts and Letters shall be organ-
ized in such manner as the Institute may
provide ; the members of the Academy to be
chosen from those who at any time shall
have been on the list of membership of the
Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of thirty
membeis, and after these shall have organ-
ized it shall elect its own officers, prescribe
its own rules, the number of its members,
and the further conditions of membership;
Provided that no one shall be a member of
the Academy who shall not first have been
on the list of regular members of the In-
stitute, and that in the choice of members
individual distinction and character, and not
the group to which they belong, shall be
taken into consideration; and Provided that
all members of the Academy shall be native
or naturalized citizens of the United States.
67
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
Department of Literature
Adams, Brooks
Adams, Charles Francis
Adams, Henry
Ade, George
Alden, Henry M.
Aldrich, Richard
Allen, James Lane
Baldwin, Simeon E.
Bates, Arlo
Bridges, Robert
Brownell, W. C.
Burroughs, John
Burton, Richard
Butler, Nicholas Murray
Cable, George W.
Carman, Bliss
Cawein, Madison J.
Chambers, R. W.
Channing, Edward
Cheney, John Vance
Churchill, Winston
Connolly, James B.
Cortissoz, Royal
Croly, Herbert D.
Cross, Wilbur L.
Crothers, Samuel McChord
de Kay, Charles
Dunne, Finley P.
Egan, Maurice Francis
Femald, Chester Bailey
Finck, Henry T.
Finley, John Huston
Ford, Worthington C.
Fox, John, Jr.
Furness, Horace Howard, Jr.
Garland, Hamlin
Gildersleeve, Basil L.
Gillette, William
Gilman, Lawrence
(jordon, George A.
Grant, Robert
Greenslet, Ferris
Griffis, Wm. Elliot
Hadley, Arthur Twining
Hamilton, Clayton
Hardy, Arthur Sherburne
Harper, George McLean
Herford, Oliver
Herrick, Robert
Hitchcock, Ripley
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe
Howeils, William Uean
Huntington, Archer M.
James, Henry
Johnson, Owen
Johnson, Robert Underwood
Kennan, George
Lloyd, Nelson
Lodge, Henry Cabot
Long, John Luther
Lounsbury, Thomas R.
Lovett, Robert Morss
Lowell, Abbott Lawrence
Lummis, Charles F.
Mabie, Hamilton Wright
Mackaye, Percy
Mahan, Alfred T.
Markham, Edwin
Martin, Edward S.
Matthews, Brander
McKelway, St Clair
McMaster, John Bach
Miller, Joaquin
Mitchell, John Ames
Mitchell, Langdon E.
More, Paul Elmer
Morris, Harrison S.
Morse, John Torrey, Jr.
Muir, John
Nicholson, Meredith
Page, Thomas Nelson
Payne, Will
Payne, William Morton
Peck, Harry Thurston
Perry, Bliss
Perry, Thomas Sergeant
Phelps, William Lyon
Pier, Arthur S.
Rhodes, James Ford
Riley, James Whitcomb
Roberts, Charles G. D.
Robinson, Edward Arlington
Roosevelt, Theodore
Royce, Josiah
Schelling, Felix iimanuel
Schouler, Tames
Schuyler, Montgomery
ScoUard, Clinton
Sedgwick, Henry D.
Seton, Ernest Thompson
Sherman, Frank Dempster
Shorey, Paul
Sloane, William M.
Smith, F. Hopkinson
Sullivan, Thomas Russell
Tarkington, Booth
Thayer. A. H.
Thayer, William Roscoe
Thomas, Augustus
Tooker, L. Frank
Torrence, Ridgely
Trent, William P.
van Dyke, Henry
Van Dyke. John C.
Wendell, Barrett
West. Andrew F.
White, Andrew Dickson
W^hite, William Allen
Whiting, Charles G.
Williams, Jesse Lynch
Wilson, Harry Leon
Wilson, Woodrow
Wister, Owen
Woodberry, George E.
68
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
69
Department of Art
Adams, Herbert
Alexander, John W.
Babb, George F.
Ballin, Hugo
Barnard, George Gray
Bartlett, Paul W.
Beckwith, J. Carroll
Benson, Frank W.
Bitter, Karl
Blashfield, Edwin H.
Brooks, Richard £.
Brown, Glenn
Brush, George de Forest
Bunce, William Gedney
Carlsen, Emil
Chase, William M.
Cole, Timothy
Cook, Walter
Cox, Kenyon
Crowninshield, Frederic
Dannat, William T.
Day, Frank Miles
De Camp, Joseph
Dewey, Charles Melville
Dewing, Thomas W.
Dielman, Frederick
Donaldson, John M.
Dougherty, Paul
Duveneck, Frank
Foster, Ben
French, Daniel C
Gay, Walter
Gibson, Charles Dana
Gilbert, Cass
Grafly, Charles
Guerin, Jules
Hardenbergh, Henry J.
Harrison, Alexander
Harrison, Birge
H^ssam, Childe
Hastings, Thomas
Henri, Robert
Howard, John Galen
Howe, William Henry
Howells, J. M.
Isham, Samuel
Jones, Francis C.
Jones, H. Bolton
Kendall. W. Sergeant
La Farge, Bancel
Low, Will H.
MacMonnies, Frederick
Mac Neil, Hermon A.
Marr, Carl
McEwen, Walter
Mead, William Rutherford
Melchers, Gari
Metcalf, Willard L.
Mowbray, H. Siddons
Ochtman, Leonard
Parrish, Maxfield
Peabody, Robert S.
Pearce, Charles Sprague
Pennell, Joseph
Piatt, Charles A.
Post, George B.
Potter, Edward Clark
Pratt, Bela L.
Proctor, A. Phimister
Redfield, Edward W.
Reid, Robert
Roth, Frederick U R.
Ruckstuhl, F. W.
Ryder, Albert P.
Sargent, John S.
Schofield, W. Elmer
Shrady, Henry M.
Simmons, Edward
Smedley, William T.
Taft, Lorado
Tarbell, Edmund C.
Tryon, Dwight W.
Vedder, Elihu
Walden, Lionel
Walker, Henry Oliver
Walker, Horatio
Warren, Whitney
Weinman, Adolph A.
Weir, J. Alden
Wiles, Irving R.
Department of Music
Bird, Arthur
Brockway, Howard
Chadwick, George Whitfield
Converse, F. S.
Damrosch, Walter
De Koven, Reginald
Foote, Arthur
Gilchrist, W. W.
Hadley, H. K.
Herbert, Victor
Kelley, Edgar Stillman
Loeffler, Charles M.
Parker, Horatio W.
Shelley, Harry Rowe
Smith, David Stanley
Van der Stucken, F.
Whiting, Arthur
DECEASED MEMBERS
Department of Literature
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey
Bigelow, John
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain)
Conway, Moncure D.
Crawford, Francis Marion
Daly, Augustin
Dodge, Theodore A.
Eggleston, Edward
Fawcett, Edgar
Fiske, Willard
Ford, Paul Leicester
Frederic, Harold
Furness, Horace Howard
Gilder, Richard Watson
Gilman, Daniel Coit
Godkin, E. L.
Godwin, Parke
Hale, Edward Everett
Harland, Henry
Harris, Joel Chandler
Harte, Bret
Hay, John
Heme, James A.
Higginson. Thomas Wentworth
Howard, Bronson
Howe, Julia Ward
Hutton, Laurence
Jefferson, Joseph
Johnston, Richard Malcolm
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70
PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE
Lea, Henry Charles
Lodge, George Cabot
Mitchell, Donald G.
Moody, William Vaughn
Munger, Theodore T.
Nelson, Henry i^omis
Norton, Charles Eliot •
Perkins, James Breck
Schurz, Carl
Scudder, Horace
Shaler, N. S.
Shirlaw, Walter
Stedman, Edmund Clarence
Stillman, William J.
Stockton, Frank R.
Stoddard, Charles Warren
Thompson, Maurice
Tyler, Moses Coit
Viele, Herman K.
Warner, Charles Dudley
Department of Abt
Abbey, Edwin A.
Bierstadt, Albert
Blum, Robert Frederick
Burnham, Daniel Hudson
Carrere, John M.
Collins, Alfred Q.
Homer, Winslow
La Farge, John
Lathrop, Francis
Loeb, Louis
Millet. Francis D.
McKim, Charles Follen
Porter. Benjamin C.
Pyle, Howard
Remington, Frederic
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
Twachtman, John H.
Vinton, Frederick P.
Ward, J. Q. A.
White, Stanford
Wood, Thomas W.
Department of Music.
Buck, Dudley
MacDowell, Edward
Nevin, Ethelbert
Paine, John K.
OFFICERS
President
John W. Alexander
Fice-Presidents
Arthur Whiting
Brander Matthews
Hamlin Garland
Robert Underwood Johnson
Hamilton W. Mabie
Harrison S. Morris
Secretary
Jesse Lynch Williams
Princeton, N. J.
Treasurer
Samuel Isham
471 Park Avenut, New York
[November, 1912]
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SKETCH OF THE ACADEMY AND LIST OF
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
The American Academy of Arts
and Letters was founded in 1904 as
an interior organization of the Na-
tional Institute of Arts and Letters,
which in turn was founded in 1898
by the American Social Science As-
sociation. In each case the elder or-
ganization left the younger to choose
the relations that should exist be-
tween them. Article XII of the Con-
stitution of the Institute provides as
follows :
In order to make the Institute more effi-
cient in carrying out the purposes for which
it was organized,— the protection and fur-
therance of literature and the arts, — and to
give greater definiteness to its work, a sec-
tion of the Institute to be known as the
ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
shall be organized in such manner as the
Institute may provide; the members of the
Academy to be chosen from those who at
any time shall have been on the list of
members of the Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of
thirty members, and after these shall have
organized it shall elect its own officers, pre-
scribe its own rules, the number of its
members, and the further conditions of
membership ; provided that no one shall be a
member of the Academy who shall not first
have been on the list of regular members
of the Institute, and that in the choice of
members individual distinction and charac-
ter, and not the group to which they be-
long, shall be taken into consideration ; and
provided that all members of the Academy
shall be native or naturalized citizens of
the United States.
The manner of the organization of
the Academy was prescribed by the
following resolution of the Institute
adopted April 23, 1904:
Whereas, the amendment to the Consti-
tution known as Article XII, providing for
the organization of the Academy of Arts
and Letters, has been ratified by a vote of
the Institute,
Resolved: that the following method be
chosen for the organization of the Academy
— to wit, that seven members be selected by
ballot as the first members of the Academy,
and that these seven be requested and em-
powered to choose eight other members,
and that the fifteen thus chosen be re-
quested and empowered to choose five other
members, and that the twenty members
thus chosen shall be requested and empow-
ered to choose ten other members, — the en-
tire thirty to constitute the Academy in con-
formity with Article XII, and that the first
seven members be an executive committee
for the purpose of insuring the completion
of the number of thirty members.
Under Article XII the Academy
has effected a separate organization,
but at the same time it has kept in
close relationship with the Institute.
On the seventh of March, 1908, the
membership was increased from
thirty to fifty members, and on the
seventh of November, 1908, the fol-
lowing Constitution was adopted:
CONSTITUTION OF THE ACADEMY
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
The American Academy of Arts and Let-
ters is an association primarily organized
by the National Institute of Arts and Let-
ters. Its aim is to represent and further
the interests of the Fine Arts and Lite-
rature.
II. MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS
Jt shall consist of not more than fifty
members, and all vacancies shall be filled
from the membership of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters. No one shall
be elected a member of the Academy who
shall not have received the votes of a ma-
jority of the members. The votes shall be
opened and counted at a meeting of the
Academy. In case the first ballot shall not
result in an election a second ballot shall
be taken to determine the choice between
the two candidates receiving the highest
number of votes on the first ballot. Elec-
tions shall be held only on due notice under
rules to be established by the^Academy. j
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72
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
III. AIMS
That the Academy may be bound together
in community of taste and interest, its
members shall meet regularly for discus-
sion, and for the expression of artistic,
literary and scholarly opinion of such top-
ics as are brought to its attention. For the
purpose of promoting the highest stand-
ards, the Academy may also award such
prizes as may be founded by itself or en-
trusted to it for administration.
IV. OFFICERS
The officers shall consist of a President
and a Chancellor, both elected annually
from among the members to serve for one
year only; a Permanent Secretary, not nec-
essarily a member, who shall be elected by
the Academy to serve for an indeterminate
period, subject to removal by a majority
vote; and a Treasurer. The Treasurer
shall be appointed as follows : Three mem-
bers of the Academy shall be elected at
each annual meeting to serve as a Commit-
tee on Finance for the ensuing year. They
shall appoint one of their number Treas-
urer of the Academy to serve for one year.
He shall receive and protect its funds and
make disbursements for its expenses as di-
rected by the Committee. He shall also
make such investments, upon the order of
the President, as may be approved by both
the Committee on Finance and the Execu-
tive Committee.
V. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
It shall be the duty of the President, and
in his absence of the Chancellor, to preside
at all meetings throughout his term of of-
fice, and to safeguard in general all the
interests of the Academy. It shall be the
duty of the Chancellor to select and pre-
pare the business for each meeting of his
term. It shall be the duty of the Secretary
to keep the records; to conduct the corre-
spondence of the Academy under the direc-
tion of the President or Chancellor; to
issue its authorized statements; and to
draw up as required such writing as per-
tain to the ordinary business of the Acad-
emy and its committees. These three
officers shall constitute the Executive Com-
mittee.
VI. AMENDMENTS
Any proposed amendment to this Consti-
tution must be sent in writing to the Secre-
tary signed by at least ten members ; and it
shall then be forwarded by the Secretary to
every member. It shall not be considered
until three months after it has been thus
submitted. No proposed amendment shall
be adopted unless it receives the votes in
writing of two-thirds of the members.
♦Deceased
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
Following: is the list of members in
the order of their election :
William Dean Howells
♦Augustus Saint-Gaudens
♦Edmund Clarence Stedman
♦John La Farge
♦Samuel Langhorne Clemens
♦John Hay
♦Edward MacDowell
Henry James
♦Charles Follen McKim
Henry Adams
♦Charles Eliot Norton
♦John Quincy Adams Ward
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury
Theodore Roosevelt
♦Thomas Bailey Aldrich
♦Joseph Jefferson
John Singer Sargent
♦Richard Watson Gilder
♦Horace Howard Furness
♦John Bigelow
♦Winslow Homer
♦Carl Schurz
Alfred Thayer Mahan
♦Joel Chandler Harris
Daniel Chester French
John Burroughs
James Ford Rhodes
♦Edwin Austin Abbey
Horatio William Parker
William Milligan Sloane
♦Edward Everett Hale
Robert Underwood Johnson
George Washington Cable
♦Daniel Coit Gilman
♦Thomas Wentworth Higginson
♦Donald Grant Mitchell
Andrew Dickson White
Henry van Dyke
William Crary Brownell
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve
♦Julia Ward Howe
W^oodrow Wilson
Arthur Twining Hadley
Henry Cabot Lodge
Francis Hopkinson Smith
♦Francis Marion Crawford
♦Henry Charles Lea
Edwin Howland Blashfield
William Merritt Chase
Thomas Hastings
Hamilton Wright Mabie
♦Bronson Howard
Brander Matthews
Thomas Nelson Page
Elihu Vedder
George Edward Woodberry
♦William Vaughn Moody
Kenyon Cox
George Whitefield Chadwick
Abbott Handerson Thayer
John Muir
Charles Francis Adams
Henry Mills Alden ^^^ |
George deForest Bru§|iV^OOQlC
LIST OF MEMBERS AND OFFICERS 73
William Rutherford Mead Nicholas Murray Butler
John White Alexander Paul Wayland Bartlett
Bliss Perry George Browne Post
♦Francis Davis Millet Owen Wister
Abbott Lawrence Lowell Herbert Adams
James Whitcomb Riley Augustus Thomas
OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1912
President: Mr. Howells. Chancellor: Mr. Sloane.
Permanent Secretary: Mr. Johnson.
Finance Committee: Messrs. Sloane, Rhodes, and Hastings.
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MrVi:J T' ■ . i.r.,;y ' ^
V
r
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
Number VI: 1913
New York
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Copyright, 1913, by
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF
ARTS AND LETTERS and of THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Sessions at the New York Historical Society, New York, December n, 1912
First Session, 10:30 a. m.
Dr. Henry Van Dyke,
Acting Chancellor of the Academy, Presiding
PAGE
Opening Remarks of the Chancellor 5
A Passion Plav in America
Augustus Thomas 7
In the Defenses of Washington
Thomas R. Lounsbmy ... 13
Taste and Technique
Carroll Beckwith 27
Realism and Reality in Fiction
William Lyon Phelps .... 31
Second Session, 3 p. m.
John W. Alexander,
President of the Institute, Presiding
Outlook and In look Architectural
John Galen Howard .... 37
The Illusion of Progress
Kenyon Cox 45
National Assets
Francis Hopkinson Smith . . 50 i^
Music :
Piano Compositions bv Howard Brockway. Played by the
Composer 55
Recital by The Barrhre Ensemble 55
Commemorative Papers read before the Academy at the Special
Meeting in New York, Friday, December 13, 191 2:
FuRNESS, Lea, Mitchell, Oilman
Arthur T Hadley 56
La Farge, Abbey, Millet
Thomas Hastings 59
HiGGiNsoN, Mrs. Howe, Crawford, Moody
Bliss Perry 63
The Institute Medal and Other Data 67
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Pubttshed at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on appHcition to the Permtnent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U. Johnsok,
537 Lexington Avenue, New York Price per annum $1.00
Vol. I New York, June i, 1913 No. 6
THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Public Meetings held at The New York Historical Society, New York
December 13, 191 2
Dr. Henry van Dyke
Acting Chancellor of the Academy, Presiding
OPENING REMARKS OF HENRY VAN DYKE
At the First Session, December 13, New York
It is due to a double accident, — the use of this admirable building as a
absence of Mr. \V. D. Ilowells on a meeting-place. We have as yet no such
voyage for health, and the absence of home of our own as that which Maz-
Prof. W. M. Sloane, who is lecturing arin built in Paris for his college, and
to the international minds in Derhn, — Napoleon turned over in. 1805 to the
it is solely on acount of this accidental Institute of France. We are "landless
coincidence of wanderlust in the Presi- men,'' wandering servants of the
dent and the Chancellor of the Ameri- Muses; and while we await a day of
can Academy, that the duty of presid- better fortunes, we are grateful that
ing at this meeting descends uikmi me. ' our annual assembly finds shelter with-
There is only one thing that I can do in a house so stately and so friendly
to win your indulgence : I can prevent as this.
the accident from becoming a catastro- The next word that must be sixjken
phe by refraining from a formal ad- is one of fellowship and greeting to the
dress. But there are a few, simple members of the Institute and the
words which ought to be said upon Academy who are present.
such an occasion. We are all alike in this, that we all
First, a word of hearty thanks to the belong to the working-classes. There
New York Historical Society for the is not a man in these two societies
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
whose life has not hecn laborious.
Since our last meeting in Philadelphia
most of us have been busy along our
special lines, tryinji; to do belter work
in architecture and music ajid sculp-
ture and painting and ix:)etry and prose
literature. Let us remember, as we
come together, the secret unity of all
the arts as an effort to express the
inner life of man and the meaning of
the world.
We are jealous, and rightly, for the
independence and autonomy of that
particular region of art in which we
work. We would not have pictures
judged from a literary standpoint, nor
literature from a pictorial standpomt :
we would not have sculpture measured
by the standards of the moving-picture
show, nor architecture considered as
"frozen music." To each of the arts
its own rules and methods and ideals:
and yet for all the same high standard
of sincerity, beauty, and significance
in the finished work. Something seen
or heard or felt, some voice or
vision that makes the artist wish to
create; and then the long toil, the lov-
ing pains of labor, to embody this in-
w^ard gift in tone or color, in song or
story, in statue or facade, for the joy
and welfare of the world. That is the
life of art, and those who share in it
should feel a sense of brotherhood.
They should cheer and encourage one
another to do good work. They should
stand together in endeavor to keep our
modern world from being brutalized,
our modern cities from being uglified,
our modem existence from being
mechanized and commercialized
through the neglect and loss of the
great and beautiful art of life.
The last word that needs to be
spoken at this moment is one of wel-
come, and explanation, to our guests.
Pray do not sup|X)se that you are
with a company of men who imagine
themselves "Immortals.'' Such a fancy
name does not fit the sobriety of our
thoughts. Every year we have to
mourn the death of some members of
this very mortal brotherhood. T^very
day we have occasion to reflect upon
the vicissitudes of fame and the uncer-
tain judgments of posterity.
No, this is not a company of self-
appointed inheritors of immortal celeb-
rity. Not a man in the Institute or the
Academy has had any voice in his own
election. Each has been chosen by the
votes of his competitors and rivals,
without solicitation. The bond that
holds us together is respect for good
work in literature and the other arts.
The Institute, which is the parent body,
and the Academy, which is chosen from
the Institute and ccMuposed of older,
not of better, soldiers, stands for the
recognition of permanence and vitality
in the ideals of arts and letters.
Not to encourage the trampling of
our noble English language with the
hooves of buffaloes, not to confuse
advertisement with criticism, not to
acquiesce in the vulgarizing of the fine
arts or to mistake hysteria for original-
ity, not to admit that the only way to
be American is to be provincial — these
are the purposes of conservation and
defense which unite the members of
these two societies. On the positive
side their aim may be stated even more
simply. To maintain a high standard
with a broad taste, and always to take
their work seriously, but not to take
themselves solemnly — that. T think, is
the ambition of the American Academy
and National Institute of Arts and
Letters.
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A PASSION PLAY IN AMERICA
By Augustus Thomas
Should there be a p^sion-play in
America? Would its presentation in a
theater or tabernacle serve the highest
purpose ? Would the moving, speaking
figure of the Christ bring His message
to minds now closed to it? Would
mental impressions now wrong or dull
or dormant be made right and clearer
and awake? Would the real purpose
of religious teaching, the growth of the
spiritual in man, be thereby furthered?
Macaulay, in his essay on Milton,
says:
The great mass of men must have images.
Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte.
God the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the
invisible, attracted few worshipers. It was
before divinity embodied in a human form,
walking among men, partaking of their in-
firmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping
over their graves, slumbering in the manger,
bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of
the synagogues, and the doubts of the
academy, and the pride of the portico and
the fasces of the lictors, and the swords of
thirty legions, were humbled in the dust.
If we grant this statement of Macau-
lay's, for us there may be significance in
the fact that this conquest, so eloquent-
ly described, occurred during centuries
when every man, after the fashion of his
private heart, set up in his own mind a
picture of the God so walking, weeping,
slumbering, and bleeding ; that this con-
quest occurred before Italian art in its
decadent period, by repetition and sten-
cil, captured, cramped, and imprisoned
free and personal concept in its conven-
tion— a convention characterized by fee-
bleness and sentimentality and devoid
of the masculine vigor that Angelo or
even Titian expressed. But as "seeing
is believing," as the eye is more easily
persuaded than the ear, more quickly
and more permanently conquered, the
Christ of that declining period, by mere
repetition of woodcut and chromo, has
subdued imagination as the persistence
of gravity's attraction stoops the
strongest shoulders.
Even though there is here not time
fully to consider the question, it is perti-
nent to ask how far the pictured image
thus set up in earlier time by hands
quite as fallible as our own fails to
command the modern imagination, es-
pecially in our self-reliant and vital
America; how far the suggested physi-
cal weakness is out of harmony with
our perhaps unconscious conception of
leadership, and what discrepancy there
may be between the Christ so pictured
and his reported speech and action;
how far, in fact, this portrait is untrue ;
and how far its acceptance and circula-
tion have weakened the recruiting pow-
er of His message? Also, what value
there would be in attempts to revise the
popular conception ?
Non-resistance in a figure incapable
of successfully resisting is the virtue
of necessity; but strength declining to
smite back has persuasive eloquence.
The peaceful carpenter of Nazareth
possessed the beauty of physical pow-
er ; a careful reading, of the synoptic
Gospels makes this the only logical de-
duction. He was above the usual stat-
ure; he was "more than common tall,"
a leader promptly recognized. Women
believed him and believed him quickly.
Several women of means followed his
pilgrimages; "Joanna the wife of
Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna,
and many others, which ministered
unto him of their substance." The his-
tory of the world is filled with the sto-
ries of sincere attachments of women
for men of moderate stature, but they
are records of attachments grown
through association, and not that admi-
ration of first sight. Women admired
this man at once. That is slight ground
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
upon which to build an opinion as to
his height, but there is other support.
A centurion — that is to say, an officer
commanding one hundred Roman war-
riors— came to Jesus one day to solicit
his healing office for a servant that was
sick. The Master offered to accom-
pany the centurion to his residence, and
thereupon the officer replied:
Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest
come under my roof: but speak the word
only, and my servant shall be healed.
For I anl a man under authority, having
soldiers under me: and I say to this man,
Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come,
and he cometh; and to my servant. Do this,
and he doeth it.
This fighting Roman, quartered in
a conquered province, meeting Jesus,
recognized the man of authority.
Again in Jerusalem, angered at the
desecration of the temple by the
merchants who had erected in it
stands under permission from the
priests, He made a whip of knotted
cords and drove from the temple the
money-changers, those who had sold
oxen and doves and sheep for sacrifice.
It is no doubt possible for a man of
ordinary stature to drive one Jew from
his stand of merchandise, it might even
be possible for an angry man with a
weapon to drive away two or three, but
to drive away a number who could
easily unite against hiiit — a number ten-
acious of their commercial rights and
who in their going would suffer finan-
cial loss, bears out this asstmiption.
Again, on Calvary, at the ctose of
day, the Roman soldiers, wishing to be
sure of the death of the three who had
been crucified, broke the legs of the
thieves who were hanging there, but
into the side of Jesus, whom they be-
lieved already dead, they thrust a spear.
If not dead, then surely this was a
quicker release than the cruel treat-
ment for the thieves. This discrimina-
tion was not a show of disrespect, as
many have accepted it, but was com-
passion, was only such consideration
as the gladiator on guard would give a
condemned man whose physical quality
won his admiration.
Jesus was deep of chest, had power
of lung and throat. From Cana to
Nazareth is three miles up the moun-
tain road, a climb made by Him often
as a boy, a youth, a man. The dwellers
in such mountain districts are deep-
chested and strong-limbed.
In His- ministry the multitude to
which He spoke was sometimes five
thousand, not counting the women and
children, a total gathering of probably
twice that number. In a modern audi-
torium, designed and constructed for
the purpose, the speaker who is heard
by such an audience is unusual. This
one of Nazareth, listened to by ten thou-
sand on the summer hillsides of Gallilee,
was no invalid, but an orator of great
vocal power. The chest was deep, the
shoulders were broad, the right one.
like that of most toilers, somewhat
higher than the left. The throwing of
stones by Jewish boys was a practice
as constant as that of throwing a ball
by our modern boy. There were of-
fenses under the Jewish law punishable
by death ; the execution was by stoning.
The Jews were stone-throwers, and
they began the practice in their youth.
Much of Palestine was under culti-
vation. A considerable part of the
crop, especially in the hill districts, was
grapes. The young carpenter of Naza-
reth was familiar with the vineyards,
with their care as to pruning and the
disposal of the dead branches by fire;
as to their cultivation, as to tKe treat-
ment of their product, the wage of the
worker, his hours. Where the vine is
cultivated as a business, there is not the
umbrageous product made to trail
above an arbor. The treatment for the
growth of the fruit is an annual cutting
back of the original branches. The
commercially productive vines are sel-
dom more than four feet high. They
are set so close together that when in
bloom their equally spreading foliage
and fruit make an unbroken deck some
four feet above the field. The employ-
ment of men in the vineyards for any
purpose after the pruning is seldom
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A PASSION PLAY IN AMERICA
profitable. The laborers are usually
children. The children creep under the
vines, and gather clusters without fa-
tigue until the end of the day, and with
agility, where the adult tires and is slow
and destructive. A second employment
for boys in the vineyards is to drive
away the birds. iEschylus watched the
vineyards in his day, and this first of
Greek dramatic poets was often flogged
in his youth for neglecting his duties
while he dreamed his immortal verse.
The trade of carpenter in Nazareth
was not a demanding one. Joseph's
helper was not always busy; the boy
would have many idle hours. Nazareth
was surrounded by vineyards; there
was in them work to drive away the
birds. This was done by shaking a
wooden clapper that made a noise, but
was supplemented, when the birds were
too bold, by the throwing of stones. A
lad who had been encouraged to trace
his lineage from David would wish to
emulate his heroic ancestor. When the
boys threw with fatal accuracy, they
were allowed to sell the birds they
killed. Two sparrows sold for a far-
thing, but already there had been creep-
ing into the mind of the young Messiah
the tender thought that "One of them
shall not fall on the ground without
your Father." He was, however, a
stone-thrower. That exercise, as much
as carpentry, develops arm and shoul-
der.
Jesus was right-handed; He thought
always in the terms of the right-handed
man: "WTiosoever shall smite thee on
the right cheek, turn to him the other
also." Men are usually smitten on
the left cheek and by the right hand
of an opponent; but He was so right-
handed in his thinking that in the readi-
ness of discourse He overlooked this
distinction. He said, "If thy right eye
oflFend thee, pluck it out; * * * if
thy right hand oflFend thee, cut it oflF."
**Let not thy left hand know what thy
right hand doeth." With Him the right
hand was the doer. The hands were
the hands of a carpenter, of a work-
man who had lived by the sweat of
his brow. The hand of a carpen-
ter is broad and calloused and strong.
Jesus also helped the fishermen. From
Nazareth or from Cana to the Sea of
Gennesaret is about ten miles. The
shores of the sea once reached, Ca-
pernaum was only two hours' sail in
the primitive craft of that day. It is
not probable, when the hostile unbe-
lievers were asking loudly, "Is n't this
who preaches to us only the carpen-
ter?" that the two fisher sons of Zebi-
dee left their nets and followed after
Him without previous acquaintance.
Christian tradition says with great
probability that these men were his
cousins. In the many years also pre-
ceding His ministry the probabilities
are that He was often found at Caper-
naum, and that these young men were
his friends ; that their mother, Salome,
had admired for years the gentle and
earnest companion of her boys, whom
she afterward followed to His death.
It is probable that when not working at
the trade of carpentry much of His
young manhood was passed in the boats
of James and John. This carpenter un-
derstood the casting of nets, he under-
stood the management of boats. At
one time, when pressed by the multi-
tude, he stepped into one of these small
boats belonging to Zebidee or Simon
Peter and pushed from the land, using
its thwart as a rostrum and keeping it
in place as he addressed the congrega-
tion on the shore. Any man who has
managed during the days of a few
weeks' outing the smallest cat-boat
knows what wet ropes do to the hand.
If Jesus had not been an honest car-
penter, his association with the fisher-
men and the help that He must impul-
sively have lent them working at their
nets would have taken His hands out
of the wax-work and manicured class.
The nails on the fingers were heavy
and worn and broken ; those of all car-
penters are, those of all net fishermen.
Often the Pharisees criticised His dis-
ciples and Him because after the day's
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
k, the day's walk, the day's curing
iie sick, and the day's ministrations,
r sat down to their evening meal
lOut washing the hands. The wash-
of hands at that time was a relig-
rite, and the criticism was of course
1 that account; but the failure to
h the hands nevertheless speaks the
wart indifference to their appear-
t. When the erring woman was
ight to Him in the temple at Jeru-
m that He might pass judgment
1 her, He "stooped down, and with
finger wrote on the ground." So
n they continued asking Him, He
ed up himself, and said unto them,
that is without sin aniong you, let
first cast a stone at her. And
n he stooped down, and wrote on
ground. And they which heard
fting convicted by their own con-
ice, went out one by one, begin-
l at the eldest, even unto the last:
Jesus was left alone, and the
lan standing in the midst."
ne conunentator, speaking of this
irrence, says that the Master
ped and wrote on the ground not
wing what to say. Another com-
tator says that this deduction is im-
;ible and that He probably wrote on
floor of the temple to remind the
s of a law which had been originally
ten upon stone. This assumption is
e untenable than the other. The
s at the moment were invoking the
and the law read death. It is in-
:eivable that this man of mercy was
inding these hunters of that san-
lary code. One minister suggests
the Master probably traced some
ilistic figures which had a secret
ificance the occult meaning of which
read by some one in the group,
re is a simpler explanation than any
hese. A grandmother who, if she
t alive, would be one hundred years
ge, told that when she was a little
of ten, ninety years ago, the chil-
I in the schools had no pencils and
tr and slates. All of their exer-
; in written arithmetic were traced
in a box of wet sand with a stylus,
or sharpened stick. When the sum
was done, the surface of the wet sand
was smoothed again for a second
trial. The sand box was the ordi-
nary tab of antiquity; the poetic allu-
sion to a name written in the sand re-
fers to that. Such simple computations
as the carpenter of Nazareth found
necessary He probably proved upon the
dirt floor of His shop with a sliver of
cedar. In the temple, with His mar-
velous intuition and tact, he knew that
to continue looking into the faces of
those accusers to whom He had said,
"He that is without sin among you, let
him first cast a stone at her," would
have been to invite the natural antago-
nism that comes with a duel of the
eyes; and just as any wholesome young
man of to-day in the same position,
wishing to give his auditors time for
reflection, would take his pencil and
mark mechanically upon the newspaper
on his table, the Master stooped and
wrote upon the ground with His finger
as He had often written on the dirt
floor of the shop in Nazareth.
He wrote on the ground with His
finger.
This was a finger in strong sympathy
with the ground, not the finger of idle-
ness and vanity and shapeliness and
care: it was the finger of a carpenter.
The fast in the wilderness, the faint-
ing under the cross, the cry of agony
at the last, all go to make in the story
high lights that determined the sorrow-
ful Renaissance conception, but the
body of the Master was symmetrical
and well nourished. He had had a boy-
hood of great liberty and self-reliance;
He was an orphan in His early youth.
Although Joseph had lived until there
were eight children in the family, Jesus
was called by the neighbors the Son of
Mary. They said: "Is n't this the car-
penter? Is n't His mother Mary, and
are not His brothers James and Joses
and Simon and Judas; and are not all
His sisters with us?" Not His sister
alone, nor both His sisters, as they
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A PASSION PLAY IN AMERICA
II
would have spoken had there been only
two, but all His sisters. So that with
four brothers named and at least three
sisters it is indicated that He was the
first of eight orphans.
This oldest of the boys had great
freedom as a child. In the day He was
for many hours without inquiry from
the mother. This is shown by the fact
that when He was twelve years old the
family, returning from the feast in
Jerusalem, starting on their homeward
way supposing Him to be in the
company, went a day's journey, and
then sought him among their kinfolk
and acquaintance; "and when they
found Him not, they turned back again
to Jerusalem, seeking Him. And it
came to pass, that after three days they
found Him in the temple, sitting in the
midst of the doctors, both hearing them,
and asking them questions.**
The trust in the boy*s ability to take
care of himself which would let Mary
dismiss Him from her mind for an en-
tire day, and that day one of travel, in-
dicates the freedom that we must infer.
Where were these long and undirected
holidays and half-days passed? There
is little to be seen from the town of
Nazareth itself, but above it, higher on
the mountain, there is a plateau which
overlooks the highest houses, and from
which may be had a view of the Valley
of the Jordan, and, on the west, Carmel,
backed by the Mediterranean clear to
the horizon. This must have been a
favorite playground of the little dream-
er. From there the waters gather on
the rainy days and tumble through the
stony gutters of Nazareth; down these
little streams He must have chased His
splintered boats launched from the shop
of Joseph.
A mountain boy, a carpenter, a fisher-
man, hill-climber, worker, athlete, but
well nourished. One neighbor com-
plained that the disciples of John fasted
often and made prayers, and likewise
the Pharisees ; but His ate and drank."
At another time Jesus himself said,
"John came neither eating nor drink-
ing and they say He hath a devil. The
Son of man came eating and drinking,
and they say. Behold a man gluttonous,
and a winebibber."
There is also an esthetic reason for
the inference that he was not emaci-
ated. Young men in the gymnasium
and other places where they go semi-
nude are reluctant to make a display of
a body that is unattractive. The mem-
bers of the group about the Master
were often in scanty clothing, often
half naked or entirely so. After the
resurrection, when Jesus was walking
on the shores of the lake and some of
the disciples had returned to their old
vocation. He called to them from the
shore, "Children have you any meat?"
"Now when Simon Peter heard that it
was the Lord, he girt his fisher's coat
unto him, (for he was naked), and did
cast himself into the sea."
In the garden of Gethsemane, upon
the occasion of the arrest, "there fol-
lowed him a certain young man, having
a linen cloth cast about his naked body ;
and the young men laid hold on him:
and he left the linen cloth, and fled
from them naked.** There were times
with that early group when a piece of
linen about the waist was covering
enough.
At the supper at Bethany, when
Mary broke the alabaster box of spike-
nard and poured it on the head of
Jesus, He said, "She hath poured this
ointment on my body, she did it for
my burial.'* And this statement that
Mary anointed the body of Jesus, oc-
curring in more than one account of
the event, is probably a literal statement
of the fact.
At that Saturday supper of an April
in Judea, in the little room of this poor
family of which the leper Simon was
the head and in which Lazarus was a
brother, a reasonable deduction is that
the air was heavy and oppressive. The
sun-burned shoulders of the itinerant
shepherd and the members of His little
flock were probably without covering.
And at the last supper five days later,
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
during a discourse and a colloquy by
no means brief, "there was leaning on
Jesus' bosom one of his disciples,
whom Jesus loved." This disciple was
John, that young man of sufficient
vigor to escape from those of the sher-
iff's party who laid hold on Him later
in the garden at the time of arrest. A
young man of vigor, but leaning on a
stouter bosom than his own. Earlier
at this supper the Master himself rose
from His place, laid aside His gar-
ments, girded a towel about His loins,
poured water in a basin, and washed
the feet of the disciples, wiping them
with the towel wherewith He was gird-
ed. The figure that took the bowl and
water and knelt in turn at the feet of
each was that of an athlete trained by
a daily walking, by work in the boats,
by mountain-climbing, by a boyhood of
liberty, by life in the open air.
Speaking of John the Baptist to the
multitude, he asked: "What went ye
out into the wilderness to see ? A reed
shaken with the wind?*' Nothing ane-
mic in that tone. And in the wilder-
ness, all the kingdoms of the earth
which the devil offered were either a
genuine temptation or they were the
delusions of a man crazed with long
fasting, and therefore not temptations
at all. If veritable, the promised king-
doms were under Roman dominion;
the temptation to possess them was
temptation to armed revolt. The temp-
tation was put behind him, but its mar-
tial potentiality was written on the
face.
And so with time enough we might
infer even more minutely, and with fair
accuracy, of the face, with its marks of
oratory, of self-control, of steadfast
determination, of quite military cour-
age blended with the power of vision.
A recent writer says it was a stroke
of genius to make the gymnasium the
central feature of the Young Men's
Christian Association. Physical culture
is the recruiting idea of the most flour-
ishing adjunct of modern Christianity;
but it is an idea in diametric opposition
to the traditional and unattractive
presentation of the founder. The vig-
orous and expressive characteristics of
the real man of Nazareth a proper
passion-play would give; under right
direction and with the cooperation and
interest of the Church, its influence
would be stimulating, would be wide
and deep and permanent.
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IN THE DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON
By Thomas R. Lounsbury
The article which here follows was written in May, i86j. Two or three times extracts
have been read from it at private gatherings ; otherwise it has lain undisturbed and virtually
buried all these years. Only a portion of the original, though distinctly the larger portion,
is here printed. As it was written nearly fifty years ago, it naturally expresses views which
I do not now entertain and says things which I should not now say. But it seemed best
to leave it as it first appeared in order to give a faint conception of the way men, at least
some men, thought and felt in the midst of the mighty struggle which was then going on.
Accordingly, no alteration has been made save what has been rendered necessary to connect
sentences where intervening paragraphs have been omitted, or where certain passages have
been transposed. One instance only is an exception. In deference to the more amiable
feelings which have sprung up since "the late unpleasantness," wherever the word rebel
occurred in the original, — and it occurred pretty often, — the word Confederate has been
substituted when I speak in my own person.
It was about one o'clock in the af-
ternoon of the third of December, 1862,
that we took the cars at Alexandria for
Union Mills. The precise situation of
the latter place none of us knew, and
it was soon evident that our scanty
stock of geographical information was
not to be largely increased by the an-
swers given to our inquiries by the in-
habitants. The Virginia poor white
is a man of more than average intelli-
gence, who knows where he lives him-
self, let alone any acquaintance with
points more remote. "A right smart
heap of a way, I reckon," was the reply
usually made in the genuine native ver-
nacular. This pursuit of knowledge
under difficulties was, however, re-
warded at last by the information that
Union Mills was a station on the
Orange and Alexandria Railway where
the track crosses Bull Run, and was the
extreme point in that direction of the
defenses of Washington. From that
city it was about twenty miles distant.
The turn of the road which shut out
the view of the place we had left be-
hind seemed to shut out also at the
same time all the sights and sounds of
civilized life. Everything bore the
marks of decay. A few houses could
be seen from the cars as we passed by,
but most of these had long been de-
serted and were fast going to ruin.
No plowed fields, no fences, no land-
marks of any kind, existed to show that
men cared longer either to own or to
cultivate the soil. The smoke of occa-
sional fires, slowly rising from the
depths of the pine forests on each side
of us, and the scattered tents of the
soldiers guarding the road, were almost
the only evidences of life that broke the
monotony of desolation. The entire
region was rapidly returning to the
abandonment and waste from which the
labor of successive generations had
rescued it. The day, too, was a cold
and cheerless one, imparting an addi-
tional gloom to the scenes through
which we passed. Green and gold of
the autumn woods had long since de-
parted, while ocasional tufts of grass,
still struggling to retain their fresh-
ness amid the general decay, seemed
only to give by contrast a more leaden
look to the folds of snow-clouds which
hung heavy on the hills.
On we whirled through plains cov-
ered by dense thickets and between
hills surmounted by impenetrable for-
ests of pine; through Annandale, past
Burke and Fairfax and Sangster's sta-
tions. The train stopped at last with-
out any particular reason for so doing
that could be gathered from anything
visible in the neighborhood. Here,
however, was our destination. We had
reached the limit of Northern sover-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
eignty. Loyalty stopped short at the
little stream which rolled at our feet
and only looked beyond. Before us
lay the bloody debatable land on which
more than on any other part of the con-
tinent had fallen the curse of war in
its heaviest form. The few persons
who still clung to the soil, bound to it
by an iron necessity, had long given up
thought or care for the morrow, and
lived only the aimless, hopeless life of
the inhabitants of the border. The re-
gion had become historic ground; but,
like all historic ground, had become so
at the price of tears and blood.
As we got oflf the cars, I looked for
the mills which had given their name
to the spot. One glance was enough to
show that they were in a far more
ruinous condition than the Union, after
which they had been called. The build-
ing was entirely torn down, and the
millstones lying alongside of the
stream were the only evidences of the
noisy life which they had survived.
The owner had not stayed behind to
save the miserable remnants of his
property. While ground is getting to
be historic, it loses altogether its at-
tractions as a residence for human be-
ings.
The line guarded by our brigade was
part of the outer line of the defenses
of Washington, and extended from
Wolf Run Shoals on the Occoquan to
Chantilly. But the whole distance was
never at one time picketed by us. The
outposts were stationed along the lower
course of Bull Run as far up as Mitch-
ell's Ford, ^t which point they left that
stream, which, rising in the Manassas
mountains, there turns off to the west.
Whence Bull Run received its name
none of the inhabitants seemed to
know; but it was probably due to the
same taste which called a rivulet
emptying into it Cub Run, and gave to
one of the most beautiful tributaries of
the Potomac the name of Goose Creek.
There is, however, some justice in the
title, if not much poetry. For though
ordinarily a quiet but always swift-
moving stream. Bull Run, under the in-
fluence of winter rains, quickly becomes
a roaring torrent, rapidly rising, over-
flowing its banks wherever it passes
through level country, and bearing
down to the Occoquan in its rushing
current large fragments of ice, blocks
of wood, and now and then an up-
rooted tree. Its fall is always as sud-
den as its rise. Below Union Milk the
scenery through which it flows is of a
character so romantic as to have made
its beauty felt even under the dismal
circiunstances under which we formed
its acquaintance. The stream there
rushes on through meadow-land and
gorge, by sloping hillsides and under
overhanging cliffs, while the path along
its eastern bank, trodden by our pa-
trols, wound its way over heights and
hollows, through groves of laurel and
the desolate ruins of what had once
been great forests. On the opposite
side, overshadowing us, were frowning
ramparts of rock, sentinelled by gi-
gantic pines, seemingly as motionless
and to mortal eyes as enduring as the
hills upon which they stood. These
lofty parapets which nature had built
were at this point the real defenses of
the line; for there are few places in
which Bull Run is ordinarily too deep
to be fordable by infantry.
Our life was in many respects a hard
one. The long line of from eight to
sixteen miles, guarded by our brigade,
required that officers and men should
go on duty nearly every other day. The
winter, too, was a cold and cheerless
one, with storms of rain and snow fre-
quent and severe. One of the heaviest
of the latter occurred as late as the
fifth of April. If this was the "sunny
South," it was quite a general feeling
that we had got on the shady side of
it. On the fifteenth of March there
was a thunder-storm, accompanied by
a fall of snow, or, rather, of sleet, a
circumstance to me somewhat surpris-
ing, and which left my meteorologkal
ideas, never very clear, in quite a mixed
state. In addition to the severe weath-
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IN THE DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON
15
er, the whole country for three months
seemed one complete sea of mud; and
much as has been said of it, nothing
too mean, nothing too vituperative, ever
has been said or ever can be said of
Virginia mud. Yet down there they
call such soil "sacred."
The constant exposure either killed
the men of weaker vitality or rendered
their discharge a necessity in conse-
quence of the diseases they contract-
ed. Still, it was no harder life than
many others were having at the same
time and doubtless not so hard as some.
We grumbled, of course; we had not
been soldiers had we not. Every man
in the army is apt to think that the pri-
vations he endures are far worse than
those endured by any one else ; that the
particular ground upon which he slcjeps
is encumbered with much sharper pro-
tuberances, the particular stone he
uses for a pillow is much harder, the
particular air which surrounds him is
much chillier, the particular rain which
falls upon his person is much
wetter, the particular mud in which
he marches is much stickier, and
the particular rations served out
to him much fuller of animal and
vegetable life, than the particular
grotmd, stone, air, rain, mud, and ra-
tions which enter into the experience
of any other individual. It is the sol-
dier's privilege to grumble; and the
deprivation of it could never be coun-
terbalanced by any increase of pay. It
is the one thing that binds him to the
life he has left behind. He has sur-
rendered his free-will. He sometimes
eats, and even relishes, food which at
home he would not give to any cat or
dog of respectable character. He oc-
casionally drinks water in which there
he would not think of washing his
hands. He goes to bed at dark, and
gets up at ridiculously early hours. On
the march he inhabits a ^og-kennel,
which courtesy and the regulations call
a shelter-tent — probably because it af-
fords no shelter. Vague memories only
linger in his mind of that far-away
past, that pre-existent state, in which
he ate oysters and drank wine and
lounged about luxurious apartments.
True, occasional delicacies do astonish
his pork-oppressed stomach; bottles of
wine, surreptitiously procured, do
sometimes gladden his heart; and car-
peted rooms, with sofas and easy-chairs
drawn up before cheerful fires, do now
and then refresh his frame: but such
events are rare. They appeal, more-
over, to the outer man only. They en-
ervate while they delight.
Not so with the grumble. That is
the natural outgrowth of his condition.
Station him on the summit of the Blue
Ridge amid cold and sleet and snow,
and he grumbles; station him in Fifth
Avenue, he will do the same. Grum-
bling is the safety-valve through which
the bitter thoughts engendered by the
manifold discomforts of his life find
their way into the great universe, and
there pass into vacancy. He is a fool
who regards such utterances as seri-
ous; he is a greater fool, as well as a
traitor, who would think to act upon
them. Our hearts were always loyal,
whatever our lips might say. Ours was
the fault-finding of that earnest devo-
tion which wished the Government to
do more, not of that mulish opposition
which wished it to do nothing. It
cleared our minds for the contemplation
of the happy scenes of that good time
coming, when the wars would all be
over, and we should have gone back
from the border. Many a winter night,
tired out with long patrols, with feet
wet, with bodies chilled, did we sit
cowering and shivering over some fee-
ble fire on the outposts, and ''indulge
our sacred fury" in grumbling at the
hardships we suffered, at the courage
and capacity of the generals by whom
we were commanded, at the inefficiency
of the Government we served. Then
with hearts relieved, our thoughts
would wander far away, in the long
hours that followed, from the barren
hills and relentless skies which encir-
cled us, to cheerful rooms in Northern
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
homes, curtained away from the chill
December air, populous with books, ra-
diant with the firelight, more radiant
still with the light of love.
All around were visible traces of the
Confederate occupation. Our camp
was about a mile north of the railroad,
in the direction of Centreville, and was
also at an equal distance from Mc-
Lean's Ford, well known as the place
where a body of our troops under
General Tyler suffered a severe repulse
in the first advance of the army of the
Potomac. In front of us was a de-
serted village, as it might be called, of
huts built of pine logs and plastered to-
gether with earth. A collection of habi-
tations similar in construction, though
much larger in number, existed, and
probably now exists, just across Bull
Run at Blackburn's Ford; and farther
back towards Manassas Junction these
former residences of the Southern
troops were still more abundant. The
telegrams which used to announce dur-
ing the winter of 1861-62 that the
rebels were dying off in consequence of
exposure and privation, must have lied
even more than ordinarily ; for no quar-
ters that have anywhere been provided
for our troops could have excelled in
comfort these huts, when occupied by
the enemy. Ruined, forts, in all cases
made of earth and many, doubtless,
never mounted with cannon, were scat-
tered over the country ; while rifle-pits,
half full of water, stretched for miles
in every direction. One in particular,
running along the main road from
Union Mills to Centreville, was so
completely hidden by the trees and
dense undergrowth as to be hardly vis-
ible at the distance of a few feet. All
through this region — in fact, through-
out the borderland between the two
armies — the houses which had been
deserted by their occupants had been
pretty generally burned down. Those
which had been left standing were as
a rule thoroughly dismantled. These
last at times gave an almost ghastly
look to the landscape.
Of actual fighting during the months
we were in the defenses of Washing-
ton we saw little or nothing. Rumors
of wars always abounded; but an oc-
casional shot exchanged with some
wandering bushwhacker or prowling
guerilla from Mosby's band made up
the sum total of our field operations.
If, however, we were not disturbed for
ourselves, Washington was for us. That
city was always excited, always un-
easy, perhaps necessarily so, from its
comparatively exposed position, and
the vast interests involved in its perma-
nent and unbroken possession by our
authorities. But confident as we were
in our own safety, the reports that con-
stantly reached us from its streets in
regard to the perik by which we were
surrounded aroused no other feeling
than amusement. One could hardly
say with truth that the solicitude felt
by the city for our safety was fully
returned by us. The great attraction
of Washington in our eyes was that, so
far as we knew, it was the only accessi-
ble place where steamed oysters could
be procured. Beyond that, sentiment
on our part did not go. There was
never any of that regard expressed for
it which we should naturally expect
would be felt for the capital of the na-
tion. Were it not for the public build-
ings, it seemed to be a general feeling
with us that it would be much better
for our cause if the city were six feet
under ground. This feeling, of course,
did not prevent our being alive to the
disgrace, and consequences more dire-
ful still, involved in its capture.
If, however, we did not see much
fighting, we heard enough of it. The
hills which slope down to Bull Ron
from Centreville to Wolf Run Shoals
are a perfect sounding-board, reechoing
the report of any artillery engagement
that takes place between them and the
Manassas and Kittoctan mountains,
and even, when the wind is favorable,
between them and the Blue Ridge it-
self. The bombardment of Harper's
Ferry in September, 1862, was distmct-
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IN THE DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON
17
ly heard at Union Mills, which is more
than forty miles distant in an air line.
No great movement was made by any
portion of the army of which the ar-
tillery did not give early, if not very
satisfactory, information. The sound,
according as it grew fainter or louder,
told usually how the day was going.
Such times were ever with us times
of interest and eager expectation. The
noise of a cannonade is always exciting,
and always pleasant — if a good way oflF.
I remember, in particular, how the re-
port of the artillery opening the caval-
ry action at Upperville on the twenty-
first of June, 1863, startled all the
camps. I could not but think that
beautiful Sunday morning that while
thousands of mothers and sisters, both
North and South, were praying, in the
words of the litany, that a good Lord
would deliver their sons and brothers
"from battle and murder and sudden
death," those same sons and brothers
were at the very moment furnishing a
peculiar commentary upon those peti-
tions by striving to cut one another's
throats. Our enforced inactivity, al-
ways tiresome, at these periods became
hateful. I doubt whether there is any
man living who really loves fighting
for its own sake. The mystery of
death, confronting and overshadowing
the spirit, awes at such a time the most
boastful and presumptuous. Yet there
is a terrible fascination about a battle,
in spite of the dread uncertainty and
horror that attend it, which cannot be
explained by any feeling of duty, of
pride, still less of curiosity. These, of
course, had their weight with us. We
could not expect to feel at ease in our
comparative safety while our fellow-
soldiers were falling; and restlessly
wandering about the camps, we lis-
tened eagerly for the tidings of fierce
conflicts whose far-off sound reached
our ears, but in whose mighty passion
we could not share.
Nothing occurred during the month
of December to disturb the monoto-
nous quiet of our life except a hostile
raid, really insignificant in its propor-
tions, but much magnified at the time
by uncertainty and apprehension.
Slocum's corps, in marching from
Harpers' Ferry to reinforce Bumside,
passed within the defenses of Washing-
ton; and the advance of a portion of
that force from Fairfax Station, where
it had been encamped, separated from
the main body a part of Stuart's cav-
alry, variously estimated at from six
hundred to two thousand men, and with
these four pieces of artillery. To make
good their escape, they were forced to
go through our lines. This they did
successfully, crossing, on the twenty-
eighth of December, the Orange and
Alexandria Railway at Burke's Station,
where they captured some of the guard
and telegraphed, it is said, various im-
pudent messages to the quarter-mas-
ter general. After cutting the wires
and tearing up a small portion of the
track, they passed on to the North.
The troops in the defenses of Washing-
ton south of the Potomac were every-
where put under arms. Our brigade
was ordered out, and detachments from
it sent to guard different points and to
close, after the most approved fashion
of scientific warfare, several military
stable-doors out of which the horses
had escaped. The fords on Bull Run
were carefully watched. Behind an ex-
tempore fortification thrown up at Mc-
Lean's, a huge saw-log, blackened in
the fire, was mounted by some of our
officers on a pair of cart-wheels which
were found near the place. This pie<ie
of artillery, pointed threateningly
across the stream, had quite an im-
posing effect when seen from a dis-
tance, and, I doubt not, has done as
good service as most of the heavy
ordnance in the defenses of Washing-
ton. But no enemy ever came to try
its strength. Where, indeed, that band
of horsemen went to I never could
find out. I fancy they must have lost
themselves somewhere in that bound-
less North towards which, when last
seen, they were heading; for though
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
day after day I read the newspapers
with scrupulous care, never a word or
hint could be found in them of the fate
which befell those bold riders.
But no one could fail to be struck at
the time with a feeling which seemed
to be universal among our troops, that
if these daring raiders would pass on
without attacking or injuring us, we
would be willing to reciprocate the fa-
vor. We would offer no opposition to
their escape, provided they behaved
themselves properly, and did not put us
under that painful necessity. This is
not very complimentary to our soldiers ;
but although it would be far from be-
ing true now, it was too true then. A
general gloom hung over the army in
consequence of the repulse of Burn-
side at Fredericksburg. But, in par-
ticular, the daring and yet successful
raids of Stuart on the Peninsula and in
Pennsylvania had given at that time
to the arm of the Confederate service
commanded by him a reputation and
prestige which subsequent events have
failed to confirm. Moreover, it was
felt that little or no reliance could be
placed upon our cavalry, which alone
could properly have any hope of inter-
cepting such flying bodies of the enemy.
It was usually worsted by half of its
nimiber, or at least believed so to be;
and if it chanced to be successful,
seemed itself always surprised at the
result. Our cavalry, indeed, was at
that period an object of contempt with
all of the infantry. A remark of one
of the soldiers of the Pennsylvania Re-
serves, while undergoing punishment,
expressed a feeling then very common.
When he enlisted again, he said, he was
going to join the cavalry; for he had
been in ten battles, and had never seen
a dead cavalryman yet. It is hardly
necessary to say that no such feeling
prevails now. The rapid rise in con-
duct, in reputation, and in general
morale of that arm of the service, its
transformation into the formidable
body it has now become, is, to any one
acquainted with its previous condition,
one of the most remarkable circum-
stances of the war.
January, February, and March were
naturally the months that tried most
severely the endurance of the men. A
part of that time it seemed as if one
half of the various regiments would be
collected every morning at their respec-
tive surgeons' quarters at the bugle-
call for the sick ; while to the air of the
same call the other half would be sing-
ing the words generally sung to
it throughout our command :
Come all ye sick!
Come all ye sic!< !
Come and get your quinine,
Come and get your quinine,
Come and get your quinine pills!
Among so large a number there were
doubtless some who feigned illness.
But the triple volleys that reechoed at
the twilight of so many successive days
over new-made graves proved that ex-
posure and privation were telling fear-
fully upon the health and lives of the
men. Their bodies were generally
sent home, a fact which the soldiers
with ghastly facetiousness held out to
one another as the great inducement to
die at that spot and time. If they fell
in the coming battles, whose shadow
darkened us ever from out of the fu-
ture, their fate might possibly be, yes.
probably would be, the fate of their
comrades whose uncovered bones still
whitened the plains of Manassas.
Boards are always, to any large army,
wherever encamped, the greatest of
rarities and luxuries; and at that
place and period scarcely enough of
them could be found for the rude
coffins of those we buried. Two mem-
bers of the company to which I be-
longed died of smallpox, and of course
their remains could not be removed. It
is some consolation to know that to
them, if not to those who live to lament
them, it is no sorrow. I doubt not they
sleep as peacefully in their solitary
fi^ravcs on that Virginia hillside as they
would in the crowded churchyards of
their Northern home.
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The fact of our remaining so long in
one encampment saved our men from
dying to any extent of any of the
United States general hospitals. Dy-
ing to the regiment, I mean. War may
slaughter its thousands, but these
slaughter their tens of thousands. When
a soldier leaves a regiment in active
service for one of the United States
hospitals, he practically leaves it for-
ever. At first, if he became well, he
was detailed ; if he remained ill, he was
discharged. Now he is put into the
invalid corps, which is a slight im-
provement. But so far as his own
regiment is concerned, he may as well
be dead. Vainly will he seek to re-
turn, vainly will his officers strive to
reclaim him. The grip of the surgeon-
in-charge upon him has a tenacity
alongside of which the connection ex-
isting between the Old Man of the Sea
and Sindbad was a tie of the most
frivolous character. Military author-
ity is far-reaching and mighty ; but it is
the puniest of powers when it comes
face to face with quinine and calomel.
One of my own men, able-bodied and
thoroughly healthy, was on duty with
his company three weeks; the remain-
ing period of his service he has so far
spent in a United States general hos-
pital. Several times he made efforts
to return to his regiment, but all to no
effect; and at last I sent him word, if
he knew when he was well off, he
would stay where he was.
During the latter part of February
and the beginning of March the emi-
gration from the South began to ap-
proach to the dignity of an exodus.
Men, women, and children poured into
the lines of our brigade at the rate of
from twenty-five to seventy-five a day.
They were mostly foreigners, leaving
the Confederacy, in which they could
no longer find a livelihood. A very few
were citizens fleeing before the Con-
scription Act, which was at that time
said to be enforced throughout Vir-
ginia with merciless rigor. The ap-
pearance of these emigrants was sad-
dening in the extreme. Every day a
silent, sorrowful procession of old
men, young men, women leading little
children by the hand, almost fainting
with weariness, passed our camp" under
guard to headquarters. Their earthly
posessions were usually all carried on
their backs, but the household goods of
some in more fortunate circumstances
were packed in rickety wagons, drawn
by horses so skeleton-like that it seemed
as if they would fall to pieces were it
not for the harness. All of these per-
sons told the same sad story of distress
and destitution in the South ; and their
looks would have convinced the stout-
est disbeliever in the policy of star-
vation that they did not come from a
land of universal plenty.
By an order of General Heintzelman,
the commander of our corps, issued in
the latter part of March, the guards
were instructed not to allow any person
from the Confederacy to come in. Yet
for a long time afterwards many came
up to our lines and sought to gain an
entrance, and even stayed days and
weeks in houses near by in the vain
hope of at last being admitted. Their
presence only added to the general dis-
tress. It was the season when the prod-
ucts of the previous year were nearly
if not altogether used up, and the prod-
ucts of the new year had not as yet
come on. The inhabitants could not
enter our lines ; they lived too far away
from any sources of Confederate sup-
ply to obtain any food from that quar-
ter. Although provisions were occa-
sionally sent out to them, but little re-
liance could be placed upon a succor
so precarious. All along that part of
Virginia, just outside of the region oc-
cupied by our forces, the destitution in
many families at that time was terrible.
Women came up to the outposts, and
with eyes swollen with weeping de-
clared themselves starving, and grate-
fully accepted the hard fare shared with
them by our soldiers. This was not
common; but it actually happened.
The cold weather and the mud pre-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
vented any drilling worth speaking of
during January, February, and most of
March. Consequently, when off duty
there was nothing for either officers or
men to do; and here the monotony of
military life made itself most severely
felt. Till a man keeps a diary, and at-
temps to set down in it the acts which
he regards as worthy of special record,
he never fully appreciates how little
happens in his daily experience outside
of eating, drinking, and sleeping. In
our peculiar situation all of these had
with us an unnatural prominence. Din-
ner was as much the great event of the
day as to well-regulated individuals
who aim to be healthy, wealthy and
wise, slumber is of the night. All of
the intellect and skill of the camp was
constantly engaged in the effort to get
up new and palatable dishes out of our
somewhat limited resources; and cer-
tain of the feats of the culinary art,
then and there accomplished, would
have brought tears to the eyes of
Soyer, Vattel, or any others who have
greatly cooked. My own masterpiece
was a pancake against which forks
vainly struggled and knives could not
prevail, the capacity of which to re-
sist foreign impressions was only
equalled by the sublime tenacity with
which the separate particles of matter
constituting its internal economy clung
to one another. Cooking was, indeed,
our pleasure in prosperity and our
solace in adversity; and with ever-
varying, but always remarkable and
hitherto unheard-of, experiments on
meats and vegetables, we whiled away
many dreary hours of the long winter,
and on several occasions cheated our-
selves into temporary and delusive an-
ticipations of having once, at least, a
good meal.
True, there were other things to be
done. Lessons were to be learned and
recited in the tactics and the regula-
tions; but in spite of their attractions,
these works could not be studied all the
time. The lack of reading matter was
the principal want felt. Books were
not easily procured, were too heavy to
be carried, and were always liable to
abuse and destruction while lying about
a camp; consequently, the inducements
to create a large library were never
very powerful. Works that anywhere
else I would not have thought of look-
ing into, there were eagerly welcomed
and diligently read. I individually
went through a course of Beadle^s
Dime Novels and Waverley Maga-
zines, and just before we left the de-
fenses of Washington, felt exceedingly
obliged for a loan of Tupper's "Pro-
verbial Philosophy."
No one under such circumstances
could fail to be impressed with the fact
that the mental deterioration of a man
long connected with the army, if sta-
tioned far away from his feUow-men,
must be rapid unless his situation or
his character is peculiar, or unless his
position is so high as to call into requi-
sition and develop the moral powers
which react upon the mind. Any regi-
mental officer, if he applies himself,
can in a year's time learn all that it is
essential for him to know to perform
his regimental duties. After that he
may as well die for any further use his
brain will be to him — of course so far
as regards acquisition, not action. His
knowledge will not be materially in-
creased, though it will certainly be less
liable to be forgotten, if he remains in
the army fifty years. In camp there
are no inducements from without to
resist the tendency to be lazy when he
can just as well be lazy. His pay is the
same whether he be much or little in-
formed; and his promotion depends
not upon his ability, but upon his sen-
iority or the political influence he can
bring to bear. In active service he can
learn nothing if he wishes. He cannot
take with him books to read or to study.
He cannot carry his investigations be-
yond the simplest elements of his pro-
fession. His individuality is lost. He
is part of a great and complex machine,
is called into action and assigned to
duty without any consultation of his
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IN THE DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON
21
tastes, of his opinions, and too often of
his capacities. He is confined to a
narrow circle of ideas, which the soH-
tariness of his profession and its want
of contact with other professions and
other modes of thought prevent ever
being enlarged or broken up. Of the
grand movements of the times, the
hopes which exalt, the fears which de-
press, the passions which agitate, he
knows nothing. I soon ceased to won-
der why some of the older officers of
the regular army, who had spent their
lives largely in outpost service, seemed
so stupid. That was a result they
could hardly help. One of our ablest
corps commanders, himself a graduate
of West Point, once told a friend of
mine that a West Pointer knew more
the day he graduated than he ever did
afterwards; and the remark, however
untrue even then of many, and how-
ever exaggerated of all, was unques-
tionably prompted by a knowledge of
the necessary consequences that follow
the enforced inaction of mind and body
and want of contact with society which
are peculiar to military life as lived in
the remote stations in the Territories
and on the frontiers.
II
On the twenty-fourth of March
headquarters were changed from
Union Mills to Centreville. With them
to the latter place went all the regi-
ments of the brigade which had been
stationed at the former. During the
whole of the month the air had been
filled with rumors of great enterprises
in which we were to have a share, and
this movement looked as if our strength
was to be collected for some offensive
purpose. Nothing came of it, however,
if anything was ever intended.
Ever since the war began I had
heard of Centreville. There had been
assembled the first body of Southern
troops which could justly be styled an
army. There the reserve of McDow-
ell's forces, drawn up in line, had
checked the advance of the enemy after
the first disastrous battle of Bull Run.
There had been encamped during the
winter of 1861-62 that formidable
multitude, estimated by the varying
shades of contempt or fear as number-
ing everywhere between fifty and two
hundred and fifty thousand, against
whose possible attack the telegraph re-
peated on every pretext to the waiting
nation the startling and inspiriting de-
spatch that Washington was now re-
garded as safe. I had seen the name of
the place so often and so many times
in such large type, I had heard so much
of the importance of its position and its
reported natural and artificial strength,
I had kpown it so long as the central
point of mighty armies, that it is no
wonder my conceptions of it had as-
sumed a vastness and grandeur which
its actual condition was far from real-
izing.
Centreville is a broken-down village
which before the war had about four
hundred inhabitants, but now would
muster scarcely more than fifty or
sixty. The houses are all old, all dirty,
all dilapidated. Most have never
known paint, and the few which have
known it have long since forgotten it.
Nearly all are built in that peculiar Vir-
ginia style which consists in flanking
each side with a tremendous chimney
of brick or of stone, this last append-
age of Northern mansions forming in
Southern domiciles a "peculiar domes-
tic institution" by itself. Both in the
village and in the neighboring country
the woodwork of these buildings has in
many cases been burned or torn down,
leaving the lofty chimneys still stand-
ing. The place had always a thriftless,
ruined appearance; and, as might be
expected, has it more especially at the
present time. Everything has gone to
seed; for in addition to the natural
shiftlessness of the inhabitants, the war
forbids any extensive or expensive in-
dulgence in modern improvements.
But miserable as the town looks so
far as it is the creation of its miserable
inhabitants, the scenery about it is
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22 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
magnificent. As if to compensate for
the failure of art, nature has been more
than ordinarily bountiful in beauty.
The village is situated three miles east
of Bull Run on the range of hills which
slope down to that stream. Right be-
fore it lies the vast plain which the
conflict of two opposing civilizations
has twice made a battle-field. Those
desperate struggles disfigured the
ground with shattered and ghastly
wrecks of humanity, which man left un-
buried, committing to the more merciful
agencies of air and water and fire the
task of returning to their native earth
the bodies and bones of those who have
fallen. This broad tract of level coun-
tr}' stretches to the Manassas moun-
tains, which stand up clear against the
western sky; while beyond them and
the intervening valley, far away on the
edge of the horizon, can be seen the
misty cones of the Blue Ridge.
Naturally we had rarely come in con-
tact with the best representatives of the
people of Virginia. In the regions
where active military operations had
been going on, the finest mansions were
fairly sure to be deserted and disman-
tled, and those who had occupied them
had almost inevitably gone to Dixie or
the deuce. But within the lines, espe-
cially well within the lines of the de-
fenses of Washington, a number of
families of all sorts and conditions still
continued to dwell. To a man brought
up in the North the ignorance, or, rath-
er, the illiteracy of some of these in-
habitants seemed amazing. During the
last months of our stay in Centreville
I was connected with the provost-
marshal's department of the division.
By the nature of the duty I was
brought into frequent contact with the
families in the neighborhood. All
passes for citizens were granted at our
office, and before given, the signature
of each person was required to a print-
ed oath that the pass would not be used
against the interests of the United
Slates. Nothing surprised me more at
first than to have individuals whom I
knew as men of apparent respectability
and possessing some landed property,
confess that they could not write their
own names. That, however, was too
common there to be long a matter of
wonder. As for loyalty, they hardly
knew what the word meant. In fact,
the unreal world of dreams never fur-
nished a more intangible collection of
spectres than the Union men of the
South — that is, the Union men of the
kind we heard so much of at the be-
ginning of the war, and have seen so
little of since. The ceaseless pressure
resulting from the occupation of the
soil and the lack of confidence in a fail-
ing cause has, it is true, led many with-
in our lines to take the oath of alle-
giance. But I never saw in the South an
actively loyal man, one who had a rea-
son for the faith that was in him, who
was not either an anti-slavery man or
rapidly becoming so. There are, in-
deed, a few knock-kneed, blear-eyed
individuals who profess themselves
equally addicted to the Union and to
slavery; but the earnest workers on
both sides scarcely affect to hide the
contempt they feel for these fossilized
fragments of the old Union.
The women everywhere were natu-
rally the most outspoken. Relying upon
the protection afforded them by their
sex, they often gave expression to their
sentiments in a manner so violent as
to cause evident uneasiness to their
suspected and therefore more suspi-
cious male relatives. These were some-
times at great pains to check the in-
temperance of the language used by
their wives and daughters, and to ex-
plain away the meaning of their words.
They might succeed in restraining the
older ones ; but the girls were never to
be deterred by any dread of remote con-
sequences from saying anything that
could possibly annoy or irritate the
Union officers or soldiers. It is but
fair to state that their conduct sprang
more from a love of mischief than from
any other feeling. The most insulting
remark ever made was the standard
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IN THE DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON
reply to any observation upon the
ragged condition of the Confederate
troops, that Southern gentlemen did not
think it necessary to dress up in order
to slaughter hogs. The origin of this
speech was contemporaneous with the
first advance of the Union army, and
from the frequency with which it is
still repeated I judge it to be the cul-
minating effort of the female mind as
now found in Virginia.
The women of the families which
continued to dwell within the lines of
the defenses of Washington, though no
less disloyal, were in other respects an
improvement upon the majority of their
Virginia sisters whom I had previously
encountered. They were bright, lively,
intelligent brunettes, and were as con-
trary, tantalizing, spiteful, and other-
wise agreeable as girls, the world over,
generally are. One of the most attrac-
tive of them, mentally, physically, and
pecuniarily, professed herself exceed-
ingly anxious to become a martyr in the
cause of Southern rights. Whether
sincere or not in her feelings, she had
her wish to some extent gratified, as
after we had taken our departure, the
provost-marshal who next succeeded —
a wretch evidently as hard-hearted as
he was hard-headed — ^sent her to Wash-
ingtcwi to become an inmate, probably
a temporary one, of the Old Capitol
Prison.
It was at this time that the policy of
employing negroes in the military serv-
ice of the United States was adopted
by the Government. Upon no other
subject could the indignation of these
damsels be sooner aroused. Language
seemed powerless to express their dis-
gust and wrath whenever the topic was
brought under discussion, as we took
care it should be often. One day I
propounded to one of the prettiest and
most pugnacious of these how near to
her she would allow me to come, pro-
vided I was put in command of a negro
regiment. "Not within fifty miles,"
was the spiteful answer. I vainly tried
to reduce the number to forty-nine, but*
the obdurate fair one would not come
down a furlong or even a rod. The
cloud-compelling Jove himself could
not have moved that indomitable dam-
sel one inch.
In spite of their constant, boastful
assertions that the South would never
succumb, there was in all they said an
undercurrent of doubt and sadness.
This was partly due to the confident
tone of the Northern troops, which no
defeat or disaster could ever shake.
"When do you think the war will be
over?*' was the question always asked.
"Oh, in five or six years," was the com-
mon reply, sometimes because such was
really the belief, but oftener prompted
by the desire to create the evident feel-
ing of depression which invariably fol-
lowed. Such an answer always made
them look sadder, though doubtless in
many cases unconsciously; for they, if
no one else, recognized the resolution
that lay behind it. Indeed, the one
thing which has characterized the senti-
ment of the Northern soldiers during
the struggle which has so long con-
tinued, has been the determination that
the war shall never end until it is ended
forever ; that it shall go on until every-
where throughout the entire land the
integrity of the nation shall be ac-
knowledged. Whatever be the result
of the mighty conflict which has al-
ready wasted so much of treasure and
blood, the feeling prevails in the army
as powerfully now as it did at the very
beginning, that rather than have the
Union broken up, better it were that
the whole land should return to the
desolation from which centuries of toil
have reclaimed it, and the civilization
of the future begin its work with a
theodolite and a surveyor's chain.
One cannot help having, however, a
sentiment of compassion for these girls
in spite of their defiant speech, dwell-
ing as they did within our lines in the
midst of an alien and hostile soldiery.
Theirs was, indeed, a dreary prospect.
For them the future held out little hope
and less promise. One year, two years.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
had swept by, and still the mighty
struggle which both parties entered
upon as a mere holiday pastime seemed
no nearer its end. Brothers and lovers
had all gone to the wars. Rarely came
any word across the lines to tell of the
fate which had befallen them. Day
after day dragged on slowly in their
solitary lives, with only occasional mes-
sages at best from those of whose con-
stant companionship they had been de-
frauded. Marrying and giving in mar-
riage there was no more. Throughout
all the borderland of Virginia that had
practically ceased. Even wherever
there were men, the times were too un-
settled, the chances of supporting a
family too doubtful, the future too full
of darkness and despair, to warrant
such a step. It seemed as if the growth
of the population would be brought to a
standstill through the want of faith and
hope. Life was too wretched to be in-
flicted upon any one who could be saved
from the curse of living. In all of my
journeyings in Virginia north of the
Rappahannock, I do not recollect to
have ever seen a child under two years
of age. Stripped as the country had
been of men capable of bearing arms,
babies w^ere even scarcer. I doubt
whether a general search-warrant
would find fifty wherever active mili-
tary operations have been going on.
With a severe snowstorm in the early
part of April the winter passed away.
The long-reluctant days of sunny
weather came at last. Camps were
decorated with pines and cedars from
the neighboring woods, and the rows of
white tents were half hidden in the
avenues of overshadowing evergreens.
With the sunny weather came also the
wives and, in a few cases, the daugh-
ters of many of the officers. Crinoline
swept through the company streets
with as much assurance as if they were
the streets of a Northern city. Picnics
were planned and went off with music
and dancing, very much like picnics
anywhere else, except that the ladies
were nearly all married, and it never
rained. Excluding the drilling, it was a
lazy, happy, dreamy time. All was
quiet on the Potomac, the Rappahan-
nock, and on Bull Run. The officer of
the outposts lounged on the fresh grass,
watching the silent, sunny plain or the
hazy outlines of the distant mountains,
and wished never to be relieved. The
officer of the day sat in his tent, smoked
cigars, drank uninspiring lemonade,
and wrote letters. The terrible bugle-
call for drill was the skeleton in our
closet. Had it not been for that, ours
would almost have been the life of the
lotus-eaters over again. Even with it,
all that was needed to bring back the
life we had left behind was the pres-
ence of woman ; and I for one felt lit-
tle disposition to blame those who sent
for their wives and daughters in spite
of the frowns of some of the powers
that be.
For certainly to a cultivated mind
the one great privation of military life
is the lack of female society. Day after
day to see men only; to hear nothing
but their talk, often earthy and some-
times gross ; to be ministered to in sick-
ness by their clumsy hands, and in sor-
row by their clumsy sympathy — all these
are ever-present facts which give one a
peculiarly vivid "realizing sense*' of his
dependence upon woman. Her absence
was felt more in the comparative quiet
of the garrison than in that active serv-
ice, where the hurrying incidents of as-
sault or defense, of flight or pursuit,
drove from the mind all thoughts save
those of the stern questions of success
or failure which presented themselves
for solution daily and hourly. Fortu-
nate was she who came to us in our
solitude; for in the dreary monotony
of camp life our imaginations were al-
ways ready and willing to invest with
the attributes of a goddess any woman
whose appearance gave us the least ex-
cuse for so doing. During the winter,
when our stock of beauty ran low, it
was natural that she who had even very
moderate pretensions to it should be
rated high.
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IN THE DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON
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Our lady visitors ornamented the
dress-parades of the various regiments
through the months of April and May
and even longer. It required some
courage for them to stand their ground.
Hints from division headquarters that
they were not needed came thick and
fast and threatened soon to become or-
ders. Some retreated early in May along
with Hooker; but many manfully per-
sisted in remaining, and, subsequently
being largely reinforced, bade a respect-
ful but obstinate defiance to the mili-
tary authorities. Insinuations that they
were or might be in the way, that move-
ments were in contemplation, made no
impression upon these indomitable fair
ones. Stay they would, and stay they
did, some even late enough to part for
the last time with their husbands be-
fore the march to Gettysburg.
The retreat of Hooker from Chan-
cellorsville turned our attention to dig-
ging. It is a very fortunate thing for
me that I have no military reputation,
for if I had, it would doubtless be for-
ever ruined by what I am going to say.
The extensive fortifications of Centre-
ville always seemed to me a humbug,
a gigantic imposition upon the credulity
of the American people. They are
made up of a chain of small forts, of
value only as a defense against a direct
attack in front, and almost utterly pow-
erless to resist an assault from the
flank. These were the only works that
cost any labor, and these could have
cost but little. Rifle-pits, to be sure,
covered the country for miles, but rifle-
pits, as every soldier knows, are the
creation of a few hours. What nature
has done for the defense of the posi-
tion is another question; but the elabo-
rate fortifications, which tasked for
months the military genius of Beaure-
gard to construct, existed only in the
fertile minds of newspaper correspond-
ents. That he himself did not regard
Centreville so highly as some of our
civilians is clearly shown by his falling
back to the line of Bull Run on the first
advance of the army of the Potomac.
It may have been no object to attack
these works ; it probably was not. Nor
do I mean to say that they could have
been taken without great loss of life.
Very few places are, so far as I have
had an opportunity of observing. But
it seems never to get through the heads
of some men that the strength of a po-
sition depends not so much on its forti-
fications as it does on the number and
spirit of the soldiers who hold it, and
the ability and resolution of the officer
who commands it. Our brigade spent
several days in digging rifle-pits and
building batteries ; and as we never ex-
pected them to be used, we endeavored
to make them appear as ornamental as
possible. They were, when we depart-
ed, the best fortifications to be found
at or near Centreville ; but by this time,
doubtless, Beauregard has all the credit
of their construction. If any troops are
now stationed at that place, they pretty
certainly point them out to visitors as
triumphal monuments of his ceaseless
activity and engineering skill.
From the first of May to the middle
of June the weather was exceedingly
warm. The skies seemed made of brass,
not a drop of rain falling for six weeks.
Our life was more quiet, if possible,
than before. We were scarcely even
disturbed by rumors; bugs and flies
were the only terrestrial enemies which
annoyed us. The former were every-
where. You swallowed them in your
food; you snuffed them up your nose;
you speared them in the bottles of ink
with your pen. Mosquitoes, however,
were so rare as to be considered al-
most a curiosity. Day after day passed
by unmarked by anything more im-
pressive than the inevitable six hours
of drill. But this unnatural calm ended
so abruptly that a few days only con-
stituted the transition period from it to
the excitement of military life in its
sternest form.
I was lying in my tent on the after-
noon of Sunday, the fifteenth of June,
when I saw several horsemen ride up
to division headquarters, which were
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
on the opposite side of the road. In a
little while the news went like wildfire
through the camps that the eleventh
corps, the advance of the army of the
Potomac, was coming. It was a thun-
derbolt from a clear sky. Not even a
rumor of any movement in progress or
in contemplation had reached us pre-
viously. At first the report could hard-
ly be believed; but a little later in the
day, those standing on the forts sur-
mounting the heights could see the
rolling clouds of dust that almost hid
from view the southern sky. About
sundown General Howard and his staff
rode in ; but his command lay encamped
for the night near Blackburn's Ford on
Bull Run, and did not reach Centre-
ville until the next morning. It was
followed immediately by the first and
the fifth corps. On Wednesday, the
seventeenth, the third corps arrived;
on Friday, the nineteenth, the second,
and about the time we were leaving the
place the sixth corps made its appear-
ance.
From the first moment of the com-
ing of these troops the monotonous
quiet of Centreville was entirely broken
up. Every day some new body of in-
fantry, cavalry, and artillery came and
went. The ceaseless march of men to
the North, the long and seemingly end-
less trains of baggage- and ammunition-
wagons, the entire ignorance that pre-
vailed even among the highest officers
as to the movements of either army,
and the thousand reports to which such
ignorance gave rise — all these kept the
place in a constant tumult of excite-
ment. Rumors that Lee was in Penn-
sylvania, rumors that he was directly
in our front, rumors that he was re-
treating towards Richmond, rumors
that he was moving up the Shenan-
doah valley, rumors that he held the
gaps of the Manassas mountains, ru-
mors that we held them, rumors that
the occupation of the Pennsylvania
border was a mere feint to draw away
our troops from Washington, rumors
that it was but the beginning of a gen-
eral invasion of the North, planned
long ago and now carried into execu-
tion, rumors that Lee had been out-
generaled by Hooker, rumors that
Hooker had been outgeneraled by Lee,
— these and numberless others of a
similar character followed one another
in endless succession. Every man had
his theory and by constantly asserting
it soon became convinced of its abso-
lute truth, and finally proclaimed it as
a fact. Confused by the reports of
every hour, which contradicted the re-
ports of the hour previous, we could
only wait for the development which
the future would bring. We were not
kept long in uncertainty. With the
smoke-clouds that in a few days rose
from the field of Gettysburg passed
away all the mystery that veiled from
us our own movements and those of
the enemy.
In the rumors in regard to the desti-
nation of our own brigade we natu-
rally had a very lively interest. As day
after day the endless columns of troops
marched through Centreville, it was a
question eagerly asked by every one,
whether we were to go or to stay. The
answer came speedily. On the twen-
ty-third of June orders were received
to be ready for the field with ten days*
rations. We had been transferred, we
were informed, to the second corps of
the army of the Potomac, commanded
by General Hancock. So on the twen-
ty-fifth of June "the band-box brigade,"
as our new associates styled it, with
drums beating and banners flying, bade
adieu to the defenses of Washington
and took the road to the North. In a
little more than a month afterwards it
reached the Rappahannock on its south-
ward march from Pennsylvania; but in
the meantime it had left in Northern
graves and hospitals more than two-
thirds of its eflFective force.
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TASTE AND TECHNIQUE
By Carroll Beckwith
Mr. President, associates, ladies, and
gentlemen: my distinguished prede-
cessors are more fortunate than I,
because they have spoken of things
rather removed from present condi-
tions. Mr. Thomas told us of events
at the beginning of the Christian era;
Professor Lounsbury, those of the War
of the Rebellion.
I must apologize beforehand, per-
haps, for touching on some of the ques-
tions of the present moment, on which
there may be many differences of opin-
ion. Therefore, I fear, I shall lay my-
self open to your disapproval. The
opening words I have written here have
been illustrated for me by Mr. Brock-
way, in his beautiful musical perform-
ance: "All art work is an expression
of human emotion." We all know that
art is not a fact. It is not real. It is
a dream. It is an ideal. It is some-
thing that comes from within the artist
and touches something within you. Its
language, as I imagine, is taste and
technique. Nature, in her creative
thoughts, searches for a language and
for a channel of expression. This chan-
nel is our taste — our technique. It is in-
dividual, it is personal, it is yourself, it
is myself; and yet it is guided by tradi-
tion. It is tradition which has estab-
lished standards — standards of com-
parison. They are arbitrary or not as
you choose to interpret them; yet they
are dangerous to defy. Intelligent
retrospect governs the quality of pres-
ent culture. It is what has passed be-
fore, what has endured the criticism,
the trial, of time, and has proved
worthy, which we adopt to-day as our
standard. It is by the measuring-rod
of an art that is past that we judge
contempory work. Xow, is this just?
Is it right? Does it handicap the
producer of the art of to-day?
Is he shackled by the standards of
the past? The sculptors of Greece,
the color of the Venetian painters, the
music of Mozart, have established
standards to which we have all
bowed. The young man in his
youth feels defiant that he should be
restrained by the adoption of laws that
to him are arbitrary and cruel. He
desires a revolution that will enable
him to be free. He wishes to cast
aside the old standards and create new
ones. Revolutions occur, in which
these standards of taste are temporarily
tossed to the winds, and new guides
are brought forward to be praised by
the press, as the press is always in
search of novelty, and is eager to put
something in the head-lines, to put
something or somebody in the spot-
light. Therefore, before the young man
invents something out of his imagina-
tion, he finds that he has gained a posi-
tion in the foreground, and he thinks
that the past has gone. It is only tem-
porary, however. The standards that
are cast down for the moment by these
revolutions do not go to oblivion.
When, after the French Revolution,
David ruled supreme in the schools of
France, and was followed by Ingres,
then Watteau, Fragonard, and Boucher
were forgotten. Their work was turned
to the wall. Nobody was interested in
them any more. The last century has
brought us to the point of appreciation,
and justice is again meted out to them
as though no revolution had occurred.
Youth and genius rebel against re-
straints. Was there ever a time when
in the beginning youth and genius did
not rebel against the art work of an
earlier period? The art of the late-
eighteenth century conies back, and
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
with it comes that school of the crafts-
men. Every new movement, every at-
traction for which we temporarily
strive, becomes, after sifting, a valu-
able asset or is cast aside. It goes on
and on, and is cast aside again and
jagain for the moment, and brilliant
and strong men like Delacroix and
Millet produce their temporary revolu-
tions of thought. The schools that are
prominent to-day must recall the fact
that Millet, the peasant painter, was
one of the most ingenious and skilled
draftsmen, as is shown by his nudes.
Then another movement appears,
and Manet comes to the center of the
stage, and beauty and poetry are cast
aside, and a crude reality is empha-
sized. His lack of ability in drawing,
his clumsy, often awkward technique, —
his lack of mastery of his trade, in
other words, — were compensated for in
his mind by the emphasis of the fact.
Brilliant in personality, brilliant in
color! If you will pardon me, I will
tell you a little incident about him
when I met him in Paris for a moment
in 1875. It was a time when the now
well-known skating-rink was a great
novelty. The first one constructed in
Paris was in the Rue Blanche, and the
skating was done on roller-skates. I
met a rich American, and he asked
me to go to the skating-rink on the
opening night as his guest. We met
there at the appointed hour, and in the
course of the evening he led me into the
loge of a famous lady of the Sec-
ond Empire, and there I found gath-
ered about her a number of gentlemen.
Soon there entered a man quite English
in dress and style, with a square-cut,
reddish beard. I asked my hostess who
he was, and she turned and presented
me to M. Edouard Manet. Then she
asked him:
"M. Manet, qu'est que vous faites
pour le Salon ?"
I, from the Latin Quarter, knew
from the gossip of the studios that he
was regularly refused at the Salon and
wondered what his reply would be.
He said: "Je fais un tas de choses."
Values were then far more important
than regard for form. To-day neither
values nor form is much cared about;
they are rather ignored. However,
M. Manet was a little too much in evi-
dence at that moment to endure, and
although I was an enthusiast about him
at that time, I wondered how long he
would last.
We then come to another period, the
latest revolution — that of Cezanne and
Matisse, who have occupied the head-
Hnes. From my point of view, not only
have values and form been disregarded,
but awkwardness seems to be sought
for, and the rules of skilled craftsman-
ship have been defied. It is now a sin
to be a skilful draftsman. It is con-
sidered obnoxious in the schools of
Paris to draw too well. It is not natu-
ral. Nature draws clumsily. We have
a distinguished illustration of this ten-
dency in the work of the very great
sculptor Rodin. Until twenty years
ago, Rodin was undoubtedly proud of
his technique and skill. To-day he
makes his figures heavy, ponderous, and
oftentimes shapeless. This movement
is strong in France. It is even strong-
er in Italy, where the Futurists are;
but in Paris to-day the movement is
like a tremendous cyclone, sweeping
everything before it.
I was told that in Paris there were
thirty-two diflferent dealers in Impres-
sionist work. While going down the
Rue Lafitte one day I looked in at a
window which I was passing. I said
to myself, "Here is a restorer of pic-
tures." I looked up at the sign in
front of the shop, and it was owned
by one VoUard. I saw many canvasses
in a rather disorderly array. It looked
Hke a workshop. I said to myself, *Tt
is one of those dealers in the latest Im-
pressionists." Out of curiosity I went
in, and was met by the head of the
shop ; I asked to look at the picture on
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TASTE AND TECHNIQIJE
2Q
the easel in the window. That picture
looked like a Turkish rug cast over a
chair. I asked the dealer if it was a
picture of still life. He said very rev-
erently :
*Tt is a portrait. Here is the hand
on the chair, and here is the head."
I looked at it and thought deeply, en-
deavoring to define the figure, but fail-
ing in my eflfort. I asked:
"But can you see it ?"
Shrugging his shoulders, he an-
swered :
"Yes, sometimes, and sometimes not."
Only a year before certain young
painters in the Latin Quarter decided
that they would create a sensation.
They brought a donkey and a large
canvas to a studio and, tying a paint-
brush to the donkey's tail, set the blank
canvas behind the donkey. They mixed
various paints, moved the canvas to
and fro, and tickled the donkey to
make him switch his tail. They thus
produced a picture, and were photo-
graphed in the act, and that picture
was hung on the wall at the autumn
Salon ! Later they came out in the pub-
lic prints and said, "Here is an example
of the work that goes on the line in this
exhibition," and they had the photo-
graph published to prove how the
painting was produced.
I met in Rome a gentleman connected
with the Futurists. He was really an
advanced member. He said : "We can-
not get on so long as these museums,
with their false standards, exist to mis-
guide the public. The only thing to
do is to burn down the museums." Now
we are being experimented upon and
vivisected, and ideas and theories are
being turned upside down ; but we must
endure the movement for a time, as it
will pass, and its incoherence will soon
cast it into oblivion, because the lan-
guage of art cannot be gained without
hard labor, and no art can exist that
does not respect the past and its stan-
dards. The earliest and best art should
be drilled into the minds and hearts of
the young painters so that they may
know what the art of past ages is.
I am sure that in the art that Mr.
Brockway represents there are those
standards which are the foundation of
his education and upon which he has
built. Taste — taste, modest and non-
combative, distinguished and refined —
is now cast aside. The other night
I saw in the New Theater the most
beautiful modern decoration that I
know of in the world, Baudry's ceil-
ing. No one looked at it. People
seemed to be indifferent to it. In Bos-
ton we have Puvis de Chavannes in
the Public Library. When this decora-
tion was painted, it was remarked that
this time Puvis de Chavannes had really
made gingerbread figures. I never
look at that painting without thinking
that they are indeed gingerbread fig-
ures; but when I go into the other
room and see the Sargent, I am con-
vinced of it.
Last winter, in Paris, there occurred
a most interesting incident. A gentle-
man of the old school, to which I be-
long, rebelled against the Impression-
ists. M. Olivier Merson put on his hat,
went out, and called on his confreres,
saying: "Cannot we get up an exhibi-
tion that may be as interesting as some
of the others about Paris? Let us form
ourselves into a little society and adopt
the name *Les Pompiers.' " You may
not be aware that in Paris an exact
copy of the classic Greek helmet is used
by the firemen. On the invitation-card of
this society of "Les Pompiers" was a
large design of the old Greek helmet.
This was one of the most beautiful and
brilliant exhibitions I saw abroad, com-
bining the men of the end of the last
century who are still working and the
conservatives of to-day, and there were
gathered together two hundred beauti-
ful works. I urge you to bear in mind,
in considering these paintings, that they
grow more beautiful as time goes on,
that they improve with age. Yes, we will
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50 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
go back and look at them, study them, moves up and then down, and one day
and learn to adopt and apply the lessons we are classic and another day we are
we learned from them in our youth. We Impressionists ; but it is my belief and
will look at El Greco, we will look at hope that what is good in the past may
Velasquez, and then we will come always be preserved, that we shall not
down to the modern Zuloaga and the forget it, and that we shall keep it as
painting from the brush of Fortuny; one of our standards and measuring-
by the normal and the scholarly, stand rods by which to judge modern produc-
the erratic and the bizarre. The way tion.
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REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION
By William Lyon Phelps
During those early years of his
youth at Paris, which the melancholy
but unrepentant George Moore insists
he spent in riotous living, he was on
one memorable occasion making a
night of it at a ball in Montmartre. In
the midst of the revelry a gray giant
came placidly striding across the crowd-
ed room, looking, I suppose, some-
thing like Gulliver in Lilliput. It was
the Russian novelist Turgenieff. For a
moment the young Irishman forgot the
girls, and plunged into eager talk with
the man from the North. Emile Zola
had just astonished Paris with "L'As-
sommoir." In response to a leading
question, Turgenieff shook his head
gravely and said: "What difference
does it make whether a woman sweats
in the middle of her back or under her
arms ? I want to know how she thinks,
not how she feels."
In this statement the great master of
diagnosis indicated the true distinction
between realism and reality. A work
of art may be conscientiously realistic,
— few men have had a more importu-
nate conscience than Zola, — and yet be
untrue to life, or, at all events, untrue
to life as a whole. Realism may de-
generate into emphasis on sensational
but relatively unimportant detail: re-
ality deals with that mystery of mys-
teries, the human heart. Realism may
degenerate into a creed; and a formal
creed in art is as unsatisfactory as a
formal creed in religion, for it is an
attempt to confine what by its very na-
ture is boundless and infinite into a
narrow and prescribed space. Your
microscope may be accurate and pow-
erful, but its strong regard is turned
on only one thing at a time; and no
matter how enormously this thing may
be enlarged, it remains only one thing
out of the infinite variety of God's uni-
verse. To describe one part of life by
means of a perfectly accurate micro-
scope is not to describe life any more
than one can measure the Atlantic
Ocean by means of a perfectly accurate
yardstick. Zola was an artist of ex-
traordinary energy, sincerity, and hon-
esty ; but, after all, when he gazed upon
a dunghill, he saw and described a
dunghill. Rostand looked steadfastly
at the same object, and beheld the vis-
ion of Chahtecler,
Suppose some foreign champion of
realism should arrive in New York at
dusk, spend the whole night visiting
the various circles of our metropolitan
hell, and depart for Europe in the
dawn. Suppose that he should make a
strictly accurate narrative of all that
he had seen. Well and good ; it would
be realistic, it would be true. But sup-
pose he should call his narrative
"America." Then we should assuredly
protest.
"You have not described America.
Your picture lacks the most essential
features."
He would reply : .
"But is n't what I have said all true ?
I defy you to deny its truth. I defy you
to point out errors or exaggerations.
Everything that I described I saw with
my own eyes."
All this we admit, but we refuse
to accept it as a picture of America.
Here is the cardinal error of realism.
It selects one aspect of life, — usually
a physical aspect, for it is easy to
arouse strained attention by physical
detail, — and then insists that it has
made a picture of life. The modern
Parisian society drama, for example,
cannot possibly be a true representa-
tion of French family and social life.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Life is not only better than that; it
is surely less monotonous, more com-
plex. You cannot play a great sym-
phony on one instrument, least of all
on the triangle. The plays of Bern-
stein, Bataille, Hervieu, Donnay, Ca-
pus, Guinon, and others, brilliant in
technical execution as they often are,
really follow a monotonous convention
of theatrical art. rather than life itself.
As an English critic has said, "The Pa-
risian dramatists are living in an at-
mosphere of half-truths and shams,
grubbing in the divorce courts and liv-
ing upon the maintenance of social
intrigue just as comfortably as any
bully upon the earnings of a prostitute/*
An admirable French critic, M. Henry
Bordeaux, says of his contemporary
playwrights, that they have ceased to
represent men and women as they
really are. This is not realism, he de-
clares; it is a new style of false ro-
manticism, where men and women are
represented as though they possessed
no moral sense — a romanticism sensual,
worldly, and savage. Life is pictured
as though there were no such things
as daily tasks and daily duties.
Shakespeare was an incorrigible ro-
mantic ; yet there is more reality in his
composition than in all the realism of
his great contemporary, Ben Jonson.
Confidently and defiantly, Jonson set
forth his play "Every Man in His Hu-
mour" as a model of what other plays
should be; for, said he, it contains
deeds and languages such as men do
use. So it does: but it falls far short
of the reality reached by Shakespeare
in that impossible tissue of absurd
events which he carelessly called "As
You Like It." In his erudite and praise-
worthy attempt to bring back the days
of ancient Rome on the Elizabethan
stage Jonson achieved a resurrection of
the dead: Shakespeare, unembarrassed
by learning and unhampered by a creed,
achieved a resurrection of the living.
Catiline and Sejanus talk like an old
text ; Brutus and Cassius talk like liv-
ing men. For the letter killeth, but the
spirit giveth life.
The form, the style, the setting, and
the scenery of a work of art may deter-
mine whether it belongs to realism or
romanticism; for realism and roman-
ticism are affairs of time and space.
Reality, however, by its very essence,
is spiritual, and may be accompanied
by a background that is contemporary,
ancient, or purely mythical. An opera
of the Italian school, where, after a
tragic scene, the tenor and soprano
hold hands, trip together to the foot-
lights, and produce fluent roulades,
may be set in a drawing-room, with
contemporary, realistic furniture. Com-
pare "La Traviata" with the first act of
"Die Walkiire," and see the difference
between realism and reality. In the
wildly romantic and mythical setting,
the passion of love is intensely real;
and as the storm ceases, the portal
swings open, and the soft air of the
moonlit spring night enters the room,
the eternal reality of love makes its
eternal appeal in a scene of almost in-
tolerable beauty. Even so carefully
realistic an opera as "Louise" does not
seem for the moment any more real
than these lovers in the spring moon-
light, deep in the heart of the whisper-
ing forest.
A fixed creed, whether it be a creed
of optimism, pessimism, realism, or ro-
manticism, is a positive nuisance to an
artist. Joseph Conrad, all of whose
novels have the unmistakable air of
reality, declares that the novelist
should have no program of any kind
and no set rules. In a memorable
phrase he cries, "Liberty of the imagi-
nation should be the most precious
possession of a novelist." Optimism
may be an insult to the sufferings of
humanity, but, says Mr. Conrad, pes-
simism is intellectual arrogance. He
will have it that while the ultimate
meaning of life — if there be one — is
hidden from us, at all events this is a
spectacular universe, and a man who
has doubled the Horn and sailed
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REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION
33
through a typhoon on what was unin-
tentionally a submarine vessel may be
pardoned for insisting on this point of
view. It is indeed a spectacular uni-
verse, which has resisted all the at-
tempts of realistic novelists to make it
dull. However sad or gay life may be,
it affords an interesting spectacle. Per-
haps this is one reason why all works
of art that possess reality never fail
to draw and hold attention.
Every critic ought to have a hospit-
able mind. His attitude toward art in
general should be like that of an old-
fashioned host at the door of a coun-
tr>' inn, ready to welcome all guests
except dangerous criminals. It is im-
possible to judge with any fairness a
new poem, a new opera, a new picture,
a new novel, if the critic have precon-
ceived opinions as to what poetry, mu-
sic, painting, and fiction should be.
We are all such creatures of conven-
tion that the first impression made by
reality in any form of art is sometimes
a distinct shock, and we close the win-
dows of our intelligence and draw the
blinds that the new light and the new
air may not enter in. Just as no form
of art is so strange as life, so it may
be the strangeness of reality in books,
in pictures, and in music that makes
our attitude one of resistance rather
than of welcome.
Shortly after the appearance of
Wordsworth's "Resolution and Inde-
pendence,'*
There was a roaring in the wind all night,
The rain came heavily and fell in floods,
some one read aloud the poem to an
intelligent woman. She burst into
tears, but, recovering herself, said
shamefacedly, "After all, it is n't po-
etry." When Pushkin, striking off the
shackles of eighteenth century conven-
tions, published his first work, a Rus-
sian critic exclaimed, "For God's sake!
don't call this thing a poem!" These
two poems seemed strange because
they were so natural, so real, so true,
just as a sincere person who speaks his
mind in social intercourse is regarded
as an eccentric. We follow conven-
tions and not life. In operas the lover
must be a tenor, as though the love of
a man for a woman were something
soft, something delicate, something
emasculate, instead of being what it
really is, the very essence of masculine
virility. I suppose that on the operatic
stage a lover with a bass voice would
shock a good many people in the audi-
torium, but I should like to see the
experiment tried. In Haydn's "Crea-
tion," our first parents sing a bass and
soprano duet very sweetly. But Verdi
gave that seasoned old soldier Otello
a tenor role, and even the fearless
Wagner made his leading lovers all
sing tenor except the Flying Dutch-
man, who can hardly be called human.
In society dramas we have become so
accustomed to conventional inflections,
conventional gestures, conventional
grimaces, that when an actor speaks
and behaves exactly as he would were
the situation real, instead of assumed,
the effect is startling. Virgin snow of-
ten looks blue, but it took courage to
paint it blue, because people judge not
by eyesight, but by convention, and
snow conventionally is assuredly white.
In reading works of fiction we have
become so accustomed to conven-
tions that we hardly notice how often
they contradict reality. In how many
novels I have read I have been intro-
duced to respectable women with scar-
let lips, whereas in life I never saw
a really good woman with such labial
curiosities. Conversations are conven-
tionally unnatural. A trivial illustra-
tion will suffice. Some one in a
group makes an attractive proposition.
"Agreed !" cried they all. Did you ever
hear any one say "Agreed" ?
I suppose that all novels, no matter
how ostensibly objective, must really
be subjective. "Out of the abundance
of the heart the mouth speaketh."
Every artist feels the imperative need
of self-expression. Milton used to sit
in his arm-chair, waiting impatiently for
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
his amanuensis, and cry, *1 want to be
milked." Even so dignified, so reti-
cent, and so sober-minded a novelist as
Joseph Conrad says, "The novelist does
not describe the world: he simply de-
scribes his own world." Sidney's ad-
vice, "Look in thy heart, and write," is
as applicable to the realistic novelist
as it is to the lyric poet. We know now
that the greatest novelist of our time,
Tolstoi, wrote his autobiography in every
one of his so-called works of fiction.
The astonishing air of reality that they
possess is owing largely to the fact not
merely that they are true to life, but
that they are the living truth. When an
artist succeeds in getting the secrets
of his inmost heart on the printed page,
the book lives. This accounts for the
extraordinary power of Dostoyevsky,
who simply turned himself inside out
every time he wrote a novel.
The only reality that we can con-
sistently demand of a novel is that its
characters and scenes shall make a per-
manent impression on our imagination.
The object of all forms of art is to
produce an illusion, and the illusion
cannot be successful with experienced
readers unless it have the air of re-
ality. The longer we live, the more
difficult it is to deceive us : we smile at
the scenes that used to draw our tears,
we are left cold by the declamation that
we once thought was passion, and we
have supped so full with horrors that
we are not easily frightened. We are
simply bored as we see the novelist get
out his little bag of tricks. But we
never weary of the great figures in
Fielding, in Jane Austen, in Dickens, in
Thackeray, in Balzac, in TurgenieflF, for
they have become an actual part of our
mental life. And it is interesting to
remember that while the ingenious situ-
ations and boisterous swashbucklers of
most romances fade like the flowers of
the field. Cooper and Dumas are read
by generation after generation. Their
heroes cannot die, because they have
what Mrs. Browning called the "prin-
ciple of life."
The truly great novelist is not only in
harmony with life ; his characters seem
to move with the stars in their courses.
"To be," said the philosopher Ia)tze.
"is to be in relations." The moment
a work of art ceases to be in relation
with life, it ceases to be. All the great
novelists are what I like to call sidereal
novelists. They belong to the earth,
like the procession of the seasons ; they
are universal, like the stars. A com-
monplace producer of novels for the
market describes a group of people
that remains nothing but a group of
people; they interest us perhaps mo-
mentarily, like an item in a newspaper ;
but they do not interest us deeply, any
more than we are really interested at
this moment in what Brown and Jones
are doing in Rochester or Louisville.
They may be interesting to their au-
thor, for children are always interest-
ing to their parents ; but to the ordinary
reader they begin and end their fic-
tional life as an isolated group. On
the contrary, when we read a story like
"The Return of the Native," the book
seems as inevitable as the approach of
winter, as the setting of the sun. All
its characters seem to share in the di-
urnal revolution of the earth, to have
a fixed place in the order of the uni-
verse. We are considering only the
fortunes of a little group of people liv-
ing in a little corner of England, but
they seem to be in intimate and neces-
sary relation with the movement of the
forces of the universe.
The recent revival of the historical
romance, which shot up in the nineties,
flourished mightily at the end of the
century, and has already faded, was
a protest not against reality, but
against realism. Realism in the eighties
had become a doctrine, and we know
how its fetters cramped Stevenson. He
joyously and resolutely burst them, and
gave us romance after romance, all of
which except the "Black Arrow" showed
a reality far superior to realism. The
year of his death, 1894, ushered in the
romantic revival. Romanticism sud-
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REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION
denly became a fashion that forced
many new writers and some experts
to mold their work in its form. A
few specific illustrations must be given
to prove this statement. Mr. Stanley
Weyman really wanted to write a real-
istic novel, and actually wrote one, but
the public would none of it: he there-
fore fed the mob with "The House of
the Wolf,'' with "A Gentleman from
France," with "Under the Red Robe."
Enormously successful were these stir-
ring tales. The air become full of
obsolete oaths and the clash of steel —
"God*s bodikins! man, I will spit you
like a lark !" To use a scholar's phrase,
we began to revel in the glamour of a
bogus antiquity. For want hi a better
term, I call all these romances the
"Gramercy" books. Mr. Winston
Churchill, now a popular disciple of the
novel of manners, gained his reputa-
tion by "Richard Carvel," with a picture
of a duel facing the title-page. Per-
haps the extent of the romantic craze
is shown most clearly in the success
attained by the thoroughly sophisticated
Anthony Hope with "The Prisoner of
Zenda,"by the author of "Peter Stirling"
with "Janice Meredith," and most of all
by the strange "Adventures of Captain
Horn," a bloody story of buried treas-
ure, actually written by our beloved
humorist Frank Stockton. Mr. Stock-
ton had the temperament most fatal to
romance, the bright gift of humorous
burlesque; the real Frank Stockton is
seen in that original and joyful work,
"The Casting Away of Mrs. Leeks and
Mrs. Aleshine." Yet the fact that he
felt the necessity of writing "Captain
Horn" is good evidence of the tide.
This romantic wave engulfed Europe
as well as America, but so far as I can
discover, the only work after the death
of Stevenson that seems destined to
remain, appeared in the epical histori-
cal romances of the Pole Sienkiewicz.
Hundreds of the romances that the
world was eagerly reading in 1900 are
now forgotten like last year's almanac;
but they served a good purpose apart
from temporary amusement to invalids,
overtired business men, and the young.
There was the sound of a mighty wind,
and the close chambers of modem
reaHsm were cleansed by the fresh air.
A new kind of realism, more closely
related to reality, has taken the place
of the receding romance. We now be-
hold the "life" novel, the success of
which is a curious demonstration of the
falseness of recent prophets. We were
told a short time ago that the long
novel was extinct. The three-volume
novel seemed very dead indeed, and
the fickle public would read nothing
but a short novel, and would not read
that unless some one was swindled, se-
duced, or stabbed on the first page.
Then suddenly appeared "Joseph
Vance," which its author called an ill
written autobiography, and it con-
tained 280,000 words. It was devoured
by a vast army of readers, who clam-
ored for more. Mr. Arnold Bennett,
who had made a number of short flights
without attracting much attention,
produced "The Old Wives' Tale." giv-
ing the complete life-history of two
sisters. Emboldened by the great and
well-deserved success of this history,
he launched a trilogy, of which two
huge sections are already in the hands
of a wide public. No details are
omitted in these vast structures; even
a cold in the head is elaborately de-
scribed. But thousands and thousands
of people seem to have the time and
the patience to read these volumes.
Why ? Because the story is in intimate
relation with life. A gifted Frenchman
appears on the scene with a novel in
ten volumes, "Jean Christophe," deal-
ing with the life of this hero from the
cradle to the grave. Although the last
sections have not yet appeared, the
earlier ones are being translated into
all the languages of Europe, so intense
is the curiosity of the world regarding
this particular book of life. Some may
ask. Why should the world be bur-
dened with this enormous mass of
trivial detail in rather uneventful lives?
The answer may be found in Fra Lippo
Lippi's spirited defense of his art,
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36 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
which diifered from the art of Fra I find in the contemporary "life"
Angelico in sticking close to reality : novel a sincere, dignified, and success-
"For. don't you mark? we're made so that ^^1 effort to substitute reality for the
we love former rather narrow realism; for it
First when we see them painted, things we j^ ^n attempt to represent life as a
have passed , . ^ *^
Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see." whole.
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OUTLOOK AND INLOOK ARCHITECTURAL
By John Galen Howard
Just as the twig is bent the tree *s inclined.
The die was cast for the distinctive
character of American architecture for
all time, I think, when a certain Pil-
grim first set an Old-World foot on
Plymouth Rock, and found it good
building material. It was a trifle hard,
and therefore difficult to work, doubt-
less, with some few fractures, or, at all
events, distinctly noticeable stratifica-
tions or lines of cleavage, and with not
a few rough edges, but, on the whole,
sound, as rocks go, and firmly fixed in
ancient world tradition. Strong stuff
was Plymouth Rock; but it held its
own not merely by reason of its
strength, but by virtue of the sort of
strength it had.
An architecture is determined neither
by material alone nor by the mind that
molds it, but by both together, insepar-
able and interactive. No mere cart-
horse kind of power was the force
which fastened Plymouth Rock. Kin-
ship in mettle to the Arabian thorough-
bred gave it aptness to the desert task,
with its long thirsts and hungers, its
utter isolations, its lonesome yearnings.
Not mere strength, but fined strength,
was its property. For refinement of that
sort which is a thing of eliminations
rather than of delicacies, and is deter-
mined about equally by temperament
(coldness of temperament agreed in
this case) and by means too straitened
for much kicking over the traces even
had the blood been hotter — refinement
was one, if not the, salient character-
istic of the architecture which arose
in those old days out of arduously
shaped Plymouth Rock, and despite all
the kicking over the traces in which our
people has indulged in more recent
times. Refinement, even though it be
of another stripe, is still a dominant
characteristic of the American style.
There is, I suppose, little room for
disagreement as to the old work. Look
at the delicate, thin treatment every-
where, the paucity of ornament, the
dryness of surface, the amenity — ^not
inconsistent with a degree of vigor,
either — of the whole, above all, the total
absence of anything remotely resem-
bling "splurge." These points witness a
psychological tendency in a way quite
independent of the particular forms
used, of the "style" in which it found
its tongue. One thinks of the pure
beauty of the Greek work, of the gran-
deur of the Roman; Byzantine spells
splendor ; the medieval cathedrals voice
daring aspiration. So our Colonial
work connotes essentially that not very
large, perhaps, but at any rate, so far
as it goes, admirable quality which I
have named; and of that quality the
phase in which almost ascetic restraint
plays the major part. Granted. But is
it as readily evident that that same
quality runs through, and indeed in-
forms, our characteristic architecture
of to-day? With its wide range of
styles, its genuine eclecticism, from the
point of view of the field as a whole,
however "correct" within their own
choice of style individual practitioners
may be, is it clear that this note of re-
finement is dominant? Does the point
need discussion ? That may be.
Suppose, to start with, we look back
over the way we 've come.
"Cut out passion," not "Make pas-
sion lovely," was the unwritten law of
early cis-Atlantic eflFort in the way of
art, as of life ; of art, what there was of
it^ doubtless because of life. Yet, after
all, he who sets himself consciously to
cut out passion lets his cat out of the
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38
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
bag. There must have been passion to
cut out ; and the chances are that sooner
or later, if he seek to cut out passion
by putting it in a bag, he will bring
about all the more viciously mordant
scratchings, and in the end, if the cat
is really there, and a cat, with the cus-
tomary complement of lives, an all the
more tempestuous felinity of escape,
but by way of ragged rent instead of
by way of neatly hemstitched placket.
We have sometimes been privileged to
observe the cat in the act of issuing
from the bag, and by that issue, as,
indeed, by all self-respecting cats, there
hangs, if you will permit the expres-
sion, a tale; and in this case, what is
more, a tale of passion, which proves
reassuringly that the cat was there. As
the saying is, "A muffled cat is no good
mouser." Open bags make more suc-
cessful meets than do tied-bag prisons.
For the architect they make capitally
warm nests, in fact, as styles, while as
prisons "styles" are apt to be either too
strong, in which case they inhibit action,
or else they are too flimsy, and invite
disrespect. If at times our cat has been
too close muffled, the escapes, not to say
the escapades, have restored, or tended
to restore, a fair average. As a whole,
our architecture can hardly be said to
be too "correct."
Half a century or more ago we saw
the cat of the English Gothic revival,
poor creature though it was, and worse
for water-wear, which all cats hate,
scratch out the eyes of our Colonial
tradition, and leave it nigh to death,
with "none so poor to do him rever-
ence." The purest poetic justice was
done when, reversing the ancient course
of architectural history, Gothic was
transmogrified into Ropianesque. The
most anemic of all lack-sap stocks begot
the fullest blooded of all sports. There
was passion for you, and not in a bag
at that! But is this a cat I see? Nay,
a very lion in the way, a king of cats,
it would seem, that can consent no fur-
ther than to hold a bag to be a con-
venient nest or lair of refuge, when
desired, but never, never, never such a
pitiful thing as a prison. "In truth,
the prison unto which we doom our-
selves, no prison is," and styles may be
comforts to the creative mind, but only
on condition that they have no draw-
ing-strings. So, at all events, Richard-
son regarded his Romanesque; its
sounding name was as an open sesame
to consideration, a big stick of resonant
authority, if you like, but, you may rest
well assured, not for a moment a limi-
tation to the activities of his imagina-
tion. And that may be one reason why
his style was not found to serve in the
long run. It was too personal, it oper-
ated on too narrw a margin of common
consent, despite all its own robust splen-
dor. Being so personal, the range of
vision for other workers was too close.
There was not room enough in it for
more than that one great personality,
which informed and filled it, and made
it in certain ways, and in certain very
important ways, too, big with promise.
All this time poor little Colonius lay
stripped of his raiment, and wounded
by the way. Priest in the gown of
Gothic, and Levite with Provencal
scrip, had not so much as looked on
him, but passed by on the other side.
"But a certain Samaritan, as he jour-
neyed, came where he was: and when
he saw him, he had compassion on
him." On the face of things, Colonius
Redivivus owed his oil and wine to the
insight, taste, and wisdom of McKim
and White and others of their group.
I should say particularly Mead but
for the manner of anthologies, which
omit living names lest their owners
blush becomingly, no doubt; but he
owed his resuscitation fundamentally
to his Americanism. McKim, Mead
and White were the active instrument
of a latent movement larger than them-
selves.
The Colonial revival succeeded not
because that kind of architecture was
the best conceivable, or because it was
in such refreshing contrast to the pre-
ceding fashion, or because of the per-
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OUTLOOK AND INLOOK ARCHITECTURAL
39
sonal power of those who reintroduced
it, great as that power was, or for any
other reason whatsoever but that it
was in real harmony with the Ameri-
can instinct, taste, and ideaL And it
had the further advantage of being
worthy tradition, all the stronger and
more acceptable for having been neg-
lected for a time. Penitence pointed
our return. Convalescence gave a fil-
lip to what otherw^ise might have
seemed insipid. Plymouth Rock, too,
in these circumstances, was found to
have a sparkle. We felt as though we
had got back home from hospital, and
had a reassuring sense of knowing
where we were. Very likely we struck
out too blindly in our new health
against the spell that just now bound
us. We hated Romanesque so cor-
dially that we could not fairly focus
the compelling genius that loomed be-
hind and above the smoke of our tem-
porary aberration. In the new joy of
finding a working system of architectu-
ral hygiene to which we were all
equally heritors, discovered to us and
interpreted by masters, it is true, but
ours just as much as theirs, after all,
we became possessed of a sense of well-
being and mastery which was most
agreeable.
And it was a habit well worth while
acquiring, to be sure, that using of a
style the limits of which we well knew,
and were pleased to accept. It induced
a frame of mind which enabled us later
to turn to other closely related, more
monumental, not to say more funda-
mental, styles — styles which had all the
while underlain the Colonial, and work
in them with something flatteringly re-
sembling the ease of mastery; with no
small degree of archaeological dryness
at times, we must concede, but with a
correctness which for the time being
was in itself a valuable quality, pro-
vided the tendency were not carried too
far. Architecture has, like other
growing phenomena, to go to school be-
fore it can wisely be emancipated. It
is a distinctly promising sign of future
power for a young people and for a
young art, as well as for a young man,
to feel his oats, looking upon his indi-
viduality, and finding it good, and,
aware of original power, to forget self
for the time being in the quiet, assidu-
ous acquisition of knowledge already
established by others. The time for
fresh [personal expression will come
later. But get the schooling first, and
of course as early as may be; for the
blade of creative originality may lose
its edge if it keep scabbard too long.
I have spoken of the succession of
architectural styles among us. That
is merely a convenient way of referring
to the several phases through which
this art, and perhaps other arts as well,
have passed in these latter decades. But
I do not wish to lay too much stress on
these phases as styles. In fact, I do
not take much stock in styles, anyway.
What I do take stock in — all I can get
and have the money to pay for, and I
pray for more — is style. The Gothic
revival in this country in the middle of
the last century was not really a revival
of Gothic at all. The fact that pointed
arches "came in,'' the more pointed the
better, had nothing to do with it. The
pointed arch was a fashion in architec-
tural dress merely, like the crinoline or
the poke bonnet ; but, gracious me ! did
you ever think for one minute that the
lady inside the crinoline was that shape ?
No more, then, the architecture that
wore pointed arches was that kind in-
wardly. I adore the real thing too de-
votedly to let it be supposed that I
mean what I say when I call that sort
of thing Gothic; but one can't always
tack across the page a dozen times to
make port. One must go as the crow
flies, especially if there 's only twenty
minutes headway or so. Take the old
word for the new thought, and let 's get
on. Just as the Gothic revival was not
Gothic, neither was the Romanesque
Romanesque. They were both little
more than the manifestation of phases
of our national life, ante-belltmi and
post-bellum. The former was the ex-
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40
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
pression of a life gone to seed, dried
up, finished, the last leaf dropped short
of a new sowing. Then was "the win-
ter of our discontent"; the "glorious
summer" followed, with all the exuber-
ance of new life, and its expression in
architecture was more exuberant even
than itself because of the overwhelming
exuberance of the man responsible for
the architecture. Of course in this we
have to reckon with the wholly ex-
traordinary Richardson. Without him
and his personal passion for Roman-
esque, we should have had some other
exuberance. He, like all other great
men, had happened at just the right
moment. Those not on our list have
happened at the wrong moment, though
of course the great moment tends to
enlarge all its men, and make its great
ones greater. That 's what happened to
Richardson; he was the great person-
ality of the art of his time, the period
of reconstruction, of the laying in of
the foundations of our real national
existence, and the architecture of that
period was determined almost solely by
him. The artist and his period, his
community, grew more exuberant hand
in hand, each on its own account, and
each the more for the other.
And quite contrary to what it is now
the fashion to maintain, the influence
of Richardson has not proved ephem-
eral in its larger character and signifi-
cance. The art of our own time is dif-
ferent and larger for his foundation
work. Whether we anathematize his
art or admire from afar off (for there
are few or none nowadays who venture
to come nigh unto it), it must be recog-
nized that because of him, because of
his breaking ground, and making big
and solid and sound, when we began all
over again on a firmer footing to try to
be a nation, the building that came after
was bigger and solider and sounder
than it would otherwise have been. Can
it be thought for one instant that Mc-
Kim and White, to whom we largely
owe the turning back to the classic
manner, came under Richardson's inti-
mate influence without being touched
by it? Richardson's sort of radio-
activity has a way of making indelible
marks. He was a great man in being;
they were great men in embryo, young
and impressionable. They had their
own point of view, and they adhered to
it with the tenacity which is an attrib-
ute of the finest type of genius; but
their ideas were enlarged, their views
clarified and fixed, and their ideals en-
riched by association with their great
master. And with all the daintiness of
their detail, more especially at first, they
took aboard with them, when they em-
barked with Mead on their own career,
a generous measure of the discoverer.
"Vogue la galere!" Undoubtedly, as
time went on, Richardson's influence,
not consciously as his influence, but as
the development within themselves of
seeds he had wakened and nourished,
though they had been sown in their
very being, became more and more
manifest in increased largeness of con-
ception and organic simplicity of hand-
ling. And it is for those qualities for
which we are even more indebted to
McKim, Mead and White (I speak now
of the, I hope, permanent institution,
eliminating personalities) than we arc
for their exquisite detail, incomparable
as that is. The detail was a part of our
heritage; the largeness was a needed
contribution, offered in the first in-
stance by Richardson, continued by
them, and complexed with the fineness
which was from of old inbred in our
architectural sense. And in both these
respects, of largeness and of exquisite-
ness alike, let me recur again for a mo-
ment to the personal note in recogniz-
ing the ever-potent influence of Mead.
He had had no direct, or, at any rate,
no close association with Richardson:
he simply did not escape, and. being
big himself, was all the readier to ac-
cept what no one in this country has
wholly escaped, whether he would or
not — the contagious largeness of that
personality. To maintain this is no
derogation of the original power of
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OUTLOOK AND INLOOK ARCHITECTURAL
41
each member of the great firm, the per-
manent institution, as I have called it.
It only goes to prove, what I began
with, that style in the great sense has
little or nothing to do with the style in
the small sense in which a given archi-
tect may be working. It is style in the
great sense that McKim, Mead and
White and all others who follow the
true faith of architectural development
in this country have in common, diffi-
cult as it often is to put one's finger on
its elements. Style overlies and in-
cludes, or may include, a multitude of
styles. And we have now right at
hand an example of this, which brings
me fairly to the second stage of my
discussion.
There is, and I think that all will be
disposed to agree, somehow a closer
affinity between the Gothic work of
Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson (and, by
the way, don't mix up their lovely work
with the earlier "Gothic Revival" al-
ready referred to) and the classical
work of McKim, Mead and White than
there is between the latter and the work
of, say. Palmer and Hornbostel, for
example. Yet these last, too, are work-
ing mostly in a modified classic style,
even more modified, to use Mr. Cram's
word (I think it is his) than his own
modified Gothic. Of course the truth
of the matter is that neither of them
is either Gothic or classic unless you
much emphasize the '^modified." Of
course they both have to be modified
to meet modern conditions. I am not
unfavorably criticizing, but rather
praising, them, from my own point of
view, when I insist on the "modified,"
as both Mr. Cram and Mr. Hornbostel
would surely wish me to do. I take it
they use the words Gothic and classic,
as I do, as short cuts. If they do not, I
beg their pardon. But I must ask the
privilege, just the same, for the pur-
pose of the present analysis. On Gothic,
read Moore, and you may be convinced,
though I am not wholly, I must con-
fess, by that particular reasoning. As
for classic, he who runs may read. But,
after all, this is more or less a haggling
over terms.
Despite my original intention to avoid
all personal references in this paper, I
have ventured to mention three firms.
This is merely a short-cut method, like
my Gothic and classic. There are many
other names that might have answered
my purpose almost equally well, and
certainly many others that deserve ad-
miring tributes, or the reverse, were
this a piece of praise and blame; but
I am merely trying to bring out the
general characteristics of our architec-
ture at this time and its trend. I have
quite inevitably named McKim, Mead
and White because they stand in a pe-
culiarly representative relation to our
art. It is hardly too much to say that
we have two lists of architects: those
who are McKim, Mead and White men
and those who are not, and the latter
list is the smaller. But of course in the
former category are included many who
have not actually worked with the great
firm as well as all of those who have.
The list of their lineal descendants,
now running into several generations
of pupilage, is astonishingly long, and
includes many names in the first rank
of achievement. And the penumbra of
that pupilage is even larger and quite
as distinguished. In the camp of that
tradition is pretty much solidarity now-
adays as to essentials. In the others is
schism ; nay, confusion worse confound-
ed. But I seem to see two main groups
here among the minority who are not
McKim, Mead and White men, which
for the purposes of this discussion may
be identified by the mention of the
other two firms I have named. I have,
then, mentioned these three firms as
each representing a phase of our art
now: the first stands for the simple,
straightforward dignity and beauty of
architectural art typified in classic or
renaissance feeling, as nearly as may
be in an ancient manner; Palmer and
Hornbostel represent, indeed, a pseudo-
classic-renaissance type, generally tak-
ing the old Roman or Greek forms as a
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
basis, but using them in a well-nigh
wholly free and individual way, even
mingled with elements from other
styles, especially in ornament, which to
the taste of the purist are inharmonious
with the general architectonic schema
and even a superf etation upon it ; while
Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson repre-
sent the Gothic manner, not indeed at
all punctiliously as regards archaeologi-
cal correctness, but yet far more so than
Palmer and Hornbostel their classic,
while less so perhaps than McKim,
Mead and White theirs.
I am not a Gothicist by any manner
of means, if to be a Gothicist means to
advocate the use of pointed forms in
our modern work for general purposes,
though I yield to none in admiration
for the old thirteenth-century master-
pieces. Except for certain special uses,
such as, for instance, those churchly
types to which Cram, Goodhue and
Ferguson for the most part confine
them, those forms seem to me not natu-
rally expressive of our modern needs,
and in most cases quite out of key with
our life. And yet, for all that, I feel in
the psychology of Cram, Goodhue and
Ferguson's work a something which,
despite the forms in which it is ex-
pressed, breathes the genuine American
spirit in a striking degree. Perhaps I
feel the psychological quality of it all
the more keenly for a certain detach-
ment. It has a — what shall I say? —
a something catholic about it, even
though it be Anglican catholic, and per-
haps too pointedly Anglican at that.
But if Anglican, why not, by an easy
transition, American? That is, in fact,
precisely what I am trying to identify
— the American catholic in architecture.
I am seeking to ignore mere forms in
order to get at the spirit behind them.
The style may go; character must re-
main. So any work, no matter what
style it is in, which manages to express
broadly enough our national spirit is
yVmerican catholic.
Well, then, if I am right in sensing a
real kinship between McKim, Mead
and White's work and Cram, Goodhue
and Ferguson's, it is interesting to ask
whether the qualities they have in com-
mon can be identified. If they can, I
take it that we shall be in the way of
identifying the dominant quality of our
architecture^ — the quality which a
wholly disinterested observer, say, five
centuries hence, might see to be char-
acteristic of our age, just as we fix on
the essential note of Greek, of Roman,
of Byzantine, of medieval work. For
undoubtedly these two firms, with their
adherents, not only represent two of
the most vital forces in our architec-
ture at the present time, but they repre-
sent the extremes of divergent choice
as to style. Classic and Gothic — ^thc
fight is on between these two as be-
tween no others. If their special cham-
pions have something vital in conmion,
it must be something very American
indeed, and even more important for
the purposes of the critic than their
very styles themselves. All the more
will this be true if we find the same
something in the notable workers of
strongly marked individualistic ten-
dencies who belong to neither of these
schools, if one may call them such, nor
in fact to any school, since they stand
virtually alone — men like Sullivan, for
instance, or the Ponds. But there are
not very many of them.
To begin with, classicists, Gothicists,
Byzantinists, eclecticists — all these de-
spise the coarse thing, the overdone
thing, like poison. Anything like a
"shocker" they would avoid assidu-
ously; they are afraid of it as with a
religious fear. They would be as
ashamed of a lewd architectural
thought as an old maid. Refined taste
is the thing. And if we are to judge of
architectural tendencies by professional
successes, this tendency has of late
become even more accentuated than
ever. I suppose the work built within
these last few years that has received
the most general approval is a certain
Washington house of Pope's in the
Adams's manner, which carries refine-
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OUTLOOK AND INLOOK ARCHITECTURAL
43
ment one point beyond anything else
we have. Walk past it almost any day
or any hour of the day, and you will
find some admirer on his knees, figu-
ratively speaking, before it. I admire
it heartily myself, but I mention it here
merely to point my argument without
attempting to estimate its value as a
milestone, or, rather, as a stepping-
stone, to future progress. It is the
dernier cri of a tendency which is vir-
tually general among our representative
architects — refinement first, last, and
all the time. Here we see the Colonial
tradition more powerful than ever.
Character, indeed, as the Greeks held,
is Fate. Plymouth Rock is still our
backbone. But, you say, how about
those others who are using classic as a
base, yet who are further from the
representative classicists than are the
Gothicists themselves? Ah, they are
perhaps the exception that proves the
rule.
But, now, that word refinement. It
is an extremely "refined" word ; I have
used it to fix a notable quality, good or
bad, good and bad, which seems to dis-
tinguish American architecture from
that of most other countries nowadays.
I do not wholly like the word; it has
connotations somewhat too feminine.
I have used it, perhaps, often enough.
It has carried us far; let us not force
a willing horse. If we could only find
a more robust word — for a greater
thing.
And, any way, it is not only one
quality we are looking for; it takes
more than one thing to make up the
American catholic. Surely, in addition
to the restrained delicacy which was
characteristic of the Colonial work,
and which, to the extent, and more, that
the original stock still colors our civili-
zation, we must recognize as an equally
general property of American architec-
ture that freedom which is traditionally
identified with our national life. It is
partly a thing of origins, partly an ever-
renewed contribution from the new-
comers, and which is, I take it, a funda-
mental, actually as well as traditionally,
of 9ur character. And then, again, we
cannot fail to acknowledge a law-abid-
ingness, a sane and persistent respect
for precedent, which is wholly con-
sonant with that high type of intellec-
tual courage — the courage to be wholly
one's self even in acknowledgement of
indebtedness to forerunners. The small
type of original dares not place himself
alongside the elder great. He strives,
therefore, for a new kind, and ends, as
likely as not, in mere eccentricity. The
larger original, and especially the great-
est, is not afraid to stand with the eld-
ers, fully aware that his own mind will
at the same time gain from close re-
lationship with theirs, and yet all the
more clearly separate itself and hold
its own against them as a background.
Many of our best men have that kind
of courage; perhaps none deserves to
be called best who does not possess it.
In any case, I feel that it has been a
distinguishing quality of all our work
best worth remembering and treasuring,
and that it is and must in the nature
of things be a quality inherent in all
permanent art.
I was seeking for a word to group
these qualities under. Refinement, free-
dom, respect for precedent, courage —
these I think make up as aggregates the
greater part of that particular kind of
reinforced concrete which I have called
the American catholic. They are all
aristocratic virtues, and they deserve an
aristocratic name. What better one is
there than distinction? Distinction is,
after all, what we are all after. In all
the wholly successful American work,
that, I feel, is the representative beauty
which we all recognize the value of and
which we struggle consciously or un-
consciously to attain in our work, how-
ever far short individual achievement
may fall. Here in America, just where
a priori you might least expect to find
precisely that ideal, you find it most
securely horsed and oflF for the crusade.
Compare the representative American
work of to-day with corresponding
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
work abroad. You will find here a tire-
less and persistent search for the fine
thing as the key-note of design, as
against the venturing into new fields
over there, especially on the Continent.
I know there are reasons, sound rea-
sons, for this. They have their fine old
examples, they are tired of imitating
them, they want to try their wings, and
they often go far afield to do it ; but the
fact remains, as I have said, that we
are on the whole the conservatives, they
are the free-lances. L'art nouveau,
that iconoclastic socialism, not to say
anarchy, of art, has gone like wildfire
from end to end of Europe these last
years, while we are on the still hunt for
aristocratic distinction. I am not say-
ing by any means that we always bag
the game or that we have all the ad-
vantage in this comparison. I dare say
Europe may in some ways be in ad-
vance on the trail to the future, and
may have that to offer even in the
new art which we must needs take
over if we are to join the world move-
ment onward. They seem to be already
in the aeroplane age of architecture,
while we are still content with auto-
mobiling. But, as a prejudiced ob-
server, I may be permitted, I hope, to
express the conviction that on the whole
we are on the surer ground— on the
ground, I should say, instead of in the
air. With painting it is much the same.
Europe is tired of saying and doing the
same old things, and bursts with desire
to get on ; America distrusts and hates
more and more the crudities and anx-
ieties of revolt, and yearns for the hal-
cyon peace of establishment. We could
almost stand a state religion, I some-
times think, provided it were catholic
enough, and we are actually within gun-
shot of a state architecture. Faguct
brings out capitally the necessity of in-
corporating the aristocratic principle in
democracy, just as Croly does in an-
other way. Believe me, it is even more
vital in architecture.
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow
room.
In the midst of freedom, "Form ! give
us form !" we cry, and too often we get
mere standardization. There is our
Scylla over against the Charybdis of
license. After all, we must steer a
mean course, keep mid-channel, if our
ship is to come in. And there is no rule
for sailing a ship except to sail it
Above all, keep on deck !
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THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS
By Kenyon Cox
In these days all of us, even Acade-
micians, are to some extent believers in
progress. Our golden age is no longer
in the past, but in the future. We
know that our early ancestors were a
wretched race of cave-dwellers, and we
believe that our still earlier ancestors
were possessed of pointed ears and
tails. Having come so far, we are
sometimes inclined to forget that not
every step has been an advance, and to
entertain an illogical confidence that
each future step must carry us still fur-
ther forward; having indubitably pro-
gressed in many things, we think of
ourselves as progressing in all. And as
the pace of progress in science and in
material things has become more and
more rapid, we have come to expect a
similar pace in art and letters, to imag-
ine that the art of the future must be
far finer than the art of the present or
than that of the past, and that the art
of one decade, or even of one year,
must supersede that of the preceding
decade or the preceding year, as the
19 1 2 model in automobiles supersedes
the model of 191 1. More than ever
before "To have done is to hang quite
out of fashion," and the only title to
consideration is to do something quite
obviously new or to proclaim one's in-
tention of doing something newer. The
race grows madder and madder. It is
hardly two years since we first heard
of ^'Cubism," and already the "Futur-
ists" are calling the "Cubists" reaction-
ary. Even the gasping critics, pounding
manfully in the rear, have thrown away
all impedimenta of traditional standards
in the desperate eflfort to keep up with
what seems less a march than a stam-
pede.
But while we talk so loudly of prog-
ress in the arts, we have an uneasy
feeling that we are not really progress-
ing. If our belief in our own art were
as full-blooded as was that of the great
creative epochs, we should scarce be so
reverent of the art of the past. It is
perhaps a sign of anemia that we have
become founders of museums and con-
servers of old buildings. If we are so
careful of our heritage, it is surely from
some doubt of our ability to replace it.
When art has been vigorously alive, it
has been ruthless in its treatment of
what has gone before. No cathedral-
builder thought of reconciling his own
work to that of the builder who pre-
ceded him; he built in his own way,
confident of its superiority. And when
the Renaissance builder came, in his
turn he contemptuously dismissed all
medieval art as "Gothic" and barbarous,
and was as ready to tear down an old
faqade as to build a new one. Even
the most cock-sure of our moderns
might hesitate to emulate Michelangelo
in his calm destruction of three frescoes
by Perugino to make room for his own
"Last Judgment." He at least had the
full courage of his convictions, and his
opinion of Perugino is of record.
Not all of us would consider even
Michelangelo's arrogance entirely justi-
fied; but it is not only the Michel-
angelos w^ho have had this belief in
themselves. Apparently the confidence
of progress has been as great in times
that now seem to us decadent as in
times that we think of as truly progres-
sive. The past, or at least the imme-
diate past, has ^tlways seemed "out of
date," and each generation has plumed
itself upon its superiority to that which
was leaving the stage as it made its
entrance. The architect of the most
debased baroque grafted his "improve-
ments" upon the buildings of the high
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Renaissance with an assurance not less
than that with which David and his
contemporaries banished the whole
charming art of the eighteenth century.
Van Orley and Frans Floris were as
sure of their advance upon the ancient
Flemish painting of the Van Eycks and
of Memling as Rubens himself must
have been of his advance upon them.
We can see plainly enough that in at
least some of these cases the sense of
progress was an illusion. There was
movement, but it was not always for-
ward movement. And if progress was
illusory in some instances, may it not
possibly have been so in all? It is at
least worth inquiry how far the fine arts
have ever been in a state of true prog-
ress, going forward regularly from
good to better, each generation building
on the work of its predecessors, and
surpassing that work, in the way in
which science has normally progressed
when material conditions were favor-
able.
If, with a view to answering this
question, we examine, however cursor-
ily, the history of the five great arts,
we shall find a somewhat different state
of affairs in the case of each. In the
end it may be possible to formulate
something like a general rule that will
accord with all the facts. Let us begin
with the greatest and simplest of the
arts, the art of poetry.
In the history of poetry we shall find
less evidence of progress than anywhere
else, for we shall find that its acknowl-
edged masterpieces are almost invari-
ably near the beginning of a series
rather than near the end. Almost as
soon as a clear and flexible language
has been formed by any people, a great
poem has been composed in that lan-
guage which has remained not only un-
surpassed, but unequaled by any subse-
quent work. Homer is for us, as he
was for the Greeks, the greatest of their
poets, and if the opinion of all culti-
vated readers in those nations which
have inherited the Greek tradition could
be taken, it is doubtful if he would not
be acclaimed the greatest poet of the
ages. Dante has remained the first of
Italian poets, as he was one of the
earliest. Chaucer, who wrote when our
language was transforming itself from
Anglo-Saxon into English, has still lov-
ers who are willing for his sake to mas-
ter what is to them almost a foreign
tongue, and yet other lovers who ask
for new translations of his works into
our modem idiom; while Shakespeare,
who wrote almost as soon as that trans-
formation had been accomplished, is
universally reckoned one of the greatest
of world poets. There have, indeed,
been true poets at almost all stages of
the world's history, but the preeminence
of such masters as these can scarce be
questioned, and if we looked to poetry
alone for a type of the arts, we should
almost be forced to conclude that art is
the reverse of progressive. We should
think of it as gushing forth in full
splendor when the world is ready for
it, and as unable ever again to rise to
the level of its fount.
The art of architecture is later in its
beginning than that of poetry, for it
can exist only when men have learned
to build solidly and permanently. A
nomad may be a poet, but he cannot be
an architect; a herdsman might have
written the **Book of Job," but the great
builders are dwellers in cities. But
since men first learned to build they
have never quite forgotten how to do
so. At all times there have been some-
where peoples who knew enough of
building to mold its utility into forms
of beauty, and the history of architec-
ture may be read more continuously
than that of any other art. It is a his-
tory of constant change and of con-
tinuous development, each people and
each age forming out of the old ele-
ments a new style to express its mind,
and each style reaching its point of
greatest distinctiveness only to begin a
further transformation into something
else. But is it a history of progress?
Building, indeed, has progressed at one
time or another. The Romans, with
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THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS
47
their domes and arches, were more sci-
entific builders than the Greeks, with
their simple post and lintel, but were
they better architects? We of to-day,
with our steel construction, can scrape
the sky with erections that would have
amazed the boldest of medieval crafts-
men; can we equal his art? If we ask
where in the history of architecture do
its masterpieces appear, the answer
must be, "Almost anywhere." Wher-
ever men have had the wealth and the
energy to build greatly, they have
bnilded beautifully, and the distinctions
are less between style and style or epoch
and epoch than between building and
building. The masterpieces of one time
are as the masterpieces of another, and
no man may say that the nave of
Amiens is finer than the Parthenon or
that the Parthenon is nobler than the
nave of Amiens. One may only say
that each is perfect in its kind, a su-
preme expression of the human spirit.
Of the art of music I must speak
with the diffidence becoming to the
ignorant, but it seems to me to consist
of two elements and to contain an in-
spirational art as direct and as simple
as that of poetry and a science so diffi-
cult that its fullest mastery is of very
recent achievement. In melodic inven-
tion it is so far from progressive that
its most brilliant masters are often con-
tent to elaborate and to decorate a
theme old enough to have no history —
a theme the inventor of which has been
so entirely forgotten that we think of it
as sprung not from the mind of one
man, but from that of a whole people,
and call it a folk-song.
The song is almost as old as the race,
but the symphony has had to wait for
the invention of many instruments and
for a mastery of the laws of harmony ;
and so symphonic music is a modern
art. We are still adding new instru-
ments to the orchestra and admitting to
our compositions new combinations of
sounds, but have we in a hundred years
made any essential progress even in this
part of the art? Have we produced
anything, I will not say greater, but any-
thing so great as the noblest works of
Bach and Beethoven?
Already, and before considering the
arts of painting and sculpture, we are
coming within sight of our general law.
This law seems to be that in so far as
an art is dependent upon any form of
exact knowledge, in so far it partakes
of the nature of science and is capable
of progress. In so far as it is expres-
sive of a mind and soul, its greatness is
dependent upon the greatness of that
mind and soul, and it is incapable of
progress. It may even be the reverse
of progressive, because as an art be-
comes more complicated and makes evjer
greater demands upon technical mas-
tery, it becomes more difficult as a me-
dium of expression, while the mind to
be expressed becomes more sophisti-
cated and less easy of expression in any
medium. It would take a greater mind
than Homer's to express modern ideas
in modem verse with Homer's serene
perfection; it would take, perhaps, a
greater mind than Bach's to employ all
the resources of modern music with his
glorious ease and directness. And
greater minds than those of Bach and
Homer the world has not often the fe-
licity to possess.
The arts of painting and sculpture
are imitative arts above all others, and
therefore more dependent than any oth-
ers upon exact knowledge, more tinged
with the quality of science. Let us see
how they illustrate our supposed law.
Sculpture depends, as does architec-
ture, upon certain laws of proportion in
space which are analogous to the laws
of proportion in time and in pitch upon
which music is founded. But as sculp-
ture represents the human figure,
whereas architecture and music repre-
sent nothing, sculpture requires for its
perfection the mastery of an additional
science, which is the knowledge of the
structure and movement of the human
figure. This knowledge may be ac-
quired with some rapidity, especially
in times and countries where man is
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
often seen unclothed. So, in the his-
tory of civilizations, sculpture devel-
ops early, after poetry, but with
architecture, and before painting and
polyphonic music. It reached the
greatest perfection of which it is
capable in the age of Pericles, and
from that time progress was impos-
sible to it, and for a thousand years
its movement was one of decline. Af-
ter the Dark Ages sculpture was one
of the first arts to revive, and again it
developed rapidly, though not so rap-
idly as before, conditions of custom
and climate being less favorable to it,
until it reached, in the first half of the
sixteenth century, something near its
former perfection. Again it could go
no further, and since then it has
changed, but has not progressed. In
Phidias, by which name I would sig-
nify the sculptor of the pediments of
the Parthenon, we have the coincidence
of a superlatively great artist with the
moment of technical and scientific per-
fection in the art, and a similar coinci-
dence crowns the work of Michel-
angelo with a peculiar glory. But,
apart from the work of these two men,
the essential value of a work of sculp-
ture is by no means always equal to
its technical and scientific completeness.
There are archaic statues which are
almost as nobly beautiful as any work
by Phidias, and more beautiful than
almost any work which has been done
since his time. There are bits of
Gothic sculpture that are more valu-
able expressions of human feeling than
anything produced by the contempo-
raries of Buonarroti. Even in times
of decadence a great artist has created
finer things than could be accomplished
by a mediocre talent of the great
epochs, and the world could ill spare
the Victory of Samothrace or the por-
trait busts of Houdon.
As sculpture is one of the simplest
of the arts, painting is one of the most
complicated. The harmonies it con-
structs are composed of almost innu-
merable elements of lines and forms
and colors and degrees of light and
dark, and the science it professes is no
less than that of the visible aspect of
the whole of nature, a science so vast
that it has never been and perhaps
never can be mastered in its totality.
Anything approaching a complete art
of painting can exist only in an ad-
vanced stage of civilization. An entire-
ly complete art of painting never has
existed and probably never will exist.
The history of painting, after its early
stages, is a history of loss here balanc-
ing against gain there, of a new means
of expression acquired at the cost of
an old one.
We know comparatively little of the
painting of antiquity, but we have no
reason to suppose that that art, how-
ever admirable, ever attained to ripe-
ness, and we know that the painting of
the Orient has stopped short at a com-
paratively early stage of development.
For our purpose the art to be studied
is the painting of modem times in I-lu-
rope from its origin in the Middle
Ages. Even in the beginning, or be-
fore the beginning, while painting was
a decadent reminiscence of the past
rather than a prophecy of the new
birth, there were decorative splendors
in the Byzantine mosaics hardly to be
recaptured. Then came primitive paint-
ing, an art of the line and of pure
color, with little modulation and no
attempt at the rendering of solid fonn.
It gradually attained to some sense of
relief by the use of degrees of light
and less light; but the instant it ad-
mitted the true shadow, the old bright-
ness and purity of color had become
impossible. The line remained domi-
nant for a time, and was carried to the
pitch of refinement and beauty : but
the love for solid form gradually over-
came it, and in the art of the high
Renaissance it took a second place.
Then light and shade began to be
studied for its own sake; color, no
longer pure and bright, but deep and
resonant, came in again, and the line
vanished altogether, and even form he-
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THE ILLUSION OF PROGRESS
49
came secondary. The last step was
taken by Rembrandt, and even color
was subordinated to light and shade,
which existed alone in a world of
brownness. At every step there has
been progress, but there has also been
regress. Perhaps the greatest balance
of gain against loss and the nearest
approach to a complete art of painting
was with the great Venetians. The
transformation is still going on, and
we have in our own day conquered
some corners of the science of visible
aspects which were unexplored by our
ancestors. But the balance has turned
against us; our loss has been greater
than our gain, and our art is, even in
its scientific aspect, inferior to that of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries.
And just because there has never
been a complete art of painting, en-
tirely rounded and perfected, it is the
clearer to us that the final value of a
work in that art has never depended
on its approach to such completion.
There is no one supreme master of
painting, but a long succession of mas-
ters of different and equal glory. If
the masterpieces of architecture are
everywhere because there has often
been a complete art of architecture, the
masterpieces of painting are every-
where for the opposite reason. And if
we do not always value a master the
more as his art is more nearly com-
plete, neither do we always value him
especially who has placed new scien-
tific conquests at the disposal of art.
Palma Vecchio painted by the side of
Titian, but is only a minor master;
Botticelli remained of the generation
before Leonardo, but he is one of the
immortal great. Paolo Uccello, by his
study of perspective, made a distinct
advance in pictorial science, but his
interest for us is purely historic; Fra
Angelico made no advance whatever,
but he practised consummately the cur-
rent art as he found it, and his work
is eternally delightful. At every stage
of its development the art of painting
has been a sufficient medium for the
expression of a great man's mind, and
wherever and whenever a great man
has practised it, the result has been a
great and permanently valuable work
of art.
For this seems finally to be the law
of all the arts. The one essential pre-
requisite to the production of a great
work of art is a great man. You can-
not have the art without the man, and
when you have the man you have the
art. His time and his surroundings
will color him; his art will not be at
one time or place precisely what it
might be at another. But at bottom
the art is the man, and at all times and
in all countries is just as great as the
man.
Let us, then, clear our minds of the
illusion that there is in any important
sense such a thing as progress in the
fine arts. We may with a clear con-
science judge each new work for what
it appears in itself to be, asking of it
that it be noble and beautiful and rea-
sonable, not that it be novel and pro-
gressive. If it be great art, it will al-
ways be novel enough, for there will be
a great mind behind it, and no two
great minds are alike. And if it be
novel without being great, how shall
we be the better off? There are
enough forms of mediocre or evil art
in the world already. Being no longer
intimidated by the fetish of progress,
when a thing calling itself a work of
art seems to us hideous and degraded,
indecent and insane, we shall have the
courage to say so, and shall not care
to investigate it further. Detestable
things have been produced in the past,
and are none the less detestable because
we are able to see how they came to
be produced. Detestable things are
produced now, and they will be no
more admirable if we learn to under-
stand the minds that create them. Even
should such things prove to be not the
mere freaks of a diseased intellect
they seem, but a necessary outgrowth
of the conditions of the age and a true
prophecy of "the art of the future,"
they ar^ not necessarily the better for
that. It is only that the future will be
very unlucky in its art.
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NATIONAL ASSETS
By Francis Hopkinson Smith
Some weeks ago I stood on the Capi-
toline Hill in Rome, close to the statue
of Marcus Aurelius, the golden lustre
of its bronze showing through the
stains of centuries. Against the blue,
glistening like a glacier, towered the
marble memorial to Victor Emmanuel,
the sweep of its serried steps echoing
the tread of hundreds of reverent feet.
The bronze was cast when the victori-
ous legions of the empire crowded the
Appian Way ; the marble was chiseled
only a few years ago, and the sound of
the completing hammer is still heard
along its unfinished front. Both ex-
press the gratitude and homage of na-
tions enriched and glorified by the per-
sonal achievements of men with but a
single eye to their country's good. Both
men in the highest and widest sense
stood head and shoulders above their
brothers. Both men were national as-
sets.
Behind the outburst of gratitude
which prompted these tributes to their
deeds, perpetuating their names so that
all the people might see, lay a deeper
and more significant meaning, one full
of purpose. This was that neither their
own nor subsequent generations should
forget. England thus laid the founda-
tion of her empire, so that to-day her
written history is only a repetition of
the names of the men who made her
great.
Perhaps in a new civilization like
our own, where, as has been the case
in other young republics, each and
every man was king, one as good as
the other, it was to be expected that, at
least for a while, the nation could do
without heroes. More important things
absorbed us, and influenced our na-
tional life, the converting of stone into
bread being one. Then there followed
the struggle for family existence inside
and outside the blockhouse, and, as the
years wore on, there came the struggle
to repair the fences that the War of the
Revolution had laid low.
Only one or two heroes loomed up,
and these were duly honored in marble
and brick, notably the Father of his
country, as well as a few of those who
had been of immediate use in giving
the new republic the right to live.
With the Civil War and our escape
from national chaos, an increased and
wider spirit of gratitude toward those
who had fought and died in the defense
of the Union asserted itself, and in the
immediately succeeding years statues
of marble and bronze were hidden in
convenient and ofttimes charitable foli-
age, planted boldly on commanding
hills, or placed in the center of spacious
squares. Some of these testimonials, it
is true, were rather late in seeing the
light, and the hat had to be passed and
repassed with persistent frequency be-
fore the roof shed the rain or the en-
circling scaflfolding was razed to the
ground. In one instance, when a me-
morial to a great soldier remained in-
complete, an eyesore and reproach to
the throngs who passed it daily, it was
only when another distinguished Ameri-
can traversed the city in a cab, begging
literally from door to door, that the
necessary funds were collected, and the
structure was finished.
The debt of gratitude due the hero
whose efforts had resulted in our na-
tional wealth and prosperity, and whose
bones were to be enshrined within its
granite walls, could wait. We had be-
come busy — extremely and profitably
busy.
This absorption in our own affairs
showed itself in other and less excus-
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NATIONAL ASSETS
3"
able forms. So acute had become the
competition in the climb of life, and so
insistent were some of us to get on and
up, that a new line of action was agreed
upon. To rise above your fellow-man
in the mad rush up the ladder of recog-
nition and accomplishment, it became
necessary not only to mount your neigh-
bor's shoulders, but to be equally active
with your muddy boots when you
passed the gentleman's visage.
Another discovery was that while one
could catch more flies with honey than
with vinegar, there swarmed a very
large mass who could be tempted with
carrion.
Then followed the still further dis-
covery that this last procedure could be
made to pay commercially, in some in-
stances to pay enormously. Instantly,
certain men of the baser sort got to-
gether, and a flood of abuse and mis-
representation unequaled in the world's
history was let loose. As the months
went by, not only some of the more
sensational newspapers, but one or
more of the respectable magazines, lent
their aid. Individuals, corporations,
groups of men prominent in the com-
munity, were attacked, and their names
held up to ridicule and contempt, many
of them names which in the near fu-
ture, it is to be hoped, will be borne on
the bronze and marble of grateful gen-
erations yet unborn.
This new and highly profitable indus-
try was thought to have reached the
climax of success immediately before
the late Spanish War, when the center
of the attack was directed against the
then President of the United States,
afterward the nation's martyr, for with-
holding his hand from the sword until
every other means of adjustment had
failed. That this surmise was prema-
ture is proved by the subsequent as-
saults, after the war was over, made
upon the men who had carried out his
orders and who, by their pluck, their
devotion to duty, their patriotism and
their interest in all that made for the
welfare of the republic, had brought the
conflict to a successful end.
It will be just as well to recall the
nature and quality of this abuse. It
may help us to a clearer vision of the
motive and results. It is not so very
far back.
We all remember that morning in
May when a thrill quivered throughout
the country — a thrill that kept up its
vibrations for months. A mere boy he
was, compared to the others. The Gov-
ernment had paid for his education,
and he must do something in return.
Our fleet of cats crouched in a circle.
Behind a narrow crack in the Cuban
coast lay the Spanish Armada. Plug
the mouth of the crack with a sunken
transport, and the mice would be
trapped, an easy prey to land cats and
water cats. When the dawn broke, he
was clinging to a fragment, his body
scorched, his clothes in tatters. Even
the Spanish admiral sent out his boat
and later a flag of truce, conveying his
unbounded admiration over the exploit
of one so young and so daring.
His countrymen took up the refrain:
"Our gallant hero!" "Our wonder of
the world !'' "A man made of the stuff
Americans are made of !" Thermopylae,
Horatius at the bridge were child's
play compared with it.
How long did it last? Until a fool-
ish and highly emotional woman kissed
him in a Western city.
Take another morning and another
hero, one who woke the civilized globe
to the realization that from that time on
the United States was a world power —
and it did not take sixty minutes.
"When you are ready, Gridley." And
it was all over.
For weeks the echoes of that first
gun rolled on. Presidents, kings, em-
perors, czars sat up and rubbed their
eyes. They are still at it. At home,
while the roar of the echoes lasted, his
countrymen tumbled over one another
in their eagerness to do him honor.
Triumphal arches were built; miles of
people under acres of waving flags
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
shouted themselves hoarse. Then an-
other wave set in — one of gratitude to-
ward the man who had exalted their
flag. Money began to pour in by the
fives, tens, hundreds, and thousands.
Some testimonial must be given the
sea-god. He must have a house all his
own, to do with as he pleased, to be a
comfort and a blessing in his later
years, the gift of the nation really, the
gift of those he had glorified. And it
must be in Washington, too, where the
diplomats of the globe could see how
w^e honored our heroes.
The purchase was made, the deeds
were drawn, the installation was com-
pleted. Then the recipient, a grizzled
old sea-dog who had spent his best
years — all of them, in fact — in the ser-
vice of his country, keeping watch in
sleet and storm, or walking the quarter-
deck, took unto himself a wife, and
settled himself in his easy-chair for a
few years of well-deserved rest. Hav-
ing kept his honor clean, and with only
his pay, and being also a gentleman
with fixed ideas regarding provision for
the woman he married, he gave her
what was his own.
Then the sluice-gates were opened;
words of one syllable in the blackest of
ink swept half-way across the front
page. Paragraphs in italics told of the
infamy. Such phrases as "a case of
naval cerebral distension," "an over-
rated man," followed by the more posi-
tive criticisms, "to say the least, it was
closely allied to sheer robbery, this tak-
ing property which was," etc., etc.,
crowded the succeeding columns.
I can see him now as his jaw tight-
ened, just as it tightened that morning
off Manila, and I can see his brows
knit when he remembered, as he read,
that there was perhaps nothing so un-
grateful as a republic — his only re-
sponse, you will remember; for he did
not open his lips, silence being the one
reply that his dignity would permit.
And there comes another morning —
the morning of our day of national in-
dependence. Guns from a mighty fleet
this time; each man a hero, from the
boy scrubbing each deck, to the captain
who walked it. For weeks they had
lain in wait ; so severe had been the dis-
cipline that the thoughtless lighting of
a cigarette put a man in irons. This
time it took only half an hour — forty
minutes, to be exact — to wipe a power
oflf the map of the world.
The country went wild. "Our noble
fleet!" "Our boys!" "The man behind
the gun !" Balls, receptions, gold med-
als, the thanks of Congress, fire-works,
illuminations, photographs of the sev-
eral commanders, dozens of them, some
when they were ten years old, as long
as the "news" proved profitable.
The financial managers of this new
and now enormously profitable industry
again put their heads together. The
best way to throw mud in this instance
was with both hands. Take the two
heroes and pit them against each other :
then let them have it, taking care so
that each could abuse the other. Thanks
be to God, neither of them did!
There was no word of gratitude
now, only money talked ; nor was there
any consideration for the feelings of
the men who had risked their lives to
save their country, as had been the case
with those other heroes of Rome and
England. This time the attack was
from behind fences, in small head-lines,
and in double-headed columns; such
phrases as "A trustworthy gentleman
conversant with facts, says," etc.. or
"It is currently reported among his in-
intimate friends," etc., or "A promi-
nent officer who, of course, wishes his
name withheld, being subject to discip-
line, was on the bridge at the time,
and is positive that," etc., caught the
public eye and poisoned the public
mind.
Well, they broke his heart and sent
him to his grave before his time, this
brave, simple, God-fearing, honest gen-
tleman, who never lifted his voice to
defame any man, and who would ra-
ther have cut oflF his right hand than
rob a brother-officer of his just due.
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NATIONAL ASSETS
53
These assaults are seldom made on
the common man — the man with the
hoe or the dinner-pail, but on those
whose official positions often make it
impossible for them to strike back. The
man with the hoe could seek out the
writer and break his head with its han-
dle, but the man of good breeding and
official dignity must continue to suffer
in silence.
But think of the agony endured —
Lincoln, sitting alone through the
night, his very soul torn with the in-
justice meted out to him by the very
men he was giving his heart's blood to
save from annihilation; Grant, his
great spirit crushed and broken by ill-
deserved comments on his financial
ruin; McKinley, his tender, kindly na-
ture misunderstood, his courage and
loyalty denied, his unselfish devotion
to the cause of peace and mercy ridi-
culed and laughed at, and this day af-
ter day, while the lives of thousands of
men was dependent upon the stroke of
his pen.
And the list can be extended, is being
extended to-day, whenever and wher-
ever an American citizen in either civil,
military, or official life, no matter how
honorable his motives, or how great
his sacrifice, lifts his head above the
crust. Especially has it been extended
during the political campaign just
closed. In fact, it may as well be ad-
mitted that the heap of journalistic
dirt and miscellaneous rubbish has
never risen to such mammoth propor-
tions.
And yet, when the dust of conflict
has been blown away by the sober
breath of the people, and the common
sense of most of the community has
had a chance to assert itself, there will
be found not one clear, unbiased mind
among us who will not affirm that the
three principal candidates of the last
compaign stood for all that is highest
in personal honesty, courage, and intel-
ligence. The sober-minded knew at the
time, as they know now, the motive of
these defamations, and the money made
out of the despicable business. They
knew, moreover, that, according to his
lights, each candidate has done his duty
as he saw it, and each candidate had
given the best that was in him, for
the welfare of his country and his
countrymen.
But how about men who are not
sober-minded? A\'hat about the igno-
rant immigrant who lands upon our
shores? How does this continued
abuse of our public men, whether
statesmen, financiers, or manufacturers,
affect him?
Consider for a moment the magni-
tude and variety of this influx. Con-
sider, too, its marvelous and unprece-
dented growth. Take our own city
alone, and grasp, if you can, the fact
that our municipal control is slipping
from us, and that to-day over forty
per cent, of our population is foreign-
bom. Of these, Russians, Poles, Aus-
trians, Hungarians, and Italians pre-
dominate, the increase in the ten years
equaling one-sixth of our whole popu-
lation, namely, six hundred and fifty
thousand souls.
In detail, the Russians have in these
ten years risen from 180,000 to
483,000; the Austrians from 90,000 to
193,000; the Hungarians have doubled;
the Italians show an increase of
200,000, while the number of Greeks,
Roumanians, and Turkish subjects
have swelled in proportion. As an ex-
ample of the figures to which the more
recent invasion has reached, take those
of the Poles, showing that in 191 1
alone 71,466 Polish immigrants were
admitted to this country, 64,000 of
whom were over fourteen years of
age, of which last number one third
could neither read nor write. Again,
of this total of 71,466, only 170 had
a profession, and only 5384 were
skilled laborers, the balance being of
the kind known as ''coarse labor."
The only falling off in this enor-
mous immigration is in the easily
assimilated, and therefore the more
desirable, peoples from northern
Europe — England, Sweden, Norway,
and Denmark, as well as Canada, both
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54
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
English and French, whose arrivals
show so small an increase as to be un-
appreciable. For many of these speak
our tongue, and have a just and rea-
sonable regard for our national aims,
institutions, and by common consent
must be regarded, and I say it in all
respect, as the most welcome and the
most favored accession to our ranks.
We have, therefore, whether we ad-
mit it or not, to grapple with and edu-
cate men and women — in the case of
the Poles only a fraction of them were
children — all ignorant of our language,
who have not only lived in lands where
the struggle for existence is acute, but
under sovereignty where in many cases
simple justice has been denied them.
What, then, will be the impression
made on their minds when they are
told that our national motto is
"Money," that every branch of our po-
litical and civil life is corrupt, and that
the same antagonism between the rich
and poor exists here even in worse
form than it did at home? Is it at all
strange that they soon become the will-
ing tools of wild and incoherent agi-
tators as ignorant as themselves, and
that Chicago, Lawrence, and West
Virginia, and only two days ago under
the Palisades in New Jersey, with their
list of dead and wounded, are the re-
sult?
More important still, what do our
young men think — those who are gradu-
ated by the hundreds and tens of hun-
dreds every year from our colleges and
universities? Is no man in public life
honest ? Whether he is or not, is there
any incentive for any one of them to
enter public life when one of the re-
wards, sometimes the only reward, is
the ridicule and contempt heaped upon
him, to say nothing of charges affect-
ing his personal character and indi-
vidual honesty?
What, then, is the remedy? A suit
for libel would be so futile as to be
heartily welcomed; the publicity would
not only increase the circulation, but
the award of one cent damages be a
veritable joy to the business end of
the paper. And it is hard to expect
a greater sum than one cent. It is
true that two years ago some English
newspapers paid one quarter of a
million of pounds to a soap manufac-
turer because of a series of editorials
which were so mild in form, accord-
ing to our standards, that they would
have been looked upon as spicy adver-
tisements rather than defamations;
but we are not in England, or France,
or Germany, or any other part of the
globe where it is unsafe to besmirch
the character of your fellow-man. On
the contrary, we live under the Stars
and Stripes, emblem of the greatest
country on earth, a land whose proud-
est boast is of equal rights and free-
dom, and whose written law guarantees
every man a square deal.
How, then, can we cut this cancer
from the body politic? How cure the
disease and thus rehabilitate the pa-
tient ?
The remedy lies with ourselves.
With you, fellow-members of the In-
stitute, and with me, and with every
soul who boasts a ten-commandment
conscience. Let me recall them for
you.
"Love thy God." Certainly, we say,
with the greatest of pleasure.
"Thou shalt not steal." Of course
not; no gentleman ever does.
"Thou shalt do no murder." By no
manner of means. How dare you in-
sult me?
"Thou shalt not bear false witness
against thy neighbor." Here follows
a dead silence. That is, thou shalt not
steal his good name, nor murder his
career, nor brand him as a criminal or
a fool, these ten commandments, re-
member, being ten rods bound to-
gether by a ribbon of justice, mercy,
and peace. To keep one, means to
keep all.
The sum of the ten is, **Do unto
others as you would have them do unto
you" — the law of the Square Deal.
We keep its letter and its spirit best
when we honor the names and uphold
the hands of the men who are our true
national assets.
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At the morning session Mr. Howard Brockway, a member of the Institute,
played music of his own composition, as follows:
a. Dance of the Sylphs. Op. 19.
(From Sylvan Suite for Orcheslra.)
b. AtTwiligrht. Op. 39. No. i.
c. Idyl of Murmuring Water. Op. 39. No. 2.
and in the second group:
a. Humoreske. Op. 36. No. 4.
b. Ballade. F major. Op. 10.
At the afternoon session the following program was rendered by the
Barrere Ensemble:
Rondino (2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons) Beethoven
Menuet (i flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons) C Debussy
Scherzo from Little Symphony (i flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets,
2 horns and 2 bassoons) Ch, Gounod
Finale, from Serenade E flat (2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 horns, 2 bassoons) Mozart
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FURNESS, LEA, MITCHELL, OILMAN*
By Arthur Twining Hadley
Forty-one years ago Horace Howard
Furness published his variorum edi-
tion of *'Rbmeo and Juliet." Within
the compass of a single volume he
brought together the materials and re-
sults of Shakespearean scholarship
which the reader had hitherto been
forced to seek in many books and many
places. No such work had been done
in England for half a century ; no such
work had ever been done in the United
States.
What first impressed the critics was
the comprehensiveness and thorough-
ness of the collection. It included
whatever was worth including; it re-
produced with accuracy whatever it
quoted. But as time went on and as
similar editions of other plays fol-
lowed, the essential importance of Fur-
ness's own contributions came more
and more into the foreground. His se-
lection and quotation were marked by
the spirit of the scholar. His own com-
ment, brief as it often was, had, beside
the merit of scholarship, the added
charm of literary form. On both
shores of the Atlantic it was recog-
nized that we had here a man who un-
derstood Shakespeare and could help
to the world's understanding of him, a
man of letters in his own right. And
the world's chief regret about this edi-
tion now is that the span of human life
was too short for even Furness's amaz-
ing industry to cover quite half of the
field which he had chosen.
It has been the misfortune of
Shakespearean critics in general that
they have allowed themselves to be sur-
rounded and befogged by the cloud of
controversy; and too often this cloud
has thickened as years went on until
*The three papers that follow were read
l)efore the Academy at the special meeting in
New York, Friday, December 13. 1912.
little was left of the original illumina-
tion except angry flashes of lightning.
With Furness it was otherwise. Al-
though he was bred to the law, or per-
haps because he was bred to the law,
he learned that the ideas which he had
to convey would be most fully accepted
if he kept clear of unnecessary argu-
ment or quarrel. As a consequence,
each decade saw him more admired
and loved by his fellow-workers, more
serene in temper, and more charming
in courtesy. The wine of his nature
was of that full-flavored kind which is
mellowed rather than soured with age.
For it was not by his writings alone
that he elucidated the spirit of Shakes-
peare. He did it yet more fully in his
life and in his person. I knew no
greater pleasure than that of listening
to Furness as he read with whole-heart-
ed enthusiasm and occasional quaint
comment some familiar play whose text
took new life through his voice. For
he had lived with the great dramatist
until Shakespeare's spirit had become
his; and if, as we hope, he is gone
where he may hold personal converse
with the immortals of three hundred
years ago, the Raleighs and the Bacons
and the Jonsons will welcome him as
one of their nimiber. For to that so-
ciety did he already belong while yet
he was here with us.
It is but a short time since Dr. Fur-
ness was himself called upon to deliver
a commemorative address in honor of
a fellow-member of our body, Henry
Charles Lea. I cannot forbear making
a brief quotation from what was then
said of one friend by another who was
so soon to follow in his footsteps:
"A man's light [as Jeremy Taylor says]
burns awhile and then turns blue and faint,
and he goes to converse with spirits: then
56
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FURNESS, LEA, MITCHELL, OILMAN
57
he hands his taper to another." But where
shall we find him who is worthy to accept
Lea's taper? Of him who shall venture to
hold it, it will crave wary walking to keep
its flame as pure and bright as when it il-
lumined the pages beneath Lea's own hand.
And warily must a man walk, as
critics have often found to their cost,
who will try to estimate Lea's work in
its full profundity. If I had to pick
out his salient characteristic, I should
say that it was honesty; strict, uncom-
promising devotion to truth. He had
two sides to his public life, the practical
and the scholarly; yet in each of them
the same fundamental characteristics
were manifest. As a practical man of
affairs he stood for honest government ;
as a scholar and writer he stood for
honest treatment of history.
Those of us who have ever tried to
write history, even on a small scale,
know how hard this is. It is so easy
to generalize on inadequate evidence,
and so vastly laborious to hunt down
facts which may in the end run coun-
ter to our own prepossessions, that
most men, especially if they have the
gift of literary style, incline toward
the smoother path. This temptation
must have been particularly subtle in
the case of Lea. For he did not ap-
proach the ''History of the Inquisi-
tion," or the various other topics of
medieval and modem jurisprudence
which he treated, in the spirit of a
mere chronicler. It was for principles,
not for facts, that he cared. The in-
stinct of generalization was strong
within him. The ethical element was
ever before his mind. Yet with all
these excuses for preferring what is
commonly called the philosophic treat-
ment of his subject, he kept himself to
the strictly historic one. Lea showed
us how history ought to be written,
and he showed us the resolution with
which a true man of letters can resist
the temptation to write it otherwise.
We can well close this tribute with
the words of Mr. James Bryce, himself
a shining example of the combination
of honest citizenship and honest schol-
arship: "I may sum up the impression
which Mr. Lea's intellectual character
and attitude leave upon his readers, and
left most of all upon those who knew
him personally, by saying that he loved
truth with a whole-hearted devotion."
Bred, like Furness, to the law,
Donald Grant Mitchell found the at-
tractions of literature stronger than
those of forensic ambition. While Fur-
ness was frequenting the society of
Elizabethan days, Mitchell, in his own
quaint and quiet way, was preparing
himself for the companionship of
choice souls of another type. I doubt
not that he has already received a warm
welcome from the congenial spirits of
Izaak Walton and Dr. Thomas Browne
and our own Washington Irving; and
has compared notes with Horace and
Pliny about Sabine farms or Tuscan
villas. For his was essentially the field
of the contemplative essay, the dream
or reverie, in which the autobiographi-
cal form adds charm to the style and
felicity to the thought.
If he passed from the speculative to
the practical side of life, it was to
touch with deft hand upon the joys
and cares of the country gentleman.
Of this good old English type Mitchell
was himself a superb representative;
handsome in person, genial in manner,
unfailing in kindness of heart. Living
on a hillside farm just outside of the
city, but during his lifetime untouched
by the city's expansion, — "My Farm of
Edgewood," of which he wrote so de-
lightfully,— the view from his window
over the spires of the town to the woods
and the sea beyond them was sym-
bolical of his whole outlook on life.
In the last public address which he
delivered Mitchell summarized in char-
acteristic fashion his attitude toward
certain present-day educational move-
ments :
There are oldish people astir, gone-by
products of these mills of learning — who
will watch anxiously lest harm be done to
apostles of the old humanities. You may
apotheosize the Faradays and Danas and the
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Edisons and Huxleys, and we will fling our
caps in the air. But we shall ask that you
spare us our Plato, our Homer, our Vergil,
our Dante, and perhaps our "chattering"
Aristotle and scoffing Carlyle. Truth, how-
ever and wherever won, without nervous ex-
pression to spread and plant it, is helpless —
a bird without wings ! And there are beliefs
tenderly cherished — and I call the spires of
nineteen centuries to witness — which do not
rest on the lens or the scalpel.
It was fortunate for American educa-
tion that it numbered among its leaders
men who took the same large view of
life that Mitchell did. And of such men
none was more eminent for his catholic-
ity of understanding than Daniel Coit
Oilman. Well might he have said, with
the Roman of old, "Homo sum, humani
nihil a me alienum puto." His literary
activity indicates his breadth of in-
terest. In his work on Monroe he is a
historian; in his life of Dana he is a
biographer ; in his two books on educa-
tion he appears as an essayist and a
critic.
There was but one thing which Gil-
man demanded of a subject, and that
was that it should be interesting. Dull-
ness, whenever and wherever found,
was an unpardonable fault; persistent
and confirmed dullness was the sin
against the Holy Ghost which could
not be forgiven. This demand was
what most frequently brought Gilman
into conflict with the conservatives in
educational matters. As far as mere
pedagogic theory was concerned, he
was by no means so radical as Eliot or
White. For classical study, if classical
study could be made stimulating, he
had the strongest sympathy; to a well-
ordered curriculum, if it could enlist
the active interest of the students, he
gave appreciation and approval. But
the college curriculum as Gilman gen-
erally found it was not made interest-
ing. Language was taught mechanical-
ly; psychology and metaphysics were
handled according to the dictates of
the Scotch school, that apotheosis of
dullness; history and science were
either learned by rote or not learned at
all. No wonder that his earlier years
at Yale and at California were spent in
waging conflicts not always successful
against those who loved the dry bones
of routine or inefficiency.
At Johns Hopkins he was given a
freer hand, and was able to collect
about him as the nucleus of a new uni-
versity men who were animated by in-
tellectual interest of a type akin to Gil-
man's own. They cared enough about
their several subjects to make re-
searches. They were animated by Gil-
man's example and precept to give the
benefit of their researches to the world
of science and letters. Students were
not numerous, appliances were not ade-
quate ; but Gilman had created, as Soc-
rates in his day had created, a phron-
tistery, a thinking-shop, of a kind
America has probably never seen be-
fore or since.
No man's total contribution to science
or letters is measured by his own pub-
lished work. The best service which
he renders is generally found in the
stimulus which he gives to others about
him and after him. He who approves
what is vital and rejects what is ster-
ile, who encourages the men of talent
and genius and protects them against
the tyranny of routine, is the man
whose labor counts for most in the end.
Measured in this fashion, Gilman's
work stands out in its true proportions
as a contribution to the arts and letters
of the country and the world.
Thus thought on thought is piled, till some
vast mass
Is loosened, and the nations echo round.
Horace Howard Furness died August 13, 1912; Henry Charles Lea died October ag, 1909;
Donald Grant Mitchell died December 15, 1908; Daniel Coit Gilman died October 13, IQ08,
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LA FARGE, ABBEY, MILLET
By Thomas Hastings
While here assembled, let us pay trib-
ute to the distinguished services of
three members of this Academy who
have recently been taken from us:
John La Farge, Edwin Austin Abbey,
and Francis Davis Millet. As they
lived in their work, they are still alive
in the influence their untiring endeavors
have produced upon modern art. They
have helped to quicken within us our
sense of beauty, and to aid us to un-
derstand better its uplifting and refin-
ing influences. Such lives largely con-
tribute to the happiness of their fel-
low-men. Those of us who enjoyed
personal intercourse with them must
realize how they themselves found hap-
piness in their work; they were happy
temperamentally, and so imparted hap-
piness to others. There was another in-
herent quality of character of which
they all had full measure — that enthu-
siasm which made all intercourse with
them interesting and stimulating. It
was the enthusiasm of the real artist,
the enthusiasm which stimulates the
creative faculties and intuitively quick-
ens the insight and understanding.
When we find the experience and
knowledge which come with age stimu-
lated by an enthusiasm which does not
grow old under these conditions, men
have retarded their declining years and
have often produced their best work
late in life. The flowing stream never
becomes stagnant. While a man's in-
terest in the opportunities of life con-
tinues, the possibilities of productive-
ness are unlimited. We may think that
by observation we have learned what to
expect of one another, but if we still
have enthusiasm, we need know no
limitations in what we may expect of
ourselves. The loss of enthusiasm is
the end of the artist's career.
John La Farge was a young old man.
He was born in New York in March,
1835. His father was a Frenchman, an
officer in the navy, who, in 1806, took
part in an expedition to Santo Domin-
go, where he married the daughter of
a planter who is said to have had some
skill as a miniature-painter. John La
Farge married Margaret M. Perry, the
granddaughter of Commodore O. H.
Perry. In his early life La Farge un-
dertone the study of law; but, always
attracted to art, it was not long before
he devoted himself wholly to the study
of painting. At that time, while in
Newport, he studied under William
Morris Hunt. The charm of some of
his early landscapes, painted there and
while he was studying with Couture in
Paris, is well remembered by those of
us who have seen them at our current
exhibitions.
It was in the early seventies that he
first began experimenting in glass
that afterward resulted in his ingen-
ious and well-known new methods of
construction and use of materials, with
their accompanying brilliancy of color.
His work in this direction made a re-
markable impression upon American
glass. Through all the years of glass-
working he continued to paint, produc-
ing many important decorations, more
especially in some of our churches. An
event in his life was when H. H. Rich-
ardson commissioned him to decorate
Trinity Church in Boston. Later, his
work appeared in the Church of the
Ascension, the Church of the Paulist
Fathers, the Brick Church, and the St.
Thomas's Church that was destroyed
by fire.
In 1886, La Farge went to Japan with
his friend Mr. Henry Adams, and after-
ward to the South Sea Islands. His cor-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
respondence, which later appeared in
"The Century Magazine," established
him in the minds of the public as a writ-
er of unusual natural ability. In his
later work as a literary man he showed
an unusual degree of versatility and
flexibility of mind. For those of us
who know well the extent and unusual
quality and merits of the man's talents,
it is futile at this time to comment fur-
ther upon his undertakings, his draw-
ings, his water-colors, his paintings, his
glass, or his writings, or to attempt to
enumerate the many honors he re-
ceived during his long and successful
life — honors not only from his own
country, but from France, England, and
Germany. Had we time, we would
rather dwell upon him as our friend
and fellow-Academician, a remarkable
character, an artist philosopher. Those
of us who knew him would agree, I be-
lieve, that, when all else had been said,
to know him and to talk with him was
to find La Farge at his best. He was
indeed an artist in conversation, a man
of ideas, with as brilliant a coloring
in his personality as in his painting.
His talk, drawn from his broad experi-
ence, was always full of suggestion, de-
lightful in anecdote and incident, with
a profound sense of humor, and a lit-
erary quality of great refinement un-
usual even in written form.
From the time of Benjamin West
until John S. Sargent, there has always
been a considerable number of self-
expatriated American artists who have
given renown to American art in
Europe. Edwin Austin Abbey was un-
questionably one of the most illustrious
of this number. He was born in Phila-
delphia, April I, 1852, a grandson of
R OS well Abbey, a prosperous merchant,
who was also an inventor of type-foun-
dry appliances and a man of decided
artistic temperament. He was the son
of William Maxwell Abbey, who was
likewise a Philadelphia merchant, and
something of an amateur artist.
In 1866, when only fourteen years
of age. Abbey published his first draw-
ings in Oliver Optic's paper, "Our
Boys and Girls." During the early
years of his life he was a student in the
Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.
Coming to New York at the age of
twenty, he quickly developed, and was
soon after employed by "Harper's Mag-
azine." Here he acquired a remarkable
facility as a draftsman in black and
white. His distinguished work as an il-
lustrator gave him at an unusually
early age a wide and popular reputa-
tion. Even at this time Old-World
legends had a potent influence upon his
character and the general direction of
his work. In his portrayal of old songs
and ballads, as well as in his illustra-
tions of historic characters, he seemed
to bring to life and to make real the
finest fancies of English literature.
"She Stoops to Conquer/' "The Desert-
ed Village," Herrick's poems, and
Shakespeares' plays, were brought into
a new light by the facile pen of the
young artist. It was perhaps this spe-
cial interest in English literature that,
in 1883, influenced him to make his
residence in England.
At frequent intervals his work, more
especially his drawings, pastels, and
water-colors, have been shown both
here and abroad at the exhibitions of
the numerous societies to which he be-
longed. It always attracted the ad-
miration of a large and appreciative
audience. It was not until 1895,
through the influence of Charles F.
McKim, that he was commissioned to
paint his first important decoration, the
well-known series of panels, "The Holy
Grail," for the Boston Public Library,
which, with Sargent's notable decora-
tions in the same building, have be-
come renowned as perhaps the most re-
markable mural decorations ever paint-
ed by American artists. Not only did
he show in this comparatively new un-
dertaking his great ability as a painter,
but he fulfilled to the utmost what his
earlier work had promised — a studious
conscientiousness in all matters of de-
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LA FAROE, ABBEY. MILLET
6i
tail, with a remarkable capacity for re-
search into the costumes and customs
of past ages.
In 1890 he married Gertrude Mead of
New York, and for many years they
lived in Fairford, Gloucestershire, Eng-
land, surrounded by a most artistic at-
mosphere.
In 1901 he was commissioned by
King Edward VII to paint for Buck-
ingham Palace the official picture of
the coronation. From that time the
greater part of his life was devoted to
painting, his last and most recent work
being three important decorative panels
for the State House at Harrisburg, in
his native State. Unfortunately, he
did not live to see this work completed.
In this country many honors and uni-
versity degrees were conferred upon
him, and he was the recipient of many
foreign decorations, and in 1898 he was
made a Royal Academician. His last
year was the sixtieth of his life, and
judging from the progressive excellence
of his work and the vitality and en-
thusiasm of the man, there was every
promise of even greater and finer re-
sults if he had lived longer to reap
more fully the benefits of experience
and his constant and untiring habits of
work.
An unparalleled event in the his-
tory of navigation was the recent foun-
dering of the great steamship Titanic.
Frank Davis Millet was one of her pas-
sengers. In mid-ocean, under a starlit
sky, which had dissolved the darkness
of the night, he must have seen the last
of this world. Amid the confusion and
debris of the sinking ship, he could see
only an unbroken horizon over the wa-
ters of the Atlantic, a circle on the
earth's surface, emblem of eternal life.
Thinking more of the safety of others
than of himself, our friend was taken
from us in the fullness of his power. I
know of no other American artist who
has served such high and varied pur-
poses with such unselfish devotion to
the interests of American art, and with
such an untiring capacity for work, un-
hesitatingly sacrificing his time for the
good of others. Indeed, he was so pub-
lic-spirited that I have often thought
that he gave himself so freely that his
unselfishness seriously interfered with
his own private interests in life.
Though gentle and unassuming, he
was a leader of men, an educator of
men. He would have succeeded in
whatever he might have undertaken.
He had a singular gift for making
friends. To know him was to love
him. He had a remarkable fund of in-
teresting information on the widest va-
riety of subjects.
We were members together of the
National Fine Arts Commission in
Washington, where I learned to know
what a delightful privilege it was to
work with him. Intellectually he was
somewhat inclined to wander, being of-
ten drawn into other channels than art.
He was born at Mattapoisett, Massa-
chusetts, in November, 1846. He was
the youngest man of sixty-six I have
ever known. During the Civil War he
was a drummer in the 50th Massachu-
setts Regiment. In 1869 he was gradu-
ated from Harvard, later associating
himself with Boston journalism, and de-
voting what spare time he could find to
the study of art. It was not long be-
fore he went to Europe and entered as
a student in the Royal Academy of
Antwerp, where he made great progress
and showed much promise. He then
traveled widely, returning to Boston to
assist La Farge in his work in Trinity
Church.
For his brilliant services as corre-
spondent for the New York and Lon-
don papers in the Russo-Turkish War,
and for bravery on the battle-field, he
was decorated by the czar. Later he
was sent as a war-correspondent to the
Philippines. He was chairman of the
Advisory Committee of the National
Museum, a member of the Municipal
Art Commission of New York, a trus-
tee of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, secretary of the American Federa-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
tion of Arts, and member of the Na-
tional Fine Arts Commission. He had
recently been appointed the executive
officer of the United American Aca-
demy and the American School of
Classical Studies at Rome, and was
returning on the Titanic after visit-
ing Rome in the interest of this insti-
tution. It seemed a fitting place for
him, with his unusual ability for organi-
zation.
In 1879 he married Elizabeth Greeley
Merrill. While their home was in
Broadway, Worcestershire, England,
his life in recent years was spent most-
ly between Washington, New York, and
Rome. With all this time given to
traveling and public affairs, it seems
almost incredible that he could have
produced so much in painting, which
was the actual means of his livelihood.
He had traveled extensively all over
the world, and spoke nearly all of the
principal languages of Europe.
In 1 89 1 he made a canoe trip the full
length of the Danube for Harper
Brothers, who published his book enti-
tled "The Danube from the Black For-
est to the Black Sea." About the same
time appeared his collection of short
stories and his translation of Tolstoi's
"Sebastapol."
In recent years he devoted a great
deal of time to decorations. The his-
torical paintings in the capitol at St.
Paul, the decorations in the custom-
house at Baltimore, and a historical
decoration in the court-house at
Newark, New Jersey, are among his
most important later works.
Few men enjoyed life as he did, and
few men gave more enjoyment to
others. He will be missed, and no one
man can be fotmd to fill his place —
alas ! so many places I
Millet was a strong, intelligent man
of character, with a sweetness and sim-
plicity almost childlike. His nature was
joyous, which attracted men to him,
and always assured him their collabora-
tion in whatever work he undertook.
John La Farge died November 14, 1910; Edwin Austin Abbey died August i, 1911; Frank
Davis Millet died April 14, 1912.
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HIGGINSON, MRS. HOWE, CRAWFORD. MOODY
By Bliss Perry
Compared with the men treasured in
Thomas Wentvvorth Higginson's
inexhaustible memories, he himself be-
longed to the "second growth" of our
literature, but he had sprung tall and
straight and graciously from the as yet
unexhausted New England soil. In
the attics of old houses in Salem there
may still be seen wide boards of clear,
straight-grained pine, toned to a mel-
low violin coloring by the stray shafts
of sunlight. Colonel Higginson's prose
had that same flawless texture, the same
heritage and tinge of sunshine. His
style matured very early. It was al-
ready perfected when he wrote the
gay, supple, singing "Charge with
Prince Rupert." It is as difficult to
date one of his essays by the test of its
style as it is to date one of Aldrich's
songs or Longfellow's sonnets. He
did not have the fortune, like his friend
Mrs. Howe, to win fame by one ec-
static lyric, or, like Wasson and El-
lery Channing, to be remembered by
one famous line. Yet there is quality
throughout Higginson's prose and his
slender pages of verse, and there is
rich variety.
It would be hard to find in American
literature any nature essays which sur-
pass his "Water-Lilies," "Foot-paths"
and "A Summer Afternoon"; or an
ethical essay more tonic than "Saints
and Their Bodies." We have had no
biographical essay more wholly admi-
rable than the "Theodore Parker," and
certainly none more delightful than the
"John Holmes"; while a more clever
controversial essay than "Ought Wom-
en to Learn the Alphabet" has not been
written since the alphabet came into
general use. Higginson coasted by
the shores of Romance in "Malbone"
and "The Monarch of Dreams." He
tested repeatedly his gifts as a biog-
rapher. In "Army Life in a Black
Regiment" we touch autobiography.
The book demanded tact and humor,
a sense of human and historical values,
and a professional pride in which the
colonel of the First South Carolina
Volunteers was never wanting. I re-
member that upon one of the last oc-
casions when he attended a meeting
of the Massachusetts Historical So-
ciety a paper was read demonstrating
the ignorance and illiteracy of the ne-
groes of the South Atlantic States,
who, we were assured, could scarcely
speak or even understand English. The
veteran colonel of the First South
Carolina rose very unsteadily to his
feet and made this perfect reply: "My
men could understand me when I gave
the word 'Forward!*''
To praise Higginson's "Cheerful
Yesterdays" is to praise him, so per-
fectly was it a part of him; not the
mere inevitable and conscious betrayal
of the personality of an author, but the
unconditional surrender of it to the
minds and hearts of his friends. In
other words, Mr. Higginson was one
of those fortunate writers who could
transfer to his pages the whole of his
personal character. You can no more
subtract from his books his idealism,
his consistent courage, his erect Ameri-
canism, than you can subtract Sir
Philip Sidney's knightly qualities from
his essay on the nature of poetry.
Higginson loved children and all
innocent things. He was chivalrous
not merely toward women, which is
easy, but toward "woman," which is
somewhat more difficult. His wit had
always a touch of tartness for the
American parvenu, for he had lived
long in Newport and was a good field
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
naturalist. His satire also amused it-
self with the Englishmen who could
not understand what our Civil War
was fought for. But in general Hig-
ginson's list of antipathies was not
much longer than such a list should be.
Surrounded all his life by reformers,
he had, like Emerson, a shrewd, de-
tached sense of the eccentricities of re-
formers. He wrote an amusing essay
about it. He used to bare his noble
gray head whenever he entered a poll-
ing-booth, but he never took off his hat
to any mere vulgar political or literary
majority. To the very end he remained
what Europeans call an "1848" man;
he carried that old idealism serenely
through the demoralized American
epoch of the eighties and nineties into
the new idealistic current of to-day.
It 16 no wonder that he was idolized by
the young.
Yet his good fortune lay not merely
in this identification of his character
with his work as a man of letters. He
was also fortunate in settling upon a
form of literature precisely adapted to
the instincts of his mind. He was a
bom essayist and autobiographer.
Too versatile a workman, and too de-
pendent upon his pen for bread, to
confine himself to his true genre, he
still kept returning to it, like the hom-
ing bee. The flexibility of the essay
form, its venturesomeness, its perpetu-
al sally and retreat, tempted his happy
audacity. But beneath the wit and grace
and fire of his phrases there is the fine
conservatism of the scholar, the inimi-
table touch of the writer whose taste
has been trained by the classics. His
essays on "An Old Latin Text-Book"
and "Sunshine and Petrarch" reveal the
natural bookman. That style of his, as
light and flexible as a rod of split bam-
boo, is the style of many of the im-
mortal classics and humanists; and it
holds when the bigger and coarser
styles warp and weaken.
No contemporary of any writer can
solve what Higginson once called "the
equation of fame." That equation
contains too many unknown quantities.
Lamb's "Essay on Roast Pig," which
has simply a good deal of Charles
Lamb in it, is now as sure of immor-
tality, as far as we can see, as Gib-
bon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire." At least we can say, here
are a dozen volumes into which
Thomas Wentworth Higginson has put
a great deal of himself, clear-grained,
seasoned, sun-bathed stuff. They will
outlast our day and many days.
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, the first
woman to be honored by an election to
the American Academy of Arts and
Letters, was, like her friend Colonel
Higginson, a representative of the
best stock of colonial America. Like
him, she lived to a great age, and re-
ceived with unfeigned pleasure the
homage of the third generation of
writing men and writing women. Her
first books and her earliest literary
friendships date from that quaint New
York of the forties, the Washington
Irving period as it was about to van-
ish. Thenceforward her home was in
Boston. Her marriage to Dr. Howe
and her quick responsiveness to ethical
impulses brought her into intimate re-
lations with that restless, aspiring
movement of reform which character-
ized New England for a score of
years before and after the Civil War.
Mrs. Howe flung herself with girlish
enthusiasm into a dozen "causes," the
education of the blind, the relief of
the poor, the Americanization of for-
eigners, the liberalizing of religion,
the emancipation of women, the move-
ment for international peace. She was
tireless, witty, undismayed, gifted with
an amazing bodily endurance and a
flashing radiance of spirit. She wrote
essays, verses, sermons, and a play, but
her fame as a writer rests almost
wholly upon her "Battle H>Tnn of the
Republic." The poem was scribbled
hastily in the gray dawn after a sound
night's sleep. It was composed, like
many of the songs of Bums, to a well-
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HIGGINSON, MRS. HOWE, CRAWFORD, MOODY
65
known tune. It interpreted, as no
other lyric of the war quite succeeded
in interpreting, the mystical glory of
sacrifice for freedom. Soldiers sang
it in camp; women read it with tears;
children repeated it in school, vaguely
but truly perceiving in it, as thirty
years before their fathers had per-
ceived in Webster's "Reply to Hayne,"
the idea of union made "simple, sensu-
ous, passionate." No American poem
has had a more dramatic and intense
life in the quick-breathing imagination
of men.
Mrs. Howe lived for half a century
after her famous lyric was written, but
the aureole of that one achievement
rested over her until the end. She was a
notable figure at public gatherings, and
her commemorative verses on various
centenary occasions were received with
delight. She prepared a poem for the
first meeting of the American Academy
of Arts and Letters at Washington, in
December, 1909. She was then eighty,
and to the very close, in her public ap-
pearances, she preserved the clear,
telling voice, the wit, the indomitable
energy, of youth. A very human wom-
an, a very feminine and wise woman,
Mrs. Howe had a place all her own in
the aflfectionate admiration of her con-
temporaries.
Francis Marion Crawford, cos-
mopolite and story-teller, became a sin-
gularly successful professional soldier
in that regiment of literature, "the
strangest in her Majesty's service",
in which Mrs. Howe, his kinswoman,
had served as a brilliant volunteer.
Crawford's youth was passed mainly
in Italy, in that American colony whose
pioneer period has been sketched by
Mr. Henry James in his life of W. W.
Story. But he also studied at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and at Heidelberg,
and, like Mr. Kipling, he had edited a
newspaper in India, before he became a
special student of Sanscrit at Harvard
in 1881.
It was in the following year that his
uncle, Samuel G. Ward, knowing the
rich fund of experience which lay in
the young man's mind, awaiting some
magical evocation, half persuaded and
half forced Crawford to write that
most purely fascinating of all his
books, "Mr. Isaacs." The exotic qual-
ities of a fertile and somewhat mysti-
cal imagination were restrained even
in that first book by a skilful sense of
what could be spun in a yarn rather
than adumbrated in a poem. Novel
after novel followed in a stream unin-
terrupted until the author's death —
novels written with a rapidity which
rivaled that of Walter Scott, even as
they almost seemed to rival Scott's
popularity. A workman as intelligent
as he was facile, Crawford set forth
his theory of the novel in the phrase,
"It is a pocket stage." He illustrated
his theory by brilliant dialogue and
moving action and in sketching his
varied backgrounds of Southern Euro-
pean life. Himself, and in a double
sense, an adopted child of Rome, Italy
had few secrets that were hidden from
Crawford's view. He wrote compre-
hensive books on Rome and Venice in
a style happily blended of the antiqua-
rian and the sentimental traveler. It
may be surmised that Thomas Car-
lyle, if he could have had the plea-
sure of reading Crawford's tales, might
have found that long row of delight-
ful and often powerful stories deficient
in a "message," and indeed it is diffi-
cult to affirm that they contained any
doctrine except the enchanting one
that this world is full of a number of
things. But no reader of Crawford
cared, such was the glamour of his in-
ventiveness, the fidelity with which he
reproduced the tone and spirit of pic-
turesque Europe.
Crawford was personally but slight-
ly known to his fellow-workers in the
craft of literature ; but the most casual
meeting with him revealed a certain
sailor-like quality of frankness and di-
rectness which gave charm to his per-
son and to his conversation. He will
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
no doubt remain a representative figure
of literary cosmopolitanism. In the
new alignments caused by the strong
currents of contemporary change he
may well prove greater or less than we
think him now; but it will be long be-
fore we shall find a more adept guar-
dian of Aladdin's lamp.
In the death of Wiluam Vaughn
Moody the Academy has lost a poet of
rich endowment and great distinction.
Like Colonel Higginson, Mrs. Howe,
and Mr. Crawford, he had the cosmo-
politan temper, and he was haunted by
the beauty of Greek literature. Un-
like them, he was perplexed by our
modern world, and was never fully at
home in it. Perhaps this is only say-
ing that he was a poet. As a Harvard
undergraduate, Moody revealed a mind
of uncommon richness and complexity
of pattern; but even at forty he had
not wholly succeeded in bringing that
mind into lucid order, into a steady
grasp of structural design. A lover of
Milton, Shelley, and Euripides, he was
enraptured of beautiful words. His
lyrics sing in burdened, thrush-like
cadences w^hich are too heavy with
thought, too deeply drenched with pas-
sionate feeling; the wet boughs of his
fragrant verse bend low, blinding the
eyes of his readers. But more than
once, as in the masterly "Ode in Time
of Hesitation/* in "Gloucester Moors,"
and in some of the songs in his dramas,
feeling and form were wrought into
consummate perfection of expression.
Here were '^thoughts that voluntary
moved harmonious numbers."
Moody's incompleted trilogy, "The
Fire-Bringers," "The Masque of Judg-
ment," and "The Death of Eve," con-
tains memorable passages, but the key
to his cosmologies and mythologies is
hard to find, and perhaps — perhaps
there was none. One of his prose
plays, "The Great Divide," had notable
success upon the boards, but at the
time of his death he seems to have
abandoned the ambitions of a play-
wright. Never quite at ease in our
contemporary America; teaching lit-
erature with abundant scholarship, but
with no love for his profession ; writ-
ing poetic dramas which few persons
lead; dear beyond most men to his
friends, but shy and wilful ; splendidly
courageous in hazarding every sacri-
fice in the service of poetry, William
Vaughn Moody lost much that other
men of letters care for, but he won,
who shall say how much more, in inner
power and in creative mastery over the
forms of his art. His friend, Mr.
Percy Mackaye, has nobly written his
eulogy in "Uriel"; and surely it is m
verse only, and not in prose, that we
should fitly record the passing of this
strong, perturbed spirit. He chose
high and hard paths, but paths which
were surely leading to serenity of vis-
ion, as they had already led him into the
secret places of beauty and close to the
passionate and troubled heart of the
sons of Eve.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson died May 9, 1911 ; Julia Ward Howe died October 17. 1910;
Francis Marion Crawford died April 9, 1909; William Vaughn Moody died October 16, 1910
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THE INSTITUTE MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Institute is
annually awarded to any citizen of
the United States, whether a mem-
ber of the Institute or not, for dis-
tinguished services to arts or letters
in the creation of original work.
The conditions of the award are
these :
(i) "That the medal shall be awarded for
the entire work of the recipient, without
limit of time during which it shall have
been done; that it shall be awarded to a
living person or to one who shall not have
been dead more than one year at the time
of the award; and that it shall not be
awarded more than once to any one person.
(2) "That it shall be awarded in the fol-
lowing order: First year, for Sculpture;
second year, for History or Biography;
third year, for Music; fourth year, for
Poetry; fifth year, for Architecture; sixth
year, for Drama; seventh year, for Paint-
ing; eighth year, for Fiction; ninth year,
for Essays or Belles-Lettres, — returning to
each subject every tenth year in the order
named.
(3) "That it shall be the duty of the Secre-
tary each year to poll the members of the
section of the Institute dealing with the sub-
ject in which the medal is that year to be
awarded, and to report the result of the
poll to the Institute at its Annual Meeting,
at which meeting the medal shall be award-
ed by vote of the Institute."
The medal was designed by Adolph
A. Weinman, of the Institute, in
1909.
The first award — for sculpture —
was to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The
medal was presented to Mrs. Saint-
Gaudens at the meeting held in mem-
ory of her husband Nov. 20, 1909.
The second medal — for history —
was awarded to James Ford Rhodes.
The third medal — for poetry — was
awarded to James Whitcomb Riley.
The fourth medal — for achitecture —
was awarded to William Rutherford
Mead.
On December 12, 1912, at 7:30 p. m.. the Fourteenth Annual Meeting and
Dinner of the National Institute of Arts and Letters was held at the
University Club, New York, when the fourth Gold Medal of the
Institute was awarded in the department of Architecture to
William Rutherford Mead.
On December 13, the sessions of the Academy and Institute were opened by an
address by
THE ACTING CHANCELLOR OF THE ACADEMY,
Dr. Henry Van Dyke.
At the close of the morning session a luncheon was given to the members of the
Academy and the Institute by
The New York Members of the Institute.
67
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CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF ARTS AND LETTERS
(Founded 1898 by the American Social Science Association)
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
This society, organized by men nominated
and elected by the American Social Science
Association at its annual meeting in 1898,
with a view to the advancement of art,
music and literature, shall be known as the
National Institute of Arts and Letters.
II. MEMBERSHIP
1. Qualification for membership shall be
notable achievement in art, music or litera-
ture.
2. The number of members shall be limited
to two hundred and fifty.
III. ELECTIONS
The name of a candidate shall be proposed
to the Secretary by three members of the
section in which the nominee's principal
work has been performed. The name shall
then be submitted to the members of that
section, and if approved by a majority of
the answers received within fifteen days
may be submitted by a two-thirds vote of
the council to an annual meeting of the In-
stitute for formal elecion by a majority
vote of those present. The voting shall be
by ballot.
IV. OFFICERS
1. The officers of the Institute shall consist
■of a President, six Vice-Presidents, a Secre-
tary and a Treasurer, and they shall con-
stitute the council of the Institute.
2. The council shall always include at least
one member of each department.
V. ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Officers shall be elected by ballot at the
annual meeting, but the council may fill a
vacancy at any time by a two-thirds vote.
VI. MEETINGS
1. The annual meeting of the Institute shall
be held on the first Tuesday in September,
unless otherwise ordered by the council.*
2. Special meetings may be called by the
President on recommendation of any three
members of the council, or by petition of at
leact one- fourth of the membership of the
Institute.
VII. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
I. It shall be the duty of the President to
preside at all meetings of the Institute and
of the council.
In the absence of the President, the
senior Vice-President
preside.
in attendance shall
3. The Secretary shall keep a minute of all
meetings of the Institvte and of the council
and shall be the custodian of all records.
4. The Treasurer shall have charge of all
funds of the Institute and shall make dis-
bursements only upon order of the council
VIII. ANNUAL DUES
The annual dues for membership shall be
five dollars.
IX. INSIGNIA
The insignia of the Institute shall be a bow
of purple ribbon bearing two bars of old
gold.
X. EXPULSIONS
Any member may be expelled for unbecom-
ing conduct by a two-thirds vote of the
council, a reasonable opportunity for de-
fense having been given.
XL AMENDMENTS
This Constitution may be amended by a
two-thirds vote of the Institute upon the
recommendation of the council or upon the
request, in writing, of any five members.
The Secretary shall be required to send to
each member a copy of the proposed amend-
ment at least thirty days before the meeting
at which such amendment is to be consid-
ered.
XII. THE ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND. LETTERS
In order to make the Institute more efficient
in carrying out the purposes for which it
was organized, — the protection and further-
ance of literatare and the arts, — and to give
greater definiteness to its work, a section
of the Institute to be known as the Acad-
emy OF Arts and Letters, shall be organ-
ized in such manner as the Institute nuy
provide ; the members of the Academy to be
chosen from those who at any time shall
have been on the list of membership of the
Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of thirty
members, and after these shall have organ-
ized it shall elect its own officers, prescribe
its own rules, the number of its members,
and the further conditions of membership;
Provided that no one shall be a member of
the Academy who shall not first have been
on the list of regular members of the In-
stitute, and that in the choice of members
individual distinction and character, and not
the group to which they belong, shall be
taken into consideration; and Provided that
all members of the Academy shall be native
or naturalized citizens of the L^nited States
* For convenience the annual meeting is usually called for January or February.
63
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
Department of Literature
Adams, Brooks
Adams. Charles Francis
Adams, Henry
Ade, George
Alden, Henry M
Aldrich, Richard
Allen, James Lane
Baldwin, Simeon E.
Bates, Arlo
Bridges, Robert
Brownell, W. C
Burroughs, John
Burton, Richard
Butler, Nicholas Murray
Cable, George W.
Carman, Bliss
Cawein, Madison J.
Chadwick, French E.
Chambers, R. W.
Channing, Edward
Chatfield-Taylor, H. C.
Cheney, John Vance
Churchill, Winston
Connolly, James B.
Cortissoz, Royal
Croly, Herbert D.
Cross, Wilbur L.
Crothers, Samuel McChord
de Kay, Charles
Dunne, Finley P.
Edwards, Harry Stillwell
Egan, Maurice Francis
Femald, Chester Bailey
Finck, Henry T.
Finley, John Huston
Firkins, O. W
Ford, Worthington C.
Fox, John, Jr.
Furness, Horace Howard, Jr.
Garland, Hamlin
Gildersleeve, Basil L.
Gillette, William
Gilman, Lawrence
Gordon, George A.
Grant, -Robert
Greenslet. Ferris
Griffis. Wm. Elliot
Hadley. Arthur Twining
Hamilton, Clajrton
Harben, Will N.
Hardy, Arthur Sherburne
Harper, George McLean
Herford, Oliver
Herrick, Robert
Hibben, John Grier
Hitchcock, Ripley
Hooker, Brian
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe
Howells, William Dean
Huntington, Archer M.
James, Henry
Johnson, Owen
Johnson, Robert Underwood
Kennan, George
Lloyd, Nelson
Lodge, Henry Cabot
Long. John Luther
Lounsbury, Thomas R.
Lovett, Robert Morss
Lowell, Abbott Lawrence
Lummis, Charles F.
Mabie, Hamilton Wright
Mackaye, Percy
Mahan, Alfred T.
Markham, Edwin
Martin, Edward S.
Matthews, Brander
McKelway, St. Clair
McMaster, John Bach
Mitchell, John Ames
Mitchell, Langdon E.
More, Paul Elmer
Morris, Harrison S.
Morse, John Torrey, Jr.
Muir, John
Nicholson, Meredith
Page, Thomas Nelson
Payne, Will
Payne, William Morton
Peck, Harry Thurston
Perry, Bliss
Perry, Thomas Sergeant
Phelps, William Lyon
Pier, Arthur S.
Rhodes, James Ford
Riley, James Whitcomb
Roberts, Charles G. D.
Robinson, Edward Arlington
Roosevelt. Theodore
Royce, Josiah
Schelling, Felix Emanuel
Schouler, James
Schuyler, Montgomery
Scollard, Clinton
Sedgwick, Henry D.
Seton, Ernest Thompson
Sherman, Frank Dempster
Shorey, Paul
Sloane, William M.
Smith, F. Hopkinson
Sullivan, Thomas Russell
Tarkington, Booth
Thayer, William Roscoe
Thomas. Augustus
Tooker, L. Frank
Torrence, Ridgcly
Trent. William P.
van Dyke, Henry
Van Dyke, John C.
Wendell, Barrett
West, Andrew F.
White, Andrew Dickson
White, William Allen
Whiting, Charles G.
Williams Francis Howard
Williams, Jesse Lynch
Wilson, Harry Leon
Wilson, Woodrow
Wister, Owen
Woodberry. George E.
69
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70
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Department of Art
Adams, Herbert
Alexander. John W.
Babb, George F.
Ballin, Hugo
Barnard, George Gray
Bartlett, Paul W.
Beckwith, J. Carroll
Benson, Frank W.
Betts, Louis
Bitter, Karl
Blashfield, Edwin H.
Brooks, Richard E.
Brown, Glenn
Brush, George de Forest
Bunce. William Gedney
Carlsen, Emil
Chase, William M.
Clarkson, Ralph
Cole, Timothy
Cook, Walter
Cox, Kenyon
Crowninshield, Frederic
Dannat, William T.
Day, Frank Miles
De Camp, Joseph
Dewey, Charles Melville
Dewing, Thomas W.
Dielman, Frederick
Donaldson, John M.
Dougherty, Paul
Duveneck, Frank
Foster, Ben
French, Daniel C.
Gay, Walter
Gibson, Charles Dana
Gilbert, Cass
Grafly, Charles
Guerin, Jules
Hardenbergh, Henry J.
Harrison, Alexander
Harrison, Birge
Hassam, Childe
Hastings, Thomas
Henri, Robert
Howard. John Galen
Howe. William Henry
Howells. J. M.
Isham, Samuel
Jaegers, Albert
Jones, Francis C.
Jones, H. Bolton
Kendall, W. Sergeant
La Farge, Bancel
Low, Will H.
MacMonnies, Frederick
Mac Neil. Hermon A.
Marr, Carl
McEwen, Walter
Mead, William Rutherford
Melchers. Gari
Metcalf, Willard L.
Mowbray, H. Siddons
Ochtman, Leonard
Parrish, Maxfield
Peabody, Robert S.
Pearce, Charles Sprague
Pennell, Joseph
Piatt, Charles A.
Pond, L K.
Post, George B.
Potter, Edward Clark
Pratt, Bela L.
Proctor, A. Phimister
Redfield, Edward W.
Reid, Robert
Roth, Frederick G. R.
Ruckstuhl, F. W.
Ryder, Albert P.
Sargent, John S.
Schofield, W. Elmer
Shrady, Henry M.
Simmons, Edward
Smedley. William T.
Taft, Lorado
Tarbell, Edmund C.
Thayer, A. H.
Tryon, Dwight W.
Vedder, Elihu
Walden, Lionel
Walker, Henry Oliver
Walker, Horatio
Warren, Whitney
Weinman, Adolph A.
Weir, J. Alden
Wiles, Irving R.
Department of Music
Bird, Arthur
Brockway, Howard
Chadwick, George Whitfield
Converse. F. S.
Damrosch, Walter
De Koven, Reginald
Foote, Arthur
Gilchrist. W. W.
Hadley, H. K.
Herbert, Victor
Kelley, Edgar Stillman
Loeffler, Charles M.
Parker, Horatio W.
Shelley, Harry Rowe
Smith, David Stanley
Stock, Frederick A.
Van der Stucken, F.
Whiting, Arthur
DECEASED MEMBERS
Department of Literature
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey
Bigelow, John
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain)
Conway, Moncure D.
Crawford, Francis Marion
Daly, August in
Dodge, Theodore A.
Eggleston, Edward
Fawcett, Edgar
Fiske, Willard
Ford, Paul Leicester
Frederic, Harold
Furness, Horace Howard
Gilder. Richard Watson
Gilman, Daniel Coit
Godkin, E. L.
Godwin, Parke
Hale. Edward Everett
Harland, Henry
Harris, Joel Chandler
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
V
Harte. Bret
Hay, John
Heme, James A.
Higginson. Thomas Wentworth
Howard, Uronson
Howe, JuHa Ward
Hutton, Laurence
Jefferson, Joseph
Johnston, Richard Malcolm
Lea, Henry Charles
Lodge, George Cabot
Miller, Joaquin
Mitchell, Donald G.
Moody. William Vaughn
Munger, Theodore T.
Nelson, Henry Loomis
Norton, Charles Eliot
Perkins, James Breck
Schurz, Carl
Scudder. Horace
Shaler, N. S.
Shirlaw, Walter
Stedman, Edmund Clarence
Stillman. William J.
SttTckton. Frank R.
Stoddard, Charles Warren
Thompson, Maurice
Tyler, Moses Coit
Viele, Herman K.
Warner. Charles Dudley
Department of Art
Abbey, Edwin A.
Bierstadt, Albert
Blum. Rol)ert Frederick
Burnham, Daniel Hudson
Carrere, John M.
Collins. Alfred Q.
Homer. Winslow
La Farge, John
Lathrop, Francis
Loeb, Louis
Millet, Francis D.
McKim, Charles Follen
Porter, Benjamin C.
Pyle, Howard
Remington, Frederic
Saint-Gaudens. Augustus
Twachtman, John H.
Vinton, Frederick P.
Ward, J. Q. A.
White, Stanford
Wood, Thomas W.
Department ok Music
Buck. Dudley
MacDowell, Edward
Nevin, Ethelbert
Paine, John K.
OFFICERS
President
Brander Matthews
J Ice-Presidents
Arthur Whiting
Hamlin Garland
Robert Underwood Johnson
Hamilton W. Mabie
Harrison S. Morris
Jesse Lynch Williams
Secretary
Henry D. Scdgtvick
I20 E. 226 St.,
New York
Treasurer
Samuel Lsham
471 Park Avenue, New York
[June, 1913I
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SKETCH OF THE ACADEMY AND LIST OF
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
The American Academy of Arts
and Letters was founded in 1904 as
an interior organization of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, which in
turn was founded in 1898 by the Ameri-
can Social Science Association. In
each case the elder organization left the
younger to choose the relations that
should exist between them. Article
XII of the Constitution of the Institute
provides as follows:
In order to make the Institute more effi-
cient in carrying out the purposes for which
it was organized, — the protection and fur-
therance of literature and the arts, — and to
give greater definiteness to its work, a sec-
tion of the Institute to be known as the
ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
shall be organized in such manner as the
Institute may provide; the members of the
Academy to !>e chosen from those who at
any time shall have been on the list of
members of the Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of
thirty members, and after these shall have
organized it shall elect its own officers, pre-
scribe its own rules, the number of its
members, and the further conditions of
membership; proz'ided that no one shall be a
member of the Academy who shall not first
have been on the list of regular members
of the Institute, and that in the choice of
members individual distinction and charac-
ter, and not the group to which they be-
long, shall be taken into consideration : and
provided that all members of the Academy
shall be native or naturalized citizens of the
United States.
The manner of the organization of
the Academy was prescribed by the
following resolution of the Institute
adopted April 2^^, 1904:
lyhereas, the amendment to the Consti-
tution known as Article XI T, providing for
the organization of the Academy of Arts
and Letters, has been ratified by a vote of
the Institute.
Resolved: that the following method be
chosen for the organization of the Academy
— to wit, that seven meml:>ers he selected by
ballot as the first members of the Academy,
and that these seven be requested and em-
powered to choose eight other members,
and that the fifteen thus chosen be re-
quested and empowered to choose five other
members, and that the twenty members
thus chosen shall be requested and empow-
ered to choose ten other members, — the en-
lire thirty to constitute the Academy in con-
formity with Article XII, and that the first
seven members be an executive committee
for the purpose of insuring the completion
of the number of thirty members.
Under Article XII the Academy
has effected a separate organization,
but at the same time it has kept in
close relationship with the Institute,
on the seventh of March, 1908, the
membership was increased from thirty
to fifty members, and on the seventh of
November, 1908, the following Consti-
tution was adopted :
CONSTITUTION OF THE ACADEMY
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
The American Academy of Arts and Let-
ters is an association primarily organized
by the National Institute of Arts and Let-
ters. Its aim is to represent and further
the interests of the Fine Arts and Litera-
ture.
II. MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS
It shall consist of not more than fifty
members, and all vacancies shall be filled
from the membership of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters. No one shall
be elected a member of the Academy who
shall not have received the votes of a ma-
jority of the members. The votes shall be
opened and counted at a meeting of the
Academy. In case the first ballot shall not
result in an election a second ballot shall
be taken to determine the choice between
the two candidates receiving the highest
number of votes on the first ballot. Elec-
tions shall be held only on due notice under
rules to be established by the Academy .
III. AIMS
That the Academy may be bound together
in community of taste and interest, its
members shall meet regularly for discus-
sion, and for the expression of artistic
literary and scholarly opinion of such top-
ics as arc brought to its attention. For the
purpose of promoting the highest standards,
the Academy may also award such prizes
as may be founded by itself or entrusted to
it for administration.
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LIST OF MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
73
IV. OFFICERS
The officers shall consist of a President and
a Chancellor, both elected annually from
among the members to serve for one year
only; a Permanent Secretary, not neces-
sarily a member, who shall be elected by the
Academy to serve for an indeterminate pe-
riod, subject to removal by a majority vote;
and a Treasurer. The Treasurer shall be
appointed as follows: Three members of
the Academy shall be elected at each annual
meeting to serve as a Committee on Finance
for the ensuing year. They shall appoint
one of their number Treasurer of the Acad-
emy to serve for one year. He shall receive
and protect its funds and make disburse-
ments for its expenses as directed by the
Committee. He shall also make such in-
vestments, upon the order of the President,
as may be approved by both the Committee
on Finance and the Executive Committee.
V. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
It shall be the duty of the President, and
in his absence of the Chancellor, to preside
at all meetings throughout his term of of-
lice, and to safeguard in general all the
interests of the Academy. It shall be the
duly of the Chancellor to select and pre-
pare the business for each meeting of his
term. It shall be the duty of the Secretary
to keep the records; to conduct the corre-
spondence of the Academy under the direc-
tion of the President or Chancellor; to
issue its authorized statements ; and to draw
up as required such writing as pertain to
the ordinary business of the Academy and
its committees. These three officers shall
constitute the Executive Coni"iittee.
VI. AMENDMENTS.
Any proposed amendment to this Constitu-
tion must be sent in writing to the Secre-
tary signed by at least ten members; and it
shall then be forwarded by the Secretary to
every member. It shall not be considered
until three months after it has been thus
submitted. No proposed amendment shall
be adopted unless it receives the votes in
writing of two-thirds of the members.
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
Following is the list of members in
the order of their election :
William Dean Howclls
♦Augustus Saint-Gaudens
♦Edmund Clarence Stedman
♦John La Farge
♦Samuel Langhornc Clemens
♦John Hay
♦Edward MacDowell
Henry James
♦Charles F'ollen McKim
Henry Adams
♦Charles Eliot Norton
♦John Quincy Adams Ward
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury
Theodore Roosevelt
♦Thomas Bailey Aldrich
♦Joseph Jefferson
John Singer Sargent
♦Richard Watson Gilder
♦Horace Howard Furness
♦John Bigelow
♦Winslow Homer
♦Carl Schurz
Alfred Thayer Mahan
♦Joel Chandler Harris
Daniel Chester FVench
John Burroughs
James Ford Rhodes
♦Edwin Austin Abbey
Horatio William Parker
William Milligan Sloane
♦Edward Everett Hale
Robert Underwood Johnson
George Washington Cable
♦Daniel Coit Gilman
♦Thomas Wentworth Higginson
♦Donald Grant Mitchell
Andrew Dickson White
Henry van Dyke
William Crary Brownell
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve
♦Julia Ward Howe
Woodrow Wilson
Arthur Twining Hadley
Henry Cabot Lodge
Francis Hopkinson Smith
♦Francis Marion Crawford
♦Henry Charles Lea
Edwin Howland Blashfield
William Merritt Chase
Thomas Hastings
Hamilton Wright Mabie
♦Bronson Howard
Brander Matthews
Thomas Nelson Page
Elihu Vedder
George Edward Woodberry
♦William Vaughn Moody
Kenyon Cox
George Whitefield Chadwick
Abbott Handerson Thayer
John Muir
Charles Francis Adams
Henry Mills Alden
George deForest Brush
William Rutherford Mead
John White .Alexander
Bliss Perry
♦I'rancis Davis Millet
Ab!K)tt Lawrence Lowell
James Whitcomb Riley
Nicholas Murray Butler
Paul Wayland Bartlett
George Browne Post
Owen Wister
TTerbert Adams
Augustus Thomas
Timothy Cole
♦Deceased
OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1913
President: Mr. Howells. Chancellor: Mr. Sloaxe. Acting Chancellor: Mr. Smith.
Permanent Secretary: Mr. John.son.
Finance Committee : Messrs. Sloane, Rhodes, and Hastings.
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TA 30. 15
PROCEEDINGS #^
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS .
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE* OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
/ Number VII: 1914
New York
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Copyright, 1914, by
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF
ARTS AND LETTERS and of THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Sessions at Fullerton Hall, The Art Institute, Chicago, November 14-15, 1913
First Session, 11 a. m , November 14
William Milligan Sloane
Chancellor of the Academy, Presiding
RbM ARKS OF THB ChANCBLLOR
IViiliafn MUligan Sloane
Lettbr from the Presidbnt of THB Academy
William Dean Howelis
Letter from the President of the United States
Woodrow Wilson .
The Song of Songs
Madison Cawein
The Influence of Literature on Modern Art
Thomas Hastings .
•'The Illusion of the First Time** in Drama
William GiUetU .
Opera in English
Reginald DeKoven
Science and Literature
John Burroughs
Second Session, 11 a. m., November 15
Brander Matthews
President of the Institute, Presiding
PAGE
5
6
II
16
33 J^
Robert Southey as Poet and Historian
The Sunny Slopes of Forty
A Plea for Choral Singing
Free Trade vs. Protection in Literature
Samuel Mc Chord Cr others
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury 39
Meredith Nicholson .... 51
George Whitefie/d Chadwick . 56
60
Rbsponse by Augustus Thomas on Receiving the Gold Medal
OF THE Institute for Drama 63
Program Notes of a Concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Consisting of Compositions by Members of the Institute . • 64
The Institute Medal and Other Data 72
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PREFATORY NOTE
The regfular sessions herein recorded were preceded by a
banquet to the two organizations on the evening of November
13 in the Sculpture Hall of the Art Institute, the hosts of the
occasion being these institutions : The City of Chicago, The Art
Institute of Chicago, The Caxton Club, The Chicago Society of
Arts, The Chicago Theatre Society, The Cliff Dwellers, The
Friends of American Art, The Illinois Chapter of the American
Institute of Architects, Lake Forest College, The Literary Oub,
The Little Room, The Musical Art Society, The Northwestern
University, The Orchestral Association, The Press Club, The
University of Chicago and The Writers' Guild.
The Chairman was Mr. H, C. Chatfield-Taylor and the
toastmaster Mr. Charles L. Hutchinson. The Mayor of Chi-
cago, being absent from the city, was represented by the Hon.
William H, Sexton, Corporation Counsel. Other speakers were
Hon. Walter L. Fisher, the Chancellor of the Academy, the
President of the Institute, Mr. Lorado Taft, and Mr. Hamlin
Garland.
Among the other hospitalities to the visiting members were
a luncheon by The Cliff Dwellers on the 14th, followed by the
concert of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a reception at
the Art Institute, and in the evening Mr. H. C. Chatfield-
Taylor was the host of the National Institute at the Chicago
Club at its annual dinner and meeting.
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Published at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Penmanent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U; Johnson,
337 Lexington Avenue, New York. Price per Annum $i.oo
Vol. II. New York, August i, 1914 No. i
THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Public Meetings held at The Art Institute, Chicago
November 14-15, 191 3
William Milligan Sloane, Chancellor of the Academy
and Brander Matthews, President of the Institute, Presiding
REMARKS OF MR. SLOANE
At the Banquet, November 13
In response to a toast to the Academy, parallels. We aim at an eventual activi-
the Chancellor of that body, Mr. ty so far impossible on account of
William M. Sloane, said, in part: poverty, every penny expended f or pub-
Mr. President : The Academy and lication and the dissemination of our
the Institute are not self-appointed, but view-s having, throughout a fairly long
came into existence through a selection history, come out of our own pockets,
and a mandate of an old, a numerous, j^ ^^^ association in such a way of
and a highly respected association. We ^^^^ ^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ j^
arroeate no superiority beyond what ^ -^ e - t % -jj
our membership and activities may tunity for immense usefulness, provided
secure for us in the effort to maintain ^^^ ^^ accepted for what we are-
high standards in literature and the national not local, comprehensive and
fine arts. We deprecate all compari- not specialized, laborious and not judi-
sons with foreign bodies of similar cial, above all American, and though
name, because we are essentially Ameri- glad to take the best whenever found,
can in temper and aspiration, and are not copying the style and ceremony of
hampered in our work by misleading the past.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
LETTER FROM WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
President of
(Read at th
New York, November 11, 1913.
Dear Mr. Secretary:
You know how very proud and glad
I should be to share the welcome
offered you of the Institute and
Academy by the lovers of arts and
letters in the most hospitable city of
Chicago. I cannot go with you, not
because Chicago is so far, but because
I am. Chicago is very near, near every
heart that loves great and generous
things, and believes them more and
more possible as time goes on, and the
perplexed and anxious present becomes
the secure and radiant future, when all
the Academy
e Banquet)
the poems and novels, the pictures and
statues, shall be as good as those we
should each like to create. When I tell
over to myself the names of the
Chicagoans who have done fine and
beautiful things already in those kinds,
I begin to envy the inspiration you will
find among them. I hope you will bring
something of it back to me, whom
adverse conditions keep from going
v/ith you.
Yours sincerely,
W. D. HoWELLS.
R. U. Johnson, Esq.,
Secretary of the Academy.
LETTER FROM WOODROW WILSON
President of the United States
(Read at the Opening of the First Session)
The White House
Washington, November 5, 1913.
My dear Mr. Johnson :
I wish most sincerely that I were free
to be present at the joint meeting of the
x\cademy and the National Institute of
Arts and Letters, but I am held fast
here by duties from which I cannot in
conscience turn away, even for a little
while.
I should like to be present to say how
sincerely I believe in the usefulness of
the two bodies joining in the meeting.
It is of no small import to the country
that such influences for upholding ideal
standards of creative art should be
encouraged. The commerce and
material development of the countr\'
are of deep consequence to it, but above
all must rise the objects we have in
view. If those objects are disinterested
and touched with insight, our greatness
will bear greater distinction and enjoy
the greater spiritual soundness and
health.
Cordially and sincerely yours,
WooDROw Wilson.
Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson,
Permanent Secretary.
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THE SONG OF SONGS
By Madison Cawein
/ heard a Spirit singing as, beyond the morning winging,
Its radiant form went swinging like a star:
In its song prophetic voices mixed their sounds with trumpet-noises,
As when, loud, a Land rejoices after war.
And it said :
I.
Hear me!
Above the roar of cities,
The clamor and conflict of Trade,
The frenzy and fury of Commercialism,
Is heard my voice,
Chanting, intoning.
Down the long corridors of Time it comes,
Bearing my message, bidding the soul of man arise
To the realization of his dream.
Now and then discords seem to intrude,
Tones that are false and feeble —
Beginnings of the perfect chord
From which is evolved the unattainable, the ideal whole.
Hear me !
Ever and ever, above the tumult of the years,
The blatant cacophonies of war,
The wranglings of politics,
Arch-demons of unrest,
My song persists, addressing the soul
With the urge of an astral something.
Supernal, elemental, Promethean,
Instinct with an everlastinfif fire.
II.
Hear me !
I am the expression of the subconscious.
The utterance of intellect,
The voice of mind
That stands for civilization.
Out of my singing sprang, Minerva-like,
Full-armed and fearless,
Liberty,
Conqueror of tyrants, who feed on the strength of Nations.
Out of my chanting arose,
As Aphrodite arose from the foam of the ocean,
The Dream of Spiritual Desire,
Mother of Knowledge,
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Victor o'er Hate and Derision,
Ancient and elemental Daemons,
Who, with Ignorance and Evil, their consorts,
Have ruled for eons of years. .
HI.
Hear me !
Should my chanting cease.
My music utterly fail you,
Behold!
Out of the hoary Past, most swiftly, surely,
Would gather the Evils of Earth,
The Hydras and harpies, forgotten,
And buried in darkness :
Amorphous of form,
Tyrannies and Superstitions,
Torturing body and soul:
And with them,
Gargoyls of dreams that groaned in the Middle Ages —
Aspects of darkness and death and hollow eidolons.
Cruel, inhuman,
Wearing the faces and forms of all the wrongs of the world.
Barbarian hordes whose shapes make hideous
The cyles of error and crime :
Grendels of darkness.
Devouring the manhood of Nations;
Demogorgons
Of War and Misrule, blackening the Earth with blood.
Hear me !
Out of my song have grown
Beauty and joy.
And with them the triumph of Reason,
The c9nfirmation of Hope,
Of Faith and Endeavor :
The Dream that 's immortal,
To whose creation Thought gives concrete form.
And of which Vision makes permanent substance.
IV.
Fragmentary, out of the Past,
Down the long aisles of the Centuries,
Uneasy at first and uncertain.
Hesitant and harsh of expression,
My song was heard.
Stammering, appealing,
A murmur merely :
Then, coherent, singing itself into form,
Assertive, ecstatic,
Louder and lovelier, more insistent,
Sonorous, proclaiming ;
Qearer and surer and stronger,
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THE SONG OF SONGS
Attaining the desired expression, evennore truer and truer :
Masterful, mighty at last,
Committed to conquest, and with beauty coeval.
Part of the wonder of life.
The triumph of light over darkness :
Taking the form of Art,
Art, that is voice and vision of the soul of man.
Hear me !
Confident ever,
One with the beauty my song shall evolve,
My voice is become as an army with banners.
Marching irresistibly forward.
With the roll of the drums of attainment,
The blare of the bugles of fame.
Tramping, tramping, evermore advancing,
Till the last redoubt of prejudice is overcome,
And the Eagles and Fasces of learning
Make glorious the van o' the world.
V.
They who are deaf to my singing.
Who disregard me,
Let them beware lest the splendor escape them,
The splendor of light that is back o* the blackness of life.
And with it.
The blindness of spirit overwhelm them.
They who reject me
Reject the gleam that goes to the making of Beauty ;
And put away
The loftier impulses of heart and of brain.
They shall not possess the dream of ultimate things,
That is part of the soul that aspires,
That sits with the spirit of Thought,
The radiant spirit who weaves,
Directed of Destiny,
At its infinite pattern of stars.
They shall not know the exaltations that make
Endurable here upon Earth,
The ponderable veil of the flesh.
VI.
Hear me !
I control, and direct;
I wound and heal ; elevate and subdue
The vaulting energies of man.
I am part of the cosmic strain o* the universe :
I captain the thoughts that grow into deeds,
Material and spiritual facts,
Pointing the world to greater and higher things.
Hear me !
My daedal expression peoples the past and the present
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lo PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
With forms that symbolize Beauty:
The Beauty expressing itself now — as Poetry,
And now — as Philosophy;
As Truth and Religion now —
And now —
As Science and Law, vaunt-couriers of Civilization.
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THE INFLUENCE OF LITERATURE ON
MODERN ART
By Thomas Hastings
In my address before the meeting of
the American Academy and the Na-
tional Institute of Arts and Letters, held
at Washington in December, 1909, 1 en-
deavored to show why the architectural
styles of past ages do not stand in any
intellectual relatdon to our age, and
how these styles, in their growth, have
always been governed by the universal
law of development, an evolution which
has manifested itself in the architects'
designs imder the imperatives of new
practical problems. I contended that
in the nineteenth century, for the first
time in the history of civilization the
architect made the vital error of en-
deavoring to adapt the style or language
of other periods to the solution of
modem problems; I pleaded for
modernity and for historic continuity,
with the hope that we should some day
have an art expressive of our own age.
We are here today representing
literature and the arts, in friendly in-
tercourse; therefore, speaking frankly
and without fear of being misunder-
stood, I do not hesitate to say that I
attribute a great deal of this modem
confusion, or this want of modernity,
to the influence of modem literature
upon art.
The modem improvements in the
printing-press, facilitating the publish-
ing of books to distribute broadcast
among the people of all classes, have
revolutionized the intellectual world far
more than its original conception, or
perhaps even more than all the com-
bined inventions, discoveries, and re-
forms that took place at the dawn of the
Renaissance. This fact has produced
a great volume of criticism which, be-
cause of the facility of publication, is
largely irresponsible and unintelligent.
Alas! as long as this condition exists,
I fear that the artist must be resigned
to meet this kind of hostile criticism
in the same spirit in which he encoun-
ters and finds a way to surmount other
difficulties in his work, for it is only
another condition in modern life, a
moral situation which must have its in-
fluence upon architectural style, in its
development, as tmly as does the in-
troduction of steel in building-construc-
tion, or any other modem physical in-
novation imposed upon the architect in
his every-day practice.
It is unfortunate that the word
* 'criticism" so frequently sugg^ests hos-
tility, especially as the best criticism
is constmctive rather than destructive.
How strange it is that there are so
many men in modem times who will
take advantage of this medium without
considering the sensibilities of an artist,
and say things to the whole world about
him and his work which they would not
have the courage to say to his face!
Friendly criticism and the informal
discussion of art is usually stimulating
and uplifting, and has always obtained,
but not until modem times has criticism
been put into print to impress itself
in so lasting a way, — and as though
with authority, — upon so vast a number
of people.
Would that we might have less liter-
ature in art, and more art in our liter-
ature ; perhaps also the artist might ex-
change some of his story-telling and
pedantic thought of the subject-matter
for better composition, and the writer
find more study of the art of expression
in literature; fewer pictures that only
tell stories, and stories that have no
pictorial side.
Words may have color as full and
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12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
luminous as may be found in any school
of painting, and fonn as subtle and
radiant as may be revealed in the art
of the sculptor or architect, and music
as beautiful and melodious as a song, —
there are symphonies of words in prose
as well as in poetry; indeed the art
of literature, or language well expressed,
may be claimed to be the mother of all
the arts.
The extremist reaction from adapta-
tion and from the modem archae-
ological tendency in art, brought about,
I believe, by literary criticism, has
driven us into what we call realism,
which is art with the art of design
omitted. We are sadly in need of more
invention, or idealism, and serious
study, and less realism and so-called
impressionism, more especially in paint-
ing and sculpture.
The painter or sculptor may with un-
tiring practice arrive at great dexterity
and agility of expression, without much
thought of design, reproducing in color
or form only what he sees; such men
may be painters and sculptors, but they
are not artists, for we have a right to
expect of them as much thought and
design in their work as in the work of
the architect, or the musician, to whom
Nature can give no direct suggestion,
but who can only imbibe constant help
from the general principle suggested
by the laws of the Universe. The so-
called "Art Nouveau" of today is prob-
ably the expression of modern realism
in its influence upon architecture, while
it seems to me, under the same influence,
much of our modem music, which many
pretend to enjoy without even under-
standing, has become more or less mere
jargon or sound without either harmom'
or melody.
With all the ingenuity and brilliant
mechanism of the modem stage, I be-
lieve that the mere reproduction of
scenes that we encounter in every-day
life is not the real art of the drama,
and I, for one, long for more of the ap-
plication to modern life of the ancient
traditions expressed in dramatic elo-
quence, declamation, and oratory.
Nowithstanding all that has been
said, the over-production of literary
criticism has unquestionably awakened
the public interest and stimulated en-
thusiasm in this age. It has shaken us
out of the dry and uninteresting period
of a generation or two ago, but it might
be interesting to question whether the
public interest has not run riot ; whether
we might not find in Art as in Govern-
ment that, if, solely in the interest of
a selfish demagogue whose one thought
is to obtain votes, an entire people is to
be consulted in the affairs of the nation,
by means of universal suffrage, and all
the safeguards of the Constitution,
created to protect the unintelligent
majority are to be removed, it may be
only a question of time until represent-
ation will be what it represents, igno-
rance and confusion.
It may be that this enlivened interest
in art, and consequent independent
judgment without respect for authorit)\
has evolved a revolution, and divorced
us from the traditions of our fore-
fathers. In matters of art as in politics^
there is too much talk to the people
about the people and their interests.
Should not the majority always be led
by the minority? The people want and
should have what is best for them, and
perhaps this can only be administered
by the intelligent minority without too
much interference.
Let us consider the fallacy of some
of our recent literary criticism. One
of the most striking instances, mislead-
ing even the most intelligent layman,
is the oft-expressed opinion in our
schools of learning as well is in our
books, to the effect that the Roman
architects were mere copyists of the
Greeks, mere engineers or construc-
tors, and not artists. No practicinfr
architect or man who has been appren-
ticed in the art can help but feel the
deepest debt of gratitude to the Roman
architects. They were in no sense of
the word copyists, they were perhaps
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THE INFLUENCE OF LITERATURE ON MODERN ART
U
the most original and creative artists
that the world has ever known. Greek
architecture in all its perfection was
slowly evolved, one generation after
another had similiar problems to solve,
such as the Choragic Monument or the
Temple, until, for example, they ar-
rived at such perfection in monumental
building as the Parthenon.
Rome was the birthplace of modem
architecture, and it was in Rome that
the individual began to think for him-
self more than ever before. He was
obliged to solve in his time the modern
living-problems which until then had
never been presented, and which were
similar to ours of today and almost as
varied, — triumphal arches, colonnades,
great amphitheatres, monumental baths
and bridges, intricate floor-planning,
and the beautiful and general application
of the use of the arch and the dome in
construction. All of these were the ex-
pression of the life of the people in a
reconstructed government, and in the
quick upbuilding of a great city. In the
last four hundred years the beginning
of the working architect's education has
always been in the study of the Roman
orders and not the Greek. The Renais-
sance was, and should still be, built
upon the traditions of Rome and not
upon those of Greece. The adaptation
of Greek art to modem life has resulted
in a neo-Greek modem art, cold and
lifeless, not to be commended.
Let us consider another illustration.
Books have been written in raptural
eloquence of the poetry and beauty of
Gothic architecture, and men of real
literary genius have decried the very
birth of the Renaissance, and have
wished that it had never happened. In
the so-called Victorian age, writers
about art have tried to persuade us that
all architecture since the fifteenth or
sixteenth century has been a failure.
They would have us believe that all the
great artists of the past four hundred
years have been misled. While we
share their admiration of the Gothic,
we see no reason for a mediaeval re-
vival. One might continue to illustrate
the fallacy of much of the 4iterary
criticism of the day that has been
promulgated through the medium of the
modem press to bring about chaos in
modem thought.
Men who have learned about art only
in a literary way write hostile criticism
about it, creating unreasonable prej-
udices even against some of the great-
est artistic works. Men have always
freely expiessed their opinions about
art, and always should do so, but the
printing-press has not always existed
for the widespread promulgation of
such criticism. Until modem times
writers on art usually have been fa-
miliar with working methods, — they
have been apprenticed in the art itself, —
like Vitruvius, Vasari, Vignola, and
Alberti.
Let the literary man criticize liter-
ature if he must. Let Aristophanes
criticize and ridicule the plans of Euri-
pides in his Comedy of the Frogs; or
Aristotle write his Poetics and Rhet-
oric; let live the school of critic-gram-
marians, and Lucian, and Longinus, the
splendor of whose style lifts him to the
highest rank among literary critics. Let
Servius commentate upon Virgil; who
would not humble himself at the thought
of Dante and Boccaccio, in their relation
to the art of their time, or revel in the
keen philosophical criticism of Samuel
Johnson. Let the modem literary critic
tell writers how to write, but not tell
architects how to plan, or painters how
to paint, nor endeavor to instruct
sculptors and musicians in the methods
of their work.
In matters of art the literary critic
is a layman and may know what he
likes, but he should not, in his wisdom
or ignorance, whichever the case may
be, endeavor to instruct others as to
what they should like.
One of the greatest modem critics,
Sainte-Beuve, has given us the true
principles which should obtain in this
relation. He said: "The Revue des
Deux Mondes mixes a good deal of its
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
wishes and its hopes with its criticisms;
and its endeavor is to explain and to
stimulate rather than to judge. I hold
very little to literary opinions. What
does occupy me seriously is life itself
and the object of it. I am accustomed
to call my judgments in question anew,
and to recast my opinions the moment
I suspect them to be without validity.
What I have wished is to say not a word
more than I thought; to stop even a
little short of what I believed in certain
cases, in order that my words might
acquire more weight as historical tes-
timony." This is high authority.
These strong words have a lesson for
our time. I am convinced that the
modem confusion in architectural styles
comes from the endless diversity of
opinions which are too hastily put into
print. Perhaps the confusion in build-
ing has come from a confusion of
tongues. It is a modem Tower of
Babel that confronts us. Those who
would write about architecture should
first be familiar with the working meth-
ods of the art. Only so can they be-
come an integral part of the life and
growth of tme art, arid only so can they
be qualified to write that which the time
needs to read.
No artist would deny the well-in-
formed literary critic the right of speak-
ing or writing about art in all its phases,
if his aim be to stimulate and encourage.
We may look to him for the history of
art, and of its influence upon the human
race. We should be the last to deny
ourselves the pleasure of enjoying and
benefiting by much good literary work
which may be done in this way. We
should, in fact, insist upon its being
every man's duty to express freely the
impressions that different works of art
make upon himself. This would be
helpful in promoting a more general
interest in art; but only the artist can
so know the principles and working
methods of his art as to be qualified
to write that which will help progress.
Where is the literary man who would
write about disease without knowing
pathology or having a hospital exper-
ience? Why, then, should not men who
would write critically about architecture
leam the structural principles of the
art?
The man who does the most good
is the man who can teach the public to
appreciate what is generally conceded
to be good, rather than the man who
would make bad things more conspicu-
ous by calling attention to them.
The literary critic sees and understands
the subject-matter, the story told; the
artist, the way in which it is told. And
this is art.
Too often we are misled by a lack
of thought under a flow of words gen-
erally concealed by pompous general-
ization. It has been said that the proper
aim of criticism is to see the object as
in itself it really is, but I contend that
this object can be seen only by the man
who has been apprenticed. Voltaire
says that false critics have built domes
of glass between the heavens and them-
selves, domes which genius has to shat-
ter in pieces before it can make itself
comprehended.
Poor John Vanbrugh, one of
England's greatest architects, whose
charming floor-plan of Blenheim Palace
will be admired for all time to come,
notwithstanding elevations inexplicably
unworthy of so great an artist, how was
he written about by no less a man than
Pope ! The poet little thought that he
was building a lasting monument to his
own want of appreciation of anything
good in architecture when he wrote of
Vanbrugh's work:
"Lo! what huge heaps of littleness around.
The whole a labored quarry above ground."
What a total insensibility to good
composition, perhaps the very best that
was being done in England at that time!
I have always had a feeling of ad-
miration for Sir Joshua Reynolds' ap-
preciation of an architect's work in that
he came to the rescue of Vanbrugh and
expressed his admiration of the Blen-
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THE INFLUENCE OF LITERATURE ON MODERN ART 15
heim plan in opposition to so strong perhaps feeble literary ability, to re-
a criticism. spond to such opportunities as are off-
Let us more and more realize that ered them to speak for themselves and
the true way for a man to educate the for their fellow-artists, if only to add
public judgment is to teach it how to something of what they have learned
discriminate for itself. The surprising from their working experience to
thing to me is that so many honest men counteract the ill effects of illegitimate
have done so much harm inadvertently, fault-finding, and to complement much
and I look forward to the day when the of the refining and uplifting influence
artists will come forth, though with of true literary criticism.
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^^THE ILLUSION OF THE FIRST TIME" IN DRAMA
By William Gillette
I am to talk a brief paper this morn-
ing on a phase of what is called Drama,
by which is meant a certain well-known
variety of stage performance usually
but not necessarily taking place in a
theatre or some such public building,
or even transplanted out into the grass,
as it occasionally is in these degenerate
days.
If you care at all to know how I feel
about having to talk on this subject —
which I do not suppose you do — but
I'll tell you anyway — I am not as highly
elated at the prospect as you might
imagine. Were I about to deliver a
Monograph on Medicine or V^aluable
Observations on Settlement Work
and that sort of thing — or even if I
had been so particularly fortunate as
to discover the Bacillus of Poetry and
could now report progress toward the
concoction of a serum that would ex-
terminate tlie disease without killing
the poet — that is, without quite killing
him, I could feel that I was doing some
good. But I can't do any good to
Drama. Nobody can. Nothing that is
said or written or otherwise promul-
gated on the subject will affect it in the
slightest degree. And the reason for
this rather discouraging view of the
matter is, I am sorry to say, the very
simplest in the world as well as the most
unassailable, and that is, the Record.
And what is meant by a *'Record" is.
roughly speaking, a History of
Behavior along a certain line — a history
of what has been done — of what has
taken place, happened, occurred — of
what effect has been produced, in
the particular direction under consid-
eration. We might say that Records
are past performances or conditions
along a specified line.
And upon these Records or Histories
of Behavior, Occurrences, or Condi-
tions, depend all that we know or may
ever hope to know; for even Experi-
ment and Research are but endeavors
to produce or discover Records that
have been hidden from our eyes. To
know anything — to have any opinion
or estimate or knowledge or wisdom
worth having, we must take account of
Past Performances, or be aware of the
results of their consideration by others
— perhaps more expert than we. Yet,
notwithstanding this perfectly elemen-
tary fact of existence, there is a group
or class of these Records, many of
them relating to matters of the utmost
interest and importance, the considera-
tion of which would at least keep people
from being so shamelessly duped and
fooled as they frequently are, to
which no one appears to pay the
slightest attention.
This class or group of forgotten or
ignored Items of Behavior I have
\entured, for my own amusement, to
call the Dead Records, — meaning there-
by that they are dead to us — dead so
far as having the slightest effect upon
human judgment or knowledge or wis-
dom is concerned, buried out of sight
by our carelessness and neglect. And
in this interesting but unfortunate
group, and evidently gone to its last
long rest, reposes the Record of the
Effect upon Drama of what has been
said and written about it by scholars
and thinkers and critics. .\nd if this
Record could be roused to life — that
is, to consideration but for a moment,
it would demonstrate beyond the
shadow of a doubt that Drama is per-
fectly immune from the manoeuvres of
any germ that may lurk in what people
who are supposecl to be **Intellectuar*
may say or write or otherwise put
forth regarding it.
The unending torrent of variegated
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THE ILLUSION OF THE FIRST TIME" IN DRAMA
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criticism, condemnation, advice, con-
tempt,— the floods of space-writing,
prophesying, high-brow and low-brow
dinner-table and midnight-supper an-
athematizing that has cascaded down
upon Drama for centuries has never
failed to roll lightly off like water from
the celebrated back of a duck — not
even moistening a feather.
From all of which you will be able
to infer without difficulty that it
is perfectly hopeless for me to try
to do any good to Drama. And I
can't do it any harm either. Even that
would be something. In fact nothing
at all can be done to it. And as I am
cut off in that direction there seems to
be nothing left but to try if, by des-
cribing a rather extraordinary and
harassing phase of the subject in-
volving certain conditions and require-
ments from a Workshop point of view,
it is possible so to irritate or annoy
those who sit helpless before me, that
I can feel something has been accom-
plished, even if not precisely what one
might wish.
It must be a splendid thing to be able
to begin right — to take hold of and
wrestle with one's work in life from a
firm and reliable standing-ground, and
to obtain a comprehensive view of the
various recognized divisions, forms, and
limitations of that work, so that one
may choose with intelligence the most
advantageous direction in which to
apply his efforts. The followers of
other occupations, arts, and professions
appear to have these advantages to a
greater or less degree, while we who
struggle to bring forth attractive
material for the theatre are without
them altogether; and not only without
them, but the jumble and confusion in
which we find ourselves is infinitely in-
creased by the inane, contradictory, and
ridiculous things that are written and
printed on the subject. Even ordinary
names which mi^t be supposed to
define the common varieties of stage
work are in a perfectly hopeless
muddle. No one that I have ever met
or heard of has appeared to know what
Melodrama really is; we know very
well that it is not Drama-with-Music
as the word implies. I have asked
people who were supposed to have
quite powerful intellects (of course the
cheap ones can tell you all about it —
just as the silliest and most feeble-
minded are those who instantly inform
you regarding the vast mysteries of the
universe) — I say I have made inquiries
regarding Melodrama of really intel-
lectual people, and none of them have
appeared to be certain. Then there's t
plain Drama — without the Melo, a very
loose word applied to any sort of per-
formance your fancy dictates. And
Comedy — some people tell you it's a
funny, amusing, laughable affair, and
the Dictionaries bear them out in this;
while others insist that it is any sort of
a play, serious or otherwise, which is
not Tragedy or Farce. And there's
Farce, which derives itself from force —
to stuff, — ^because it was originally an
affair stuffed full of grotesque antics
and absurdities; — yet we who have
occasion to appear in Farce at the
present day very well know that unless
it is not only written but performed
with the utmost fidelity to life it is a
dead and useless thing. In fact it must
not by any chance be Farce ! And there
is the good old word Play that covers
any and every kind of Theatrical Ex-
hibition and a great many other things
besides. Therefore, in what appears —
at least to us — ^to be this hopeless con-
tusion, we in the workshops find it nec-
essary to make a classification of Stage
Work for our own use. I am not
advising anyone else to make it, but am
confessing, and with considerable trepi-
dation— for these things are supposed to
be sacred from human touch — that we
do it. Merely to hint to a real Student
of the Drama that such a liberty has
been taken would be like shaking a red
bull before a rag. Sacrilege is the name
of this crime.
More or less unconsciously, the.., :nd
without giving any names or definitions
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
(I am doing that for you this morning),
we who labor in the shops divide Stage
Performances in which people endeavor
to represent others than themselves for
the amusement and edification of specta-
tors, into two sections :
1. Drama.
2. Other Things.
That's all. Its so simple that I
suppose you'll be annoyed with me for
talking about it. Drama — in the dic-
tionary which we make for ourselves,
, is that form of Play or Stage Repre-
sentation which expresses what it has
to express in Terms of Human Life.
Other Things are those which do not.
Without doubt those Other Things may
be classified in all sorts of interesting
and amusing ways, but that is not our
department. What we must do is
to extricate Drama from among them ;
— and not only that, but we must
carefully clear off and brush away any
shreds or patches of them that may cling
to it. We do not do this because we
want to, but because we have to.
For us, then, Drama is composed of
— or its object is attained by — simulated
bfe episodes and complications, serious,
tragic, humorous, as the case may be ; by
the interplay of simulated human pas-
sion and human character.
Other Things aim to edify, interest,
amuse, thrill, delight, or whatever else
they may aim to do, by the employment
of language, of voice, of motion, of be-
havior, etc., as they would not be em-
ployed in the natural course of human
existence. These unlife-like things,
though they may be and frequently are,
stretched upon a framework of Drama,
are not Drama; for that framework
so decorated and encumbered can never
be brought to a semblance or a simula-
tion of life.
Although I have stated, in order to
shock no one's sensibilities, that this
is our own private and personal classi-
fication of Stage Work, I want to
whisper to you very confidentially that
It doesn't happen to be original with
us ; for the development and specializa-
tion of this great Life-Qass, Drama —
or whatever you may please to call it,
has been slowly but surely brought
about by that section of the Public
which has long patronized the better
class of theatres. It has had no theories
— no philosophy — ^not even a realiza-
tion of what it does, but has very
well known what it wants — ^yet by its
average and united choosing has the
character of Stage Work been changed
and shaped and moulded, ever develop-
ing and progressing by the survival of
that which was fittest to survive in the
curious world of Human Preference.
Be so good as to understand that I
am not advocating this classification in
the slightest degree, or recommending
the use of any name for it. I am
merely calling attention to the fact that
this Grand Division of Stage Work is
here — with us — at the present day ; and
not only here, but as a class of work
— as a method or medium for the ex-
pressing of what we have to express —
is in exceedingly good condition. After
years and centuries of development,
always in the direction of the humani-
ties, it closely approximates a perfect
instrument, capable of producing an
unlimited range of effects, from the
utterly trivial and inconsequent to the
absolutely stupendous. These may be
poetical with the deep and vital poetry
of Life itself, rather than the pleasing
arrangement of words, thoughts, and
phrases; tragical with the quivering
tragedy of humanity — not the mock
tragedy of vocal heroics; comical with
the absolute comedy of human nature
and human character — ^not the forced
antics of clowns or the supernatural
witticisms of professional humorists.
The possibilities of the instrument
as we have it to-day are infinite. But
those who attempt to use it — ^the writers
and makers and constructors of Drama,
are, of course, very finite indeed. They
must, as always, range from the multi-
tudes of poor workers — of the cheap
and shallow-minded, to the few who
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THE ILLUSION OF THE FIRST TIME" IN DRAMA
19
are truly admirable. I have an impres-
sion that the conditions prevailing in
other arts and professions are not
entirely dissimilar. Some one has
whispered that there are quite a few
Paintings in existence which could
hardly be said to have the highest
character; a considerable quantity of
third, fourth, and fifth rate Music —
and some of no rate at all ; and at least
six hundred billion trashy, worthless,
or even criminally objectionable,
Novels. It would not greatly surprise
me if we of the theatre — even in these
days of splendid decadence — ^had a
shade the best of it. But whether we
have or have not, the explanation of
whatever decline there may be in
Dramatic Work is so perfectly simple
that it should put to shame the vast
army of writers who make their living
by formulating indignant inquiries re-
garding it. For the highest authority
in existence has stated in plain language
that the true purpose of the Play is to
hold the mirror up to Nature — mean-
ing, of course, human nature; and this
being done at the present day a child in
a kindergarten could see why the reflec-
tions in that mirror are of the cheapest,
meanest, most vulgar and revolting
description. Imagine for one moment
what would appear in a mirror that
could truthfully reflect, upon being held
up to the average Newspaper of to-day
in the United States 1 But I admit
that this is an extreme case.
And now I am going to ask you —
(but it is one of those questions that
orators use with no expectation of an
answer) — I am going to inquire if any-
one here or any where else goes so far
as to imagine for an instant that a
Drama — a Comedy — ^ Farce — ^a Melo-
drama—or, in one word, a Play,
is the manuscript or printed book which
is ordinarily handed about as such?
And now I will answer myself — ^as I
knew I should all the time. One
probably does so imagine unless he has
thought about it. Doubtless you all
suppose that when a person hands you a
play to read he hands you that Play —
to read. And I am here with the un-
pleasant task before me of trying to
dislodge this perfectly innocent impres-
sion from your minds. The person
does nothing of that description. In a
fairly similar case he might say, "Here
is the Music,*' putting into your hands
some sheets of paper covered with
diflferent kinds of dots and things strung
along what appears to be a barbed-
wire fence. It is hardly necessary
to remind you that that is not the Music.
If you are in very bad luck it may be
a "Song" that is passed to you, and as
you roll it up and put it in your hand-
bag or your inside overcoat-pocket, do
you really think that is the Song you
have stuffed in there? If so, how
cruel! But no! You are perfectly
v/ell aware that it is not the Song which
you have in your hand-bag or music-
roll, but merely the Directions for a
Song. And that Song cannot, does
not, and never will exist until the
specific vibrations of the atmosphere
indicated by those Directions actually
take place, and only during the time
in which they are taking place.
And quite similarly the Music which
we imagined in your possession a
moment ago was not Music at all, but
merely a few sheets of paper on which
were written or printed certain Direc-
tions for Music; and it will not be
Music tmtil tho^e Directions are
properly complied with.
And again quite similarly the Play
which you were supposed to be hold-
ing in your hand is not a Play at all,
but simply the written or printed
Directions for bringing one into being ;
and that Play will exist only when these
Directions for it are being followed out
— and not then unless the producers
are very careful about it.
Incredible as it may seem there are
people in existence who imagine that
they can read a Play. It would not
surprise me a great deal to hear that
there are some present with us this very
morning who are in this pitiable condi-
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20
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
tion. Let me relieve it without delay.
The feat is impossible. No one on
earth can read a Play. You may read
the Directions for a Play and from these
Directions imagine as best you can what
the Play would be like ; but you could no
more read the Play than you could read
a Fire or an Automobile Accident or a
Base-Ball Game. The Play— if it is
Drama— does not even exist until it
appeals in the form of Simulated Life.
Reading a list ,of the things to be said
and done in order to make this appeal
is not reading the appeal itself.
And now that all these matters have
been amicably adjusted, and you have
so quietly and peaceably given up what-
ever delusion you may have entertained
as to being able to read a Play, I would
like to have you proceed a step further
in the direction indicated and suppose
that a Fortunate Dramatic Author has
entered into a contract with a Fortunate
Producing Manager for the staging of
his work. I refer to the Manager as
fortunate because we will assume that
the Dramatist's Work appears promis-
ing; and I use the same expression in
regard to the Author, as it is taken for
grfinted that the Manager with whom
he has contracted is of the most
desirable description — one of the essen-
tials being that he is what is known as a
Commercial Manager.
If you wish me to classify Managers
for you, — or, indeed, whether you wish
it or not, — I will cheerfully do so.
There are precisely two kinds. Com-
mercial Managers and Crazy Managers.
The Commercial Managers have from
fifty to one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year rent to pay for their
theatres, and, strange as it may seem,
their desire is to have the productions
they make draw money enough to pay
it, together witK other large expenses
necessary to the operation of a modem
playhouse. If you read what is written
you will find unending abuse and insult
for these men. The followers of any
other calling on the face of the earth
may be and are commercial with im-
punity. Artists, Musicians, Opera
Singers, Art Dealers, Publishers,
Novelists, Dentists, Professors, Doctors,
Lawyers, Newspaper and Magazine
Men and all the rest — even Secretaries
of State — are madly hunting for money.
But Managers — Scandalous, Mon-
strous, and Infamous ! And because of
a sneaking desire which most of them
nourish to produce plays that people
will go to see, they are the lowest and
most contemptible of all the brutes that
live. I am making no reference to the
managerial abilities of these men; in
that they must vary as do those engaged
in any other pursuit, from the multi-
tudinous poor to the very few good.
My allusion is solely to this everlasting
din about their commercialism; and I
pause long enough to propound the in-
(|uiry whether other things that proceed
from intellects so painfully puerile
should receive the slightest attention
from sensible people.
Well, then, our Book of Directions
is in the hands of one of these Wretches,
and, thinking well of it, he is about to
assemble the various elements neces-
sary to bring the Drama for which it
calls into existence. Being a Com-
mercial Person of the basest descrip-
tion he greatly desires it to attract the
paying public, and for this reason he
must give it every possible advantage.
In consultation with the Author, with
his Stage-Manager and the heads of
his Scenic, Electric, and Propcrt)'
Departments he proceeds to the work
of complying with the requirements of
the Book.
So far as painted, manufactured, and
mechanical elements are concerned,
there is comparatively little trouble.
To keep these things precisely as much
in the background as they would appear
were a similar episode in actual life
under observation — and no more — is
the most pronounced difficult}'. But
when it comes to the Human Beings
required to assume the Characters
which the Directions indicate, and not
only to assume them but to breathe
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**THE ILLUSION OF THE FIRST TIME" IN DRAMA
21
into them the Breath of Life — ^and not
the Breath of Life alone but all other
elements and details and items of Life
so far as they can be simulated, many
and serious discouragements arise.
For in these latter days Life-Ele-
ments are required. Not long ago they
were not. In these latter days the
merest slip from true Life-Simulation
is the death or crippling of the Charac-
ter involved, and it has thereafter to be
dragged through the course of the play
as a disabled or lifeless thing. Not all
plays are sufficiently strong in them-
selves to carry on this sort of morgue
or hospital service for any of their im-
portant roles.
The perfectly obvious methods of
Character Assassination such as the
sing-song or "reading" intonation, the
exaggerated and grotesque use of ges-
ture and facial expression, the stilted
and unnatural stride and strut, cause
little difficulty. These, with many other
inherited blessings from the "Palmy
Days" when there was acting that
really amounted to something, may
easily be recognized and thrown out.
But the closeness to Life which now
prevails has made audiences sensitive
to thousands of minor things that would
not formerly have affected them. To
illustrate my meaning, I am going to
speak of two classes of these defects.
I always seem to have two classes of
everything — but in this case it isn't so.
There are plenty more where these
came from. I select these two because
they are good full ones, bubbling
over with Dramatic Death and De-
struction. One I shall call — to dis-
tinguish it, "The Neglect of the Illu-
sion of the First Time" ; the other, "The
Disillusion of Doing it Correctly."
There is an interesting lot of them
which might be assembled under the
heading "The Illusion of Unconscious-
ness of What Could Not Be Known"
— but there will not be time to talk about
it. All these groups, however, are
closely related, and the "First Time"
one is fairly representative. And of
course I need not tell you that we have
no names for these things — no groups
— no classification; we merely fight
them as a whole — as an army or mob
of enemies that strives for the down-
fall of our Life-Simulation, with poi-
soned javelins. I have separated a
couple of these poisons so that you may
see how they work, and incidentally
how great little things now are.
Unfortunately for an actor (to save
time I mean all known sexes by that),
unfortunately for an actor he knows or
is supposed to know his part. He is
fully aware — especially after several
performances — of what he is going to
say. The Character he is representing,
however, does not know what he is
going to say, but, if he is a human
being, various thoughts occur to him
one by one, and he puts such of those
thoughts as he decides to, into such
speech as he happens to be able to com-
mand at the time. Now it is a very
difficult thing — and even now rather an
uncommon thing — for an actor who
knows exactly what he is going to say
to behave exactly as though he didn't;
to let his thoughts (apparently) occur
to him as he goes along, even though
they are there in his mind already ; and
(apparently) to search for and find the
words by which to express those
thoughts, even though these words are
at his tongue's very end. That's the
terrible thing — at his tongue's very end !
Living and breathing creatures do not
carry their words in that part of their
systems; they have to find them and
send them there — with more or less
rapidity according to their facility in
that respect — as occasion arises. And
audiences of today, without knowing
the nature of the fatal malady are fully
conscious of the untimely demise of
the Character when the actor portray-
ing it apparently fails to do this.
In matters of speech, of pauses, of
giving a Character who would think
time to think ; in behavior of eyes, nose,
mouth, teeth, ears, hands, feet, etc.,
while he does think and while he selects
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
his words to express the thought — this
ramifies into a thousand things to be
considered in relation to the language
or dialogue alone.
This menace of Death from "Neg-
lect of the lUusiop of the First Time"
is not confined to matters and methods
of speech and mentality, but extends
to every part of the presentation, from
the most climacteric and important
action or emotion to the most insignifi-
cant item of behavior — a glance of the
eye at some unexpected occurrence — the
careless picking up of some small object
which (supposedly) has not been seen
or handled before. Take the simple
matter of entering a room to which,
according to the plot or stor>', the Char-
acter coming in is supposed to be a
stranger: unless there is vigilance the
actor will waft himself blithely across
the threshold, conveying the impression
that he has at least been bom in the
house — ^finding it quite unnecessary to
look where he is g'oing and not in the
least worth while to watch out for
thoughtless pieces of furniture that may,
in their ignorance of his approach, have
established themselves in his path. And
the different scenes with the different
people ; and the behavior resulting from
their behavior; and the love-scenes as
they are called — these have a little
tragedy all their own for the perform-
ers involved ; for, if an actor plays his
part in one of these with the gentle awk-
wardness and natural embarrassment of
one in love for the first time — as the plot
supposes him to be — he will have the
delight of reading the most withering
and caustic ridicule of himself in the
next day's papers, indicating in no po-
lite terms that he is an awkward ama-
teur who does not know his business,
and that the country will be greatly
relieved if he can see his way clear to
quitting the stage at once; whereas if
he behaves with the careless ease
and grace and fluency of the Palmy
Day Actor, softly breathing airy and
poetic love-messages down the back of
the lady's neck as he feelingly stands
behind her so that they can both face
to the front at the same time, the audi-
ence will be perfectly certain that the
young man has had at least fifty-seven
varieties of love-affairs before and that
the plot has been shamelessly lying
about him.
The foregoing are a few only of the
numberless parts or items in Drama-
Presentation which must conform to
the "Illusion of the First Time." But
this is one of the rather unusual cases
in which the sum of all the parts does
not equal the whole. For although
every single item from the most impor
tant to the least important be success-
fully safeguarded, there yet remains the
Spirit of the Presentation as a whole.
Each successive audience before which
it is given must feel — not think or rea-
son about it, but feel — ^that it is wit-
nessing, not one of a thousand weary
repetitions, but a Life Episode that is
being lived just across the magic bar-
rier of the footlights. That is to say,
the Whole must have that indescribable
Life-Spirit or Effect which produces
the Illusion of Happening for the First
Time. Worth his weight in something
extremely valuable is the Stage-Direc-
tor who can conjure up this rare and
precious spirit!
The dangers to dramatic life and limb
from "The Disillusion of Doing it Cor-
rectly" are scarcely less than those in
the "First Time*' class, but not so diffi-
cult to detect and eliminate. Speaking,
breathing, walking, sitting, rising, stand-
ing, gesturing — in short behaving cor-
rectly, when the character under repre-
sentation would not naturally or cus-
tomarily do so, will either kill that char-
acter outright or make it ver>' sick in-
deed. Drama can make its appeal only
in the form of Simulated Life as it is
Lived — not as various authorities on
Grammar, Pronunciation, Etiquette,
and Elocution happen to announce at
that particular time that it ought to be
lived.
But we find it well to go much further
than the keeping of studied and unusual
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''THE ILLUSION OF THE FIRST TIME" IN DRAMA
23
correctness out, and to put common and
tO'be-expected errors in, when they
may be employed appropriately and un-
obtrusively. To use every possible
means and device for giving Drama
that which makes it Drama — Life-
Simulation — must be the aim of the
modem Play-Constructor and Pro-
ducer. And not alone ordinary errors
but numberless individual habits, traits,
peculiarities are of the utmost value for
this purpose.
Among these elements of Life and
Vitality but greatly surpassing all others
in importance is the human character-
istic or essential quality which passes
under the execrated name of Person-
ality. The very word must send an
unpleasant shudder through this highly
sensitive assembly ; for it is supposed to
be quite the proper and highly cultured
thing to sneer at Personality as an alto-
gether cheap affair and not worthy to
be associated for a moment with what
is highest in Dramatic Art. Neverthe-
less, cheap or otherwise, inartistic or
otherwise, and whatever it really is or
is not, it is the most singularly impor-
tant factor for infusing the Life-Illu-
sion into modem stage creations that
is known to man. Indeed it is some-
thing a great deal more than important,
for in these days of Drama's close ap-
proximation to Life, it is essential. As
no human being exists without Person-
ality of one sort or another, an actor
who omits it in his impersonation of
a human being omits one of the vital
elements of existence.
In all the history of the stage no
performer has yet been able to simu-
late or make use of a Personality not
his own. Individual tricks, mannerisms,
peculiarities of speech and action may
be easily accomplished. They are the
capital and stock in trade of the "Char-
acter Comedian" and the **Lightning-
Change Artist," and have nothing what-
ever to do with Personality.
The actors of recent times who have
been universally acknowledged to be
great have invariably been so because
of their successful use of their own
strong and compelling PersonaHties in
the roles which they made famous.
And when they undertook parts, as they
occasionally did, unsuited to their Per-
sonalities, they • were great no longer
and frequently quite the reverse. The
elder Salvini's "Othello'* towered so far
above all other renditions of the char-
acter known to modem times that they
were lost to sight below it. His "Gladi-
ator" was superb. • His "Hamlet" was
an unfortunate occurrence. His person-
ality was marvelous for "Othello" and
the "Gladiator," but unsuited to the
Dane. Mr. Booth's personality brought
him althost adoration in his "Hamlet"
— selections from it served him well in
"lago," "Richelieu," and one or two
other roles, but for "Othello" it was not
all that could be desired. And Henry
Irving and Ellen Terry and Modjeska,
Janauschek and Joseph Jefferson and
Mary Anderson, each and every one of
them with marvelous skill transferred
their Personalities to the appropriate
roles. Even now — once in a while —
one may see "Rip Van Winkle" excel-
lently well played, but without Mr. Jef-
ferson's Personality. There it is in
simple arithmetic for you — a case of
mere subtraction.
As indicated a moment ago I am only
too welj aware that the foregoing view
of the matter is sadly at variance with
what we are told is the Highest Form
of the Actor's Art. According to the
deep thinkers and writers on matters of
the theatre, the really great actor is not
one who represents with marvelous
power and truth to life the characters
within the limited scope of his Person-
ality, but the performer who is able to
assume an unlimited number of totally
divergent roles. It is not the thing at
all to consider a single magnificent per
formance such as Salvini's "Othello,"
but to discover the Highest Art we
must inquire how many kinds of things
the man can do. This, you will observe,
brings it down to a question of pure
stage gymnastics. Watch the actor who
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24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
can balance the largest number of roles is only a Landscape Artist. Find the
in the air without allowing any of them chap who can paint forty different
to spill over. Doubtless an interesting kinds." I have an idea the Theatre-
exhibition if you are looking for that going Public is to be congratulated that
form of sport. In another art it would none of the great Stage Performers,
be : '*Do not consider this man's paint- at any rate of modem times, has
ings, even though masterpieces, for he entered for any such competition.
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OPERA IN ENGLISH IN ITS BEARING ON THE AMERICAN
COMPOSER AND MUSIC IN AMERICA
By Reginald DeKoven
It can hardly be denfed that the pre-
vailing tendencies of modem creative
musical expression are definitely em-
piric; cacophony, clamor, and com-
plexity, the triple octave of modernity,
are the distinguishing signs today of
our musical progress or retrogression —
according to the varying standpoint of
the onlooker or commentator. The
great musicians of the time, the men
of genius with a real messag^e, seem
inclined to exalt a formula of expres-
sion at the expense of artistic sincerity,
imagination, and inspiration; while the
lesser talents, the imitators, the camp-
followers of any army on the march
forward, having absorbed or appropri-
ated some formula not their own, and
distorted and exaggerated it in a pain-
ful endeavor for some new thing, force
their eccentric lucubrations on a long-
suffering public with the smug assur-
ance that they have contributed some-
thing to musical literature.
If the capacity among composers for
writing absolute or pure music along
traditional and accepted lines has not
entirely lapsed, the desire for so doing
has certainly disappeared, and opera,
or one of its kindred and allied forms
of musico-dramatic expression, has be-
come the goal and Mecca of the major-
ity of the workers in the field of creat-
ive music, as affording them the great-
est latitude and opportunity, the widest
publicity, and the surest attention, for
the promulgation of whatever theories,
vagaries, or idiosyncrasies the modem
decadent desire for the novel and the
eccentric may impel them to.
Whether Strauss or Debussy should
be the High Priest and King of this
now most popular form of musical Art ;
whether the stentorian and aggressive
intensity of the one or the elusive,
colorful, mystic formlessness of the
other should most be emulated;
whether the voice or the orchestra
should mle and dominate the operatic
realm; or whether music-drama, nt<Ao-
drama, or the more conventional and
accepted operatic formulae are most
desirable in this class of work, it is not
my intention to discuss in this paper.
The question, however, of the language
in which opera — not opera in general,
but our opera in America, in particular
— should be sung, is, in my judgment,
and in its bearing on the future activi-
ties of the American composer, and
the development of his creative ability,
one of the most vital and important
for, if not in, this country at the present
time. Just how the giving of opera in
the vernacular may affect music in
America and the American composer,
and more particularly from a National
standpoint, it will, therefore, be my
endeavor to point out.
Opera in the vernacular — opera sung
in the English language — is no new
thing in this country. More than a
generation ago, when grand opera was
a heavily subsidized luxury for the
wealthy and cultured few, and the
Metropolitan Opera House in New
York was still a tentative and costly
experiment, the so-called standard
operas were being sung in English
throughout the country by traveling
operatic organizations, like those of
Emma Abbott, the Boston Ideals, the
Bostonians and others, generally
adequately interpreted by competent
artists, with a degree of popular inter-
est and appreciation and consequent
financial success, which made hand-
some fortunes for the projectors of
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
these enterprises. The artistic success
achieved by the Thurber Opera Com-
pany— really the first to give opera
in English on anything like a com-
plete and Metropolitan scale — showed
that the lack of permanence of
this praiseworthy experiment was due
to extravagant conditions of organiza-
tion and to financial mismanagement,
rather than because the public at large
did not desire or care for opera in
English. In later years, both Mr.
Henry W. Savage and the Messrs.
Abom have given grand opera in Eng-
lish in more or less satisfactory artistic
fashion throughout the country, and
with generally uniform financial success.
In view of these facts, it is hard to
see why we are not forced to admit that
opera in English in this country has
not been for some time a definite and
accepted fact, rather than a questionable
possibility. Within the last decade,
however, the conditions of opera-giving
have very much changed. After years
of expensive struggle the Metropolitan
Opera House grew by degrees out of a
tentative exi>eriment into a quasi-
National institution, which centralized
in itself, and practically entirely dom-
inated and controlled operatic interests
and activities in this country. From
its success, and the enterprise and
liberality of its directors and supporters,
the present permanent opera com-
panies in Boston and Chicago came
into being, and opera, once a luxury
of the few, has developed into a
generally popular form of intellectual
recreation, a necessity, almost, of the
many. It is only within the last few
years, when interest in opera as a
form of entertainment has spread and
increased to a notable extent, that indi-
vidual writers and critics, and societies
and organizations, like the National
Federation of Musical Clubs, and the
National Society for the Propagation of
Opera in English, of which I have the
honor to be president, have voiced a
rapidly growing popular sentiment,
desire, and opinion by asking the ques-
tion why opera in English should not
be admitted to our great opera houses.
The foreign influences which have con-
trolled, and to a great and regrettable
extent still control, these enterprises,
were at first definitely inimical to in-
cluding opera in the vernacular in their
scheme of opera-giving. But popular
opinion is mighty and will prevail; so
that now opera in the vernacular, both
original and in translations of standanl
works, has gained a permanent place
in the regular repertoires and plans of
our three leading operatic institutions.
This being so, it might seem super-
fluous to argue the question further pro
or con, or to insist that we are the
only musical people of the world —
England as an essentially non-operatic
country being excepted — who permit
their opera to be sung to them other-
wise than in the vernacular, or to
demand that all their opera should be so
sung. But the entering wedge for opera
in English has only just been driven
in, and there are still so many intelligent
opera-lovers and musicians who declaim
against and decry opera sung in Eng-
lish, that it may not be amiss briefly to
indicate the points at issue, and, if
possible, clinch the argument in favor
of a proposition which has a definite
and important bearing on the future
development of music in Anrerica.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint.
it must, I think, be admitted that Ac
contention that opera should be sung
in the language which originally inspired
the music is a valid one. From the
standpoint of practical possibilities,
however, this contention can hardly
be sustained; as otherwise the Russian
opera "Pique Dame" would not be
sung to us in Italian; we should not
be obliged to hear the original
Bohemian text of the "Bartered Bride"
in a German translation; or have the
original German idiom of "Kuhreigcn"
distorted into French. If the text of
operas must, of necessity, be trans-
lated, why, in an English-speaking
country, not translate them into Eng-
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OPERA IN ENGLISH
lish ? Inconsistencies of this kind must
surely invalidate the aesthetic plea for
the original text so often urged against
opera in the vernacular.
The principal arguments against
opera in English, as I have heard them
raised, would seem to be :
First. The unaccustomed sound of
the language, making the sentiments
expressed in song seem oftentimes
strange, uncouth, and even ludicrous.
Second. The inferior and inartistic
qualities of the translations of the texts
in use.
Third. The limitations and difficul-
ties of the English language as a
language of Song.
Fourth. The lack of artists com-
petent to sing in that language.
The first two of the above objections
may readily be answered as one; for
were we to have the proper artistic
translations of foreign texts, now
readily obtainable, both would disap-
pear. It is certain, in answer to the
third objection, that anyone who has
heard Signor Bonci sing a song in Eng-
lish can no longer maintain that English
as a singing language is either difficult
or impractical ; and it is equally certain,
to reply to the last objection, that if the
public should demand, as in time it
surely will, that all opera be sung in the
vernacular, singers a plenty to sing
them can and will be found. As a prac-
tical musician, having sung myself in
four languages, I maintain confidently
that to an English-speaking person,
English, always next to Italian the pure
language of song, when properly
studied, is the easiest language in which
to sing. In this day and age of dramatic
opera when intelligible dramatic diction
has become a sine qua non for any kind
of intelligent enjoyment, the hackneyed
and lackadaisical argument that opera
is always unintelligible, and that, there-
fore, the language in which it is sung
matters not at all, seems too puerile to
discuss.
The gist and inwardness of the
whole question of opera in English for
American audiences, is, I think, summed
up and set forth in a conversation I
had a couple of years ago with Signor
Gatti-Casazza, the Director of the
Metropolitan Opera House, then newly
arrived on these shores, in reference
to his including opera in English in
his regular operatic plans. Knowing
that a large portion of his reputa-
tion as an impressario was due to his
mounting of the Wagner operas at
La Scala, I said to him: "May I ask,
Mr. Gatti, when you gave your per-
formances of Wagner in Milan, in
what language these operas were sung?"
He replied: "In Italian, of course."
"May I ask further?" I continued, "had
you given these operas with the original
German text, what would have been
the result?" He then replied: "Why,
nobody would have come to see them ;"
thus proving conclusively that in Italy,
at least, it is impossible from either an
artistic or financial standpoint to give
opera in any language other than the
vernacular. But if the Italians insist
imperatively that their opera shall be
sung to them exclusively in their native
tongue, thereby making of Opera an
intelligible, and, therefore, more popular
and generally interesting entertainment,
making of it in fact a National institu-
tion, for the masses and not alone for
the classes — all of which arguments for
opera in the vernacular apply equally
here — why should not we opera-lovers
of America free ourselves from the
chains and fetters imposed by foreign
influences which bind and impede our
National operatic development, and
demand the same thing. We must, I
believe, admit that opera in English is
practical from the standpoint of
language; desirable from its resultant
intelligibility and consequent wider
appeal to popular interest and sym-
pathy; and, therefore, finally inevitable
for us, as an English-speaking musical
people. For, if to-day, opera, as it
undoubtedly is, be the dominant, the
most popularly appealing and most
opportunistic musical form for the
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
expression of creative musical thought,
it is also inevitable that the future
activities of the American composer
must be largely operatic to assure to
himself artistic progress and delevop-
ment, and secure for his Art the needed
wider National recognition, significance
and importance. And to what language
shall a composer write opera, if not
his own?
I have so far employed the term
"Opera in English," in referring to
that language when used in connection
with music in opera. But there is
another term — "English Opera" —
which has a far more pertinent and
important significance in its bearing on
the subject under discussion, as affect-
ing the development of National musi-
cal art, both creative and interpreta-
tive. Opera in English and English
Opera, though correlated terms, are,
nevertheless, not sufficiently coincident
to be employed interchangeably. Opera
in English, as I take it, means the
performance in the English language
of the operas of the standard repertoire ;
while English Opera would mean the
production of operas originally written
to an English text by composers of
whatever nationality. Bearing in mind
the undoubted influence of a language
on the conception and expression of a
composer's thought, the consideration
of English Opera opens up an entirely
new range of artistic suggestion. How-
ever opinions may vary as to the
desirability or suitability of Opera in
English, there can be at the present
time but one opinion as to the positive
necessity of English Opera as the
readiest means to our hand not only to
stimulate and develop American musi-
cal art and the American composer, but
also to encourage and increase that
much needed National confidence in
native musical possibilities which begets
a National Art and the love and respect
of a Nation for it.
As giving the American composer
important and available opportunities
for the display of his abilities to a still
somewhat incredulous public, the bent-
fits of English Opera can hardly be
doubted; while the case of Opera in
English cannot be considered as con-
clusively proved until the popular
demand for it in our great opera-
houses has been registered, as it has
hardly been hitherto, in unmistakable
fashion. Indications at the present
time definitely point to thie fact that the
operatic powers-that-be have realized
that there is a genuine feeling abroad
among the public, that the time has
come for at least an experiment in
English Opera-giving, and the reper-
toire of our principal opera-houses
for 1913-14, as announced thus far.
show that English Opera rather than
Opera in English has been chosen
to illustrate the experiment. I be-
lieve confidently that, were opera to
be once generally sung in English,
the appreciation for this form of Art
and of music in general, by the public
at large, would be notably increased.
Such increased appreciation, would,
I further believe, in its turn and by
degrees, foster and develop that
National interest in and feeling for
music as an art, which we still lack,
and which we instantly need in order
that this art with us may assume in the
minds of the people the position and
National significance which it enjoys
abroad, and to which it owes its influ-
ence and importance there.
Any development of a National
School of Music in this country de-
pends, therefore, to my thinking en-
tirely upon the stimulus to music in
general, which Opera in English and
English Opera would undoubtedly give.
My friend, the late Mr. McDowell,
was always very impatient at being put
forward as an American composer, and
was wont to declare, with some heat,
that he would rather not be heard at
all than to be known simply as a com-
poser whose works were exploited for
purely National reasons. While one
may understand and appreciate his
reluctance to be judged as a composer
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OPERA IN ENGLISH
29
seeking for international reputation by
merely local standards and because of
local indulgence, I am inclined to think
that his attitude in this matter was
wrongly taken. The greatest music
known to the world today is so strongly
marked and influenced by distinctively
National characteristics and feeling,
that it may almost be set down as axio-
matic that music to be great must, in a
sense, be National; for the history of
music shows that the best music — that
music which has shown the greatest
permanence — has been written by the
composers of those countries where the
greatest amount of National feeling
prevails. Perhaps what music in
America most needs today for its
proper and progressive development, is
a larger measure of national confidence
in National ability in this particular
field of Art. It is National pride as
well as National feeling that begets and
fosters a National Art.
Paris is now the great art-producing
center that it is, because the French in
all matters pertaining to Art are so
intensely National. To a Frenchman,
French Art is better and more perfect
than any other Art; and in order that
French Art should be encouraged and
developed, Frenchmen are ready to
incur even the charge of provincialism.
It cannot be doubted that this National
confidence in a National ability has
everything to do with the productive
vitality which is characteristic of French
Art in all its branches . to-day. It is
also beyond question that the lack of
that National confidence in National
artistic capacity which distinguishes
France, is the principal cause why we
in America are, to a great extent, a
Nation of adapters and imitators rather
than originators and creators, artisti-
cally speaking; why, from a dramatic
standpoint, our theatrical managers re-
produce rather than produce; why, at
any of our principal opera-houses an
unknown German, Frenchman, or
Italian has a better chance of having
an unknown and untried work pro-
duced, than an American ; why we have
had, strictly speaking, hitherto no
National drama, no National music, and
far too little National pride or interest
in National achievement in any branch
of Art. Literature, on the other hand,
has ever fared better. Is there any
reason why, with the proper oppor-
tunity and the needed encouragement,
which, as I contend, will best be secured
by giving him the chance of being heard
in opera, the time is not ripe for the
American composer to take an equal
place in popular affection and esteem
with that occupied by the workers in
literary fields?
It is, perhaps, not surprising, that up
to now our musical productiveness has
not been on a par with, or attained
equal eminence or distinction with, our
achievements in the other branches of
Art and Literajture. The hurry and
bustle, the ceaseless activity and untir-
ing energ>' of our busy life, have left to
our people little time for meditation and
the contemplation and cultivation of
the higher emotions and faculties.
Music is the natural expression, the
wordless language of a part of our
being which our daily business and
commerical pursuits have not only not
encouraged but, of necessity, impeded.
I well remember on my first arrival in
Chicago, more years ago than I care
to think of, being told by a gentleman
— 3, leader at the Bar — who represented
at that time the literary culture of the
City, that he considered that any man
— with the accent on the MAN — who
devoted any attention to music was
little better than a fool ! And Chicago
was not alone in this point of view at
that time ; and I feel sure that the solid
business man, even today, is still only
too ready to look upon any worker in
artistic fields from much the same
standpoint; to measure his achieve-
ments by a purely financial standard,
and regard his failure to obtain im-
portant financial returns for his work
as conclusive evidence that Art as a
profession is but a poor thing at best.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
It is certainly true that in music,
at least, and until very recently, our
culture has been from the top down,
rather than, as it should be, from the
bottom up. The American composer,
largely owing to the difficulties of ob-
taining anything like an adequate and
comprehensive musical training in this
country, has been, by education, asso-
ciation, environment, sympathy, and
acquired tradition in thought and feel-
ing, in method and practice, essentially
foreign, rather than distinctively Amer-
ican.
We do not possess in this country
the folk-music which makes the music
of Spain and Italy, Russia and Swe-
den, Germany and the Czech countries
so individual and so characteristic,
wherewith a composer might start in
to build up a National School of Music ;
for it is idle to allege^ in spite of the
efforts of Dr. Dvorak and others, that
the folk-music — Indian, Negro, and
Creole — ^which undoubtedly exists in
this country is really valuable as a basic
foundation for a School of Music
which could be considered in any sense
National.
The popular airs, or folk-music, of
a Nation might well be called the al-
most unconscious soul-utterances of
the people ; their very existence in most
instances is due to some National crisis,
some wave of National feeling or emo-
tion; at times they emerge from the
fiery crucible of a Nation's anguish,
and at other times the irresistible out-
burst of a Nation's joy gives them be-
ing. But, up to comparatively recent
times, we have been a people rather
than a Nation; and until we shall fin-
ally and once for all have done away
with our hyphenated nationalities and
consequently divided National feeling,
we cannot expect to have an expression
in music which shall be distinctly Amer-
ican, and readily recognizable as such.
It was because of the divided National
feeling which caused the Civil War,
that the numerous melodies brought
into being by the emotions of that
titanic struggle, which otherwise
might well have ranked with many of
the most characteristic folk-songs of
Foreign Nations, obtained little or no
permanence. The Spanish War which
for the first time really bridged the
bloody chasm between North and South
and began to build up a feeling of
united Nationality, marked, in my judg-
ment, a definite period and milestone
in our musical history and progress.
Since that time music in this countr>'
has received an impetus and gained a
development, not alone artistic, but
popular, that it had never compasse<l
before.
If folk-music be an inevitable neces-
sity for the foundation of a National
School of Music, we are but now be-
ginning to be that Nation which could
find a vent for its emotions or feelings
in such a form. I am not one of those
who decry or cavil at the enormous and
heterogeneous output of so-called pop-
ular music — ^be it ragtime or what you
will — which is characteristic of Music
in America today. In bringing music
as a fact and a pleasurable feature of
daily life to people who had previously
never considered or known it at all.
this music has achieved a definite result
and worked an enduring benefit. Be-
cause of it, and for the first time in our
musical history, musical culture lias
been begun, as it should begin, from
the bottom up ; for publishers of popu-
lar music are responsible for the state-
ment that the popular song has vastly
improved in character and artistic qual-
ity during the past decade, and that a
song of merit sufficient to obtain a
vogue and widespread popularity five
years ago is now no longer good
enough to secure general popular sym-
pathy and recognition. All this is cer-
tainly vastly ^encouraging, and tends to
show that music is becoming that fac-
tor and interest in the daily life of the
many, and not alone of the cultured
few, which, when properly assimilated,
will lead the public, as the result of an
emotion, to express itself musically.
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OPERA IN ENGLISH
31
when occasion shall arise, in a manner,
and with a voice that shall be recog-
nizably American. So, it is possible
that this popular music of the day,
ei^emeral though it be, may contain
the germ of the folk-song, that uncon-
scious utterance of the people referred
to above, which some day will make
American music as distinctively Na-
tional as that of other nations. And,
our composers of to-day would do well
to heed these signs of the times.
The trend of all music at the present
time is away from form, formalism, and
pre-accepted theory. Greater latitude
and unlimited freedom of expression is
now the cry of the musician, who has
by slow degrees been emancipated from
the chains and shackles of tradition and
convention which bound and fettered
musical Art through long years of pro-
gressive development; and what the
American composer now most needs, in
order to secure the National confidence
and pride in his abilities which will in
time render a distinctively National
School of Music a possibility, is to be
heard. Opera in any one of its numer-
ous forms or varieties — Grand, Lyric,
Light or Comic — would seem to afford
him the needed opportunity, and if he
write opera at all, he must write Eng-
lish Opera; hence the vast importance
of English Opera and Opera in English
— the latter surely a preparation for the
former — to the American composer as
a formative influence towards an ulti-
mate National expression, and as a
means of inducing the public at large,
to whom Opera every year more and
more appeals, to support and recognize
his abilities and assist in his develop-
ment.
But, any argument in support of
English Opera and Opera in English
would be only half stated, any discus-
sion on the bearing of Opera in the ver-
nacular on music in America and the
American composer, would be incom-
plete and half-hearted, without refer-
ence to the significance and importance
of the undoubted influence of such
Opera upon the American singer and
operatic artist. If a country the size
of Italy can support, as it does today,
more than sixty theatres and opera-
houses where original Opera is pro-
duced, think of the possibilities of oper-
atic production in a country of the size
and wealth of America, when Opera
through being sung in the vernacular,
shall attain that measure of popular in-
terest and appreciation which will ren-
der it an essential part of the intellec-
tual and artistic life and enjoyment of
the people here, as it is in Italy at the
present time. Were such a condition
of opera-giving ever to obtain in this
country, as is by no means unlikely, we
should have permanent opera-com-
panies, not only in our three principal
cities, but in a score ; while the thou-
sands of young American singers who
are now barnstorming in opera in for-
eign countries, singing minor roles at
starvation salaries, would have the
needed and much-to-he-desired oppor-
tunity of being heard and appreciated
in the country where they belong, and
from which this present lack of oppor-
tunity has, to a great extent, exiled
them. There are to-day hundreds of
thousands of young men and women
studying singing in this country, wait-
ing, hoping, and too often in vain, for
the hardly-won chance to show their
talents to the public, and thus justify
the labor, time, and money they have
spent in cultivating them. Now that
it is possible, as never before, to obtain
in this country a competent and thor-
ough vocal training, there is all the
more nee<l for those who elect to gain
an education here to be heard here,
without being first compelled to go
abroad, to obtain the reputation which
now seems necessary to secure them
even a hearing at home. The fact
that the diction of so many of our
native-born singers is faulty and im-
perfect in English has been due largely
to the necessity of singing almost exclu-
sively in foreign languages, consequent
upon their having been trained abroad.
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It is a great point in favor of the de-
velopment of Opera in this country that
this necessity no longer exists. In this
connection, it is a little curious to note
that the principal opponents of Opera
in English at the Metropolitan Opera
Hoitse have so far been the American-
bom and English-speaking members of
that organization, who, because of their
foreign training having never studied
how to sing in their own language,
and, moreover, being generally unintel-
ligible in any language, have been
seemingly disinclined to place their
faulty and imperfect diction in bold
relief by singing in English.
It is certain, and I cannot make the
contention too emphatic, that any in-
telligent person, with proper study, can
sing the English language intelligibly.
The fact has been proven, and should,
therefore, no longer be cited as a prin-
cipal and prohibitive objection to the
English language as a language of
opera and song.
Critics have long denied the exist-
ence of conditions founded on arbitrary
conventions, which, according to them,
would render the existence of a Na-
tional School of Music a possibility;
why, it is a little hard to see. In every
other branch of Science, or Art, or
Industry, we have, as a Nation,
equaled, if not excelled, the achieve-
ments of older civilizations, and the
very variety of the elements which
are now forming the American Nation
would argue in favor of the possibility
of the ultimate establishment of a
School of Music, which, by uniting the
characteristics of many peoples, might
well, in time, develop into something
broader, stronger, fresher, and more
spontaneous than anything the world
has yet seen. As a people today we
have an eminently original imagina-
tive and constructive faculty, and when
the rapid civilizing and developing pro-
cesses which we are now undergoing
shall have given us more leisure, and
broadened our perception to the extent
of enabling us to see in the cultivation
of the Arts one of the noblest fields for
the exercise of human energy, we may
confidently expect to see the American
composer take a place in the world of
Music commensurate with the position
to which workers in Literature and the
other Arts, as well as in the Sciences,
in this country have already attained.
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SCIENCE AKD LITERATURE
By John Burroughs
It is not in the act of seeing things
or apprehending facts that we differ so
much from one another, as in the act
of interpreting what we see or appre-
hend. Interpretation opens the door to
the play of temperament and imagina-
tion, and to the bias of personality. A
mind that has a lively fancy and a
sense of mystery will interpret phenom-
ena quite differently from a mind in
which these things are absent. The
poetic, the religious, the ethical mind,
will never be satisfied with the inter-
pretation of the physical universe given
us by the scientific mind. To these
mental types such an interpretation
^eems hard and barren; it leaves a
large part of our human nature un-
satisfied. If a man of science were to
explain to a mother all the physical
properties, functions, and powers of her
baby, and all its natural history, would
the mother, see her baby in such a por-.
traiture? Would he had told her why
she loves it? Is it the province of
literature and art to tell her why she
loves it, and to make her love it more ;
of science to tell her how she came by
it, and how to secure its physical well-
being. Literature interprets life and
nature in terms of our sentiments and
emotions; science interprets them in
terms of our understanding.
The habit of mind begotten by the
contemplation of Nature, and by our
emotional intercourse with her, is in
many ways at enmity with the habit
of mind begotten by the scientific study
of nature. The former has given us
literature, art, religion; out of the
latter has come our material civiliza-
tion. Out of it has also come our
enlarged conception of the physical
universe, and a true insight as to our
relations with, albeit this gain seems to
have been purchased, more or less, at
the expense of that state of mind that
in the past has given us the great poets
and prophets and religious teachers and
inspirers.
As I have said, the two types of mind,
the scientific and the artistic, the analytic
and the synthetic, look upon nature and
life with quite different eyes. Words-
worth said of his poet that he was quite
**contented to enjoy what others under-
stood." When Whitman, as he records
in one of his poems, fled from the
lecture-hall where the "learned astron-
omer" was discoursing about the stars,
and in silence gazed up at the sky
gemmed with them, he showed clearly
to which type he belonged. Tyndall
said that men of warm feelings, with
minds open to the elevating impres-
sions produced by nature as a whole,
whose satisfaction therefore is rather
ethical than logical, lean to the syn-
thetic side, while the analytic harmo-
nizes best with the more precise and
more mechanical bias which seeks the
satisfaction of the understanding.
Tyndall said of Goethe that while his
discipline as a poet went well with his
natural history studies, it hindered his
approach to the physical and mechani-
cal sciences. "He could not formulate
distinct mechanical conceptions; he
could not see the force of mechanical
reasoning," as Tyndall himself could
see it. Tyndall was a notable blending
of the two types of mind ; to his pro-
ficiency in anal3rtical and experimental
science he joined literary gifts of a
high order. It is these gifts that made
his work rank high in the literature
of science.
Tyndall was wont to explain his
mechanistic views of creation to
Carlyle, whom he greatly revered. But
Carlyle did not take kindly to them.
This was one of the phases of physical
science which repelled him. Carlyle
revolted at the idea that the ^un was
the physical basis of life. He could
not endure any teaching that savored
of materialism. He would not think
of the universe as a machine, but as
an organism. Igdrysill, the Tree of
Life, was his favorite image. Con-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
sidering how the concrete forces of
the universe circulate and pull together,
he found no similitude so true as that
of the tree. "Beautiful, altogether
beautiful and great," said he. "The
Machine of the universe — alas! do
think of that in contrast!"
Carlyle was a poet and a prophet
and saw the world through his moral
and spiritual nature, and not through
his logical faculties. He revolted at
the conception of the mystery we name
life being the outcome of physical and
chemical forces alone.
Literature, art and religion are not
only not fostered by the scientific spirit,
but this spirit, it seems to me, is almost
fatal to them, at least so far as it
banishes mystery and illusion, and
checks or inhibits our anthropomorphic
tendencies. Literature and art have
their genesis in love, joy, admiration,
speculation, and not in the exact knowl-
edge which is the foundation of science.
Our creative faculties may profit by
exact knowledge of material things,
but they can hardly be inspired by it.
Inspiriition is from within, but scientific
knowledge is from without.
There is no literature or art without
love and contemplation. We can make
literature out of science only when we
descend upon it with love, or with
some degree of emotional enjoyment.
Natural history, geolog>% biology,
astronomy, yield literary material only
to the man of emotion and imagina-
tion. Into the material gathered from
outward nature the creative artist puts
himself, as the bee puts herself into
the nectar she gathers from the flowers
to make it into honey. Honey is the
nectar plus the bee; and a poem, or
other work of art, is fact and observa-
tion plus the man. In so far as
scientific knowledge checks our
tendency to humanize nature, and to
infuse ourselves into it, and give to it
the hues of our own spirits, it is the
enemy of literature and art. In so far
as it gives us a wider and truer con-
ception of the material universe, which
it certainly has clone in every great
science, it ought to be their friend and
benefactor. Our best growth is
attained when we match knowl^^ with
love, insight with reverence, under-
standing with sympathy and enjoy-
ment; else the machine becomes more
and more, and the man less and less.
Fear, superstition, misconception,
have played a great part in the litera-
ture and religion of the past ; they have
given it reality, picturesqueness and
power; it remains to be seen if love,
knowledge, democracy and human
brotherhood can do as well.
The literary treatment of scientific
matter is naturally of much more
interest to the general reader than to
the man science. By literary treatment
I do not mean taking liberties with
facts, but treating them so as to give
the reader a lively and imaginative
realization of them — a sense of their
aesthetic and intellectual values. The
creative mind can quicken a dead fact
and make it mean something in the
emotional sphere.
When we humanize things, we are
beyond the sphere of science and in the
sphere of literature. We may still be
dealing with truths, but not with facts.
Tyndall, in his Fragments, very often
rises from the sphere of science into
that of literature. He does so, for
instance, in considering the question of
personal identity in relation to that of
molecular change in the body. He
asks:
How is the sense of personal identity
maintained across this flight of the molecules
that goes on incessantly in our bodies, so
that while our physical being, after a cer-
tain number of years, is entirely renewed,
our consciousness exhibits no solution of
tontinuity? Like changing sentinels, the
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon that depart
seem to whisper their secret to their com-
rades that arrive, and thus, while the Non-
ego shifts, the Ego remains the same. Con-
stancy of form in the grouping of the mole-
cules, and not constancy of the molecules
themselves, is the correlative of this con-
stancy of perception. Life is a twitr which
in no two consecutive moments of existence
is composed of the same particles.
Tyndall has here stated a scientific
fact in the picturesque and poetic
manner of literature. Henri Rergson
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SCIENCE AND LITERATURE
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does this on nearly every page. When
his subject-matter is scientific, his
treatment of it is literary. Indeed, the
secret of the charm and power of his
"Creative Evolution" is the rare fusion
and absorption of its scientific and
philosophical material by the literary
and artistic spirit.
How vividly present Huxley is in
everything he writes or speaks, the man
shining through his sentences as if the
sword were to shine through its scab-
bard— a different type from Tyndall,
more controversial. A lover of combat,
he sniffs the battle afar; he is less
poetical than Tyndall, less given to
rhetoric, but more a part of what he
says, and having a more absolutely
transparent style. How he charged the
foes of Darwin, and cleared the field
of them in a hurry. His sentences went
through their arguments as steel
through lead.
As a sample of fine and eloquent
literary statement I have always greatly
admired that cldsing passage in his
essay on "Science and Morals" in which
he defends physical science against the
attacks of Mr. Lilly, who, armed with
the weapons of both theology and
philosophy, denounced it as the evil
gfenius of modem days :
If the diseases of society, says Huxley,
consist in the weakness of its faith in the
existence of the God of the theologians, in
a future state, and in uncaused volitions, the
indication, as the doctors say, is to suppress
Theology and Philosophy, whose bickerings
about things of which tney know nothing
have been the prime cause and continusU
sustenance of that evil scepticism which is
the Nemesis of meddling with the unknow-
able.
Cinderella is modestly conscious of her
igrnorance of these high matters. She lights
the fire, sweeps the house, and provides the
dinner; and is rewarded by being told that
she is a base creature, devoted to low and
material interests. But in her garret she
has fairy visions out of the ken of the pair
of shrews who are quarreling down-stairs.
She sees the order which pervades the seem-
ing disorder of the world; the great drama
of evolution, with its full share of pity and
terror, but also with abundant goodness and
beauty, unrolls itself before her eyes; and
she learns in her heart of hearts the lesson,
that the foundation of moralitjr is to have
done, once and for all, with lying; to give
up pretending to believe that for which there
is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible
propositions about things beyond the possi-
bilities of knowledge.
She knows that the safety of morality lies
neither in the adoption of this or that theo-
logical creed but in a real and living belief
in that fixed order of nature which sends
social disorganization upon the track of im-
morality as surely as it sends physical dis-
ease after physical trespasses. And of that
firm and lively faith it is her high mission
to be the priestess.
Herbert Spencer, so far as I have
read him, never breathes the air of
pure literature. "Life," says Spencer,
"is a continuous adjustment of internal
relations to external relations." In
other words, without air, water and
food our bodies would cease to func-
tion and life would end. Spencer's
definition is of course true so far as
it goes, but it is of no more interest
than any other statement of mere fact.
It is like opaque and inert matter.
Tyndall's free characterization of life
as a "wave which in no two consecu-
tive moments of its existence is com-
posed of the same particles" pleases
much more, because the wave is a
beautiful and suggestive object. The
mind is at once started upon the inquiry,
What is it that lifts the water up in
the form of a wave and travels on,
while the water stays behind? It is a
force imparted by the wind, but where
did the wind get it, and what is the
force? The impulse we call life lifts
the. particles of the inorganic up into
the organic, into the myriad forms of
life — plant, tree, bird, animal — ^and,
when it has run its course, lets them
drop back again into their former
inanimate condition.
Although Tyndall and Huxley
possessed fine literary equipments,
making them masters of the art of
eloquent and effective statement, they
were nevertheless on their guard against
any anthropomorphic tendencies. They
were not unaware of the emotion of the
beautiful, the sublime, the mysterious,
but as men of science they could inter-
pret evolution only in terms of matter
and energy. Most of their writings
are good literature, not because the
,authors humanize the subject-matter
and read themselves into nature's script,
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE? ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
but because they are masters of the
art of expression, and give us a lively
sense of the workings of their own
minds.
Spencer was foreordained to the
mechanistic view of life. His mind
moves in the geometric plane. It is a
military and engineering intellect
applied to the problems of organic
nature. How smoothly and orderly his
intellect runs, with what force and
precision, turning out its closely woven
philosophical fabric as great looms turn
out square miles of textiles, without a
break or a flaw in the process. Never
WJis a mind of such power so little
inspired; never was an imagination of
such compass so completely tamed and
broken into the service of the reason-
ing intellect. There is no more aerial
perspective in his pages than there is
in a modem manufacturing plant, and
no hint whatever of *'the light that
never was on sea or land." We feel
the machine-like run of his sentences,
each one coming round with the
regularity and precision of the revolving
arms of a patent harvester, making a
clean sweep and a smooth cut; the
hdmogeneous and the heterogeneous,
the external and the internal, the
inductive and the deductive processes,
alternating in a sort of rhythmic beat
like the throb of an engine. Spencer
had a prodigious mind crammed with
a prodigious number of facts, but a
more juiceless, soulless system of
philosophy has probably never emanated
from the human intellect.
The tendency to get out of the
sphere of science — the sphere of the
verifiable — into the sphere of literature,
or . of theology, or of philosophy, is
pronounced, even in many scientific
minds. It is pronounced in Sir Oliver
Lodge, as seen in his book, "Science
and Immortality." It is very pronounced
in Alfred Russell Wallace; in fact, in
his later work his anthropomorphism
is rampant. He has cut more fantastic
tricks before the high heaven of science
than any other man of our time of equal
scientific attainments. What a contrast
to the sane, patient and truth-loving
mind of Darwin! Yet Darwin, it
seems to me, humanized his birds when
he endowed the females with human
femininity, attributing to them love of
ornament and of fine plumage, and
this making love of ornamentation the
basis of his theory of sexual selection-
It seems as though in that case he could
not find the key to his problem, and so
proceeded to make one — ^a trick to
which we are all prone.
Since science dehumanizes nature, its
progress as science is in proportion as
it triumphs over the anthropomorphic
character which our hopes, our fears,
our partialities, in short, our innate
humanism, has bestowed upon the out-
ward world. Literature, on the other
hand, reverses this process, and
humanizes everything it looks upon ; its
products are the fruit of the human
personality playing upon the things of
life and nature, making everything
redolent of human qualities, and speak-
ing to the heart and to the imagination.
Science divests nature of all human
attributes and speaks to impersonal
reason alone. For science to be anthro-
j)omorphic is to cease to be science:
and for literature to be anything else is
to fail as literature. Accordingly, the
poet is poet by virtue of his power to
make himself the center and focus of
the things about him, but the scientific
mind is such by virtue of its power to
emancipate itself from human and
personal consideration, and rest with
the naked fact. There is no art without
the play of personality, and there is no
science till we have escaped from
personality, and from all forms of the
anthropomorphism that doth so easily
beset us. It is not that science restricts
the imagination; it is that it sterilizes
nature, so to speak, reducing it to
inorganic or non-human elements. This
is why the world, as science sees it,
is to so many minds a dead world.
When we find fault with science, and
accuse it of leading us to a blank wall
of material things, or of deadening our
esthetic sensibilities, we are finding
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SCIENCE AND LITERATURE
•37
fault with it because it lcK>ks upon the
universe in the light of cold reason, and
not through that of the emotions. But
our physical well-being demands the
dehumanization of the physical world,
until we see^ our true relation to
the forces amid which we live and
move — our concrete bodily relations
— we are like children playing with
fire, or with edged tools, or with
explosives. Man made no headway
against disease, against plague and pes-
tilence, till he outgrew his humanistic
views, dissociated them from evil spirits
and offended deities, and looked upon
them as within the pale of natural
causation. Early man saw and felt and
heard spirits on all sides of him — in fire,
in water, in air, but he controlled and
used these things only so far as he was
practically scientific. To catch the wind
in his sails he had to put himself in
right physical relation to it. If he
stayed the ravages of flood or fire, he
was compelled to cease to propitiate
these powers as offended deities, and
fight them with non-human forces, as
he does to-day. And the man of to-day
may have any number of superstitions
about his relations to the things around
him, and about theirs to him,* but he is
successful in dealing with them only
when he forgets his superstitions and
approaches things on rational grounds.
There is no danger that our exact
knowledge will ever exhaust the
Universe. There will always be vast
vistas ahead of inexact knowledge, or
of the uncertain, the problematical that
will stimulate the imagination and
excite the emotions. Both literature
and religion may find a congenial field
always in advance of our exact knowl-
edge. The more we know, the vaster
the outlook into the Universe.
Our fathers who held that every
event of their lives was fixed and
unalterable, according to the decrees of
an omnipotent being, could not have
survived had their daily conduct been
in harmony with their beliefs. But
when ill, they sent for the doctor; if the
house got afire, they tried to put the
fire out; if crops failed, they improved
their husbandry. They slowly learned
that better sanitation lessened die death-
rate; that temperate habits prolonged
life; that signs and wonders in the
heavens and in the earth had no human
significance; that wars abated as men
grew more just and reasonable. We
come to grief the moment that we for-
get that nature is neither for nor against
us. We can master her forces only
when we see them as they are in and of
themselves, and realize that they make
no exception in our behalf.
The superstitious ages, the ages of
religious wars and persecutions, the
ages of famine and pestilence, were
the ages when man's humanization of
nature was at its height ; and they were
the ages of the great literature and art,
because, as we have seen, these things
thrive best in such an atmosphere.
Take the gods and devils, the good and
bad spirits, fate and foreknowledge,
and the whole supernatural hierarchy
out of the literature and art. of the past,
and what have we left? Take it out
of Homer and -^lischylus, and Virgil,
and Dante, and Milton, and we come
pretty near to making ashes of them.
In modem literature, or the literature
of a scientific age, these things play an
insignificant part. Take them out of
Shakespeare, and the main things are
left; take them out of Tennyson, and
the best remains; take them out of
Whitman, and the effect is hardly
appreciable. Whitman's anthropomor-
phism is very active. The whole
universe is directed to Whitman, to
you, to me; but Whitman makes little
or no use of the old stock material of
the poets. He seeks to draw himself
and to assimilate and imbue with the
human spirit the entire huge material-
ism of the modem democratic world.
He gives the first honors to science, but
its facts, he says, are not his dwelling.
I but enter by them to an area of my
dwelling.
Being a poet, he must live in the
world of the emotions, the intuitions,
the imagination — the world of love,
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
fellowship, beauty, religion — the super-
scientific world. As practical beings
with need of food, shelter, transporta-
tion, we have to deal with the facts
within the sphere of physical science;
as social, moral and esthetic beings, we
live in the super-scientific world. Our
house of life has upper stories that
look off to the sky and the stars. We
are less as men than our fathers, have
less power of character, but are more
as tools and vehicles of the scientific
intellect.
Man lives in his emotions, his hopes
and fears, his loves and sympathies,
his predilections, and his affinities, more
than in his reason. Hence, as we have
more and more science, we must have
less and less great literature; less and
less religion; less and less war; less
and less racial and political antagon-
isms; more and more freedom and
fellowship in all fields and with all
peoples. Science tends to unify the
nations and make one family of them.
The antique world produced great
literature and great art, but much of
its science was childish. We produce
great science, but much of our litera-
ture and art is feeble and imitative.
Science, as such, neither fears, nor
dreads, nor wonders, nor trembles, nor
scoffs, nor scorns; is not puffed up;
thinketh no evil; has no prejudices;
turns aside for nothing. Though all
our gods totter and fall, it must go its
way. It dispels our illusions because
it clears our vision. It kills supersti-
tion because it banishes our irrational
fears.
Mathematical and scientific truths are
fixed and stable quantities ; they are like
the inorganic compounds ; but the truths
of literature, of art, of religion, of
philosophy, are in perpetual flux and
transformation, like the same com-
pounds in the stream of life.
How much of the power and the
charm of the poetic treatment of nature
lies in the fact that the poet reads him-
self into the objects he portrays, and
thus makes everything: alive and full
of human interest? To him
The jocund day
Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain-top;
he sees the highest peak of the mountain
range to be
The last to parley with the setting sun ;
he sees
The white arms out in the breakers tire-
lessly tossing;
while the power and the value of
science is to free itself from ,these
tendencies, and see things in the white
light of reason. Science is the enemy
of our myth-making tendency, but it
is the friend of our physical well-being.
Every material thing and process has
its physics, which, in most cases, seem
utterly inadequate to account for the
thing as it stands to us. Life is a
flower, and the analysis of it does not
tell us why we are so moved by it.
The moral, the esthetic, the spiritual
values which we find in life and in
nature, are utterly beyond the range
of physical science, and I suppose it is
because the physico-chemical explana-
tion of the phenomenon of life takes no
account, and can take no account, of
these, that it leaves us cold and unin-
terested. Spencer with his irrefragible
mechanistic theories leaves us indiffer-
ent, while Bergson, with his "Creative
Evolution," sets mind and spirit all
aglow. One interprets organic nature
in terms of matter and motion, the
other interprets it in terms of life ami
spirit.
Science is the critic and doctor of
life, but never its inspirer. It enlarges
the field of literature, but its aims are
unliterary. The scientific evolution of
the great problems — life, mind, con-
sciousness— seem strangely inadequate :
they are like the scientific definition of
light as vibrations or electric oscolla-
tions in the ether of space, which would
not give a blind man much idea of
light. The scientific method is supreme
in its own sphere, but that sphere is
not commensurate with the whole of
human life. Life flowers in tlie sub-
jective world of our sentiments, emo-
tions and aspirations, and to this world
literature, art and religion alone have
the key. ^-^ j
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SOUTHEY AS POET AND HISTORIAN
By Thomas R. Lounsbury
Do€s anyone now read Southcy's
poetry — ^that is, anyone besides the
special student of literature who re-
gards it a duty to make himself
acquainted with what the rest of the
world has chosen to neglect? Many
are doubtless familiar with certain
short pieces of his which usually find
a place in anthologies. But it is of the
longer poems, especially of the so-called
epics, upon which he expected to build
the enduring basis of his reputation,
that the question is asked. One indeed
must guard against the common error
of asserting that an author is no longer
read because he meets with little favor
or abundant dislike in the circle to
which the speaker or writer chances to
belong. To that not unfrequent con-
tention the constant renewal of editions
and their large sale furnishes the all-
sufficient and, indeed, the overwhelm-
ingly conclusive disproof. But to the
argument that he is still read Southey
cannot successfully appeal. Both
modern editions of his works and
modem purchasers of them are lacking.
Readers there doubtless are; but they
must be scanty in number. Compara-
tively few, in fact, were those who read
his poems in his lifetime; and the
number has certainly not increased since
his death.
Yet very high was the reputation of
Southey in his own day. Many there
were then who looked upon him as a
great intellectual leader, and some there
were who achieved what seems to us
now the peculiarly difficult task of
regarding him as being as great a poet
as he considered himself to be. One
man of eminence there was among his
contemporaries who held such a faith
ftrmly and held it unshaken till his
death. This was Walter Savage Lan-
dor. The two poets indeed may be
said to have formed a limited Mutual
Admiration Society. Southey was one
of the very few persons of that time
who had read Landor's epic of "Gebir."
He assured the author in fullest sin-
cerity that while the poem as a poem
was not a good one, it nevertheless con-
tained the finest poetry in the language.
Some will recall the mortification which
DeQuincey felt or professed to feel
when he found that Southey also was
familiar with this epic. He had con-
ceited himself to be the sole reader in
England of the work, and the sole pur-
chaser of it. He had fancied himself,
while stalking along the streets of
Oxford, being pointed out by his fellow
students as the one person in Europe
who actually possessed a copy of
**Gebir," and had possibly read it.
Great accordingly was his sorrow to
find that Southey also had achieved this
feat of literary derring-do. It may have
been a mock regard which De Quincey
professed. But Southey's admiration
tor Landor was a genuine one and
Landor repaid it in kind. In season and
out of season, he celebrated the merits
of his widely lauded but little read con-
temporary. In season and out of season,
he extolled him on all occasions and in
all companies. One of the great objects
of Emerson's visit to Europe in 1833
was to see Landor, who, he thought,
was strangely underrated in his own
country. Of the interview he has left
a vivid description in his ''English
Traits." But of one of Landor's likes
he seemed to have had too much. "He
pestered me with Southey," lie wrote;
"but who is Southey?"
Yet at this particular time many there
were who would have been as indignant
with Emerson's impatient query as was
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Landor himself when it was published
much later. A ^reat deal of Southey's
repute was undoubtedly due to the fact
that he was constantly before the public.
All his life he toiled not intermittently
but unceasingly. To this he was com-
pelled by the necessity of supporting
those dependent upon him. fiut even
had that compulsion not existed, he
w^ould have kept at work as earnestly
and as incessantly, though the char-
acter of his production might have
undergone some change. Literary
labor was in accordance with his tastes
and desires. His life was very largely
in his books and his greatest pleasure
lay in writing, and in reading the proof-
sheets of what he had written. There
was scarcely anything in the way of
prose or verse which he did not attempt.
He wrote ballads, he wrote odes, he
wrote elegies, he wrote tales of wonder,
he wrote narrative stories, he wrote
epics. This was in poetry ; and in that,
not content with English measures, he
sought to introduce the sapphics and
hexameters of the classic tongues. In
prose he wrote essays on all sorts of
topics, reviews of books on all sorts of
subjects, treatises discussing all sorts
of social and political questions, biogra-
phies of persons of the most diverse
character, and histories both civil and
ecclesiastical. He edited the works of
poets of great repute, of small repute,
and of no repute. His talents, which
were of an exceedingly high order,
were so constantly employed upon such
a vast variety of subjects that they not
only kept his name always before the
public but they gave it the impression
of a force which was entitled to be
called genius. In his incessant industry
and the effects wrought by it, Southey
corresponded very closely to the well-
known Puritan conception of the devil,
who, of course, is in no way equal to
the Almighty, but somehow manages
to make up in a measure for his inferi-
ority in power by his infernal activity.
There was little indeed in the way of
literary undertakings which he had not
at times contemplated in imagination.
From his early years he was always
planning great or at least bulky enter-
prises. "Is it not a pity," he said to a
friend in 1796, "that I should not
execute my intention of writing more
verses than Lope de Vega, more trage-
dies than Dryden, and more epic poems
than Blackmore? The more I write,
the more I have to write." To his
friend, Grosvenor Bedford, he wrote in
1801, asking him his opinion of
**Thalaba." In his letter he expressed
bis intention of trying the different
m)rthologies that were almost new to
poetry. He had begun with the Moham-
medan. "The Hindoo, the Runic, and
the Old Persian," he went on to say,
"are all striking enough and enough
known. Of the Runic I have hardly
yet dreamt. I have fixed the g^round-
plan of the Persian. The Hindoo is
completely sketched ; you can make little
of its title, 'The Curse of Keradon.' "
This state of mind never left him. To
the very end of his active career, he
was projecting works, the proper com-
pletion of any one of which would
have required the conscientious labor
of a good part of a lifetime.
To men of the present day it may
seem strange that there should ever
have been a time when Southey was
reckoned a great poet; that his name
should be regularly mentioned in con-
junction with those of Coleridge and
Wordsworth, and should be almost
universally ranked above that of Shel-
ley or of Keats. Yet it is certain that
for a long time he was regarded, at
least by a large number, with not merely
respect for his life — ^which he more
than deserved — ^but with a belief in his
genius which it is no longer easy to
comprehend. His works, to be sure,
had usually no large sale. But as he
wrote much, he was always before the
public; and the number of his produc-
tions compensated to some extent for
their lack of circulation. What was
perhaps of more importance to the
spread of his reputation was the fact
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SdUTHEY AS POET AND HISTORIAN
41
that he was always spoken of in the
\ ery highest terms by a body of influen-
tial reviewers. A deference was felt
for his learning which later scholarship
cannot sanction ; for while multifarious,
it was neither accurate nor profound.
A further deference was expressed for
his imputed genius which men of
modem times do not feel. Especially
was this true, during that long preval-
ence of Tory domination which ex-
tended from the fall of Napoleon to
the passage of the Reform Bill. He
was universally celebrated in the reac-
tionary periodicals of the period as one
of the most eminent authors of the
time, occasionally as the most eminent.
He was reckoned among the sublimest
of poets, the profoimdest of scholars,
the most excellent of Uprose writers.
These were the assertions constantly
made by the men of the party to which
he belonged. They were not seriously
contested by the men of the party to
which he was opposed. His works, as
fast as they appeared — and they
appeared very fast — were regularly
reviewed in about every prominent
periodical, and so far as the periodicals
professing his own political faith were
concerned, they were almost invariably
reviewed with high praise.
Nor did this estimate of Southey,
which ranked him on an equality with
Coleridge and Wordsworth, come
entirely from ordinary men. The
unqualified praise of Landor — almost
the only continuous praise ever ex-
pressed by him of anybody — ^may be
disregarded; for in several instances,
though particularly in this one, Landor
had a perversity of admiration which
excited on the part of his fellow men
sometimes surprise, sometimes amuse-
ment, and sometimes irritation. But
as an illustration of a by no means
uncommon attitude at the time, take the
letter to Southey written in 1813 by
Walter Scott in regard to the laureate-
ship. For the sake of the writer's
character, it is to be hoped that he
meant what he said, little as it resounds
10 the credit of his judgment. "I am
not such an ass," wrote Scott, "as not
to know that you are my better in
poetry, though I have had (probably
but for a time) the tide of popularity
in my favor."
Against this laudatory estimate of
professional critics — ^and to some extent
of authors of high repute — stood then,
and has always continued to stand, un-
shaken the indifference of the general
public of cultivated men. They could
not be induced to read, or, if induced,
they could not be made to admire.
Their attitude toward Southey is
another proof among the many proofs
familiar to the student of literary his-
tory, of the truth of the dictum, when
properly understood, of the great Greek
philosopher, that the people at large,
however contemptible they may appear
v;hen taken one by one, are not, when
collectively considered, unworthy of
sovereignty. "The principle," said
Aristotle, "that the multitude ought to
be supreme rather than the few best is
capable of a satisfactory explanation.
Each individual among the many has
a share of virtue and judgment, and
when they meet together they become
in a manner one man. . . . Hence
the many are better judges than a single
man of music and poetry; for some
understand one part and some another,
and among them they understand the
whole."
There is, indeed, something almost
pathetic in Southey's career, and in the
contrast furnished by it between the
great anticipations he cherished and the
proportionately petty realities he accom-
plished. He believed in himself so sin-
cerely and so thoroughly that it was
perhaps well that he lived no longer
than he did, to witness any further
crumbling of his hopes and expectations
than that which he actually experienced.
And in certain ways he had a right to
believe in himself. Never was there a
man who did his full duty with more
consistent r^[ularity and fidelity. In
all the relations of private life, he was
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
more than blameless; he was in the
highest degree exemplary. Never was
there a better husband, a kinder father.
Never was there a man more bent on
looking after the well-being of those
mtrusted to his charge, either by his
own act or the improvidence of those
to whom he was allied. Never was
there one more willing to sacrifice him-
self for the sake of his friends, never
one more generous in hastening to the
aid of strangers in distress whom he
deemed deserving. He brought hope
and help from his own scanty resources
to those struggling with difficulties. He
was, in truth, unwearied in well-doing ;
and in spite of his positive opinions
there was in his nature a wide and
embracing charity for the views of
men, whether living or dead, for whose
character and ability he had respect
if any common ground could be dis-
covered upon which they could stand.
All this can be said justly; even more
could be said truly. The praise, though
in certain respects of the very highest
kind, is not in the least degree exag-
gerated. But a man may be the best of
husbands and fathers, the most faithful
of friends, generous in feeling, upright
in conduct, without being a man of
genius; and Southey, though possessed
of great and varied talents, was very far
from being a man of genius. Flawless
too as he was in all the relations of pri-
vate life, he was also in his way one of
the most unreasoning, intolerant, and
narrow-minded bigots that ever lived.
He thought and spoke of political and
literary foes with a bitterness and un-
charitableness which to men of the
present day is none the less offensive
because he honestly believed that in so
doing he was acting as the special cham-
pion of the Lord. He had started out
in life, holding the most extreme radical
opinions. He had then given expres-
sion to sentiments which had brought
down upon him the invectives of the
men who styled themselves Anti- Jaco-
bins. His political views and his metri-
cal experiments had been travestied by
Canning in imitations which are far
superior to the originals. From the
extreme position in one direction which
he had early taken he had gone to the
extreme in the other direction. It wa,s
inevitable that the intemperance of
opinion he displayed on some topics
should lead to his opinions on others
being misinterpreted and misrepre-
sented. He was more than once
charged with expressing views which
he was so far from entertaining that he
felt for them actual aversion. He was,
for instance, thoroughly out of sym-
pathy with the tone of the Quarterly
Review when speaking of American
men and American affairs. He pro*
tested not only against the injustice of
the attitude but against its folly. Yet
so close was his own connection with
tliat periodical that he was then held
and has sometimes been held since
responsible for the very utterances he
disliked and deplored.
There is nothing vcr>^ unnatural in
the change of opinion which Southey
underwent, nor under ordinar>* condi-
tions is there anything about it objec-
tionable. What was offensive was the
fury he exhibited toward those who
continued to advocate the views which
he himself had abandoned. Against
them he was continually breathing out
thrcatenings and slaughter. The pri-
vate utterances preserved in his pub-
hshed correspondence read often like
the ravings of a fanatic monk, and dis-
play the spirit of a Spanish inquisitor.
It is hard to believe that a good man.
which Southey unquestionably was.
could give vent to the aspersions he diti
upon the character and motives of those
whose opinions differed from his own;
or that an intelligent man living in the
nineteenth century should indulge in
beliefs which would have been almost
discreditable to an ignorant monk of
the ninth. Nothing irritated him more
than that the men of the party to which
he was opposed should be permitted to
express their opinions unchecked. Dur-
ing the years of Tory domination that
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SOUTHEY AS POET AND HISTORIAN
43
followed the battle of Waterloo, he was
constantly clamoring for restraints upon
the liberty, or as he called it, the licen-
tiousness of the press. The news-
papers, he declared in 1820, ought to
be under the control of the government.
Nothing inflammatory, nothing hostile
tc existing institutions should be suf-
fered to appear. In the same year he
declared that the freedom of the press
was incompatible with public security.
His later correspondence, in truth, is
fairly dolorous with its predictions of
coming calamity ; for the prophetic rage
took hold of him as the poetic rage
abated ; only it was not on the lyre but
in his letters that he "struck the deep
sorrows of his soul." In the concession
of the Catholic claims he foresaw as
early as 1822 the approaching ruin of
the country. The measure, he said,
might be staved off for a while, but
it was certain to be carried at last. "I
do not dream of preserving our liber-
ties," he wrote; "the question is how
much it will be possible to save from the
*vreck, and how long before we arrive
at that strong and armed government
with which all changes of that nature
must end." A little earlier he had
written to a friend to the same mourn-
ful effect. "Things cannot continue
thus," he said in 1820, "and whatever
course they may take, if you and I
should reach the age of three-score
years and ten, we shall, in all human
p»robability, have outlived the English
constitution and the liberties of Eng-
land." All the industrial development
of modem society met with his unquali-
fied disapproval. As late as 1832 he
wrote to a friend that he could not con-
ceive of a great cotton manufactory as
anything but an abomination to God and
man. These establishments in fact
were producing more goods than the
world could afford a market for, and the
ebb tide of prosperity was as certain as
the flow; and then, he added, in' some
neap tide Radicalism, Rebellion, and
Ruin will rush in through the breach
which hunger has made. "I was bom,"
he wrote in a letter of September, 1829,
"during the American revolution; the
French revolution broke out just as I
grew up, and my latter days will in all
likelihood be disturbed by a third
revolution more terrible than cither."
Men who sincerely entertain such
sentiments are not apt to regard with
tenderness those who hold contrary
views. All such were, in Southey's
opinion, the vilest of the vile. It can be
well understand therefore that a person
of this character should become an
object of dislike, and almost of detesta-
tion, to the men of the opposite party.
He was constantly termed a turn-coat
and a renegade ; and the epithets he sent
out were retumed to him with added
virulence. His life in consequence was
in certain aspects little more than a long
conflict with literary and political foes.
But in one respect he occupied a posi-
tion of peculiar advantage. This was
the perfect satisfaction he felt with
everything he himself said or did. In
all of Southey's trials and tribulations
— and in some ways they were numer-
ous and in all ways nobly borne — he
was invariably comforted with the con-
sciousness that in any and every view
he expressed at any time on any subject
he was absolutely right. If during the
course of his career he had changed his
opinions, it was something for which he
felt neither moral nor intellectual con-
trition. The discarded views, even if
they were mistaken, belonged properly
to the period in life in which they were
held. They were no more to his dis-
credit than teething in an infant.
There must have been something
peculiariy exasperating to Southey's
opponents in the knowledge they could
not fail to gain of this tranquil self-
sufficiency. The rock • of serene self-
satisfaction upon which he was perched,
constituted an impregnable barrier from
which argument retired baffled ; against
it the waves of criticism and calumny
dashed in vain. As a rule over the
minds of the most positive of men there
comes at times doubt as to the absolute
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
correctness of their own conclusions.
If we can trust Southey's recorded
utterances, never did there appear
among his convictions the slightest trace
of that weak paltering with one's
own self-confidence, which sometimes
obtrudes its hateful presence into the
thoughts of the most opinionated — that,
upon any subject about which he ex-
pressed himself with assurance, he
could be mistaken. In whatever dispute
he became engaged, he did not merely
suppose, he was positively certain that
he was completely in the right. In any
historic or literary discussion in which
he took part, he never had a moment's
doubt that he knew far more of the
subject than his opponent. He was
consequently always sure to come off
victorious. In the controversies he
carried on, he professed himself to be
always in good humor with his oppo-
nents. He could not be heartily angry
with them, because they lay so com-
pletely at his mercy. Every attack they
directed against any position he had
taken, served only to make manifest its
strength. Such are his very words
found on more than one occasion in
his letters. They represented accurately
his state of mind. The serene happi-
ness brought to life by the conviction
that one is always right and one's
adversaries are always wrong, is some-
thing that defies any estimate of value
which the ordinary imagination is able
either to calculate or to comprehend.
Southey possessed in its perfection this
most precious of treasures. Thrice is
he armed, says the poet, who hath his
quarrel just; but thrice three times is
he armed that hath an unwavering con-
fidence in the justness of his quarrel.
Along with this faith in the correct-
ness of his views went an equal faith in
his own greatness — especially in his
greatness as a poet and as a historian.
In 1796, at the age of twenty-two, he
made his most successful poetic venture
in an epic entitled "Jo^^ of Arc." Two
years later it appeared in a second and
revised edition. Then followed in
succession a number of works remark-
able for their extent, if not for their
merit,— 'Thalaba the Destroyer" in
1801, "Madoc" in 1805, "The Curse of
Kehama" in 1810, and "Roderick the
Last of the Goths" in 1814. There were
many other poems produced both before
and after the appearance of these. But
it is these of which he himself had the
highest opinion; it is upon these that
praises were lavished by distinguished
contemporaries. Upon these too his
poetical reputation mainly rested then
and rests now, so far as he can be said
to have poetical reputation at all. "Joan
of Arc," as he himself asserted, set him
up in the world. It gave him hopes of
a popularity which was never realized
by the success of the productions which
followed. That the great excellence of
his verse would be recognized ultimately
he never had the slightest question from
the outset, though he was compelled to
ptit off the happy day, first to his later
years, and then to posterity. For as
time went on, his poetry met with less
and less favor, so far as favor depends
not on the praise of critics but on the
multitude of readers. Its sale dimin-
ished instead of increasing. But it was
not his fault that his writings were not
popular; it was entirely the fault of the
public. Future times would reverse the
verdict of the present; and upon that
which was now disregarded and fre-
quently decried would be built the
enduring monument of his fame.
No one embraced more heartily than
Southey and promulgated more con-
stantly the dictum that the great author
must create his own audience, and that
the opinion of contemporaries must be
of little or no value. As late as 1831
he expressed his thorough conviction
that they who seek anxiously the
applause of their own age must be con-
tented with it, for they would never
have that of any succeeding one.
"Many years must elapse," he wrote at
another time, "before tfie opinion of the
few can become the law of the many."
To posterity the poet must always be
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.SOUTHEY AS POET AND HISTORIAN
45
looking, forgetting that posterity has
so much laid upon its shoulders by the
living who are demanding its attention,
that it has but comparatively little
leisure left it to rehabilitate the dead.
His state of mind, as revealed in his
correspondence, shows the slow declen-
sion of confidence in immediate success
into almost absolute hopelessness; and
there would be something saddening in
watching the gradual decadence of high-
wrought expectation, were not such
feelings counteracted by observing the
steady increase which went on in his
own self-estimate. There can, indeed,
be found in his earlier correspondence
one half-hearted doubt expressed as to
the absolute supremacy of his position.
This was in 1811. In a letter of that
year to Grosvenor Bedford, he modestly
disavowed the character which that
friend had given him in an article on
"The Curse of Kehama," written for
the Quarterly Review, but never
printed. "I wish," he wrote in serious
remonstrance, "you would not call me
the most sublime poet of the age,
because on this point both Wordsworth
and Landor are at least my equals. You
will not suspect me of any mock-
modesty in this. On the whole I shall
have, doiie greater things than either,
but not because - I possess greater
powers."
It was this sort of conviction that
sustained Southey's courage during a
career in which his poetry was much
praised but little read. It enabled him to
look with a certain degree of equanimity
upon the success of contemporary
authors. He admired and respected
Scott ; of his own superiority to him as
a poet he had not, however, the slightest
question. "We shall both be remem-
bered hereafter," he wrote to him in
1813, "and ill betide him who shall
institute a comparison between us.
There has been no race ; we have both
got to the top of the hill by different
paths, and meet there not as rivals but
as friends." "You and I," he wrote to
him the following year, "are not yet
off the stage ; and whenever we quit it,
it will not be to men who make a better
figure there." Through all these years
of working and waiting he gave his
iriends to understand that his standard
of achievement was something to which
only a few of the world's great poets
had attained. As like them he stood
on lofty and lonely heights, like them
he must expect to be visited but by the
few. This state of mind was reached
only as a result of the chastenings of
experience. The success of "Joan of
Arc" led him to anticipate more for
"Thalaba." Before it was published,
he wrote that its sale was of importance
to him. He would not, he declared,
sell his whole property in it "because
I expect the poem will become popular
and of course productive." His expec-
tations were disappointed. The work
appeared in the first half of 1801. In
November of that year he wrote to a
friend an account of its success. "The
sale of Thalaba' is slow," he said;
"about three hundred only gone."
Naturally after this experience, he
did not look with confidence upon the
prospects of "Madoc," his next work,
to which in particular he trusted for
immortality. "I shall get by it less
money than fame," he wrote to his
brother in October, 1803, "and less
fame than envy; but the envy will be
only life-long." In 1808 he wrote to a
friend about certain great poems he was
still planning. "Considering," he said,
"that the first edition of Thalaba' is
lying in the warehouse, and that my
whole profits upon it have amounted to
five and twenty pounds, this is having
good heart. But I cast my bread upon
the waters, and if I myself should not
live to find it after many days, my
children will." Later in that same year
he communicated to the same friend
the news that this work had at last
reached the end of its slow seven years'
sale, and that its reprinting at once was
recommended by the publishers. He
took courage, though he was far from
being duly exultant. "Slow and sure,"
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
he wrote, *'but it is satisfactory to see
the fruit trees of one's own planting
beginning to bear, however slender the
first crop." A few years later he
seemed to take a melancholy pride in
the little acceptance of his work by the
public as compared with the enormous
success which waited upon the produc-
tions of some of his contemporaries.
He contrasted the disproportion be-
tween the sale of "The Curse of Keha-
ma," and that of "The Lady of the
Lake," which had been published at
nearly the same time. Of the latter
twenty-five thousand copies had been
printed; of the former five hundred.
Even of this five hundred, he wrote in
February, 1811, "if they sell in seven
years I shall be surprised." But as he
was enabled to gain his support from
other sources, it was a matter of little
consequence. "So," he added, "as I
feel no want of any profit from these
works, which are for futurity, I am
completely indiflferent concerning the
immediate success."
As wUl be inferred from the extracts
already quoted, the failure of his poems
to sell did not shake in the slightest
Southey's faith in himself or his con-
fidence that the neglect of contempo-
raries would be more than made up by
the admiring reverence of future
generations. After he was gone, he
would receive that justice which is as
seldom denied to the dead as it is
granted to the living. Of "Kehama"
he observed that it would increase his
reputation without increasing his popu-
larity. "Every generation," he wrote
to his brother in 1809, "will aflFord me
some half-dozen admirers of it, and the
everlasting column of Dante's fame
does not stand upon a wider basis."
Later in the same year he wrote to a
friend about the same poem. "With
regard to 'Kehama,' " he said, "I was
perfectly aware that I was planting
acorns, while my contemporaries were
setting Turkey beans. The oak will
grow ; and though I may never sit under
its shade, my children will." Four
years later he expressed himself to the
same effect about "Roderick, the Last
of the Goths." The work could not
have a great sale. "I am neither
sanguine," he wrote to Cottle in 1814,
"about its early nor doubtful about its
ultimate acceptance in the world." "The
sale of it," he said to another friend,
"will become of importance, when by
the laws of literary property it will no
longer benefit the author or his family."
"The passion for novelty is soon satis-
fied," he wrote to his brother in Decem-
ber, 1815, "and the poem is of far too
high a character to become popular till
time has made it so. It is like an acorn
upon Latrigg. The thistles and the
fern will shoot up faster, and put it
out of sight for a season, but the oak
will strike root and grow."
As no one would buy his poetry, he
was compelled to turn to prose for his
subsistence. It was very well, he
observed, to be content with posthu-
mous fame ; but it was impossible to be
so with posthumous bread and cheese.
In this department of intellectual exer-
tion, he was far more fortunate. Here-
in he met with a fair degree of success ;
in a few instances with great success.
What is more it was a success right-
fully won. His prose, though lacking
in llie very highest graces of style, and
by no means deserving of the excessive
laudation sometimes bestowed upon it,
is generally delightful and fully merited
the favor with which it was regarded.
It was simple, clear, and unaffected,
and was frequently marked by felicities
of phrase which arrest the attention and
enforce the idea. It is even now always
read with pleasure save when he sought
to play the part of a humorist The
drollery of Southey is one of the most
depressing things in literature. It
excites a distrust in human nature,
almost a sense of shame, that an3rthing
so preposterous should ever have been
mistaken for facetiousness by any civi-
lized man, still more by a man of a high
order of ability. Yet it has further to
be said that even in his prose his success
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SOUTHEY AS POKT AND HISTORIAN
47
was largely due to work which he him-
self regarded as comparatively unim-
portant. These were the little sketches,
essays, and reviews which he produced
merely as potboilers. One of these
short pieces has done more to keep his
name before the world of readers than
his most laborious performances. The
"Life of Nelson," is the most popular
vvork he ever wrote. In its first form
it was an article in the Quarterly
Review. Even at this day its circula-
tion in England is very large.
But there was one field in the depart-
ment of prose which he purposed to
make peculiarly his own. This was
history. To build upon it a great name
v/as one of his most ardent ambitions.
To one work in particular he devoted
his attention at an early period and
labored at it more or less during his
v/hole life. This was a history of
Portugal. It was never completed and
no portion of it was ever published.
An offshoot of it, indeed — ^the history
of Brazil — came out between the years
1810 and 1819 in three very bulky vol-
umes. I have never read it — a peculi-
arity I share with nearly all the mem-
bers of the English-speaking race —
and therefore have not a right to
express an opinion as to its merits ; but
in r^ard to its fortune, it can be
asserted that it met with no more favor
from the public than did "Madoc," and,
in this instance, with much less mercy
from the reviewers. A history of the
Peninsular War, — which appeared be-
tween 1823 and 1832, — was received
with somewhat greater indulgence,
owing to the more general interest in
the subject; but it did not at the time
satisfy the requirements of those best
acquainted with the events and most
interested in their proper representa-
tion. As a consequence it was cast in
the shade then, and has been still more
so in modern times, by the slightly later
production of Colonel Napier. But the
prospective publication of the work of
another for which Wellington had
reserved his materials, did not abate in
the slightest Southey's serene confidence
in the inevitable superiority of his own
work. The Duke might have behaved
with more wisdom, he wrote to Caro-
line Bowles. "Let who may write the
military history," he added, "it is in my
book that posterity will read of his
campaigns."
The truth is that Southey was un-
fitted both by temperament and train-
ing for a historian. By nature he was
the intensest of partisans. To every
investigation he made or question he
considered he brought a bundle of
prejudices and preconceived views. He
lacked entirely the judicial cast of mind
which is never swerved from the truth
by the merely plausible. He lacked still
more that high historical imagination
which gives to its possessor an almost
intuitive insight into the motives which
sway both individuals and masses of
men. Furthermore he had only the
most elementary notions of research.
With his own private library, large as
it was, — especially in Spanish and
Portuguese books — ^he could not have
written an enduring work for the his-
tory of a modem state. It would
require the study of an infinitude of
detail which he could never have made
the claim of having accomplished, and
of the necessity of which he had not the
slightest comprehension. Nor was the
resulting lack of accuracy counter-
balanced in his case by the interest
which wrath and partiality usually lend
to that mixture of fact and fable which
we agree to call history.
Yet of his greatness as a historian
Southey had no more doubt than of his
greatness as a poet. What he did in the
former capacity he recognized must be
slower of production than in the latter ;
but it would be just as enduring.
"Pyramids are not built in a day," he
wrote in 1801, "and I mean to make
mine" — by which he meant the history
of Portugal — "to outlive and outrage
the Egyptian ones." He knew, he
declared, that his work would be of
more permanent reputation than Gib-
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bon's. Pages could be filled with
extracts from his private correspon-
dence expressing these laudatory esti-
mates of himself as a historian. The
future, to which he was constantly
appealing from the verdict of contem-
porary opinion, has failed to accept him
at his own valuation. Yet during a
great part of the fourth decade of the
nineteenth century — in fact till toward
its close — Southey, owing to the multi-
plicity of his undertakings, filled on
the whole a larger space in the public
eye than any other living man of letters.
Posterity, instead of wondering at his
greatness, as he anticipated, now finds
itself wondering at the fame he achieved
in his lifetime. Its present attitude is
a singular commentary upon his remaric
in a letter to a friend as late as 1832 :
"It is more profitable to have your
reputation spread itself in breadth; I
am satisfied with looking to the probable
length of mine."
One purely literary production of his
of some notoriety, if not of much im-
portance, made its appearance during
this same decade. It had been in his
mind a score of years before he pre-
pared it for publication. This was the
work entitled "The Doctor," the first
part of which came out in 1834. The
last two of its seven volumes did not
appear till after his death. There are,
it may be said, interesting passages in
it, but it is not interesting as a whole.
Worse than anything else, it is every-
where deformed by that terrible faccT
tiousness in which Southey took delight,
and in that bastard wit which relies for
its effect not upon the idea which is
sought to be conveyed but upon the
variations of type in which the words
are printed. Literature in fact has little
more depressing than the ghastly
attempts at humor found here. An
elephant playfully endeavoring to gam-
bol like a kitten may give one a physical
counterpart to the mental feats of
Southey in his desperate struggles to be
jocose.
The work was anonymous. It never
had a large sale, in spite of Southey's
persistent efforts to arouse interest in
it by making inquiries about it, and
suggesting the name of some noted man
as its possible author. This practice he
carried on in a way that has occasionally
shocked the sentiments or excited the
indignation of moralists. His conduct,
indeed, in the methods he followed to
conceal his having any concern with the
work, brings up for consideration, one
o£ the most mooted questions in casu-
istry. Has an author, who desires to
remain unknown, the right to deny his
having written any particular produc-
tion when the question is put to him
directly? On this point controversy
has raged for an indefinite period. That
sturdy moralist, Dr. Johnson, apparently
took the affirmative view. He told Bos-
well that he was sure that Burke was
not the author of "J^^^^s." He was
sure of it because Burke had told him
so of his own accord. "The case would
have been different," he added, "had I
asked him ; a man so questioned, as to
an anonymous publication, may think
he has a right to deny it" Obviously
the contrary view puts the writer at
the mercy of any impudent seeker after
information whose social position or
physical strength suggests the inadvisa-
bility or prevents the possibility, of
returning that proper answer which can
be made only through the agency of
the boot.
But those who dissent from this view
assure us that a direct denial is never
justifiable. Whewell, the Master of
Trinity, discussed this question in his
"Elements of Morality." He took
strongly the negative side. He insisted
upon the wrongfulness of a direct denial
even when the mere refusal to answer
at all would be equivalent to answering
in the affirmative. Other methods could
be followed by the persecuted author
who sought to save himself from
the impertinent inquisitor. "He may
evade the question," this moralist tells
us, "or turn off the subject. There is
nothing to prevent his saying, 'How can
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SOUTHEY AS POET AND HISTORIAN
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you ask me such a question?* or any-
thing of the like kind." Again he
informs us that the author interrogated
may seek for some turn of conversation
by which he may baffle curiosity with-
out violating truth. This is the course
of conduct recommended in this particu-
lar case by the moralist who in the same
work had previously laid it down as a
dictum that he "who has used expres-
sions with a view to their being mis-
understood" has violated the duty of
truth; who had further said that
"not only lying but every mode of
conveying a false belief is prohibited
by the principle of truth." The
doctrine is assuredly sound. The
whole essence of a lie consists in the
intention to produce in the mind of
another a false impression of a given
fact. That impression this professed
moralist tells us it is wrong to produce
directly; but it is right to produce it
indirectly. You may word your answer
so as to induce your hearer to believe
something contrary to the truth. Hav-
ing achieved this desired result, if con-
fronted later with your supposed denial,
when the truth has come out, you can
proudly point to the fact that your
language is susceptible of quite another
mterpretation from that which it would
naturally bear and which at the time you
actually intended to have it bear. This
is a sort of cheap morality which is held
in high esteem by a certain class of
advocates of so-called truth. To any
but a moralist of this sort it would seem
much more manly for the writer, who is
determined to have his identity con-
cealed, to lie boldly like a gentleman,
than to palter, like a sneak, with words
in a double sense intended to produce
an impression contrary to the truth.
However this may be, neither of these
methods can Southey be said to
have followed. Among intelligent men
familiar with his writings there was
never doubt as to his authorship of
"The Doctor." The opinions expressed,
both literary and political, were his,
the likes and dislikes were his, the
methods of expression were his. Con-
jecture accordingly pointed to him
almost invariably from the outset.
Now had he been content to deny the
authorship, whenever charged with it
or asked about it, no serious fault could
be found with his conduct by those who
hold the view taken by Dr. Johnson.
But it is only the direct personal ques-
tioning that justifies the denial. What
may be called a negative mendacity is
all that the most tolerant of casuists
would be willing to treat as legitimate.
Positive mendacity in such a matter
can plead nothing in its defense. The
anonymous author cannot be permitted
to go out of his way to create the
impression that he is not responsible for
the work under consideration. Yet this
is something which "the great and good
Southey," as his admirers delighted to
term him, actually did. His conceal-
ment of his authorship of the work
assumed an almost aggressive character.
Again and again he introduced, of his
own accord, the subject in letters so
worded as to lead inevitably to the
inference that he had nothing whatever
to do with its production. His son
tells us in his biography that his father's
mystification in regard to the matter
was "one of his chief sources of amuse-
ment, and indeed his only recreation
during his latter years."
In an unremitting devotion to this
peculiar sort of pleasure Southey antici-
pated the necessity of making any posi-
tive denial of his authorship by sedu-
lously attempting to saddle it upon vari-
ous other writers. His suggestion of
their names was always accompanied
with high encomiums of the work itself.
One of the latest he selected for this
compliment, as he assuredly considered
it, was Theodore Hook. "I have to
thank you for a copy of The Doctor,' "
he wrote to him on one occasion. To
him also he duly forwarded letters on
the work which had come addressed to
himself. He tried another experiment
of the 'same general kind of denial
upon Lockhart, the editor of the
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Qt4arterly. This was utterly unpro-
voked by any inquiry of the latter or
by any curiosity expressed by him about
the book. "The Doctor/' Southey
wrote to him in February, 1834, **has
been sent to me with my name in rubric
letters on the back of the title-page,
and with the author's compliments, but
with no indication who that author is;
nor has the channel through which it
came enabled me to guess the source.
Some guesses that seemed likely enough
were met by greater unlikelihoods; but
when I heard Frere named as the sup-
posed author, I wondered I had not
thought of him at first. I know not in
what other person we could find the wit,
the humor, the knowledge and the con-
summate mastery of style." Lockhart
was a good deal surprised at receiving
this unsolicited information; for in his
own mind he had fastened upon
Southey as the author. But after such
a volunteered disclaimer, as it seemed,
of having written it, he naturally
assumed that it could not be his. He
wrote a review of it for the Quarterly,
which while giving up much of its space
to extracts from its better portions, con-
tained remarks upon it as a whole which
could hardly have been pleasing for
Southey to read. For most of what the
anonymous author had written Lock-
hart expressed little admiration. "Two-
thirds of his performance," he said,
"look as if they might have been
penned in the vestibule of Bedlam." He
suspected, indeed, that the work was
the production of a man who stood more
in need of physic than of criticism. He
furthermore spoke of the author's self-
esteem, his heavy magniloquence, his
prolix babble on various topics and his
dolorous jesting. Southey must have
gained from this review a clear impres-
sion of the inadvisability of successfully
imposing upon an editor. For once,
at least, the contributor got from the
Quarterly an unbiased view of the way
his work was regarded w^hen its author-
ship was not known.
With the fifth volume of "Tht
Doctor," which came out in 1838,
Southey's literary life practically ended.
In the following year came the begin-
ning of his breakdown. It was not.
however, until 1843, that the body wa^
relieved from an existence in which the
mind had largely ceased to share. It
was a tragic ending to what had been
in many ways a long and honorable
career. It may have been as well that
his life was not protracted to witness
what would have been to him the more
tragic gradual decadence of the estimate
in which he was held. All his antici-
pations of a popularity with posterity
that would more than counterbalance
the indifference of his contemporarie>
have come to nought. The burden he
cast upon it, so far it has declined tf»
take up. Charles Lamb stood infinitely
lower than he in repute while the two
were living. Him Southey liked ex-
ceedingly and on one or two occasion>
championed vigorously. But that his
aear but, in his opinion, humble friend
V'Ould ever rival him in the regard of
posterity never so much as occurre<I
to his thoughts. Yet Lamb's writings,
even the most trivial, have been care-
fully collected and brought out in
edition after edition. Their popularit> .
in truth, shows every sign of increasing.
No such fortune has befallen Southe> .
There has been no call for that com-
plete posthumous edition of his works,
by the sale of which he expected \u>
descendants to be enriched; which by
containing his latest additions and cor-
rections would effectually prevent the
piratical attempts of unscrupulous pub-
lishers. His reputation in fact has
slowly but steadily sunk since his death,
in spite of occasional efforts to revive
it; and that posterity, which in hi>
opinion was to revere his memor\', is
already beginning to come dangerously
near to forgetting his name.
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THE SUNNY SLOPES OF FORTY
By Mbrbdith Nicholson
We who gain the watershed of the
years, no matter how humble our sta-
tion or how flimsy our achievements,
may be pardoned for loitering to throw
out and reappraise the accumulations
in our pack with a view to lightening
the load for further traveling. Those
who, climbing the ladder of the paral-
lels toward the white North, pause at
life's meridian to compare notes of
their adventures, may still profit by crit-
icism; whereas others who wait to
cache the reflections of their senecti-
tude in the polar ice, to be resurrected
by later travelers, may commit them-
selves irrevocably to error. If we have
gained the ridge in good spirits we are
still able to fight back, and to defend
ourselves from attack.
The sunny slopes of forty are those
that dip down on the farther side of
the Great Divide. Any one can see
with half an eye that they are less
precipitous than the geographers de-
scribe them. It appears from a cau-
tious survey that by following the more
deliberate streams that longest hold the
heat of the sun we may delay appre-
ciably our arrival at the polar waste.
We are not of those who, having mis-
laid their charcoal tablets:
"in disdainful silence turn away,
Stand mute, self -centered, stern, and dream
no more."
We mean to give the official chloro-
former a lively sprint before he over-
takes us. We shall fool the world as
long as we can by keeping our trousers
pressed and flaunting the bravest neck-
wear the haberdasher affords. By tack-
ing a new collar to our spring overcoat
and shaking out the moth balls we may
carry it — thrown indifferently over the
arm as though we never expected to use
it — a long way into November.
Those of us who have reached the
great watershed certainly cannot com-
plain of the fate that launched us on
our pilgrimage in the last half of the
nineteenth century. The drama has
never been dull and we have watched
the course of many excellent players.
An imaginative boy, bom in the later
sixties, could still hear the bugles and
the clash of arms. Throughout this mid-
western country every hearthside had
its Iliad. Now and then, within my
own recollection, there appeared at the
doorstep men who, unable to redomesti-
cr.te themselves after four years of
camp and field, still clung to the open
road. How long the faded old army
overcoat hung together — and on how
many shoulders it became an adver-
tisement of valor, an asset, a plea for
alms! Having been denied the thrills
of war itself it was no small compensa-
tion to look upon its heroes — to observe
daily in the street men who had com-
manded armies, to attend those gather-
ings of veterans that so brightly visual-
ized for curious youth the magnitude
of the great struggle of the sixties. If
one's father had been of the mighty
legion; if there existed in the garret a
musket or a sword that he had borne
in the conflict; if there remained, in a
soap-box under the eaves, the roster
of his company, an order or a report
or a bundle of old letters, for inspection
on rainy days, the luckier the lad to
whom such memorabilia came as a
birthright. It is inconceivable that any
boy bom in those times could have
escaped the fascination of those heroes,
whether he sat at meat with them daily
in his own household, or saw them in
the streets with the stamp of the drill
sergeant still upon them. And nothing
was so impressive as the fact that they
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
had flung down their youth as the gage
of battle.
We are none of us without our wist-
ful tenderness for those who won "the
immortal youthfulness of the early
dead":
"Shelley and Keats, with laurels fresh and
fair,
Shining unwithered on each sacred head;
And soldier boys who snatched death's starry
prize,
With sweet life radiant in their fearless eyes,
The dreams of love upon their beardless lips.
Bartering dull age for immortality:
Their memories hold in death's unyielding
fee
The youth that thrilled them to the finger
tips."
The historian and the philosopher
have not yet exhausted those decades
that immediately followed the war. The
social and political conditions of the
post-bellum period present phenomena
as interesting as any in our history, and
in spite of the dark, shameful pages of
reconstruction it still seems little short
of a miracle that the combatants yielded
themselves as readily as they did to
readjustment. I remember when "The
Fool's Errand" was a novel much dis-
cussed ; it must have been the best seller
of its day. But quite aside from its
value as a criticism of life or as a
protest against Ku-Klux ferocity, I
recall Judge Tourgee's appearance in a
Methodist pulpit in my town one Sun-
day morning, dashingly arrayed in
evening dress.
The display of these obscene vest-
ments, so cooly flaunted in the sanctu-
ary, deepened my early impression of
the literary life as a gay adventure,
against which even the terrors of a
provincial Sabbath could not prevail.
However, the garment oftenest in the
eyes of the youth of those days was the
enticingly described bloody shirt, whose
pleasant appellation envisaged it in
glowing scarlet and seemed to set it
dancing on all the clothes-lines in
Christendom. It was, I fancy, from the
sheer contrariness of youth, that having
heard from the cradle so much of the
unreconstructed and menacing char-
acter of the Southern colonels and
brigadiers, I clearly resolved to identify
myself with the political party whose
strength lay chiefly in the states lately
in rebellion. I must be pardoned if I
mention this the least bit jauntily, for
in dark alleys and on vacant lots safely
remote from the domestic altar my ir-
reconcilable playmates made necessar>'
the defense of my apostasy with fists
none too skillful and a frame wherein
anaemia threatened early extinction.
My sinful leanings toward mag^animit>*
and tolerance I shall not seek to justify
on any high grounds: though perhaps
there was a degree of sincerity in my
feeling that the war being over it was
preposterous to renew the fight ever}-
time the community was called upon to
elect a constable.
Those feelings and agitations had the
eflPect nevertheless of stimulating in
most of my generation an interest in
politics. The idealism that had flow-
ered in the war not unnaturally with-
ered and awaited a refreshening of the
exhausted soil. It was with real aston-
ishment that most of us whose youth
synchronized with the complete un-
broken domination of the humbled
South and who saw the spirit of mili-
tary triumph revived in all political
struggles, began to hear strange mur-
murings on our own side of the Ohio
as we approached manhood. In 1876
there had been rumblings that
threatened for a time to deepen into
the bellowings of cannon — when it
seemed that those swords that had not
been beaten into plowshares but provi-
dentially stored away in the attic, mi^^t
be oiled and sharpened for other
battles.
The limitations of time compel roe
to compress in a word a belief, by no
means original with me, that the cam-
paign of 1884 marked a reflowering of
idealism in our political life. It seems
in the retrospect that the exalted faith
which had planted its bright gonfalon
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THE SUNNY SLOPES OF FORTY
53
on the heights of so many battlefields
in the sixties had begun once more to
assert itself. Not the last interesting
circumstances attending Mr. Cleve-
land's appearance as the protagonist of
a new gospel was his unconscious
appeal to what may be called the
academic element in our population,
long scorned as an impractical body of
visionaries, but which from his advent
has exerted an increasingly salutary
influence in public affairs. The once
despised professor with his prepos-
terous ideals, his fatuous insistence that
human experience is not to be neglected
in the scrutiny of present tasks and
duties, has now become a force to
reckon with in public matters great and
small. It must be with a certain grim
htunor that those of us who take our
politics seriously glance toward Wash-
ington and see there, in the seat of the
Presidents, a gentleman finely repre-
sentative of the academic type — ^who
on ceremonial occasions in the groves
of academe wore so demure and clois-
tral an air — administering the affairs
of the United States with an intelli-
gence, a poise, a courage, that are so
admirable to the majority of his coun-
trymen, so bewildering to the hungry
and thirsty among his fellow partisans.
I beg to be indulged a moment longer
to reflect a conviction held by many
that our colleges and universities are
to exert more and more an influence
upon our political ideals and the effici-
ency of governmental administration.
I shall not attempt to enumerate the
long list of scholars in universities who
have in the past twenty years taught
political morality and economic free-
dom, or who have not scrupled to stand
on the firing line when there was work
for fighting men to do; but the indi-
vidual cases are not so impressive as
the appearance in so many states, and
notably in so many state universities,
of men who, often with personal dis-
comfort and sacrifice, are stimulating in
American youth a faith in ideals and
the courage to defend and support
them. It is not, I believe, a fantastic
notion, that within twenty years we
shall find in American universities^
scliools for the education of men and
women in all branches of municipal
administration, and that towns and
cities will draw upon these specially-
trained students for their public ser-
vants in the same spirit in which other
corporations seek the best available
talent to administer their business. And
manifestly there is no sane reason why
any community should choose to be
governed from the gutter rather than
by experts with no other ambition
than to serve the public honestly and
efficiently.
The boy that I seem to have been in
those green valleys below was not
interested solely in military and politi-
cal heroes, though my first literary
admirations were linked in some degree
to the earlier passion. I took into my
boyish pantheon Emerson, Lowell,
Whittier, Longfellow and Thoreau,
whom I appraised as quite worthy to*
trail their austere robes among the mili-
tary and political heroes of my adora-
tion; and their New England, which
none of my forbears had ever looked
upon, became a half -mythical and
fabled world. Nor can I think of them
now as other than priests of high con-
secration who stood valiantly at their
simple altars and preached the clean
gospel that was in them. Democracy,
as they interpreted it, became a finer
thing than it had been before and
fortunate are the new generations if
they do not wholly neglect them.
By what transitional processes or
under what guidance I gave over the
concealment and perusal of trash and
dipped into those deeper and cleaner
currents I have no impression, but I
recall that at sixteen I was the most
devoted of Emersonians. Having
habitually secreted innumerable copies
of Beadle's most seductive romances
in the lining of my waistcoat or, as
being more in keeping with the daring
spirit of the tales themselves, tucked
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
them into the top boots which boys wore
in those days, the open display of pocket
volumes of Emerson marked an ad-
vance in moral tone as well as in taste.
Conceit and priggishness which dance
malevolently on the ink-bottle at this
point must vanish before my admission
that in the case of Emerson at least, I
had found and pocketed only an odd
stone, as puzzling in its way as a mag-
net and affording the unexpected
shocks of a toy battery. The very dis-
continuity of the essays and their allu-
siveness and irrelevances w^re well
calculated to arrest and charm the young
mind. And they were so amazingly
plausible! Higher up on the slopes of
youth I was to find the English poets,
but quite likely they would have bound
me less strongly if the New Englanders
had not fallen in my way just when
they did.
I have since learned that Emerson
propounded no consistent philosophy;
that he was after all only a kind of
rural almanac man, the keeper of a
wayside spring who handed up cold
water in a rusty dipper to the passerby ;
and yet I have never escaped his charm ;
and an acquaintance with him and his
contemporaries implanted in me a rev-
erence for the New England landscape
over which in my fancy they roamed,
uttering wisdom and chanting songs.
I speak of this only because it is fair
to assume that to many thousands of us
in these prairies those New England
voices came as a great inspiration. In
these days of literary exploitation, when
a new genius is heralded every morning
and eclipsed by another at sundown,
when the horse power of every
novelist's motor is advertised to hasten
the steps of the hesitating purchaser
toward the bookshop, those austere
Olympians appear a trifle dingy. We
are assured that Emerson was a
peddler of discarded rubbish from old
garrets, that Whittier piped a thin
music, and that Longfellow was only a
benevolent Sunday-school teacher lead-
ing his class for a picnic in the forest
primeval. Lowell has been described
as a dull essayist and a poet who
gleaned a negligible aftermath in older
fields, Hawthorne as a melancholy bore,
and Holmes as a cheerful one ; and yet
for those of us who found them in
youth, when returning travelers brought
news of them from the seat of the
Brahmins, they still speak with golden
tongues.
We may well wonder, now that
everyone and everyone's aunt writes
a novel, whether the literar>' calling
will ever again enjoy the dignity of
those days. Authorship seems bent
upon confusing itself with journalism,
with which, we used to be told, it has
no kinship whatever. I can recall at
the moment no new shrine at a Con-
cord, a Cambridge or a Salem, no lately
discovered cottage in a snow-bound
Amesbury that is likely to lure the pious
pilgrim. Those brooding New Eng-
landers seem rather absurd in these
roaring times when every daily news-
paper boasts a staff poet and when
a novelist who fails to utter two books
a year is neglecting his opportunities.
Where some prosperous manufacturer
of salacious romance is becalmed in his
motor, and dictates to his secretary
while a new tire is being adjusted —
there indeed may the delighted villagers
pour forth to render him homage; but
those who attempt to look upon the
author at home are as likely as not to
be whipped from the estate by the game
keepers or drowned for my lord's
entertainment in the lilied moat
beneath the royal windows.
The literature of Democracy has its
own path to blaze, and its opportunities
for service are enormous. Certain
recent tendencies toward the vulgar and
vicious in fiction are disturbing and
disheartening, but it is to be hoped that
they are only temporary. It is hardly
possible that the novel is to be linked
permanently to the garbage can; that
the strength of the "strong*' books of
which we hear lies hierely in their
malodorousness, or that the novel as
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THE SUNNY SLOPES OF FORTY
:>•)
a representation of life and manners is
to be abandoned wholly to literary
adventurers who combine the confec-
tioner's trade with the fragant calling
of the scavenger. American fiction has
not lacked noble servants, and there are
writers still abiding with us —
Howells, James and Cable, to go no
further — ^who have carried the torch
high and firmly planted it for our
guidance.
We need chant no miserere as we
lift our pack and look down upon our
further course. We are still alive, mid-
way of a great era, and some things of
worth we have seen accomplished. A
perceptible strengthening of moral fibre
in our political life and an increasing
patience with idealism in its many
expressions w^ may safely jot down on
our tablets.
I take it as a good omen that this
society, whose purpose is the encourage-
ment of sobriety and earnestness in all
the arts, has unfolded its young banner
in this teeming Chicago. As a citizen of
another state no sentiment of local
pride inspires my feeling that here in
this great city, whose aspect is not with-
out its terrors for the unfamiliar eye,
idealism is struggling to flower with
as fine a spirit as may be found any-
where in America. Nothing is more
cheering than the knowledge that here
at the foot of the lakes, in this great
western clearing house, this huge
caldron of the nations, so many great-
hearted and earnest men and women
are addressing themselves to social
betterment, to political freedom and
honesty, to the dissemination of sweet-
ness and light. The ills of Chicago
may strike the unfriendly critic as
appalling, but there are many wise and
skilled physicians seeking to diagnose
her afBictions and supply the remedies.
It may be doubted whether any city
of its size m the world, with any similar
history, ever offered encouragement
along so many lines of progress as
this western capital. If to Chicagoans
this tribute appear gratuitous and pre-
sumptuous, I make it nevertheless with
a feeling that I should like some such
expression to become a part of the
record of this society. We find here
not only groups of people interested
in civic administration, in social uplift,
and in education along broad lines, but
we find a municipal spirit that we
have only to know to admire. It is
conceivable that here within the lives
of many of us the municipal riddle
shall be solved and ideals of beauty and
utility so blended and standarized as
to become an example to forward-look-
ing cities everywhere. And it is a
privilege and a pleasure thus to bring
from a sister province and a sister city
this frail wreath to hang upon the huge
door, imaginably wrought of iron and
somewhat battered, that stands at this
western gate. The pillars may loom
grim and forbidding against the un-
softened glare of the prairies, but at
the top there are already tracings of
"lily-work," as on the columns that
Hiram lifted to the glory of Solomon.
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A PLEA FOR CHORAL SINGING
By George Whitefield Chadwioc
About the year 1836, a musical society
was organized in the little town of Bos-
cawen, N. H. The town records state
that it had a membership of singers,
and of players on the flute, clarinet,
bugle, violin, and bass viol, and that it
was in existence for more than forty
years. This society was the successor
of an earlier one which was organized
before the beginning of the eighteenth
century, called the Martin Luther
Society, of which Daniel Webster and
his brother Ezekiel were members, and
to which they contributed a bass viol
and a bassoon.
Such musical activities were not ex-
ceptional or peculiar to that little town ;
on -the contrary they were typical of
the interest in music all over rural New
England, for in those days every village
had its church and every church its
choir, and in that church and choir the
social as well as the religious interests
of the place were largely concentrated.
There were very few organs in the
churches, so they brought their bass
viols, large and small, and sometimes
their clarinets and flute. To this day
these old instruments, mostly of Ameri-
can manufacture, are to be found in
the garrets of old New England houses.
This musical interest was not con-
fined to the rural districts; it invaded
the towns and cities, and from these
choirs was eventually developed the
Musical Convention, a kind of periodi-
cal singing-school, of which the Wor-
cester Festival, in Massachusetts, is a
direct descendant. Also, great choral
societies were formed, like the Handel
and Haydn Society of Boston, which
has been one of the most powerful fac-
tors in the creation and preservation of
musical taste in that city. Besides this,
some of these country players of the
viol, the bugle, and the clarinet strayed
into Harvard Collie (it was easier
then than at present), and, to the con-
sternation of the Faculty, formed a
Musical Club called the Pierian Sodct}*.
From that small and much disparaged
association descended in the third
generation, through the generosity and
public spirit of one who had himself
quaffed the Pierian spring, the Boston
Symphony Orchestra. For the Har-
vard Musical Association sprang from
the Pierian Sodality, and through its
efforts orchestral music was nurtured
and kept alive in Boston amid a
period of storm and stress until the
Symphony Orchestra was organized;
and largely owing to the influence of
the Harvard Musical Association, the
chair of music at Harvard Universit)*
was established. Such was musical
New England in the early part of the
last century.
And how is it now ? In the country,
beyond the reach of the trolley, a musi-
cal desert, a barren waste broken only
by the occasional squeak of a wheezy
cabinet organ drooling out a ragtime
gospel hymn, or a vulgar scrap of
vaudeville music issuing from the
strident horn of a talking-machine.
The village blacksmith no longer re-
joices to hear his daughter's voice sing-
ing in the choir. He listens to a paid —
and usually overpaid — quartet choir
simpering and snickering behind their
curtain, and to an organist who rafales
the congregation with selections from
the operas, or thinly disguised imita-
tions of them. And in the cities, grand
opera, so-called musical comedy, sym-
phony concerts, chamber concerts,
artists' recitals, great schools of music,
pianolas and talking-machines — every-
thing to amuse and entertain the public.
^6
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A PLEA FOR CHORAL SINGING
57
but not much which includes it in active
musical life.
All these things are very well, very
amusing, sometimes even educating; but
they can never take the place of that
music which is made in the home and
by the family, — ^made by the people, for
the people, and through which the
people may achieve a part of that
spiritual uplift which is the highest and
best element of the musical art For
without the interest of the people them-
selves in choral singing and in home
music, the support of the general public
is not to be expected.
Why is Germany considered to be
the most music-loving nation? Not
because opera and concerts are cheap
and good; that is the effect, not the
cause. It is because everybody, from
the Emperor down, is expected to sing,
and does sing. Students sing in their
corps-meetings, and soldiers on the
march. Every workman in a factory
belongs to his little Gesang-Verein. In
Leipsic alone there are sixty or seventy
of these societies.
The English have the reputation of
being an unmusical nation, which, in my
opinion, is not at all deserved. They
may be somewhat lacking in discrimina-
tion, but their appetite for music is
simply omnivorous, and there is no town
of a thousand inhabitants in England
without its choral society. Very often
it has an amateur orchestral society also.
The great choral festivals of England,
in Birmingham, Worcester, Gloucester,
Hereford, Sheffield, and London would
not be possible except for this wide-
spread interest in choral singing among
the people. It is their joy and delight,
and they even have a musical notation
of their own which is a direct result
of it.
To be sure, there are many choral
societies in the large cities of the United
States, and in many places musical
festivals are annually given, with per-
formances of choral works of greater
or less importance, at which the choral
forces study during a portion of the
year. These festivals are usually
assisted and sometimes arranged by the
symphony orchestras of large cities,
which happen to be on tour. In such
cases, as for example at Worcester and
Cincinnati, at the University at Evan-
ston, at the University of Michigan at
Ann Arbor, and, above all, at Toronto,
where the unrivaled Mendelssohn choir
holds an annual festival assisted by the
splendid Chicago Orchestra, the results
--both artistic and financial — are so
decided that the struggling choral socie-
ties of larger cities may well envy them
their success.
In the larger cities the choral socie-
ties, particularly those which have been
longest established, are meeting with
little support from the public, and with
a lack of interest on the part of singers
which makes it difficult for them to keep
their ranks full. The young people who
are trying to study singing with a
teacher, but who would learn much
more by singing in a chorus, usually re-
gard their voices as too precious for
that purpose, and the others would much
rather play bridge-whist, or dance, or
go to a moving-picture show. They
dislike to bind themselves to attend
rehearsals of serious music which may
possibly interfere with these diversions.
And this is not altogether, as some
have supposed, because our American
public has lost interest in the older
forms of classic choral music, — the
oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn
and the great works of Bach ; rather, it
is because our young people have not
been brought up to sing, and thus have
never experienced the keen delight of
self-expression through the singing
voice and the inspiration that comes
through participation in a choral per-
formance.
But there is a class of our people who
have discovered these pleasures for
themselves. They are the wage-earners,
the artisans, the domestics, even the
day-laborers, who have been organized
into People's Choral Unions in sev-
eral places. This movement, originally
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58
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
started by Mr. Frank Damrosch in
New York, has spread to other cities,
large and small, with excellent results
to the community, both socially and
artistically. These choral societies in a
certain way have taken the place of the
old-fashioned singing-school. The con-
ductor is usually an enthusiast who
gives his services gratis. The members
pay a small sum at each rehearsal for
the running expenses and the organiza-
tion is self-supporting.
Beginning with elementary instruc-
tion in sight-singing and voice-produc-
tion, these people are eventually trained
to take part in the performance of
oratorios and choral works. A large
proportion of the members in large
cities is of foreign birth, and they are
setting a good example to our native-
born citizens who are idling away their
Sunday afternoons or dozing over
lurid Sunday papers.
If we hope ever to become a really
musical nation, this interest in choral
singing must extend to all classes of
society. The great choruses of Eng-
land are recruited from families of the
well-to-do, and even from the nobility,
as well as from the working-classes.
In Germany, the Gesang-Verein in-
cludes people of every station in life,
banded together by their common love
of music. And so it must be in this
country if we are to realize the vision
of Walt Whitman, and "hear America
singing."
But before this millennium can arrive
there is much work to be done. The
soil must be fertilized and made ready
to receive this seed from which a musi-
cal nation is to grow. To do this we
must begin at the very beginning. And
the beginning is in the school; not only
in the public but in the private school.
For in the boy's preparatory schools,
with the exception of those which have
a daily church service and choir, the
teaching of singing is almost wholly
neglected ; and one direct result of this
is that college choral singing, with the
exception of the glee clubs, is almost
entirely confined to the football-fidd,
or to convivial occasions.
In the public schools good work is
being done and much has already been
accomplished. In some of the Eastern
schools works like Haydn's Creation
have been performed by high-school
choruses. When their students can
accomplish so much it would seem
money well spent for the school authori-
ties to provide competent solo singers
and an orchestral accompaniment, — ^but
unfortunately they are not always so
liberal. There is room for improve-
ment not only in methods but in admin-
istration, and especially in the adjust-
ment of the study of music to the rest
of the curriculum of the school. Above
all, the question of politics should be
absolutely eliminated. The training of
youthful voices should never be in-
trusted to unqualified persons — be they
ever so useful Republicans, Democrats
or Progressives.
One thing more ! The women's musi-
cal clubs have become a potent musical
influence all over the country. They
are ceaselessly working, studying and
organizing, and to them more than to
any other one factor is due the growing
appreciation of good music in this
country. To them the American com-
poser owes much, for they have insisted
that he shall be heard, and respected.
These clubs usually include a chorus,
■—necessarily of sopranos and alto?
only; but could the "mere men" be
annexed, in a strictly ex-officio capacit\'
of course, what glorious choral results
would soon follow! No longer would
choral music languish in this country.
In one generation, or before, choral
singing would become universal, as it
is in England and Germany, to the
great advantage of the community
socially, morally, and vocally; for it
is no longer a subject of controversy
that music does exert a salutary influ-
ence. It is conceded, even by those
who are oblivious of its delight and deaf
to its appeal ; even its therapeutic value
has been demonstrated.
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A PLEA FOR CHORAL SINGING 59
So, let these devoted women use all cal hive; and there compel them to
those arts of persuasion for which their serve their queens loyally and faith-
sex is so justly renowned, and, even by fully in the cause of song. It would
force if necessary, bring their husbands, add the brightest jewel to their already
brothers, sons, and lovers into the musi- glittering diadem.
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FREE TRADE versus PROTECTION IN LITERATURE
By Samuel McChord Crothers
In the old-fashioned text-book we
used to be told that the branch of learn-
ing that was treated was at once an art
and a science. Literature is much more
than that. It is an art, a science, a pro-
fession, a trade, and an accident. The
literature that is of lasting value is an
accident. It is something that happens.
After it has happened, the historical
critics busy themselves in explaining it.
But they are not able to predict the next
stroke of genius.
Shelley defines poetry as the record
of "the best and happiest moments of
the best and happiest minds." When
we are fortunate enough to happen in
upon an author at one of these happy
moments, then, as the country news-
paper would say, "a very enjoyable time
was had." After we have said all that
can be said about art and craftsman-
ship, we put our hopes upon a happy
chance. Literature cannot be stand-
ardized. We never know how the most
painstaking work may turn out. The
most that can be said of the literary
life is what Sancho Panza said of the
profession of knight-errantry: "There
is something delightful in going about
in expectation of accidents."
After a meeting in behalf of Social
Justice, an eager, distraught young man
met me, in the streets of Boston, and
asked :
"You believe in the principle of
equality ?"
"Yes."
"Don't I then have just as much right
lo be a genius as Shakespeare had?"
"Yes."
"Then why ain't I?"
I had to confess that I didn't know.
It is with this chastened sense of our
limitations that we meet for any organ-
ized attempt at the encouragement of
literary productivity. Matthew Arn-
old's favorite bit of irreverence in which
he seemed to find endless enjoyment was
in twitting the unfortunate Bishop who
had said that "something ought to be
done" for the Holy Trinity. It was
a business-like proposition that involved
a spiritual incongruity.
A confusion of values is likely to take
place when we try to "do something"
for American Literature. It is an
object that appeals to the uplifter who
is anxious to "get results." But the
difficulty is that if a piece of writing is
literature, it does not need to be up-
lifted. If it is not literature, it is likdy
to be so heavy that you can't lift it.
We have been told that a man by taking
thought cannot add a cubit to his
stature. It is certainly true that we
cannot add many cubits to our literary
stature. If we could we should all be
giants.
When literary men discourse wth
one another about their art, they often
seem to labor under a weight of respon-
sibility which a friendly outsider would
seek to lighten. They are under the
impression that they have left undone
many things which they ought to have
done, and that the Public blames them
for their manifold transgressions.
That Great American Novel ought to
have been written long ago. There
ought to be more local color and less
imitation of European models. There
ought to have been more plain speaking
to demonstrate that we are not squeam-
ish and are not tied to the apron-strings
cf Mrs. Grundy. There ought to be a
literary centre and those who are at it
ought to live up to it.
In all this it is asstuned that contem-
60
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FREE TRADE versus PROTECTION IN LITERATURE
6i
porary writers can control the literary
situation.
Let me comfort the over-strained con-
sciences of the members of the writing
fraternity. Your responsibility is not
nearly so great as you imagine.
Literature differs from the other arts
in the relation in which the producer
stands to the consumer. Literature can
never be made one of the protected
industries. In the Drama the living
actor has a complete monopoly. One
might express a preference for Garrick
or Booth, but if he goes to the theatre
he must take what is set before him.
The monopoly of the singer is not quite
so complete as it once was. But until
canned music is improved, most people
will prefer to get theirs fresh. In paint-
ing and in sculpture there is more or
less competition with the work of other
ages. Yet even here there is a measure
of natural protection. The old masters
may be admired, but they are expensive.
The living artist can control a certain
market of his own.
There is also a great opportunity for
the artist and his friends to exert pres-
sure. When you go to an exhibition of
new paintings, you are not a free agent.
You are aware that the artist or his
friends may be in the vicinity to observe
how First Citizen and Second Citizen
enjoy the masterpiece. Conscious of
this espionage, you endeavor to look
pleased. You observe a picture which
outrages your ideas of the possible.
You mildly remark to a bystander that
you have never seen anything like that
before.
"Probably not," he replies, "it is not
a picture of any outward scene, it repre-
sents the artist's state of mind."
"Oh," you reply, "I understand. He
is making an exhibition of himself."
It is all so personal that you do not
feel like carrying the investigation
further. You take what is set before
you and ask no questions.
But with a book the relation to the
producer is altogether different. You
go into your library and shut the door.
and you have the same sense of intellec-
tual freedom that you have when you
go into the polling-booth and mark
your Australian ballot. You are a
sovereign citizen. Nobody can know
what you are reading unless you choose
to tell. You snap your fingers at the
critics. In the "tumultuous privacy" of
print you enjoy what you find enjoy-
able, and let the rest go.
Your mind is a free port. There are
no customs-house officers to examine the
cargoes that are unladen. The book
which has just come from the press has
no advantage over the book that is a
century old. In the matter of legibility
the old volume may be preferable, and
its price is less. Whatever choice you
make is in the face of the free competi-
tion of all the ages. Literature is the
timeless art.
Clever writers who start fashions in
the literary world should take account
of this secrecy of the reader's position.
It is easy enough to start a fashion ; the
difficulty is to get people to follow it.
Few people will follow a fashion except
when other people are looking at them.
When they are alone they relapse into
something which they enjoy and which
they find comfortable.
The ultimate consumer of literature
is therefore inclined to take a philo-
sophical view of the contentions among
literary people, about what seem to
them the violent fluctuations of taste.
These fashions come and go, but the
quiet reader is undisturbed. There are
enough good books already printed to
last his life-time. Aware of this, he
is not alarmed by the cries of the
"calamity-howlers" who predict a
famine.
From a purely commercial viewpoint,
this competition with writers of all
generations is disconcerting. But I do
not see that anything can be done to
prevent it. The principle of protec-
tion fails. Trades-unionism offers no
remedy. What if all the living authors
should join in a general strike! We
tremble to think of the army of strike-
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62 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
breakers that would rush in from all must not put all our thought on increas-
centuries. mg the output In order to meet the
From the literary viewpoint, how- free competition to which we are ex-
ever, this free competition is very stimu- posed, we must improve the quality of
lating and even exciting. To hold our our work. Perhaps that may be good
own under free-trade conditions, we for us.
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RESPONSE OF AUGUSTUS THOMAS
Upon the Presentation to Him of the Gold Medal of the Institute, for Drama
Mr. President: I cannot conceive
of a jury in the United States, however
that jury might be constituted, however
chosen or appointed, however com-
missioned or delegated or empowered,
whose approval in a field of art or of
letters would be so authoritative as is
the approval of the men and the organ-
ization for whom you speak.
The proper fear concerning that
approval is not that it may not be
sufficiently esteemed, but that its
bestowal may in the recipient produce
self-consciousness to a benumbing and
inhibiting degree.
Nothing like this presentation has
ever been done to me except once, and
my experience then does not help me
now, because then I was alone, and
because we had nothing to do but to
take it and not let our new shoes
squeak so much going back to our seats.
In the present parallel to that remem-
bered scene I miss this morning our
parents standing about the wall. I miss
— my eyes aren't as good as they were
then — I almost miss the girls in their
pink ribbons. I miss the lilacs on the
teacher's desk and, just behind her, the
Tropic of Capricorn. It had been there
all winter, but never so awfully plain as
on that shiny morning in May with the
sun outside, and then the cowbells, and
the trees, and the great, wonderful
world turning on its own axis once in
every twent-four hours. That was
forty-five years ago, and although I
have remembered it ever since, the
Tropic of Capricorn has never been of
any real help to me until now.
My mother was eighty-nine last
March, and, besides, she is not very
well. The other children couldn't get
away, and she has had to live in St.
Louis. I have decided not to go back
to New York to-night, but to go home
and show her this medal. She will not
appreciate it as much as I do, and al-
though I shall explain to her how kind
you men are, and how careful you have
to be, she will only wonder what has
made all the delay.
When we grow up it is not good to
be too proud, but one may certainly
take to himself such comfort as he may
find in that clause of your constitution
which provides that this medal must be
given to a living person or to one who
has not been dead more than one year;
and as this embarrassing moment pro-
longs itself, there is comfort also
toward which I reach, perhaps need-
lessly, in that other clause which says
the medal must not be awarded twice
to any one person.
But, Dr. Matthews, knowing as I do
the greatness of the honor, and know-
ing also at first hand much of human
weakness, I see no happiness in this
business except by regarding this award
as the Institute's comment upon the
intentions of the recipient and the seem-
ing direction of his efforts, rather than
upon their results, and in accepting it
not as a record but as a stimulus and
an obligation.
6j
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Compositions by members of the Institute made up in its entirety the Fifth
Program of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Twenty-third Season, the
concert being given on Friday afternoon, November 14, 1913, and repeated
Saturday evening, November 15, 1913.
^PRELUDE TO ACT III, "Natoma" Herbeit
fA NORTHERN BALLAD, Opus 46 Parker
"DRAMATIC OVERTURE, "Melpomene" Chadwick
^CONCERTO FOR PIANOFORTE No. 2, D minor. Opus 23. . . .MacDowell
Lahchetto calmato.
Presto giocoso.
Largo — Molto allegro.
Soloist: Miss Edith Thompson
INTERMISSION
*'THE DEFEAT OF MACBETH" Kelley
*FOUR CHARACTER PIECES, Opus 48 Foote
* FESTIVAL MARCH AND HYMN TO LIBERTY Stock
♦Conducted by the Composer at the first concert.
tConducted by Mr. Frederick A. Stock, leader of the Orchestrtu
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PROGRAM NOTES
(Published by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
Prepared by Felix Borowski of Chicago
Introduction to Act III
"Natoma''
Victor Herbert •
Born Feb. 1., 1859, at Dublin
"Natoma," Victor Herbert's first con-
tribution to the literature of serious
opera, was produced for the first time
Februar>' 25, 1911, by the Chicago
Opera Company, at Philadelphia. The
cast was as follows: Natoma: Miss
Mary Garden; Barbara: Miss Lillian
Grenville; Lieut. Paul Merrill: John^
MacCormack; Alvarado:^ Mario Sam-
laarco; Father Peralta: Hector Du-
franne; Don Francisco de la Guerra:
Gustave Huberdeau; Pico: Armand
Crabbe; Jose Castro: Frank Preisch.
Geofonte Campanini was the conductor.
Four days after the Philadelphia per-
formance "Natoma" was brought out
at the Metropolitan Opera House, New
York, with the cast that had played and
sung it at the first performance. The
opera was not interpreted in Chicago
until December 15, 1911. The libretto
of Mr. Herbert's work was written by
Joseph D. Redding. * This author
placed the scene of the opera in Cali-
fornia— its first act on the Island of
Santa Cruz; the second in the plaza of
the town of Santa Barbara on the main-
land, and the third inside the mission
church, whose exterior had formed the
background of the plaza in the second
act. The time of the action was 1820,
under the Spanish regime.
♦Joseph Deighn Redding (born Sept. 13,
1859, at Sacramento, Cal.) is by profession a
lawyer. Educated first at California Military
Academy, he was graduated from the
Harvard Law School in 1879, and has been
in practice in San Francisco since 1882.
The story of "Natoma" is concerned with
the Indian girl, whose name gives the title
to the opera, and her love for Lieut. Paul
Merrill, of the United States brig Liberty.
The latter has had some sentimental passages
with Natoma, but when he sets eyes on Bar-
bara^ the daughter of Don Francisco de la
Guerra — to her Natoma has long been a com-
panion— ^his fancy for the Indian girl is swal-
lowed up in the stronger passion for her mis-
tress. The young Spaniard, Alvarado, also
loves Barbara, who is his cousin, and it is
not long before he is made aware that the
girl reciprocates the affection of the young
lieutenant whose ship is lying off the island
of Santa Cruz. Alvarado conceives the plan
of killing Merrill, but Castro, a half-breed,
persuades him that a safer scheme would be
to abduct Barbara and carry her away into
the mountains. They propose to do this on
the morrow when the festivities of the maid-
en's name-day will be at their height. Na-
toma, however, overhears the plot, and when
the fiesta is gayest she kills Alvarado with a
dagger just as he is about to abduct his
cousin. The crowd is on the point of taking
vengeance on Natoma when the door of the
mission church swings open and Father Pe-
ralta, the padre, appears on the steps holding
a cross aloft. He gives the Indian girl sanc-
tuary, and under the stress of his pleading
Natoma makes a final renunciation; for she
gives up the world and love and finds sur-
cease of sorrow among the nuns of the
neighboring convent.
Mr. Herbert's prelude is written for
the following orchestra: two flutes,
piccolo, two oboes, English horn, two
clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons,
double bassoon, four horns, three trum-
pets, three trombones, tuba, kettle-
drums, cymbals, triangle, harp and
strings. It opens (Feroce, ma in tempo
moderato) with a marked phrase ff in
the full orchestra, and a slower section
eight measures long leads into a broad
theme {Maestoso e patetico, C sharp
minor, 4-4 time) given out by all the
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
strings, the double basses excepted. At
the eighteenth measure there is heard
in the violins and woodwind alternately
the motive associated with Natoma, or
more properly with the amulet which
she wears round her neck and which,
connected with the history and destiny
of her people, may be considered as
signifying Natoma's fate. Following
this there comes a division which, fre-
quently recurring in the course of the
opera itself, is concerned with Natoma
and her love for Lieut. Paul Merrill.
Here it is given to the first violins, a
broken chord figure in the violas and
harp arpeggios accompanying it. After
a development of this the prelude ends.
"A Northern Ballad''
Opus 46
Horatio W. Parker
Born Sept. 5, 1863, at Auburndale, Mass.
This work was composed at New
Haven, Conn., in 1899, and was pro-
duced for the first time at a concert of
the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Bos-
ton, Dec. 29, 1899. Wilhelm Gericke
was the conductor. The programme
also contained Moszkowski's first
suite for orchestra, opus 39 — this pre-
ceded "A Northern Ballad''— and Bee-
thoven's sixth (Pastoral) symphony,
which followed it. The score — still un-
published— ^bears a dedication to Theo-
dore Thomas. It was performed at
these concerts during the ninth season
(Feb. 10, 1900), Mr. Thomas having
been the conductor. The composer
states that "A Northern Ballad" bears
no "program." The work is scored for
two flutes, piccolo, oboe, English horn,
two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns,
two trumpets, three trombones, tuba,
harp, kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals
and strings.
When the piece was played for the
first time at Boston in 1899, William F.
Apthorp, then the editor of the program
book, contributed the following analysis
which has been forwarded by the com-
poser for reproduction here :
"The composition is essentially in sonata
form. It begins with a slow introduction,
Molto moderato, E minor, 3-4 time, in which
a theme of folk-song character is developed,
at first simply, by the woodwind and horns,
then against counterph rases in the strinsrs.
Episodic phrases from the main body of the
composition lead over to the Allegro non
troppo in E minor (3-4 time). This begins
widi its fitful first theme, the development,
in which there is a good deal of contrapuntal
imitation, going on from piano to fortissimo.
After a change to D minor, the 'cclli enter
with a more cantabile phrase against flutter-
ing arpeggois in the woodwind, which is soon
taken up by the first violins. This is tran-
sitional; the second theme coming in the
woodwind in D minor, over a simple accom-
paniment in the strings. This theme is de-
veloped at some length, a new lightly skip-
ping figure coming in the flute, then the clari-
net, as the closing developments of the sec-
ond theme lead over to the free fantasia.
This begins with fragments of the first
theme, of the folk-song theme of the intro-
duction, and a new dancing phrase. The
working-out, though not so very long, is
often of an elaborate description. The third
part begins in the tonic, but somewhat irr^^u^
larly, with figures from the first theme, not
with the theme itself in the shape in which
it appeared at the beginning of the first part ;
it sounds like a continuation of the working-
out, when all of a sudden you find yourself
in the midst of the first theme itself, and
become conscious that the third part has be-
gun. Its relation to the first part is r^^Iar,
the second theme coming now in the tonic
E major. There is a long coda running
almost entirely on the second theme, the
composition ending pianissimo in the full
orchestra in D flat major."
Dramatic Overture, "Melpomene. '^'
George Whitefield Chadwick,
Born Nov. 13, 1854, at Lowell, Mass.
Concerning his overture "Melpo-
mene," Mr. Chadwick has supplied the
following information for the purposes
of this program : "It was composed in
the year 1886 and first performed by
the Boston Symphony Orchestra under
Mr. Gericke in December of the same
year. It was originally intended as a
companion piece for my earlier overture
Thalia/ the full title of which was
'Overture to an Imaginary Comedy."
'Melpomene/ however, somewhat out-
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PROGRAM NOTES
67
grew its original scope, so that it can
hardly be called 'Overture to an Imagi-
nary Tragedy' but rather a piece which
typifies an atmosphere of tragic poetry
in general. It was published in 1887,
since which time it has probably been
played more than any of my other or-
chestral works, having been performed
at the Philharmonic in London, at the
Worcester Festival, in England, Paris,
Leipzig, Copenhagen, and several other
European cities."
Melpomene was one of the nine muses
who, originally included among the
nymphs, were afterward regarded as
quite distinct from them. Although
Hesiod in his "Theogony" calls the
muses the nine daughters of Zeus and
Mnemosyne, the enimieration varied
with other poets. Homer, writing now
of one and now of many muses, con-
sidered them as deities dwelling in
Olympus who, at the banquets of the
gods, sing to the lyre of Apollo and
inspire his song. According to Hesiod
the names and attributes of the muses
were as follows: 1. Calliope, the muse
of epic song, represented as standing
with a wax tablet and a pencil in her
hand. 2. Qio, the muse of history, with
a scroll. 3. Euterpe, the muse of lyric
song, with a double flute. 4. Thalia,
the muse of comedy and bucolic poetr>',
with the comic mask, the ivy wreath
and the shepherd's staff. 5. Melpo-
mene, the muse of tragedy, with tragic
mask and ivy wreath. 6. Terpsichore,
the muse of danciijg, with the lyre. 7.
Erato, the muse of erotic poetry, with
a smaller lyre. 8. Polyhymnia, the muse
of sacred songs, usually represented as
veiled and pensive. 9. Urania, the muse
of astronomy, with the celestial globe.
"Melpomene" is scored for two flutes, pic-
colo, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, two
bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, kettle drums, bass drum,
cymbals and strings. The overture opens
with a slow Introduction (Lento e dolente,
D minor, 4-4 time), its theme given out by
the English horn over sustained harmony of
the trombones. The phrase thus played by
the English horn is repeated by the oboe a
fourth higher. Following this idea there is
heard a melody, based on the same material
and given to the oboe. This leads to the
main movement (Allegro agitato, D minor,
2-2 time) whose subject, after some intro-
ductory chords in the full orchestra, is an-
nounced by the strings. There is a crescendo,
and the principal theme is thundered out ff
and in augmentation by the basses and trom-
bones. After some stormy treatment of this
material, the second theme enters with the
oboes, English horn and violoncellos. Fol-
lowing this comes (in the woodwind) a theme
which had been heard in the Introduction,
its accompaniment being given pissicato to
the strings, and to a broken chord figure in
the clarinet. Allegro. There is a fanfare for
the trumpets, and the character of the music
becomes one of greater excitement. A mo-
tive in the trombones forte suggests that
which had been given to the English horn
at the beginning of the Introduction. After
a climax has been attained, the excitement
subsides, and a new division (Un poco piu
moderato) is introduced, its material being,
however, a fugato based on the principal
theme. The Introduction's motive returns
(animato) in the woodwind, following the
opening phrase of the principal theme given
in augmentation to the trombones, this be-
ing, in reality, the beginning of the Recapitu-
lation. There is a ritardando and the sec-
ond subject is sung by the oboe and English
horn in octaves. The trumpet fanfare re-
turns, and the mood is again one of excite-
ment. There is a great climax, a crash of
cymbals followed by a pause. Lento. The
material of the Introduction is now reheard
in modified form, and with this the overture
is brought to a conclusion.
Concerto for Pianoforte
No. 2, D minor, Opus 23
Edward Alexander MoxDowell
Bom Dec. 18, 1861, at New York
Died Jan. 23, 1908, at New York
MacDowell began the composition of
the second of his two concertos for
piano in 1884 at Frankfort, and the
work was completed in 1885 at Weis-
baden. Some of the material in the
scherzo of the concerto had been writ-
ten in the summer of 1884 as sketches
for a symphonic poem — it was to have
been entitled "Beatrice and Benedick*'
— which had been inspired by a per-
formance of ''Much Ado About Noth-
ing" given by Henry Irving and Ellen
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Terry at the Lyceum Theatre, London.*
The symphonic poem was eventually
abandoned. The first performance of
MacDoweirs second concerto took place
March 5, 1889, at a Theodore Thomas
Symphony concert, Chickering Hall,
New York, the composer having also
been the soloist. At the same concert
Tschaikowsky's fifth symphony was
played for the first time in America.
Four months later (July 12) Mac-
Dowell played his work at an "Ameri-
can Concert'' given at the Paris Expo-
sition. In England the second concerto
was first played by Mme. Teresa Car-
reno at a Crystal Palace Concert, April
7, 1900.
The orchestra employed by Mac-
Dowell in the accompaniment of his
second concerto comprises two flutes,
two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons,
four horns, two trumpets, three trom-
bones, kettle drums and strings.
I. (Larghetto calmato, D minor, 6-8 time).
The movement is constructed in a somewhat
irregular sonata form. It opens with a sub-
ject given to the muted strings pianissimo.
The piano enters alone with a broader theme,
fortissimo. The first idea is taken up again,
this time by the woodwind and second vio-
lins, the solo instrument then stating alone
(poco piu mosso e con passione) the real
principal subject of the movement. This is
worked over at some length, eventually giv-
ing way to the second theme in F major,
which is heard in the violoncellos, with a
running accompaniment in the violins. The
piano takes up the running figure, and the
first violins play a counter subject against
the second theme played by the second vio-
lins and violas. There follows a strongly
marked idea in the brass, drawn from the
first piano theme. Development takes place
and the piano plays a passage based on the
principal subject, which leads into a Reca-
pitulation. The second theme, now in D
major, is given to the violins, its running
accompaniment in the piano part. There is
a short coda which brings the movement to
a soft and tranquil close.
II. (Presto giocoso, B flat major, 2-4
time). Although not so entitled on the
score, this movement is practically a scherzo.
It opens with an elf -like subject given partly
to the woodwind and strings and partly to
the piano. It is followed by a more vigorous
idea, the true second theme appearing in the
horns (F major), the piano accompanying
it with a semi-trill. The first theme re-
appears and there is a tutti, which opens the
Development section. An episode (first for
the solo instrument, afterward taken up by
the strings) is now introduced, it, in its turn,
being succeeded by the first theme. There
is development of the episode and the Re-
capitulation sets in, the principal subject
being given out much as in the opening
portion of the movement. The second
theme is allotted once more to the horns.
There is a short coda ending pianissimo,
III. The movement opens (Largo, D
minor, 3-4 time) with an Introduction in
which the principal theme of the main move-
ment is foreshadowed. (Molto Allegro, D
major, 3-4 time). The woodwind prepare
the way for the entrance of the first sub-
ject, stated by the piano, ff. Another idea, '
drawn from the first, is given out lightly by
the piano and strings in F major. The first
theme is worked out, and a new and vigorous
theme appears if in B minor in the full
orchestra. This is developed together with
the opening subject. The Recapitulation of
the first theme opens with the first theme in
the brass and the movement ends with a
brilliant and sonorous coda.
*It was a representation of Shakespeare's
"Hamlet" given by Henry Irving and Miss
Terry at the Lyceum Theatre in 1884 which
inspired MacDowell to the composition of his
symphonic poem "Hamlet and Ophelia"
(1885). The score of that work he dedicated
to the two artists.
"The Defeat of Macbeth"
Edgar Stillman Kelley
Born April 14, 1857, at Sparta, Wis.
Mr. Kelley, who with "The Defeat
of Macbeth" is given representation for
the first time on the programs of these
concerts, obtained his musical training
from F. W. Merriam (1870-74) ; Qar-
ence Eddy and N. Ledochowski in Chi-
cago (1874-76); in 1876 he went to
Stuttgart where for four years he was
a pupil of Max Seifriz (in composi-
tion), Wilhelm Kriiger and Wilhebn
Speidel (in piano playing) and Fried-
rich Finck (organ playing). Mr. Kel-
ley acted as organist in Oakland and
San Francisco, Cal. He conducted a
light opera company in the Eastern
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PROGRAM NOTES
69
States (1890-91) and taught piano play-
ingi organ and composition in various
schools in California and New York.
He was musical critic for the San Fran-
cisco Examiner from 1893 until 1895;
in 1896 special instructor in composi-
tion at New York College of Music;
in 1901-02 at Yale University. In con-
nection with music for the stage Mr.
Kelley has written music to "Macbeth"
(produced 1885 and 1887). Newly
written and given at the Ducal Court
Theatre, Coburg (1909-10) ; music to
"Ben Hur" (1899) ; music to "Prome-
theus Bound" ; comic opera "Puritania*'
(given first at the Tremont Theatre,
Boston, June 9, 1892). He has com-
posed for orchestra a Chinese Suite,
"Aladdin" — the Chinese themes in this
were the result of a study of Chinese
music made by Mr. Kelley during his
residence in San Francisco ; "Gulliver,"
humorous symphony; "New England"
symphony, produced at the Norfolk
Festival, 1913.
"The Defeat of Macbeth" is the last
number of a Suite for orchestra which
— containing five movements — was con-
structed from the incidental music to
Shakespeare's tragedy to which refer-
ence has been made in a preceding para-
graph. The Suite is thus composed:
I. Overture ; II. "Arrival of King Dun-
can" ; III. Introduction to Act II ; IV.
Banquet Music; V. "The Defeat of
Macbeth."
"The Defeat of Macbeth" is scored
for two flutes, piccolo, two oboes, two
clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, four
trumpets, three trombones, tuba, kettle-
drums, bass drum, side drum, triangle,
cymbals, gong and strings. On a fly
leaf of the autograph score the com-
poser has written the following pro-
gram of the work:
"Trumpets in the English camp sum-
mon the allied armies to advance on
Dunsinane. The peaceful mood of the
Highlands is broken by distant gallop-
ing of Macbeth's horsemen. The war-
horns of the approaching Scots are an-
swered by the English trumpets preced-
ing the shock of arms. Macbeth falls
and his forces fly. The English trum-
pets signal the conquerors to assemble
and Malcolm is proclaimed King of
Scotland." The following additional
explanation was inserted in the pro-
gram book of the Cincinnati Sym-
phony orchestra, when Mr. Kelley's
work was played by that organiza-
tion at Cincinnati, Feb. 28-Mar. 1,
1913:
" The Defeat of Macbeth,^ when given
in connection with the play, is the intro-
duction to the final act and is based on
the closing events of the tragedy.
Primitive trumpet calls in divers keys,
answering each other, form the intro-
duction, and lead to the march of the
English. As the movement dies away,
the mood of the Scotch hills is sug-
gested by a quieter section (given out
by the oboe) . A second allusion to the
English soldiery is followed by the ap-
proach of Macbeth's horsemen (gal-
loping figure in violas and violoncellos) .
It is heard first in the distance and ever
growing nearer. Now the hoarse, chal-
lenging tones of the Scotch war-homs
are answered by the bright fanfare of
the English trumpets. The varied events
of medieval warfare are portrayed by
the well-adapted use of some of the
devices of modem orchestration in
which numerous harmonic designs may
be traced. Macbeth falls and his forces
fly. To those familiar with the preced-
ing numbers of the work, additional sig-
nificance is imparted by the final pro-
nouncement of the motive associated
with the weird sisters and their proph-
ecy concerning Macbeth's fate (trom-
bones and tuba). This motive, heard
first in the overture, then in connection
with Macbeth's first interview with the
witches, and again in the incantation
scene, where the sybillic admonition —
that he has no cause to fear till Bir-
nam Wood come to high Dunsinane
Hill— finds, at the fulfillment of the
prophecy, its fullest and most elaborate
development."
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Four Character Pieces
Opus 48
Arthur William Foote
Bom March 5, 1853, at Salem, Mass.
These Four Character Pieces are
transcriptions of some piano composi-
tions which, entitled "Five Poems after
Omar Khayyam" — were written by Mr.
Foote at Dedham, Mass., in the sum-
mer of 1898. Of these five poems, four
were orchestrated in July and August,
1900, and they were performed for the
first time Dec. 20-21, 1907, at the
eleventh concert of the Chicago S)mi-
phony Orchestra — at that time the
Theodore Thomas Orchestra — under
the direction of Frederick Stock. The
program also comprised Elgar's "Frois-
sart" overture; the Pastorale from the
Christmas Oratorio by Bach; Wilm's
Concertstiick for harp and orchestra
(performed by Enrico Tramonti) ;
Block's "Triptyque S^ymphonique"
and Liszt's symphonic poem, "Les Pre-
ludes." The work, dedicated to Georg
Henschel, was published in 1912. For
the program book of the Chicago con-
certs Mr. Foote supplied the following
explanation of his music which, as has
been said, is based on quatrains from
the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam :
I
Tram indeed is gone with all his Rose,
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no
one knows;
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.
Andante comodo, in B major and 3-4
time: — ^The theme heard at the outset
in the solo clarinet runs through the
whole, with a contrasting counter-sub-
ject; while always there is an accom-
paniment persisting with a "strum-
ming" sort of rhythm.
II
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank
deep:
And Bahram, that great Hunter— the Wild
Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot ])reak his
Sleep.
Allegro, in B minor and 3-4 time: —
The basis of this is a strongly accented
theme stated at the commencement of
the first violins. For this the fullest
orchestra is used, and there are occa-
sional touches of cymbals, tambourine,
etc.
The middle part is as a revery.
Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the
Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscripts
should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who
knows!
In this the accompaniment is softly
given by the strings, harp, etc., the mel-
ody being sung by clarinet and by flute.
This dies out, and the first theme re-
turns— ending ft.
Ill
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
Comodo, in A major and 4-4 time :—
The subject heard at the start in the
strings appears in changing forms —
without any other contrasting theme,
and is throughout based on an organ-
point on the dominant (prolonged £
in the bass). It fades out in the strings
in their highest positions, with a few
last Es in the harp.
IV
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again—
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden — and for one in
vain!
With strongly marked rhythm, in E
minor and 6-8 time: — After some
chords with harp and strings pizzicato
the theme enters in the solo horn and
violoncello — rises to ft and, again, dies
out in the E minor chord, being suc-
ceeded by the Piu allegro (in B major
and 3-4 time) —
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
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PROGRAM NOTES
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This next is a sort of Scherzo, toward
the end of which is a reminiscence of
the theme of the first piece, fortissimo.
This subsides, and after a pause the
first theme returns, with a wavy ac-
companiment in divided strings — the
movement proceeding to an expressive
pianissimo close.
Festival March
Frederick A. Stock
Born Nov. 11, 1872, at Jiilich, Germany
In commemoration of the twentieth
anniversary of the founding of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra — it was
at the time of that foundation, in 1891,
the Chicago Orchestra — Mr. Stock
composed his Festival March, which re-
ceived its first performance at the first
concerts of the season, Oct. 14-15,
1910. A note at the end of the manu-
script score states that the March was
composed at Aachen (Aix-Ia-Chapelle)
and that it was begun August 11, 1910,
and completed August 25 — ^the work
having been an artistic product of its
composer's vacation spent in Germany.
Since the labors of the Chicago Sym-
phony Orchestra have been entirely de-
voted to the cause of musical progress
in America it was, perhaps, a natural
decision which led Mr. Stock to incor-
porate with his own creative material
certain national tunes which have long
been associated with the folk music of
this country. As will be heard during
the interpretation of the March these
tunes are, with the exception of "The
Star Spangled Banner," rather suggest-
ed than unfolded at length, and they
are largely given contrapuntal develop-
ment with other material. The national
melodies thus drawn upon are "The
Old Folks at Home," "Yankee Doodle,"
"Dixie" and "The Star Spangled Ban-
ner." His composition the writer dedi-
cated to the officers and members of the
association which for so long has sup-
ported the provision of the highest type
of orchestral art in this city, and of
which he has been the musical director
since its founder's death. The Festival
March is written for a large orchestra,
the following instruments being called
for by the score — two flutes, piccolo,
three oboes (one interchangeable with
an English horn), two clarinets, bass
clarinet, two bassoons, double bassoon,
four horns, four trumpets, three trom-
bones, tuba, kettle drums, bass drum,
side drum, cymbals, triangle, bells,
glockenspiel castagnettes, tambourine,
harp and strings.
The work opens with an introduction
(Moderato, Maestoso e Pesante) twenty-five
measures long in which the principal theme
is foreshadowed in passages for the lower
strings over a long continued organ-point on
F. There is a hint of the two first measures
of "The Star Spangled Banner" occurring in
the trombones eleven bars after the begin-
ning of the piece. Still later a suggestion of
"Yankee Doodle" is heard in the violoncellos
and trombones. A crescendo working up to
a ff leads into the main theme, put forward
by the full orchestra.
. The subject having been worked over at some
length and with much sonority, the music
becomes more tranquil, and over a tremolo
in the divided violoncellos there is heard (in
the woodwind) four measures of "Dixie,"
this being interwoven with "The Old Folks
at Home" in the second violin. The develop-
ment of these melodies is continued, with
hints of "Yankee Doodle" given out by the
violoncellos and trombones.
Working over of the main theme is re-
sumed, and nine measures later the whole
first phrase of "Yankee Doodle" is given to
the tuba and "bass clarinet, following this
there being heard the first phrase of "Dixie"
in the woodwind. The main theme returns
ff, A climax, followed by a diminuendo and
a rallentando, leads into the Trio, the subject
of which (Sehr ruhig) is allotted to the first
violins.
At the close of the Trio a return is made
to the main subject-matter over a long organ-
point on F, "Dixie" and, later, "Yankee
Doodle" also being suggested. A long cres-
cendo leads to the climax of the work in
which, after a pause, "The Star Spangled
Banner" is shouted forth first by the brass
{Maestoso) and after it by the full orches-
tra; and with this Hymn to Liberty the
March comes to its conclusion.
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THE INSTITUTE MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Institute is
anrtually awarded to any citizen of
the United States, whether a mem-
ber of the Institute or not, for dis-
tinguished services to arts or letters
in the creation of original work.
The conditions of the award are
these :
(1) "That the medal shall be awarded for
the entire work of the recipient, without
limit of time during which it shall have
been done; that it shall be awarded to a
living person or to one who shall not have
been dead more than one year at the time
of the award; and that it shall not be
awarded more than once to any one person.
(2) "That it shall be awarded in the
following order: First year, for Sculpture;
second year, for History or Biography;
third year, for Music; fourth year, for
Poetry; fifth year, for Architecture; sixth
year, for Drama; seventh year, for Paint-
ing; eighth year, for Fiction; ninth year,
for Essays or Belles-Lettres — returning to
each subject every tenth year in the order
named.
(3) "That it shall be the duty of the Secre-
tary each year to poll the members of the
section of the Institute dealing with the
subject in which the medal is that year to be
awarded, and to report the result of the
poll to the Institute at its Annual Meeting,
at which meeting the medal shall be awarded
by vote of the Institute."
The medal was designed by Adolph
A. Weinman, of the Institute, in
1909.
The first award — for sculpture —
was to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The
medal was presented to Mrs. Saint-
Gaudens at the meeting held in mcm-
or}' of her husband, November 20, 1909.
The second medal — for history —
was awarded to James Ford Rhodes,
1910.
The third medal — for poetry — was
awarded to James Whitcomb Rilev.
1911.
The fourth medal — for architecture
— was awarded to William Rutherford
Mead, 1912.
The fifth medal — for drama — was
awarded to Augustus Thomas, 1913.
On November 14, 1913, the Fifteenth Annual Meeting and Dinner of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters was held, when the fifth Gold Medal of
the Institute was awarded, in the Department of Drama, to
Augustus Thomas.
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CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF ARTS AND LETTERS
(Founded, 1898, by the American Social Science Association)
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
This society, organized by men nominated
and elected by the American Social Science
Association at its annual meeting in 1898,
with a view to the advancement of art,
music and literature, shall be known as the
National Institute of Arts and Letters.
II. MEMBERSHIP
1. Qualification for membership shall be
notable achievement in art, music or litera-
ture.
2. The number of members shall be limited
to two hundred and fifty.
III. ELECTIONS
The name of a candidate shall be proposed
to the Secretary by three members of the
section in which the nominee's principal
work has been performed. The name shall
then be submitted to the members of that
section, and if approved by a majority of
the answers received within fifteen days
may be submitted by a two-thirds vote of
the council to an annual meeting of the
Institute for formal election by a majority
vote of those present. The voting shall be
by ballot.
IV. OFFICERS
1 The officers of the Institute shall consist
of a President, six Vice-Presidents, a Secre-
tary and a Treasurer, and they shall con-
stitute the council of the Institute.
2. The council shall always include at least
one member of each department.
V. ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Officers shall be elected by ballot at the
annual meeting, but the council may fill a
vacancy at any time by a two-thirds vote.
VI. MEETINGS
1. The annual meeting of the Institute shall
be held on the first Tuesday in September,
unless otherwise ordered by the council.*
2. Special meetings may be called by the
President on recommendation of any three
members of the council, or by petition of at
least one-fourth of the membership of the
Institute.
VII. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
1. It shall be the duty of the President to
preside at all meetings of the Institute and
of the council.
2. In the absence of the President, the
senior Vice-President in attendance shall
preside.
3. The Secretary shall keep a minute of all
meetings of the Institute and of the council,
and shall be the custodian of all records.
4. The Treasurer shall have charge pf all
funds of the Institute and shall make dis-
bursements only upon order of the council.
VIIL ANNUAL DUES
The annual dues for membership shall be
five dollars.
IX. INSIGNIA
The insignia of the Institute shall be a bow
of purple ribbon bearing two bars of old
gold.
X. EXPULSIONS
Any member may be expelled for unbecom-
ing conduct by a two-thirds vote of the
council, a reasonable opportunity for defense
having been given.
XI. AMENDMENTS
This Constitution may be amended by a
two-thirds vote of the Institute upon the
recommendation of the council or upon the
request, in writing, of any five members.
The Secretary shall be required to send to
each member a copy of the proposed amend-
ment at least thirty days before the meeting
at which such amendment is to be consid-
ered.
XII. THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AND
LETTERS
In order to make the Institute more efficient
in carrying out the purposes for which it
was organized, — ^the protection and further-
ance of literature and the arts, — and to give
greater definiteness to its work, a section
of the Institute to be known as th-e Acad-
emy OF Abts and Letters, shall be organ-
ized in such manner as the Institute may
provide; the members of the Academy to be
chosen from those who at any time shall
have been on the list of membership of the
Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of tiiirty
members, and after these shall have organ-
ized it shall elect its own officers, prescribe
its own rules, the number of its members,
and the further conditions of membership;
Provided that no one shall be a member of
the Academy who shall not first have been
on the list of regular members of the In-
stitute, and that in the choice of members
individual distinction and character, and not
the group to which they belong, shall be
taken into consideration; and Provided that
all members of the Academy shall be native
or naturalized citizens of the United Stages.
♦For convenience the annual meeting is usually called for November or December.
73
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
Department of Literature
Adams, Brooks
Adams, Charles Francis
Adams, Henry
Ade, George
Alden, Henry M.
Aldrich, Richard
Allen, James Lane
Baldwin, Simeon £.
Bates, Arlo
Bridges, Robert
Brownell, W. C.
Burroughs, John
Burton, Richard
Butler, Nicholas Murray
Cable, George W.
Carman, Bliss
Cawein, Madison J.
Chadwick, French E.
Chambers, R. W.
Channing, Edward
Chatficld-Taylor, H. C.
Cheney, John Vance
Churchill, Winston
Connolly, James B.
Cortissoz, Royal
Croly, Herbert D.
Cross, Wilbur L.
Crothers, Samuel McChord
de Kay, Charles
Dunne, Finley P.
Edwards, Harry Stillwell
Egan, Maurice Francis
Fernald, Chester Bailey
Finck, Henry T.
Finley, John Huston
Firkins, O. W.
Ford, Worthington C.
Fox, John, Jr.
Furncss, Horace Howard, Jr.
Garland, Hamlin
Gildcrsleeve, Basil L.
Gillette, William
Gilman, Lawrence
Gordon, George A.
Grant, Robert
Greenslet, Ferris
Griffis, Wm. Elliot
Gummere, F. B.
Hadley, Arthur Twining
Hamilton, Clayton
Harben, Will N.
Hardy, Arthur Sherburne
Harper, George McLean .
Herford, Oliver
Herrick, Robert
Hibbcn, John Gricr
Hitchcock, Ripley
Hooker, Brian
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe
Howells, William Dean
Huntington, Archer M.
James, Henry
Johnson, Owen
Johnson, Robert Underwood
Kennan, George
Lloyd, Nelson
Lodge, Henry Cabot
Long, John Luther
Lounsbury, Thomas R.
Lovett, Robert Morss
Lowell, Abbott Lawrence
Lummis, Charles F.
Mabie, Hamilton Wright
Mackaye, Percy
Mahan, Alfred T.
Markham, Edwin
Martin. Edward S.
Mather, F. J., Jr.
Matthews, Brander
McKelway, St. Clair
McMaster, John Bach
Mitchell, John Ames
Mitchell, Langdon E.
More, Paul Elmer
Morris, Harrison S.
Morse, John Torrey, Jr.
Muir, John
Nicholson, Meredith
Page, Thomas Nelson
Payne, Will
Payne, William Morton
Perry, Bliss
Perry, Thomas Sergeant
Phelps, William Lyon
Pier, Arthur S.
Rhodes, James Ford
Riley, James Whitcomb
Roberts, Charles G. D.
Robinson, Edward Arlington
Roosevelt, Theodore
Royce, Josiah
Schelling, Felix Emanuel
Schouler, James
Scollard, Clinton
Sedgwick, Henry D.
Seton, Ernest Thompson
Sherman, Frank Dempster
Shorey, Paul
Sloane, William M.
Smith, F. Hopkinson
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
73
Sullivan, Thomas Russell
Tarkington, Booth
Thayer, William Roscoe
Thomas, Augustus
Thorndike, A. H.
Tookcr, L, Frank
Torrence, Ridgely
Trent, William P.
van Dyke, Henry
Van Dyke, John C.
Wendell, Barrett
White, Andrew Dickson
White, William Allen
Whiting, Charles G.
Whiilock, Brand
Williams, Francis Howard
Williams, Jesse Lynch
Wilson, Harry Leon
Wilson, Woodrow
Wister, Owen
Woodbcrry, George E.
Depaktment of Art
Adams, Herbert
Alexander, John W.
Babb, George F.
Bacon, Henry
Ballin, Hugo
Barnard, George Gray
Bartlett, Paul W.
Beckwith. J. Carroll
Benson, Frank W.
Betts, Louis
Bitter, Karl
Blashfield, Edwin H.
Brooks, Richard E.
Brown, Glenn
Brunner, Arnold W.
Brush, George de Forest
Bunce, William Gedney
Carlsen, Emil
Chase, William M.
Clarkson, Ralph
Cole, Timothy
Cook, Walter
Cox, Kenyon
Dannat, William T.
Day, Frank Miles
De Camp, Joseph
Dewey, Charles Melville
Dewing, Thomas W.
Dielman, Frederick
Donaldson, John M.
Dougherty, Paul
Duveneck, Frank
Foster, Ben
French,. Daniel C.
Gay, Walter
Gibson, Charles Dana
Gilbert, Cass
Grafly, Charles
Gu^rin, Jules
Hardenbergh, Henry J.
Harrison, Birge
Hassam, Childe
Hastings, Thomas
Henri, Robert
Howard, John Galen
Howe, William Henry
Howells, J. M.
Jaegers, Albert
Jones, Francis C.
Jones, H. Bolton
Kendall, W. Sergeant
La Farge, Bancel
Low, Will H.
MacMonnies, Frederick
Mac Neil, Hermon A.
Marr, Carl
McEwen, Walter
Mead, William Rutherford
Melchers, Gari
. Metcalf, Willard L.
Mowbray, H. Siddons
Ochtman, Leonard
Parrish, Maxfield
Peabody, Robert S.
Pearce, Charles Sprague
Pennell, Joseph
Piatt, Charles A.
Pond, I. K.
Potter, Edward Clark
Pratt, Bela L.
Proctor, A. Phimister
Redfield, Edward W.
Reid, Robert
Roth, Frederiijk G. R.
Ruckstuhl, F. W.
Ryder, Albert P.
Sargent, John S.
Schofield, W. Elmer
Shrady, Henry M.
Simmons, Edward
Smedley, William T.
Taft. Lorado
Tarbell. Edmund C.
Thayer, A. H.
Tryon, D wight W.
Vedder. Elihu
Walden, Lionel
Walker, Henry Oliver
Walker, Horatio
Warren, Whitney
Weinman, Adolph A.
Weir, J. Alden
Wiles, Irving R.
Department of Music
Bird, Arthur
Brockway, Howard
Chadwick, George Whitefield
Converse, F. S.
Damrosch, Walter
De Koven, Reginald
Foote, Arthur
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76
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Gilchrist, W. W.
Hadley, H. K.
Herbert, Victor
Kelley, Edgar Stillman
LoeflFler, Charles M.
Parker, Horatio VV.
Schelling, Ernest
Shelley, Harry Rowe
Smith, David Stanley
Stock, Frederick A.
Van der Stucken, F.
Whiting, Arthur
DECEASED MEMBERS
Department of Literature
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey
Bigelow, John
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain)
Conway, Moncure D.
Crawford, Francis Marion
Daly, Augustin
Dodge, Theodore A.
Eggleston, Edward
Fawcett, Edgar
Fiske, Willard
Ford, Paul Leicester
Frederic, Harold
Furness, Horace Howard
Gilder, Richard Watson
Gilman, Daniel Coit
Godkin, E. L.
Godwin, Parke
Hale, Edward Everett
Harland, Henry
Harris, Joel Chandler
Harte, Bret
Hay, John
Heme, James A.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
Howard, Bronson
Howe, Julia Ward
Hutton, Laurence
Jefferson, Joseph
Johnston, Richard Malcolm
Lea, Henry Charles
Lodge, George Cabot
Miller, Joaquin
Mitchell, Donald G.
Moody, William Vaughn
Munger, Theodore T.
Nelson, Henry Loomis
Norton, Charles Eliot
Peck. Harry Thurston
Perkins, James Breck
Schurz, Carl
Schuyler, Montgomery
Scudder, Horace
Shaler, N. S.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence
Stillman, William J.
Stockton, Frank R.
Stoddard, Charles Warren
Thompson, Maurice
Tyler, Moses Coit
Viele, Herman K.
Warner, Charles Dudley
Department of Art
Abbey, Edwin A.
Bierstadt, Albert
Blum, Robert Frederick
Burnham, Daniel Hudson
Carrere, John M.
Collins, Alfred Q.
Homer, Winslow
Isham, Samuel
La Farge, John
Lathrop, Francis
Loeb, Louis
Millet, Francis D.
McKim, Charles Follen
Porter, Benjamin C.
Post, George B.
Pyle, Howard
Remington, Frederic
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
Shirlaw, Walter
Twachtman, John H.
Vinton, Frederick P.
Ward, J. Q. A.
White, Stanford
Wood, Thomas W.
Department of Music
Buck, Dudley
MacDowell, Edward A.
Nevin, Ethelbert
Paine. John K.
OFFICERS
President
Brander Matthews
Vice-Presidents
Arthur Whiting
Hamlin Garland
Robert Underwood Johnson
Hamilton W. Mabie
Harrison S. Morris
Jesse Lynch Williams
Secretary
Henry D. Sedgwick
120 E. 22d St., New York
Treasurer
(to be appointed,
vice Samuel Isham, deceased)
[September. 1914]
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SKETCH OF THE ACADEMY AND LIST OF
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
The American Academy of Arts
and Letters was founded in 1904 as
an interior organization of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, which in
turn was founded in 1898 by the Ameri-
can Social Science Association. In
each case the elder organization left the
younger to choose the relations that
should exist between them. Article
XII of the Constitution of the Institute
provides as follows:
In order to make the Institute more eflfi-
cient in carrying out the purposes for which
it was organized, — the protection and fur-
therance of literature and the arts, — and to
give greater definiteness to its work, a sec-
tion of the Institute to be known as the
ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
shall be organized in such manner as the
Institute may provide; the members of the
Academy t6 be chosen from those who at
any time shall have been on the list of
members of the Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of
thirty members, and after these shall have
organized it shall elect its own officers, pre-
scribe its own rules, the number of its
members, and the further conditions of
membership; provided that no one shall be a
member of the Academy who shall not first
have been on the list of regular members
of the Institute, and that in the choice of
members individual distinction and charac-
ter, and not the group to which they be-
long, shall be taken into consideration; and
provided that all members of the Academy
shall be native or naturalized citizens of the
United States.
The manner of the organization of
the Academy was prescribed by the
following resolution of the Institute
adopted April 23, 1904 :
Whereas, the amendment to the Consti-
tution known as Article XII, providing for
the organization of the Academy of Arts
and Letters, has been ratified by a vote of
the Institute,
Resolved: that the following method be
chosen for the organization of the Academy
to wit, that seven members be selected by
ballot as the first members of the Academy,
and that these seven be requested and em-
powered to choose eight other members,
and that the fifteen thus chosen be re-
quested and empowered to choose five other
members, and that the twenty members
thus chosen shall be requested and empow-
ered to choose ten other members, — ^the en-
tire thirty to constitute the Academy in con-
formity with Article XII, and that the first
seven members be an executive committee
for the purpose of insuring the completion
of the number of thirty members.
Under Article XII the Academy
has effected a separate organization,
but at the same time it has kept in
close relationship with the Institute.
On the seventh of March, 1908, the
membership was increased from thirty
to fifty members, and on the seventh of
November, 1908, the following Consti-
tution was adopted:
CONSTITUTION OF THE ACADEMY
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
The American Academy of Arts and Let-
ters is an association primarily organized
by the National Institute of Arts and Let-
ters. Its aim is to represent and further
the interests of the Fine Arts and Litera-
ture.
II. MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS
It shall consist of not more than fifty
members, and all vacancies shall be filled
from the membership of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters. No one shall
be elected a member of the Academy who
shall not have received the votes of a ma-
jority of the members. The votes shall be
opened and counted at a meeting of the
Academy. In case the first ballot shall not
result in an election a second ' ballot shall
be taken to determine the choice between
the two candidates receiving the highest
number of votes on the first ballot. Elec-
tions shall be held only on due notice under
rules to be established by the Academy.
III. AIMS
That the Academy may be bound together
in community of taste and interest, its
members shall meet regularly for discus-
sion, and for the expression of artistic,
literary and scholarly opinion on such topics
as are brought to its attention. For the
purpose of promoting the highest standards,
the Academy may also award such prizes
as may be founded by itself or entrusted to
it for administration.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
IV. OFFICERS
The officers shall consist of a President and
a Chancellor, both elected annually from
among the n>enibers to serve for one year
only; a Permanent Secretary, not neces-
sarily a member, who shall be elected by the
Academy to serve for an indeterminate
period, subject to removal by a majority
vote; and a Treasurer. The Treasurer shall
be appointed as follows: Three members of
the Academy shall be elected at each annual
meeting to serve as a Committee on Finance
for the ensuing year. They shall appoint
one of their number Treasurer of the Acad-
emy to serve for one year. He shall receive
and protect its funds and make disburse-
ments for its expenses as directed by the
Committee. He shall also make such in-
vestments, upon the order of the President,
as may be approved by both the Committee
on Finance and the Executive Committee.
V. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
It shall be the duty of the President, and
ir. his absence of the Chancellor, to preside
at all meetings throughout his term of office,
and to safeguard in general all the interests
of the Academy. It shall be the duty of
the Chancellor to select and prepare the
business for each meeting of his term. It
shall be the duty of the Secretary to keep
the records; to conduct the correspondence
of the Academy under the direction of the
President or Chancellor; to issue its author-
ized statements; and to draw up as required
such writing as pertain to the ordinary busi-
ness of the Academy and its committees.
These three officers shall constitute the
Executive Committee.
VI. AMENDMENTS
Any proposed amendment to this Constitu-
tion must be sent in writing to the Secre-
tary signed by at least ten members; and it
shall then be forwarded by the Secretary to
every member. It shall not be considered
until three months after it has been thus
submitted. No proposed amendment shall
be adopted unless it receives the votes in
writing of two-thirds of the members.
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
Following is the list of members in
the order of their election :
William Dean Howells
♦Augustus Saint-Gaudens
♦Edmund Clarence Stedman
♦John La Farge
♦Samuel Langhorne Clemens
♦John Hay
♦Edward MacDowell
Henry James
♦Charles Follen McKim
Henry Adams
♦Charles Eliot Norton
♦John Quincy Adams Ward
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury
Theodore Roosevelt
♦Thomas Bailey Aldrich
♦Joseph Jefferson
John Singer Sargent
♦Richard Watson Gilder
♦Horace Howard Fumess
♦John Bigelow
♦Win slow Homer
♦Carl Schurz
Alfred Thayer Mahan
♦Joel Chandler Harris
Daniel Chester French
John Burroughs
James Ford Rhodes
♦Edwin Austin Abbey
Horatio William Parker
William Milligan Sloane
♦Edward Everett Hale
Robert Underwood Johnson
George Washington Cable
♦Daniel Coit Gilman
♦Thomas Wentworth Higginson
♦Donald Grant Mitchell
Andrew Dickson White
Henry van Dyke
William Crary Brownell
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve
♦Julia Ward Howe
Woodrow Wilson
Arthur Twining Hadley
Henry Cabot Lodge
Francis Hopkinson Smith
♦Francis Marion Crawford
♦Henry Charles Lea
Edwin Howland Blashfield
William Merritt Chase
Thomas Hastings
Hamilton Wright Mabie
♦Bronson Howard
Brander Matthews
Thomas Nelson Page
Elihu Vedder
George Edward Woodberry
♦William Vaughn Moody
Kenyon Cox
George Whitefield Chadwidc
Abbott Handerson Thayer
John Muir
Charles Francis Adams
Henry Mills Alden
George deForest Brush
William Rutherford Mead
John White Alexander
Bliss Perry
♦Francis Davis Millet
Abbott Lawrence Lowell
James Whitcomb Riley
Nicholas Murray Butler
Paul Wayland Bartlett
♦George Browne Post
Owen Wister
Herbert Adams
Augustus Thomas
Timothy Cole
' Deceased.
OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1914
President: Mr. Howells. Chancellor: Mr. Sloane.
Permanent Secretary: Mr. Johnson.
Finance Committee: Messrs. Sloane, Rhodes, and Hastings.
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TH 3o.|5
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
Number VIII: 1915
Sixth Annual Joint Meeting, New York, November 19-20, 1914
New York
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Harvard CoUo o Ijibrary
Jan. 2 ., 1- 1 '
Uift of
Pp©6. C. W. Bliot.
Copyright, 1915, by
Thb American Academy of Arts and Lbttbrs
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF
ARTS AND LETTERS and of THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Sessions at Aeolian Hall, New York, November 19-30, 1914
First Session, 10.45 a* m., November 19
William Dean Howells
President of the Academy, Presiding
PAGE
Grbbting by His Honor, The Mayor op New York
John Purtoy MUchel ... 5
Address by the President of the Academy
U^iHam Dean Howells 7 ^
Lb Theatre Commb Instrument d' Amelioration Sociale
(WITH Letter prom Pres. Poincare) M, Eughte Brieux .... 8
d€ I'Aeadimit Pranfoiu
Greeting to M. Brieux
President Woodrow Wilson . 13
What is Pure English?
Brattder Matthews .... 14
The Quality op Imagination in American Life
Robert Merrick 19
Second Session, 3.15 p. m , November 19
A PRESENTATION OF ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
Composed by Members of the Institute
[See page 24]
Third Session, 10.45 a* '^•i November 20
Edwin Howland Blashfield
President of the Institute, Presiding
Remarks by the President of the Institute
Edwin Howland Blashfield . 26
Announcements by the Chancellor op the Academy
William Milligan Sloane . . 27
Poem: The Maker of Images
Brian Hooker 28
The American Composer
Arthur Whiting ^q
Certain Tendencies in Modern Painting
Paul Dougherty ^6
A Novelist's Philosophy
George W, Cable 41
Conferring upon John S. Sargent of the Gold Medal of the
Institute 45
Text of the Response of President Wilson to the Letter
of President Poincare 47
The Institute Medal and other Data 48
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PREFATORY NOTE
During the sessions herein recorded many courtesies were
extended to the members of the Academy and the Institute.
On the evening: of November i8, Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler gave a dinner to his fellow-members of the Academy to
meet M. Brieux, the representative of the French Academy, and
afterward a reception to the members of the Institute and many
other guests. On the 20th Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan gave the
hospitality of the Morgan Library, and the members were invited
to a special exhibition arranged in their honor at the American
Museum of Natural History. Other institutions that offered
courtesies were The New York Historical Society, The Brooklyn
Institute of Arts and Sciences, The New York Public Library,
Botanical Gardens, The New York Zoological Society, The Cen-
tury Association, The Hispanic Society of America, The Women's
Cosmopolitan Club, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The presentation of the compositions in the concert of the
20th was made through the generosity of Mr. Harry Harkness
Flagler and Mr. Harrison S. Morris.
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Published at intervals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U. Johnson,
327 Lexington Avenue, New York. Price per Annum $1.00
Vol. II New York, September i, 1915 No, 1
THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Public Meetings held at Aeolian Hall, New York
November 19-20, 19 14
\
William Dean Howells, President of the Academy, and
Edwin Howland Blashfield, President of the Institute, Presiding
[Session of November 19]
ADDRESS OF WELCOME BY HIS HONOR THE MAYOR OF
THE CITY OF NEW YORK, JOHN PURROY MITCHEL
Gentlemen of the American Academy to this meeting of the men who repre-
of Arts and Letters and of the National sent America's living leaders in the fine
Institute of Arts and Letters, and Mr. arts, in literature, and in music. I
Brieux : It is to me a source of genuine think that whatever might have been
satisfaction and pleasure that I am per- said in the past, it can no longer be said
mitted to come here this morning as that New York City is provincial or
the representative of the city to extend narrow. In fact, cannot we say with
a welcome to the members of the truth to-day that New York is the
Academy and of the Institute and to center of literature and of art in this
their most distinguished guest, Mr. country? We have here the writers.
Brieux, the representative of the We have here the magazines, if indeed
French Academy. The city of New they are literature. We have here the
York feels a very deep interest in litera- great printing establishments and
ture and in the fine arts, and therefore houses which help the business men of
it is glad to extend an official welcome the community to profit by the genius
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
of the members of the Academy and
the Institute. But we have particularly
those great institutions — the Metropoli-
tan Museum of Art and the others —
that have contributed greatly to the up-
building and the support of the fine arts
in this country. The citizens of New
York take a deep and genuine interest
in the development of literature and
art, and surely no better proof of this
could be found than the splendid gift to
the city recently made by Mr. Altman in
that magnificent collection that is but
just housed in the Metropolitan Mu-
seum. I am glad that the Institute and
the Academy have chosen New York
as the place for their annual meeting
this year, and I recommend New York
to them as a place for succeeding an-
nual meetings.
Ladies and gentlemen, we arc par-
ticularly delighted to-day to welcome
here Mr. Brieux, who comes both as a
most distinguished citizen of France
and as a representative of her great
Academy. I know that I merely ex-
press your sentiments when I extend
to him the hearty welcome of the whole
city of New York.
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ADDRESS OF WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
President of the Academy
Gentlemen of the American Acad-
emy, and of the Institute, and you,
ladies and gentlemen, who have favored
us with your presence : It is my singular
privilege as President of the American
Academy to thank the French Acad-
emy for sending one of its most dis-
tinguished members to oflfer us its
friendly recognition. Hitherto that
Academy has not authorized any of its
members to represent it abroad, and I
cannot say what reasons moved it to
contravene its custom in our favor.
But perhaps the French Academy real-
ized that in coming to a kindred so-
ciety in a nation which Lafayette
helped Washington to found, our guest
would still be in his own country,
among a people united with his in the
fellow-citizenship of the democratic
spirit, and the imperishable ideals of
liberty, equality, fraternity.
T could not express too strongly my
sense of the honor which the French
Academy has done us, and I will not
multiply words in the vain endeavor.
It is enough, though little, to say that
it is an honor beyond the gift of princi-
palities or powers, and that it could
come from no other source in the
world. Whatever civic grace this
honor might have lacked has been add-
ed by the exchange of letters concern-
ing it, which you will hear read, be-
tween the President of the French
Republic, a member of the French
Academy, and the President of the
United States, a member of the Ameri-
can Academy.
As for the bearer of the French
Academy's assurance of good-will to
ours, the envoy whom we have here
with us this morning, he is already
known to us, past all praise of mine,
by that work of his in which we are
aware of an imagination finding su-
preme expression in the drama; a pro-
found reverence for truth as the life
of invention; an instinctive obedience
to the authority that rests with reality
alone; a keen wit sparely flickering at
moments into delicate humor or broad-
ening into rich burlesque; an unfail-
ing mastery of character, and a quick
sensibility to every variance of motive ;
a pervading awe of the tragedy of life,
not less in its nature than in its condi-
tioning; a tender compassion for suf-
fering and helplessness; a manly ad-
horrence of cruelty and a loathing of
baseness. These are the qualities, the
principles, of an author whose work
has its highest effect in making us
judges of ourselves, and whether we
see his work on the stage or in the
vaster theater of the printed page,
where Shakespeare is at his best, we
yield to the spell which art lays upon us
when its appeal is from soul to soul.
For this poet's art is not art as it used
to be imagined, — art for its own selfish
sake or for beauty's sake only, — but
it is art for truth's sake, for justice'
sake, for humanity's sake. It is art in
which we never cease to feel the throb
of a generous heart, modulated by a
powerful mind, and governed by a
faithful conscience.
This author, whom I am so glad and
so proud to welcome here, will speak
to you of "The Theater as a Means of
Social Betterment"; and now I will no
longer keep you from greeting Mon-
sieur Eugene Brieux, French Academi-
cian.
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ADDRESS OF M. EUGENE BRIEUX
Member and Representative of the French Academy
Messieurs et chers confreres : J'ai ete
charge par Monsieur Poincare, Presi-
dent de la Republique f rangaise et mem-
bre de TAcademie frangaise, de re-
mettre a Monsieur Wilson, President
de la Republique americaine et membre
de TAcademie americaine, la lettre
suivante :
Monsieur le President et illustre Confrere:
Monsieur Butler avait bien voulu, il y a
quelques mois, me convier a la session solen-
nelle de TAcademie americaine des Arts et
des Lettres. Si vif que fut mon d^sir de
saisir cette heureuse occasion de rencontrer
Votre Excellence, j'avais exprime la crainte
que les devoirs de ma charge ne me per-
missent pas de me rendre a cette aimable
invitation. Les evenements qui depuis lors
sont survenus en Europe et qui ont pour la
liberty des peuples une importance vitale
m'empechent naturellement aujourd'hui de
m'eloigner de France. Je ne veux pas du
moins laisser partir Monsieur Brieux sans
le prier de vous transmettre la nouvelle
assurance de mes sentiments confraternels
et de mon amitie.
UAcademie frangaise, fidele gardienne des
traditions litteraires de mon pays, a charge
Monsieur Brieux de porter a la brillante
civilisation americaine le salut de la vieille
et immortelle civilisation mediterraneenne.
Laissez-moi joindre i cet hommage col-
lectif le temoignage personnel de ma vivc
admiration pour la grande republique aux
destinees de laquelle vous presidez si noble-
ment. Laissez-moi joindre aussi Texpres-
sion de la constante sympathie qu'eprouve
pour votre glorieuse nation la libre demo-
cratic dont j*ai Thonneur d'etre le represen-
tant.
Veuillez agreer, Monsieur le President et
cher Confrere, Texpression de mes senti-
ments devoues.
R. PoiNCARi:*
C'est avec une profonde emotion,
Messieurs, que je vous apporte ce salut
et celui . de TAcademie franqaise. Je
sens mieux que je ne le sais dire im-
portance de rhonneur qui m'est fait.
Le souvenir de ce jour restera fixe dans
ma memoire aussi longtemps que je
vivrai, je vous le dis en toute simplicite.
Pour TAcademie frangaise et pour
vous-memes il eut certes mieux valu
qu'elle fit un meilleur choix, mais pour
moi Terreur qu'elle a pu commettre ainsi
est particulierement heureuse. Je me
suis longtemps demande en quoi j'avais
pu meriter une telle faveur et malgre
mes efforts je n*ai pu decouvrir en moi
rien qui la justifiat. La seule explica-
tion que j'aie trouvee est celle-ci: mes
confreres de TAcademie savaient ma
grande reconnaissance pour les Etats-
Unis; ils ont voulu, non pas me per-
mettre d'acquitter cette dette, mais me
donner le moyen de la reconnaitre pub-
liquement. Je les en remercie.
Messieurs, j'aurais voulu, dans cette
lecture traiter quelque sujet qui vous
interessat. J'avais demande a Mon-
sieur le President Butler de me donner
sur ce point quelques indications, au
moins, j'aurais cm avoir quelque chance
de ne point vous deplaire tout a fait.
Monsieur le President Butler m'a re-
fuse ce precieux concours et il m'a con-
seille de vous parler de moi-meme, de
mon ceuvre, et de mon ideal litteraire. Je
le livre a vos rancunes. Parler de moi !
Si je le fais avec trop de modestie, avec
trop d'exactitude, je causerai decide-
ment un trop grand tort k ceux qui
m'ont envoye; et si je le fais avec
orgueil, que penserez-vous de ma suf-
fisance ? Je vais done vous parler plutot
de ce que j'ai voulu faire que de ce
que j'ai fait.
C'est aux Etats-LTnis qu'on a le mieux
compris la nature de mes efforts. C'est
de la part des robustes citoyens de cette
saine democratic que j'ai regu les
applaudissements auxquels j'ai ete le
plus sensible. A Paris, j'en dois foumir
ici Taveu, dans le monde tres parisien,
et aussi parmi les purs artistes, la forme
moralisatrice de mon theatre a etc
quelque peu meprisee. On m'appelait
♦The response of President Wilson to this letter will be found on page 47.
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ADDRESS OF M. EUGENE BRIEUX
9
par derision "L'honnete Brieux" et
parce que je suis fils d'ouvriers, on
m'avait aussi sumomme "le Tolstoi du
faubourg du Temple."
Je ne m'en suis pas senti diminue,
au contraire, et si je revendique devant
vous conrme un titre de gloire ces
appellations qu'on voulait dedaigneuses,
c'est que je sais bien qu'a vos yeux on
n'est diminue ni parce qu'on est hon-
nete, meme avec maladresse, et fils du
peuple, meme avec fierte.
Si Ton cherche a degager, dans mon
oeuvre, une ligne directrice on peut y
trouver une preoccupation constante,
celle de protester contre Tabus de la
puissance sous plusieurs formes. Cest
en abusant de la petite ou de la grande
quantite de puissance devolue a chacun
que des etres qui passent pour des
honnetes gens, qui se croient des lion-
netes gens, et a qui nous serrons cor-
dialement la main sont purement et
simplement des criminels qui seraient
bien etonnes qu*on le leur dit.
II n'y a pas de tyrans que sur des
trones, il en est sous la lampe familiale,
et, surtout dans les pays latins, il y a
des hommes modestes, humbles bour-
geois, venerables, a la figure patemelle,
qui sont de detestables despotes et qui
tiennent sous le joug leur femme et
leurs enfants. Remarquez bien (et
c'est ce qui fait Tinteret de Tetude)
qu*un tel homme est un brave homme,
un honnete homme ; il ne peche que par
im orgueil qu'il ignore, il est convaincu
qu'il sait mieux que ses enfants ce qui
leur convient. II y a de pauvres petits
etres dont on a decide des leur enfance
et pariois meme avant qu*il fussent nes
qu'ils seraient generaux, ingenieurs,
medecins, ou avocats, qu'ils vendraient
du coton ou des valeurs de bourse. Le
tyran, le plus souvent, agit dans le
•desir obscur de se continuer lui-meme
par ses enfants. II voudrait leur voir
realiser le reve qu'il avait fait et qu'il
n'a pas realise. II croit sa raison
superieure a celle de ses fils et de ses
filles, il croit fermement savoir mieux
qu'eux Tepouse ou Tepoux qui leur
convient, et il commet cette formidable
erreur d'imposer a des jeunes gens la
comprehension de la vie de sa propre
maturite. L'initiative, I'audace, Tamour
du risque, le besoin et le devoir d'ex-
pansion, de realisation sont des vertus
qu'il ne peut plus pratiquer, qu'il
meprise par consequent; il n'est plus
capable que de prudence, cette forme de
I'avarice, et il ne veut entendre parler
que la prudence, et il veut enseigner la
prudence, et il veut imposer la prudence
a ceux qui ont I'heureux apanage et le
devoir de la mepriser. Comme il se
trouve bien de porter des bequilles, il
en conclut que les bequilles sont indis-
pensables a tous, et il veut forcer a en
porter ceux pour qui elles ne pourraient
etre qu'un ridicule et un embarras.
Avec la puissance patemelle, la
puissance la plus redoutable que les
hommes se soient attribuee, est celle
du medecin et aussi celle du juge. Que
certains, parmi nous, aient ose revendi-
quer un de ces deux roles, c'est, si Ton
reflechit bien, presque incroyable. Sans
doute il est necessaire qu'il y ait des
medecins, puisqu'il y a des malades, et
qu'il y ait des juges, puisqu'il y a des
criminels; mais songez que suivant le
mot connu, bien souvent I'intervention
du medecin se borne a introduire des
medicaments qu'il connait peu dans un
corps qu'il ne connait pas; songez que
les juges — je ne parle que de ceux de
I'Europe, bien entendu — infligent par-
fois avec legerete des chatiments par-
fois tres lourds, et condamnent a des
peines qu'ils ne peuvent apprecier pour
des fautes dont ils ignorent I'orig^ne.
II est des juges etourdis, il en est de
cruels. II en est qui, pendant I'audi-
ence, pensent a toute autre chose, qui
meditent sur le mauvais caractere de
leur epouse et sur I'indiscipline de leurs
enfants, sur le cours de la bourse et
sur leur avancement, qui supputent le
temps qu'il fera dimanche et reflechis-
sent sur I'emploi des loisirs que leur
donnera la retraite. Cependant, ces hom-
mes prononcent ensuite des jugements
qui ruineront un homme dans son hon-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
neur ou dans sa fortune. D'autres juges,
s*ils ont a se prononcer sur la culpabilite
d'un accuse, se feront, d'avance, apres
un leger examen du dossier, une opinion.
A parti r de ce moment, s'ils ont par
exemple, decide que Thomme arrete est
bien le coupable, ils ecarteront les argu-
ments en sa faveur qu'ils pourront ren-
contrer, ils les declareront, d'avance,
sans valeur et sans portee. Tout au
contraire, ils accueilleront les arguments
opposes comme des allies et des amis.
Les temoins a decharge, ils les con-
sidereront, d'avance encore, comme des
imposteurs ou des imbeciles, et il^
accueilleront les autres avec sympathie.
Le resultat sera parfois la condamna-
tion d'un innocent.
Et cependant, ces juges sont des
hommes, et des hommes qui se croient
honnetes, que Ton croit honnetes. Com-
ment peuvent-ils done, sans s*en aper-
cevoir, etre cependant de tels criminels?
C'est qu*ils manquent d'elevation mo-
rale, c'est surtout parce que Thabitude
a emousse leur sensibilite; c*est qu'ils
ont subi la deplorable deformation pro-
fessionnelle qui leur fait accomplir
comme un metier ce qui devrait etre
pratique comme un sacerdoce.
J*ai etudie ce cas dans une piece in-
titulee la Robe Rouge, de meme que
j'avais etudie le cas du medecin dans
['Evasion. D'autres oeuvres ont con-
damne Tabus de la puissance paternelle ;
il en reste beaucoup a ecrire. II y aurait
a condamner Tabus de puissance de
Targent, de la presse, de la tribune, de
la politique.
L'argent, la presse, la politique peu-
vent etre, en effet, selon Temploi qui
en est fait, des forces bienfaisantes ou
redoutables.
Qui ne condamnerait la richesse
lorsqu'elle est employee comme mani-
festation de ^anite, d'egoisme, lors
quelle est insolente, aveugle, et sterile?
Quelle puissance haissable dans ses
abus! Mais quels eloges ne merite pas
son emploi lorsque celui qui Ta con-
quise, non content de la regarder comme
une consecration legitime, comme
un resultat merite de son intelligence ct
de son travail, Temploie encore au sou-
lagement de la misere; non pas a un
soulagement aveugle qui ne fait qu'cn-
tretenir et perpetuer le mal au lieu dc
le supprimer, mais a un concours clair-
voyant. Le vrai but de la charite, le
seul but qu'elle doive viser, c'est dc
mettre les miserables en etat de se
passer d'elle; c*est non pas dc leur
donner Topium de Taumone, mais dc
leur foumir le moyen de redcvenir des
etres libres, independants, qui puiscnt
dans le travail le droit a la fierte. La
fortune qui agit ainsi merite d'etre
saluee ainsi que la memoire de ccux —
nombreux parmi les citoyens de votrc
Republique — qui, a leur mort, affectent
ce qu'ils ont acquis a la fondation d'tmi-
versites, de musees, de bibliotheques,
d'hopitaux, et qui, apres avoir donne
Texemple du travail recompense, don-
nent celui du patriotisme efficace et de
Taltruisme intelligent.
Dans une democratic la presse est une
puissance de premier ordre. Rien n'est
plus haissable qu'elle si elle s'abaissc
a servir des interets, a assouvir des
vengeances, a satisfaire des ambitions
injustifiees, et si elle emploie comme
moyens la diffamation, le mensonge ou
Tinjure. Au contraire, son role est Ic
plus beau de tons les roles, sa puissance,
la puissance la plus utile, lorsqu'ellc
entreprend de rcdresser les abus, lors
qu'elle recherche la realisation du bien
public, lorsqu'elle s'emploie a fairc
I'education du peuple et a lui inspirer
des idees de progres; lorsqu'elle lui
apprend a la fois le respect du passe
et la confiance dans Tavenir.
S'il est un don precieux parmi ceux
qu'un homme puisse recevoir, c'est bien
le don de la parole, c'est bien le don de
Teloquence. Malheur a celui qui, Tayant
re<;u, commet cet autre abus de puis-
sance qui consiste a eveiller des haincs,
a provoquer des revendications qu'il
salt ne pouvoir etre satisfaites, a ex-
citer des appetits qu'il sait ne pouvoir
etre apaises; malheur a celui qui dans
un but d'ambition person nelle provoque
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ADDRESS OF M. EUGENE BRIEUX
dans les profondeurs de la masse Tenvie,
la haine, et la colere. Toute puissance
cree un devoir a celui qui en est favo-
rise. Et Tabus de cette puissance est
une sorte de crime.
Messieurs, si j'en avais le temps, si
j avais le talent necessaire, je tenterais
d*aj outer, sur ce sujet, quelques pieces
a these a celles que j'ai deja ecrites.
J'ai la conviction profonde que le
theatre peut etre un precieux moyen
d'enseignement. II ne saurait borner
son ambition a egayer les spectateurs.
Non que je veuille dire qu'on ne puisse
Tutiliser a faire rire les honnetes gens,
a leur faire oublier les soucis de la
joumee, a suppleer aussi, si Ton veut,
a la penurie de leurs emotions. Mais
de meme qu'on accepte qu'il y ait des
romans gais ou emouvants, et des
livres inktructifs, on doit reconnaitre au
theatre le droit, de temps en temps tout
au moins, de traiter les questions les
plus graves et les sujets les plus,
importants.
En ce qui me concerne, j'ai tou jours
envisage le theatre non comme un but,
mais comme un moyen. J'ai voulu par
lui non seulement provoquer des^ re-
flexions, modifier des habitudes et des
actes, mais encore (et on a pu me le
reprocher vivement sans me le faire
regretter) determiner des arretes ad-
ministratifs qui m'apparaissaient desi-
rables. J'ai voulu que, parce que j'aurai
vecu, la quantite de souffrance repandue
sur la terre fut diminuee d'un peu.
J'ai I'immense satisfaction d'y avoir
reussi, et je sais que deux de mes
pieces, les Remplacantes et les Azmriis,
ont contribue a sauver des ex-
istences humaines, et a en rendre
d'autres moins douloureuses. Des
efforts plus grands ont pu etre steriles ;
la chance a favorise les miens.
A cela je n'ai aucun merite. J'ai agi
sous la poussee de mes instincts. Je
n'aurais pas pu faire autre chose que
ce que j'ai fait. J'etais ne avec une
ame d'apotre— encore une fois, je n'en
tire aucune vanit6 ; ce n'est pas moi qui
me la suis cre6e — ^mais la vue de la
souffrance des autres m'a toujours ete
insupportable. Dans ma mesure, j'ai
voulu me delivrer de la colere et de
la gene qu'elle me causait. Tout enfant,
je revais d'aller ou civiliser les Apaches
de Gustave Aimard et de Fenimore
Cooper ou sauver les petits Chinois dont
les Annales de la Propagation de la Foi
me racontaient les martyres. J'ai voulu
aller catechiser les sauvages. "Mais,"
m'a dit M. le Marquis de Segur, dans
son discours de reception, "ce ne fut
qu'une velleite passagere; vous avez
bientot reconnu qu'en Afrique, en
Oceanie, il n'etait plus guere de sau-
vages, mais qu'il en est beaucoup en
France, et vous vous etes restreint a
evangeliser ceux-la."
II s'est trouve que mes dispositions
natu relies d'esprit me permettaient de
me servir de ce porte-voix retentissant
qu'est le theatre. Et, on I'a dit avec
raison, je n'ai souvent fait qu'enfoncer
des portes ouvertes. Ces portes ou-
vertes, beaucoup les croyaient fermees,
et a ceux-la j'ai montre qu'elles ne
I'etaient pas en y passant. Dans ce
porte-voix je n'ai crie rien de nouveau,
je le sais bien. J'y ai repete dans un
langage que la masse de mes contem-
porains pouvait mieux comprendre des
ve^^ites que des philosophes et des
savants avnient decouvertes, eux, et
renfermees dans des livres que les habi-
tues de theatre n'avaient pas la tenta-
tion d'ouvrir. Voila pourquoi j'ai ete
un auteur dramatique. Vous venez,
Messieurs, de vous apercevoir que cette
seule ambition m'etait permise, et que
je ne pouvais songer a etre un orateur.
Je ne puis done que m'excuser d'avoir
cependant parle devant vous, et vous
remercier de votre bienveillante atten-
tion. Mais si je I'exprime mal, vous
sentirez cependant je veux I'esperer, la
fierte que je ressens a etre regu par
votre conipagnie, et la joie que j'ai
eprouvee a prendre contact avec I'ad-
mirable societe americaine, avec cette
republique soeur, reservoir immense et
intarissable de jeunes energies, de
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
sagesse^ d'independance, et de gene-
rosite.
Messieurs, vous ne me comprendriez
pas si je ne vous disais pas un mot de
la France. Mais vous ne me ferez pas
Tinjure de redouter pendant un seul
instant que je puisse avoir la con-
damnable pretention de peser sur vos
consciences. J'ai le respect de votre
liberte et Testime de votre jugement.
Je veux vous dire cependant la pro-
fonde emotion que j'ai ressentie en face
des sympathies que vous temoignez a
mon pays. Nous avions pris un re-
grettable plaisir, pendant longtemps a
nous denigrer nous-memes. Nos ro-
manciers, trop souvent, ont calomnie
la femme frangaise. Des esprits moins
clairvoyants que les votres eussent pu
s*y tromper. Vous avez reagi. Ceux
d'entre vous qui sont alles a Paris, et
y ont vu autre chose que les boulevards,
ceux surtout qui ont pris contact avec
la bourgeoisie en province, sont revenus
agreablement surpris de la difference
qu'ils avaient constatee entre les fran-
gaises de nos livres et celles de la
realite. Vous savez.aussi quelles re-
serves de foi, d'energie, et de patrio-
tisme la France pent tirer, au moment
necessaire, des profondeurs de sa con-
science, quelle generosite et quelle force
elle est capable d'apporter au service
de son droit et a la defense de sa liberte.
Je voulais vous en remercier, au nom
de TAcademie frangaise et au nom de
tous mes compatriotes.
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GREETING TO MONSIEUR BRIEUX
From the President of the United States
Air. Matthews, before delivering the share in the pleasure of greeting Mon-
address that follows, read this letter sieur Brieux. Since it is not, may I
from Mr. Wilson: not through you send a cordial mes-
sage of welcome to Monsieur Brieux
My dear Prof. Matthews: and an expression of my warmest in-
"I wish sincerely that it were possible Merest in the meeting of the two socie-
for me to attend the joint meeting of ^^^s.
the American Academy and the Nation- "Cordially and sincerely yours,
al Institute of Arts and Letters, and to "Woodrow Wilson/'
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WHAT IS PURE ENGLISH ?
By Brander Matthews
There is no topic about which men
dispute more frequently, more bitterly,
or more ignorantly than about the right
and the wrong use of words. Even
political questions and religious ques-
tions can be debated with less acri-
mony than linguistic questions. The
usual explanation of this unexampled
acerbity in discussion is probably ac-
curate; it is that our political and our
religious opinions are our own, and we
are individually responsible for them,
whereas our linguistic opinions are the
result of habits acquired from those
who brought us up, so that asper-
sions on our parts of speech appear
to us to be reflections on our parents.
To misuse words, to make grammatical
blunders, is an evidence of illiteracy;
and to accuse a man of illiteracy is to
disparage the social standing of his
father and his mother.
The uneducated are inclined to re-
sent any speech more polished than
their own, and the half-educated are
prompt to believe that their half -knowl-
edge includes all wisdom. As the half-
educated acquired their half-knowledge
from a grammar, they naturally turn
to it as to an inspired oracle, not sus-
pecting that the immense majority of
the grammars in use in our schools,
until very recently, abounded in un-
founded assertions about our language,
and laid down rules without validity.
And one immediate result of this was
singularly unfortunate. Since some of
these new-fangled rules had not been
known to the translators of the
Bible, to Shakespeare and to Milton,
students were called upon to point out
the so-called "errors" in the writings
of these mighty masters of language!
Not only was this absurd; it was also
injurious in that it misdirected the
effort of those who wished to learn
how to use English accurately. It fo-
cused attention on the purely negative
merit of avoiding error instead of cen-
tering it on the positive merit of achiev-
ing sincerity, clarity, and vigor. The
energies of the students were wasted,
and worse than wasted, in the futili-
ties of what President Stanley Hall
has contemptuously termed "linguistic
manicuring."
The same attitude had been taken by
the highly trained Roman rhetoricians
toward the Latin of certain of the
fathers of the church, the vernacular
vigor of whose writings did not please
the ultra-refined ears of the over-edu-
cated critics. After recording this fact
in his study of the "End of Paganism,'*
the wise and urbane Gaston Boissier
remarked that "When we have spent
all our life recommending purity and
correction and elegance, — ^that is to say,
the lesser merits of style, — we often
become incapable of seeing its larger
merits"; and "we set up a standard of
perfection based on the absence of de-
fects rather than on the presence of
real qualities ; and we are no longer apt
to appreciate what is new and original."
The refined taste of the over-educated
is always likely to be more appreciative
of the absence of defects than of the
presence of what is new and original.
This explains why it was that the sin-
ewy strength and masculine veracity of
Mark Twain's style (in his later writ-
ings) did not earlier receive the recog-
nition they deserved, although there had
been prompt praise for the effeminate
graces of Walter Pater's labored
periods.
Like the Roman rhetoricians con-
temporary with Tertullian, ' our lin-
guistic manicurists are forev<;ir recom-
mending purity and correcitness and
elegance, three, qualities n(i)t easy to
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WHAT IS PURE ENGLISH ?
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define. Elegance is to be attained only
by those who do not stoop to seek it
too assiduously. Correctness is likely to
be misinterpreted as a compliance with
the niles laid down by the uninspired
grammarians rather than obedience to
the larger laws whereby the language
is freely guided. And purity is a cha-
meleon word, changing meaning while
we are looking at it.
Many of those who are insisting
upon the preservation of the purity of
our language mean that English must
be kept free from contamination by
foreign tongues, that we who use it
must refrain from borrowing words
from other languages and from making
new words of our own, and that, in
short, we must stick to the old stock
and use nothing but what an impas-
sioned orator once called "real angular
Saxon." Now, it needs but a moment's
reflection to show that an insistence on
this kind of purity would deprive Eng-
lish of its immemorial privilege of
helping itself with both hands to terms
of all sorts from all sorts of languages,
ancient and modem, civilized and bar-
baric. To the exercise of this indis-
putable right English owes its unparal-
leled richness of vocabulary and its
unequaled wealth of words, more or
less equivalent, yet deftly discriminated
by delicate shades of difference.
Of course this power to enrich itself
from other tongues is not peculiar to
English, and ever\' other language has
profitably availed itself of its freedom
to annex the outlying words it needed
for the rectification of its linguistic
frontiers. When Latin was a living
speech it was continually levying upon
Greek for the terms it lacked itself. In
Latin the vocabulary of philosophy,
for example, was almost exclusively de-
rived from the Greek, just as in English
the vocabularies of millinery and of
cookery and of war are derived from
the French.
If the preservation of the purity of
English meant that we must exclude
from our language every word not
native to our speech, erecting a pro-
hibitive tariff wall to keep out all im-
ported terms, then it would become the
duty of every lover of our tongue to
advocate impurity. To do its work,
our language, like every other, ancient
and modern, needs now and again to
be replenished and reinvigorated by
fresh blood. Just as the population of
the British Isles is Celtic and Roman,
Anglo-Saxon and Norman, and just as
the population of the United States is
compounded of a variety of ethnic in-
gredients, so the English language, the
joint possession of British and Ameri-
cans, is itself a melting-pot, a linguistic
crucible into which have been thrown
words from every possible source.
As the vocabularies of war, of mil-
linery, and of cookery have been re-
cruited from the French, so the vocab-
ulary of shipping has been recruited
from the Dutch and the Scandinavian,
and the vocabulary of music from the
Italian. The vocabulary of philosophy
is partly Latin, but mainly Greek; and
even the rude dialects of the American
Indians have been laid under contribu-
tion to describe things native to North
America — moccasin, for example, and
tepee and totem. Certain Dutch words
— stoop for one and boss for another —
were imported into the general English
use from America — from the New
Amsterdam which is now New York.
In all these cases the words which
were adopted from foreign tongues
are now regarded as native. They have
been completely assimilated, and the
language is the richer for their inclu-
sion within it. Even the most pedantic
of purists unconsciously employs count-
less terms which he would be com-
pelled by his principles to reject if he
stopped to consider that they are not
outgrowths of the native stock. We all
use words for what they mean to us
now and here, without regard to their
remoter source in some other tongue
once upon a time, and without regard
to their exact meaning in that other
tongue. "Language as written, as
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
spoken, is an art and not a science,"
Professor Gildersleeve has asserted,
adding the encouraging comment that
"the study of origins, of etymology,
has very little, if anything, to do with
the practice of speaking and writing.
The affinity of English with Greek and
Latin is a matter that does not enter
into the artistic consciousness of the
masses that own the language."
To the pedants and to the purists no
declaration could be more shocking
than that the masses own the language ;
and yet no assertion is more solidly
rooted in the fact and more often em-
phasized by those who have trained
themselves to a mastery of their own
tongue. The fastidious French poet
Malherbe, when asked as to the pro-
priety of a word, used to refer the in-
quirer to the porters of the Haymarket
in Paris, saying that these were his mas-
ters in language. The fastidious Cicero
was constantly refreshing his own
scholarly vocabular\' by the apt terms
he took over from Plautus, who had
found them in the tenements of the
Roman populace. And the wise Roger
Ascham put the case pithily when he
wrote in his "Toxophilus" that "he that
will write well in any tongue must fol-
low the counsel of Aristotle, to speak as
the common people do, to think as the
wise men do."
Language can be made in the library,
no doubt, and in the laboratory also,
but it is most often and most effectively
created in the workshop and in the
market-place, where the imaginative
energy of our race expresses itself
spontaneously in swiftly creating the
lacking term in response to the unex-
pected demand. Nothing could be bet-
ter, each in its own way, than pictur-
esque vocables like scare-head and
loan-shark^ wind-jammer and hen-
minded, all of them American contri-
butions to the English language, and
all of them examples of the purest
English. Hen-minded is an adjective
devised by Mr. Howells to describe the
"women who are so common in all
walks of life, and who are made up of
only one aim at a time, and of manifold
anxieties at all times." Scare-head and
loan-shark are the products of the
newspaper office, while wind-jammer
was put together by some down-east
sailor-man, inheritor of the word- form-
ing gift of his island ancestors who
helped to harr>^ the Armada. "/riW-
jammer/' remarked Professor Gilder-
sleeve, trained by his intimate knowl-
edge of Greek to appreciate verbal vigor
as well as verbal delicacy — **ivind-jam-
mer" is a fine word, I grant, and so is
tvery Anglo-Saxon compound that
grows and is not made."
But all new words are not of neces-
sity good words. Ben Jonson, who
was himself a frequent maker of new
words, displayed his shrewdness when
he declared that "Custom is the most
certain Mistress of Language as the
publicke stampe makes the current
money," adding as a caution, "but we
must not be too frequent with the mint,
every day coyning."
Our treasury is enriched when we
take over needed terms from abroad
and reissue them stamped with our own
image and superscription. There is no
damage to the purity of English if the
borrowed words are absolutely assim-
ilated; but there is danger when they
remain outlanders and refuse to take
out their naturalization papers. Moc-
casin and boss, lieutenant and omelet,
zvaltc and tremolo, are now citizens of
our vocabulary, although they were
once immigrants admitted on suflFer-
ance. Unfortunately, hosts of other
linguistic importations have retaine<i
their foreign spelling, often with alien
accents, and have kept their un-Eng-
lish pronunciation. Ennui and genre
and nuance are not yet acclimated in
English speech, because they cannot be
pronounced properly by those unfa-
miliar with spoken French. Quite as
bad is the case of difi and mitier and
role, all of which still wear the accents
of their native tongue, abhorrent in
English orthography.
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WHAT IS PURE ENGLISH ?
n
Probably chauffeur and garage have
come to stay; they are not transients,
but permanent boarders in that inn of
strange meetings which the English
language is. But chauffeur offensively
violates the principles of English or-
thography, and garage still preserves its
foreign pronunciation, although there
are some already who have had the
courage to speak it as if it rhymed
with marriage, thus Anglicizing it once
for all. It is pleasant to see that there
are others who do not shrink from
speaking and writing risky in place of
risque, and brusk in place of brusque,
just as the French have transmogrified
beefsteak and roast beef into biftek
and rosbif.
The real danger of impurity lies not
in taking over foreign terms, but in
employing them without taking them
over completely. Either a word is Eng-
lish or it is not. If it is not English,
a speaker or a writer who knows his
business ought to be able to get along
without it. There is no imperative call
for us to borrow mise-en-sckne or pre-
midrCf for instance, artiste or dinoue-
ment, Zeitgeist or rifaciamento, and it
is perfectly possible to express in our
own tongue the meanings conveyed by
these terms imported in the original
package.
On the other hand, if a word is now
English, whatever its earlier origin,
then it ought to be treated as English,
deprived of its foreign accents, and
forced to take an English plural. No
one doubts for a moment that cherub
and criterion, medium and index, can
claim good standing in our English
vocabulary, yet we find a pedant now
and then who still bestows upon these
helpless words the plurals they had to
use in their native tongues, and who
therefore writes cherubim and criteria,
media and indices, violating the gram-
matical purity of English. The pedant
who is guilty of this affectation is
"showing off," as the boys say; he is
trying to display his acquaintance with
foreign languages, and he is only re-
vealing his ignorance of his own tongue.
It is blank ignorance, intensified by
sheer affectation, which tempts any one
to speak of a foyer-hall or of a grille-
room, misbegotten hybrids impossible
to a man who is on speaking terms
with either English or French. This
same combination of ignorance and
affectation is responsible for employe
and repertoire, when we have already
the simple English employee and reper-
tory. And no phrase of contempt is
cutting enough for those friends of
aviation who persist in calling a shed
wherein a flying machine is sheltered
a hangar, in blissful unconsciousness
that hangar is simply the exact French
equivalent for shed. Ignorance could
go but one step further, and we may
expect to see it bestowing a pedantic
plural upon omnibus^ terming those use-
ful vehicles omnibi.
It cannot be said too emphatically or
too often that that English is pure, and
that only that English is pure, which
conforms to the free genius of our en-
ergetic and imaginative mother tongue.
It does not matter whether the word
or the term or the usage is new-fangled
or old-fashioned, Anglo-Saxon or Ro-
mance, borrowed from a barbaric
tongue or made out of hand to meet
the pressing necessity of the moment;
if it is in accord with the spirit and
tradition of the language, it is pure.
A good omen it is that there has
recently been founded in England a new
organization designed to spread abroad
a knowledge of the true theory and the
proper practice of the English language.
It will encourage "those who possess
the word-making faculty to exercise it
freely.*' It will advocate the thorough
Anglicizing of all alien words deserv-
ing incorporation into English, thus
defending the purity of the language
against the pedants. In the society's
preliminary pamphlet, in its declaration
of principles, which is really a ring-
ing declaration of independence from
pedantry and from the false idea of
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
purity, there is one very significant
passage :
"Believing that language is or should
be democratic both in character and ori-
gin, and that its best word-makers are
the uneducated, and not the educated
classes, we should prefer vivid popular
terms to the artificial creations of
scientists. We shall often do better by
inquiring, for instance, not what name
the inventor gave to his new machine,
but what it is called by the workmen
who handle it; and in adopting their
homespun terms and giving them
literary currency we shall help to pre-
serve the living and the popular char-
acter of our speech."
This new British organization is
headed by the new poet laureate, and
it is felicitously entitled the Society for
Pure English.
There is need of a corresponding
organization on this side of the Atlan-
tic; and as the French Academy is the
guardian of the French language,
cautiously giving its sanction to the new
words and new usages spontaneously
created in response to new necessities,
so the American Academy of Arts and
Letters may in time take upon itself
to defend the true purity of English
against the pedants who are ever its
most insidious enemies, dangerous to
the freedom of the noble tongue which
is the birthright of both the British and
the Americans.
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THE QUALITY OF IMAGINATION iN AMERICAN LIFE
By Robert Herrick
The traveler speeding east or west
on the railroad between New York and
Chicago skirts the southern shore of
Lake Michigan, along which rise hills
of sand that are sparsely covered with
scrubby pines. Between these dunes
open vistas of the blue waters of the
lake, shading into a far horizon of
mysterious gray. A few years ago —
less than a dozen — this was all there
was except an occasional fisherman's
hut beneath the dunes. But here, it
seems, was the strategic point where
the iron ores coming by ship from the
upper lakes could best meet the coke
coming from the mines in the Alle-
ghanies, where the finished product of
steel could most easily be shipped to
its ultimate destination over the many
railroads radiating to the east and west,
to the north and south. So here within
a few months' time there rose magically
among these bare sand-dunes the
modern industrial city of Gary. Now
as the train speeds one sees a cloud of
smoke hovering above the long, low
buildings or drifting eastward before
the lake breeze. Large ore vessels dock
in a harbor hollowed out of the sand.
The ore is dipped from the bowels of
these steel vessels by long electric-
scoops, handed to neighboring blast-fur-
naces, and melted into pig-iron, which
in turn is recreated into steel on neigh-
boring hearths. Then the steel ingots
are run through rail mills and dumped
on waiting cars, or taken to the mer-
chant mill to be fashioned into the
many metal shapes on which our civi-
lization is being built skyward.
There is no waste of time or labor
in all this process; it is the best ex-
ample I know of scrupulous economy
in the shaping of means to ends on a
large scale. Gary is a triumph of prac-
tical imagination, created whole within
a few months on the waste sand-
dunes along the lake, created efficiently
for a necessary purpose. It is one of
those modern marvels of which Ameri-
cans are rightly proud. For it repre-
sents just as truly the operation of the
imaginative spirit, daringly incarnating
itself in fact, as the canvas of the
artist, the ode of the poet, or the sym-
phony of the musician. And the spirit
that conceived this large work of the
practical imagination is the same spirit,
compact of venture and shrewdness and
dream, that has poured this nation out
across a continent from sea to sea ; that
has filled these one hundred millions
of people with restless ambitions and
desires; that has made us Americans
the paradox of the modem world — the
most material and the most ideal people
that has ever lived.
Into this new city by the lake have
come workmen by the tens of thousands,
mostly new Americans from European
countries, such as engage in the coarser
labors of our civilization. For them
the city of Gary has been plotted, run-
ning back into the prairie for several
miles, with its checkerboard squares
filled in spasmodically by brick and
cement buildings, with long vistas of
concrete walks and macadam roads —
such a dwelling-place as one may see
almost anywhere in this broad country
of ours, only newer, fresher, and more
uncompromisingly ugly in its drab and
yellow coloring.
Here is where Americans house
themselves by the millions after the
day's labor in our enormous hives — ^this
or worse. Yet out of this raw, ugly
city has come recently the one original
idea in education that America has pro-
duced— an industrial education through
actual work by the children of work-
ing-men, school and industry united —
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
an idea that gives meaning alike to
school and labor, that makes education
real. The Gary idea in education is an
effort of the constructive imagination
perhaps more enduring than the steel
city itself, which through some acci-
dent of invention or economic adjust-
ment may be conjured out of existence
as swiftly as it was built. In the neigh-
boring center of Chicago many other
constructive ideas, fruit of American
imagination in the art of social life, are
at work, such as the juvenile courts,
the park and the playground systems.
These are prosaic conceptions, but built
as surely with imagination as cathedral
or statue; efforts to realize the dream
of a more perfectly humanized indus-
trial life, to develop a free society in
a new environment, to fuse the raw
human elements of our nation, gathered
from all the world, into something ser-
viceable and fit. As I take my evening
walk on the lake esplanade and watch
the lamping fires of the steel works
glow upon the southern sky, I feel the
imagination of America ardently at
work in the creation of a new and
better world.
* * *
There is a plain brick building in
New York that looks like a well-kept
factory or warehouse, an unpretentious,
unbeautiful, serviceable building within
and without, fireproofed, antiseptic,
equipped with every labor-saving device.
In this unpoetic laboratory are rising
to-day the boldest dreams of the
modem world. Pale, thoughtful men,
dressed in scrupulous white, pass
through the corridors or bend over the
stone benches in the separate rooms.
There is no pomp, no ceremony, but
the even-tempered, silent atmosphere of
science. Here the hidden enemies of
men are tracked down, isolated, exter-
minated. You may watch under the
microscope the germ of one of man-
kind's curses, centuries old, whose toll
of human life and happiness makes the
death-list of all the world's wars seem
petty. Such an unpretending company
of scientists seeking the secrets of
disease may be found in many of our
larger cities, engaged in the persistent
struggle, which will last as long as
civilization endures, to make men more
nearly masters of their fate, to free
them from the grosser limitations of
their flesh. No wonder, then, that the
silent campaign of the laboratory has
become noised abroad; that its results
are seized upon, exaggerated by the
popular imagination. The scientist has
usurped the fascination formerly ex-
ercised by the church, by literature, and
by art. Of similar popular inspiration
are those gardens in the California
valley where Burbank has created new
plant forms, seeking to give man the
same command over food that experi-
mental medicine does over disease. And
to these might be added the laboratory
of the inventor, the workshops of
Edison or Wright. For these are
the things that stir the imagination of
our youth — speed and power and
knowledge.
* * *
When the city of San Francisco was
shaken by an earthquake, devastated
by fire, its inhabitants fled by thousands
to the fields beyond the city, there to
camp in the open for weeks. From all
accounts, after the first shock, in the
flight of the fugitives from their crumb-
ling, burning homes, there was no panic,
no rioting, no despair. At once in the
strickert people the American instinct
for organization, reconstruction, re-cre-
ation, asserted itself, and in that army
of fugitives, bereft of ever>'thing, was
displayed a high spirit of hopefulness
and kindness, of mutual help and cour-
age. The whole nation, at the news of
the disaster, made that response to the
call for help which is the American's
noblest characteristic. Aid poured into
the devastated city in a steady volume
— money, provisions, men. Relief was
organized, the destitute were provided
with food and clothing and shelter.
All this was but another example of
the practical working of the American
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THE CyJALITY OF IMAGINATION IN AMERICAN LIFE
21
imagination in efficient deeds of imagi-
native sympathy. To-day we are pre-
paring to feed a stricken nation across
the sea.
The notable fact of the San Fran-
cisco disaster was the spirit of faith
and courage there aroused. A peculiai
light comes to the faces of all those
who participated in that crisis when
their minds go back to it — a vision of
enhanced life once seen. "It was the
greatest experience in all my life," "I
should never have known what life
might be if I had not lived through
that," they say. Why ? Because for one
time in their lives they saw men strip-
ped of conventions, naked to their souls,
and from the understanding it gave
them they drew courage and a fresh
faith in humanity. That dream of uni-
versal brotherhood, which despite much
dissolution still rests at the bottom of
American hearts, seemed for a short
time to have become real. Men trusted
one another, men bore one another's
burdens, men worked for all, not for
self.
Among all those refugees camped out-
side their ruined city there was no dis-
ease, no debauchery; selfishness was
made ashamed. For once the hectic in-
dividualism of our life was subdued
beneath a larger ideal.
"And when," said I to a friend who
had been a leader there, "did this idvll
end?"
"When the banks opened, and the
saloons," was his reply. In other w>rds,
when human nature returned to iVs ac-
customed plane of life. But for a few
vivid weeks at least each had had the
vision, the dream of man's brotherhood
made real for a little time in the ruined
city.
The San Francisco disaster evoked
not merely the imaginative generosity
of America, so quick to respond to
every call for need, but also that fun-
damental idealism in our national char-
acter, which is compact of imagination.
It was evidence of the ineradicable
faith we have in human nature, in the
possibility of creating a nobler society
than any the world has known, where
a more exact justice will be done to all,
where rich and poor will no longer
draw off and snarl at each other, where
men will no longer be content to sell
themselves for wealth, where the state
will become the higher consciousness
of all its citizens. This dream of a pos-
sible brotherhood of man is just as real,
just as vital a possession of our people
as that other national epic of the self-
made man — of the poor youth cleaving
his way upward to worldly success
without the aid of family or education.
Both are fit democratic epics. And this
imaginative ideal of social obligation is
compelling among us to-day, rising in
wave after wave of effort and enthusi-
asm, seeking by manifold means to im-
pose its vision of justice, of service.
Strip America to-day of her imagina-
tive efforts for the making over of
society, and it would be a sad place
indeed.
* * *
Ten months ago I sat in the Senate-
chamber at Washington, listening to
the long debate on the sending of
troops into Mexico. As Senator after
Senator rose and spoke on the urgent
question of national policy that might
— indeed, that most felt must — at that
hour mean war with our neighbor
nation, it seemed to me that I was list-
ening to the voices of the American
people, east and west, north and south,
affirming their national ideals. There
was the selfish voice of those who had
property in Mexico, or who secretly
hoped to exploit its riches for their
private gain. These scolded because
this country had not recognized Huerta
according to the precedents of a cal-
lous and selfish diplomacy. There were
the voices of lusty young Americans,
descendants of that pioneer breed that
had pushed its way across this conti-
nent, exterminating the inferior Indian.
"On to Mexico — to the Panama Canal !"
was their cry. The right of conquest
of the inferior by the superior was a
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
necessity, the destiny of the race, and so
forth, was the argument. There were
the voices of the merely timid, who
were alarmed over the whole business,
who prayed that we might get out of it
somehow without disturbing our own
welfare. And there were also other
voices, blending in this concert of opin-
ion— voices of those who maintained
that this great nation, strong as it is,
with the might to conquer and crush,
had a duty to itself and to the world —
a duty of self-restraint — not to conquer
and crush because it could or because
its people had property involved, but
to use its strength for help to its dis-
tracted neighbor. These last voices
happily prevailed. Already there is
entering the consciousness of Ameri-
cans a perception that a powerful state
has a higher course to pursue than to
further the private speculations of its
citizens on a foreign soil, than to im-
pose its superior civilization upon its
weaker neighbor; furthermore, that
one nation in dealing with another
must obey the same standard of scru-
pulous honor and disinterestedness that
the best type of its citizens employ in
their private affairs. The President's
insistence upon our living up to the
spirit of our treaties exemplifies the
working of moral and spiritual im-
agination in the state. It is the new
statesmanship as opposed to the old
diplomacy.
As I listened to those speeches that
long April day, I seemed to hear the
old and the new arguing together — the
old America, so raw, so individualistic,
so self -centered, and the inarticulate
new America, struggling to express an
unrealized ideal of personal faith and
national conduct that was higher, more
satisfactory to the complex conscious-
ness of our day than any we have
aimed at. And that is what I hear all
about me, especially since the catas-
trophe of this European war came
upon the world. The old America that
you and I have known was brave, buoy-
ant, optimistic with the easy opti-
mism of youth and comfort, super-
ficially objective, as youth is often su-
perficially objective, content with crude
satisfactions, marveling easily at its
own size and strength, without much
sense of outward beauty, of inward ne-
cessities; nevertheless, eager and un-
satisfied, always seeking, selfish and
splendidly generous, egotistic and de-
voted, swift, practical, and ideal. That
and much more was the America we
have known. And, as I have tried to
present to you in a few simple illustra-
tions, this old America has been filled
\v4th imagination for the practical, for
the scientific, for the ideal, yes, for the
spiritual.
What is to be the new America —
more of the ideal and of the spiritual
individually, and as a nation, or less;
given over utterly to a riot of practical
deeds, of force? We cannot longer
remain unaware of our purpose.
For the crisis has come, not of our
making, yet testing us inevitably, as
it must test all the world. The old mo-
rality has , broken down — ^a personal,
family, isolated-state morality. It was
not large enough. The old religion has
broken down — a personal-salvation,
mystical-sacrifice religion. It was not
true enough. It could not satisfy the
souls of modem men. Are we, then,
to admit the defeat of our imaginative
faiths; to confess that we have lived
self-deluded in a world of brute forces,
which may spin for a few fitful aeons,
to be snuffed out ultimately into a cold
darkness? And that we, sojourners
here, are animals merely capable of ris-
ing at rare moments on the tiptoes of
imagination to conceive what we might
become if we could but rule our pas-
sions of fear and greed and hate? I
hear many proclaiming the frankest
materialism, which has risen to the sur-
face at the shock of war, insisting that
into this new world of ours we must
bring the habit of suspicion and fear
and hate that is now making a hell of
Europe, that the duty of nations, as
of individuals, is to fight, to conquer.
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THE QUALITY OF IMAGINATION IN AMERICAN LIFE
23
to possess. Are we individually and as
a nation to accept this forlorn answer
to the riddle?
Or are we to rise from this world
shock stronger and larger, more im-
aginative in our conceptions of what
life shall be, both personal and national,
putting from us childish delights and
crude ideals? Are we to grasp fear-
lessly the opportunity that fate has giv-
en us, to attain the spiritual as well as
the material primacy of the world?
Shall we refuse to suffer the evil spell
that Europe has endured these many
ages, to sow here in the New World
that seed of hate from which Europe
is now reaping the crop? Are we to
remain confident in our strength, our
upright purposes toward all the world,
going on our way serenely, holding
forth a higher faith for humanity? Are
we to maintain unaltered that hospi-
tality to the poor of all races that has
distinguished us, by which we have
proved our ideal of brotherhood, or are
we to shut our doors selfishly against
unprivileged strangers who may seek
refuge in our paradise? In sum, are we
to realize imaginatively our lofty po-
sition as arbiter and leader of the world,
with fresh conceptions of the worth
and dignity of life, of success and ser-
vice, or are we to prepare America to
become the next great battle-ground of
the world?
We seem to sit here waiting, listen-
ing, contemplating the terrible spec-
tacle of war across the sea, judging,
making up our minds about momentous
matters, one and all. As we answer
these questions, and come to a final de-
cision with ourselves, we shall reveal
the true quality of our imagination. Is
it the American union of the practical
with the ideal that is to find the solu-
tion of a world peace without national
dishonor or social degeneration?
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24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
SECOND SESSION
Thursday, November I^h, at 3:15 P. M.
A PRESENTATION OF ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
composed by members of the institute
The Orchestra
OF
The Symphony Society of New York
walter damrosch, conductor
PROGRAM
Ormazd, Symphonic Poem ... . F. S. Converse
(Composed for a Persian Poem rendered from the Zend Avesta
by Percy Mackaye)
Andante, from Symphony, No. 1 .... . Frederick A. Stock
Fantasy, Pianoforte with Orchestra, Op. 11 . Arthur Whiting
Moderate Maestoso— Allegro Appassionato — Pastorale —
Allegro Appassionato— Allegro Scherzando
(Played by the Composer)
La Villanelle du Diable, Fantasie Symphonique . . Charles M. Loeffler
Prince Hal, An Overture, Op. 31 . David Stanley Smith
(Conducted by the Composer)
With the exception of "La Villanelle du Diable" these works were heard in New York
on this occasion for the first time.
ORMAZD . . . F. S. Converse
(Rendered after the Bundehesch of the ancient Persians by Percy MacKaye)
On the far mountain Albordj, in the realm Twice on huge wings, above abysmal
of primal light, is the abode of Ormazd. Duzahk, he fluttered up toward Albordj ;
Beyond the spheres of high heaven he twice fell he back,
created his shining hosts: the Sun, his giant Beyond his bleak pit of doom, beautiful
runner, who never dies; the Moon, who rose the peak of Albordj; in the bowels of
girdles the earth; and the Planets, his darkness, like fire, were the dreams of the
splendid captains. Such-like as the hairs damned.
upon a Titan's head were the unnumbered A third time, then, Ahriman uprose :
stars on the ramparts of Ormazd. Seven around him he marshalled his hordes, cold
were his splendid captains. Beyond the stars and wandering comets, the kings of
spheres of high heaven marshalled he them. chaos. Glittered against them the ranks of
In the realm Gorodman, the dwelling of Ormazd. Dazzling and dark was the con-
the blessed Fravashis, the circling of worlds flict.
in their spheres was like to immortal music. For ninety nights the smoke of stars ob-
Below the bright bridge Chinevat, in the scured them, till back into abysmal Duzahk
bowels of darkness, is the abode of Ahri- fell Ahriman, defeated. Golden then was
man. the laughter of Ormazd. Like laughter, the
Deep in abysmal Duzahk he created his gold-haired Planets rattled their shields,
terrible numbers — for every creature of In the realm of Gorodman, the dwelling
light a Daeva of gloom. Like the death- of the blessed Fravashis, the circling of
pang of the primal Bull was the moaning worlds in their spheres was like to im-
of Ahriman — ^his loathing for Ormazd. mortal music.
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A PRESENTATION OF ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
25
LA VILLANELLE DU DIABLE . . . Charles M.
(After the poem of M. Rollinat; translation by Philip Hale)
LOEFFLER
Hell *s a burning, burning, burning.
Chuckling in clear staccato,
The devil, prowling, runs about.
He watches, advances, retreats
Like zagzag lightning;
Hell's a burning, burning, burning.
In dive and cell.
Underground and in the air.
The devil, prowling, runs about.
Now he is flower, dragon-fly,
Woman, black cat, green snake;
Hell's a burning, etc.
And now with pointed mustache,
Scented with vetiver,
The devil, etc.
Wherever mankind swarmrs.
Without rest, summer and winter;
Hell 's a burning, etc.
From alcove to hall.
And on the railways.
The devil, etc.
He is Mr. Seen-at-Night,
Who saunters with staring eyes;
Hell's a burning, etc.
There floating, like a bubble,
Here squirming like a worm.
The devil, etc.
He's grand seigneur, tough.
Student or teacher;
Hell 's a burning, etc.
He inoculates each soul
With his bitter whispering;
The devil, etc.
He promises, bargains, stipulates,
In gentle or proud tones;
Hell's a burning, etc.
Mocking pitilessly
The unfortunate whom he destroys,
The devil, etc.
He makes goodness ridiculous,
And the old man futile;
Hell 's a burning, etc.
At the home of the priest or skeptic.
Whose soul and body he wishes.
The devil, etc.
Beware of him to whom he toadies,
And whom he calls "My dear Sir."
Hell 's a burning, etc.
Friend of the tarantula.
Of darkness, and the odd number.
The devil, etc.
My clock strikes midnight.
If I should go to see Lucifer?
Hell *s a burning, burning, burning ;
The devil, prowling, runs about.
PRINCE HAL
David Stanley Smith
The work is a portrait in tones of the young royal friend of
Falstaff as we find him in "Henry IV." It attempts to set forth
his buoyancy and high spirits and to follow Shakespeare in em-
phasizing the manly dignity which in the young prince already fore-
shadowed the greater Henry V.
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THIRD SESSION
November 20
RHMARKS BY EDWIN H. BLASHFIELD
President of the Institute
Our Guest, Fellow-Members, Ladies
AND Gentlemen:
The National Institute of Arts and
Letters holds to-day its annual exer-
cises. The members of the Institute
and the Academy are practitioners of
the arts of peace, literary, musical, and
graphic, and we are uplifted to-day by
the presence of our distinguished guest,
a visitor from that country which for
a thousand years has stood in the fore-
front of the art-producing nations.
His presence is a vivid reminder,
too, of the deep sympathy which we
feel for all our brothers across the sea
in this moment when the voice of the
arts is so terribly dominated by the
voice of the cannon.
For all the stress, with its inevitable
depression, we dare look forward to
a time when the arts and letters shall
come to their own again, and, confident
in that future, we have not ceased in
our activity.
Under the peaceful rule of our fel-
low-member in the White House, we
write verses, we record, we compose,
we build, we model, and iwe paint.
There are no drones in our hive: all
are workers. The activities of the In-
stitute, actual and potential, are great.
Its influence extends as far as our
country does, up, down, and across.
Through a membership which covers
territory reaching from ocean to ocean
and from the gulf to the lakes, the hand
of the Institute directs forces for ed-
ucation, for cultivation, for embellish-
ment. Its hand is at the helm of our
foremost universities and museums,
upon the pen of poets and prose-
writers, upon brush and chisel. It
holds the baton of those who direct
our musical seasons ; it moves the read-
er in his study, the public in the play-
houses ; and it plans and builds the sky
line of our cities. Indeed, wherever
there is a program of activities, wheth-
er written or unwritten, there you will
surely note the presence of some mem-
ber of the National Institute of Arts
and Letters, some one who is talking or
writing, designing or acting or com-
posing for the public.
It is pleasant to us to think of Acad-
emy and Institute as a vehicle for the
presentation of the results of individ-
ual achievement, pleasant to hear those
results applauded. But it is still closer
to our wish that the Institute shall be
a field in which we may strive together
in s)rmpathetic reaction of mind upon
mind; in a mutual endeavor which in
the arts and letters may promote the
evolution of American standards. And
we of the Institute have asked you
here, you, the public, our audience, be-
cause we earnestly hope for those
closer relations of inspiration on your
part — inspiration of our work — w4iich
shall help to make it a part of the
national usefulness.
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ADDRESS OF WILLIAM M. SLOANE
Chancellor of the American Academy
The Institute and the Academy have
already served the public during one
generation of men. The original mem-
bers were chosen by the American
Social Science Association, then the
most numerous and active organization
of its kind in America. With such a
mandate the work has advanced, our
membership has been enlarged, and its
standards have been preserved, by
careful selection from the candidates
desiring to enlist for the cause. No
member has ever proposed himself.
Being one in origin, the Institute and
the Academy are one in singleness of
purpose and activity, the latter having
been created by the former as a stimulus
to endeavor. They ape no other exist-
ing institution, and their chief end
and aim are to emphasize the unity of
the fine arts and cooperate with every
existing association for the promotion
of any one of them, as far as is desired.
Our membership is representative in
that within it are active workers in
letters, painting, sculpture, architecture,
music, and the drama. The list of our
members is a roll of honor only in so
far as individuals distinguish them-
selves. As a body, we do not seek to
pronounce decisions as to merit, except
in so far as we are called on to bestow
recognition for work in administering
trusts given to us for specific purposes
by generous donors. But we have been
highly successful in our chief aim, that
of stimulating one another and broaden-
ing our horizons by contact with our
fellow-workers, who are specialists in
some one of the fine arts. The most
eminent public servants in connection
with those arts have been largely of our
membership. We are, of course, a self-
perpetuating body, and as our intelli-
gence serves us, we fill vacancies from
those who either have deserved or
seem likely to deserve well of their
country.
Hitherto we have been absolutely
self-supporting, and we intend so to
remain, if necessary. But there are, to
our belief, prospective foundations for
various literary and artistic purposes
which we shall be called on to manage,
as similar bodies do elsewhere. It is
not likely that we shall shrink from the
task when it is laid upon us.
We already draw upon our own
funds for the Institute medal, and in
the separate treasury of the Academy
there is accumulated a fund sufficient
to establish a corresponding Academy
medal.
Finally, it is my duty and my great
privilege to announce that since our
last annual meeting the Academy has
been incorporated, as the Institute
already was; that in its corporate ca-
pacity a noble building site has been
conveyed to it, on condition that
within five years a portion at least of
such a building shall have been erected
as may eventually provide a dignified
and suitable home for both Institute
and Academy ; and, finally, that antece-
dent to the outbreak of the European
war a generous contribution to the
endowment fund was made.
For myself and my fellow-members
of the Board of Directors I beg to
express our assurance that sudh an
illustrious example will find imitators,
and that, while we have yet a long way
to go, we hope, before very long, even
at a time of such financial stress, to
make further announcements of a
similar sort. We are encouraged to go
forward because some men of insight
comprehend and appreciate the work
already done.
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(Copyright 1915 by Brian Hooker)
THE MAKER OF IMAGES
By Brian Hooker
Sunbeam and storm-cloud over the wonderful
Sea, whereupon ships labor and mariners
Hope and despair, while, safe in haven,
Weavers of dream by the wayside wander,
Whose hands know not the oar, nor their eyes endure
Insurgent ocean. Nevertheless, they live
Not vainly, if at heart their dreams be
One with the heart of the world forever.
Long since an unknown maker of images
Walked where the shore looms high before Pergamon,
Fronting the sea. And while he dreamed there,
Suddenly over the bright horizon
Fell darkness. Birds cried out, flying heavily
Down the wind. Blue gloom, swallowing sail by sail.
Swung landward. The tall meadow-grasses
Swayed like the mane of a beast in anger
Arousing. Then one glare, and a thunderbolt
Cracked, and the world went out into colorless
Ruin of rain, and sky and headland
Blent with the spray of the plunging ocean.
Meanwhile, amazed, the maker of images
Clung to the cliff, then rose; and at eventide
Through dew-sweet fields and rain-washed woodland
Wandered, as one having seen a vision,
Homeward, without speech. And for many days
Carved on the new-raised altar of Pergamon
What he had seen; yet not the unmeaning
Welter of cloud over storm-torn water,
But warfare of white gods, the Olympians,
Against the earth-born, — Zeus, thunder-panoplied,
Pallas, and Ares, and Poseidon
Ranging the van of his windy legions, —
While underneath, vain giants in agony
Piled mountains; and alone, understanding all.
Foam-bosomed Aphrodite smiled down
Quietly out of the heights above them.
Storms pass; untold suns, glooms beyond numbering,
Vanish. The unchanging pageant elaborates,
And kingdoms fail, and strange commanders
Govern imperial generations
Of momentary dust; and the pyramid
Follows the prince, where, emulous, tremulous.
Like motes along the moonbeam dancing
Into the dark, the enchanter changes
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THE MAKER OF IMAGES 29
Men and the deeds of men. Yet through centuries
Gone, since before that altar, adoringly.
With arms upraised, the Pergameans
Gazed, and grew stronger of heart, beholding
Their dreams remain. Still, still, as a thousand years
Embody June, so now and forevermore
New lamps, new eyes, one light undying.
Hold, and reveal in a thousand rainbows.
All gods of all times fight for us, laugh with us ;
Forgotten angels cool our delirium;
Vague monsters from primeval caverns
Widen the wondering eyes of children;
And knights of old, high-hearted adventurers,
Ride errant with us, making a tournament
Of toil; and new-hung moons remember
Passion and pang of imagined lovers
Whose perfumed souls in blossomy silences
Hunger, forlorn: Adonis, Endymion;
Brynhild, Elaine, Ysolde, Helen, —
Names like the touch of the lips that loved them, —
And brazen-handed heroes who sang as they
Charged home against impregnable destiny
Clang trumpets in our wars; and saints leave
Lilies of peace by the lonely highway.
Pray, therefore, that, ourselves being treasures
Of beauty brought from Eden, ephemeral
Husbands of ageless dawn, our dreams, too,
Mold for a moment the gold immortal
Not fouled by unclean hands, nor unworthily
Shapeff for gain ; nor scorned, while idolaters
Of deities unborn unwisely
Gather barbarian toys of tinsel
To flatter purblind eyes. But remembering
The beautiful old gods and the champions
Of storied wars and sylvan horn-calls
Waking mysterious elfin laughter,
We, in our own hour makers of images,
Charm storm and day-dream into such harmony
As men of deeds, beholding, long for,
Forging the world into forms of heaven.
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THE AMERICAN COMPOSER
By Arthur Whiting
For the last forty years compositions
of music by academically trained
Americans have been submitted to the
judgment of the public. The verdict
on the merits of the works returned by
the popular jury is not unanimous, but
is given in every degree of apprecia-
tion, influenced by every degree of
prejudice from chauvinism to anti-
Americanism. Intelligent optimists dis-
cover signs of character in the composi-
tions which, if sporadic, promise for the
near future a national style. Intelligent
pessimists see in them nothing but the
musical mannerisms of all nations sedu-
lously collected and stamped "Yankee."
Unintelligent optimists shout that, being
American, they must be good. Unin-
telligent pessimists jeer that, being
American, they must be bad.
This article is an inquiry into the re-
lation of the American composer to con-
temporary musical art. It is an attempt
to give the findings and conclusions of
critics who know that if they over-
praise, they belittle and dishonor, but
that if, on the other hand, they do not
give just due, they retard and dishearten
a movement for which they feel the
deepest concern — a movement by which
native music may worthily stand beside
American literature and painting. As
a preliminary to this inquiry, let us dis-
miss from the council the unintelligent
shouters and jeerers. Let all profes-
sional agitators and advocates, and all
editors who preach that a protective
policy will advance American art, be
invited to retire.
Great music is national, expressing
the temper and character of a nation.
The most homogeneous people have
produced the most characteristic art.
The music of Germany is pure German,
the music of Italy is the very essence
of Italian minds, and even the most ex-
perimental and venturesome French
composer never leaves Paris. The
alleged absence of idiom in the language
of the American composer is attributed
by some to the fact that the national
character of the citizens of these United
States of America is not yet fixed, that it
will acquire distinction of feature only
after the many elements of race within
these borders have been fused.
Whatever the American composers of
the future may be, those of the present,
whom we are now discussing, are by a
very large majority of British stock.
While they are now living and produc-
ing in all parts of the country, they or
their parents were bred near the eastern
shore of the United States. The Eng-
lish-speaking native, who has domi-
nated the continent for three centuries,
is still a pure type, and his musical
descendant has grown up under homo-
geneous conditions and influences.
The American of to-day is unique.
He has his own face, his own way of
doing and of feeling things. If his
emotions have as yet no complete musi-
cal representation, it is not because they
cannot be represented in tones, for we
have one song at least — our beloved
"Dixie" — which throbs exactly with the
national pulse, and which is of such
sterling worth that it has survived fifty
years of hard usage, and is to-day as
thrilling and impelling as when it led
the tired marchers of the Southern
Confederacy.
The official and ceremonial hymn of
a country is usually perfunctory and
Philistine. It is pious custom more than
spontaneous feeling which brings us to
our feet when we sing that common-
place tune which we borrowed from
England, which she borrowed from
Germany, the words of which we
vaguely remember to begin,
God save our *t is of thee.
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THE AMERICAN COMPOSER
31
I speak thus disrespectfully of our
national anthem because it is not our
national anthem; it is not a musical
representation of our national feeling
or experience. As to the verses, I leave
them to any American conscience.
If many of the accredited hymns of
nations are characterless, there are at
least three popular songs which are, in
a real sense, national. The "Rakoczy
March" of Hungary, the "Marseillaise"
of France, and "Dixie" of America, are
intoxicants which stimulate the nerves
of their respective races, so that the
first two have often been forbidden by
the police in times of special excite-
ment. But there is nothing warlike or
vengeful in our own song: it has good-
natured energy, a certain confident
strength; its saucy gait has humor; it
is not theatrical, self-conscious, or
sentimental — it represents the Ameri-
can character.
The skeptic asks, "Is there any
formal music by native American com-
posers which is not more or less a blend
of German, French, and Scandinavian
styles?" Such a searching question
must be answered in perfect honesty,
after a careful review of the works
available for criticism.
I confess to remembering that in the
American compositions of twenty-five
years ago — overtures, symphonies,
poems (symphonic and otherwise),
chamber and choral music — that whilom
guarantee of quality, that orthodox
watermark "Made in Germany," was
impressed on too many pages of the
score. I confess to remembering that
at that period some composers of lighter
works smuggled Scandinavian rhythms
and harmonies across our frontier,
naturalizing them by the simple device
of changing the title-page.
I must acknowledge also that in
recent years, while recognizing the
steadfastness of those few belated minds
whose reconciliation to Brahms has
become so complete that they have
adopted his style for their own, too
many of our composers, unabashed.
have exchanged their former German
for a French manner, thereby inviting
the consideration which we give to the
versatile chameleon. All this is damag-
ing evidence, but it condemns those
whose talents are so superficial that
they would be chameleons in any
country.
Now that the witnesses for the prose-
cution have been heard, we can call on
many to testify for the defense. We
are proud to be able to say that we
have men who have produced music
with a flavor of its own, composers
whose European education has only in-
tensified and confirmed their natural
qualities. That peculiar energy which
marks the tune of "Dixie" is native to
them — an energy which is not out of
place in large and dignified form. One
hears from them a turn of phrase, a
lilt, and a catch which, without mental
reservations, can be stamped "Made in
America."
Given a nation of nervous tempera-
ments, it follows that the principal
characteristic of its composers will be
rhythm, the most important and at
present the most neglected element of
music. The European world since
Wagner has become so obsessed by the
idea of harmonic possibilities and re-
fined tone-color that many craftsmen
are now employed exclusively in the
splitting of harmonic hairs. Under this
treatment the texture of music is fast
losing its substance, and the tonal spec-
trum is merging into monochrome.
This evolution at the expense of the
great complement, rhythm, is a one-
sidedness which the strong-beating
pulse of America may help to correct
in some degree if her composers use
their natural power. Indeed, that
popular syncopation, now fallen into
such low company that it answers to
the name of "rag-time," is a legitimate
contribution to the art of music, an
invention of our own which has been
eagerly accepted by Europe as some-
thing new.
The influences which have been
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
potent in forming the character of our
native music are, first, negro melodic
idiom, and, second, Celtic and English
national songs.
The negro influence has been one
of propinquity. The African slave is a
singer whose life of suffering and hard-
ship has brought to the surface all his
powers of expression. A humble mem-
ber of the national family from the
beginning, his songs of pathos and
glorification have made a deep impres-
sion on every music-loving child, who,
on becoming later a trained musician,
finds his own speech somewhat akin to
that of his old friend.
The Celtic and English influence is
that of blood, an inheritance which is
felt in the music of our most character-
istic writers.
There has been much to-do recently
over the alleged neglect of our com-
posers by the public and by those high
in authority. It is said that talent
languishes for lack of recognition, and
that therefore the country should organ-
ize to the end that no genius remain
undiscovered. This cry has been raised
principally by professional agitators,
and has been so persistent that many
earnest and patriotic people now re-
proach themselves that they find more
interest in current European music than
in that of their own countr>^men, and
determine that hereafter they will re-
member the assurance of the editor that
the domestic is quite as good as the
imported article.
An enemy could hardly devise any-
thing more humiliating to artists than
this, or put the American composer in
a more unhappy relation to his public.
No one can rebuke so effectively these
foolish friends of American art as the
self-respecting composers themselves,
and the blame rests with them that this
grotesque movement has not been
suppressed.
In fact, the American composer has
not always been fortunate in his friends.
Many real friends have hesitated to act
as such and to be helpful by unsparing
comment in fear of the charge of na-
tional disloyalty — a fear which will re-
strain almost any well-meaning critic.
The healthful growth of our music has
been retarded, standards have been mis-
placed, weak men have been given
praise which should have been reserved
for strong men, and all because certain
irresponsible people have the power, by
simply uttering two words, "unpatri-
otic" and "disloyal," to silence needful,
strengthening, in the highest sense
friendly, criticism.
As to any adverse predisposition on
the part of the public, there is no in-
stinctive prejudice against the Ameri-
can poet, painter, sculptor, or architect ;
there is no such prejudice against the
brother artist in music when his work
is as good as theirs. For any acquired
antipathy that may be in the public
mind at present the composers them-
selves are to blame.
It is said that our conductors and
public often prefer the works of second-
rate European composers to works of
equal musical merit by our own men.
No doubt there is such preference at
times, and it is not difficult to find the
reason. The material of the American
compositions may be quite as good as
that of the foreigner; but when it
happens that the technical treatment is
inferior, that the material is not handled
with the same skill, conductors who are
not chauvinists will take the better
workmanship, other things being equal,
and the public will applaud them for so
doing.
There is a harmful tradition in this
countr\' that the free-bom American
artist is exempt from that servile ap-
prenticeship to the technique of com-
position and instrumentation which the
•European student accepts without a
thought of protest. The conviction that
a Yankee can do anything he sets his
mind to is a survival of the spirit of
pioneer days when the woodsman's
family would have suffered or died but
for his ready and complete resourceful-
ness. Tie was obliged to surmount
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THE AMERICAN COMPOSER
33
difficulties without training or experi-
ence, and we are proud of his make-
shifts and homely ingenuities.
But makeshifts are inadequate to
the requirements of modem art, and
any young man who tries to dodge the
grind which alone can make him master
of his craft will confess when he
reaches the age of fifty that they were
blameless who rejected his talent in the
rough for the highly polished work of
his European or his wiser American
rival. -Students will find men in this
country who are models of prepared-
ness— men who were far-seeing in their
youth, who, feeling that they had some-
thing to express, labored unceasingly
to express it like artists.
Such, indeed, are the best of our
American composers whose music has
received cordial, if not always quick,
recognition. They have been garlanded
and honored, so much so that some of
them have suffered from the solicita-
tions of an eager and hero-worshiping
public.
There are many musical laymen
among us who wish to be helpful in the
cause of native production, but who are
uncertain what their relation to the
young composer should be.
But who are the friends of an artist ?
There can be but one answer, which is :
those who love art more than they love
the artist. This dictum and what is
now to follow will be recognized as that
wholesome, but unpalatable, draught,
the counsel of perfection. It should be
reasonably diluted before being taken,
otherwise it will make one's eyes water.
These truth-loving friends, then, wish
to be of service to American music
through their influence on the work of
the young composer. To this end they
put him and his metal to tests. Will
he bend or will he break under them?
Instead of ^'encouraging" talent, — an
unhappy expression in connection with
what is nothing if it be not spontaneous,
— they subject him to that trial, that
cruiel, experience for the young enthu-
siast, namely, temporary neglect. If
they find him, after years, still making
music to no audience, they can be sure
that he loves music more than he loves
an audience, and score him one for
disinterestedness.
Then there is the quality of his pro-
duction. Is it the plausible manuscript
which any accomplished musician can
make as the result of his study and pro-
fessional experience — music which has
every appearance and every feature of
life, but which is, after all, only a lay
figure? Is the work of the young pro-
bationer characteristic, idiomatic, na-
tional? And, finally, is it prophetic,
daring, lawless, reckless to startle the
ladies, of both sexes?
If the friends (it will be noted that
they are extremely intelligent) find
these qualities, in addition to disin-
terestedness, they may safely and con-
fidently raise their hats, for they are in
the presence of a genius. Having found
him, what shall they do with him?
Their responsibilities are quite over-
whelming. What is their duty to art,
regardless of human feelings? Shall
they announce him to the world at
once?
In these times and in this country a
discovered genius is an artist heavily
handicapped, a worker loaded with re-
sponsibilities from which in obscurity
he was free. Unless he has a character
of iron, the public will undo him.
Therefore let the announcement be de-
ferred until the precious manuscripts
make a goodly pile. Do not advise
him, but give him all opportunity for
experiment, and shield him from the
public unto that day when he is firm on
his feet; then he will do the rest.
What is the counsel of perfection to
the friends in their relation to lesser
talents; to those whose music is silent
when there is none to listen ; who bend
until they break under neglect; whose
work is reminiscent, law-abiding, pro-
nounced sane by professional critics?
We know what nature does to ani-
mals that lack the boisterousness of
youth; we know that she resists any
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
artificial means to strengthen and pro-
long the life of the congenitally weak.
But whether it be for the good of art
that only the best survive may be left
to the judgment of the friends.
However, the composing of music as
education, not as a contribution to an
demanding public attention, is indis-
pensable to every complete musician.
There are hidden and unsuspected
wonders in the works of the masters
which can be discovered only by the
student of composition. Such modest
work sometimes rewards the doer un-
expectedly by the discovery of a vein
of originality in his expression. In
other words, the Cinderella of the study
may unconsciously possess the foot for
the slipper.
The question comes up: How can
a young composer hear and judge the
effect of his music when conductors
and the public ignore him?
One of the phases of ingenuous
youth which appeal to grown-up s)nn-
pathy is the young painter's demand
for the largest canvas, the young sculp-
tor's call for the hugest block of marble,
the young musician's helplessness with-
out the service of an augmented
orchestra. In the midst of such pro-
portions one hesitates to suggest less
expensive means of demonstration, to
say that it takes fewer instruments to
prove one's self a genius or a fool, or
any modification of these extremes.
That ever-present help, the domesti-
cated pianoforte, was alone sufficient
for Chopin's superlative art. One voice
added to it was all that Lowe required
to state his case. Such every-day ma-
terial and simple combinations of string
and wind instruments are always avail-
able, and the youth who says some-
thing notable with them will find
orchestral conductors the following
morning calling at his door.
If the office of the friends is to dis-
cover genius and to prevent others
from doing the same, if the wisdom of
encouraging mediocrity is questioned,
what active business is at hand for
them?
A task awaits them which, employ-
ing their full strength, will not be fin-
ished for many generations, perhaps
centuries ; that is, preparing the ground
in which musical genius will grow,
spreading the influence of good art,
fertilizing the soil with general knowl-
edge and love of beauty.
No doubt such methods will strike
the American mind as somewhat vague
and up in the air, and the fruition so
deferred that practical men will look
over and under and through the situa-
tion for some short cut by which genius
may be delivered within a reasonable
time after the order has been placed.
But we should not for a moment be-
lieve that this is a field for up-to-date
promoting schemes. There is only one
way to produce genius, and that is the
way it has been done in Europe from
the beginning.
Johann Sebastian Bach, the supreme
music product of the world, was the
result of a thousand influences, operat-
ing for centuries. The work of thou-
sands of minor composers before him
had to die and rot and be ground into
a compost before the soil should be rich
enough to grow that glory of German
art.
. Bach did not happen because the
"Ladies' Monday Musical" of Eisenach
joined with the "Chromatic Qub" of
Weimar and the "G Qefs" of Kothen in
passing resolutions, first, that composi-
tions of native composers should be
heard with more interest; and, second,
that these societies hereby pledge them-
selves to prefer the domestic output to
the imported Italian product; and,
third, that they hereby censure that
snobbishness which believes in the su-
periority of foreign music.
Bach was not encouraged to use his
powers and to become aware of what
was really in him because of the stimu-
lus to art given by the "Leipsic Choral
Union," which offered a prize of a
thousand gulden for the most inspired
setting of the St. Matthew Passion, stir-
ring composers for miles around (who
needed that sum of money) to produce
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THE AMERICAN COMPOSER
35
the kind of originality which they be-
lieved to be likely to pique the fancy
of the particular gentlemen who had
kindly consented to act as judges for
the competition.
The editor of that esteemed weekly
(with trade supplement), "Musical
Germany," did not call with clarion
voice that teachers should stand shoul-
der to shoulder against foreign preten-
tiousness.
In other words, we should hardly
consider the science of organization in
the musical affairs of those times to
be a science at all. And yet their
primitive methods were rewarded, and
those conditions which had existed for
generations finally produced the flower.
The American composer has been at
his art for forty years. It may be said
that conditions did not produce him,
for there were no conditions. When
we look at the very thin soil out of
which our native music has so recently
sprung, land which has never known
plow or fertilizer, we wonder not at
the many weeds, but that flowers of
real beauty should be found here and
there. These scattered specimens are
pledges of the garden of the future.
And now, musical laymen of the
country who want to help the Ameri-
can composer, apply your energies to
enriching the musical life of the nation ;
give every child the best music; advise
students to compose not to see how
great their own powers are, but to
measure and venerate true greatness.
Tjspke long views; do everything by
years, and not by days. Then, when
future generations have continued the
labor of love you began, the American
composer, expressing in music the very
spirit of America, may be acclaimed by
his happy countrymen.
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CERTAIN TENDENCIES IN MODERN PAINTING
By Paul Dougherty
What I shall have to say to you this
morning will not be either learned or
startling. I appear in the guise neither
of the prophet nor of the critic. I
merely wish to point out certain things
that seem to me fundamental and, for
that reason, very simple and perhaps
easily forgotten. I cannot hope that
you will all agree with me, but I do
hope that you will not all disagree, and
that we shall all bear in mind Dr. John-
son's saying: "That any man has a
right to say what he thinks, and any
other man the right [mentally] to knock
him down for it."
Periodically, the world of modern
art is convulsed with the cries of new
prophets, and we hear of the creation
of a new art: a movement has been
launched. Forty years ago it was Im-
pressionism ; the day before yesterday
it was Post-impressionism; yesterday,
Futurism; to-morrow, what? Person-
ally I must confess, quite unashamed,
that I am not a believer in movements.
It is true that the minority of pictures
at each period of the history of art
have a kind of family likeness, as sixty
years ago they were Romantic, recently
impressionistic, to-day at least a grow-
ing minority post-impressionistic.
This is proof neither for nor against
a movement, but only that most people
who paint are without specific original
power. In this predicament, and with
tools to use, a technique that is in itself
a delight, they must imitate somebody,
and it is more appealing to be in fashion
than out of it. This is why Post-im-
pressionism numbers its followers by
the thousands. It is because most
people cannot discern between chaff and
wheat that they seem to be witnessing
in astonished helplessness the trans-
formation of painters whose work
was once quite commonplace, indeed,
magic of a doctrine, into shining gen-
iuses, who produce what we are told
are great original works with the same
facility that a magician in evening dress
and a black imperial brings forth
often students' beginnings, under the
numerous rabbits out of a presumably
empty black hat. After all, a poor
Post-impressionist picture is no worse
than a poor Impressionist or a poor
salon piece. It is severe to blame
the unoriginal painter. If any one is
to be scolded, it is the public that can-
not distinguish between good and bad.
The reactionary, who thinks that be-
cause a work is what is called "modem"
in tendency it must be worthless, is
guilty of the same kind of foolishness
as he who thinks that because it is built
out of cubes it must be a masterpiece.
No doctrine can give men genius.
There are no short cuts or panaceas in
art, as in nothing else are there specifics
against stupidity or incompetence. Good
art teachings can no more make good
artists than good laws can make good
men. But I anticipate.
It seems that we live in one of those
transitional periods in which history is
made rapidly, as if oft-denied and long-
accumulated impulses gathered force
sufficient to break barriers and sweep
along events with dramatic suddenness ;
eras of change in which irresistible
restlessness challenges established stan-
dards; a restlessness that is spiritual,
demanding reality and questioning the
meanings of things. It often threatens
cherished possessions or refuses old
valuations.
In art it proclaims the futility of
most of the art of the past; where it
concedes that there have been great
men, it declares them to be going in
the wrong direction, diseased and mis-
shapen giants. Its audacity is superb;
it ruthlessly destroys the old, and sets
itself the task of forging a new
esthetics, and a new philosophy. This
is a courageous, manly, healthful
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CERTAIN TENDENCIES IN MODERN PAINTING
37
attitude in those in whom it is honest,
and I believe they are many; but it is
also possible that it may be all this, and
still be mistaken, and it is here we
reach, I think, the crux of the matter,
that it is one thing to state a doctrine
of esthetics that may be valid, and quite
another thing to make that doctrine
powerful to produce great and moving
art. Certain writers on Post-impres-
sionism have expounded a theory of
esthetics that seems to be patently
sound, though I cannot feel it to be
new or peculiar to themselves. We hear
it said, for example, that the object of
art is not representation ; that in paint-
ing forms should be used not as means
of suggesting emotions or conveying in-
formation, which is mere description,
but as objects of emotion in themselves.
The aim is the essential, etc. All this
is quite true. I only beg to interject
that while I am a radical myself, I
wish to be just, and I cannot see that
really great art at any time has occupied
itself with mere representation.
Out of what conditions has this pro-
test grown ? Under the burden of what
impression has this passionate reaction
accumulated? To understand it, you
must be able to relate it to the back-
ground, the history that has immedi-
ately preceded it. If we look clearly
and honestly, we shall find, I think
reasons for its existence, even if they
are not adequate to explain its violence.
We find in the painting of the immedi-
ate past a continual dilution of the wine
of the original French Impressionists ; a
continual searching, more and more,
after what the painter understands by
effect,^a diminishing occupation with
the substances over which the effect
plays; a preoccupation with the phe-
nomena of life, becoming more and
more tenuous and unsubstantial; a
tendency to the use of color as a merely
decorative agent; a thinness of sub-
stance; a preoccupation with the light
of the moment; a sacrifice of funda-
mentals to the study of values. This in
what we know as easel pictures. In
decoration it becomes a servile sub-
serviency to the color scheme of the
room, a kind of millinery idealism, a
slavish submission to architectural be-
hest; in architecture, an abandonment
to the fallacy that what was living, vital,
and beautiful in Greece or Italy or
France, in centuries past, must be the
same here and now, if copied or tran-
scribed with sufficient accuracy and
skill; in other words, a crystallization
according to standards instead of the
outgrowth of an inward necessity.
We have been much dominated
by a fear of going wrong, and in
America we walk perilously near a
sterile and elegant eclecticism. To-day,
I think, conditions are different, they
are certainly changing, and the future
holds the hope of something better ; but
the answer is not in the doctrine ex-
pounded by the preachers of Post-
impressionism, sound as much of it
is, and still less in the hysterical
screeching of the gentlemen who
call themselves Futurists. I fear that
what is offered us is but the substi-
tution of one academic ideal for an-
other.
I have said that much of the doctrine
of Post-impressionism is sound. It ad-
vocates a return to essentials. It de-
mands the resuscitation of design. It
preaches the truth of the unity of form
and color, and it presses for simplifi-
cation, not representation, the substi-
tution of significant forms for external
imitation or literal description, howso-
ever noble, in paint. No one who thinks
clearly can reject the soundness and
saneness and healthfulness of such a
scheme. How, then, does it come that
the work that is offered to us as an
illustration of this doctrine is so
strangely unmoving and puzzling? The
answer lies in the question itself. It is
because most of it was made to illustrate
a doctrine, that it was painted to prove
a theory. The statement of a doctrine
of esthetics is an intellectual process.
Let us examine the problem of the
artist and the process that is involved
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
in the creation of his art. Now, the
production of a work of art is not a
mental process at all. It is the outcome
of the entire spiritual nature of the
artist speaking through a more or less
fully commanded medium. Its genesis
is emotional and peiceptive, and not
rationalistic. Hence we have the reason
for the external sterility of doctrine,
however reasoned in its application to
the production of art. The doctrinaire,
when he turns to the practice of art,
paints or models to prove his theory.
He is preeminently occupied with the
justification and exposition of the dog-
ma which he holds. He incorporates
into his work, by a sheer effort of the
will, those qualities that he deems
strengthening. His final object is the
establishment of a scheme of logic.
The artist's procedure is quite con-
trary. He is not interested in proving
anything. He looks at the visible uni-
verse, and it is beautiful or ugly or any
one of a thousand shades between
them. The point is that it exites him
with a stimulus that is not mental, but
sensational. He is aware of a mysteri-
ous, but immediate, relationship be-
tween himself and it. Life is height-
ened and intensified in him, and in his
art he asks you to share his experience
and not to listen' to the proof of a
theory. He will not be thwarted with-
out a fight. You may say to him that
the cumulative expression of the past
means more to you than his offering.
It probably means as much to him as
to you, but he is speaking of a direct
experience, and, sooner or later, if he
speaks truly, you are bound to listen.
But the audience, too, has its rights.
It stands on ancient ground, hard won,
that has stood in good stead through
the generations; it demands that it
shall be convinced. It says it cannot
believe your story unless you make it
seem real to it. It is not so much that
it says so, but that it feels so, and it is
within its rights. If you are asked to
believe that some one has had a great
experience and you find his witness
vague, that he cannot tell where or
how it was, you are likely to be un-
moved. You may be wrong, but don't
be afraid. But if this experience is put
before you so that you feel yourself to
be not only there, but with him, so that
what he experienced becomes part of
your experience, living and real to you.
you believe his truth. It is your truth.
Now, the painter presents to you a
world that exists with indefinite bound-
aries, usually four, and on a surface
that you know to be fiat. The conven-
tions at his disposition are forms and
colors. He speaks to you of adventures
in the moving, material universe that
surrounds us. He seeks to tell you
what it has made him feel. His object,
it is true, is not to represent in a toy
fashion, however skilfully, the mere
facts of that universe, but the realities
of his feelings about it. He asks you
to believe that it has interested him and
filled him with emotion. In order to
make you feel that, he must convince
you that he has really seen it, that its
existence and reality have sunk deep
into his consciousness; that the objects
contained in it exist for him in the
same intensity as they exist in nature.
Now, the first great fact about the ex-
istence of objects is what, for lack of a
better word, I might call a kind of
"thereness" about them. They are
solids, and have weight and displace-
ment. If inside the world the picture
offered you you cannot be convinced
of its volumetric existence, you have
a discouraging sense that whatever
else you are asked to believe by its
author is not based on a substantial
structure. The painter, by process of
selection, sunders the images of objects
from natural space, and he must re-
create them in pictorial space, and il-
luminate them with the sense of their
volumetric existence, unimpaired, or,
better, amplified to attain this. It is im-
possible to conceive of form and color
as different phenomena. They arc the
two directions of one movement. With-
out light, there is no vision. To illumi-
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CERTAIN TENDENCIES IN MODERN PAINTING
3Q
nate an object is to reveal its existence.
To color it is to particularize the mode
of its revelation; hence it is impossible
to alter the color of an object without
corrupting its structure. To deny this
is to father an instability which is ab-
surd, and to disorganize and unbalance
the scheme of reality both natural and
esthetic. In this basic sense, then,
representation becomes the original
groundwork of art; its final aim the
projection of essentials revealed by
objects in a state of intense and ener-
getic volumetric existence. But the key
to this living world is to be found in
the artist's personality, and not in some
geometrically or philosophically con-
structed universe.
The artist's eyes serve him in quite a
different stead from those of most per-
sons, who use them chiefly for acquir-
ing facts. Art is concerned with a
world of emotional realities, and with
material things only so far as they are
emotionally significant. Now, any talk
dealing with emotion is difficult, for
many persons, never having felt any
esthetic emotions, are inclined to think
that one is dealing with what is not.
I do not wish to seem to discount
the processes of logic, but this point
of view precludes the appreciation
of what is nevertheless a fact, that
.emotions are as real as sensory sen-
sations and that there are other
realities than those of the physical
world. The religiense, the mystic, and
the artist hold this view. To them there
are things the worth of which cannot be
related to the physical ; things the worth
of which is not relative but absolute;
things that are good, just as red is red,
because it is so. Let us, then, have the
courage to recognize that there are
things beyond the realm of proof ; that
logic has its limitations as well as its
uses; that sensibility in certain things
— and art is one of them — is the key to
experiences that logic cannot reveal.
And here I must object to some well-
intentioned cultivated people who are
attempting to bring art to the people.
Who has not seen them with flocks of
victims shuffling through the museums,
instructing them by dates, tags, and
labels. What have these professional
rhapsodists or historical analysts to do
with art? An intelligent child might
get, if left to himself, something from
a visit to the Metropolitan Mraseum,
provided no cultivated persons were
there to tell him what was the proper
thing to feel, or prevent his feeling
anything but a desire to escape by com-
manding him to think.
Dogma, then, is only the substitution
of one system for another, the change
from one academic model to another;
it has no hope to oflFer. What, then,
can break the huge machine of slavery,
convention, imitation, and emptiness in
which we all, even the freest of us, are
caught and partly maimed? If dogma
fails as a revivifying power, to what,
then, are we to turn ? What are usually
called the intellectual classes will reply,
'^Culture." Now, it is difficult to define
culture, though most of us know a
cultivated person when we meet one;
usually it is some one who has traveled
in Italy.
In the deepest sense culture means an
education that has intensified person-
ality and strengthened its powers of
expression; but, alas! we get no help
here, for such an education as this is
not for sale. It is an intellectual ad-
venture, sought by some in solitude,
found by others in society, that closes
only when life closes, but it is always
individual. That is its hall-mark, and
in this It resembles art itself. In the
usual sense of the word, a cultivated
society is one that has been educated
to a series of standards of taste, a kind
of foot-rule for the measurement of
achievements, and its vision is always
rearward. Cultivated people have al-
ways been defenders of the antique, as
if the great antique needed that.
In art schools one draws from it be-
fore one draws from life, to show one,
I suppose, where life goes wrong. Cul-
ture makes a person familiar with
masterpieces, but it cannot make one
sensitive to that which makes them
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
masterpieces. It is consequently ret-
rospective, which is, after all, its safest
ground. Culture, too, is apt to get its
rules mixed, so that it is angry and hurt
to find that the artist is not always a
gentleman. It is more dangerous than
Philistinism, for it is better armed,
more intelligent, and more pliant, and
it has, moreover, an air of being on the
side of the artist. But it is his enemy,
for it appeals to authority and not to
sensibility. The essence of originality,
however, is that it feels and thinks for
itself. It is not picturesque, because, if
it is original, it is new ; and we all know
that to be picturesque things must be
old. It seems strange, and it is dis-
quieting, and culture is all too apt to
attack it.
But of late years we have seen a re-
versal of this, for cultivated persons,
having had to adopt so many things
they would have liked to reject, — in
fact, did reject, but have had forced on
them, though only then to make the
part of a tradition, a standard, to beat
down the next original, — the cultivated,
after many mistakes, nervously de-
termine to be right this time in refer-
ence to the new art. This has given us
the spectacle of some bravely, but re-
gretfully, confessing themselves behind
the times, with many uneasily enunci-
ating the strange accents of a new faith.
Whence, then, is the wind of free-
dom to blow? In what quarter will
the new dawn break? Histor>' assures
us that nothing short of a revival of
the religious spirit can restore the con-
ditions in which the great types of art
may reach again their full stature. It
is evident that monumental art calls
for sacrifices of small imitations; but
they are sacrifices dictated by the mys-
tic vision of the inward eye, and no
intellectual substitute for that vision
can be valid in Egypt, Greece, in early
Gothic, in Byzantine mosaic, in Ori-
ental drawings and pottery, for in all,
in their primitive manifestations, some-
thing of the divine eternal was com-
municated, undiluted by the medium.
The sacrifices of the Post-impression-
ists, as a witty Englishman has said,
are sacrifices in the wrong places, and
not to be laid upon the altar even of
an absent god. Just as one hundred
years ago men played at being classic,
to-day, from a deeper ennui, we play
at being primitive, Coptic, Greek, or
Aztec.
Let us. then, honestly confess our-
selves beaten. We are not, and can-
not be, primitive, howsoever much we
should like to be, or howsoever inter-
esting we find it to try to be. Like the
occupation of lifting oneself over ob-
stacles by one's boot-straps, it may be
amusing, — one may even, if the straps
are stout enough, put one's whole
strength into it, — but it is unprofitable.
However, if we cannot be real primi-
tives, we can be something better than
imitation ones. If we cannot live in an
age of great religious revival, we can
at least, each and all of us, live honestly
and deeply, and if we are brave enough,
we can be free. If modem life cannot
oflfer the artist the background of a
great religious experience, it can at least
oflfer him liberty, an open road to free
individual expression, unhampered by
a past that sits in judgment on him.
rather than its more legitimate role as
a source of refreshment and inspiration
to him.
We all wish to do something for art.
and this is what we can do: organize
society so that liberty is increased, —
liberty of thought, — for art thrives in
a liberal atmosphere. Make it less diffi-
cult for each to speak his truth as he
sees it, and do not foster the spirit of
compromise. Do not expect all men
to be sensitive in the same direction,
or think that art is something that can
be acquired by hard study. Let us not
fear to go wrong in these matters, if
we go for what we like. Art is not
morality, though they are deeply re-
lated in quite another way. Let us
realize that it is more important to be
honest than to be polite, though delight-
ful if we can be both, and that social
virtues, good as they are, are not the
only ones.
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A NOVELlST^S PHILOSOPHY
Bx Gforge W. Cablr
A novelist should have as clear a
conviction of how to live as of how to
write, and on occasion may state it with
the freedom of an actor answering a
curtain-call.
In either case originality is not the
supreme necessity, and so I would
say that the chief element in a life
worth living is what the preachers call
character, and that in character the
three paramount constituents must be
courage, fidelity, and affection. These
are the three dimensions of the soul.
Every form of conscious wrong-doing
is a default in one or more of these
three graces. Every plan of life aban-
doned as a failure owes both its wreck
and its abandonment to a shortage in
one or another of these qualities, a
narrowing of them upon too few things
or facts.
How wide, then, should their com-
pass be? It should be as wide as the
world we have to live in. In a life
truly centered, the right courage,
fidelity, and affection toward anything
whatever do not conflict with the right
courage, fidelity, and affection toward
anything else. No art of living can be
wise or safe which does not keep this
truth for its guiding-star. Like all arts,
the art of life is difficult, and much of
it lies in keeping our courage, fidelity,
and affection for matters nearest to us
equally or proportionately operative in,
to, and for matters farthest away.
Our imperfect natures can never do
this perfectly, and if they could, we
should not escape the censure of this
very imperfect world. We should cer-
tainly incur it, and quite as certainly
its blunders are ours. But be they ours
or not, our courage, fidelity, and
affection toward it should make its ap-
proval sweet, and yet should be too
large to accept that approval as a guide
of life or as life's chief reward.
But why ? Why be bound to a whole
world whose censure the noblest living
is certain to incur? For at least five
reasons. No life can escape that cen-
sure. Second, censure is not all that
the world pays to noble living; it pays
also noble rewards. Third, we gain the
reward of self-approval. Fourth, the
more we broaden the range of our
courage, fidelity, and affection, the
more we have of them, the more we
live. And fifth, we may not choose;
we come to our birth bound. We in-
itially owe the whole world these three
golden coins. They are the admission
fee into human society, into a world
brought to its present imperfect, yet
magnificent, order and beauty by the
imperfect, yet aspiring, courage, fidelity,
and affection of unnumbered millions
through thousands of past years. It
is mainly by trying to slip through life
without paying this gate-money in full
to a whole living world that we em-
bitter life and lives.
What, must we set out into life, and
rise and work, and sleep day and night,
day and night, to life's end under a
sense of incalculable debt to a whole
world? Is that to make the best
of life? Yes. The proposition contains
everything essential to a fairer, better
life and world than ever yet have been.
This naked statement of it shows its
grinning skeleton, but what would even
a Venus or an Adonis be without a
skeleton? If this is saying no more
than "Be good, and you '11 be happy,"
what of it? Has any method yet been
found by which a man can make him-
self happy or life worth while by being
bad ? This is axiomatic, that no worthy
happiness can be had without nobility.
What, then, is noble? I wish the ten
commandments^ or the last six, leaving
out of all debate the first four, were
known by some kinder, more appreci-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
ative name. They are so much more
than mere law. They are the naturally
essential requisites of nobility. Who-
ever first gave them, that is largely why
they were given. They are the logical
necessities of our courage, fidelity, and
affiection, and the limits of our prac-
tical acceptance of them are the exact
delimiting measure of our savagery.
Ordinarily the savage's sense of his
moral obligations suddenly loses nine
tenths of its energy at the bounds of
his village or tribe. At times the re-
maining tenth may reach farther, but
rarely indeed as a principle of living
fully reasoned out. When it does, that
reasoner is no longer a savage. We
have a strong parallel among enlight-
ened peoples. We cr>' —
Lives there a man with soul so dead,
but thousands who would scorn a
scorner of patriotism can only smile
at a plea for a courage, fidelity, and
affection devoted to a whole world as
one universal mother.
It is rare for the sentiment of pa-
triotism to be reasoned out into a prin-
ciple of life. Its true essence is a fear-
less, faithful, affectionate membership
in the social system to which we belong.
As such it becomes a constant, daily
motive, saturating every activity and
aspiration of the most ordinary life.
A true sentiment of citizenship must
be grounded in a lively perception of
the illimitable beneficence of human
government — a beneficence only less
than divine. To the fostering care of
government we owe every element of
life which makes us anything better
than gregarious animals. The words
'^mother-country*' and "fatherland"
confess this. Without government not
one in a million of us would ever have
been born and no one would have been
born in our place. For without govern-
ment man is hard put to it to steal a
wretched animal subsistence from a
thousand square miles to the man,
while under government he may live
the civilized life a thousand men to the
mile.
Our food, drink, clothes, tools, uten-
sils, every foot of highway, under-
ground piping, or overhead wire, ever>'
written or printed line, ever>' house of
residence, education, healing, or wor-
ship, every ship, lighthouse, or chart,
every coin bearing Caesar's or Lib-
erty's image, every hour of physical
safety, we owe to the care of our gov-
ernments and to the comity between
them.
National government and inter-
national comity are an atmosphere of
blessing as essential to our very being as
the air we breathe. They do not merel\
enable a million men to live where
hardly a hundred could live in sav-
agery; the million, because they are a
million instead of a hundred, can have
ten thousand things ten thousand times
as inexpensively as one savage could
get them from another, especially all
the things — and restraints — that make
life long, high, broad, and rich. Gov-
erment is human providence, and the
difference between it and life without
it would be yet more tremendous were
it not impossible for savagery to l)e
absolute or government perfect.
Now, there are multitudes honestly
seeking the life best worth living who
every day thank God for a host of
blessings — life itself and freedom and
safety to worship Him, not one of which
they could have without government,
yet whose patriotic devotion sleeps from
one war to another. They worship Got!
and endure government, without which
they never would have heard of a gt>d
whom it would be decent to worship.
The nobler notion of government
embraces the whole pulsating frame-
work of society, public and private,
with its uncounted governments within
governments, and he who is mean to
his government dwarfs his life. We
belong to the whole of human society,
and the truer our courage, fidelity, and
affection to it is, the more bearable will
be our ills, the richer our joys.
A life with this spread of boughs is
a tree the roots of which are so many
and so strong, reach so far^nd so deep.
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A NOVELIST'S PHILOSOPHY
43
and feed so richly on the best things,
that no storms can wreck it. It cannot
be a failure by its own fault, and so
cannot be a failure at all. It is likely
to be rich in constant rewards. More-
over this likelihood grows stronger as
more and more of mankind actually
live by these principles. Individuality
is a superb necessity to a noble life, yet
the most of life's disappointments come
of a mistaken individuality stifling this
high sentiment of collectivism, whose
happier name is civilization.
But there is an undue individualism
in whole peoples toward other whole
peoples. We see it in the patriotism
commonly taught to children — and
soldiers; a sentiment of courage, fidel-
ity, and aflFection for their own people,
transmuting itself into valor, pride, and
contempt toward other peoples ; a purely
militant spirit of clan. No life can be
quite at its best which does not demand
and seek for its national social order
a brave, faithful, fraternal subordina-
tion of itself to the common welfare
and self -betterment of all peoples, the
maintenance and advancement of one
universal order, an inteqiational ap-
plication of the golden rule.
Oddly enough, we are everywhere
nearer to this seeming Utopia in con-
duct than in motive. This comes by
commerce; and such conduct will re-
main better than its usual motive until
in the popular mind the lawful pursuit
of wealth is held in nobler esteem than
it ever has been. One reason why the
all but universal pursuit of wealth is
not more honored is that to producer,
carrier, seller, and consumer it can
operate beneficently with no more
benevolence than the most superficial
good-will and good faith. Also, because
it cannot normally sustain a benevolent
motive on any terms alien to a self-
seeking exchange of benefits. Savants,
missionaries, soldiers, artists, states-
men, poets are singled out for special
approval for seeking their reward in
the giving of benefits and regarding but
lightly their own compensation in things.
They find joy in the belief that "a
man's life consisteth not in the abun-
dance of the things which he
possesseth."
Well, neither does his destruction.
A people's life, especially, does con-
sist so largely in the spiritual use of
things that their possession in abun-
dance is of vast importance. The very
existence of millions of souls well
worthy to exist depends on it. The
splendid precept is aimed not against
wealth, but against greed.
Wealth itself is sacred, a thing trans-
muted from human life and transmut-
able into human life again. Any sor-
didness lies only in the way it may be
got, held, spent, or coveted, and it is
as easy for the poorest man to be
sordid with one dollar as for the richest
with his millions. Even the missionary
may forget at times that he could not
be a missionary, content with no harvest
but souls, were there not some ten
thousand men immersed in commerce,
law, and all the comparatively selfish
beneficences, and that two of the activi-
ties into which he would rejoice to lift
the savage are civil government and
the pursuit of wealth.
The breath and blood of this pursuit
is the ancient rule of quid pro quo, yet
it can be at the same time a labor of
love. Millions who feel their lives to
be well worth living do make the pur-
suit of wealth, whether in dividends or
wages, a labor of true love, and find
their chief satisfaction in so doing.
L'nfortunately, in business love chiefly
pushes from behind, draws but little in
front, operates half through the busi-
ness relation, and there dies. Consider
any ferr>'-boat or suburban train, black
with its human swarm hurrying to or
from work. Every soul in that swarm
is helping to make or do something not
directly for self, but for humanity as
a whole, and will draw his or her
reward not from one employer alone,
but from civilization at large in all its
manifold providence over him. Nearly
every one of them is going or coming,
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44
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
not with any zeal for civilization, yet
neither in brute greed for self alone,
but mainly for the sake of those who
by the bonds of love and birth are pre-
eminently his or hers and whose he or
she preeminently is.
Better, this pursuit always recognizes
in some degree that these bonds ought
to reach not only backward into the
home, but also forward into all busi-
ness relations. It finds courage essen-
tial to enterprise, fidelity to credit,
amity to harmonious understanding,
and it is largely on the buoying power
of this perception that the world and
worthy living have risen to where they
are.
Yet the seeker of wealth, to apply it
to the life which makes wealth most
real, will perceive that these virtues
cannot work effectually on mercenary
promptings without the promptings also
of citizenship, local and universal. But
fancy the world's trade carried forward
on true quid pro quo principles and at
the same time on the principles of
world citizenship, and say if that would
not make a better world than man has
ever yet seen.
There are men to-day pursuing wealth
on those joint principles — rich men,
poor men, the lofty, the lowly. They
do not expect this wealth-hungry world
to come quite around to their theories
or practice in any visible future, yet
they are living the life best worth while.
They have their errors, their sorrows,
small and great, but it is not their kind
who die broken-hearted or by their own
hand.
Finally, under these few principles
of collectivism the life best worth living
secures abundant play for an individual-
ism so rich and fine that compared with
it all self-assertion in discord with such
principles is ignoble and self -embitter-
ing. Also It is needless. Human life,,
whether to be human or divine, must
aspire and must rejoice. Whatever
man chooses to do, seek, or suflFer is
either immediately or ultimately for
joy. Too monotonously the cry of the
earnest is, "Of what use?" The idle
fret them into this narrowness by their
yet narrower test question, "What joy ?*'
until sometimes the earnest can see little
good in most of the world's activities.
They cry or sigh, "To what purpose is
this waste?'*
Doubtless there is waste, yet I think
a great deal of other-worldliness is
badly mixed with an amazing ingrati-
tude to human society. This worid
seems to me as definitely for joy as for
use or discipline; not a world with
which we should have as little to do
as we may, but as much as we can.
Both its joy and ours are one of the
debts we daily owe it. In the best life,
for a man or a world, use and joy are
yoke-mates. Every joy should be use-
ful, every use joyful, and the world's
work should be the making not of
utilities only for later joys, but joy it-
self, present joy. And in this joy-mak-
ing it is not every man for himself, —
that, again, were savager\% — but, as
truly as in commerce, each one of us
for thousands of thousands other than
himself.
The heroine of a certain novel, beinp
asked to pray by a dying soldier and
captive foe, says:
"I know, captain, that wc can't have long-
ings, strivings, or hopes without beliefs; bc^
liefs are what they live on. I believe in
being strong and sweet and true for the pure
sake of being so, and yet more for the
world's sake; and as much more again for
God's sake, as God is greater than his works.
I believe in beauty, and in joy. I believe
they are the goal of all goodness and of all
God's work and wish. As to resurrectron,
punishment and reward, I can't see what
my noblest choice has to do with them ; they
seem to me to be God's part of the matter.
Mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect
joy, both in and infinitely beyond myself,
with the desiring love with which I rejoice
to believe God loves them» and to pity the
lack of them with the loving pity with which
God pities it. And above all I believe that
no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart
from a love that loves the whole world's
joy better than any separate joy of any
separate soul."
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CONFERRING ON MR. SARGENT OF THE GOLD MEDAL
OF THE INSTITUTE
In presenting the medal Mf. Blash-
field said:
The gold medal of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters, designed
and executed by one of its members,
Mr. A. A. Weinman, has been given
five times : To Augustus Saint-Gaudens,
for sculpture; to James Ford Rhodes,
for history; to James Whitcomb Riley,
for poetry; to William Rutherford
Mead, for architecture; to Augustus
Thomas, for dramatic composition. To-
day it is awarded, in the department of
painting, to John Singer Sargent.
To state the titles of its recipient is
needless. To present in detail to such
an audience as this the artistic claims
of Sargent would be as superfluous as
to explain why President Wilson or
Mr. Roosevelt is known to his country-
men.
For thirty-five years the master has
been a prominent figure in art, looming
always larger. It is for painting that
this medal is given, and to me (in his
absence I can say it freely) Sargent as
painter is greater than any man alive.
It is, then, rather to Sargent as a man
and as an influence that I shall give the
few words which I have to say.
Thirty-five years ago by the calendar,
a thousand years or so by the changes
that have come, very many of us, then
young men, were studying in that sister
republic from which our distinguished
visitor, Monsieur Brieux, comes to us
to-day. Happy in her hospitality, we
were glad indeed to find shelter even
under the very edge of that mantle of
art, which, descending from the Greeks,
has rested for centuries upon the
shoulders of France. Already Sargent
wa5? a phenomenon to us and to his
Pre nch comrades. Bom in Florence,
fami liar even as a child with what
Italy had to teach, he quickly assimilated
Gallic traditions, became his master's
best pupil, and soon "bettered his in-
structions." Sensational his work was
because better than that of others; but
as we look back, we realize that it was
never eccentric. As long as those about
him were more or less conventional, he
was daring. While innovation was still
tonic, Sargent was an innovator. When
in later years innovation lapsed at the
hands of some men into incoherency,
Sargent held a straight course and re-
mained coherent. He could perform
all the feats of the most ultra-realist
of the plein-air school, as in his Hermit,
in the picture at the Metropolitan Mu-
seum. Such a figure is like a gun on
a disappearing carriage ; he appears and
produces his effect at the artist's will,
or he is lost in the woods by that same
will, and you have to look for him to
find him.
Such technical cleverness Sargent
possesses absolutely, but he makes it
a means, never an end, and thereby
as an influence he is always in medio
and always tutissimus.
His work is marked by sincerity,
strength, and sanity. To prove that
he is a true academician, respectful
of the great conventions of art, let
me quote to you a line from a letter
which I received from him years ago.
He says, "Composition and form are
the rarest things nowadays, and seem
to me the only things worth trying for."
Once, not having seen him for years,
I passed an hour in his studio. When
we left it the lady who was with
me said, "Did you realize that Mr.
Sargent is still shy, as he was years
ago?" Translate the word modest, and
you have the man. Since we had seen
him he had painted kings and heroes
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46 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
and sages, meeting them on his own not only to a great artist, but to a great-
ground, and still he remained modest, hearted man?
When we add to this that in a jealous In the much-regretted absence of Mr.
world no one has heard a hard word Sargent I place this medal for him in
spoken of Sargent, may we not con- the hands of the Secretary of the In-
clude that we are awarding our medal stitute.
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RESPONSE OF PRESIDENT WILSON TO
PRESIDENT POINCARE*
The White House.
December 7, 1914.
My dear Mr. President:
I feel honored to address you also as
my colleague in letters and wish to
thank you most sincerely for the kind
message you were gracious enough to
send through Monsieur Brieux.
I, of course, fully understand the
circumstances which have made it im-
possible for you to visit the United
States, but I wish, nevertheless, to ex-
press my sincere regret that it is not
possible for you to do so, and I desire
to take advantage of this occasion
not only to express my personal re-
spect and admiration, but also to assure
you of the warm feeling of men of let-
ters and of thought throughout the
United States for the distinguished
President of France.
The relations between our two peo-
ples have always been relations of such
genuine and cordial friendship that it
gives me peculiar pleasure as the offi-
cial representative of the people of the
United States to send through you, the
distinguished spokesman of France, my
warmest greetings to the people of the
great French Republic.
Be pleased to accept, my dear Mr.
President and my admired colleague,
the assurances of my sincere con-
sideration.
WooDRow Wilson.
Hon. R. Poincare,
President of the French Republic.
♦See page 8 for President Poincare's letter.
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THE INSTITUTE MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Institute is
annually awarded to any citizen of
the United States, whether a mem-
ber of the Institute or not, for dis-
tinguished services to arts or letters
in the creation of original work.
The conditions of the award are
these :
(1) "That the medal shall be awarded for
the entire work of the recipient, without
limit of time during which it shall have
been done; that it shall be awarded to a
living person or to one who shall not have
been dead more than one year at the time
of the award ; and that it shall not be
awarded more than once to any one person.
(2) "That it shall be awarded in the
following order: First year, for Sculpture;
second year, for History or Biography;
third year, for Music; fourth year, for
Poetry; fifth year, for Architecture; sixth
year, for Drama; seventh year, for Paint-
ing; eighth year, for Fiction; ninth year,
for Essays or Belles-Lcttres — returning to
each subject every tenth year in the order
named.
(3) "That it shall be the duty of the Sec-
retary each year to poll the members of the
section of the Institute dealing with the
subject in which the medat is that year to be
awarded, and to report the result of the
poll to the Institute at its Annual Meeting,
at which meeting the medal shall be awarded
by vote of the Institute."
The medal was designed by Adolph
A. Weinman, of the Institute, in
1909.
The first award — for sculpture —
was to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The
medal was presented to Mrs. Saint-
Gaudens at the meeting held in mem-
ory of her husband, November 20, 1909.
The second medal — for history —
was awarded to James Ford Rhodes,
1910.
The third medal — for poetr>' — was
awarded to James Whitcomb Rilev,
1911.
The fourth medal — for architecture
— was awarded to William Rutherford
Mead, 1912.
The fifth medal — for drama — was
awarded to Augustus Thomas, 1913.
On November 18, 1914, the Sixteenth Annual Meeting and Dinner of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters was held, when the
Sixth Gold Medal of the Institute was awarded,
in the Department of Painting to
John Singer Sargent
48
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CONSTITUTION OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF ARTS AND LETTERS
(Founded, 1898, by the American Social Sdence Association)
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
This society, organized by men nominated
and elected by the American Social Science
Association at its annual meeting in 1896,
with a view to the advancement of art,
music and literature, shall be known as the
National Institute of Arts and Letters.
II. MEMBERSHIP
1. Qualification for membership shall be
notable achievement in art, music or litera-
ture.
2. The number of members shall be limited
to two hundred and fifty.
III. ELECTIONS
The name of a candidate shall be proposed
to the Secretary by three members of the
section in which the nominee's principal
work has been performed. The name shall
then be submitted to the members of that
section, and if approved by a majority of
the answers received within fifteen days
may be submitted by a two-thirds vote of
the council to an annual meeting of the
Institute for formal election by a majority
vote of those present. The voting shall be
by ballot.
IV. OFFICERS
1. The officers of the Institute shall consist
of a President, six Vice-Presidents, a Sec-
retary and a Treasurer, and they shall con-
stitute the council of the Institute.
2. The council shall always include at least
one member of each department.
V. ELECTION OF OFFICERS
Officers shall be elected by ballot at the
annual meeting, but the council may fill a
vacancy at any time by a two-thirds vote.
VI. MEETINGS
1. The annual meeting of the Institute shall
be held on the first Tuesday in September,
unless otherwise ordered by the council.*
2. Special meetings may be called by the
President on recommendation of any three
members of the council, or by petition of at
least one-fourth of the membership of the
Institute.
VII. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
1. It shall be the duty of the President to
preside at all meetings of the Institute and
of the council.
2. In the absence of the President, the
senior Vice-President in attendance shall
preside.
3. The Secretary shall keep a minute of all
meetings of the Institute and of the council,
and shall be the custodian of all records.
4. The Treasurer shall have charge of all
funds of the Institute and shall make dis-
bursements only upon order of the council.
VIII. ANNUAL DUES
The annual dues for membership shall be
five dollars.
IX. INSIGNIA
The insignia of the Institute shall be a bow
of purple ribbon bearing two bars of old
gold.
X. EXPULSIONS
Any member may be expelled for unbecom-
ing conduct by a two-thirds vote of the
council, a reasonable opportunity for defense
having been given.
XI. AMENDMENTS
This Constitution may be amended by a
two-thirds vote of the Institute upon the
recommendation of the council or upon the
request, in writing, of any five members.
The Secretary shall be required to send to
each member a copy of the proposed amend-
ment at least thirty days before the meeting
at which such amendment is to be con-
sidered.
XII. THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AND
LETTERS
In order to make the Institute more efficient
in carrying out the purposes for which it
was organized, — the protection and further-
ance of literature and the arts, — and to give
greater definiteness to its work, a section
of the Institute to be known as the Acad-
emy OF Arts and Letters, shall be organ-
ized in such manner as the Institute may
provide ; the members of the Academy to be
chosen from those who at any time shall
have been on the list of membership of the
Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of thirty
members, and after these shall have organ-
ized it shall elect its own officers, prescribe
its own rules, the number of its members,
and the further conditions of membership ;
Provided that no one shall be a member of
the Academy who shall not first have been
on the list of regular members of the In-
stitute, and that in thf choice of members
individual distinction and character, and not
the group to which they belong, shall be
taken into consideration: and Provided that
all members of the Academy shall be native
or naturalized citizens of the United States.
♦For convenience the annual meeting is usually called for November or p€;cember. |
49 Digitized by VjOOQ IC
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
Department of Literature
Adams, Brooks
Adams, Henry
Ade, George
Alden. Henry M.
Aldrich, Richard
Allen, James Lane
Baldwin, Simeon E.
Bates, Arlo
Br'dges, Robert
Brownell, W. C.
Burroughs, John
Burton, Richard
Butler, Nicholas Murray
Cable, George W.
Chadwick, French Ensor
Chambers, R. W.
Channing, Edward
Chatfield-Taylor, H. C
Cheney, John Vance
Churchill, Winston
Connolly, James B.
Cortissoz, Royal
Croly, Herbert
Cross, Wilbur L.
Crothers, Samuel McChord
deKay, Charles
Dunne, Finley Peter
Edwards, H. S.
Egan, Maurice Francis
Fernald. C. B.
Finley, John H.
Firkins, O. W.
Ford, Worthington C.
Fox, John, Jr.
Furness, Horace Howard, Jr.
Garland, Hamlin
Gildersleeve, Basil L.
Gillette, William
Gilman, Lawrence
Gordon, George A.
Grant, Robert
Greenslet, Ferris
Griffis, William Elliot
Gummere, Francis B.
Hadley, Arthur Twining
Hamilton, Clayton
Harben, Will N.
Hardy, Arthur Sherburne
Harper, George McLean
Harrison, Henry Sydnor
Henderson, William J.
Herford, Oliver
Herrick, Robert
Hibben, John Grier
Hitchcock, Ripley
Hooker, Brian
Howe, M. A. De Wolfe
Howells, William Dean
Huntington, Archer M.
James, Henry
Johnson, Owen
Johnson, Robert Underwood
Kennan. George
Lloyd, Nelson
Lodge, Henry Cabot
Long, John Luther
Lovett, Robert Morss
Lowell, A. Lawrence
Lummis, Charles F.
Mabie, Hamilton Wright
Mackaye, Percy
Markham, Edwin
Martin, E. S.
Mather, F. J., Jr.
Matthews, Brander
McMaster, John Bach
Mitchell, John Ames
Mitchell, Lang don E.
More, Paul Elmer
Morris, Harrison S.
Nicholson, Meredith
Page, Thomas Nelson
Payne, Will
Payne, W. Morton
Perry, Bliss
Phelps, W. Lyon
Pier, Arthur Stanwood
Rhodes. James Ford
Riley, James Whitcomb
Rives, George L.
Roberts, C G. D.
Robinson, Edward A.
Roosevelt, Theodore
Royce, Josiah
Schelling, Felix E.
Schouler, James
Scollard, Clinton
Sedgwick, Henry D.
Seton, Ernest Thompson
Sherman, Frank Dempster
Shorey, Paul
Sloane, William Milligan
Sullivan, T. R.
Tarkington, Booth
Thayer, William Roscoc
Thomas, Augustus
Thomdike, Ashley H.
Tooker, L. Frank
Torrence, Ridgley
Townsend, E. W.
Trent, W. P.
van Dyke, Henry
Van Dyke, John C.
White, Andrew Dickson
White, William Allen
Whiting, C G.
Whitlock, Brand
William, Francis Howard
Williams, Jesse Lynch
Wilson, Harry Leon
Wilson, Woodrow
Wister, Owen
Woodberry, George E.
Department of Art
Adams, Herbert
Bacon, Henry
Ballin, Hugo
Barnard, George Gray
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MEMBERS AND OFFICERS OF THE INSTITUTE
5>
Bartlett. Paul W.
Beckwith, J. Carroll
Benson, F. W.
Betts, Louis
Blashfield. Edwin Rowland
Brooks, Richard E.
Brown, Glenn
Bnmner, Arnold W.
Brush, George de Forest
Carl sen, Emil
Chase, William M.
Clarkson, Ralph
Cole, Timothy
Cook, Walter
Cox. Kenyon
Dannat, W. T.
Day, Frank Miles
De Camp, Joseph
Dewey, Charles Melville
Dielman, Frederick
Donaldson, John M.
Dougherty, Paul
Duveneck, Frank
Foster, Ben
French, Daniel Chester
Gay, Walter
Gibson, Charles Dana
Gilbert, Cass
Grafly, Charles
Guerin, Jules
Hardenbergh, Henry J.
Harrison, Alexander
Harrison, Birge
Hassam, Childe
Hastings, Thomas
Henri, Robert
Howard, John Galen
Howe, W. H.
Howells, J. M.
Jaegers, Albert
Jones, Francis C.
Jones, H. Bolton
Kendall, W. Mitchell
Kendall, W. Sergeant
Low, Will H.
MacMonnies, Frederick
MacNeil, Hermon A.
Marr, Carl
McEwen, Walter
Mead, William Rutherford
Melchers, Gari
Metcalf. W. L.
Mowbray, H. Siddons
Ochtman, Leonard
Peabody. R. S.
Pennell, Joseph
Piatt, Charles A.
Pond, L K.
Potter, Edward C.
Pratt, Bela L.
Proctor. A. Phimister
Redfield, E. W.
Roth, F. G. R.
Ruckstuhl, F. W.
Ryder, Albert P.
Sargent, John S.
Schofield, W. E.
Shrady, Henry M.
Smedley, W. T.
Sjmions, Gardner
Taft, Lorado
Tarbell, E. C
Thayer, A. H.
Tryon, D. W.
Vedder, Elihu
Walden, Lionel
Walker, Henry O.
Walker, Horatio
Warren, Whitney
Weinman, A. A.
Weir, J. Alden
Wiles, Irving R.
Department of Music
Bird, Arthur
Brockway, Howard
Chadwicic, G. W.
Converse, F. S.
Damrosch, Walter
De Koven, Reginald
Foote, Arthur *
Gilchrist, W. W.
Hadley, H. K.
Herbert, Victor
Kelley, Edgar Stillman
Loeffler, Charles M.
Parker, Horatio W.
Schelling, Ernest
Shelley, Harry Rowe
Smith, David Stanley
Stock, Frederick A.
Van der Stucken, F.
Whiting, Arthur
DECEASED MEMBERS
Department of Literature
Adams, Charles Francis
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey
Bigelow, John
Cawein, Madison J.
Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain)
Conway, Moncure D.
Crawford, Francis Marion
Daly, Augustin
Dodge, Theodore A.
Eggleston. Edward
Fawcett. Edgar
Fiske, Willard
Ford, Paul Leicester
Frederic, Harold
Furness, Horace Howard
Gilder, Richard Watson
Gilman, Daniel Coit
Godkin, E. L.
Godkin, Parke
Hale, Edward Everett
Harland, Henry
Harris, Joel Chandler
Harte, Bret
Hay, John
Heme, James A.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth
Howard, Bronson
Howe, Julia Ward
Hutton, Laurence
Jefferson, Joseph
Johnston, Richard Malcolm
Lea, Henry Charles
Lodge, George Cabot
Lounsbury, Thomas R.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Mahan, Alfred T.
McKelway, St. Clair
Miller, Joaquin
Mitchell. Donald G.
Moody, William Vaughn
Muir, John
Munger, Theodore T.
Nelson, Henry Loomis
Norton, Charles Eliot
Peck, Harry Thurston
Perkins, James Breck
Schurz, Carl
Schuyler, Montgomery
Scudder, Horace
Shaler, N. S.
Smith, F. Hopkinson
Stedman, Edmund Clarence
Stillman, William J.
Stockton, Frank R.
Stoddard, Charles Warren
Thompson, Maurice
Tyler, Moses Coit
Viele, Herman K.
Warner, Charles Dudley
Department of Art
Abbey, Edwin A.
Alexander, John W.
Babb, George F.
Bierstadt, Albert
Bitter, Karl
Blum, Robert Frederick
Burnham, Daniel Hudson
Carrere, John M.
Collins, Alfred Q.
Homer, Winslow
I sham, Samuel
La Farge, John
Lathrop, Francis
Loeb, Louis
Millet, Francis D.
McKim, Charles FoUen
Pearce, Charles Spragfue
Porter, Benjamin C.
Post, George B.
Pyle,* Howard
Remington, Frederic
Saint-Gaudens, Augustus
Shirlaw, Walter
Twachtman, John H.
Vinton, Frederick P.
Ward, J. Q. A.
White, Stanford
Wood, Thomas W.
Department of Music
Buck, Dudley
MacDowell, Edward
Nevin, Ethelbert
Paine, John K.
OFFICERS
President
Edwin H. Blashfield
Vice-Presidents
Arthur \\Tiiting
Hamlin Garland
Walter Cook
Paul Dougherty
William Lyon Phelps
Henry D. Sedgwick
Secretary
Ripley Hitchcock
34 Gramercy Park, New York
Treasurer
Arnold W. Brunner
101 Park Avenue. New York
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SKETCH OF THE ACADEMY AND LIST OF
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
The American Academy of Arts
and Letters was founded in 1904 as
an interior organization of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, which in
turn was founded in 1898 by the Ameri-
can Social Science Association. In
each case the elder organization left the
younger to choose the relations that
should exist between them. Article
XII of the Constitution of the Institute
provides as follows:
In order to make the Institute more effi-
cient in carrying out the purposes for which
it was organized, — the protection and fur-
therance of literature and the arts. — and to
give greater definiteness to its work, a sec-
tion of the Institute to be known as the
ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
shall be organized in such manner as the
Institute may provide ; the members of the
Academy to be chosen from those who at
any time shall have been on the list of
members of the Institute.
The Academy shall at first consist of
thirty members, and after these shall have
organized it shall elect its own officers, pre-
scribe its own rules, the number of its
members, and the further conditions of
membership ; provided that no one shall be
a member of the Academy who shall not
first have been on the list of regular mem-
bers of the Institute, and that in the choice
of members individual distinction and char-
acter, and not the group to which they be-
long, shall be taken into consideration; and
proznded that all members of the Academy
shall be native or naturalized citizens of the
United States.
The manner of the organization of
the Academy was prescribed by the
following resolution of the Institute
adopted April 23, 1904:
Whereas, the amendment to the Consti-
tution known as Article XII, providing for
the organization of the Academy of Arts
and Letters, has been ratified by a vote of
the Institute.
Resolved: That the following method be
chosen for the organizafon of the Academy,
to wit. that seven members be selected by
ballot as the first members of the Academy,
and that these seven be requested and em-
powered to choose eight other members,
and that the fifteen thus chosen be re-
quested and empowered to choose five other
members, and that the twenty members
thus chosen shall be requested and empow-
ered to choose ten other members, — the en-
tire thirty to constitute the Academy in con-
formity with Article XII, and that the first
seven members be an executive committee
for the purpose of insuring the completion
of the number of thirty members.
Under Article XII the Academy has
efltected a separate organization, but at
the same time it has kept in close re-
lationship with the Institute. On the
seventh of March, 1908, the member-
ship was increased from thirty to fifty
members, and on the seventh of Novem-
ber, 1908, the following Constitution
was adopted:
CONSTITUTION OF THE ACADEMY
I. ORIGIN AND NAME
The American Academy of Arts and Let-
ters is an association primarily organized
by the National Institute of Arts and Let-
ters. Its aim is to represent and further
the mterests of the Fine Arts and Litera-
ture.
II MEMBERSHIP AND ELECTIONS
It shall consist of not more than fifty
members, and all vacancies shall be filled
from the membership of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters. No one shall
be elected a member of the Academy who
shall not have received the votes of a ma-
jority of the members. The votes shall be ,
opened and counted at a meeting of the
Academy. In case the first ballot shall not
result in an election a second ballot shall
be taken to determine the choice- between
the two candidates receiving the highest
number of votes on the first ballot. Elec-
tions shall be held only on due notice under
rules to be established by the Academy.
III. AIMS
That the Academy may be bound together
in community of taste and interest, its
members shall meet regularly for discus-
sion, and for the expression of artistic,
literary and scholarly opinion on such topics
as are brought to its attention. For the
purpose of promoting the highest standards,
the Academy may also award such prizes
as may be founded by itself or entrusted to
it for administration.
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54
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
IV. OFFICERS
The officers shall consist of a President and
a Chancellor, both elected annually from
among the members to serve for one year
only; a Permanent Secretary, not neces-
sarily a member, who shall be elected by the
Academy to serve for an indeterminate
period, subject to removal by a majority
vote; and a Treasurer. The Treasurer shall
be appointed as follows: Three members of
the Academy shall be elected at each annual
meeting to serve as a Committee on Finance
for the ensuing year. They shall appo»ni
one of their number Treasurer of the Acad-
emy to serve for one year. He shall receive
and protect its funds and make disburse-
ments for its expenses as directed by the
Committee. He shall also make such in-
vestments, upon the order of the President,
as may be approved by both the Committee
on Finance and the Executive Committee.
V. DUTIES OF OFFICERS
It shall be the duty of the President, and
in his absence of the Chancellor, to preside
at all meetings throughout his term of office,
and to safeguard in general all the interests
of the Academy. It shall be the duty of
the Chancellor to select and prepare the
business for each meeting of his term. It
shall be the duty of the Secretary to keep
the records; to conduct the correspondence
of the Academy under the direction of the
President or Chancellor; to issue its author-
ized statements; and to draw up as required
such writing as pertain to the ordinary busi-
ness of the Academy and its committees.
These three officers shall constitute the
Executive Committee.
VI. AMENDMENTS
Any proposed amendment to this Constitu-
tion must be sent in writing to the Secre-
tary signed by at least ten members; and it
shall then be forwarded by the Secretary to
every member. It shall not be considered
until three months after it has been thus
submitted. No proposed amendment shall
be adopted unless it receives the votes in
, writing of two-thirds of the members.
MEMBERS AND OFFICERS
Following is the list of members in
the order of their election :
* William Dean Howells
♦Augustus Saint-Gaudens
♦Edmund Clarence Stedman
♦John La Farge
♦Samuel Langhorne Clemens
♦John Hay
♦Edward MacDowell
Henry James
♦Charles Follen McKim
Henry Adams
♦Charles Eliot Norton
♦John Quincy Adams Ward
♦Thomas Rayncsford Lounsbury
Theodore Roosevelt
♦Thomas Bailey Aldrich
♦Joseph JeflFcrson
. John Singer Sargent
♦Richard Watson Gilder
♦Horace Howard Fumess
♦John Bigelow
♦Winslow Homer
♦Carl Schurz
♦Alfred Thayer Mahan
♦Joel Chandler Harris
Daniel Chester French
'John Burroughs
James Ford Rhodes
♦Edwin Austin Abbey
Horatio William Parker
William Milligan Sloane
♦Edwin Everett Hale
Robert Underwood Johnson
^ George Washington Cable
♦Daniel Coit Gilman
♦Thomas Wentworth Higginson
♦Donald Grant Mitchell
.\ndrew Dickson White
Henry van Dyke
William Crary Brownell
Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve
♦Julia Ward Howe
Woodrow Wilson
Arthur Twining Hadley
' Henry Cabot Lodge
♦Francis Hopkinson Smith
♦Francis Marion Crawford
♦Henry Charles Lea
Edwin Howland Blashfield
William Merritt Chase
Thomas Hastings
Hamilton Wright Mabie
♦Bronson Howard
Brander Matthews
Thomas Nelson Page
Elihu Vedder
George Edward Woodbcrry
♦William Vaughn Moody
Kenyon Cox .
George Whitefield Chadwick
Abbott Handerson Thayer
♦John Muir
♦Charles Francis Adams
Henry Mills Alden
George deForest Brush
William Rutherford Mead
♦John White Alexander
Bliss Perry
♦Francis Davis Millet
Abbott Lawrence Lowell
James Whitcomb Riley
Nicholas Murray Butler
Paul Wayland Bartlctt
♦George Browne Post
Owen Wister
Herbert Adams
Augustus Thomas
Timothy Cole
Cass Gilbert
William Roscoe Thayer
♦Deceased.
OFFICERS FOR THE YEAR 1914-15
President: Mr. Howells Chancellor and Treasurer
Permanent Secretary: Mr. Johnson
Directors: Messrs. Blashfield, Brownell. Hastings, Howells, J<
and Si.OANE Digitized by
Mr. SLOAmc
FORM OF BEQUEST
I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to the American Acad-
emy OF Arts and Letters, a corporation organized and incor-
porated under the laws of the State of New York, the sum of
dollars, to be applied
to the uses of said corporation.
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r^ 3o/ IS
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
''■ATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
,ND LETTERS
■'1 6
vember 18-19, '9'^
.A
Arnold W, Br\
-^UCATION
Nicholas Murray *
^AiCAN Literature i
Brand Whitlock ....^
Dean Howells of the Gold Medal
. Fiction
Hamilton Wright Mahi^
«
jwells in Acceptance of the Medal |
. t
Memorial Tributes:
s ^DAMS [ William M, Sloane
Robert Underwood Johnson., 5s
'tSFORD Lounsbury Brandcr Matthews 61
^ Institute and the Academy, and Other Data 65
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r^ 3o, IS
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
Number IX: 1916
Seventh Annual Joint Meeting, Boston, November 18-19, i9»5
New York
Office of the Academy, 70 Fifth Avenue
\ ...Google
1
Copyright, 1916, by
The American Academy op Arts and Lbttbrs
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE AMERICAN
ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS and of THE NATIONAL
INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Sessions at Jordan Hall, Boston, November 18-19, 1915
First Session, 10.45 a. m., November 18
William M. Sloane
Chancellor of the Academy, Presiding
Address by the Chancellor
William M, Sloane 5
The IJevolt of Modern Democracy against Standards of Duty
Brooks Adams 8
The Country Newspaper
William Allen White 13
An American Mania as seen by a Foreigner
. . Paul W. Bartlett 19
Poems: I. Remarks about Kings
II. Lights Out
Henry Van Dyke 26
Second Session, 3.15 p. m., November 18
CONCERT OF COMPOSITIONS BY MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTE
(See page 27)
Third Session, 10.45 a. m., November 19
Edwin Howland Blashfield
President of the Institute, Presiding
Remarks by the President of the Institute
Edwin Howland Blashfield,, 28
Poem : Federation
Percy MacKaye 28
Architecture and the Man
Arnold W. Brunner 30
DiSaPLINE AND THE SOCIAL AlM IN EDUCATION
Nicholas Murray Butler 36
The American Quality in American Literature
Brand Whitlock 41
Presentation to William Dean Howells of the Gold Medal
OF THE Institute for Fiction
Hamilton Wright Mabie 51
Letter from Mr. Howells in Acceptance of the Medal 53
Memorial Tributes:
Alfred Thayer Mahan I u/:ii:^^ i/ qi^„^^ ^a
Charles Francis Adams f ^^^^^^'^ ^^- '^'''^^^ ^^
John Muir Robert Underwood Johnson,, 58
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury Brandcr Matthews 62
Medals of the Institute and the Academy, and Other Data 65
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PREFATORY NOTE
On the evening of November 17, President and
Mrs. A. Lawrence Lowell gave a reception to the
members of the Institute and their wives. On the
eighteenth Mr. James Ford Rhodes gave a luncheon
to the members of the, Academy; that evening the
dinner of the Institute was held at the Harvard
Club. On the afternoon of the nineteenth, Mrs.
John L. Gardner threw open Fenway Court to the
members of the Institute and their wives. Institu-
tions that offered their courtesies were the. Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, the Harvard Club, the Union
Club, the St. Botolph Club, and the Tavern Club.
Through the courtesy of Mr. George W. Chad-
wick the sessions were held in Jordan Hall.
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
American Academy of Arts and Letters
AND OF THE
National Institute of Arts and Letters
Published at mteroals by the Societies
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy, Mr. R. U. Johnson,
Room 41 1 , 70 Fifth Avenue, New York Price per Annum $1.00
Vol. II New York, November, 191 6 No. 3
THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Public Meetings held at Jordan Hall, New York
November 18-19, 1915
William M. Sloane, Chancellor of the Academy, and
Edwin Howland Blashfield, President of the Institute, Presiding
[Session of November i8]
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM M. SLOANE
Chancellor of the Academy
Were Mr. Howdls present in person, its development. The range of his
as he is in spirit, he would magnify genius has been such that he is an
his office as president of this associa- American in the broadest sense, and his
tion. Of that you may be assured, power has been so commanding that
because in our annual meetings of the wherever our language is read he is
past he has repeatedly lent the whole esteemed national in dimensions, corre-
force of his personal reputation to sponding to all the diversities of our
maintain and explain our history and land and people ; and human as a citizen
purposes, as well as the high respon- of the world, possessor of what is the
sibilities which have been placed on general heritage of his art among the
the Institute and Academy of Arts and choicest of mankind.
Letters. This I am sure he would have In this he is the manifest standard
been proud to do once more in this city and standard-bearer for this body of
of renown, which was the home of his artists and men of letters, which was
soul during one of the finest periods of styled National and American by the
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Social Science Association, its creator,
a noble band of patriots, whose moving
spirit in the days of its highest efficiency
was Frank B. Sanborn, a respected and
devoted New Englander. It was that
organization which selected the original
membership of the Institute. We
derive, therefore, in a certain sense
from the Boston and Concord spirit.
The list embraced men from every part
of our land; as it has been enlarged,
and the dead have been replaced by the
living, that fact has not been forgotten,
and what is now a tradition has the
sanctity of customary law. Were the
birth^aces affixed to the names of our
members, it might appear as if effort
had been exerted to uphold it ; but in
fact the great hearthstones of artistic
and literary energy, the city centers,
glow by forces which collect there by
the law of gravitation from whereso-
ever they originate in town or country.
Two elements, therefore, enter into
our fervid life, that of place quality and
that of art unity. As America is one
and indivisible, r^ardless of miles and
hours, an incontestible truth, so our
central purpose is to unify all its artistic
energies. There is no similar associa-
tion elsewhere, because ho other com-
pany seeks or has sought to include all
the fine arts in its purview. Ours is the
age of the highest specialization known
to history. To this we owe the amazing
achievements in the applied arts and
sciences which in far less than a century
have revolutionized the conditions and
conduct of life more radically than dur-
ing the previous millennium.
But movement is not necessarily
progress, and the chapter we have
written in the history of morals awaits
the judgment of time and the critics.
Specialization in the fine arts has not
reached an equal development, but it
has gone far on the same road. So, too,
has education. The finest spirits in both
have become aware of the inherent
danger of too wide a cleft between the
segments. Each needs the organic con-
nection with all the others; secession
means the stopps^e of spiritual circula-
tion, and, if not death, either atrophy
or eccentricity. To illustrate from the
field of my own activities, the new
history, so called, became so scientific
as to be arid. Within a single lustrum I
have heard the meed of highest merit
assigned by experts of the four great
Western powers to Macaulay because
above all else, while neglecting neither
erudition nor research, he was a man
of letters. The great musician is the
man of broadest culture, while an artist
and sculptor of the highest rank are the
profoundest students in the history of
their arts.
In the short time at my disposal it
would not be possible to explain the
exquisite transfusion of benefits which
the meetings of Institute and Academy
set up in the hearts and minds of those
who attend them. Once every year in
some great community which cultivates
the things of the spirit we seek for an
even broader sympathy. Homogeneity
is stagnation. Too much inertia, too
much stability, too much local patriot-
ism, too much homekeeping either in
place or occupation, create but a
homely wit. We need, in order to be
truly national and American, to breathe
the different atmospheres, be it the cir-
cumambient air of the Federal capital,
or of the metropolitan cities of East or
West, or of Boston, still as ever the
mother alike of movements and of
leaders. So we thank you for the
opportunity which your hospitality gives
us. What you give we accept in the
spirit of a like generosity and open-
mindedness. To make clear, entirely
clear, to the multitude, what are our
aims requires long agitation ; but from
each of those who honor us with their
presence we may hope for help and
stimulus. Primarily we exist for our-
selves as a mutual-benefit society; we
are no Olympian court to sit in judg-
ment, nor actors on a stage theatrically
attitudinizing before one another or the
public. We are a company of strenuous
workers, merchants and manufacturers
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ADDRESS OF WILLIAM M. SLOANE
of wares conceived in the spirit at least
of beauty and fitness. If we are to make
a mark on the public taste, if we are to
promote the efficiency of the fine arts
in rendering democracy efficient in peace
or war, it will be by the democratic
temper and the individual output of
each of us as a public servant.
For the purposes of our organic life
and artistic propaganda we must h^ve
a home and endowments. For the
former we have the conditional gift of
a dignified site, and of endowment we
have a handsome banning, sufficient
to insure permanency but not full
efficiency. But we have yet to find that
moral support which springs from
understanding and sympathy by the
minds which rise above mediocrity, men
and women who, passionately loving
their country, realize that what art and
literature create for it must be the best
expression of its genius. Liberty and
democracy do not mean subordination,
but coordination. Why should the
workers in the American world of
literature and fine arts not demand in
their turn a full share of the great bene-
fits in moral and material support
lavishly bestowed on the stupendous
activities of men in other fields, no more
devoted, no more able, no more com-
manding in power than those whose
names adorn the roll of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters?
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THE REVOLT OF MODERN DEMOCRACY AGAINST
STANDARDS OF DUTY
By Brooks Adams
I know not how it may be with others,
but I am aware of a growing reluctance
to express my views in public, which
of late has approached absolute re-
pugnance. Perhaps this feeling may be
due to the sombreness of age, but I
rather incline to ascribe it to an appre-
hension of the future which dawned on
me long ago, but which of late has
deepened with a constantly augmenting
, acceleration. If I thought that anything
/ that I could do would effect the final
/ issue, I might be more inclined to effort ;
I but I perceive myself to be so far
\ sundered from most of my countrymen
that I shrink exceedingly from thrust-
ing on them opinions which will give
offense or, more likely still, excite
derision. For when I look about me
I see the American people as a whole
quite satisfied that they have solved the
riddle of the universe, and firmly con-
vinced that by means of plenty of
money, popular education, cheap trans-
portation, universal suffrage, unlimited
amusements, the moral uplift, and the
"democratic ideal," they have only one
more step to take to land them in
perfection.
I cannot altogether share this opti-
mism, and particularly I have doubts
touching the American "democratic
ideal." It is of these doubts that I
intend to speak to-day, as I consider
this apotheosis of the "democratic ideal"
the profoundest and most far-reaching
phenomenon of our age. Yet I so much
dislike assuming 'the critical attitude
that I should hav^ declined the flatter-
ing invitation you have given me to
address you had I deemed it quite
becoming for a member of an associa-
tion like this to refuse to participate in
your proceedings when requested to do
so by your officers. I have only this one
claim to urge to your indulgence: at
least I have not sought to vex you by
obtruding my speculations on you.
I start with this proposition, which to
me is self-evident, and which I there-
fore assume as axiomatic: that no
organized social system, such as wc
commonly call a national civilization,
can cohere against those enemies which
must certainly beset it, if it fail to recog-
nize as its primary standard of duty the
obligation of the individual man and
woman to sacrifice themselves for the
whole community in time of need. And,
furthermore, that this standard may be
effective and not theoretical, it must be
granted that the po>ver Jo_4etermine
when the moment of need has arisen lies
not with the individual, but with society
in_jits— corporate capacity. This last
crucial attribute can never be admitted
to inhere in private judgment.
I shall ask you to consider with me
first the nature of the American "demo-
cratic ideal," and subsequently to test
it by this standard. For my part, for
the last twelve months this subject has
been constantly in my thoughts, fixed
there by the war now raging.
Last August I chanced to be in Paris
when hostilities began, and I came home
filled with the solemn impression of the
French sense of duty made on me by
seeing the whole manhood of France
march to the frontier without a murmur
and without a quaver. I knew that the
same thing was going on in Germany.
I thought that men could do no more.
Now, the rights and wrongs of this war
are, for my present purpose, im-
material; all that concerns me is the
national standard it illustrates of self-
sacrifice and of duty. And on both sides
of the Rhine I found that standard
good. It seemed to me also to be the
true standard of pure democracy. For
what can be more democratic than that
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REVOLT OF MODERN DEMOCRACY AGAINST STANDARDS OF DUTY 9
y
prince and peasant, plutocrat and
pauper, shall serve their country to-
gether side by side, marching in the
same regiment, wearing the same uni- .
form, submitting to the same discipline,
enduring the same hardships, and dying
the same death ? In mass universal ser-t \
vice is absolute equality. Some men, it' ^
is true, serve as officers, but these men
are officers only because, by lives
devoted to obedience, to self-denial,
and to study, they have made them-
selves fit for command, and when the
hour of danger is at hand this fitness
for command is recognized by their
countrymen who have chosen more
lucrative or easier walks in life.
I had supposed that in our democracy
these great facts would be appreciated
and honored by all, even though it might
possibly be argued that in America the
necessity for such self-abnegation had
not yet arisen. I never fell into greater
error. Familiar as I am with American
idiosyncrasies, I was astonished, on
landing in New York, to find the
German military system bitterly assailed
as conflicting with the American "demo-
cratic ideal," and I asked myself why
this should be. It is true that the
German system of universal military
service had been the first to be
thoroughly organized, but that could not
impeach its principle or make it conflict
with a sound "democratic ideal."
I beg you to grant me an instant in
which to explain myself. I wish to
make it clear that I have never admired
Germany as a whole, although I have
known her rather intimately. A genera-
tion ago, when it was the fashion here
almost to worship the Germans, even to
their art, their literature, their language,
and their mapners, when eminent gentle-
men who have no good word for
Germany now used to insist to me at
college that nothing but a Germanized
education could suffice for the student,
I rebelled. I protested that Germany
had made no such contribution to our
civilization, in comparison, for instance,
vith France, as to justify in us any such
servile attitude, and that I could not
admit her claims. In later years I have
distrusted her ambitions, I have detested
her manners, I have abhorred her
language and her art, I have feared her
competition, and I have been jealous of
her navy, but I have never questioned in
my heart that her military system of
universal service is truly democratic,
and I have wished that it might be
adopted here. It never occurred to me
that it could be denounced as undemo-
cratic, or reviled as a tool of the Junker
class, used by them for their own
aggrandizement and for the oppression
of the German people. Such an accusa-
tion would have seemed to me too
shallow to be noticed. I could not com-
prehend how any sober-minded man
who knew the history of the Seven
Years War and of Jena could fail to
perceive that the German military
system was an effect of a struggle of a
people for existence, and that the
German people and the German army
are one. Their vices and their virtues
are the same. To imagine that a hand-
ful of Prussian squires, most of whom
are far from rich, could coerce millions
of their countrymen from all ranks in
life, who equally with the Junkers are
trained and armed soldiers, into doing
something which they thought harmful,
and waging wars which they hated as
ruinous or wrong, was and is to me a
proposition too absurd to deserve
serious refutation. What, then, I asked
myself, could be the secret of the
hostility of Americans to German uni-
versal military service, a hostility which
Americans disguised under the phrase
of faith in "democratic ideals"? And
as I watched this phenomenon and
meditated upon what I saw and heard,
the suspicion which had long lain half-
consciously in my mind ripened into
the conviction that the real tyranny-
against which my countrymen revolted I
was the tyranny of universal self-sicri- '^\
fice, and that they hated German uni-
versal military service because it rigor-
ously demanded a sacrifice from every
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
man from which they personally
shrank; for, enforced in America, as
it might be were Germany to prevail in
this war, they would perhaps be con-
strained to give one year of their lives
to their country.
If this inference were sound, it
occurred to me that not improbably our
^'democratic ideal" consisted in the prin-
. ciple that men or women should not be
f obliged to conform to any standard of
duty against their will, or, in short, in
\the principle of universal selfishness.
Then I turned to our women for
enlightenment, as the female sex is
supposed to set ours an example in un-
seUishness. To instruct myself I read
the modern feminist literature and
followed a little the feminist debate,
and very shortly I found my question
answered.
Since civilization first dawned oa
earth the family has been the social
unit on which jdl authority, all order,
and all obedience has reposed. There-
fore the family has been the cement of
society, and the chief element in co-
^hesion. To preserve the family, and
I thus to make society stable, the woman
has always sacrificed herself for it, as
the man has sacrificed himself for her
upon the field of battle. The obliga-
tions and the sacrifices have been
correlative. But I beheld our modern
women shrilly repudiating such a
standard of duty and such a theory of
self-sacrifice. On the contrary, they
denied that as individual units they
owed society any duty as mothers or as
wives, and maintained that their first
duty was to themselves. If they found
the bonds of the family irksome, they
might renounce them and wander
whither they would through the world
in order to obtain a fuller life for them-
selves. This phase of individualism
would appear to be an ultimate form of
selfishness, and the final resolution of
society into atoms, but none the less it
would also appear to be the feminine
interpretation of the American "demo-
cratic ideal."
Proceeding a little further, I come to
the capitalistic class — a class which I
take to be a far more powerful class
with us than are the Prussian Junkers
in Germany. Nothing, therefore, can
be more important to our present pur-
pose than to appreciate the standard
recognized by them. I shall take but
one test of many I applied, because time
is pressing.
The railways are to a modem
country what the arteries are to the
human body. The national life-blood
flows through them. They are a prime
factor in our prosperity and content-
ment in time of peace, and our first
means of defense in time of war.
Though they are vital to our corporate
life, our Government confides their
administration to capitalists as trustees,
who are supposed to collect for their
work as trustees a reasonable compen-
sation, which they levy on the public by
a tax on transportation which we call
rates. Very clearly no injustice could
be more flagrant and no injury deeper
than that such taxes should be unequal
or excessive. I ask in what spirit this
most sacred of trusts has been per-
formed? The l^islation that cumbers
our statute-books, the cases that
cram our law reports, and the wrecks
upon the stock-market tell the tale
better than could any words of mine.
It is hardly a tale of self-abn^ation to
meet a standard of public duty, though
it may well be an exemplification of the
American ''democratic ideal."
Next in order would naturally come
labor. The spectacle in democratic
England of hundreds of thousands of
coal miners utilizing the extremity of
their country's agony as a means of ex-
torting from society a selfish pecuniary
advantage for themselves brings before
us vividly enough the workman's under^
standing of the "democratic ideal."
Supposing, for our own edification,
we contemplate ourselves, we who are
artists and literary men, and ask our-
selves what our interpretation is of our
"democratic ideal." At this suggestior
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REVOLT OF MODERN DEMOCRACY AGAINST STANDARDS OF DUTY ii
there rises before my mind a vision of
long ago. I was one evening conversing
in a dub with a well-known painter
about some decorations which were
attracting attention and were very
costly, but which offended my taste as
being frankly plutocratic. I observed
that though they brought high prices,
I questioned whether they conformed
to any true canon of art. Like a flash
he turned on me and said :
"And who are you to talk of artistic
standards? In our world there is but
one standard, and that the standard of
price. That which sells is good art, that
which does not sell is bad art. There
can be no appeal from price."
I made no answer, for I saw that he
was right. Art is a form of expression,
and art can, therefore, express only the
society which environs it, and our
standard is money, or, in other words,
\the means of self-indulgence. I had
been tmconsciously thinking of the civi-
lization which produced the old tower
of Chartres and the Virgin's Portal at
Paris, when monks, safe in their con-
vents, could concentrate their souls on
expressing the aspirations and the self-
devotion of their age. I wonder
whether we as literary men have in
mind, when we do our work, an ideal
which is our standard, as religion was
their standard or as the verdict at
Olympia was the standard of the
Greeks; or do we worry little over the
form or the substance of our labor, and
think mostly of the artifices which may
attract the public, and charm the pub-
lisher by stimulating sales. If we do
the latter, we exemplify the American
"democratic ideal," which denies any
standard save the standard of self-
interest which is incarnated in price.
I had reached this point in my re-
flections when it occurred to me to test
my inferences by applying them to our
collective public thought. After some
hesitation I have concluded that, as a
unified organism, we Americans are
nearly incapable of continuous collective
thought except at long intervals under
the severest tension. For instance, dur-
ing the Civil War one-half of our
country sustained what might be called
a train of partly digested collective
thought through some four years, but
on the return to the Union of the
Southern States our thought became
more disorderly than ever. Ordinarily >
we cannot think except individually or
locally. Hence the particular interest »
must, as a rule, dominate the collective \
interest, so that scientific legislation is 1
impossible, and no fixed policy can be
long maintained. Thus we can formu-
late no scientific tariff, since our tariffs
are made by combinations of private
and local interests, with little or no
relation to collective advantage. We
can organize no effective army, because
the money aridlhe effort needed to con-
struct an effective army must be
frittered away to gratify localities; nor
can we have a well-adjusted navy,
because we can persist in no plan
developed by a central intelligence. We
call our appropriation bill for public
works our pork-barrel, probably with
only too good reason. But the point to
be marked is that in our national legis-
lature the instinct of unity, continuity,
and order seldom prevails over in-
dividualism or disorder, with the result
that our collective administration otf
public affairs may not unreasonably be
termed chaotic.
Descending from the Union to the
State, the same rule holds. This year
a constitution was submitted to the
voters of New York, the object of
which was to check in some small
measure the chaos of individualism in
state affairs. It was defeated by an
enormous majority because the "demo-
cratic ideal" does not tolerate the notion
of unity or order at the cost of private
self-interest.
But after all the most perfect ex-
emplification of the American "demo-
cratic ideal," or the principle of selfish-
ness in public affairs, occurs in our
cities. In America there is one city
administered on the principle of unity
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
and self-restraint. It is Washington,
but I suppose that no other municipality
in the land would endure such a yoke,
and the reason is plain. In Washington
private interests are subordinated to
public interests, but our "democratic
ideal" contemplates a municipal system
which yields an opposite result. Self-
interest requires that our municipalities
should be so organized that every rich
man may buy such franchises as he
needs to enrich himself, while every
poor man may obtain his job at the pub-
lic cost. This is the complete subordina-
tion of the principle of unity to that of
diversity, of order to chaos, of the com-
munity to the individual, of self-sacri-
fice to selfishness. It is in fine the pure
American ''democratic ideal."
I submit most humbly that untold
ages of human experience have proved
to us that nature is inexorable and
demands of us self-sacrifice if we would
have our civilization, our country, our
families, our art, or our literature
survive. Unselfishness is what the
words patriotism and maternal love
mean. Those words mean that we can-
not survive and live for ourselves alone.
We cannot be individualistic, or selfish
to an extreme, we cannot hope for
salvation through our "democratic
ideal." For, if we accept that, we
accept the conclusion that our country
can never exert her strength in the hour
of peril, because we leave to private
judgment the sacrifice which every citi-
zen shall make her. We renounce a
standard of duty. But surely sooner or
later that mortal peril must arise which
none can hope to escape, either from
within or from without, and when wc
least expect it. "But of that day and
hour knoweth no man, for ye know
not what hour your Lord may come."
If it be true, as I do apprehend, that
our "democratic ideal" is only a phrase
to express our renunciation as a nation
of all standards of duty, and the sub-
stitution therefor of a reference to
private judgment; if we men are to
leave to ourselves as individual units the
decision as to how and when our
country may exact from us our lives;
if each woman may dissolve the family
bond at pleasure; if, in fine, we are to
have no standard of duty, of obedience,
or, in substance, of right and wrong
save selfish caprice ; if we are to resolve
our society from a firmly cohesive mass,
unified by a common standard of duty
and self-sacrifice, into a swarm of atoms
selfishly fighting one another for money,
as beggars scramble for coin, then I
much fear that the hour cannot be far
distant when some superior, because
more cohesive and intelligent, organism,
such as nature has decreed shall always
lie in wait for its victim, shall spring
upon us and rend us as the strong have
always rent those wretched, because
feeble, creatures who are cursed with
an aborted development.
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THE COUNTRY NEWSPAPER
By William Allen White
The country town is one of those
things we have worked out for our-
selves here in America. Our cities are
not unlike other cities in the world ; the
trolley and the omnibus and the sub-
way, the tender, hot-house millionaire
and the hardy, perennial crook, are
found in all cities. Qass lines extend
from city to city well around the globe.
And American aversion to caste dis-
appears when the American finds him-
self cooped in a city with a million of
his fellows. But in the country town —
the political unit larger than the village
and smaller than the city, the town with
a population between three thousand
and one hundred thousand — we have
built up something distinctively Ameri-
can. Physically, it is of its own kind;
the people for the most part live in
detached wooden houses, on lots with
fifty feet of street frontage and from
one hundred to one hundred and fifty
feet in depth. Grass is the common
heritage of all the children — grass and
flowers. A kitchen-garden smiles in the
back yard, and the service of public
utilities is so cheap that in most country
towns in America electricity for light-
ing and household power, water for the
kitchen sink and the bath-room, gas for
cooking, and the telephone with un-
limited use may be found in every
house. In the town where these lines
are written there are more telephones
than there are houses, and as many
water intakes as there are families, and
more electric lights than there are men,
women and children. Civilization brings
its labor-saving devices to all the people
of an American country town. The un-
civilized area is negligible, if one
measures civilization by the use of the
conveniences and luxuries that civiliza-
tion has brought.
In the home the difference between
the rich and the poor in these towns is
denoted largely by the multiplication of
rooms ; there is no very great difference
in the kinds of rooms in the houses of
those who have much and those who
have little. And, indeed, the economic
differences are of no consequence. The
average American thinks he is saving
for his children and for nothing else.
But if the child of the rich man and the
child of the poor man meet in a common
school, graduate from a common high
school, and meet in the country college
or in the state university, — ^and they do
associate thus in the days of their youth,
— there is no reason why parents should
strain themselves for the children; and
they do not strain themselves. They
relax in their automobiles, go to the
movies, inhabit the summer boarding-
house in the mountains or by the sea,
and hoot at the vulgarity and stupidity
of those strangers who appear to be rich
and to be grunting and sweating and
saving and intriguing for more money,
but who really are only well-to-do
middle-class people.
In the American country town the
race for great wealth has slackened.
The traveler who sees our half-
dozen great cities, who goes into our
industrial centers, loafs about our
pleasure resorts, sees much that is sig-
nificantly American. But he misses
much also if he fails to realize that there
are in America tens of thousands of
miles of asphalted streets arched by
elms, bordered by green lawns, fringed
with flowers marking the procession of
the seasons, and that back from these
streets stand millions of houses owned
by their tenants — houses of from five to
ten rooms, that cost from twenty-five
hundred to twenty-five thousand dollars,
and that in these houses live a people
neither rural nor urban, a people who
have rural traditions and urban aspira-
tions, and who are getting a rather large
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
return from civilization for the dollars
they spend. Besides the civilization that
comes to these people in pipes and on
wires, they are buying civilization in
the phonograph, the moving-picture, the
automobile, and the fifty-cent reprint
of last year's fiction success. The
Woman's City Federation of Clubs is
bringing what civic beauty it can lug
home from Europe and the Eastern
cities; the opportune death of the
prominent citizen is opening play-
grounds and hospitals and parks; and
the country college, which has multi-
plied as the sands of the sea, supple-
ments the state schools of higher learn-
ing in the work of bringing to youth
opportunities for more than the com-
mon-school education.
Now, into this peculiar civilization
comes that curious institution, the
country newspaper. The country news-
paper is the incarnation of the town
spirit. The newspaper is more than the
voice of the country-town spirit; the
newspaper is in a measure the will of
the town, and the town's character is
displayed with sad realism in the town's
newspapers. A newspaper is as honest
as its town, is as intelligent as its town,
as kind as its own, as brave as its town.
And those curious phases of abnormal
psychology often found in men and
women, wherein a dual or multiple per-
sonality speaks, are found often in com-
munities where many newspapers babble
the many voices arising from the dis-
organized spirits of the place. For ten
years and more the tendency in the
American country town has been toward
fewer newspapers. That tendency seems
to show that the spirit of these com-
munities is unifying. The disassociated
personalities of the community — the
wrangling bankers, the competing public
utilities, the wets and the drys, the
Guelfs and the Ghibellines in a score of
guises that make for discord in towns —
are slowly knitting into the spirit of the
place. So one newspaper in the smaller
communities — in communities under fif-
teen thousand, let us say — is becoming
the town genus. And in most of the
larger towns — so long as they are towns
and not cities — one newspaper is rising
dominant and authoritative because it
interprets and directs the community.
The others are merely expressions of
vagrant moods; they are unhushed
voices that are still uncorrected, still
unbridled in the community's heart.
It is therefore the country newspaper,
the one that speaks for the town, that
guides and cherishes the town, that era-
bodies the distinctive spirit of the town,
wherein one town differeth from
another in glory — it is that country
newspaper, which takes its color from
a town and gives color back, that
will engage our attention at present
That newspaper will be our vision.
Of old, in this country, the newspaper
was a sort of poor relative in the com-
merce of a place. The newspaper re-
quired support, and the support was
given somewhat in charity, more or less
in return for polite blackmail, and the
rest for business reasons. The editor
was a tolerated person. He had to be
put on the chairmanship of some im-
portant committee in every community
enterprise to secure his help. In times
of social or political emergency he sold
stock in his newspaper company to
statesmen. That was in those primeval
days before corporations were con-
trolled; so the editor's trusty job-press
never let the supply of stock fall behind
the demand. Those good old days were
the days when the editor with the
"trenchant pen" stalked to g^ory
through libel-suits and shooting scrapes,
and when most American towns were
beset by a newspaper row as by a fiend-
ish mania.
But those fine old homicidal days of
the newspaper business are past, or arc
relegated to the less-civilized parts of
the land. The colonel and the major
have gone gallantly to dreams of glory,
perhaps carrying more buckshot with
them to glory than was needed for bal-
last on their journey; but still they arc
gone, and their race has died with them.
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THE COUNTRY NEWSPAPER
'5
The newspaper-man of to-day is of
another breed. How the colonel or the
major would snort in derision at the
youth who pervades the country news-
paper office to-day ! For this young man
is first of all a manufacturer! The
shirt-tail full of type and the cheese-
press, which in times past were held as
emblems of the loathed contemporary's
plant, have now grown even in country
villages to little factories. The smallest
offices now have their typesetting ma-
chines. The lean, sad-visaged country
printer, who had tried and burned his
wings in the editorial flight, is no more.
Instead we have a keen-eyed, dressy
young man who makes eyes at the girls
in the front office and can talk shows
with the drummer at the best hotel or
books with the high-school teacher in
the boarding-house. This young gentle-
man operates the typesetting machine.
Generally he is exotic, frequently he is
a traveler from far countries; but he
rides in the Pullman, and the clay of
no highway ever stains his dainty feet.
In the country town, in the factory that
makes even the humblest of our country
dailies, the little six- and eight-page
affairs, all unknown, unhonored, and
unsung, three or four and sometimes
half "a dozen of the smart, well-fed,
nattily dressed machine-operators are
hired, and the foreman — the dear old
pipe-smoking, unshaven foreman who
prided himself in a long line of appren-
tice printers, the foreman who edited
copy, who wrote the telegraph heads,
and ruled the reporters in the front
office with an iron rod of terror, the
foreman who had the power of life and
death over every one around the build-
ing but the advertising man, the fore-
man who spent his princely salary of
fifteen dollars a week buying meals for
old friends drifting through with the
lazy tide of traffic between the great
cities, the foreman who could boast that
he once held cases on the "Sun" and
knew old Dana — that foreman is gone ;
in his place we know the superin-
tendent. And, alas! the superintendent
is not interested in preserving the
romance of a day that is past. He is not
bothered by the touch of a vanished
hand. When the vanished hand tries to
touch the superintendent of the country
newspaper office to-day a ticket to the
Associated Charities' wood-yard is his
dull response. The superintendent is
interested largely in efficiency. The day
of romance is past in the back room
of the country newspaper.
But in the front room, in the editorial
offices, in the business office even, there
abides the spirit of high adventure that
is incarnate in these marvelous modem
times. Never before were there such
grand doings in the world as we are
seeing to-day. Screen the great war
from us, and still we have a world full
of romance, full of poetry, full of an
unfolding progress that is like the
gorgeous story of some enchanter's
spell. Where in all the tales of those
"Arabian Nights' Entertainments" is
an3rthing so wonderful as wireless
telegraphy, so weird and uncanny as
talking over the seas without wires?
What is Cinderella and her romance
compared with the Cinderella story to-
day— the story that tells us how the
world is turning into her prince,
shortening her hours of work, guar-
anteeing her a living wage, keeping her
little brothers and sisters away from the
factory and in school, and pensioning
her widowed mother that she may care
for her little flock! How tame is the
old Cinderella story beside this! And
Sindbad is losing his load, too ; slowly,
as the years form into decades, Sindbad
is sloughing off the old man of the sea.
The twelve-hour day is almost gone,
and the eight-hour day is coming
quickly; the diseases and accidents of
labor are falling from his shoulders,
being assumed by his employer; his
bank-savings are guaranteed by his
government; his food is no longer
poisoned ; his tenement is ceasing to be
a pit of infection ; his shop is no longer
a place of torture. And every day the
newspaper brings some fresh and in-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
spiring chapter of these great stories to
their readers. Stories of progress are
the magnificent tales of sorcery and
wizardry that come gleaming in celestial
light across the pages of our news-
papers every day. And in our country
papers we rejoice in them, because we
know the heroes. We know Cinderella;
she works in our button factory. We
knew her father, who lived on Upper
Mud Creek, and was a soldier in the
big war of the sixties. We know
Sindbad; he is our neighbor and friend.
He is not a mere number and a wheel-
tender to us. We played with him as
boys ; we went to school with him in the
lower grades before he had to leave,
when his father died, to support the
family. We see Cinderella and Sindbad
every day, and when we read of their
good fortunes we feel kindly toward the
paper that tells us of these fine things.
We open the country paper and say,
"How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him that bringeth good
tidings!" And so we read it, every
line. It is the daily chronicle of the
doings of our friends.
Of course our country papers are pro-
vincial. We know that as well as any
one. But, then, so far as that goes, we
know that all papers are provincial.
How we laugh at the provincialisms of
the New York and Boston and Chicago
papers when we visit those cities ! For
the high gods of civilization, being
jealous of the press, have put upon all
newspapers this spell, that every one
must be limited ip interest to its own
town and territory. There can be no
national daily newspaper, for before it
reaches the nation its news is old and
dull and as clammy as a cold pancake.
News does not keep. Twelve hours
from the press it is stale, flat, and
highly unprofitable. However the trains
may speed, however the organization of
the subscription department and the
press-room may perfect itself, the news
spoils before the ink dries, and there
never may be in our land a cosmopoli-
tan press. So the cities' papers find
that they must fill with city news those .
spaces, that in a nation-wide paper
should be filled with the news from the
far corners of our land. Thus in every
country paper we have the local gossip
of its little world. And our country
papers are duplicated on a rather
grander scale in the cities. What we
do in six or eight or ten or twelve pages
in the country the city papers do in
twenty or forty pages. What they do
with certain prominent citizens in the
social and criminal and financial world
we do also with our prominent citizens
in their little worlds.
And in the matter of mere circula-
tion, our American country newspapers
are a feeble folk, yet they do as a matter
of fact build their homes upon the rock.
The circulation of daily newspapers in
our cities — towns of over four hundred
thousand — aggregates something over
eleven millions. The other daily news-
papers in the country circulate more
than twelve millions, and the weeklies
circulate twenty millions more, and
most of these weeklies are printed in
our small country towns. We have,
therefore, a newspaper circulation of
nearly thirty-four millions outside of
our great cities, and only eleven millions
in the great cities. At least so says our
latest census bulletin. And the money
we country editors have invested is pro-
portionately larger than that our city
brethren have invested.
But the beauty and the joy of our
papers and their little worlds is that wc
who live in the country towns know our
own heroes. Who knows Murphy in
Nlew York? Only a few. Yet in
Emporia we all know Tom O'Connor —
and love him. Who knows Mk>rgan in
New York? One man in a hundred
thousand. Yet in Emporia who does
not know George Newman, our banker
and merchant prince? Boston people
pick up their morning papers and read
with shuddering horror of the crimes
of their daily villain, yet read without
that fine thrill that we have when we
hear that Al Ludorph is in jail again in
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THE COUNTRY NEWSPAPER
*7
Emporia. For we all know M ; we 've
ridden in his hack a score of times.
And we take up our paper with the
story of his frailties as readers who
begin the narrative of an old friend's
adventures.
The society columns of our city pa-
pers set down the goings and comings,
the marriages and the deaths of the
people who are known only by name;
there are gowns realized only in
dreams; there are social ftmctions that
seem staged upon distant stars. Yet
you city people read of these things
with avidity. But our social activities,
chronicled in our coimtry papers, tell
of real people, whose hired girls are
sisters to our hired girls, and so we
know the secrets of their hearts.' We
know a gown when it appears three
seasons in our society columns, dis-
guised by its trimming and its covering,
and it becomes a familiar friend. To
read of it recalls other and happier
days. And when we read of a funeral
in our country newspapers, we do not
visualize it as a mere church fight to
see the grand persons in their solemn
array on dress-parade. A funeral no-
tice to us country readers means some-
thing human and sad. Between the
formal lines that tell of the mournful
affair we read many a tragedy; we
know the heartache ; we realize the des-
titution that must come when the flow-
ers are taken to the hospital ; we know
what insurance the dead man carried,
and how it must be stretched to meet
the needs. We can see the quiet lines
on each side of the walk leading from
the house of sorrow after the services,
the men on one side, the women on the
other, waiting to see the mourning fam-
ilies and to be seen by them; we may
smile through our tears at the uncon-
genial pall-bearers, and wonder what
common ground of mirth they will find
to till on the way back from the ceme-
tery. In lists of wedding-guests in our
papers we know just what poor kin was
remembered and what was snubbed.
We know when we read of a bank-
ruptcy just which member of the firm
or family brought it on by extravagance
or sloth. We read that the wife of the
hardware merchant is in Kansas City,
and we know the feelings of the dry-
goods merchant who reads it and sees
his own silks ignored. So when we see
a new kind of lawn-mower on the dry-
goods merchant's lawn, we don't blame
him much for sending to the city for it.
Our papers, our little country papers,
seem drab and miserably provincial to
strangers; yet we who read them read
in their lines the sweet, intimate story
of life. And all these touches of nature
make us wondrous kind. It is the coun-
try newspaper, bringing together daily
the threads of the town's life, weaving
them into something rich and strange,
and setting the pattern as it weaves,
directing the loom, and giving the cloth
its color by mixing the lives of all the
people in its color-pot — it is this country
newspaper that reveals us to ourselves,
that keeps our country hearts quick and
our country minds open and our country
faith strong.
When the girl at the glove-counter
marries the boy in the wholesale house,
the news of their wedding is good for a
forty-line wedding notice, and the forty
lines in the country paper give them
self-respect. When in due course we
know that their baby is a twelve pound-
er named Grover or Theodore or Wood-
row, we have that neighborly feeling
that breeds the real democracy. When
we read of death in that home we can
mourn with them that mourn. When
we see them moving upward in the
world into a firm and out toward the
country-club neighborhood, we rejoice
with them that rejoice. Therefore, men
and brethren, when you are riding
through this vale of tears upon the Cali-
fornia Limited, and by chance pick up
the little country newspaper with its
meager telegraph service of three or
four thousand words, or, at best, fifteen
or twenty thousand; when you see its
array of ^countryside items ; its inter-
minable local stories; its tiresome edi-
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i8 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
torials on the waterworks, the schools, clay from your eyes and read the little
the street railroad, the crops, and the paper as it is written, you would find
city printing, don't throw down the con- all of God's beautiful, sorrowing, strug-
temptible little rag with the verdict that gling, aspiring world in it, and what you
there is nothing in it. But know this, saw would make you touch the little
and know it well : if you could take the paper with reverent hands.
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AN AMERICAN MANIA AS SEEN BY A FOREIGNER
By Paul W. Bartlett
One morning, a few weeks ago, on
leaving Boston for New York, I met on
the train the royal commissioner of
fine arts from a foreign country to the
Panama-Pacific Exposition. I had
made his acquaintance at the fair; we
had served together on the international
jniy of awards, and, despite that, we
had become good friends.
He greeted me heartily.
"Here I am at last," he exclaimed.
"I have nearly finished my grand tour
of America, and I am delighted. I have
been everywhere, seen everything.
Your great cities, some of them barely
names before, have materialized for me.
Your country is grandiose. What a
great field for art — architecture, for
painting, for sculpture! It was a rev-
elation to me. What an inspiration you
Americans ought to have!" He hesi-
tated a moment, then softly said, "But
I have discovered that you already have
a mania."
"A mania!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," he said sadly. "I cannot call
it art, and I would not call it sculpture :
Americans have a mania for portrait
statues."
"Oh, I understand," I answered;
"you have seen some of the cousins of
your masterpieces of the Campo Santo
of Genoa, not to speak of similar work
in France and England."
"Yes," he admitted, "and I am pro-
foundly ashamed of the relationship. I
deplore this modem form of production
on principle ; but, grotesque as they are,
hopeless as the modern costume cer-
tainly is for a sculptor, our statues, even
at Genoa, show at least an attempt
toward feeling and sen^^iment. While
yours, apart from a few fine examples,
show nothing, stiff photographic, epi-
leptic mannikins that they are, many
not even fit for a dry-goods store.
"They are to be found everywhere
in the United States and Canada, in-
doors and out. They are placed in your
buildings without any more regard for
architectural style and rhythm than if
style and rhythm did not exist. These
statues must perforce, Americans think,
harmonize with all styles.
"To be sure, I did find in the West
some towns that were still in the 'peb-
ble-stone' or cast-iron fountain' period ;
but despite that, the statue was always
omnipresent.' If it had not come, it
was on the way.
"Sometimes they had only one, some-
times two, three, or more. In St. Paul,
for instance, I discovered a nest of
them; four all huddled together in the
capitol, and an extra one that had
spilled over on the steps. The people
there did not seem to be discouraged,
as they had prepared pedestals for
more.
"I was shown these things with pride,
and while I felt very much confused
at being obliged to comment upon them
and dissemble my feelings, the inno-
cence of my hosts was so obviously sin-
cere that I could not feel angry, hurt,
or insulted.
"One of these gentlemen said, 'I am
very proud of this statue, because I
helped to pay for it.' Another one re-
marked, 'You know, I have been very
much interested in this kind of work
since I have been connected with our
new cemetery.' A third one explained :
The sculptor of this statue wanted to
make it standing, because the subject
was short and had a large head; but
we could not understand it that way.
We wanted him sitting. That is the
way our Tom used to do his thinking.' "
The commissioner looked at me for
a moment and then asked:
"Bartlett, is all this pure stupidity or
is it a mild form of mental aberration ?"
"My dear friend," I replied, feeling
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
a little shocked, **you must not take it
so seriously. I should prefer to have
you think that it is simple ignorance.
For a large percentage of our people
sculpture is nothing more than a statue
— the statue of some one they wish to
honor. Decorative forms, poetical sym-
bolism expressed in sculptural language,
do not appeal to them yet, although this
may come. They are not thinking of
beauty. Memory is their sole object.
The formula of their expression of
memory is unfortunate, no doubt, and
all these statues might be properly
termed pivic memorial tombs. In most
cases a simple bust would be sufficient,
and fulfil their ultimate purpose, which
is, although not always realized by them,
the exaltation of the mentality of the
deceased.
"It would indeed be extraordinary if
these works were not epileptic, stiff,
and photographic, as they are all exe-
cuted from photographs, and instan-
taneous photography is very much in
vogue at the present time. These stat-
ues stand and please not for what they
are, but for what they mean.
"Very well,*' the commissioner re-
plied, "I will grant your plea of ignor-
ance for some of your younger cities;
but you cannot make the same excuse
for the East — for Philadelphia, New
York, or Boston."
"Certainly not," I admitted ; "and for
Boston least of all."
He was thoughtful, and after a long
silence he resumed in a philosophical
strain :
"We all make mistakes. There seem
to be long periods of mistakes, and we,
wonder why. The advent of genius is
mysterious and cannot be foreseen ; but
taste and knowledge, based upon sound
tradition, may be developed.
"I cannot maintain that our taste in
Europe is as good as it used to be, but
the old roots are still there. I cannot
deny that at present we have more skill
than genius, but in our countries art
attained the great heights. Our past
looms up with the majesty of ages, in
forms of magnificence and dignity. Our
knighthood is not at stake, despite our
errors and vagaries.
"The beauty of our inheritance is a
guaranty for the possibilities of our fu-
ture. Why cannot America profit by
our experience? You are spending
more money than we are, and imitating
too often our failures. How can the
gentlemen of your committees, in face
of such lamentable results, imagine, as
I understand they do, that they have
any special artistic insight? They arc
reckless because they do not feel that
they have anything to lose, while in
reality they are losing sight of the main
chance — the chance of building up not
only great cities, but also handsome
ones.
I remained silent, and he calmly went
on:
"I was thinking of all these questions
the other day on my way from Quebec
to Boston, and I also thought with dis-
tinct relief and pleasure: *Now, I am
approaching Boston, the great, the old,
the respectable classic city of New Eng-
land. Everything there will be differ-
ent. There I will find harmony.' In
fact, you told me so yourself," He
stopped, looked at me severely for a
moment, and burst out, "How could you
have dared to deceive a friend, a
stranger ?"
"Deceive you," I retorted. "But, I
assure you — "
"Yes, yes," he said, with somewhat
of a sneer, "you assured me before —
you told me that Boston was the one
city in the United States where art was
studied, beloved, and respected. Now
all that may be true, but it must be an
inner grace, and I am accustomed to
more palpable exterior evidence."
"Well," I argued quietly, "did you
not feel there a certain peaceful and
tranquil spirit, a certain quiet and en-
thusiastic energy, different in quality
from anything else in this country? Did
you not feel there a certain grandeur
and strength, a certain poise and dis-
tinction, a certain mellowness and am-
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AN AMERICAN MANIA AS SEEN BY A FOREIGNER
21
bience, akin and equal to that of your
own old cities? Yes? Well, then, I
did not deceive you, after all."
He apologized. He had spoken has-
tily.
"I was thinking/* he said, **more es-
pecially of your national brand of stat-
ues, which I was surprised to find there.
They appear all the more trivial in
such a noble setting. They ought to
know in Boston that the durability of
sculpture, one of its grand virtues when
it is good, becomes a terrible calamity
when it is ugly, and that it requires
nothing less than an earthquake or a
foreign invasion to destroy or remove a
statue which has been firmly riveted on
its pedestal by a ceremony and a few
sentimental speeches."
"Mr. Commissioner," I said, "permit
me to differ with you again. The city
of Boston removed a few years ago, of
its own free will, a statue from the
Public Garden. The statue was in gran-
ite, represented a soldier, and was orna-
mented with a tin sword. It was re-
placed by a very fine statue in bronze."
He recovered, and this was his re-
tort:
"A time will come when it will be
necessary to use that same free will
all over the United States. In the
meanwhile," he added, shrugging his
shoulders, '*you are all alike, and you
remind me of that old trouble between
Gerome and Besnard — Gerome, the
celebrated, the respected, the classic
professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts ;
Besnard, the brilliant, the erratic, the
esthetic genius of the day.
"Besnard had recently returned from
Rome, and was much talked of in art
circles. At that time an art critic called
on Gerome to talk over the future of
French art. The name of Besnard was
mentioned.
" 'Oh, yes,' said Gerome, 'Besnard.
Poor Besnard,' he does not even know
how to draw !'
"The interview was published, and
the next morning the critic promptly
called on Besnard.
" *Oh, yes,' said Besnard, 'you come
about Gerome. Poor Gerome ! he does
not even know what drawing means!'
"And there you are," the commissi-
oner cried. "You do not know what
sculpture means, and much less how to
use it. And, besides," he concluded
aggressively, "you have another mania."
I was })eginning by this time to feel
angry, and I thought to myself, "I
really can't stand this much longer."
But I had to be polite, so I blandly
said:
"I am not surprised that you have
found something else."
"You must not be surprised," he re-
peated. "A detailed report is expected
from me by my Government. I have
investigated these matters more thor-
oughly than you may think, and I have
noticed that the persistent effort in
America to marry art and business is
taking the form of a mania — a mania
which to me is not devoid of 'une pointe
de jalousie^ towards the artist."
I made a movement, y
"Yes," he said, "I understand; but
with us it is different. We have art
in our business, and appreciate the as-
set. But Americans insist on business
in their art. There is a nuance, as
Verlaine would have said.
" 'He has no head for business' is a
common American complaint against
the artist. Now tell me seriously. Why
should an artist pay any particular at-
tention to business ? Is the mental atti-
tude of the artist toward his work akin
in any way to ordinary business ? Has
the state of mind, emotional and recep-
tive, which is necessary to the artist
to feel and interpret with any nobility
the beauty of nature anything to do
with business? Do the months and
years of patient toil which are necessary
to the sculptor in his search for the
concrete and synthetical forms in which
he strives to embody his inspirations
and ideals have anything to do with
business ?
"America has hundreds, nay, thou-
sands of business men for one artist.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
and it seems to me that you ought to
thank God when a real artist and poet
is bom to your country — one who is
not a business man."
I was still angry, but he was right,
and I said:
"My dear sir, I feel obliged to agree
with you."
He continued:
"I have never heard this criticism
formulated abroad. In fact, with us the
artist who shows too much facility in
his affairs loses caste. How often have
I heard the remark, Oh, un tel, ce n'est
pas un peintre; c'est un ma/rchand,' or
'So-and-So, he does not make statues:
he sells them!' We even once had a
sculptor who was commonly known as
'Le sculpteur en gros/
"The amusing part in your case is
that the criticism is not only silly, but
that it is also fallacious, as, unbeknown
to you, perhaps, a certain number of
your artists have become very efficient
business men. The business guilds
would not deny, for instance, that title,
say, to a sculptor of second or third-
rate talent who has made a fortune and
name by producing works which have
little more value than the materials in
which they are executed.
"It would also be willing to confer
the same title upon the painter of the
same grade of talent who by skillful
manoeuvering manages to sell his pic-
tures at factitious prices, the frames, in
this case, being the only valuable assets.
Americans like the trumpet and the
bass-drum; only the other day one of
your art critics said to me : *You know
So-and-So. He speaks more and acts
more like a genius than any one we
have, and,' he added, 'the people like
it.'
"Charlatans are never without ability.
For them art is not art, but business —
artful business. For them every monu-
ment becomes a moneyed transaction.
Every statue is a deal, and the legiti-
mate sale of pictures is reduced to
a traffic.
"This influence is so pernicious that
one of your best men recently confided
to me, quite unconsciously, that never
since he started his business had he had
such a bad year as this one."
I was speechless.
The commissioner continued, this
time without gloves:
"I had the pleasure of knowing some
of your young artists twenty-five or
thirty years ago, when they came to us
to study. At that time they had talent.
enthusiasm and ideals. We loved them,
their masters loved them, and guided
their minds and hands with the same
care that they bestowed upon the sons
of their own blood. I had hoped to
find them here, in their prime, produc-
ing great works, the pride of their coun-
try, an honor to their masters. Imagine
my disappointment, my despair, to see
them demoralized by American com-
mercialism, their talents impaired, their
enthusiasm exhausted, their ideals de-
based to dollars and cents.
"It is because you confided their
youthful years to us, because we edu-
cated them and equipped them with the
knowledge and traditions of our fore-
fathers, that I feel so indignant at their
abuse, and that I have the right to
speak to you as I do.
"I feel all the more deeply, perhaps,
because my life, my career, are devoted
to the care and to the furtherance of
the art of my country. As a member
of our ministry of fine arts it is my
duty to see that the funds devoted to
art by the state are properly spent. It
is m> duty to watch, to find, to nurse
every young talent, to follow its career,
and when the artist has developed his
power of production, to be careful that
work suitable to his talent is put in
his way, and later, when he is in the
glory of his achievements, to sec that
the proper honors are bestowed upon
him, adding thereby to his authority
and dignity, and loudly proclaiming his
fame and genius to the worW. Per-
sonally, I have no talent, but it gives
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AN AMERICAN MANIA AS SEEN BY A FOREIGNER
me the greatest joy to help to guide
and protect the genius of my race and
be useful to my country."
I could not, after this vital declara-
tion, feel angry any more, so I said :
"My dear friend, I sincerely wish
we had you here to help us, as we have,
despite all, and fortunately for the
honor of the American school, a strong
body of sincere, stubborn, and talented
men. You saw their work in San Fran-
cisco, and you know that we may well
be proud of them. They are genuine
and energetic, and can hold their own
even against commercialism.
"They are modest and retiring, and
all this stupidity offends them. They
realize that the only honest claim the
artist can have on the love and respect
of his contemporaries and on that of
posterity is based upon the fact that
he may have added during his career
some beauty to our inheritance. They
are living up to this ideal, and while
they may be iearful to protest, I can
assure you that they have in their hearts
the most profound contempt for this
commercialism and for all those who
foster it."
He nodded in approval, so I contin-
ued:
"This intense feeling was illustrated
a few years ago in an amusing way in
one of those quiet country villages
where the painters love to spend the
summer months.
'There happened to be at the head
of the little band an austere and studi-
ous artist who took advantage of his
authority to advise and criticise his fel-
low-workers, among whom was a
younger man who had been in business
before he 'turned to art.'
"This last one was finally annoyed,
and said one evening at dinner:
" *Mr. So-and-So, I am very much
pained to see that you criticize me so
severely. I am afraid you dislike me
because I am the son of a grocer.'
"'Oh, no,' the austere painter re-
plied, 'I do not dislike you because your
father was a grocer or because you
have been a grocer yourself. What I
object to is that, in spite of your efforts
and success in art, you are still a gro-
eery
At this very moment we pulled into
New Haven.
"Here, for instance," the commis-
sioner exclaimed, "in this provincial
town, there is a point of view and a
situation that I cannot comprehend. I
visited New Haven and Yale before
I went West," he explained.
"Now, any sane person would think
that this great university, with its
charming museum, with its school of
art, would have some influence on the
artistic activities of the city, such as
they might be. One could suppose that
the city would be glad to be guided by
the wisdom, the culture, the good judg-
ment to be found in the faculty. But,
alas, for New Haven ! It goes blindly
on, like all the others!
"I was shown there a group in bronze
which would shame a founder of 'tin
soldiers,' and when some decorative
motives are needed for a new building,
they are casually bought by the jrard
or by the ton. I cautiously questioned
a member of the faculty.
" 'Are you not somewhat distressed
by these conditions?* I asked.
" 'Why no,' he answered, with a
smile. 'We are thankful that the re-
sults are not worse.'
" 'Not worse !' I cried ! 'Come to my
help, ye Gods of Olympus !'
"This was my first moral shock in
America. I understood then that there
were possibly things in the United
States which would be difficult for me
to understand."
The commissioner was quiet for a
few moments. The train thundered on.
"What a difference!" he finally mur-
mured.
"What a difference?" I questioned.
"Yes," he said, "I was thinking of
the past. I was thinking of the spirit
of the Middle Ages and of the glory
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
of the Italian and French Renaissance.
The artists and artisans were then all
men. Their skill, their honesty, their
love for their work, are apparent; ex-
ude from every cornice, from every or-
nament, from every form and every
plait of every statue; and the beauty
which emanates from their extraor-
dinary compositions was patiently in-
stilled into them drop by drop. The
Maitres Imagiers lived at the different
courts and monastaries, wandered from
church to cathedral, Jagonnant leurs
images fondant leurs chefs-d'oeui/re* as
we are told. There was no business
there.
"These conditions obtained, as you
know, for centuries, and the result of
this touching simplicity was grandiose,
— masterpieces without number and of
all kinds, in the presence of which we
all bow in reverence, our hearts over-
flowing with admiration and our eyes
filling with tears and our minds with
indignation when we hear of their wan-
ton destruction. Add to this the re-
membrance of the integrity, the virility,
and the haughty independence of the
great masters of the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries. 'There was no busi-
ness there.'
"I was also thinking of that naive de-
scription, given to us in San Francisco
by the commissioner of China, concern-
ing the position of artists in his coun-
try." The commissioner pulled out a
paper. "Here it is,'* he said, "as far
as I can remember," and he read :
" *We in China love and respect ar-
tists and grave-hunters.
" 'We love artists because artists
make portraits of grandfather, grand-
mother, mother, and father.
" 'We don't have photographs yet,
and never make portraits of young
Chinese, because not good enough yet.
" 'Only make portraits of Chinese
when old enough to have become real
men, real women.
" *When Chinaman get enough
money, and want portrait of family,
he get artist to come and live with
family.
" 'Good portraits not made quick.
Sometimes takes weeks, sometimes
takes months, sometimes takes years.
" 'Artist must know people well be-
fore he can make good portrait.
" 'And that is why Chinese families
admire and cherish artists, because they
make faithful portraits of grandfather,
grandmother, father, and mother.
" 'We love grave-hunters because
they find beautiful, secluded places
where ancestors may rest quietly, and
bring good luck to family.' "
The commissioner was fully aroused
by this time. He raised his voice :
"I am, of course, fully aware that
these medieval ideas and customs, quaint
and attractive as they may be to us
personally, are not suitable for our
time or for young America. However,
something must be done if your country
wishes to improve its opportunities. I
venture to predict that, barring extra-
ordinary characters whose genius dom-
inates any conditions, America will not
have a g^eat national school until it
fully understands that art is not busi-
ness, and treats it accordingly, — until
Americans appreciate the fact that a
real artist is a rare and sensitive bein^.
however much energy and strength he
may have, and that his constant effort
to gn*asp an ever-fleeting beauty must
be helped and encouraged in order to
attain the highest results, — until the\'
realize that the artist sees things they
do not see, and feels things they do
not feel, and that the works of his hands
and brains are precious not only be-
cause they are beautiful and lasting, but
also because he alone can do them.
"Until then they will go on indulging
in their manias, encumbering their
buildings and parks with monstrosities,
deceiving themselves and being de-
ceived, as they are now."
I tried to interrupt. He lifted his
nand.
"Not a word I" he said, "not a word !"
I have spoken to you as a kind master
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AN AMERICAN MANIA AS SEEN BY A FOREIGNER 25
to a pupil. I hope you are not offended, member that I told you what I believed
and that you may profit by my words, to be the truth."
I leave to-morrow for my country, for We parted, and the next day I re-
the front, where I shall fight for liberty, ceived a card on which was written :
justice, and honor. You may never "Nevertheless, a noble and intelligent
see me again, and I want you to re- mania might lead you to an ideal."
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26 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
POEMS
By Henry van Dyke
I.— REMARKS ABOUT KINGS
God said, I am tired of kings, — Emerson.
God said, "I am tired of kings,"
But that was a long while ago.
And meantime Man said, "No;
I like their looks in their robes and rings."
So he crowned a few more,
And they went on playing the game as before.
Fighting and spoiling things.
Man said, "I am tired of kings.
Sons of the robber chiefs of yore.
They make me pay for their lust and their war.
I am the puppet; they pull the strings;
The blood of my heart is the wne they drink.
I will govern myself for a while, I think,
And see what that brings."
Then God, who made the first remark,
Smiled in the dark.
II.-LIGHTS OUT
"Lights out!" along the land,
"Lights out!" upon the sea;
The night must put her hiding hand
O'er peaceful towns, where children sleep,
And peaceful ships that da-rkly creep
Across the waves, as if they were not free.
The dragons of the air,
The hell-hounds of the deep.
Lurking and prowling everywhere,
Go forth to seek their helpless prey.
Not knowing whom they maim or slay,
Mad harvesters, who care not what they reap.
Out with the tranquil lights!
Out with the lights that burn
For love of law and human rights !
Set back the clock a thousand years!
All they have gained now disappears,
And the Dark Ages suddenly return.
You that let loose wild death
And terror in the night,
God grant you draw no quiet breath
Until the madness you began
Is ended, and long-suffering man.
Set free from war-lords, cries, "Let there be light!"
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SECOND SESSION
Thursday, November 18th, at 3.30
CONCERT
OF COMPOSITIONS BY MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTE
given by
The Boston String Quartet
Sylvain Noack, first violin ; Otto Roth, second violin ; Emil Ferir, viola ;
Alwin Schroder, violoncello. Assisted by J. Theodorowicz, violin,
and by Charles Bennett, bass, and Wallace Goodrich, pianist
PROGRAM
I. Charles M. Loeffler
Lyrisches Kammermusiksttick in F Major for Strings
(Allegro Commodo — Poco Allegretto — Allegro)
II. David Stanley Smith Songd
Music When Soft Voices Die
Flower of Beauty
Evening Song
Love's Music
III. Howard Brockway
Suite for Violoncello and Pianoforte, Op. 35
Ballade
Serenade au Carneval
The pianoforte part played by the composer
IV. Songs
G. W. Chadwick . . Ballad of Trees and the Master
F. S. Converse Bright Star
Arthur Foote Tranquility
Edgar Stillman Kelley Eldorado
V. Henry Hadley
Quintet in A Minor for Pianoforte and Strings
(Allegro Energico — Andante — Scherzo — Finale)
The pianoforte part played by the composer
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THIRD SESSION
Friday, November 19TH, 1915
THE CHAIRMAN (Mr. Blashfield)
I need not pronounce an address pants became articulate. To-day we who
before this audience. Until lately the are descendants of those infant pro-
Institute has felt bound to introduce it- genitors of the Arts and Letters are
self annually, but to-day even our Gold deeply appreciative of Boston's hos-
Medal celebrates its seventh birthday, pitality.
Yet it is not our venerable age which As for the artists, in these late years
emboldens us, but hospitable Boston, of perturbed and sometimes antagon-
Here in Boston, which has Cambridge istic effort, the Boston painters have
at its door and Concord only over the shown that the admirable sanity and
way, every man of letters and every solidarity which they have maintained
artist, wherever he may have been born, through it all can also become brilliant
feels that for the time he is in his as a contribution. We have so much
father's house. It is quite certain that before us this morning that I shall say
somewhere among the historic furniture nothing further than to reaffirm our
brought in the Mayflower was hidden pleasure and reiterate our thanks,
the cradle of American Arts and Upon all subjects of greatest import
Letters in America, and that Boston the world has looked for the first and
has rocked it, sometimes more, some- last word to the poet. I have the honor
times less, gently until its twin occu- to introduce Mr. Percy MacKaye.
FEDERATION
By Percy MacKave
Over there they know the singeing and blinding of sorrow.
Over there they know the young dead; they know the dear
Touch of the living that shall be the dead to-morrow:
Here — what know we here?
Over there they feel* the heart-rage, the sick hating
Of bitter blood-lust, the imminent storm of steel,
Burden and pang of terror never-abating:
Here — what do we feel?
There, where they snuff the reek of a burning censer
Borne by the stark-mad emperors, their pain.
Tinged with a hallowed pride, takes on the intenser
Soul of a world insane.
We, who still spared to reason, here where the thunder
And surge of the madness dwindle to murmurs and cease.
We who, apart, stand dazed by the demons of plunder.
How shall we conjure peace?
Peace — did we call her, the gluttonous mother who suckled
Her monster child till it waxed to this Minotaur?
Peace — did we crown her, the secret harlot who truckled
To breed from the loins of War?
28
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FEDERATION 29
One word, one only, will be ours in awaking:
Nevermore 1 Nevermore let us build for merely our own.
Peace is not ours alone for the making or breaking;
Peace is the world's alone.
For the battle-gauge is feud-lust or federation.
The ultimate beast is enthroned, and man is its thrall;
And beast or man shall survive as nation with nation
Fights not for one, but all.
A dream? Yes, the dream that once was a planet's derision
Now blazons a planet's prayer: the cry to be free
Of a world unconceived in woe of a Dante's vision,
Or Christ's on the blasted tree.
For our deeds are the henchmen of dreams. Since only by another
Dream can the dreamer be vanquished, let ours create
The beautiful order of brother united with brother.
Victorious dreaming is fate.
America, dreamer of dreams, be destiny's leader.
Militant first for mankind; for so your own soul,
Blended of all, for all shall be interceder
And guide to the world's goal.
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THE CHAIRMAN
Of all artists it seems to me we may
count him most important who makes
the sky-line of our cities, who estab-
lishes the surface character of our
municipal home, with its outdoor
furnishing of street and square, church,
crest, and tower. We are to hear from
one who has traveled east, 'west, north,
and south in the interest of this city
planning, in the interest, that is to say,
of the widest relativity of his art of
architecture. I have the honor to in-
troduce Mr. Arnold W. Brunner.
ARCHITECTURE AND THE MAN
By Arnold W. Brunnbr
Architects are the scene-painters of
the world. Much of the scenery, the
backgrounds of great events, remain
to-day as records, and are perhaps more
convincing than written history. Con-
structed of enduring materials, these
scenes of marble, granite, and bronze
bring to our senses a vivid realization
of stirring actions and heroic deeds of
actors long since gone.
To regard architecture as a back-
ground may seem to relegate it to a
secondary place and to indicate a lack
of appreciation of its importance. And
by architecture I mean all that the word
implies — that art so often called the
noblest of the arts, because it embraces
the others, sculpture, painting, the
treatment of the landscape, and to-day
the newer architecture of cities. It is
a mixed art, largely diluted, or
strengthened, if you please, by science.
Its aim is to produce a combination of
the useful and the beautiful.
I have heard it charged that our
training and practice have a tendency
to make us grow more interested in
things than in people, and we architects
have often been reminded that humanity
is of more importance than inanimate
objects. Such criticism is fair enough,
and we may well remember that the
value of our designs and creations
depends on their eflfect upon those who
use them and who are inspired by them.
Architecture, unlike other arts, cannot
depend on beauty alone. To serve its
mission fully it must provide a fitting
background for human activities.
In the theater the painted scene and
artificial accessories which simulate
the real thing as closely as possible
have been considered by actors to be
important factors in their success. Even
the advocates of the new school, who
favor stern simplicity and extreme
breadth of treatment, believe that the
actor needs the assistance of stage
decorations to illuminate the intention
of the author and to bring out fully
the purpose of the drama.
It seems to me that in our daily lives
we have underestimated the influence
that our backgrounds, our scenery,
exert on us. I know a church that
suggests a music-hall. I know a theater
so somber and gloomy that our spirits
are depressed when we enter it. I know
a museum of fine arts where it is almost
impossible to concentrate one's atten-
tion on the paintings and sculpture.
These buildings, pretty enough to look
at, violate the first rul^ of the game.
They do not express their purpose, but
on the contrary nullify and contradict
it.
Some years ago I had occasion to
Visit a court room in New York. Men
kept on their hats, whistled, and
laughed. Large brass spittoons were
numerous, but, though necessary, were
copiously disregarded. A noisy lady
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ARCHITECTURE AND THE MAN
3^
who sold apples was gamilious and
apparently in great favor. The general
atmosphere was most disorderly, and
the attendants had difficulty in secur-
ing silence at the entrance of the judge,
A few years later I, visited the same
court room, and was astonished to find
all this changed. Men removed their
hats when they entered, and talked in
low tones. The apple-lady remained
in the corridor, and an air of dignity
and decency prevailed.
The reason for this gfratifying change
was that the eastern wall had been
covered by a mural painting of great
beauty, Simmons's figure of Justice in
the center, flanked by well-painted
groups on each side, three prisoners on
the right, and the three Fates on the
left, dominated the room. The influence
of this powerful composition had made
the previous disgraceful conditions im-
possible. The picture made its appeal,
and the appeal was instantly answered.
Whoever has seen Blashfield's mural
painting in the United States Court
Room in the Qeveland Federal Build-
ing must recall its effect on the public.
Its beauty and strength — the two
splendid angels pointing to the Ten
Commandments, the majesty of the law
and the tragedy of crime — here, too,
make a background that speaks, that
fulfills its purpose. Many other in-
stances come to mind, but I shall not
multiply examples.
We can build a study in which no
man can study, a library in which no-
body can read ; or we can design rooms
for such purposes, restful in treatment,
simple in form, quiet in tone, that will
not irritate and distract, but on the con-
trary soothe the inmates and make con-
centration easier. Such rooms exist.
The needs of humanity are para-
mount, and the arts of design should
yield to the man. We need feel no loss
of dignity in taking the view that the
interior of our buildings are back-
grounds, for making backgrounds is not
easy. The effect of perfect harmony
required to produce a congenial atmos-
phere demands die sacrifice of in-
dividual triumphs. Perhaps interesting
features of design must be omitted,
decorations toned down, stained-glass
windows subdued, details suppressed
for the benefit of the ensemble, just as
the true musician in a great orchestra
restrains and sinks his individuality.
We all recall the mural paintings of
Puvis de Chavannes in the Pantheon,
and how he deliberately kept them flat
and in a low key to harmonize with
the stone walls of that noble building.
Other painters strove to outdo one
another in the brilliancy and strength
of their pictures, but Puvis believed it
imperative to preserve the tranquility
and unity of eflfect of the great interior,
and by self-denial and omission he
succeeded where they failed, and pro-
duced a splendid work of art, a decora-
tion, yet only a background.
We have heard a great deal durii^
the last few years about the power of
suggestion over our subjective mind.
A glance, a touch, a gesture, or a word,
and, we are told, our subconscious self
responds instantly. Probably this is all
true, but who will deny that our objec-
tive or every-day mind, acting through
the five senses, is swayed by suggestion
and strongly affected by its environ-
ment? Beauty makes a powerful appeal
to us, and we are sensitive to the in-
fluence of ugliness. There are d^^rees
of disorder, hideousness, and gloom
against which no gaiety of temperament
can prevail.
George B. McQellan, when he was
mayor of New York, once said that if
a man arose from a bench in City Hall
Park and happened to look to the north,
he would be made happier and better
by the sight of the City Hall; but if he
chanced to look the other way, and his
vision was greeted by the Post-Office, it
would be natural for dismal and even
homicidal thoughts to arise in his mind.
Try it. Stand at the side of the foolish
fountain in the middle of the park and
glance through the trees at the lovely
little City Hall, and see if its charming
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32
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
proportions and simple beauty do not
induce a different frame of mind from
that which comes from an inspection
of the hideous Post-Office, with its
bulbous and useless Mansard roof,
easily the worst of the late Mr. MuUett's
creations.
Then try if you can to preserve a
happy and contented disposition when
you walk through some of the noisy
neighboring streets, where ugliness and
shabbiness vie with vulgarity. I need
not select the streets; they have their
counterparts in other cities where the
air of unrest and incompleteness is
emphasized by ragged sky-lines and
ugly buildings. Yet this is the scenery
to which we submit, the background of
our daily lives.
Let us take Broadway, or a part of
it, as an example. "A walk on Broad-
way" has been a favorite theme with
many distinguished writers who have
amused and instructed us by their
observations. Artists have sketched it
over and over again, and charmed us
with pictures which showed exactly
how it would look if it looked that way.
At the risk of discovering the dis-
covered, let us walk down Broadway,
and without being too critical frankly
note what we see.
If we begin at Fifty-ninth Street
we find Columbus Circle a grievous
disappointment Here is an intersec-
tion of very important streets with a
monumental entrance to Central Park
in the picture, but the serio-comic shaft
in the center and the unfortunate build-
ings that surround it are most distress-
ing. There is no composition, no
harmony. It goes all to pieces.
Proceeding down-town we find
irregularity and disorder, the big and
little, the expensive and the shabby,
mixed on all sides. The intensity of
the struggle and the competition of
commercial life are everywhere pain-
fully apparent, and the result is a con-
fused mass of incongruities. The
Metropolitan Opera House, where the
best operatic performances in the world
are presented, has no setting at all, and
is squeezed in between a bank and a
shop. Opposite, and up and down for
many blocks, are hideous, cheap struc-
tures built largely of galvanized iroa
and bill-boards. The larger and more
pretentious buildings have f agades with
some attempt at design, but their toa
conspicuous backs and sides go bare.
The little Herald Building, which in
itself has distinction and recalls far-
away Verona, is strangled by the
elevated railroad and a jumble of in-
congruous buildings in a very vortex
of confusion. Below Twenty-third
Street we are surprised at the apparent
desolation of disuse, for here is what
is known as a "blighted district," with
air its characteristics, in the middle of
Broadway.
I dwell on these wretched facts
because every favorable chance for
design has been thrown away. Times
Square, Miadison Square, Union Square
are three conspicuous instances of
neglected opportunities. Each one is
capable of treatment that might make
it a beauty spot in our crowded city,,
but no attempt has been made to design
properly and maintain these little parks.
As the encircling buildings tower up-
ward, these squares are apparently
shrinking in size and certainly in impor-
tance and dignity; so they now appear
to be disregarded and almost forgotten.
Individualism is admirable, but it may
degenerate into license. Even in a free
country, a democracy, there is a limit
to the rights of the individual, and
that limit is reached when they run
counter to the rights of the community.
A crowd organized, drilled, and led
may become an army, but, lacking
restraint, will be a mob. Broadway is
now in the mob state. How can we
expect men and women in such
surroundings to "fill the unforgiving
minute with sixty seconds worth ol
distance run" ? I have heard Broadway
called picturesque, but do not believe it.
It is only sordid; the picturesque is
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ARCHITECTURE AND THE MAN
33
created by a happy collaboration of
chance and time.
According to Arnold Bennett, the
"human machine" is often foolishly
neglected. In his book about it he calls
our attention to various means of
making the machine travel through the
world more smoothly, but he takes little
note of the friction tfiat may come from
without or of the fact that we may
accomplish a good deal by paying some
attention to the roads on which we
travel.
To mend them will require much
effort. We become used to noises,
chaotic streets, and the disregarded
demands of order and beauty; but we
need not become fatalists and meekly
accept any distasteful environment into
which pernicious conditions have
thrown us. We can largely mitigate
the exaggerated ugliness of our cities if
we determine to do it. And we will
determine to do it only when we realize
the tremendous- influence that our
surroundings exert on us.
Twenty-five years ago one of our few
architectural critics, the late Mont-
gomery Schuyler, said that American
architecture was apparently "the art of
covering one thing with another thing
to imitate a third thing, which, if
genuine, would be highly uijdesirable."
Perhaps this criticism is still deserved,
for if we survey the field we must admit
that of the great number of buildings
erected every year there is only a small
fraction of them that may be con-
sidered good architecture.
Not only are materials woefully mis-
applied and combined, but the first prin-
ciples of design are commonly ignored,
and the result is that atrocious build-
ings abound. Looking further, we find
sky-scrapers in positions where extreme
height is a crime, buildings that swear at
their neighbors and have no relation to
the streets on which they are built,
villanous "improvements," as the real-
estate fraternity call them, that are the
acme of ugliness. It would be interest-
ing, incidentally, to determine how
many "improvements" are required to
ruin a neighborhood.
It has been said that American
humor has found its fullest expression
in architecture, but as humor is merely
one of our by-products and not our
acknowledged purpose, we may wonder
what is the matter and how it happens.
It may be that if it was the custom for
the architect to sign his building he
would be more alive to his responsibili-
ties and at least strive to do his best.
At present architects are generally
anonymous, and a building is popularly
supposed to be the result of some
process of nature and not the product
of human thought and endeavor.
Perhaps the trouble is the lack of a
discerning public, and perhaps the press
on which the public relies is to blame.
Like new books and new plays, new
buildings are over-advertised and over-
praised without discrimination. We are
always assured that the last hotel,
department store, theatre, or what not,
is a marvel of beauty and an ornament
to the city. I have read columns of
praise of a building with a plan so com-
plicated that it was difficult to find the
stairs and elevators without a, guide.
The impossible facade, whose composi-
tion was apparently suggested by the
kaleidoscope, was so overloaded with
bad ornament ("spinach" we call it)
that it looked like a petrified growth of
fungus ; but the printed description con-
tained a glowing testimonial to its ex-
quisite charm.
Surprising combinations of gigantic
columns and arches resting lightly on
a solid base of plate glass, and playfully
interspersed with balconies, electric
signs, bay windows, and balustrades,
surmounted by a collection of undis-
guised water-tanks on stilts, are adver-
tised as superlatively beautiful. The
public is told this repeatedly and con-
tinuously, and apparently believes it.
American cities are now undergoing
vital transformations. As most of them
have been planned on the "rush-hour"
principle, their growing pains have been
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
unnecessarily severe. Accordingly, the
architecture of cities, or city planning,
as it has been called, has been forced
on the attention of the public. The
problems arising from an ever-increas-
ing population, new traflSc conditions,
congestion of people in buildings and
of buildings on ground, tmexpected
changes of all kinds, are complicated
and extremely difficult. This is not
work for the amateur. Experience,
patient study, and a constructive
imagination are needed to increase the
efficiency of a city as a working
machine, and at the same time to secure
the beauty that comes from order and
fitness of purpose.
All this, however, is entirely ignored
by our so-called critics. Cactus-like
growth of towns, aimless streets, absurd
extensions of the city map, miscalled
civic centers, often not more than
irregular open spaces in front of the
leading hotel — all are proclaimed in the
public prints as brilliant examples of
city planning.
This is the stuff that forms the public
taste. Of real criticism by real critics
we have unfortunately very little. The
inadequacy of most of it reminds one
of the opinion expressed by Charles II,
who almost drove Sir Christopher Wren
to despair when he was designing St.
Paul's. After many plans had been
made and rejected, the king was finally
greatly pleased with what was unques-
tionably the worst of Wren's designs,
and expressed his approval by saying
that it was "very artificial, proper, and
useful."
Ac'cordingly, we need not be surprised
to find that what we may call our "best
sellers," types that are repeated with
unimportant variations all over the
country, are unquestionably the worst
examples. They are not architecture
at all, even if they look like it and
masquerade under its honored name;
and for the most part they are not
designed by trained architects, but by
imposters with no qualifications for
their work.
I have borrowed the term *T)est
sellers" from the literary market,
because I am credibly informed that the
most popular books are the most mere-
tricious. The work of the architect,
however, is more nearly paralleled by
that of the dramatist. Plays are built
apparently on much the same principle
as buildings. The main motifs in both
arts must be clear, simple, and con-
vincing. The incidentals, the details,
explain and assist, but cannot save a
defective or weak backbone.
We are told on excellent authority
that a written play is not the play at
all; it is only a book of directions for
bringing one into existence. Similarly,
a set of plans does not constitute an
architect's output any more than a copy
of his specifications. Like a play, the
plans are merely the directions for pro-
ducing something. A drawing, be it
ever so attractive and convincing, is
only a promissory note which binds its
maker to deliver in the concrete what is
stated on its paper face. Sometimes it
may be well to pause and consider if
the author has sufficinet funds in his
mental bank to make good.
Like the dramatist, certain forces
stand between the architect and his
audience. I am told that dramatic
authors often find difficulty in main-
taining their conceptions and persuad-
ing managers, producers, and actors to
follow their ideas and faithfully inter-
pret them. The architect has his inter-
preters, too: masons and carpenters,
plasterers and cabinet-makers, carvers
and decorators, workmen of all kinds,
whose only aim in life is apparently to
deviate from the plans as much as
possible. These mechanics can so
mutilate and distort a design that the
result may be very different from the
architect's conception, which remains a
dream that the public will never know.
There are other points of similarity
between architecture and the drama.
For instance, both arts are constantly
pronounced hopelessly decadent and on
the other hand they are loudly defended.
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ARCHITECTURE AND THE MAN
35
and declared to be in a flourishing and
healthy condition, developing steadily
and triumphantly. On the whole, the
optimists seem to have it.
Good architecture is now beginning
to receive recognition from many new
sources. The modem educator admits
the moral and physical effect of beauty
in the school-house, and he demands a
sympathetic atmosphere for his pupils.
In the hospital of to-day gfreat care is
taken to prevent the suggestion of any-
thing disagreeable or dispiriting. Wards
must be light, sunny, and well pro-
portioned. Attractive surroundings, a
pleasant outlook, everything that can
add to the effect of cheerfulness, are
considered powerful factors in aiding
the physicians to secure a larger per-
centage of cures.
There has been a revolution in
factory building, for it has been dis-
covered that the condition of the work-
shop counts. Men and women are
depressed or stimulated as the work-
shops are dull and ugly, or bright and
cheerful. Not only light, temperature,
comfort, and cleanliness are subjects
of grave considieration, but we are
seriously informed that a certain
amount of beauty is thought necessary
for the modem workshop.
This is not the conclusion of philan-
thropists, but the last word of the
modern manufacturer, who places effici-
ency above all else. How much work
can he get out of his employees, and
what is it worth in dollars and cents?
Apparently it is worth a great deal.
Accordingly the commercial value of
beauty has unexpectedly come to our
rescue, and we may hope for an in-
creased appreciation of good archi-
tecture and even for a growing love of
beauty for its own sake.
The American Academy in Rome is
doing much for architectural education,
and the two expositions in California
are greatly stimulating public interest.
No one can see the splendid combina-
tion of buildings and sculpture, courts
and gardens, in San Francisco or the
entirely charming reminiscences of
Spain assembled for our benefit among
the luxuriant foliage of San Diego with-
out experiencing a thrill of delight. The
excellence of the work of the individual
designers is perhaps less notable than
the poise and balance that come from
symmetry of arrangement and well-
studied grouping, a proof of the im-
mense value of good team work.
The influence of these two archi-
tectural triumphs will go far, as far we
hope as Washington, where unfor-
tunately it has been necessary to main-
tain a constant struggle to preserve the
dignity and beauty of the capital city.
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THE CHAIRMAN
If ever there has been a time in our
history when discipline should become
a word to conjure with it is now.
Leaders in letters, in music, painting,
sculpture, tell us of the rebellion of
pupils against sustained work and their
pursuit of that ignis fatuus which is
supposed to light a short-cut toward
attainment. The distinguished leader
of the largest body of university men
in the country will address us, and will
talk of Discipline and the Social Aim
in Education.
DISCIPLINE AND THE SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION
By Nicholas Murray Butler
The brief paper which I shall read
this morning has been written to con-
clude a somewhat extended argument
as to the meaning of the process and
human institution that we call educa-
tion. In the course of that argument
the fundamental philosophical prin-
ciples upon which education rests have
been examined and discussed. Applica-
tion of those principles has been pro-
posed to a number of practical educa-
tional problems. In the 4;ourse of the
argument attention is given to those
tests and standards by which the educa-
tional progress of the individual man
may be measured. There remains the
question as to the social aim of educa-
tion. What should be the object of
discipline in this respect? This par-
ticular question is forced upon us at the
moment by the events of the European
War. We are everywhere taking note
of and contrasting various national
ideals of education and of social organi-
zation. What should be the American
ideal in these respects? To that ques-
tion I should like briefly to address
myself.
All training implies an end or pur-
pose. The systematic development of
knowledge and capacity, and the syste-
matic formation of habits of thought
and of action, would have no signifi-
cance or value unless they aimed to
accomplish some definite result. Moral-
ists and political philosophers have
toiled for ages to formulate and to
define an end or object of training and
discipline, and the result is some of the
most illuminating and inspiring of the
world's literature.
A moment's reflection will make it
plain that the purpose of training and
of discipline will depend upon the
philosophy of life which controls our
thinking and our action. If one's
philosophy of life, so called, is to have
no philosophy, but only to try to deal
with each situation as it arises and to
make the best of it, then the end and
purpose of training will be simply that
one may drift aimlessly about on a sea
which he has no instruments to measure,
and be borne by currents which he has
no power to divert or to withstand. It
is apparent, too, that under the influence
of a system of caste, or of a uniform
religious belief, or of an all-controlling
national aim or purpose, discipline and
training will be given a precise and
definite form. The younger generation
will be taught either to feel the force
of the caste distinctions and to enter
into a caste with all that it implies, or
to accept the formulas and the ritual of
a religion to which it gives inherited
adherence, or to subject itself to the
legally organized powers and organs of
the state and to do their will uncom-
plainingly and as effectively as possible.
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DISCIPLINE AND THE SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION
31
For the great modem democracies,
no one of these ends or aims of dis-
cipline is possible, since these democ-
racies rest upon the principles of
equality before the law and of oppor-
tunity open freely to talent of every
kind. The purpose and function of
discipline in a democracy are neces-
sarily quite diflFerent from those that
approve themselves in an absolute
monarchy or in a nation which accepts
the principles that the state is diflferent
from, and superior to, the individuals
that compose it, and that it is not sub-
ject to the moral and legal limitations
which bind the indiyiduaL Membership
in such a st^te is not citizenship, but
subordination. Such a state may attain,
for a time at least, a high degree of
social and political effectiveness, but this
effectiveness will be gained at the cost
of civil liberty ; and the price is far too
high to pay. The educational system
of a nation which accepts a form of
political philosophy sudi as this will
naturally aim at two things. It will
aim to train the few for effective leader-
.ship and it will aim to train the many
for effective subordination. It will fix
a substantial barrier between those
schools and institutions which train for
leadership and those schools and institu-
tions which train for subordination.
This subordination may be political or
it may be social or it may be economic
or it may be military, but if it exists,
there can be no such thing as common
schools in the nation. The conception
of conmion schools and the very name
itself are the product of the social
philosophy of democracy. The com-
mon school is not and cannot be a class
school. It is a school for the children
of the whole people in which they are
to be given that instruction and that
discipline which lay the foundations
not for leadership in a state and not for
subordination in a §tate, but for citizen-
ship of a state ; and these are the same
for all.
The ethical and the social aims of
education are accomplished in part by
example, in part by precept, and in still
larger part by practice. The inculca-
tion of virtue by precept is far less
effective than the inculcation of virtue
by example, and the inculcation of
virtue by example requires for its com-
pletion the habitual practise of that
virtue by the pupil. This explains why,
in the elementary and secondary schools,
so little attention is paid to formal in-
struction in morals and in duties,. and
why so much emphasis is properly laid
upon the personality of the teacher and
upon the actual behavior and habits of
the pupils.
The problem of discipline in the
educational system of a democracy is
the world-old problem of reconciling
liberty with order, progress with perma-
nence, and government with justice.
Not until mankind is itself perfect will
this problem be finally ^nd completely
solved. The pressing question that now
arises to perplex the democracies of the
world is how to secure increased
national effectiveness without the sacri-
fice of liberty, how to move forward
toward the attainment .of a national
purpose without calling upon the agents
and organs of despotism to take com-
mand. In other words, the question is
how to reconcile the civil liberty of the
individual with an increasing degree of
national organization for national needs
and with a steadily increasing sense of
individual responsibility for a collective
purpose or policy. This is the precise
topic which most concerns the philoso-
phers of to-day who would throw light
upon the difficult problems of the
moment as these arise in education, in
ethics, and in politics.
It is of the essence of democracy that
every man shall be called upon to do
the best that is in him and to do this in
such manner as not to limit the similar
right and the equal opportunity of every
other man to do the same. Therefore,
every one's share in collective action or
in the accomplishment of a collective
purpose must be something which he
imposes upon himself, and not some-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
thing which is imposed upon him by
force from without or by the authority
of other wills than his own. The abnor-
mal or atypical person must, of course,
be dealt with in abnormal and atypical
ways, but the normal human being must
be called upon to become responsible
for himself and to render service to the
community as his own free act and not
in response to the compulsion of
another.
There can be no dispute as to the
fact that society is composed of in-
dividual men, but there appears to be
wide difference of opinion as to the
relation in which society should stand
to the individual units that compose it.
There are those who, confident of the
wisdom of their own opinions and judg-
ment, impatient of the slow sagacity of
nature, and dissatisfied with the imper-
fect results of education, would extend
the rule of compulsion over the conduct
and habits of men from the necessary
to the merely expedient, and from the
highly important to the trivial and in-
significant. It is just now a common
observation that whenever a majority,
however fickle or however fortuitous,
can be obtained in support of a given
restriction upon others which com-
mends itself to their own judgment or
their own feelings, they will promptly
impose that restriction upon all men
within reach of their authority, quite
regardless of its ultimate moral and
social effects. This is the disposition
which for many centuries has been
responsible at one time or another for
sumptuary legislation of various kinds,
and for the annoying and foolish re-
strictions which have from time to time
been imposed upon men without any
permanent result other than to make
clear the unwisdom of the principles
and policies which guide such action.
This is the danger that is always present
in those movements which, to those who
are enthusiastic in their support, and
frequently high-minded, appear to make
for moral and economic progress and
prosperity, but which in reality have an
opposite effect, because they extend the
area of compulsion over conduct.
Sound discipline has a higher social
aim than this, and it proceeds by a quite
different method. It takes its start
from the capacity and the educability
of the person. Upon this it makes the
most rigorous and insistent demands.
It aims to develop personality, self, to
the utmost, but it aims to develop it as
selfhood and not as selfishness. The
gap between selfhood and selfishness is
as wide as the gap between a sound
and an unsound individualism. Unsound
individualism errs on its side as com-
pletely as does collectivism on the other
side. The one means an eventful
anarchy where right is determined by
the rule of might; the other means a
stagnation where right is determined by
tradition and by custom. Between the
two, sharing the advantages of in-
dividualism and of collectivism alike
and avoiding the evils of both, lies that
form of political and moral philosophy
which, for lack of a better term, may
be called institutionalism. This philoso-
phy teaches that the man finds his com-
pletion and his satisfaction in willing
membership in the social whole, with all
the obligations that such membership
brings as to human service and as to
collective responsibility.
Institution^ism finds in the family,
in the church, in the state, in private
property, in science, in literature, and
in the fine arts those institutions and
undertakings which represent the striv-
ing of human personality toward the
goal of self-expression and attainment.
No one of these institutions or under-
takings is static or fixed, but every one
of them reveals in history a process of
development which appears to be
toward greater perfection and the in-
creasing satisfaction of man. Where,
as in the case of the church, of litera-
ture, and of the fine arts, there seem
to be exceptions to this rule, inasmuch
as an astounding standard of perfection
was reached in the early stages of
Western civilization, there is much food
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DISCIPLINE AND THE SOCIAL AIM OF EDUCATION
39
for reflection. It may, perhaps, be true
that some of the more subtle and
imaginative forms of himian expres-
sion and achievement are as well able
to approximate perfection in their
earliest manifestations as after a long
course of development.
It is in these institutions and under-
takings that man finds that larger edu-
cation which life superimposes upon
the discipline and training of the school.
It is through participation in these in-
stitutions and undertakings and, in the
case of exceptional men, through con-
tribution to our knowledge of them or
through furthering their development,
that personality finds its highest expres-
sion and its fullest satisfaction. A
person is, as Kant long ago pointed out,
not a means to an end ; a human person
is an end in himself. The enriching of
one's own personality is the real basis
for human service and for bearing a
share of collective responsibiUty. The
objective goods that may follow from
human service and from collective
action are of course highly important,
but the subjective results in the minds
and characters of those who participate
in them are more important still.
Autocracy and an all-powerful non-
moral state have demonstrated that
they can obtain and manifest a marked
degree of national efficiency. It re-
mains for democracy to prove that it
can do the same, or it will eventually
succumb before a more effective type
of national organization in which true
civil liberty is unknown.
The difficulties of democracy are the
opportunities of education. It is for
the educational system of a really free
people so to train and discipline its
children that their contribution to na-
tional organization and national effec-
tiveness will be voluntary and generous,
not prescribed and forced.
The service and the* sacrifice which
are the results of a self-imposed limita-
tion are worth many times the service
and the sacrifice that follow prescrip-
tion and compulsion. The moment that
we substitute for an autonomous will,
a will that is self-directed, an heterono-
mous will, a will that is directed by
others, we have treated the human
being not as a person, but as a thing;
we have substituted mechanism for life.
The early training and discipline of
the child are for the purpose of teaching
his will to form itself, to direct itself,
to walk alone. Fortunately, the child
is not asked to begin his life ^t the
point where the race began, but he is
offered through the family, the church,
and the school the benefits of the age-
long experience of the race and of its
inherited culture and efficiency. These
are offered him not as rods for chas-
tisement or formulas for repression, but
rather as food upon which to grow and
as a ladder upon which to climb. If
the process of training and discipline
has been wisely ordered, the child will
come to the end of his formal training
not only with keen appreciation of what
has been done for him, but with eager
anticipation of the opportunity that lies
open before him. It is the merest sciol-
ism to suppose that every child can or
should construct the world anew for
himself. His own reactions, his own
experiences, his own appreciations, his
own reflections, are only important as
part of a process, and that process is
his gfrowing into an understanding of
what the world has been and is, in order
that through participation in it he may
strive to alter it for the ^better.
The ideal society and the ideal state
is not one ruled by a despot, by a mili-
tary caste, or by a controlling oligarchy,
however beneficent these may be, or
however efficiently organized the masses
whom they order and control. The
ideal society and the ideal state is a
democracy in which every man and
every woman is fitted to be free, to put
forth the best possible eflFort in self-ex-
pression through participation in the
great human institutions and undertak-
ings that constitute civilization, and in
service like-minded with themselves.
This is the social aim of a soundly con-
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40 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
ceived education. To its accomplish- complish this, they are futile. "For
ment, all training, all discipline, all vo- what shall it profit a man, if be shall
cational preparation, all scholarship are gain the whole world, and lo«e bis own
intended to lead. If they do not ac- soul?"
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THE CHAIRMAN
As the poet Dante passed in the
streets of Florence, the women and chil-
dren shrank from him, saying, "That
is the man who has been in hell." To-
day a man who has been in hell is
coming towards us upon the ocean only
a day away. It was to him that, in
their hour of direst need, the women
and children of Belgium crowded for
help and sympathy. At the very center
of the great conflict, facing danger and
ministering to need, he yet found time
for a service to art and to the Institute.
In a time of doubt he has seen his
way clearly and has "stood four square
to all the winds that blow." We count
it great fortune to hear about the Amer-
ican quality from one who in this dis-
tracted time has so nobly upheld what
we think are American ideals. Mr.
Whitlock's paper will be read by the
friend whom he specially designated
as its reader, Mr. Hamlin Garland.
THE AMERICAN QUALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
By Brand Whitlock
In Walt Whitman's essay on "Demo-
cratic Vistas," there is a passage that
has long had for me a curious fascina-
tion. The poet in his ardent way had
been studying the achievements and ten-
dencies of our republic, and he tells us
that in passing to and fro, beholding the
crowds in the great cities, a singular
awe falls upon him. He feels "with de-
jection and amazement" that among our
geniuses few or none have yet really
spoken to this people, created a single
image-making work for them. He says :
"What has filFd and fills to-day our
intellect, our fancy, furnishing the
standards therein, is yet foreign. The
great poems, Shakspere's included, are
poisonous to the pride and dignity of
the common people, the life blood of
democracy. The models of our litera-
ture, as we get it from other lands,
ultra-marine, have had their birth in
courts, and bask'd and grown in castle
sunshine; all smells of princes' favors.
Of writers of a certain sort, we have
indeed plenty, contributing after their
kind; many elegant, many leam'd, all
complacent. But touched by the na-
tional test, or tried by the standards of
democratic personality, they wither to
ashes."
And then he exclaims : "Do you call
those genteel little creatures American
poets ? Do you call that perpetual, pis-
tareen, paste-pot work, American art,
American drama, taste, verse? I think
I hear, echoed as from some mountain-
top afar in the West, the scornful laugh
of the Genius of These States."
He is speaking of American democ-
racy here in his capacity of prophet
rather than in his capacity of poet, even
if his prophecy does sound much like
his poetry. It is a long essay, more or
le3S abstruse, and probably as little liked
as it is little read. In it Whitman
sounds, as he was wont to say, his bar-
baric yawp over the housetops; much
of it, like much of all prophecy and
poetry, if not over the housetops, is at
least over the head, though Whitman
might have said of his prophecy, as
Browning said of his own poetry, that
he never intended it as a substitute for
a cigar, — art, I suppose, being a collab-
oration between the artist and the ama-
teur, and subjective poetry and subjec-
tive democracy difficult to comprehend
even by that limited aristocracy that
finds them one and the same thing.
Whitman was writing in 1871, at the
beginning of that decade in which taste
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42
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
in America was so poor that years af-
terward, when Mr. Howells wished to
show how bad some bit of architecture
and decoration was, he had only to say,
'The 70's had done their worst." The
epoch made memorable by the names of
Irving, Cooper, and Bryant, Poe and
Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow,
Whittier, Lowell and Holmes, had
closed with the Civil War, and, al-
though Whitman respected and admired
much of that literature, and said he
could not imagine any better luck befall-
ing these States for a poetical beginning
and initiation than had come from Em-
erson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whit-
tier, he had for its romanticism the im-
patience that romanticism always in-
spires in the democratic temperament.
For when it was not wholly of roman-
ticism, it was of its traditions from the
days of Irving, who imported the or-
iginal stock. Hawthorne had frankly
regretted that there was no romantic
ruins in America to inspire him, and
Cooper found in his own land only the
scene and not the spirit of those tales
the heroes of which were medieval
knights in buckskin and Indian chiefs
who talked like Mr. Gladstone.
In the sick mind of Poe, that pioneer
of decadence, whom Emerson called
"the jingle man," romanticism found a
fertile soil for its rankest growths. His
gloomy and morbid genius was as alien
to the American spirit as that of the
luxurious Baudelaire, his translator,
commentator, and admirer, who de-
spised America and hated the whole
scheme of democracy, and it was pre-
cisely for that reason, as he does not
fail to make clear, that Baudelaire se-
lected Poe as the only one of our race
with whom he could have sympathy.
Of all the brilliant group, Emerson, in
his thought, was the most distinctly
American, as ruggedly and originally
American as Lincoln himself, and with
an almost identical sense of the spiritual
meaning and purpose of the New
World. Perhaps it was this fact that
made him so universal, so that his phil-
osophy lifts him out of common cate-
gories and places him in the ranks of
Montaigne and Marcus Aurelius.
The others were all sound, whole-
some, genial normal men, and normal
Americans, too, in all their civic sym-
pathies, and proudly aware of their citi-
zenship in the New World. Longfellow
was perhaps nearer the people than any
of the others, though it may be that I
have this impression because there is
very clear in my memory that wintry
morning in the Ohio school-house when
the teacher told us he was dead. We
were all as depressed as though we had
lost a friend, and one litle girl put her
head down on her desk and cried. She
was the girl, I think, to whom the poet
had sent his autograph for the school's
celebration of his birthday only a month
before. No poet can be far from the
people of his land when he is loved by
the children in the public schools. Whit-
tier had much of this same affection,
for he was of the people, too, and as
Quaker could hardly fail to be genu-
inely of the American spirit, just as the
noble Commemoration Ode shows Low-
ell mostly to have been.
They courageously took their part as
scholars in politics, though they guarded
their art from its contacts, and lived in
another world, as artists are wont to do
— 3L world that one somehow thinks of
in the case as that Victorian, or, better,
that Tennysonian, world of country
gentlemen living gracefully in old
Georgian mansions, among elms and
yew-trees and lovely lawns, with sun-
dials and trim hedges, a fixed and
finished world, with every man content-
ed in his place.
The successive imitations, dilutions,
and attenuations that immediately fol-
lowed them were less and less of the
people, now interested in other things.
For with the great war over, new
thoughts, new aspirations were stirring.
Before the nation lay a mighty task,
a new and fascinating adventure, an
ambition no less than to subjugate a
continent, and men sprang with the
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THE AMERICAN QUALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
43
spirit of Jacob to wrestle with the
earth. No man now for romanticism
in presence of the romantic reality ! The
imagination of the land was turned
toward the boundless West, and young
men, as ruthless as the Forty-niners
or the old scouts and Indian-fighters,
joined the splendid pageant of the pi-
oneers to stretch railroads across the
prairies, uprear cities, make a civil-
ization in the wilderness, and grow up
with the country.
They had little sympathy with writ-
ers in general, much less with writers
who, bhnd to all that was going on out
of doors, knew the people only as a
vague element against which to draw
the characters they traced from other
books, like those pallid students one
sees in the Louvre making copies of the
masters. Small wonder the "Genius of
These States" poured his scornful
laugh from the mountain-top afar in the
West.
Whitman, in regretting that none of
our geniuses had yet spoken to the
people, could not have failed to observe
from his own experience how difficult
is that supreme achievement, especially
for the sophisticated artists. It is one
thing to write about the people, quite
another to write for them. It requires
that naivete which artists early lose, or
that simplicity which they rarely attain.
We sometimes sigl*. over the want of
appreciation of art among us, as though
there were somewhere a country in
which all the people have cultivated
tastes ; but there is no such country. In
the older nations there is, of course,
a greater accumulation of artistic treas-
ure, public monuments on which Time,
the consummate artist, has placed her
subtle patina, and unconsciously the
taste is affected by these noble pres-
ences ; but the public there has the same
idols the public worships everywhere,
and if there is an altar to art, it is to
an unknown God. Even the great
painters had small recognition in their
day. The taste of the crowd was fixed
on the cinema of their time, numerous
examples of which still exist in the
galleries of Europe. The public recog-
nition accorded Phidias was the accusa-
tion by the people of Athens of having
stolen the gold intrusted to him for the
embellishment of his statue of Zeus,
and Rembrandt's great painting "The
Night- Watch" was refused by the cor-
poration of Amsterdam because the por-
traits were said not to resemble the
originals. In pictures the public looks
not for beauty or artistic excellence,
but for some drama, some story, that
literatesque quality, the defect of many
English and American paintings, which
easily piques the interest. It is no
doubt the first requisite of any work
of the imagination that it be inter-
esting, but what interests the artist
and what interests the public are two
widely different things. The public
likes the primitive tale of adventure,
in which the adventurer does not have
to pay in his own character for his
deeds, and sentimental stories that ig-
nore the logic of life; and seemingly
it likes the same story over and over
again, like children who resent the alter-
ation of a single idea in the tales told
to them at bedtime and hold one to
one's identical phrases. It is no mean
power, this ability to touch the common
heart, to gratify the public taste, but
a noble one, and the pity is that the
writers who are endowed with it often
seem insensible to the responsibility
it entails.
This adolescent taste, common to
the people everywhere, is especially
marked in time of abnormal material
growth, such as the era that followed
the Civil War. Not only the creation,
but the appreciation, of art requires en-
ergy, and the energies of men intensely
preoccupied with worldly achievement,
always at variance with artistic ideals,
are absorbed in their conflicts. The
superman is too impatient for what he
calls results to develop qualities that
do not directly serve his ends, and his
esthetic and emotional nature remains
undeveloped and elemental Unwilling
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44
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
to admit any inferiority in himself, he
is irritated by anything he cannot un-
derstand at a glance. Poetry he simply
cannot grasp; as well ask a pugilist to
read "Rabbi Ben Ezra." And yet, he
has his hours of relaxation, consents to
be amused, and turning from the serious
things of life to the soft, the dreamy,
the impracticable, he may smile indul-
gently on artists, whom he regards as
part of his valetry, with chorus girls,
comedians, clowns, and negro minstrels.
Publishers, editors, and theatrical man-
agers begin to flatter him, to pander to
him, to give him what he wants. If the
author listens to the tempter, he aban-
dons art for business, and, since paper
can be manufactured from wood, and
books be bound by machines, a busi-
ness that can be made very profitable.
All men of good-will everywhere re-
joice to see the artist prosper, and salute
him with admiration as he passes in
his touring-car, but they nevertheless
guard themselves against the resulting
confusion between literature and print-
ed matter.
The memory of the first clear note of
the American motive in our fiction takes
us back to the days in which we seem
to have had more literary criticism than
we have in these, when publishers, tak-
ing culture into their own hands, wisely
observe the precaution to print a re-
view of each book on its cover. We
were all thrilling then over Mr. How-
ells's battle for realism, as we under-
stand the word in America, not natural-
ism, or mere meticulous accuracy in re-
porting superficial details, but that in-
ner realism which is the soul of things
and one with the logic of life, the eye
clear enough to see and the heart strong
enough to accept the results of char-
acter and deed. It is a principle that
must be the basis of any art that is
democratic, as it is the basis of democ-
racy itself.
It was, indeed, the democratic faith,
no less than the literary genius, of Mr.
Howells that gave the first impulse
toward a native and indigenous fiction.
and with the vision that accompanies
all real faith he saw what art might do
with the rich and varied life that lay
all undiscovered before the eyes of
American writers. In **A Modem In-
stance,*' and "The Rise of Silas Lap-
ham," to select only two of his many
novels, he laid the foundation of a new
literature in America. We had for the
first time American novels that were of
American authenticity; that is, they
were faithful to the American condition
they pictured, with portraits, instead of
photographs and caricatures, of typical
American characters, fresh from the
hand of an American who knew Ameri-
can life, viewed it with sympathy and
understanding, and, above all, from the
American point of view.
It is difficult to realize now just what
those novels meant in our literature, in
view of what it had been. There was
in them a new quality, genuine and in-
vigorating, and they exercised an in-
fluence on American literature as pro-
found as had Gogol's "Cloak" on Rus-
sian literature. More by his perform-
ance even than by his precept, since the
best criticism of any work is better
work, Mr. Howells changed the man-
ner of writing novels in America, as
Ibsen created a revolution in the writing
of plays everywhere. Playwrights might
scoff at Ibsen, but they did not dare to
write as they had written before he
wrote ; their old tricks, expedients, and
dodges would no longer serve ; no more
soliloquys, no more asides, no more
lapses of time, once Ibsen had shown
how silly and unreal these were. And
so with Mr. Howells; no one in Amer-
ica writes as he might have written be-
fore Mr. Howells wrote. Under his
Imfluence, and affected, no doubt, by
those Russian, Spanish, and Italian
writers whom he introduced to his
people, and, so far as manner was con-
cerned, by the modem French school,
the work of creating an American liter-
ature was undertaken, one might almost
say, in the practical American way.
Every writer who felt the impulse to
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THE AMERICAN QUALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
45
interpret his own time and his own
people quite wisely began at home.
There was an industrious scratching of
the native soil, every part of the Union
was subjected to a careful examination,
every State in turn minutely analyzed,
the customs and habits of different re-
gions duly set down and noted, and the
several dialects of the English language
spoken among us, some of them still
redolent of the accents of foreign lands,
faithfully recorded. There was an ex-
tensive survey, an immense documen-
tation of localities, and if the whole
body of work lacked that envergure
that would make it national in range
and scope, if it did not immediately
take on the epic grandeur of our terri-
torial expansion and produce an
epopee with the national type distinctly
identified, it was the inevitable conse-
quence of the wide extent and variation
of the land, of lingering sectionalism,
and of conflicting currents of race and
tradition.
It was a loving labor, all animated by
the same intention of truth, honesty,
and sincerity. These writers wrote be-
cause they had a story to tell rather
than because they had to tell a story;
their work had a native flavor; one at
least with the nation's mind, it was
evolving with the nation. Critics have
said that it was sectional, a New Eng-
land, a Southern, a Mid- Western, and
a Western, rather than an American
literature; that is was provincial, not
national. It was, indeed, representative
of the several distinct regions of the
land and of their local pecuHarities, but
if it was provincial it was in that sense
that "Eugenie Grandet" or "Madame
Bovary" or "Pierre et Jean" or "Jude
the Obscure" are provincial. The scene
if. laid in the provinces, the microcosm
in which life, everywhere the same, may
be more easily studied, and I suspect
that any disappointment that might have
been felt in it was due to our American
habit of looking for the big.
We used to talk in those days of the
Great American Novel, and most of us
fully intended some day to write it.
But is was found to be a rather large
order. America was in the process of
that recurrent discovery that has been
going on since Columbus's time, and
changed too often and loomed too
large for any single imagination; it
was beyond the writer, as the Grand
Canon or Niagara are beyond the
painter. But it had a quality that de-
termined its validity as American above
any other claim, and that was, it was
not pervaded by the subtle and de-
bilitating atmosphere of caste and rank
and privilege ; even in the dialect stories
the characters were not treated patron-
izingly, en grand seigneur, de hatit en
bas. Between this work and what had
gone before there was the difference be-
tween the position a gillie is permitted
to assume in one of the novels of Sir
Walter and that which a Scotsman
takes naturally in the poems of Robert
Bums. The novels that were written
as the result of this impulse were not
pel haps widely popular. The new ten-
dency was criticized, sometimes bitterly,
a fact that was proof of its significance.
Most of us can remember with what an
outcry Mr. Howells's "A Hazard of
New Fortunes" was received, and how
Mr. Howells was urged to continue on
the safe ground of old sequences, for
he was getting dangerously near truths
that have a very high explosive poten-
tiality. Our language had not been en-
riched at that time by the word "muck-
raker," so that Mr. Howells could not
be disposed of so summarily as have
some of our novelists who since that
time have exposed wrong and injustice,
even if they did not do it with the art
that is inseparable from everything he
writes. It was not openly declared that
wrong and injustice should not be ex-
posed; it was only insisted that it was
not the province of art to expose them,
and if art felt it must do so, it was
suggested that it issue pamphlets —
which nobody would read. Perhaps
the same reproach was visited on Cer-
vantes when he muckraked chivalry in
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
'*Don Quixote," for that book must have
hurt business seriously, or on Tolstoy
when he muckracked war in "War and
Peace," or on Turgenieff when he
muckraked serfdom in "The Memoirs
of a Sportsman."
The innate conservatism of the peo-
ple— for no one is so conservative as
the crowd — opposes innovation, and
with people of our race art always en-
counters the chilling influence of the
Puritan spirit, always suspicious of
beauty. In keeping art clean, Puritan-
ism risks making it sterile ; it never can
Icam that there is something antiseptic
in liberty, so that it purifies itself and
heals its own wounds. It is not so in-
transigeant as it was, and yet by a re-
spectable portion of certain of our com-
munities, very clean, honest, earnest,
and industrious folk, no more worthy
to be found anywhere, it was actually
considered not so very many years ago
a sin to read a novel or to see a play,
so that young boys were left either to
the puerile stories given out in Sunday
schools or to the "Nickel Libraries,"
which could be folded conveniently for
the pocket and so read under a desk
leaf at school, and then exchanged, in
that circulating library the boys thus
early founded without having been en-
dowed by Mr. Carnegie. I remember,
indeed, to have read an excellent one
myself, dealing with the life, trials,
and triumphs of Jesse James and his
brother Frank. I seem to have read
it at the time with absorbing interest,
though I could not read it now, unless
it were given a pasteboard bade and
sold for a dollar and eighteen cents,
with a cover announcing the sensational
discovery of the latest Alexander Du-
mas who would have written it.
Romanticism, indeed, in some form
always contrives to flourish on, and
to prevail over its patient, meritorious
rival, even if it has to go into the
cinema, where under the censorship of
police sergeants it is, from all reports,
doing well even now. And doubtless
it will continue to do this, for our
business men, after two hours spent in
dictating to distinguished stenographers
in the morning, two hours at luncheon
at the club in the middle of the day,
and eighteen holes of golf in the after-
noon, are so tired in the evening that
they cannot apply their undoubted
judgment in art to the works of serious
writers, while their lovely daughters,
whom our publishers are assiduous to
please, have long since passed on to
William Blake and Nietzsche. And as
for our working-men, after the day's
work is done, instead of reading about
the upper classes in the English serials
that are always running in the maga-
zines, they go out to see the movies.
Sometimes it seems indeed that the
audience is so reduced and limited that
there is nobody left for whom novels
may be written, unless the novelists
write for one another, and as the eti-
quette of the profession requires that
they present one another with auto-
graph copies of their works, they seem
sometimes to be in danger of eating
one another up, and perishing out of
the earth altogether.
Fortunately, however, it is not quite
so bad as that; for, notwithstanding
the confusion of standards, our writers
of the tendency I have no doubt too
dimly and vaguely defined, have gone
on, down to this very day, writing
novels the best of which will stand that
practical test which alone can determine
the national quality of a novel.
Ask a Russian to recommend a few
books that would enlighten one as to
the genius, ideals, and mentality of his
nation, and, preferring fact to fiction,
stipulate that the books be novels and
not histories, and he will instantly
say : "Why, read Gogol, GontscharoflF,
Dostoievsky, Ostrovsky, TurgenieflF,
Tolstoy, Garshin." He will tell you
that he does not agree with all the
ideas they advance, and then, with a
shrug of the shoulders and a little smile
of tolerant affection, he will add, "But
it is Russia."
From the names of a score of novel-
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THE AMERICAN QUALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
47
ists one can select twice that many
books that will tell the inquiring for-
eigner of the mentality of the American
people and the quality of their life, and
I think that certain of the novels of
Mr. Howells, of Mark Twain, and of
Frank Norris, to name no others, will
rank with the best in any literature,
and, if the work that was less than
theirs somehow fell short of the highly
incandescent, imaginative quality that
is a prerequisite to the synthesis of
great art, it was an authentic expression
of the national consciousness growing
brighter and more vivid all the while.
But why, after all, American art?
Since art is universal, why not just art?
In what would American art consist?
How would American literature be dis-
tinguished from other literatures,
American poetry from other poetry,
American novels from other novels?
By its personality, that is all. Art, in-
deed, is personality, not alone individ-
ual personality, but national personality,
and the supreme artist incarnates the
mentality of his race. He thinks as
the nation thinks, feels as it feels, as
Lincoln, by a kind of anthroposcopy,
knew all the various whims and currents
of the public mind. It is a quality our
humorists have always possessed. It
is that which has made them distinctive
and different from the wits and satir-
ists of other lands. Nowhere do the
people read more than in America,
nowhere do they protect themselves
and their institutions so much by the
sharp weapon of ridicule. Our humor-
ists, despite all their exaggeration, have
been wholly American and generally
right minded ; they have represented us
pretty accurately, and often protected
us against representatives who were
not so faithful, and against many an old
fraud and pretense that still flourish
elsewhere and work their tragedies in
the lives of men have withered in the
scornful laugh of the Genius of These
States. For it has been precisely that
genius, this American humor, bound in
a profound and intimate relation to
the fundamental American spirit; for
what are they both but that intuitive
sense of human values which scorns
all affectation, especially that of superi-
ority, refuses to estimate men by any
other standard than that of individual
character, is impressed only by natural
human dignity, and requires every tub
to stand on its own bottom?
One, indeed, who wishes to under-
stand Ajnerica might read our humor-
ists and know all about us if it were
not for the fact that he would have
to understand our country and be in the
secret of its coterie speech in order to
understand the humorists. The novel-
ists might learn much from them. The
Russian realists viewed humanity in
despairing pity. The French realists, and
especially Flaubert, viewed it in con-
tempt and disgust. The American real-
ist, I should say, would view it much
as the American humorists have viewed
it: they have known most of its de-
fects, but they have viewed it tolerant-
ly, sympathetically, and with respect
for the dignity and the right there is
somewhere in every man simply be-
cause he is a man.
I should be filled with regret if I
thought in any way I had suggested
that American literature would be chau-
vinistic, or of the mind of a politician
whooping it up at the Fourth of July
picnic. Art does not raise her voice in
controversy or perspire in argument.
She is not concerned in advancing
causes or in bringing about reforms.
She is not interested in the initiative
and referendum, and is wholly indiffer-
ent as to whether the town votes wet
or dry. She cares not whether the
Government is conservative or radical,
reactionary or progressive, scorns 'dull
economics, and turns impatiently away
from preaching and propaganda. She
is equally at home in monarchy or re-
public, and is of a glad, free, spon-
taneous democracy, a kind of loose
character kept under constant surveil-
lance by the police of formalism and
respectability.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
But, while Art has no interest in
parties or schools of thought, — she has
seen so many of these ephemerae! — she
is curious about those who are preoccu-
pied by their demand and devote their
lives to them, for she is curious about
life in all its manifestations, and, above
all, in man as its highest manifestation.
If the novelist would serve art, then, he
takes man where he finds him, provided
that man is interesting, or interesting
to him. Novels are not distinguished
because they portray distinguished
characters, but because they are written
by distinguished intelligences, and the
novelist will seek life in some other
epoch or in some other parish in vain;
all he can know of life is that which
he sees in the life about him, for there
is no other life that any one can know,
and most of us cannot know even that
very well.
Walt Whitman has prepared an elab-
orate questionnaire for those who aspire
to the august place of poet in these
States. It is to be found in his poem
'*By Blue Ontario's Shore," and if the
intending poet has not time to read
the entire poem, he should not fail to
make out answers to the interrogatories
in those two cantos in which old Walt
questions him with many and stem
questions, as though he were a candi-
date for public office, as, indeed, in
a very important sense, he is: Has he
studied out the land, its idioms, and
men ? Has he left all feudal processes
and poems behind, and assumed the
poems and processes of democracy? Is
he really of the whole people ? Is what
he offers America not something that
has been better told or done before?
Has not it or the spirit of it been im-
ported on some ship? Does it not as-
sume that what is notoriously gone is
still here ?
It would doubtless require something
more than this to constitute a poet, but
I think the root of the matter is there.
An American novel would not consist
merely in a story the scene of which is
laid in the United States. It would be
entirely feasible to write a novel, laying
the scene in New Yorfc, with none but
American citizens as characters, and
have it no American novel at all. It
has, indeed, been done several times.
For American is a state of mind; like
the kingdom of heaven, it is within you,
or — it is not. It is simply a question of
the artist's conception of life, of his
relation to other men. Does he natur-
ally, spontaneously, and consistently as-
sume the American attitude toward
life?
Maupassant advanced the doctrine
that the novelist should be a detached,
impartial, and impersonal observer — a
captivating theory, but the difficulty is
that no writer can long remain in that
state of mind, least of all Maupassant.
In his essay on the works of this writer,
Tolstoy begins by telling how Turgcn-
ieff, leaving Yasnya Poliana after a
visit, took a book from his valise and
gave it to Tolstoy, saying: "Read this
when you have time. It is by a young
French writer." The book was "La
Maison Tellier," and with the reluct-
ance we all have for a book a friend
has urged upon us, Tolstoy did not read
it for a long time, and then one day he
read it, and wrote a long essay on it.
The purpose of Tolstoy's essay is to
show Maupassant's moral attitude
toward the personages and the prob-
lems involved in the book and toward
life in general. But it is not neces-
sary to read Tolstoy's essay to sec
what is Maupassant's attitude in
these respects ; it is only necessary to
read "La Maison Tellier."
For though a writer may succeed in
showing nothing else, in revealing
no other character, always, inevit-
ably, he reveals himself. All books
are autobiographies. From any given
book we may learn little, but we
may learn all that it is essential to
know about the author of that book :
whether he is a gentleman and a
scholar or a bounder and a cad;
whether he is a liberal or bigot;
whether he is intelligent or, despite
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THE AMERICAN QLJALITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
49
all his instruction, essentially igno-
rant; whether, in a word, he is by
turns sentimentalist, brute, and cynic,
or a man of sympathy, humor, and
compassion, who loves his fellow-men
even when they seem least to deserve
it.
As to the future of American letters,
its highest hope lies where the hope of
the race lies, in allegiance to that
America of the mind where all who
love their fellow-men have dwelt. I
speak of this conception of life as the
American attitude not because it is an
attitude characteristic of all Ameri-
cans, for there are many, born in
America, who still find themselves be-
wildered and disconcerted immigrants
in the land, but because it is the atti-
tude of one imbued with the spirit that
has led so many of the best of mankind
to behold in the achievement of the
American ideal the hope of mankind.
And as Lincoln, in whom this spirit
was nobly incarnated, asked, where
will one find a better or an equal hope ?
One, even a prophet, is apt to grow
vague and hazy when he begins to dis-
cuss the form anything will take in the
future, especially anything so spiritual
as art, and I shall not idly speculate
about something of which in reality I
can know nothing. We are living in a
solemn hour of change; the world will
never again be the world we knew.
But I think the best of our novels will
continue to be more and more of that
human spirit we have been considering.
One is always reading that realism has
passed or is passing or is about to pass,
but it will pass only when the desire
for truth passes from the human heart.
It has never known any final form, nor
ever will, any more than truth will;
but in each of its stages it makes a
little more progress toward perfection,
as the race does, and it makes progress
only along that way in which there is
freedom and equality for all. Our
veracious and veritable fiction would
be as sympathetically concerned about
all men as the Declaration of In-
dependence, and it will be one with
that higher poetry, which, whenever it
finds it necessary to complete expres-
sion, will not hesitate to fling off the
tyranny of prosodic rule, — meanwhile,
aware no doubt that the mere fact that
emotional statements are printed in
lines that, to use an expression of the
old-time printer, have not been "justi-
fied," is not of itself sufficient to con-
stitute them poetry.
Thus informed, it could not be of
that shabby snobbery that is exclusively
preoccupied with the luxurious and
fashionable, and with those who rever-
ence and imitate them, as if there were
no other people of interest ; nor would
it be concerned with the shamed apology
and evident regret that America has no
officially recognized social class; nor,
with the air of making the best of a
bad bargain, would it try to make
plutocrats do for aristocrats, and mil-
lionaires for lords. Perhaps in no re-
spect will the change be so marked, so
revolutionary, as in the place women
will occupy in the novel; it will be
significantly one with that change in
the place she will occupy in the re-
public. The novel, too, will be equally
concerned with working-men and work-
ing-women and their emotions, their
longings, and the problems that perplex
them, and with the drama of the crowds
in cities. And all these people would be
in it in their own right, not, like those
shabby choruses in the operas, to show
off the brilliant and costly stars. Fic-
tion, in a word, would not be so class-
conscious, for there can be no hope of
the emanation of beauty from the
warped, darkened, and asymmetrical
mind that purblindly sees sharp divis-
ions, fixed and implacable distinctions
and rigid separations between mortals
who are all alike involved in the snares
of the capricious fates, all alike the
victims and the heirs of time.
To the imagination of the Old World
there has always been something per-
plexing, troubling, in the dim vision of
America, lying off there in the west,
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
vast, vague, and mysterious in her pos-
session of other standards and ideals.
Time and time again the Old-World
writers have crossed the ocean on their
hurried visits, desperately determined
to understand her, to tear her secret
from her. Some of them were polite
and ccMTiplimentary, some, like young
Tocqueville, sympathetically reported
on her institutions and intelligently
criticized them, while others, noting
only superficial manners and jotting
down with relish any crudity, any
gaucherie, they might detect, returned,
to cover her with contempt and snob-
bish scorn. And not one of them seems
ever to have envisaged her, ever to
have divined her; not one of them
seems ever to have caught the faintest
conception of her spiritual significance
or to have beheld even so much of the
vision as glows any morning in dark
eyes on Ellis Island; all failed in that
poetic insight which alone can interpret
her meaning and apprehend her relation
to the development of man the in-
dividual unit.
And all the while America, impassive,
inscrutable, patient, amused, waited for
her poet to interpret and reveal her,
aware that her dream was for the poet
alone. And her poet will come some
day out of the stress and strain and
turmoil, out of the dust and tears and
sweat of common life, from the world
of common men. He will have no
illusions about them ; he will know their
folly, their foibles, and their sins as well
as their wisdom, their virtues, and their
sacrifices; and, thus knowing them,
understanding them, loving them, as
one of their very own, will reveal them
not only to themselves, but to those
others who are precisely like them in all
essentials except in the weakness of
imagining themselves somehow uncom-
mon, diflferent, and better; and by the
revelation of his art he will transmtutc
into life the truth and beauty of the
dream.
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PRESENTATION TO MR. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS OF
THE GOLD MEDAL OF THE INSTITUTE
In presenting the medal Mr. Hamil-
ton Wright Mabie said :
The Gold Medal of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, designed
and executed by one of its members,
Mr. A. A. Weinman, has been given
to Augustus Saint-Gaudens for sculp-
ture, to James Ford Rhodes for his-
tory, to James Whitcomb Riley for
poetry, to William Rutherford Mead
for architecture, to Augustus Thomas
for dramatic composition, and to John
Singer Sargent for painting. It is given
to-day to William Dean HJowells for
fiction.
No selection of a man of letters to
receive a distinction conferred by a
jury, not of his peers, but of his fellow-
craftsmen, could more happily combine
recognition of achievement and the fit-
ting moment. Mr. Howells was the
first man chosen by the Institute to
constitute the American Academy of
Arts and Letters; he was elected its
first president, and his succession to
himself has not been interrupted. He
is not only the official head of the Acad-
emy, but in his work and character
he interprets its spirit and purpose. So
long as he remains where he is, the
Academy needs no gloss.
And this distinction is conferred in
the city of Mr. Howells's earliest liter-
ary friendships and reputation. In the
closing hours of the first day of creative
work in American literature he became
the associate of the men who gave the
beginnings of that literature elevation
of thought and dignity of form; here
his verse was first published; and here
he came into the view of the country
as the editor of the magazine which at
the beginning allied itself with the
American writing that was to endure.
Standing at the compositor's frame
in the friendly, human atmosphere of
an Ohio town, he shared the charac-
teristic life of his country when the
insights are deepest because they are
unconscious. It was a long way from
Martin's Ferry to Venice, but to youth
the Old World is always new, as to
the man who studies men the New
World is always old.
Ardent and eager in heart and poetic
in spirit, Mr. Howells went from the
frontier of a young and practical coun-
try to the elusiye frontier city, half
palace, half mirage, of the ancient realm
of art and romance. Four years in Ven-
ice was a university course in the hu-
manities without the distractions of
college life. If you add knowledge of
the modem languages and of the vital
books of the day in poetry and fiction,
you have an education shaped by im-
pulses passionate in their appeal, but
tempered and modulated by the tradi-
tions of beauty and skill. Under such
influences the realist who had the Tol-
stoyan passion for his kind became the
sensitive artist whose tools have the
delicate precision of a Benvenuto
Cellini.
A man of the modem temper, un-
dismayed by the newest method and
the latest radicalism, Mr. Howells is
always the artist. However advanced
his doctrine, his speech never misses
the charm which has made art the uni-
versal language. In Altruria, as in
Venice, one hears the accent which
survives all changes of time and place
and taste. A journalist at times, Mr.
Howells never ceased to be a man of
letters ; a patient and courteous editor,
he never lost the artist's sense of re-
sponsibility for the casual line as for
the carefully executed work.
It is his distinction that he has made
commonplace people significant and
the unsalted average man and woman
interesting. Fiction, reminiscence,
poetry, impressions of places and peo-
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
pie, essays, comedies, criticisms — what
variety of substance, what uniformity
of skill, of that fineness of taste which
is bom of right feeling as well as of
sound training!
To call him an American in any
divisive sense is to belittle Mr. Howells,
since it is the quality of art that it
uses the vernacular to speak of univer-
sal things ; but in a very real sense Mr.
Howells is not only a man of his time
and country, but of his region. Neither
the old nor the new West has given
us a novel reading of the mystery of
life; but fifty years ago in the Ohio
Valley and to-day on each slope of the
Rocky Mountains men and women are
impatient of traditions and keep open
house to ideas. It is true they as often
entertain cranks as angels, but they
have made all human kind welcome and
at home. Life as a work of art has
interested them less than life as an ex-
periment.
Hawthorne invested the austere ro-
mance of the Puritan spirit with dusky
splendor, and Cooper gave his genera-
tion the romance of primitive feeling
and action on land and sea. Mr. How-
ells, divesting the novel of the dramatic
aids of station, passion, and adventure,
has brought into view those elements
of character and of circumstance which,
in the newest as in the oldest world,
give life perennial interest. In "The
Rise of Silas Lapham" and "A Hazard
of New Fortunes" he dramatized op-
portunity, the romance of American
life. A realist, but never a literalist,
whose faith in democracy is saved from
superstition by that breadth of view
and play of imagination which we call
humor, Mr. Howells has made Ameri-
canism synonymous with sanity, hope.
the idealism of the clean hearth, and
seriousness of mood tempered by op-
timism, humor, and good fellowship.
Last year a slender book of fantasy
came from Mr. Howells's hand. It had
to do with Shakspere and Bacon re-
visiting "the pale glimpses of the moon"
at Stratford-on-Avon. It has the air
of a digression, of a romancer givii^
himself a half-holiday. It is the story
of a skylark ; a poet of an ease of wing
and magic of song akin with the sky-
larks that rise out of the meadows
at Hampton Lucy and pour out a flood
of unpremeditated music as they ascend
the invisible stairways of the sky.
There is no sign of toil in this slender
book, but there is more of Shakspere
in it than in many of those ponderous
octavos that recall the old-time descrip-
tion of the German scholar: he goes
down deeper and stays down longer
and comes up muddier than any other
scholar in the world. The facts drift
into the current so casually that only
the experienced reader knows that he
holds in his hand one of the most in*
telligent biographies of Shakspere that
has appeared. The owls have often
given us their account of the skylark;
this is a poet's report.
A serious thing fashioned without a
trace of toil, the wings liberated frcnn
the stone and every sign of tool and
dust vanished. Is not this the sign and
witness of art?
So to-day, at the summit of his years,
the National Institute of Arts and Let-
ters does not presume to honor William
Dean Howells; it is content to recog-
nize the beauty and value of a contribu-
tion to American literature made by
one who has not only the suffrages, but
the hearts of his fellow-craftsmen.
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LETTER FROM MR. HOWELLS IN ACCEPTANCE OF THE
MEDAL
Gentlemen of the Institute and the
Academy — ^A rumor of one of those
good things which seem too good to
be true has come to me with such in-
sistence that I must take it for fact,
and I am asking the Secretary of the
Institute to acknowledge it for me. I
know he will fitly account for my not
doing this in person, and I will not
hamper him with any expressions of
my preference as to how he shall con-
vey to you my sense of the supreme
honor which your award of the medal
for fiction has done me. In the last
analysis, I find this sense a sort of
dismay, which it would be difficult to
render.
Yet I will not pretend that it is alto-
gether the unexpected which has hap-
pened, or that, with whatever con-
sciousness of demerit, I did not hope
it might happen. I felt that if by no
other right the medal of fiction might
be mine by the right of seniority, for
I have been writing novels now for
nearly fifty years, and I have outlived
nearly every contemporary who might
have outrivaled me in the competition.
If this triumph of longevity had its
inevitable sadness, I hoped that there
might be some touch of the kindness
which sweetens the acclaim of his ar-
rival to the man who is out of the
running.
So far as pure criticism has governed
your vote, I might say that the novelist
whom you have done the greatest honor
that the world could do him has striven
for excellence in his art with no divided
motive, unless the constant endeavor
for truth is want of fealty to fiction.
The fashion of this world passes away,
and I have seen it come and go in my
art, or phases of it. The best novel
of my day is not the best novel of yours
in some of these. But if I could be-
lieve the vital things were not the same
in your esteem, I could not prize your
medal as I do. As it is, with my belief
that you have peculiarly in your keep-
ing the standard of the arts which
Burke says every man has by mere
fidelity to nature, and that you will
have it increasingly as you welcome to
your number whoever is striking for
beauty in any art, I prize your award
more than all the words of my many
books could sav.
5J
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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS*
By William M. Sloane
Charles Francis Adams, fourth in
descent from President John Adams
through President John Quincy Adams
and a scarcely less famous sire of his
own name, died in his eighty-first year,
a young man to the end. He was
soldier, financier, and historian, con-
sumed by zeal in each of his successive
vocations. Of our company he had
been a member for ten years. Unani-
mously chosen as a representative his-
torian, he was active in the enterprises
of the Academy, making public appear-
ances of dramatic power, and generous
in his support of its undertakings. His
personality was altogether sympathetic
among us. The members of other
bodies, personal friends of longer stand-
ing than most of us, have described
him in their pubHc tributes as brusque
and positive, yet open-minded and re-
ceptive; as aristocrat by temper and
democrat in conduct ; as alike an icono-
clast and a conservative; in short, as
the embodiment of paradox, physical
and mental.
Doubtless, in one sphere of his activi-
ties and during the years of combat,
he so appeared and so was. Much, too,
depended on the temper of his asso-
ciates, who all unconsciously may have
presented a similar front to him. He
was a doughty gladiator in the cause
of righteousness, and had a heavy fist
where dishonesty in affairs lurked be-
hind fine phrases and shiny euphem-
isms. While in a high degree endowed
with insight, while his vision of the
goal was always clear, and while his
reasoning processes made him in many
instances prophetic, he was really a
warrior; he loved the joy of battle even
more than conquest. The weapons of
his concrete knowledge and ruthless
logic were not unfair and never foully
wielded, but they were unsparing. With
gallant, honest foes he was even chival-
rous. It was not safe to menace him
with precedent or the ethos of history
or the lessons of experience. He was
sure to have interpretations of his own
which were alike novel and founded on
unsuspected aspects of familiar facts.
Authority was for him no thunderbolt,
but rather a flickering, dancing will-o'-
the-wisp.
This temper he manifested as an offi-
cer of the line in the Civil War, as a
student and director of railways and
systems of transportation, as an advo-
cate of radical changes in the higher
education given by American universi-
ties, and, what concerns us most as his
colleagues of Institute and Academy,
in his treatment of history as a human
discipline.
Among us he was always suave and
genial, as befitted a recognized person-
age. For many years of his later life
his home was Washington, and in the
national society comprising men and
women from all regions and of all ages,
he found a flattering recognition as a
sage, which calmed his spirit and soft-
ened his manners. But in matters of
history he was a knight-errant to the
last. He regretted the discovery of
America as having occurred a century
too soon ; he discredited the veracity of
the enthroned divinities of history from
Herodotus onward; the accepted view
of Washington as a strategist of the
first order he sedulously attacked. He
was an advocate of state's rights and
supported the project for a monument
to Lee in the national capitol. His
♦Read before the Academy, December 9, 1915.
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CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
55
attitude as a historian was pre-emi-
nently that of the doubter and the icon-
oclast. It has been said of Voltaire
that he transformed the writing of
history by the sheer force of doubt.
In the present-day era of modern and
radical reconstruction Mr. Adams made
his many readers keen and alert, even
if he could not always command con-
viction.
His complete works are embraced in
eleven volumes. In a sense he was a
writer of pamphlets and miscellanies,
but from first to last there is a unity
of style and purpose, whether the theme
be ancient, modem or contemporary;
social, economic or political. His style
is rugged and polished by turns, but
always a style — readable and reasoned.
The contents are uneven in value, but
everywhere you find something worth
while. For him there was all around
a turbulent, living, throbbing world,
little concerned with academic stand-
ards of form and fashion, indifferent
to culture, hard-fisted and selfish. The
morals of such a world were more
gristle than bone, and needed harden-
ing. And so he was a teacher of ethics,
not of the chair and school, but of the
lawgiver. He writes magisterially, he
enforces judicially, and he flays like
the judges in the gate.
That he wielded power as an his-
torian is beyond all peradventure, but
it was not because of his style. His
title to a high place rests on his untiring
industry as an investigator. For drud-
gery he had both capacity and respect,
since without the ceaseless murmur of
the treadmill no power can be gener-
ated. In biography he excelled; the
lives of his father and of Richard
Henry Dana are masterpieces of com-
position and vivid description. His lec-
•tures delivered at Oxford and pub-
lished as the last volume of his series
are a fine performance of daring, didac-
tic controversy. While he had a certain
British cast to his Americanism, he
never forgot, and did not entirely for-
give, the treatment to which his country
was subjected by official and social Eng-
land during the Civil War. It was bold,
though not overbold, within the thresh-
old of their own house, to instruct, to
warn, and to correct the descendants
of the sires who had so wrought. The
university, aware of his sincerity and
impartial in its own judgments, be-
stowed on him its highest honor but
one, the degree of doctor of letters.
The visit was particularly fruitful in
that, like a mole, he burrowed among
the tap-roots of historical knowledge,
namely, the private papers put at his
disposal by the families whose progeni-
tors had made English and American
history. Nothing daunted him, age had
neither withered nor staled him, and
the leads which he opened he and his
highly prized friend, Mr. Worthington
C. Ford, most industriously worked,
bringing a wealth of rich ore to be
assayed in America. He may be said
to have retained undiminished energy
to the end of his long and strenuous
life. While his independence of char-
acter, his unflinching treatment of pub-
lic questions, and his proud conscious-
ness of inherited obligations, forbade
any close organic connection with party
machinery, he was nevertheless a
statesman, an elder counselor in politics.
His advice, when sought, was freely
given, and, when not sought, was pro-
claimed in such ways as to secure gen-
eral attention from the intelligent pub-
lic. Legislators were powerfully in-
fluenced by it.
He was therefore in some sense a
maker of history as well as a writer
of it. His nature was eminently social ;
he frequented private dinners and re-
ceptions and was always prominent;
he talked abundantly and listened at-
tentively. Again and again he de-
clared that no platform was better than
that of a great public banquet, and as
an after-dinner speaker he made ad-
dresses which were always weighty
with thought. His intimate friends
were proud and happy in his society
and confidences, for he was alike witty
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56 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY: MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
and humorous. Like the monk of med-
ieval fable whose name was "Give," he
found comrades entitled "It shall be
given," and with all the gravitv of hi?
nature, the seriousness of his purpose,
and the occasional frostiness of his ad-
dress, he enjoyed life to the full as
few have done. It is a pleasant duty
to commemorate his work and his stim-
ulus in this association.
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN*
By William M. Sloanb
Alfred Thayer Mahan died last
year at the age of seventy-four. De-
riving in family, training, and confes-
sion from the old New York, his an-
cestry was notable. He was bom at
West Point, where his father, a learned
engineer of high repute, was then pro-
fessor. His career from his student
days at Columbia University and An-
napolis onward to his fiftieth year was
that of a faithful, painstaking officer
and Christian gentleman of the Angli-
can mold. In 1883 he had published
an admirable professional study entitled
"The Gulf and Inland Waters," and
two years later he was made lecturer
on naval history and strategy at the
Naval War College in Newport. Upon
his duties as teacher he entered with
the fitness due to university education
and professional discipline. Five years
later was published "The Influence of
Sea Power on History." During the
twenty-three years following- he pub-
lished no fewer than seventeen pieces
of important historical work, short and
long, making a total of nineteen titles
to his credit.
His biographies of Farragut and Nel-
son, as well as the finely studied bit of
autobiography entitled "From Sail to
Steam," are all works of the highest
importance. They exhibit the mind and
style of the author with great clarity,
because none of them is abstract, meta-
physical, or controversial. Further-
more, they display the man as his mind
worked without artficial stimulus, and
naturally expressed itself in language.
There is the patient, unwearying search
for truth, for he had trained himself in
archival study and the comparative
method in establishing facts; there is
his characteristic insight and grasp of
meaning, for he was essentially a moral-
ist and interpreter; there is his plain
dealing and lucid style. While he was
a man of letters, he held his construc-
tive imagination in firm control, a hand-
maiden and not a mistress. It was the
aflFair of his readers to supply the ele-
ment of fancy, if they chose to do so.
To the landsman the ocean is a favorite
field for the play of that faculty, and
readers give it full scope under the
stimulus of his suggestions.
It has been the function of certain
American historians to exhibit to Euro-
pean peoples the hidden meanings of
their past. Among them Admiral Ma-
han was easily a chief. Were we to
reckon the greatness of historical woric
by its contemporary influence, his
would be a reputation to which, in the
long list of modern historians in all
lands none can be exactly paralleled.
Behind the historian was the man, a
devout and orthodox Christian, with a
strain of mysticism, inquiring into the
divine purposes as revealed in the
course of human events. Among all
forms of this transcendent power in
action the sailor-historian magnified that
exhibited by national eflFort on the high
seas. His epochal woric, for it wa^'
nothing less, is contained in his series
of six volumes on Sea Power, embrac-
ing substantially the historical ages in
their entirety. Every people and every
age was carefully examined in its rela-
♦Read before the Academy, December 9, 1915.
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ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
37
tive importance, and naturally the older
lands, entering on the portentous strug-
gle to maintain territories and prestige,
were more profoundly interested than
the newer, his own included.
While therefore it cannot be said
that he failed to secure from Americans
the due meed of honor, yet it was be-
yond the seas that he was revered and
admired with a passionate intensity
never fully apprehended in his own
country. When in 1902 he was presi-
dent of the American Historical Asso-
ciation, the theme of his presidential
address was "Subordination in Histori-
cal Treatment," and his exposition re-
lated his own method in emphasizing
the central elements of his thought as
a historian. So successful was he in
his sea-power books that his message
was a revelation to Europe generally
and to Great Britain particularly.
Within a single year both Oxford and
Cambridge bestowed upon him their
highest honors. The advocates of the
Greater England and the Three-Power
Standard found in him their prophet
and in his studies their justification.
As the volumes appeared, they were, in
whole or in part, translated into the
leading European languages, and care-
fully edited excerpts were the text-
books for naval expansion. That the
ocean, so far from being the barrier
it had been considered, was in reality
the great highway, the all-uniting men-
struum of isolation, burst as a fact
upon the consciousness of Europe like
a convulsion of nature.
To be sure, the stresses of expansion
were already powerful in international
politics, and the European world was
beginning to groan in spirit over prob-
lems entailed by material prosperity
and the growth of population. The
forces of nature were being harnessed
for the multiplicaton indefinitely of
human industry and the inflation of
wealth. Statesmen were sorely in need
of pretexts for armament, and they
seized for a comer stone of their policy
upon the fact ruthlessly exposed by the
American historian that Nelson, rather
than Wellington, had worn away to in-
nocuous and tenuous inefficiency the
portentous power of Napoleon. The
cars which heard alike in England and
Germany were only too receptive, the
grasp of national understandings only
too swift, and the subsequent activities
only too mischievous. But we must not
fall into the baneful fallacy of sequence
as proving cause and effect. Secular
history is not the record of human
Utopias, and what it reveals is not the
dealings of regenerate mankind. Un-
varnished truth is the characteristic of
Mahan's pages, the truth fairly stated
and philosophically considered ; for him
it was no counsel of perfection; it was
an exhibition of how unstable is the
equilibrium in the nice balance of poli-
tical powers. His work, dispassionately
considered, has neither charm nor se-
duction ; in a high degree it is a caution
against danger, a warning against false
interpellations of facts. That self-
seekers should abuse it is, alas! the
way of the world.
Speaking from frequent contact with
Admiral Mahan throughout many
years of pleasant acquaintance, the
writer must enter a protest against the
charge that he was at any time, in con-
versation or in his writings, an apostle
of war. So far from that, he was pre-
eminently an apostle of peace. It is a
sacrilege to distort the general tendency
of a life-work by false emphasis on
particulars. He did not write primarily
for others, because, great as he was in
other respects, he was greatest as an
American, and the lesson he taught was
intended for American patriots. He
advocated a powerful fleet and battle*
ships of great size, but solely for the
safety and dignity of the land which
was dear to him and to protect against
violence a pacific evolution of the civil-
ization he believed to be the highest
Knowing the genius of peoples as few
others did, he realized the passions, am-
bitions, and imprincipled purposes of
contemporary nationalities, the shifti-
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58 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY: MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
ness of policies, the flimsiness of alli-
ances and treaties, the lust for glory,
for wealth, and for power. He had
marked how the embittered hates of one
generation were swiftly transformed
into the fawning flatterings of the next,
and how readjustment of understand-
ings occurs in the twinkling of an eye
when common material advantage im-
periously commands it. Fully aware of
such appalling truths, and sensitive to
his own convictions about sea power,
he desired his country to be on its
guard against empty protests of affec-
tion and shallow pretenses of aloofness.
It was good to know a man of such
elevated character, to hear his fascinat-
ing talk, to enjoy his courtesy, and to
delight the eyes with his fine appear-
ance. Tall, slender, erect, with expres-
sive blue eyes and a clear complexion,
he was moderate and modest in his
intercourse with men, though fearless
and often unsparing in the defense of
his principles. He was mindful of his
duties great and small, meticulous in
his attention to obligations he had ac-
cepted, and so in our company a genial,
appreciate comrade. He shrank from
all notoriety and self -display, and
during his years of incumbency in the
Institute and Academy there was never
a time when he was conspicuous to the
degree of his eminence in the great
world. As the perspective of time
lengthens, our devotion to his memory
is likely to increase. The trusted ad-
viser of the Government, he died in
Washington with all his armor as a
patriot on, w^h faculties keen and alert.
The awful conVulsions of the hour had
justified his mterpretations of sea
power, but I Wye heard that they had
likewise filled T^ijn with consternation
lest as a result, deferred perhaps, yet
probable, the political map of America
might eventually be as completely re-
made as that of Europe.
JOHN MUIR*
By Robert Underwood Johnson
Sometime, in the evolution of Amer-
ica, we shall throw off the two shackles
that retard our progress as an artistic
nation — philistinism and commercialism
— and advance with freedom toward
the love of beauty as a principle. Then
it will not be enough that one shall love
merely one kind of beauty, each worker
his own art, or that art shall be separ-
ated from life as something too precious
for use: men will search for beauty as
scientists search for truth, knowing
that while truth can make one free, it is
beauty of some sort, as addressed to
the eye, the ear, the mind, or the moral
sense, that alone can give permanent
happiness. When that apocalyptic day
shall come, the world will look back
to the time we live in and remember
the voice of one crying in the wilder-
ness and bless the memory of John
Muir. To some beauty seems only an
accident of creation: to Muir it was
the very smile of God. He sang the
glory of nature like another psalmist
and, as a true artist, was unashamed of
his emotions.
An instance of this is told of him as
he stood with an acquaintance at one
of the great view-points of the Yose-
mite Valley, and, filled with wonder
and devotion, wept. His companion*
more stolid than most, could not un-
derstand his feeling, and was so
thoughtless as to say so.
"Mon," said Muir, with the Scotch
dialect into which he often lapsed, "can
ye see unmoved the glory of the Al-
mighty?"
"Oh, it's very fine," was the reply,
"but I do not wear my heart upon niy
sleeve."
♦Read before the Academy, January 6, 1916.
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JOHN MUIR
S9
"Ah, my dear mon," said Muir, "in
the face of such a scene as this it's no
time to be thinkin' o' where ye wear
your heart."
No astronomer was ever more de-
vout. The love of nature was his reli-
gion, but it was not without a personal
God, whom he thought as great in the
decoration of a flower as in the launch-
ing of a glacier. The old Scotch train-
ing persisted through all his studies of
causation, and the keynote of his phil-
osophy was intel%ent and benevolent
design. His wonder grew with his wis-
dom. Writing for the first time to a
young friend, he expressled the hope
that she would "find that going to the
mountains is going home and that
Christ's Sermon on the Mount is on
every mount."
It was late in May, 1889, that I first
met him. I had gone to San Francisco
to organize the series of papers after-
ward published in "The Century Miaga-
zine" under the title of "The Gold-
hunters of California," and promptly
upon my arrival he came to see me.
It was at the Palace Hotel in San
Francisco. I was dressing for dinner,
and was obliged to ask him to come
up to my room. He was a long time
in doing so, and I feared he had lost
his way. I can remember as if it were
yesterday hearing him call down the
corridor: "Johnson, Johnson! where
are you ? I can't get the hang of these
artificial canons," and before he had
made any of the conventional greetings
and inquiries, he added, "Up in the
Sierra, all along the gorges, the glaciers
have put up natural sign-posts, and you
can't miss your way; but here there's
nothing to tell you where to go."
With all his Scotch wit and his demo-
cratic feeling, Muir bore himself with
dignity in every company. He readily
adjusted himself to any environment.
In the high Sierra he was indeed a
voice crying in the wilderness; more-
over, he looked like John the Baptist
as portrayed in bronze by Donatello and
others of the Renaissance sculptors.
spare of frame, hardy, keen of eye and
visage, and, on the march, eager of
movement. It was difficult for an un-
trained walker to keep up with him as
he leaped from rock to rock as surely
as a mountain goat or skimmed the
surface of the ground, a trick of easy
locomotion learned from the Indians.
If he ever became tired, nobody knew
it, and yet, though he delighted in
badinage at the expense of the "tender-
foot," he was as sympathetic as a
mother. I remember a scramble we had
in the upper Tuolumne Canon which
afforded him great fun at my expense.
The detritus of the wall of the gorge
lay in a confused mass of rocks varying
in size from a market-basket to a
dwelling-house, the interstices over-
grown with a most deceptive shrub, the
soft leaves of which concealed its iron
trunk and branches. Across such a
Dantean formation Muir went with cer-
tainty and alertness, while I fell and
floundered like a bad swimmer, so that
he had to give me many a helpful hand
and cheering word, and when at last I
was obliged to rest, Muir, before going
on for an hour's exploration, sought
out for me one of the most beautiful
spots I had ever seen, where the rush-
ing river, striking pot-holes in its gran-
ite bed, was thrown up into waterwheels
twenty feet high. When we returned to
camp he showered me with little atten-
tions and tucked me into my blankets
with the tenderness that he gave to
children and animals.
Another Scotch trait was his surface
antipathies. He did not hate anything,
not even his antagonists, the tree van-
dals, but spoke of them pitifully as
"misguided worldlings"; yet he had a
wholesome contempt for the contempt-
ible. His growl — he never had a bark
—was worse than his bite. His pity
was often expressed for the blindness
of those who, through unenlightened
selfishness, chose the lower utility of
nature in place of the higher.
Many have praised the pleasures of
solitude; few have known them as
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6o PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY: MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
Muir knew them, roaming the high
Sierra week after week with only bread
and tea and sometimes berries for his
subsistence, which he would have said
were a satisfactory substitute for the
"locusts and wild honey" of his proto-
type. His trips to Alaska were even
more solitary, and we should say for-
bidding, but not he ; for no weather, no
condition of wildness, no absence of
animal life could make him lonely. He
was a pioneer of nature, but also a
pioneer of truth, and he needed no
comrade Many will recall his thrilling
adventure on the Muir Glacier, told in
his story entitled "Stickeen," named
for his companion, the missionary's
dog. I heard him tell it a dozen times,
how the explorer and the little mongrel
were caught on a peninsula of the
glacier, and how they escaped. It is one
of the finest studies of dogliness in all
literature, and, told in Muir's whimsical
way, betrayed unconsciously the ten-
derness of his heart. Though never
lonely, he was not at all a professional
recluse: he loved companions and
craved good talk, and was glad to have
others with him on his tramps; but it
was rare to find congenial friends who
cared for the adventures in which he
reveled. He was hungry for sympathy
and found it in the visitors whom he
piloted about and above the Yosemite
Valley — Emerson, Sir Joseph Hooker,
Torrey, and many others of an older
day or of late years, including Presi-
dents Roosevelt and Taft.
Muir was clever at story-telling
and put into it both wit and sym-
pathy, never failing to give, as a
background, more delightful informa-
tion about the mountains than a pro-
fessor of geology would put into a
chapter. With his one good eye, — for
the sight of the other had been im-
paired in his college days in Wiscon-
sin by the stroke of a needle, — ^he
saw every scene in detail and in mass.
This his conversation visualized until
his imagination kindled the imagina-
tion of his hearer.
Adventures are to the adventurous.
Muir, never reckless, was fortunate
in seeing Nature in many a wonderful
mood and aspect. Who that has read
them can forget his descriptions of
the wind-storm in the Yuba, which
he outrode in a treetop, or of the
avalanche in the Yosemite, or of the
spring floods pouring in hundreds of
streams over the rim of the valley?
And what unrecorded adventures he
must have had as pioneer of peak and
glacier in his study of the animal and
vegetable life of the Sierra ! Did any
observer ever come nearer than he to
recording the soul of nature? If
"good-will makes intelligence," as
Emerson avers, Muir*s love of his
mountains amounted to divination.
What others learned laboriously, he
seemed to reach by instinct, and yet
he was painstaking in the extreme
and jealous of the correctness of both
his facts and his conclusions, defend-
ing them as a beast defends her young.
In the Arctic, in the great forests of
Asia, on the Amazon, and in Africa
at seventy-three, wherever he was, he
incurred peril not for "the game/*
but for some great emprise of science.
But Muir's public services were
not merely scientific and Hterary.
His countrymen owe him gratitude
as the pioneer of our system of Na-
tional Parks. Before 1889 we had
only one of any importance, the Yel-
lowstone. Out of the fight which he
led for the better care of the Yosemite
by the State of California grew the
demand for the extension of the sys-
tem. To this many persons and or-
ganizations contributed but Muir's
writings and enthusiasm were the
chief forces that inspired the move-
ment. All the other torches were
lighted from his. His disinterested-
ness was too obvious not to be recog-
nized even by opponents. To a friend
who, in 1906, made an inquiry about
a mine in California he wrote: "I
don't know anything at all about the
^mine or any other. Nor do I know
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JOHN MUIR
6i
any mine-owners. All this $ geology
is out of my line." It was in his name
that the appeal was made for the crea-
tion of the Yosemite National Park in
. 1890, and for six years he was the
leader of the movement for the re-
trocession by California of the valley
reservation, to be merged in the sur-
rounding park, a result which, by the
timely aid of Edward H. Harriman,
was accomplished in 1905.
In 1896-97, when the Forestry Com-
mission of the National Academy of
Sciences, under the chairmanship of
Professor Charles S. Sargent of Har-
vard, was making investigations to
determine what further reservations
ought to be made in the form of
National Parks, Muir accompanied it
over much of its route through the
Far West and the Northwest and
gave it his assistance and counsel.
March 27, 1899, he wrote: "I've
spent most of the winter on forest
protection; at least I've done little
besides writing about it." From its
inception to its lamentable success in
December, 1913, he fought every step
of the scheme to grant to San Fran-
cisco for a water reservoir the famous
Hetch Hetchy Valley, part of the
Yosemite National Park, which, as I
have said, had been created largely
through his instrumentality. In the
last stages of the campaign his time
was almost exclusively occupied with
this contest. He opposed the project
as unnecessary, as objectionable in-
trinsically and as a dangerous prece-
dent, and he was greatly cast down
when it became a law. But he was
also relieved. Writing to a friend,
he said: "I'm glad the fight for the
Tuolumne yosemite is finished. It
has lasted twelve years. Some com-
pensating good must surely come from
so great a loss. With the New Year
comes new work. I am now writing
on Alaska. A fine change from faith-
less politics to crystal ice and snow."
It is also to his credit that he first made
known to the world the wonder and
glory of the Big Trees ; those that have
been rescued from the saw of the
sordid lumbermen owe their salvation
primarily to his voice.
Muir's death, on Christmas Eve of
^ 1914, though it occurred at the ripe age
of seventy-six, and though it closed a
life of distinguished achievement, was
yet untimely, for his work was by no
means finished. For years I had been
imploring him to devote himself to the
completion of his record. The material
of many contemplated volumes exists in
his numerous note-books, and though,
I believe, these notes are to a great
degree written in extenso rather than
scrappily, and thus contain much avail-
able literary treasure, yet where is the
one that could give them the roundness
of presentation and the charm of style
which are found in Muir's best literary
work? One always hesitates to use the
word "great" of one who has just
passed away, but I believe that history
will give a very high place to the in-
domitable explorer who discovered the
great glacier named for him, and whose
life for eleven years in the high Sierra
resulted in a body of writing of marked
excellence, combining accurate and
carefully coordinated scientific observa-
tion with poetic sensibility and expres-
sion. His chief books, "The Mountains
of California," "Our National Parks,"
and "The Yosemite," are both delight-
ful and vivid, and should be made sup-
plemental reading for schools. When
he rhapsodizes it is because his sub-
ject calls for rhapsody, and not to
cover up thinness of texture in his
material. He is likely to remain the
one historian of the Sierra,- importing
into his view the imagination of the
poet and the reverence of the wor-
shiper.
Muir was not without wide and
aflfectionate regard in his own state,
but California was too near to him to
appreciate fully his greatness as a
prophet or the service he did in try-
ing to recall her to the gospel of beauty.
She has, however, done him and her-
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62 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY: MEMORIAL ADDRESESS
self honor in providing for a path on
the high Sierra from the Yosemite to
Mount Whitney to be called the John
Muir Trail. William Kent, during
Muir's life, paid him a rare tribute in
giving to the nation a park of red-
woods with the understanding that it
should be named Muir Woods. But
the nation owes him more. His work
was not sectional, but for the whole
people, for he was the real father of
the forest reservations of America. The
National Government should create
from the great wild Sierra Forest
Reserve a National Park to include the
King's River Canon, to be called by his
name. This recognition would be, so
to speak, an overt act, the naming of
the Muir Glacier being automatic by
his very discovery of it. It is most
appropriate and fitting that a wild
Sierra region should be named for him.
There has been only one John Muir.
The best monument, however, would
be a successful movement, even at this
late day, to save the Hetch Hetchy
Valley from appropriation for com-
mercial purposes. His death was
hastened by his grief at this unbeliev-
able calamity, and I should be recreant
to his memory if I did not call special
attention to his crowning public service
in endeavoring to prevent the disaster.
The Government owes him penance at
his tomb.
In conclusion, John Muir was not a
"dreamer," but a practical man, a faith-
ful citizen, a scientific observer, a
writer of enduring power, with vision,
poetry, courage in a contest, a heart of
gold, and a spirit pure and fine.
THOMAS RAYNESFORD LOUNSBURY*
By Brander Matthews
When the National Institute of Arts
and Letters decided that the time was
ripe for the founding of an American
Academy of Arts and Letters, it
selected seven of its members and em-
powered them to select eight others.
Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury was
one of the eight thus chosen, and he
was therefore one of the first fifteen
original members of the Academy. He
was faithful in his attendance at our
annual meetings, journeying to Wash-
ington, to Philadelphia, and to Chicago,
and enriching our programs on two
occasions by papers of characteristic
interest.
He was bom on the first of January,
1838, and he was graduated from Yale
when he was twenty-one. He labored
for a year or two on the American
Cyclopedia, edited by Ripley and Dana.
At the outbreak of the Civil War he
enlisted in the 126th New York Volun-
teers, serving to the end. At Gettys-
burg his regiment was deployed down
the slope of Cemetery Ridge, the men
being so exhausted that they went to
sleep, despite the noise of tfie terrific
artillery duel which preceded Pickett's
charge.
Shortly after the end of the war
Lounsbury was called to an instructor-
ship in the SheflSeld Scientific School
of Yale; and to the Sheffield School
and to Yale he rendered devoted ser-
vice for nearly forty years. He was
made professor of English in 1871 ; and
in 1906 he was regretfully allowed to
retire into the innocuous desuetude of
the emeritus professor. Always inde-
fatigable in research and in the accumu-
lation of information scientifically veri-
fied, he was regretfully hampered in
the later years of his life by a failing
of sight, which forced him to limit his
hours of labor. Yet he retained to the
end his cheery good humor and his
keen interest in life. Although he was
*Read before the Academy, March 9, 1916.
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THOMAS RAYNESFORD LOUNSBURY
(>)
seventy-six when he came to the meet-
ing in New York in November, 1914,
he seemed to be as full of vitality as
ever. He survived until the following
spring, dying in April, 1915.
At the time of his lamented death
the position held by Professor Louns-
bury was without parallel. He was
recognized as the chief of all the
scholars who in Great Britain and in
the United States had devoted them-
selves to what is known in university
<:ircles as "English," and he was the
final survivor of those of this group of
students who maintained a command-
ing place in the two halves of the sub-
ject, in the history of the English
language and in the history of English
literature in both its branches, British
and American. No other English
scholar on either side of the Atlantic
could speak with equal authority about
both the language and the literature.
His brief history of the English
language is a little masterpiece of care-
fully controlled information and of
marvelously lucid exposition; and he
followed this with later discussions of
usage, of pronunciation, of spelling,,
and of Americanisms and Briticisms.
These several books were the result of
wide-spread and incessant investiga-
tion ; they were solidly rooted in knowl-
edge ; they were informed with wisdom ;
and they were illumined by both wit
and humor. Never was there a student
•of linguistics less pedantic than Louns-
buryy or more human in his understand-
ing of the essential fact that speech is
the possession of the people as a whole
and not an appanage of the self-ap-
pointed grammarians. In all his discus-
sions of the English language, its
idioms, and its orthography, Lounsbury
was as independent and as individual as
he was as a biographer. He was willing
to stand up and be counted in the com-
pany of the much decried spelling re-
formers. He attacked the Tories who
ventured to defend our complicated
and chaotic spelling, employing all the
weapons furnished him by his erudition
and his wit. Ten years ago he was one
of the organizers of the Simplified
Spelling Board, and for several years
he served as its president, lending to
the cause the weight of his authority
and of his character.
The same sanity and good humor,
the same comprehensive thoroughness,
the same untiring industry in getting
at the exact facts, the same sagacity in
interpreting these facts anew, char-
acterized his many contributions to the
history of English literature. He
mastered his successfve subjects with
the meticulous accuracy of a conscien-
tious man of science, and he presented
the results of his labor to the reader
with the skill of an accomplished man
of letters. His own task was hard in
order that our work might be easy. He
began his career as a biographer with
his cordial and delightful study of
Fenimore Cooper. He erected an endur-
ing monument in the three solid tomes
of his Chaucer. He devoted several
volumes to the vicissitudes of Shak-
spere's fame. He narrated with a host
of new facts the early years of Brown-
ing's poetic activity, and he left in-
complete at his death his final study of
the slow and steady rise of the reputa-
tion of Tennyson.
He left it incomplete only in so far
as it was unfinished and in part un-
revised. But it is not a fragment; it
covers the ground thoroughly as far as
he had carried his work. It is larger
in scope than a mere biography of
Tennyson. It is this first of all, of
course, but it is also a searching analysis
of the literary history of Great Britain
in the third, fourth, and fifth decades
of the last century, made possible at
the cost of tremendous labor in examin-
ing the files of a host of dead-and-gone
periodicals. The result of this in-
domitable research, carried on un-
flinchingly despite many disadvantages,
is a masterly reconstruction of the cir-
cumstances of English literature in the
thirty years during which Tennyson
was gaining the unchallenged position
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64 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY: MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
he occupied in the final thirty years of
his life.
Nowhere does the author allow him-
self to be choked by the dust of the
back-numbers he disturbed from their
silent sleep. Everywhere he retains
control of his vast mass of material,
and everywhere does he handle it with
a fine artistic sense of its significance.
Everywhere does he reveal his own
fundamental characteristics, his fair-
ness, his tolerance, his transparent
honesty, his understanding of human
nature, and his omnipresent sense of
humor. He is never overcome by the
burden of his material; he is never
hurried, and he conducts his leisurely
inquiry in accord with his large and
liberal method. He knew that he had
a long job to do, and he did it as he
felt that it ought to be done. What is
more, he did it once for all; and most
unlikely is it that any later delvers into
this period will be able to add anything
significant, or will find any occasion to
modify the judgments here expressed.
Nor is it likely that critics of another
generation will be tempted to attack the
main positions taken by Lounsbury in
his earlier studies of Chaucer, of Shak-
spere, of Browning, and of Fenimore
Cooper. Whatever memorial he was
about to build, Lounsbury always sank
his foundations down to bed-rock.
His position among American
scholars was lofty, and it will be long
before his authority will be in any way
diminished. In fact, one might well
apply to him a remark he himself made
about Tennyson: "Every great writer
attains in time to a certain wealth of
reputation, not indeed an unearned in-
crement, but an amount of compound
interest which has been accruing since
the investment was first made."
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THE INSTITUTE MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Institute is
awarded to any citizen of the United
States, whether a member of the Insti-
tute or not, for distinguished services
to arts and letters in the creation of
original work.
The conditions are that the medal
shall be awarded for the entire work 6f
the recipient, without limit of time dur-
ing which it shall have been done ; that
it shall be awarded to a living person or
to one who shall not have been dead
more than one year at the time of the
award ; and that it shall not be awarded
more than once to any one person.
The medal was designed by Adolph
A, Weinman, member of the Institute,
in 1909.
The first award — for sculpture — was
to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The medal
was presented to Mrs. Saint-Gaudens
at the meeting held in memory of her
husband, November 20, 1909.
The second medal — for history —
was awarded to James Ford Rhodes,
1910.
The third medal — for poetry — was
awarded to James Whitcomb Riley,
1911.
The fourth medal — for architecture
— was awarded to William Rutherford
Mead, 1912.
The fifth medal — for drama — was
awarded to Augustus Thomas, 1913.
The sixth medal — for fiction — was
awarded to William Dean Howells in
1915.
THE ACADEMY MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Academy is
conferred in recognition of special dis-
tinction in literature, art or music, and
for the entire work of the recipient,
who may be of either sex, and must be
a native or naturalized citizen of the
United States, and not a member of the
Academy. It was first awarded to Dr.
Charles William Eliot, at the annual
meeting in Boston, November 18, 1915,
and the presentation was made in behalf
of the Academy by Dr. Nicholas
Murray Butler in New York, January
27, 1916. The medal was designed and
modeled by James Earle Fraser, mem-
ber of the Institute.
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THE ACADEMY LECTURES
The first course of lectures by mem- Street, New York. During this course
hers of the Academy, under its auspices, were delivered the memorial addresses
was given during the season of 1915-16 here printed. Following is the list of
at the Chemists' Club, 52 East 41st the papers:
December 9, 1915,
January 6, 1916,
January 27,
February 17,
March 9,
March 30,
Nicholas Murray Butler: "A Voyage
of Discovery."
Edwin H. Blashfiejd: "The Value of
Disciplined Thought in Art."
Bliss Perry: "Concerning Satire."
William M. Sloane: "Democracy and
Efficiency."
Timothy Cole : "The Analogy between
Engraving and Painting."
Brander Matthews: "Shakspere's
Stage Traditions."
FORM OF BEQUEST
I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to the American Academy
OF Arts and Letters, incorporated under an Act of the Congress
of the United States, approved April 17, 1916, the sum of
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A k
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T A e>''./<
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE.
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
NUMBER X: 1917
EIGHTH ANNUAL JOINT MEETING
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 16-17, 1916
\
New York
OFFICE OF THE ACADEMY, 70 FIFTH AVENUE
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Copyright, 1917, by
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
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CONTENTS
PROCEEDINGS OF THE PUBLIC MEETINGS OF THE AMERICAN
ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS and THE NATIONAL
INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Sessions at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New York, November 16-17, 1916
First Session, 10.30 a.m., November 16
William M. Sloane, Chancellor of the Academy, Presiding
Address by the Chancellor
WiUiam M. Sloane 5
La Fonction des Influences ^trang^es dans le D^veloppe-
MENT DE la LiTT^RATURE FrAN^AISE
Monsieur Gustave Lanson 7
Professor of French Literature in the University of Paris, and in
Columbia University, 19 16-17
Nationalism in Literature and Art
Theodore Roosevelt 11
Second Session, 2.15 p.m., November 16
Concert of Compositions by Members of the Institute 18
Third Session, 10.30 a.m., November 17
Edwin Howland Blashfield, President of the Institute, Presiding
Standards
William Crary Brownell., 19
History, Quick or Dead?
William Roscoe Thayer.,. 29
The Future Fight (Poem)
Richard Burton 35
A Few Eternal Verities of the Arts of Design
Will H. Low 43
Memorial Tributes to Members of the Academy
William Merritt Chase Kenyon Cox 49
John White Alexander Edwin Howland Blashfield 51
George Browne Post Thomas Hastings 54
Bronson Howard Augustus Thomas 56
John Bigelow WiUiam Milligan Sloane. . 59
Medals of the Institute and the Academy, and Other Data 63
Note on the Address of Monsieur Henri Bergson, de l'Acad^mie Franchise 64
Correspondence of the Academy with the Acad^mie Franc^aise and the Acad^mie des
Beaux-Arts 64
PUBLISHED AT INTERVALS BY THE SOCIETIES
Copies may be had on application to the Permanent Secretary of the Academy,
Mr. R. U. Johnson, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York
Price per Annum, f 1.00
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PREFATORY NOTE
On the evening of November 1 5, Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler
gave a dinner to his associates of the Academy at his house,
followed by a reception to the members of the Institute by
Dr. and Mrs. Butler. On the evening of the i6th the Annual
Meeting and dinner of the Institute took place at the Uni-
versity Club. On the afternoon of the i6th Mr. Henry C.
Frick gave the hospitality of his art galleries to the members.
On the 17th, by courtesy of Mr. Archer M. Huntington, they
were received at the Hispanic Society of America at the open-
ing of a special exhibition of Spanish tapestries, etc., and
the same evening a musical reception was given in their honor
by Dr. and Mrs. Walter Damrosch. Institutions that offered
courtesies were the Century, University, and Cosmopolitan
Clubs.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS
AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LETTERS
Vol. II
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER, 1917
No. 4
Public Meetings held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New York, November 16-17, >9>6
WILLIAM M. SLOANE, Chancellor of the Academy, and
EDWIN ROWLAND BLASHFIELD, President of the Institute, Presiding
[session of NOVEMBER 1 6]
ADDRESS OF WILLIAM M. SLOANE
Chancellor of the Academy
When twice in succession our presi-
dent finds it necessary to seek recupera-
tion and healing under milder skies, the
chancellor of the Academy can merely
renew our expression of regret in his
enforced absence, and convey to our
friends his warmest greeting. It is im-
possible to emulate the gracious lan-
guage with which he would have wel-
comed you and the distinguished guest,
M. Lanson, who brings us the tribute of
good will from a sister institution over
the sea. For this reason my words are
few, and shall be confined to a brief ac-
count of my stewardship during the last
year. Your own hearts will supply what
I forbear to say when time is short and
art is long.
Our seventh annual meeting was held
a year ago in Boston. The welcome was
worthy of the place in every regard, and
the program provided for the sympa-
thetic public illuminated perfectly the
purposes of Institute and Academy to
emphasize the unity of all the fine arts
in their reciprocity one with another;
in stimulating each and all to higher
achievement, while likewise exhibiting
this high purpose in every portion of our
broad domain. We were as much at
home in Boston as we had been in
Philadelphia and Chicago, as we should
be in New OrJeans or San Francisco.
The national spirit of science in the fine
arts knows nothing of local jealousy,
though it knows much of local character.
Throughout the winter our activities
as individual members have been as in-
tense and constant as ever, which is a
matter of course. But organically we
have likewise been diligent in business.
Congress has recognized the nation-wide
scope of the Academy as well as of the
Institute in granting to the former, as it
had already done to the latter, a na-
tional charter. With marked success we
have held a series of public meetings in
this city, at each of which a paper of
high character has been read to large and
select audiences. There will be a similar
course during the coming winter, six in
all, for which tickets can be secured on
application to Mr. Johnson's office, 70
Fifth Avenue. There is no charge for
admission, and the directors believe that
as the public interest grows, the institu-
tion of Institute and Academy lectures
will be not only permanent, but of the
highest value to the choice spirits who
favor the speakers by their attendance.
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
At one of these meetings the medal of
the Academy was bestowed for the first
time. The recipient was Charles W.
Eliot, and the award was for his mastery
in the use of the English language.
This, too, was an enlargement of our
activities, and one which has met with
wide-spread commendation.
As if to emphasize the duty of a body
like the Academy in laboring to preserve
the beauty of our English tongue and to
enrich its vocabulary as modern ideas
demand modern expression, a lady has
given to us the sum of three thou-
sand dollars for this purpose. This
sum is offered in the belief that, with
much expenditure of thought and judg-
ment, a relatively small expenditure of
money may be rich in result. We are
to have at our disposal a third of the
sum each year for three successive years
in order to secure papers and conferences
which will lead to the formation of a
plan not for rewarding the expert, but
for guiding the striving artist by the
suggestion of principles and standards.
This appears to the directors an auspi-
cious beginning of what must necessarily
be a long, arduous labor; but we enter
upon it with gladness, assured that those
who come after will perform their tasks
with the same enthusiasm and consci-
entiousness as we assume to perform
them for ourselves and our successors.
Such a trust implies a chivalric devotion
on the part of her who initiates it; those
who accept will surely not be slothful in
the affair.
These are the items of our present
condition in matters intellectual and
spiritual. Our material condition has
not changed: we are still without a
home, and our endowment is far from
sufficient. But we feel no dismay that
benefactors are as yet sympathetically
inquisitive rather than actively gener-
ous. So far we have been delighted by
the interest shown, and by the warm en-
couragement we have received. Every
member is himself a generous contrib-
utor: most in money, some in kind, a
few in both; and all exhibit their faith
by works. The example we set for our-
selves we do not herald all abroad, but
we commit our needs of larger dimen-
sion to the intelligent and discriminating
founders who in America have abun-
dantly met the educational and elee-
mosynary demands of their country with
a liberality unprecedented in history. A
goodly portion of the shower will fall
on us if we deserve it, as we aim to do.
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LA FONCTION DES INFLUENCES 6TRANG6RES
DANS LE DEVELOPPEMENT DE LA
LITTfiRATURE FRAN^AISE
By Monsieur Gustave Lanson
Mesdames, Messieurs: Puisque Tln-
stitut National des Arts et des Lettres
et TAcademie Americaine m'ont fait le
tres grand honneur de m'inviter a lire
devant vous dans cette seance solennelle,
mes premieres paroles ne peuvent etre
que I'expression de ma profonde grati-
tude. Je sais bien que cet honneur va
au-dela de ma personne, et que j'en suis
redevable surtout k mon pays, i la
France, dont la civilisation, la littera-
ture et les arts sont aim^s ici d'un amour
si fervent. Je le sais; mais cette certi-
tude, pour un coeur fran^ais, ne fait que
rendre la dette plus grande, et plus
douce a reconnaitre.
On remarque dans la vie litt^raire de
la France depuis des slides— et c'est un
de ses caractires les plus curieux — une
sorte de rythme, un mouvement de bas-
cule qui fait qu'alternativement nous
nous ouvrons, nous nous fermons a im-
portation des idees et des formes d'art
etrangires. Les p^riodes d'imitation suc-
cfedent aux piriodes de creation, et de
nouveau leur font place, sans que jamais
nous demeurions longtemps satisfaits
d'etre simplement nous.
Nous sommes Italiens, Grecs, Latins,
Espagnols, avant d'etre nous-mfemes
dans nos chefs-d'oeuvre classiques. Nous
nous jetons ensuite dans I'anglomanie, et
nous nous entichons d'une douce, re-
veuse, et m^nagire Allemagne. Enfin,
recemment, vous nous avez vus nous
Jeter ^perdument dans le Tolstoisme et
I'lbsinisme, voire le Nietzscheisme; et
c'est un peu votre William James qui
nous a fait tater du pragmatisme.
Ces ph^nomenes ont ite considires
souvent par les contemporains avec in-
dignation, par les historiens avec s6ve-
riti. Par une association d'idees invo-
lontaire et presque fatale, les moments
d'influence etrangere dans notre littera-
ture se sont assimiles dans nos esprits
aux temps maudits ou I'itranger a en-
vahi notre sol, occupe nos villes, et
menace I'existence nationale.
Les souffles du dehors ont paru mor-
tels a I'esprit franjais, et Ton a juge
qu'il ne pouvait s'y ouvrir sans s'alt^rer,
les appeler sans s'abandonner et se
trahir.
11 y a la, Messieurs, beaucoup d'illu-
sion : on prend des abstractions pour des
rialitis; on se figure je ne sais quelle
bataille des id£es indigenes et des idees
etrangeres, des genres indigenes et des
genrfe Strangers, comme se battent les
Vertus et les Vices dans un tableau de
primitif. Alors c'est un malheur na-
tional quand le genre Stranger repousse
le genre indigene, ou quand I'idee fran-
Saise est exterminee par I'idee du dehors.
Mais regardons les choses comme elles
sont: dans ces fantastiques batailles, le
seul etre r6el est I'esprit, I'esprit franjais
qui va vers plus de verity, plus de
beauts, et qui gagne toujours, quand il
acquiert une idee. Car est-ce I'idee qui
le prend, ou lui qui prend I'idfe? Le
point de vue de Joachim du Bellay est le
plus juste, lorsqu'il compare le transport
des richesses d'une littirature itrangire
dans la notre a une conquete, et qu'il in-
vite la jeunesse frangaise k I'assaut, au
pillage de la Grfece, de Rome et de
ritalie.
Ce n'est point la un paradoxe. Si vous
voulez bien r^fl^chir un instant k la
fonction qu'a remplie, dans la vie litt^-
raire de notre pays, I'afflux intermittent
de la pensfe et de I'art Strangers, vous
verrez que, loin de correspondre k une
diminution de vitality, k une depression,
k un ^puisement, il manifeste la volont^
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8
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
d'etre, la force de renouvellement d'un
genie toujours actif et robuste.
La fonction dont je parle est double.
Dans son premier aspect, qu'on decouvre
d'abord, elle consiste a Clever I'esprit
national au dessus de lui-meme, a
raider, en le nourrissant, a se develop-
per. II faudrait avoir I'esprit bien mal
fait pour refuser d'envoyer un enfant a
I'ecoie, de peur qu'il n'y corrompit la
purete originelle de son g^nie. Mais ce
ne serait pas avoir I'esprit plus sain, que
de pretendre, a I'age adulte, ne plus rien
tenir que de soi-meme, de son develop-
pement, de ses propres decouvertes, et
de refuser toutes les acquisitions dont on
serait redevable a d'autres. 11 n'en va
pas autrement des nations. Celle qui
s'enfermera dans la contemplation de
soi-meme, et croira n'avoir rien a rece-
voir de personne, s'epuisera, s'ankylo-
sera, se dessechera plus ou moins vite:
sa lumi^re est condamnde k s'^teindre.
Nos autres Fran^ais, nous sommes un
peuple curieux. Nous n'avons jamais
pu voir avec tranquillite, que d'autres
hommes comprissent ce que nous ne
comprenions pas, eussent des plaisirs
que nous ne sentions pas. L'avance
prise par d'autres dans les lettres et dans
les arts nous a enflamm^s d'emulation,
excites a marcher sur leurs pas, non
pour nous trainer derrifere eux, mais
pour les rattraper, si nous pouvions, et
les depasser. Nous nous sommes donne
une Trag£die aux i6e et 176 siicles,
parce que les Grecs et les Italiens en
avaient une; nous nous sommes donne
une poesie lyrique au ipe siecle, parce
que les Anglais et les AUemands en
avaient une. Notre volont^ a suivi
notre intelligence; et notre effort de
creation a ete dirige par Vid6e claire de
ce qui nous manquait, et que nous aper-
cevions chez d'autres.
Qui sait si, sans ces excitations du
dehors, nous ne serions pas restes infini-
ment au dessous de nous-memes?
Pendant quatre ou cinq siecles, du
moyen-age au milieu du i6e siecle, nous
avons un theatre florissant, et I'art dra-
matique ne fait pas de progres. Un jour
nous nous mettons a imiter Seneque et
Sophocle, voire le Trissin ou Giraldi : au
bout d'un sikle, sortent le Cid et An-
dromaque; et il apparait que cet art
dramatique, que nous n'avons pas su
organiser tous seuls, est I'une des plus
certaines vocations du genie frangais.
Ainsi, au point de depart de beaucoup de
nos progres, il y a une influence du de-
hors, un parti pris d'imitation, qui, loin
d'eteindre notre originalite, I'eveille et
nous oblige a tirer de nous la puissance
latente dont autrement nous n'aurions
peut-etre jamais pris conscience.
L'autre fonction des litteratures
etrangeres, qui n'est pas moins impor-
tante, a ete de nous rendre, k de certains
moments, le droit d'etre nous: plus d'une
fois I'influence du dehors a €t€ libera-
trice. Un jour la latinite nous debar-
rasse de I'italianisme; un autre jour,
I'Angleterre nous aide i rejeter le poncif
greco-romain. Mais parfois aussi I'une
ou l'autre des nations cultivees nous a
delivres de nous memes. 11 arrive que
Ton emploie les chefs-d'ceuvre du genie
a paralyser le g6nie. On ne songe pas
que Corneille et Racine ont fait, comme
disait Flaubert, "ce qu'ils ont voulu":
et Ton condamne ceux qui viendront
apres eux a faire, non pas comme eux,
ce qu'ils veulent, mais d'aprb eux, qu'ils
veuillent ou ne veuillent pas. On ne
trouve de pi^s bien faites que celles
qui sont jetees dans les moules d'Augier
ou de Dumas fils, quand ce n'est pas
dans ceux de Scribe et de Sardou: II ne
s'agit pas de ressembler k la vie, ni d'ex-
primer une vue personnelle de la vie, il
s'agit de ne pas s'ecarter des modeles.
Alors celui qui a quelque chose a dire,
celui qui congoit une idee ou sent une
beaute dont la technique traditionnelle
ne veut pas, s'insurge, tantot au nom de
Shakespeare, tantot au nom d'lbsen,
aujourd'hui pour un ideal anglais, de-
main pour un ideal scandinave. — en rea-
lity toujours pour lui-meme, pour I'ideal
intime et personnel de sa nature poe-
tique.
II arrive aussi que la societe frangaise
a change d'esprit, qu'elle a acquis de
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INFLUENCES eiRANGeRES DANS LA LITieRATURE FRAN^AISE 9
qu'ils sont, avec ce qui les fait ressem-
bler et plaire a la nation qui les a pro-
duits; nous n'en prenons que ce qui est
a notre usage. L'idfe que nous nous en
faisons, exacte ou fausse, n'a besoin que
d'etre adaptee au reve inexprime de
notre coeur; nous faisons de Shakespeare
ou de Byron, de Schiller et d' Ibsen selon
les temps, ce que Montaigne faisait de
Plutarque et de Seneque. Nous ne cher-
chons pas leur sens mais le notre; et
nous disons d'apres eux "pour d'autant
mieux nous dire."
11 pourra se faire sans doute que tel
ecrivain soit ecrase sous le poids de son
butin, qu'a tel moment Timitation de-
vienne mecanique et servile. Je ne veux
pas rehabiliter la Franciade de Ronsard.
un grand poete pourtant et d'un vaste
genie; mais ce sont justement ces expe-
riences malheureuses qui marquent les
limites des appropriations possibles et
fecondes. Et les echecs meme d'un jour
preparent la victoire du lendemain.
II a fallu gacher bien des tragedies
pendant pres d'un siecle pour que fut
realisable la perfection du Cid et d'Ho-
RACE.
Je sais bien encore qu'il y a des
peuples dont I'esprit n'a pu recevoir I'in-
fluence etrangere sans en etre opprim^,
sans y perdre son originalite. Soyez
surs qu'ils n'ont perdu que ce qu'ils n'a-
vaient pas. Je doute d'une personnalite
qui s'evapore siais^ment au soleil, et
qui se dissout au premier contact. En
tout cas, je ne crains rien pour la
France. II y a parfois des medecins
tant-pis qui nous prescrivent de tenir
I'esprit frangais a la chambre, de le
mettre a la diete. lis lui interdisent les
voyages, de peur des courants d'air; ils
I'empechent de se nourrir, de peur qu'il
n'altere son essence par I'absorption des
substances etrangeres. C'est le traiter
en personne de bien petite sante ! Je le
crois plus robuste, capable de reagir k
toutes les pressions du dehors, capa-
ble d'assimiler tous les aliments qu'il
absorbe; notre passe me repond de notre
avenir. Nous avons bien digere Rome.
Cette puissance d'assimilation, et la
nouveaux sentiments, des manieres nou-
velles de reagir aux conditions ^ternelles
de la destinee humaine ou aux condi-
tions modifiees de I'existence nationale.
dependant les litterateurs ne se trou-
blent pas pour si peu dans leur tran-
quille petite Industrie, et ils continuent
de fournir les memes produits a un
public qui n'est plus le meme. Ce pu-
blic, alors, se detourne d'un art qui ^tait
fait pour ses arriere-grands-peres, et va
demander a des ceuvres etrangeres les
idees, les emotions, la beaute poetique
qui correspondent aux aspirations se-
cretes du temps present. On se tourne
vers Ossian, parce qu'on a Bernis; on
se tourne vers Byron, parce qu'on a
Parny. L'imitation est un moyen de
s'affranchir. II y avait trois quarts de
siecle que les ames franjaises etaient
gonflees de sentiments romantiques,
quand le romantisme du C^nacle, en
ayant I'air de sacrifier la tradition clas-
sique a un gout malsain de bizarreries
exotiques, a tout simplement bris^ des
formes surann^es, refondu une langue
figee et readapte la litterature franjaise
a la vie frangaise. Lamartine a 6crit la
poesie que Mademoiselle de Lespinasse,
de toute la passion orageuse de son coeur
insatiable, appelait, et ne pouvait obte-
nir des hommes de gout tvhs polis qui
I'entouraient.
Par la s'explique une apparente con-
tradiction dont on ne peut manquer
d'etre frappe. On nous voit, au cours de
notre histoire, les yeux toujours fixfe sur
les litteratures etrangeres, occupes a les
admirer, a les introduire, a les copier.
Et Ton nous dit toujours que nous
sommes incapables de les comprendre.
Le$ Anglais s'amusent de nos imitations
Shakespeariennes; et Mariano de Lara
&late de rire devant I'Espagne d'Her-
nani. C'est un fait, que la plupart de
nos romantiques, et souvent les plus
barbouilles d'exotisme, ne savent pas ou
savent tres mal I'allemand, I'anglais, et
meme I'espagnol.
C'est qu'en fait, ce qui nous inte-
resse, ce n'est pas de reproduire la pen-
see etrangere, le poeme etranger, tels
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10 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
curiosite qui lui fournit de la mati^re,
sont dans un rapport ^troit avec un des
caractires les plus marques de notre lit-
t^rature, le caractere que Brunetiire,
dans un de ses plus beaux essais, a si
iloquemment d^fini. D'autres littera-
tures sont peut-etre plus originales que
la notre; la nationality, la race, s'y font
sentir plus fortement; elles ont mieux
conserve leur ind^pendance, leur pu-
rete, leur saveur primitive de terroir.
Chez nous, la nationality s'est depouillfe.
Nous ne nous sommes pas developpes
dans le sens de la particularite, de la
locality, mais dans celui de Tuniversa-
lit^, de I'humaniti. Nous avons voulu
qu'on devint plus frangais, a mesure
qu'on serait plus humain. Nous n'avons
jamais su ce que c'^tait que des V^rit^s
Fran^aises: nous ne connaissons que la
verite, sans epithfetes, la verity de tous
les hommes.
Et c'est pour cela que nous avons
toujours recueilli toutes les idfes de
toutes les nations; nous les avons trai-
ts comme nos propres id^, filtrto.
humanist, pour les distribuer ensuite
par toute I'Europe et dans le monde
entier. La vertu civilisatrice de notre
litt^rature tient k ce que nous n'avons
jamais repouss^ ni une forme de la ve-
rite ni une forme de la beaut6 conune
etrang^res k notre race. Notre puis-
sance d'expansion est faite de notre re-
ceptivity meme. Si I'Europe, si le monde
ont donn^ parfois k notre langue un
empire presque universel, c'est qu'ils
estimaient — ils savaient — que nous ne
leur apportions pas la tyrannie d'un
temperament ethnique, mais la lumiire
de la raison humaine.
Aurions-nous pu remplir ce role histo-
rique, qui est notre gloire, si nous avions
eu le souci illusoire et pueril de rester
purs, Torgueilleuse, la sauvage preten-
tion de ne pas meler notre esprit aux
esprits des autres peuples, et de donner
sans recevoir?
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NATIONALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART
By Theodore Roosevelt
Mr. Chancellor, our distinguished
guest, Monsieur Lanson, fellow-mem-
bers of the Academy and Institute: I
am in the position of having had my
speech mad6 for me by Monsieur Lan-
son far better than I could make it. I
do not mean that I am to speak about
France; but that what i have to say on
!'Nationalism in Literature and Art" has
been said by our guest with that clear-
ness and fineness of expression which
can perhaps be attained only by masters
of the French language.
And let me at the outset say anent the
tribute paid to William James as having
familiarized France with the philosophy
of pragmatism, that not a few of us ad-
mired William James without clearly
understanding him until Monsieur Emile
Boutroux translated him for us.
In speaking of the French genius.
Monsieur Lanson has most clearly set
forth the attitude that should be taken in
every country as regards both the duty
of seeking for everything good that can
be contributed by outside nations and
the further duty of refusing merely to
reproduce or copy what is thus taken,
but of adapting it and transmuting it
until it becomes part of the national
mind and expression.
There is only one thing worse than
the stolid refusal to accept what is great
and beautiful from outside, and that is
^ servilely to copy it. Monsieur Lanson
must permit me to say that even the
greatest authors do not shine at their
best when they are nearest to copying a
foreign masterpiece. A great French
dramatist has produced a play modeled
on a great Spanish epic, and the great
English dramatist in 'Troilus and Cres-
sida" adapted part of a medievalized
tradition of Homer. I think 1 prefer the
Spanish epic to the French drama in
that particular case, and i know that 1
prefer even a dozen lines of the Greek
epic to all but half a dozen lines of the
English play, — although in some of his
other plays I believe that the dramatist
in question rose above all the other poets
of all time.
The greatest good that is done by the
reception and the assimilation of a for-
eign culture is in the effect on the mind
of the person who so assimilates it that
he can use it in doing productive work
in accordance with the genius of his own
country.
I cannot forbear saying in the pres-
ence of Monsieur Lanson a word as to
the debt we all owe France for the
French example, and especially the
French example at this moment. As
one of our own beloved American writ-
ers who is present with us to-day has
said — in speaking of what he will hardly
pardon me for calling a warped, al-
though a rugged, genius of American
poetry, Walt Whitman — as John Bur-
roughs has said, strength comes before
beauty and valor before grace. If France
had been only a literary and artistic
country, we should not now have the
feeling that we have as we rise to our
feet when French heroism is mentioned.
The other day 1 was interested in cer-
tain paleontological and archaeological
studies at the point where the two sci-
ences come together, and I happened to
be reading the work of a great French-
man. 1 made inquiries about him, and
found that he is dead in the trenches,
because, although he was a great ar-
chaeologist, he put patriotism, love of
country, and the duty to be a man ahead
of the duty of being a scientific or liter-
ary man.
There is another example for us in
France. Our guest has correctly said
that the Frenchman is not bound by
local ideas f he is national; he is not
addicted merely to the cult of belfry
patriotism; he is content to be a French-
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12 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
man and nothing else. It would be well
for us here, when we grow a little mel-
ancholy as to the time taken by the
melting-pot to turn out a purely Amer-
ican product, to remember that, vast
though this country is, the racial differ-
ences are not one whit greater in our
population than in the population of
France. The Norman, the Breton, the
Gascon, the man of Languedoc, the man
of the center of France, represent the ex-
treme types of all the different races of
central and western Europe; but they
have all been assimilated into one co-
herent and distinctive French national-
ity, so that the man of Toulouse, the
man of Rouen, the man of Marseilles,
the man of Lyons or of Paris, are all
essentially alike, despite the wide dif-
ferences in blood and ancestry. This is
something worth our while remember-
ing, and it is something that is encour-
\ aging to remember. And in what I am
about to say it really would hardly be
necessary for me to do more than to
tell us to take example by the develop-
ment of French art and literature from
the days of the "Song of Roland" down
to the present year.
French literature has changed much.
Our guest will allow me to coitiment
upon the fact that in the great epic
which I have mentioned, a great, typical
French poem, containing scores of thou-
sands of lines, only one woman — at least
only one French woman — is mentioned,
and only three lines are devoted to her,
and two of these lines describe her
death. There has been development in
French literature since that time!
France has helped humanity because
France has remained French. There is
no more hopeless creature from the
point of view of humanity than the per-
son who calls himself a cosmopolitan,
who spreads himself out over the whole
world, with the result that he spreads
himself out so thin that he comes
through in large spots. We can help
humanity at large very much to the ex-
tent that we are national — in the proper
sense, not in the chauvinistic sense —
that we are devoted to our own country
first. 1 prize the friendship of the man
who cares for his family more than he
cares for me; if he does not care for his
family any more than he cares for me,
1 know that he cares for me very little.
What is true in individual relations is
no less true in the world at large.
So you see that the most important
part of my paper had beeif given before
I came to it!
One thing that the French can teach
us is the need of leadership. There can be^
no greater mistake from the democratic
point of view, nothing more ruinous
can be imagined from the point of view
of a true democracy, than to believe that
democracy means absence of leadership.
Of course it is hard to tell exactly how
much can be done in any given case by
the leadership that is differentiated from
the mass work. That is true in produc-
ing a national art or national literature,
just as it is true in other activities of
national life. Something, of course, and
in some cases much, can be accom-
plished. But the greatest literature, the
greatest art, must spring from the soul
of the people themselves. There must
be leadership in the blossoming period,
in any blossoming period, of any great
artistic or literary nation. But if the
art is genuinely national, the leadership
must take advantage of the life of the
people, and must follow the trend of its
marked currents. Greek art, like Gothic
architecture, owed more to the national
spirit than to any conscious effort of
any group of men; and this is likewise
true of the Greek and English litera-
tures. On the other hand, Latin litera-
ture was not really an expression of the
soul of the Latin race at all, and this
will seem strange only to the men who
have not succeeded in freeing their
thought from the narrow type of scho-
lastic education prevalent in our univer-
sities and schools up to the present day.
Latin literature was merely an elegant
accomplishment developed by small
groups of Latin-speaking men who self-
consciously set themselves to theproduc-
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NATIONALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART
>3
tion of a literature and an art modeled
on Greek lines. The result of the efforts
of these men has had a profound effect
upon the civilization of the last two
thousand years throughout the world;
but this effect has come merely because
the race to which this artificial literature
belonged was a race of conquerors, of ad-
ministrators, of empire-builders. Greek
literature and art, Greek philosophy,
Greek thought, have profoundly shaped
the after destinies of the world, although
the Greek was trampled under foot by
the Roman. But Roman literature.
Latin literature, would not be heard of
at this day if it were not for the fact
that the Latin stamped his character on
all occidental and central Europe.
^ Normally there must be some relation
between art and the national life if the
art is to represent a real contribution to
the sum of artistic world development.
Nations have achieved greatness with-
out this greatness representing any ar-
tistic side; other great nations have
developed an artistic side only after a
preliminary adoption of what has been
supplied by the creative genius of some
wholly alien people. But the national
greatness which is wholly divorced from
every form of artistic production,
whether in literature, painting, sculp-
ture, or architecture, unless it is marked
by extraordinary achievements in war
and government, is not merely a one-
sided, but a malformed, greatness, as
witness Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage.
It behooves us in the United States
not to be content with repeating on a
larger scale the history of commercial
materialism of the great Phenician com-
monwealths. This means that here in
America, if we do not develop a serious
art and literature of our own, we shall
have a warped national life. Most cer-
tainly I do not mean that the art and
literature are worth developing unless
they are built on a national life which
is strong and great in other ways, unless
they are expressions of that valor of
soul which must always come before
^beauty. If a nation is not proudly will-
ing and able to fight for a just cause, —
for the lives of its citizens, for the
honor of its flag, even for the rescue of
some oppressed foreign nationality, —
then such a nation will always be an
ignoble nation, and this whether it
achieves the sordid prosperity of those
who are merely successful hucksters, or
whether it kills its virility by an ex-
clusive appreciation of grace, ease, and
beauty. Strength, courage, and justice
must come first. When the beauty-lov-
ing, beauty-producing Greek grew cor-
rupt and lost his hold upon the great
arts of war and government, his pro-
ficiency in arts of a different kind did
not avail him against the Roman. The
glory of Greece culminated in those cen-
turies when her statesmen and soldiers
ranked as high as her sculptors and
temple-builders, her poets, historians,
and philosophers.
We of this nation are a people differ-
ent from all of the peoples of Europe, but
akin to all. Our language and literature
are English, and the fundamentals of
our inherited culture are predominantly
English. But we have in our veins the
blood of many different race-stocks, and
we have taken toll of the thought of
many different foreign nations. We have
lived for three centuries, and are still
living under totally new surroundings.
These new surroundings and the new
strains in our blood interact on one
another in such fashion that our na-
tional type must certs^inly be new; and
it will either develop no art and no lit-
erature, or else the art and literature
must be distinctly our own.
In a recent number of the "Suwanee
Review" — incidentally, the "Suwanee
Review" represents the kind of work
which Americans should welcome — it
was pointed out how the names of our
writers, painters, and poets of to-day
show the growing divergence of our peo-
ple from the English stock. This does
not in the least mean that there should
be any break with English scholarship
and culture, any failure to take full ad-
vantage of their immense storehouse;
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14 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
but it does mean that this country is
steadily evolving a new national type.
This new national type can add to
the sum of world achievement only
if it develops its own forms of na-
tional expression, social, literary, and
artistic.
Of course to make the type self-con-
sciously anti-English shows as mean a
sense of uneasy inferiority as to make it
a mere imitation of the English. Take
three widely different books which have
dealt with vital conditions during the
last two years, and consider the names
of the authors. Two of them deal with
conditions growing out of the World
War and the failure of this nation to
act in accordance with its loftiest tradi-
tions of the past. The other, the first
one of which 1 speak, refers not to any-
thing special to this nation, but to some-
thing of vital interest to all modern
nations. I refer to Bade's 'The Old Tes-
tament in the Light of To-day," very
much the ablest and most remarkable
Biblical study produced anywhere in
any country of recent years. Another is
Owen Wister's "Pentecost of Calamity,"
which every American should read, and
the third is Gustavus Oehlinger's "Their
True Faith and Allegiance," which
should be read by every man who claims
to be an American, whether he is of old
colonial stock or is a naturalized citi-
zen or is the son of a naturalized citi-
zen; and if any man fails with all his
heart to stand for the doctrines therein
set forth, this country is not the place
for him to live. None of these three au-
thors is English by blood, at least on his
father's side. All are of mixed blood,
and all are purely American, through
and through— -American in every sense
which can possibly aid in making the
term one of pride to us and one of use-
fulness to mankind at large.
Now, conditions in this country are
such that from time to time a certain
number of our people are lost to us.
Some painters go to live in France, some
writers in England, some musicians and
even occasionally some scientists, else-
where in continental Europe. Occasion-
ally these men may individually benefit
themselves, in which case all I can say
is, I trust they cease calling themselves
Americans. 1 don't want to call them
American-French or American-English.
Let them be frankly English or French
and stop being American. They repre-
sent nothing but loss from the point of
view of national achievement and must
be disregarded in any study of our de-
velopment.
It is eminently necessary that we
should draw on every hoard of garnered
wisdom and ability anywhere in the
world of art and of literature, whether /
it be in France or Japan, in Germany,
England, Russia, or Scandinavia. But^
what we get we must adapt to our own
uses. Largely we must treat it as an in-
spiration to do original productive work
ourselves, so that we may develop nat-
urally along our own lines. We need
have scant patience with artificial devel-
opment in nationalism or in anything
else. I care little more for the Cubist
school in patriotism than I care for it in
art or in poetry. The effort to be orig-
inal by being fantastic is always cheap.
Second-rate work is second-rate work,
even if it is done badly. Nor does the
possession of a national art mean in the
least that the subjects treated shall be
only domestic subjects. But the posses-
sion of a national art does mean that
the training and habit of thought of the
men of artistic and literary expression
shall put them into sympathy with the
nation to which they belong. Partly they
must express the soul of a nation,
partly they must lead and guide the soul
of the nation; but only by being one
with it can they become one with human-
ity at large. When the greatest men, the
men whose appeal is to mankind at large,
make their appeal, it will be found that
it carries most weight when they speak
in terms that are natural to them, when
they speak with the soul of their own
land. Normally the man who can do
most for the nations of the world as
a whole is the man the fibers of whose
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NATIONALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART
15
being are most closely intertwined with
those of the people to which he himself
belongs.
Merely to copy something already
produced by another nation is probably
y useless. Cultivated Englishmen, for ex-
ample, have added immensely to their
scholarly productivity by their study
of the Latin tongue and their familiarity
with it. The study of Latin has helped
them to do productive work. But when
they themselves have tried to become
Latin writers they have never done any-
thing at all. One form of their effort
to write Latin has represented, I sup-
pose, in the aggregate, as large an
amount of sheer waste as anything in all
education, and that is the setting of boys
and young men to writing Latin verses.
Millions of Latin verses have been writ-
ten by Englishmen, cultivated English-
men ; and there is n't one of them which
any human being would put in a Latin
anthology to-day. It has represented
sheer waste of effort — a waste as sheer
as learning the Koran by heart in a
Moslem university, and the product is
of no more permanent value than the
verses scribbled at a week-end house-
party.
/ There have been countless American
artists who have spent their time paint-
ing French and Dutch subjects. Some
have done good work — almost as good
as if they were Frenchmen or Dutch-
men. All of them put together have not
added to the sum of American achieve-
ment or to the world's artistic develop-
ment as much as Remington when he
painted the soldier, the cow-boy, and the
Indian of the West. Now let me add
for the benefit of the worthy persons
who, having seen this statement, will
write me the day after to-morrow,
yearning for a commission, that the fact
that they would like to paint Indians
does not mean that they are going to do
good work. If Remington's desire had
not been equaled by his power of artistic
achievement, what he did would have
been worthless. Good Joel Barlow
found he had a new nation and no epic;
and as he figured to himself that Ho-
mer had self-consciously written the epic
of Greece, and as he knew about Milton,
he sat down and wrote an epic of Amer-
ica conceived in the same spirit that
made us put Washington naked to the
waist and with a toga around him in
front of the Capitol — ^the same spirit, if '
our guest will pardon me, which made
the French seventeenth-century sculp-
tors put Louis XIV in a Roman corse-
let. Well, poor Joel Barlow wrote his^
"Columbiad"; I have one of the copies
of the original edition. I would not have
it out of my library for any considera-
tion unless 1 were required to read it;
if I had to read it I would surrender it. /
Many Americans of wealth have ren-
dered real service by bringing to this
country collections of pictures by the
masters of painting. But all of these
men of wealth who have brought over
paintings to this country, put together,
have not added to the sum of productive
civilization in this country as much as
that strange, imaginative genius, Mar-
cus Symons, who was utterly neglected
in life, who is n't known in death, but
who will assuredly be known to gener-
ations that come after us as perhaps the
greatest imaginative colorist since Tur-
ner.
I was struck the other day by some-
thing that Lady Gregory mentioned to
me. She is one of that knot of men and
women who of recent years have made
Ireland a genuine influence in the world
of literature. She and her fellows have
done this because their work has been
essentially national. In this country she
lectured upon the need that we Ameri-
cans should develop our own drama and
poetry along similar national lines. She
has told with much humor (and in pri-
vate conversation has elaborated with
examples) how some of her auditors,
like those victims of medieval magic
who were made to learn the Lord's
Prayer backward, deliberately inverted
her teachings, and proposed themselves
to her to write not American, but Irish,
prose or poems! She spoke in various
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i6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
cities of the need that we should develop
local schools of literary activity, not
anti-national schools, but representative
of all the local features of our composite
nationality. She urged our people to
realize the deep humor and interest in
the new types developed in each new
center of American life. She asked the
hearers in different centers to develop
from each the local story, the local play,
the local poem, exactly as she and those
like her had done in Ireland. She de-
scribed in some detail what they had
done in Ireland; whereupon in each unit
a considerable portion of her auditors
thought they would like to imitate what
she had done in Ireland, under the im-
pression that they were following out
her advice to be original !
For example, she told of one case
where, having produced one of her plays
in which a cowherd was concerned, one
of her auditors sent her a few days af-
terward a play of his own on "Irish Cat-
tle-keeping," where one of the features
was the tinkling of the cow-bells. Now,
they do not have cow-bells in Ireland.
He knew how cow-bells sounded in the
pasture lot at home, just as he knew how
the rails sound when they clatter down
on the ground as the hired man lets the
cows out. And he might just as well
have attributed the sound of the falling
of rails to a region of stone walls as to
have attributed cow-bells to Ireland.
He and his kind are zealous, well-mean-
ing, profoundly foolish persons, who
thought that they were inspired by her
teachings to undertake something for
which they were exquisitely unfitted.
They were not really inspired at all.
They were simply filled with the desire
to copy somebody else because they
did not have in their own souls the ca-
pacity for original or productive work.
The easiest of all things is to copy.
Ordinary writers do not write about
what they themselves see, for they see
very little. They merely repeat what
has already been written in books about
what somebody else has seen. You re-
member Oliver Wendell Holmes's state-
ment that it took over a century to ban-
ish the lark from American literature,
and 1 am bound to say that the lark oc-
casionally survives here and there in
American literature to this day. Yet
no American has ever heard the skylark
in America, because he is not here to be
beard. But the average American writer
has read Hogg or Shelley or Shakspere;
and so when he thinks of going out in
the early morning in the country, and
does not know anything about the coun-
try, he thinks he ought to feel inspired
by the skylark, and writes accordingly.
Ordinary people, as they grow wealthy
and become vaguely aware of new needs,
— or, if that is too strong an expression,
grow vaguely to feel that they ought to
show some evidence of growth in taste to
parallel their growth in wealth, — ^find it
easier to import not only their own
ideas, but their material surroundings.
When our multi-millionaires beconse
wealthy enough, they are apt to copy Old
World palaces and to fill these palaces
with paintings brought from the Old
World. If the millionaire is sufficientiy
primitive, he will explain to you with
pride that the paintings are hand-made.
Now, it is eminently right to try to add
to our own development by the studies
of great architecture and the great
schools of painting of the Old World. If
we do not study them, we shall never
develop anything worth having on our
own side of the water. But neither the
mere reproduction of a specimen of a
great architecture nor the mere purchase
of the product of a great school of paint-
ing is of the slightest consequence in add-
ing to the sum total of worthy national
achievement. A minutely accurate re-
production of a beautiful and very ex-
pensive French chateau, popped down at
the foot of some unkempt mountain-
range, or elbowing another imitation
chateau of a totally different nationality
and type in some summer capital of the
wealthy, does not represent any advance
in our taste or culture or art of living.
It represents nothing but a personal in-
ability to make wise use of acquired or
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NATIONALISM IN LITERATURE AND ART
17
\ inherited riches. The Raphaels in Eng-
land reflect credit primarily on Italy,
not on England. It is to the Turners
in the National Gallery that we must
turn when we desire to consider real
achievements by England in the field of
art. We neither know nor care whether
the Spanish grandees and Dutch burgo-
masters of the seventeenth century ac-
cumulated masterpieces of Italian paint-
ers. Our concern is solely with the
artistic genius that produced Velasquez
and Murillo, with the artistic genius
that produced Rembrandt and Franz
Hals. Similarly, it means very little to
have an Egyptian obelisk in Central
Park. (In the effort to avoid overstate-
ment, I have made this statement
feebly.) But it means a great deal to
have Saint-Gaudens's Farragut and
Sherman in New York, Saint-Gaudens's
Lincoln in Chicago, and MacMonnies's
Kit Carson in Denver.
Of course an over-self-conscious
straining after a nationalistic form of
expression may defeat itself. But this is
merely because self-consciousness is al-
most always a drawback. The self-con-
scious striving after originality also
tends to defeat itself. Yet the fact re-
mains that the greatest work must bear
the stamp of originality. In exactly the
same way the greatest work must bear
the stamp of nationalism. American
work must smack of our own soil, men-
tal and moral, no less than physical, or
it will have little of permanent value.
Let us profit by the scholarship, art,
and literature of every other country
and every other time; let us adapt to
our own use whatever is of value in any
other language, in any other literature,
in any other art; but let us keep steadily
in mind that in every field of endeavor
the work best worth doing for Amer-
icans must in some degree express the
distinctive characteristics of our own
national soul.
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SECOND SESSION
Thursday, November i6rH, at 2.15
CONCERT
OF COMPOSITIONS BY MEMBERS OF THE INSTITUTE
Given by
The Kneisel Quartet
Franz Kneisel, First Violin Hans Letz, Second Violin
Louis Svecenski, Viola Willem Willeke, Violoncello
PROGRAMME
George W. Chadwick Quartet in D Minor, No. 5
Allegro moderator Andantino—Leggiero e presto
Allegro vivace
Arthur Foote Tema con Variazioni in A Major, Op. ^2
Henry K. Hadley Quintet in A Minor for Pianoforte and Strings, Op. 30
Allegro energico— Andante— Allegro giocoso (Scherzo)
Allegro con moto
The Composer at the Piano
18
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[session of NOVEMBER 1 7]
STANDARDS
By William Crary Brownell
It is perhaps a little difficult precisely
to define the term "standards/' but it is
happily even more superfluous than dif-
ficult, because every one knows what it
means. Whereas criticism deals with
the rational application of principles ap-
plicable to the matter in hand, and has
therefore a sufficiently delimited field of
its own, standards are in different case.
They belong in the realm of sense rather
than in that of reason, and are felt as
ideal exemplars for measurement by
comparison, not deduced as criteria of
absolute authority. As such they arise
insensibly in the mind, which automat-
ically sifts its experiences, and are not
the direct result of reflection. In a word,
they are the products not of philosophy,
but of culture, and consequently perti-
nent constituents of every one's intellec-
tual baggage. In this presence 1 shall
not be exi)ected to apologize for using
the term to denote a quality rather than
a defect, and just as when we si)eak of
"style" we mean good style and not bad,
to mean by standards high standards,
not low, or, what is the same thing, ex-
acting, not indulgent, ones. So that we
may leave these latter out of the account
in noting as one of the really significant
signs of our revolutionary and transi-
tional time the wide disapi)earance of
standards altogether, the contempt felt
for them as conventions, the indignation
aroused by them as fetters, the hatred
inspired by them as tyranny.
This spirit of revolt— conceived, of
course, as renovation by its votaries, but
still manifestly in the destructive stage,
witnessed by the fierceness of its icono-
clastic zest, so much greater than its
constructive concentration — is plainly
confined to no one people and to no one
field of activity. It is indeed so marked
in the field of art and letters because it
is general, and because the field of art
and letters is less and less a sheltering
inclosure and more and more open to
the winds of the world. Goethe's idea
of "culture conquests" has lost its value
because the new spirit involves a break
with, not an evolution of, the past. In
the new belles-lettres a historical refer-
ence arouses uneasiness and a mytholog-
ical allusion irritation because they are
felt to be not obscure, but outworn. The
heart sinks with ennui at the mention
of Amaryllis in the shade and thrills with
pleasure in imaging the imagist in the
bath. The plight of the pedant in the
face of suqh preferences as prevail
arouses pity. His entire mental furni-
ture is of a sudden out-moded. The ad-
vantages of standardization are left to
the material world. Esthetic coin may
be of standard weight and fineness; it
loses its currency if its design is not
novel, making it, that is to say, fiat and
irredeemable in the mart of art, sterling
only in its grosser capacity. The objec-
tion is to formulations themselves as
restrictions on energy. The age feels
its vitality with a more exquisite con-
sciousness than any that has preceded
it. It does little else, one may say in a
large view, than in one form or another
express, illustrate, or celebrate this con-
sciousness. And every one who sympa-
thetically "belongs" to it feels himself
stanchly supported by the consensus of
all it esteems. All the "modernist"
needs to do, if challenged, is to follow
the example of Max Miiller, who replied
to an opponent seeking to confute him
by citing St. Paul: "Oh, Paulus! 1 do
not agree with Paulus."
Why is it that the present age differs
so radically from its predecessors in its
attitude to its ancestry ? Why its drastic
departure from its own traditions, its
light-hearted and adventurous abandon-
ment of its heritage? The present ochlo-
cratic expansion, modified only by con-
centration on securing expansion for
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20 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
others, and contemptuous of results
achieved even to this end by any former
exj)erience, is so striking because it is in
no wise a phase of traceable evolution,
but is so marked a variation from tyj)e.
The cause is to be found, no doubt, in
the immense extension in our time of
what may be called the intellectual and
esthetic electorate, in which, owing to
education, either imperfect or highly
si)ecialized, genuine culture has become
less general — ^with the result that the in-
tellect which has standards has lost
co6j)erative touch with the susceptibility
and the will, which have not, but whose
activities are vastly more seductive,
as involving not only less tension, but
often no tension at all. For the instinct-
ive hostility to standards proceeds from
the tension which conformity imposes
both on the artist who produces and the
public which appreciates. Hence the
objection to standards as sterilizing the
spontaneity which is a corollary of our
energetic vitality. But the foundations
of the structure in the roomy upper sto-
ries of which the artist works and the
public enjoys are based upon standards,
and any one whose spontaneity is unable
to find scope for its exercise in these up-
per stories, or who is unprepared by the
requisite preliminary discipline to cope
with the comi)etition he finds there, and
who in consequence undertakes to recon-
struct the established foundations of the
splendid edifice of letters and art, will
assuredly need all the vitality that even
a child of the twentieth century is likely
to possess.
The mutual relation existing between
artist and public has always been ob-
vious to any analysis of the origin and
development of art, whose genesis
plainly proceeds from the fusion of co-
oi)eration, and whose growth has been
governed by demand not less than by
supply, since, however the artist may
have stimulated demand, he is himself a
product. It is plain, accordingly, that
in the main a public gets not only, as has
been remarked, the newspapers it de-
serves, but the art and letters it appre-
ciates. And since every public is at pres-
ent far more sensitive than ever before
to the general spirit of the era without
restrictions of time and place, our own
has taken the general grievance of stand-
ards very hard, because, owing to its
ingrained individualism, it has accentu-
ated what elsewhere has been a more
unified phase of a general movement by
the incoherency of personal obstreper-
ousness. This solvent has disintegrated
the force as well as the decorum of our
public and made it clear that the agency
of which art and letters now stand in
most urgent need is a public with stand-
ards to which the}' may appeal and by
which they may be constrained. De-
mocracy— to which so far as art and let-
ters are concerned any advocate who
does not conceive it as the spread "in
widest commonalty" of aristocratic vir-
tues is a traitor — has largely become a
self-authenticating cult with us, as an-
tagonistic as Kultur to culture, and many
of its devotees now mainly illustrate
aristocratic vices: arrogance, contemp-
tuousness, intolerance, obscurantism.
Terribly little learning is enough to in-
cur the damnatory title of high-brow.
The connoisseur is deemed a dilettante,
and the dilettante a snob, fastidiousness
being conceived as necessarily affecta-
tion and not merely evincing defective
sympathies, but actively mean. "Peo-
ple desire to popularize art," said Manet,
"without j)erceiving that art always
loses in height what it gains in breadth."
If Moliere, who spoke of his metier as
the business of making les bonnetes gens
laugh, had only practised on his cook,
which he is said to have also done, "we
should have had," observes M. Andre
Gide, "more 'Fourberies de Scapin' and
other 'Monsieur de Pourceaugnacs,' but
I doubt if he would have given us *Le
Misanthrope.' " And M. Gide contin-
ues: "These bonnetes gens, as Moliere
called them, equally removed from a
court that was too rigid and a pit that
was too free, were precisely what Mo-
liere regarded as his particular public.
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STANDARDS
21
and it was to this public that he ad-
dressed himself. The court of Louis
XIV represented formalism; the par-
terre represented naturalism; they rep-
resented good taste. And it was through
them that the admirable French tradi-
tion was so long maintained."
A public like this we once had, and
we have it no longer. Its limitations
were marked, but they emphasized its
existence. Its standards were narrow,
but it had standards. We had a class
not numerous, but fairly defined, cor-
responding to the class Charles Sumner
found in England, distinct from the no-
bility, but possessed in abundance of se-
rious knowledge, high accomplishment,
and refined taste — ^the class precisely
called by Moliere les honnites gens.
We have now a far larger public, but a
promiscuous one, in which the elements
least sensitive to letters and art are disr
proportionately large, owing, among
other things, to the si)ecialization of the
elective system, with its consequent de-
struction of common intellectual inter-
ests and therefore of common standards
in our higher education, and in which,
owing to the spread of popular educa-
tion, all standards are often swamped
by the caprices of pure appetite and
the demands of undisciplined desires.
Rapacity is not fastidious, and the kind
of art and literature that satisfies its
pangs shares its quality as well as re-
sponding quantitatively to its exorbi-
tant needs.
To expect literary and art standards
of such a public as this — incontestably
superior as it is, 1 think, in other re-
spects, and esi)ecially as it api)ears to
the eye of hope! — is visionary. What
does such a public ask of art and letters?
It asks sensation. Hence its inordinate
demand for novelty, which more surely
than anything else satisfies the craving
for sensation and which, accordingly, is
so generally accepted at its face-value.
The demand is impolitic because the
supply is disproportionately small. An
ounce of alcohol will give the world a
new asj)ect, but one is supposed to be
better without it, if for no other reason
because a little later two ounces are
needed, and when the limits of capacity
are reached the original staleness of
things becomes intensified. Undoubt-
edly letters and art suffer at the present
time from the effort to satisfy an over-
stimulated appetite which only extrava-
gance can appease. The demand is also
unphilosophic because novelty is of ne-
cessity transitory, and the moment it
ceases to be so it is no longer novel. The
epithet "different," for example, now so
generally employed as the last word of
laudation, we should hasten to make the
most of while it lasts; some little child,
like the one in Andersen's story of "The
Two Cheats," is sure ere long to ask
how it is synonymous with "preferable."
And in losing its character novelty in-
evitably, of course, loses its charm.
Nothing is more grotesque than last
year's fashions.
If our public would once admit that
the element of novelty in anything has
nothing whatever to do with the value
of the object, it might reflect usefully
on the mind that considers the object,
with the result of coming to j)erceive,
on the one hand, that all that can be
asked of the object is to possess intrinsic
value, and, on the other, that it is very
much its own business to justify the
value of its novel sensations. This may
easily be below standard, like the pug-
nacity of the generous soul who had
heard of the crucifixion only the day be-
fore. Carlyle, reading the Scriptures
while presiding at prayers in the home
of an absent friend, and, on encounter-
ing the line, "Is there any taste in the
white of an egg?" exclaiming, to the con-
sternation of the household, "Bless my
soul, I did n't know that was in 'Job'!"
exhibits a surprise of different quality
from that of Emerson's small boy who,
laboriously learning the alphabet and
having the letter pointed out to him,
exclaimed, "The devil! Is that 'Z'!" It
has a richer background — a background
Carlyle himself needed when, announc-
ing that he did n't consider Titian of
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22 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
great importance, he earned Thackeray's
retort that the fact was of small im-
portance with regard to Titian, but of
much with regard to Thomas Carlyle.
So on those occasions, admittedly
rare, when candor compels crudity to
confess to culture, "I never thought of
that," or "What surprises me about
Shakspere is his modernness," what cul-
ture feels is the lack of standards im-
plied in the lack of background disclosed.
"How do you manage to invent those
hats?" inquired a friend of the comedian
Hyacinthe. "I don't invent them," re-
plied the actor; "I keep them." One
need not be learned in its hats to value
the light a knowledge of the past throws
on the present. All the same, a little
general learning has come to be a use-
ful thing in a world where from its in-
frequency it has ceased to be dangerous
and where the thirsty drink deep, but
taste not the Pierian spring.
A sound philosophy, however, is no
more than general culture the desid-
eratum of an emotional age, and it is
not difficult to trace our depreciation
of the former to a popular recoil from
disciplined thought, in itself emotional,
and of the latter to the purely emotional
extension which our democratic tradi-
tion has of late so remarkably acquired.
One of the results has been the wide-
spread feeling that intellectual standards
are undemocratic, as excluding the
greenhorn and the ignoramus from sym-
pathies extended to the sinner and the
criminal — who have assuredly a differ-
ent title to them, belonging at least to a
different order of unfortunates.
A public of which a large element feels
in this way is bound to make few de-
mands of knowledge in its artists and
authors — even in its writers of fiction.
Accordingly, one must admit that in the
field of fiction, bewilderingly populous
at the present time, our later writers,
excelling in whatever way they may,
nevertheless differ most noticeably from
their European contemporaries in pos-
sessing less of the knowledge which is
power here as elsewhere. They are cer-
tainly not less clever, any more than
their public is less clever than the Euro-
pean public. But every one is clever
nowadays. We are perhaps suffering
from a surfeit of cleverness, since, being
merely clever, it is impossible to be
clever enough. Our cleverness is apt to
stop short of imagination and rest con-
tentedly in invention, forgetful of Shel-
ley's reminder that the Muses were the
daughters of Memory. Columbus him-
self invented nothing, but the children
of his discovery have imperfectly shared
the ruling passion to which they owe
their existence. New discoveries in life
are hardly to be expected of those who
take its portrayal so lightly as to neglect
its existing maps and charts. And this
is why our current fiction seems so ex-
perimental, so speculative, so amateur
in its portrayal of life, why it seems so
immature, in one word, compared grade
for grade with that of Europe. The
contrast is as sensible in a page as in a
volume in any confrontation of the two.
I know of no English short-story
writer of her rank who gives me the
positive delight that Miss Edna Ferber
does — or did. But why should we play
all the time? Why should we bracket
O. Henry's immensely clever "expanded
anecdotes," as Mrs. Gerould calls them,
with the incisive cameos carved out of
the very substance of life taken se-
riously, however limitedly, of a consum-
mate artist like Maupassant? Such fixed
stars of our fiction as Henry James and
Mr. Howells are perfectly comparable
with their European coevals; but I am
speaking of the present day, not of the
day before yesterday, the horoscope of
which, so rapid are our changes, is al-
ready superseded. And how are we to
have a standard of culture, of solidity,
of intellectual seriousness, in fine, as ex-
acting as that to which a Swiss or Scan-
dinavian novelist is held, — a standard
to which such rather solitary writers as
Mrs. Wharton in prose and Mrs. Dargan
in poetry, having the requisite talent
and equipment, instinctively conform, —
if our public is so given over to the ela-
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STANDARDS
23
tion of emotion as to frown impatiently
on any intellectual standard of severity,
or, owing to its dread of conventionality,
on any common standard whatever?
An enthusiastic writer, herself a poet,
speaks ecstatically of "the unprecedented
magnificence of this modern era, the un-
precedented emotion of this changing
world," as if the two were interde-
pendent, which I dare say they are;
but also as if mercurial emotion were
a better thing than constancy, which
is more doubtful, or as if unprece-
dented emotion were a good thing in
itself, whereas it is probably bad for
the health. Orderly evolution, which
is at least spared the retesting of its ex-
clusions, is unsatisfactory to the impa-
tient, desirous of changing magnificence.
It involves such long periods that we
can hardly speak of its abruptest phases
as unprecedented, unless they occur as
"sports," which are indeed immune from
the virus of precedent. However, it is
quite right to talk of this changing
world, and since it is so changing, diffi-
cult to talk of it long — except in the lan-
guage of emotion. Otherwise than emo-
tionally one is impelled to consider its
shiftings as related to the standards of
what is stable, which is just what it
objects to. Hence the difficulty its apos-
tles and its critics have in getting to-
gether about it.
To assign to art and letters the work
of transforming esthetically the repre-
sentative public of an era like this is to
set them a task of a difficulty that would
deject Don Quixote and dismay Mrs.
Partington. There remains the alterna-
tive of increasing the "remnant." Of the
undemocratic doctrine of the "remnant"
in the social and political field 1 my-
self have never felt either the aptness
or the attraction. The interests of people,
in general are not those of the remnant,
and history shows how, unchecked, the
remnant administers them. Except in a
few fundamentals, they are less matters
of principle than matters of adjustment.
And the attractiveness of the doctrine
must be measured by the character of
the remnant itself, in our case certainly
hardly worth the sacrifice of the rest of
the nation to achieve. But the remnant
in art and letters is another affair alto-
gether. It cannot be too largely in-
creased at whatever sacrifices; and the
only way in which it can be increased is
by the spread of its standards. Other-
wise art and letters will be deprived of
the public which is their stimulus and
their support and be reduced to that
which subjects them to the satisfaction
of standardless caprice.
A heterogeneous public at one chiefly
in its passion for novelty may easily
have the vitality it vaunts, but there is
one quality which ineluctably it must
forego; namely, taste. I hasten to ac-
knowledge that it reconciles itself with
readiness to this deprivation and depre-
ciates taste with the sincerity insepara-
ble from the instinct for self-preserva-
tion. Certainly there are ideals of more
importance, and if the sacrifice of taste
were needed for their success, it would
be possible to deplore its loss too deeply.
We may be sure, however, that the alter-
native is fundamentally fanciful. The
remark once made of an American
dilettante of distinction that he had
convictions in matters of taste and
tastes in matters of conviction implies,
it is true, an exceptional rather than a
normal attitude. But though it is quite
needless to confound the two categories,
it is still quite possible to extend consid-
erably the conventional confines of taste
without serious encroachment on the do-
main of convictions. Nothing is in bet-
ter taste than piety, for example. And
since also nothing is more fundamental,
any one in search of an explanation of
our present wide-spread antipathy to
taste as outworn and unvital might do
worse than scrutinize the various psycho-
logical changes that have accompanied
the much-talked-of decline of religion,
one result of which has apparently been
to divide the traditional worship of the
world between two distinct and inter-
hostile groups of secular schismatics —
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24 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
one adoring the golden calf and the
other incensing the under dog.
Taste is indeed essentially a matter
of tradition. No one originates his own.
Of the many instances in which man-
kind is wiser than any man it is one
of the chief. It implies conformity to
standards already crystallized from for-
mulae already worked out. And it has
the great advantage of being cultivable.
There is nothing recondite about it. It
is a quality particularly proper to the
public as distinct from the artist. In-
deed, its possession by the public pro-
vides the artist with precisely the con-
straint he most needs and is most apt
to forget, esj)ecially in the day of so-
called "free art." It cannot be acquired,
of course, without cooperation, and it
involves the effort needed to acquire,
and is not fostered by the emotion that
is an end in itself. At the present time,
accordingly, its pursuit is attended with
the discomfort inherent in the invidious.
It is pathetically ironical to pass one's
life, as doubtless is still done now and
then, in regretting that one knows so
little, and at the same time arouse dis-
gust for knowing so much. The rem-
nant, if extended, will have to be of
martyr stuff, but it need fear no com-
punctions if it is tempted into occasional
reprisal, consoled by Rivarol's reflection,
"No one knows how much pain any man
of taste has had to suffer before he gives
any."
What most opposes the advancement
of this salutary element of exacting
taste in our public, however, is the vigor
of the spirit of nonconformity, which
by definition has no standards, and
which is no longer the affair of tempera-
ment it used to be, but is a conscious
ideal. As such, of course, in an emo-
tional era, pursued with passion, it is
also pursued into details of high differ-
entiation— manners, tastes, preferences,
fastidious predilections. To the new
theology, the new sincerity, the new
poetry and painting, the new every-
thing, in fact, will ultimately, no doubt,
be added the new refinement, the new
decorum. Meantime our nonconform-
ists are concentrated upon vilipending
the old. This is a field in which the
new egotism may assert itself, with the
minimum of effort involved in mere talk
— talk that asserts an independence of
conventions marked by positive fanati-
cism.
Gibbon notes with his accustomed
perspicacity the affinity of independ-
ence for fanaticism in remarking the
hostility of fanaticism to superstition,
the bugbear of the present time. "The
independent spirit of fanaticism," he
says in his chapter on Mahomet, "looks
down with contempt on the ministers
and slaves of superstition," and the re-
mark explains the current Islamic inva-
sion of the reticences of life. Given her
undeniably fanatical independence, for
example, it is easy to see why the con-
temporary young girl of the thoughtful
variety is so shocked by the constitution
of society as it is, as to vary her impas-
sioned sympathy for the street-walker
by grinding her teeth at the thought of
the Sunday school. But is it not a
rather literal logic that leads her to in-
volve the purely decorative elements
with the structure of the civilization
that has produced her? Why, for in-
stance, should she be "thrilled" by read-
ing, why should she herself write, that
not inconsiderable part of the detail of
the latest fiction that is else too color-
less to have any other motive than the
purely protestant one of heartening the
robust by revolting the refined? Why
should this fiction itself be at such pains
to display what even the public ward
of the maternity hospital screens, and
insist on those intimate ineptitudes that
are paraded in letters only because they
are curtained in life?
Dress illustrates the same phenomenon
of impatience with standards of deco-
rum. Here we can see how fashions
differ from standards, and how exacting
is the tyranny which replaces the slavery
of convention with the despotism of
whim. The aspect of "this changing
world" presented by its habiliments is
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STANDARDS
25
indeed such as to arouse "unprecedented
emotion." Already, to be sure, there are
sjgns of even more change, but since it
is manifestly to be progressive instead
of purely haphazard, we know whither
we are drifting, and that our need of
purely emotional appreciation will re-
main stable. The current affinity of the
bottom of the skirt for that of the
decolletage is destined, no doubt, to a
richer realization, owing to what we are
now calling an "intensive" conviction
of the truth that "the body is more than
raiment." And as we are to be above
all things natural, and as, except for ar-
tists, the female form is the loveliest
thing in nature, we not only have the
prospect of still further emotional felic-
ity in the immediate future, but may
look forward with the gentle altruism
of resignation to the increase of man-
kind's stock of happiness in a remoter
hereafter — in the spirit of the French
seer who, on the eve of the Revolution,
exclaimed: "Les jeunes gens sont bien
heureux; Us verront de belles cboses."
We know how Mme. Tallien justified
him.
Undress, too, as well as dress, holds
out an alluring prospect, at least in
fiction, in which the imagination is al-
ready very considerably "stimulated"
by what the eye is condemned to forego
in fact. No community has, of course,
as yet adopted the Virgtlian motto half-
heartedly suggested by Hawthorne for
Brook Farm, "Sow naked, plow naked,"
but fiction may be said to front that
way. Mr. Galsworthy is only the most
distinguished of those who enable their
readers to emulate Actaeon at their ease,
and we are constantly assisting at the
bath of beauty in company with lady
novelists to whom the experience must
naturally seem less sensational, but who
are especially sensitive to the desirabil-
ity of being "in the swim," if not reck-
less of becoming what Shelley calls
"naked to laughter" in the process.
However, it is not, after all, the more
obvious traits of our public as a whole
that give the cause of art and letters at
the present time an especial claim on
our attention. Considered in the mass,
a mercurial public may conspicuously
fail in its duty to this cause, but being
mercurial, it is susceptible of transfor-
mation. The character of the persons
composing it is the more fundamental
consideration. This character is particu-
larly marked by a general characteristic
calculated to create even in the optimist
some concern, and fairly enough de-
scribed as mediocrity invigorated by thie
current aimless, but abounding, vitality,
which gives mediocrity a force it has
never heretofore conceived of itself as
possessing. Ours is the day of the ma-
jority, but there is nothing invidious in
ascribing mediocrity to the majority in
the intellectual sphere. One may ac-
knowledge it with the same wry frank-
ness with which Thackeray discoursed
of snobs. As Henley, who certainly did
not suffer* from morbid self-disparage-
ment, once wrote me, "We are all too
damnably second-rate." What is new
is the extraordinary self-respect that me-
diocrity has suddenly acquired. The
new humanity should add a chapter
about it, to bring its gospel up to date.
Democracy is to my sense the finest
thing in the secular world, but in a
cosmic universe there is a place for
everything, and it should keep its place.
The modern person is, to begin with,
under some misconception as to his own
nature, which he has somehow come to
conceive of as that of a highly organized
personality. Reflection would assure
him, however, that mere individuality
is a matter of the will, personality of
the character. One can be propagated by
mere fission; the other cannot even be
inherited. One synthetizes individual
traits, the other divides without dis-
tinguishing one unit from another —
sheep, for example. In fact, the extreme
attenuation of j)ersonality is especially
conspicuous in many persons whose
claims to its possession in all its fullness
are aggressively asserted. Yet it is in vir-
tue of his assumed personality, always
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26 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
an exceptional possession, that the per-
son who is not exceptional at all asserts
his title to a special sanction for his ac-
tivities in either production or apprecia-
tion.
Naturally independence is his central
ideal, which incidentally accounts for
the disintegration of the public he com-
poses. It is his duty to live his own
life, to do his own thinking, unaware of
the handicap he involuntarily assumes
and unmindful of Huxley's warning, "It
is when a man can do as he pleases that
his troubles begin." Accordingly we
fairly whirl in centrifugal discussion
which contemplates agreement as little
as it achieves it. The proverbial ego-
tism of the young, to whom no doubt
the world's progress is chiefly due, is
I)erhaps a source of strength to them in
their work of amelioration and advance.
Modesty is doubt, says Balzac, and ego-
tism gives them the requisite confidence
in a world largely given over to the
grosso modo in its struggles upward.
But the most sympathetic observer of
their attitude and activities at the pres-
ent time must note a fundamental
change in this advantageous quality —
a transformation of force into ferocity,
modified by fatuousness, making it pe-
culiarly difficult for age to bear in mind
that principle of pleasing which renders
it necessary, as Scherer observes, to
learn many things that one knows from
those who are ignorant of them.
Another detail of the seriousness with
which the modern person contemplates
his individuality is witnessed by the
latest phase of what is known as "mod-
ern art." "Every expressor is related
solely to himself," announces one of the
exhibitors in the catalogue deraisonne
of a recent modern show. As to which
the observer may reflect with Mr. San-
tayana that "solipsism in another is ab-
surd." The artist cannot be permitted
to function for himself alone. If he has
not, in popular parlance, "got it over,"
how do we know that he has got it out?
He has perhaps had his catharsis, but in
secret. Besides, we want ours. Ours,
indeed, was the one Aristotle had in
mind. And we are not likely to get it
if, asking for ^
Lisht feet, dark violet tyes, and parted hair.
Soft, dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy
breast,
our expressor gives us instead
Lead feet, bold blueblack eyes, and violet
hair,
Hard, knotty hands, green neck, and chalky
breast,
however closely these may be related to
himself.
So far as benevolence is concerned,
however, it must be acknowledged that
self-esteem was never more abundantly
justified. Probably there never was a
time in which there was so much war-
rant for a wide-spread secular feeling
comparable to that which the young
man of great possessions would have
enjoyed had he taken the counsel he
sought. To deny the need of new stand-
ards for new phenomena would indeed
exemplify a smugness exaggeratedly
Victorian, — ^to employ the stigma so lav-
ishly affixed to their own nest by the
Stymphalidae of the day. And the most
conspicuous advance that can be chron-
icled is the penetration by the demo-
cratic spirit of society in general so as
appreciably to have increased the sym-
pathy between •classes and stations in
life. Nothing could have been more
needed in view of the comparatively
recent establishment among ourselves of
virtually i)ermanent inequalities, which
make purely contractual ethics, first for-
mulated by the first murderer, seem in-
adequate save to Pharisaism, power, and
its parasites. But as regards the indi-
vidual, the psychology of service is still
unsettled. The ideal has largely sup-
planted that of mere duty, hitherto
proverbially "the law of human life."
"Service" is too compact of energy and
emotion itself to submit to the discipline
now felt to be so devitalizing, but here-
tofore a prime factor in the development
of standardized character. Its conscious-
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STANDARDS
27
ness has awarded it indulgences that
have pushed all notion of penance into
the background. Du sollst entbehren
expresses an idea rarely heard of now
save as necessarily involved in the pur-
suit of some practical utility. The pop-
ular literature of philanthropy is fiercely
polemic. As a recent poet sings:
It is a joy to curse a wrong.
Indignation is the most self-indulgent
of the passions — at least of those which
may also be virtues. It requires no ten-
sion. The gentlest souls sag into its
luxurious embrace by mere relaxation.
Nothing, in fact, is more characteristic
of the complicated psychology of ser-
vice pursued with enthusiasm, than a
certain savagery, subtly intensified by
the self-righteousness that lies in wait
for any altruism that is absorbing. And
we may say that the philanthropic
movement itself has become popularized
as it could hardly have been otherwise
by the affinity of a certain side of it for
a particularly alluring form of original
sin. Naturally our fiction reflects it as
it does the other egotistic phenomena of
our individualist independence. Accord-
ingly, owing to its preoccupation with
the superficialities of self-expression, and
of efferent energies so exclusively, we
have had in recent years very little of
it dealing with the inner life.
Are art and letters to be sentimental-
ized out of their established standards
by the comprehensive and militant dem-
ocratic movement of our time? is the
question in which our whole discussion
ends. Still more succinctly, are they
to be produced by and for the crude or
the cultivated? The field is, after all,
a circumscribed one in the world of
mankind's activities, and its proper cul-
tivation has reached a pitch of intensive-
ness that demands more knowledge and
more training than mere iukling and
energy have at their command. Like
the water of life in the Apocalypse, art
is now prescribed to be taken freely and
by all comers. Multitudes have cer-
tainly come, such numbers indeed as to
put the principle of natural selection
quite out of commission and make one
look back wistfully to the old disciplined
novitiate as a preparation for at least
the priesthood of the cult. But conced-
ing the artist's possession of his craft,
the pitch of cleverness our writers have
achieved, the weakness of the practi-
tioner in general in the field of art and
letters at the present time is that, not
as an artist or as a writer, but as a man
he does not know enough. The fact may
be noted without invidiousness, since it
only places him in the same category in
which Arnold set Byron and Words-
worth, the two figures in English litera-
ture that after Shakspere and Milton he
deemed the most majestic. But it is not
necessary to argue from august examples
the value of knowledge to the criticism
of life on a stately scale in order to ap-
preciate the importance to any specific
work of intelligence of its intellectual
connotation. In point of fact, the first
thing we wish to know, to feel, to see in
a work of art is just this. What and how
much does the mind of the artist con-
tain? What is its other furniture be-
sides merely the special aptitude and
equipment required for the production
of this particular thing, of which this
particular thing is but the sample? It
is not the foot that interests us, but Her-
cules. We are brought around finally,
I think, to make the same demand of
culture in the case of the artist which
I began by suggesting in the case of his
public.
At all events, it is to have in mind
some other cause than that of art and
letters, to conceive these as an absolutely
uninclosed domain, as the common of
civilization, so to say, whose weedy as-
j)ects and worn places and rubbish-
heaps are as legitimate details as its
cultivated area. Ought not access to
this territory to be made more difficult,
as difficult as possible? At least let us
have a gate — the strait gate whereby
he who has some kind of credentials
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28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
may enter in, and so far as possible win
public opinion to approve the closing up
of those other ways accessible to the thief
and the robber. Q^is custodiet ipsos
custodes? Not the authority of autoc-
racy, certainly. Nor even that of criti-
cism, whose function, as I have said, is
the exposition of those principles that
are the test of standards, so much as the
standards themselves, which arise in-
sensibly in the mind of the cultivated
public and spread in constantly widen-
ing circles. Mankind, once more, is
wiser than any man, and its correlative
in the case of art and letters is the pub-
lic which you, ladies and gentlemen,
represent, and the cooperation of which
is quite as important as that of their rep-
resentatives on the platform. For it is
always to be remembered that the cause
of letters, the cause of art, is not that
of its practitioners — hardly that of its
practice — but of its constituting stand-
ards, just as the cause of mankind is
not that of the men who compose it,
which it is the weakness of purely ma-
terial philanthropy to forget. The idea
is not a vague one. It is one which
is at the present time being illustrated
with that precision which in the world
of ideas is a French characteristic. We
have before our eyes the demonstration
of its definiteness by an entire people
animated by the clear consciousness that
what counts for them in this brief in-
terlude of time between two eternities
is not the comfort or even the lives of
any or all Frenchmen, but the perpetual
renewal of the consecrated oil that feeds
the torch of France.
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HISTORY, QUICK OR DEAD?
By William Roscob Thayer
A critic, reviewing my biography of
Cavour, said in substance: The author
plunges us back into the very life of the
period he describes. He makes us feel
the passions of the actors, great and
small, who played in the drama of the
Risorgimento. We are infected by
their prejudices; we take sides; we al-
most forget ourselves, and become tem-
porarily a part of the titanic conflict.
This is not history.
Such a frank assertion forces us to
ask. What is history?
The streets of Naples are paved with
slabs of lava quarried at the foot of
Vesuvius. If you wished to write an
account of an eruption of the volcano,
would you visit the Chiaja, note-book
in hand, measure and weigh the lava
paving-stones, and analyze them with a
microscope ? Or would you assemble all
the reports of witnesses of the eruption,
climb Vesuvius itself, trace the streams
of lava, look into the crater, observe the
changes caused by explosions and by the
caving in of walls, and so saturate your-
self with the records and the setting of
the event that it became real and living
and visible to you? Only on these terms
can you make it real and living and
visible to your readers.
But my critic declares that history
must be dead, and there can be no ques-
tion that much of the history written
up to the present time has been dead,
and has stayed dead.
But may there not possibly be need
and perhaps an opening for a minimum
of live history? May we not, by ac-
cepting too narrow a definition, shut out
one branch of history which not only
has a right to exist, but does exist, and
under favorable conditions may bear
the finest fruit on the tree? The pen-
alty of exclusiveness is deprivation. We
ought to recognize that the writing of
history embraces work of many kinds.
some higher, some lower, all honorable,
all necessary. But this recognition must
not blind us to the fact that there is a
distinction between the lower and the
higher. The architect who designs a
cathedral is deservedly held in far dif-
ferent esteem from the masons who lay
the physical foundations or the hodmen
who carry the mortar to bind stone on
stone. In America documentarians have
somehow been accepted as the chief, if
not the only, historians.
Speaking broadly, historical workers
may be divided into two great classes:
First, the men whose interest lies
chiefly in facts; and, next, the men who,
having ascertained the facts, cannot rest
until they have attempted to interpret
them. These two aims, information and
interpretation, should not be regarded
as mutually hostile, but as mutually
complementary.
The worship of Fact, which must not
be confounded with Truth, does not lead
us far. To know that Q)lumbus discov-
ered America on October 12, 1492, or
that the Declaration of Independence
was made on July 4, 1776, or that Na-
poleon lost the battle of Waterloo on
June 18, 181 5, is interesting; but unless
these statements are reinforced by much
matter of a different kind, they are
hardly more important for us than it
would be to know the number of leaves
on a tree. And this is true, though the
facts be indefinitely multiplied.
1 have read, for instance, an account
of the American Revolution in which
the uncontroverted facts followed one
another in as impeccably correct a se-
quence as the telegraph poles which
carry the wires over the 850 miles of the
Desert of Gobi. The paramount interest
in this case, however, is not the number
of poles, nor the expanse of desert, but
the contents of the telegrams flashed
along the wires. That may symbolize the
29
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30 prcx:eedings of the academy and the institute
difference between the historian of in-
formation and the historian of interpre-
tation. Not for a moment, of course,
does any one deny the usefulness of the
former; but we shall not be able to pen-
etrate far into man's historic past by the
method of counting telegraph poles or
of measuring the distance between them.
The message borne by the telegram, the
meaning of the sequent or scattered
events in any historic movement, be it
of long duration or merely a fleeting
episode, that alone can have significance
for us.
Viewed thus, history is a resurrec-
tion. The dead actors in remote dramas
cease to be dead; the plot, the meaning
emerge, as when an electric current is
turned on and lights up the pieces set
in many patterns. In one sense history
resembles an autopsy, for it usually
deals with cadavers; but whereas the
physician makes his post-mortem to see
what the patient died of, the historian
examines, or should examine, to discover
how his subjects lived. Life, evermore
life, is the paramount theme for those
who live — life, in which death is the
inevitable incident, often tragic, some-
times pathetic, but never so significant
as life. The maladies of nations and of
institutions, and even the diseases of
which they died, form much of the ma-
terial of history; but you cannot isolate
them from the larger living organism
in which they appeared. Gibbon traced
through thirteen hundred years the de-
cline and fall of the Roman Empire;
and yet each symptom of imperial decay
which he described coincided with signs
of the growth of new forces, new states,
new ideals; so that you may read his
monumental and matchless work either
as a funeral oration over the grandeur
which was Rome or as a chronicle of the
springing into life of the world which
replaced Rome.
Without a sense for transformation
we shall not come far either as students
or as critics of history. Gibbon pos-
sessed that sense in a superlative degree,
although he emphasized the negative
transformation of dissolution instead of
its positive counterpart, growth. There
will be no more Gibbons, because the
accumulation of material would crush
any daring i)ersons who should attempt
to survey history by the millennium, as
he did; but no one deserves to be called
a historian who lacks this sense.
In the world of nature outside us vast
processes are continuously going on: an
endless dance of atoms; a passing out
of one thing into another and from that
to a third; a hide-and-seek of phenom-
ena; night chasing day; the fruit suc-
ceeding to the flower; the stalk, yellow
with full-eared corn one week, stubble
the next; fruition only another name for
beginning, for a new seed-time; and so
on forever with this cosmic metamor-
phosis, in which the sun also and the
stars take their turn, on a scale beyond
our human comprehension. And in this
protean masquerade, forces do not act
singly; but several may work through
the same body simultaneously, each
toward a different end.
Until you perceive that mankind,
like inanimate matter, is the medium
through which a similar array of intel-
lectual and moral forces shuttle per-
petually, you will get nothing from his-
tory except the foam and bubbles that
float on its surface. It is because these
forces, which often repel or seem to neu-
tralize one another, pursuing their way
at different rates of speed, and appar-
ently capable of unnumbered transfor-
mations, never stop, that life, manifold
and complex life, is the substance of
human history; and the representation
which the historian makes of any frag-
ment or series of this boundless evolu-
tion must possess first of all life, the
stuff out of which the original flows.
We need have no fear, therefore, that
a history can ever be too lifelike. Com-
pared with the actual that he wishes to
portray, the utmost the historian can
compass is like an eight-by-ten-inch
painting of Niagara to the Falls them-
selves. He must use the devices which
art supplies in order to represent his
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HISTORY, QUICK OR DEAD?
3«
subject on such a scale and in such a
manner that it will make on the mind
of his readers an impression equivalent
to that made by the original. The art
which the historian must employ is lit-
erature— the art of conveying by words
in the best way human facts, ideas, and
emotions. Whoever uses speech, writ-
ten or oral, must obey the laws of
sj)eech; he cannot claim exemption on
the ground that he is a "scientific his-
torian," amenable only to the laws of
science. For every man of science, if
he treat his special subject by writing,
and not by technical symbols and dia-
grams, is bound by literary laws. It
makes no difference whether you put out
to sea in a dory or in an ocean liner, the
laws of flotation will inexorably gov-
ern you. Protesting that you are a
landsman and not a mariner, a devotee
of science and not of literature, will not
save you from capsizing. That the large
concerns of science may be treated with
literary excellence without losing their
scientific quality the works of Buffon,
Faraday, Darwin, Huxley, and Tyndall
show.
The war which once raged over the
question whether history is a science
seems to have reached a truce — the truce
of indifference, in which each side is at-
tending to its business as if j)eace were
restored. Like the ancient literary feud
of the Classicists and the Romanticists,
this also tends to reduce itself to a mat-
ter of terms. If you mean that history
is a science like chemistry or optics or
algebra, you mistake. The algebraic
formulae were as true 5000 B.C. as they
will be A.D. 5000. You can predict
that the molecules of hydrogen and oxy-
gen, when combined in the same ratio,
will always form water; but you can
predict nothing about the action of
human ingredients. On the afternoon
of April 14, 1865, nobody foresaw that
within twelve hours Abraham Lincoln
would die by assassination; nor could
the effect of his death be foretold. None
of us knows what will happen next week,
much less next month or next year. This
ignorance is not science; it renders sci-
ence impossible.
So we must abandon the delusion that
history can be a science; for science
deals with elements which are constant
and verifiable, while history deals with
the human motives and will of the
atoms — ^that is, the individual persons
— ^which compose society.' These can
never be completely measured, nor do
they combine with or react on one
another in precisely the same way. Even
if it were possible to get a formula for
a person in his normal state, we should
still be unable to guess what he would
do if he suddenly went crazy. Molecules
of oxygen never go crazy; the chemist
knows how they will behave under any
given conditions. This liability to in-
sanity is only one of a thousand facts
which prove that human beings cannot
be "explained" by the laws which gov-
ern material atoms.
But though history can never be an
exact science, the historical student will
follow the scientific method in his in-
vestigations. He will search for his ma-
terials as patiently, analyze them as
carefully, and draw his conclusions from
them as sincerely, as the chemist does
with his materials. He has no instru-
ments of fixed capacity to work with.
His insight, his judgment, his fund of
information, must serve him instead of
microscope or burette, blowpipe or acid
test.
We must not forget that the partizans
of history as a science are inspired by
the noblest motive — the sense of justice.
Except duty, no other attribute is so
august as justice, no other demarks so
clearly the difference between man and
animal. The beasts of the field share
with us, according to their kind, love
and hate, courage and fear; they are sly
and mean, they are cruel; but, so far
as appears, they are unmoved by any
desire for justice for themselveis; nor do
they question the justness of the uni-
verse. Even among men this desire de-
veloped late, and the cheeriest lover of
his kind would hardly claim that it has
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32 prcx:eedings of the academy and the institute
yet dominated the dealings either of in-
dividual men or of nations with one
another.
Under one aspect justice is at the
heart of every modern religion. From
Job to Milton, and so on down to to-day,
thinkers and moralists — and how many
j)erplexed nameless souls besides! —
have busied themselves trying to justify
the ways of God to men? The entrance
of morality into human affairs brought
with it the recognition of justice. When
lightning sets fire to a house or earth-
quake destroys thousands of human be-
ings, when a tiger leaps upon and slays '
a huntsman or a pernicious microbe
spreads an epidemic over a whole city,
the man of science, unless he be unscien-
tifically eager to prove a pet theory, will
record the happening without bias. It
is unmoral, — even the legal fiction of
regarding unpreventable natural calami-
ties as "acts of God" does not give a
moral complexion to them, — and he re-
mains dispassionate. But suppose that
an incendiary started the fire, or that an
anarchist set off the bomb which killed
a crowd, or that a highwayman garroted
a passer-by, or that a miscreant poisoned
the milk supply, the case would be al-
tered completely. The act would be
human; we should examine it under its
moral aspects; and justice, seeking to
appraise it, would go behind the legal
fact to determine, if possible, the mo-
tive.
So we are brought back to my earlier
remark that motives constitute the ulti-
mate stuff of history. The scientific his-
torian sets up the judge as his model
because he reverences fairness, impar-
tiality; but j)erhaps he fails to see that
the judge himself is already biased, being
bound to investigate each case and to
interpret it according to the existing
code. In this respect the man of science
does not differ from the judge. Is not
the chemist also bound rigidly by laws?
Does he not try by every device to les-
sen the possibility of error which may
J'.e in his j)ersonal equation? And yet
what are his laws, or the judge's, or
those of moralists and of priests but
conclusions reached and demonstrated
by their forerunners and accepted by
their fellows?
The "personal equation"! Is it not
just that, if it be of the proper kind,
which makes the great discoveries? How
many million apples had dropped mean-
ingless to the ground before the one
which fell within sight of Newton ? And
what except Newton's personal equation
made that the most significant apple in
history? And what makes an opinion
handed down by John Marshall a law
which will bind men as long as they
acknowledge its force — ^what but his per-
sonal equation?
If the j)ersonal equation play such a
part in matters as positive as the phys-
ical sciences or the law, how much more
must it influence the work of those who
deal directly with human nature, that
elusive, erratic, volatile, protean sub-
stance which is, notwithstanding, the
most enduring of all? When we come
to the arts, — to music, poetry, painting,
— the personal equation is the artist And
how often is this true in medicine, where
the master of diagnosis j)erceives, as if
by divination, the cause of a disease
which his colleagues, though equally
learned as he in medical laws and prac-
tices, had been blind to?
By this road, too, the road of science,
we arrive at Interpretation as the high-
est oflTice of the historian. And how
could it be otherwise, since history most
nearly concerns the motives and deeds
of men? What the scientific historian
means is that historians should aim at
the fairness and impartiality of a judge,
and should employ the scientific meth-
ods of investigation which promote the
highest accuracy. To this we all say
amen. This ideal was not invented by
Ranke or any other modern; it has in-
spired every true historian since Herod-
otus. Do you suppose that Thucydides
was not immensely concerned to know
and state the truth?
Happily, we are not always so bad as
the doctrines we profess. Some "scien-
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HISTORY, QUICK OR DEAD?
33
tific" historians who shudder at the
thought of being "interesting" are read
because, despite themselves, they have
literary aptitude; some "literary" his-
torians are welcomed even in the ranks
of the Philistines. The greatest surprise
of all awaits the American who is taught
to go to the Germans for models of sci-
entific objectivity. He goes, and finds
them anything but objective; he finds
Treitschice, a glorified partizan pam-
phleteer; Sybel, a subsidized eulogist of
the Hohenzollern dynasty; and even
Ranke and Mommsen taking little pains
to disguise their prejudices. All of which
means that the instrument, being hu-
man, will more or less affect the work
it produces. Were it otherwise, it might
be possible to degrade man to the level
of a machine, as soulless and as correct
as a cash-register.
Contemj)orary verdicts and state-
ments are proverbially incomplete, if
not incorrect or downright false. There-
fore, argue the advocates of dead his-
tory, history must be written, after the
evidence is all in, as a lifeless chronicle
which is as irrevocable as the entries in
the Book of Judgment. To this the be-
liever in quick history replies: "All
that the accumulation of evidence has
done has been to put us — ^years, or, it
may be centuries after an event — ^into
the position of an omniscient contempo-
rary observer. We know both sides, all
sides, better than the actors themselves
could know them. Our increased knowl-
edge enables us to see a living picture
of the event, to appraise the motives
of the men and women, to see how the
episode fits into the larger sequence of
history." Until a historian looks upon
his testimony as alive, he cannot pre-
sent it truly; for life is the fundamental
truth underlying human facts. To sup-
pose that by regarding his material as
dead the historian will be more likely
to tell the truth is a delusion. The qual-
ity of truthfulness is in the man, not in
the material.
After all, if a man write honestly, his
personal bias will never deceive his
readers. Only those who falsify or omit
or garble the evidence do harm, and
they are wretches indeed, perjurers, not
historians. I do not believe that any-
body was ever misled by Macaulay's
Whigism or by Gibbon's skepticism
or by Carlyle's hero-worship or by
Treitschke's magnification of Prussian
absolutism.
And why should we not wish to hear
the opinions of masterful historians in
regard to important historical events?
In literature we set the highest value on
what Sainte-Beuve thinks of a book or
of an author. The masters of literature
stand each for some unborrowed point
of view. Thackeray, Dickens, George
Eliot, Meredith — ^we would not have
them alike; each sees life originally, and
tries to describe it honestly, and so adds
to our knowledge of it. In its more re-
cent manifestation, fiction seems to be so
closely engaged in a competition with
the kodak that it matters little who
writes it; for the personality of the man
who holds the camera counts for little.
But some of us still prefer a painting to
a photograph, not only because a paint-
ing has color, but because it has the
personality of the painter behind it.
We know that Rembrandt or Turner
put on his canvas something that the
photographic plate could not see.
I say this not to urge that the his-
torian should make a purely subjective
figment of his material, but to remind
you that the personal equation may —
nay, must — determine the value of the
completed book. Whatever be our the-
ories, which our practices may improve
on, no man fit to be called a historian
ever finished his work without feeling
the inadequacy of his own powers, or of
any conceivable human means, to repro-
duce even the little fragment of history
which he has chosen. And no his-
torian can work far or deep without be-
ing aware that he is reporting from the
heart of human life matters too sacred
to be twisted in the narration to suit his
private fancy. He is aware of the mani-
festation of mighty forces — of forces
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34 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
mightier than those which drive the
Mississippi from Minnesota to the Gulf
or that swing the oceans to and fro in
their tidal pendulation. He senses,
though he cannot see. Presences which
lead the actors of the everlasting human
drama on and off the stage; Spirits
which teach them their parts and
prompt them when they falter; Furies
which pursue, punish, and avenge; Fates
which accomplish their tasks as dispas-
sionately as heat or cold.
In the calendar of nature four seasons
fill the measure of each year; each
merges in the next; and though there
may be slight annual variations, no year
passes without completing its circuit of
spring, summer, autumn, winter. In hu-
man evolution there is no such sequence.
If there be seasons, they are of such vast
duration that we have not yet observed
them. There is no recurrent return to
the starting-point. Each race passes
through the order appointed for all liv-
ing creatures: first, birth, then growth,
prime, decrepitude, and death; but no
race, in expiring, bequeaths its hoard to
another. Generally there is the slow ob-
literation through blending; and where
a race grows strong by conquest, its
strength is often sapped by the process
of merger with the weaker conquered.
The Roman Empire was in ho sense the
heir of Athens, nor Catholic Spain of
the Saracens, nor England of the North-
men, who as Normans from France con-
quered the Saxon kingdom. Doubtless
the new combinations are conditioned
by the remains of the old elements, but
there is no lineal descent. In races which
at different epochs occupy the same re-
gion there is rather such a law of suc-
cession as we sometimes find among our
forests: when the primeval pines go,
oaks shoot up; and after the oaks,
beeches and birches follow.
What determines the handing on of
the torch from race to race? We men
are such incorrigible optimists that we
assume that every transmission means
advance; but this is not true. Often a
race lower in everything except brute
force subdues a higher. There is a
deeper principle at work. Sometimes
the baffled historian concludes that our
human life, and the consecutive record
of it in history, can be explained only
by physical reactions. A drought in cen-
tral Asia causes the raid of Tartar
hordes into Europe, with all that fol-
lows; the Venetian Republic languishes
and dies because the discovery of a new
ocean route diverts the commerce of the
world away from her.
But even as he acknowledges these
facts, which seem to reduce man to the
level of an automaton, the sport of
purely material agents, the historian re-
members the saints and heroes before
whose spiritual potency matter is as
yielding as glass is to sunshine.
This is the high mission of the his-
torian. He starts out to narrate a sec-
tion of history, aiming only at describ-
ing what he sees, without plea or preju-
dice. Narration is his chief concern, but
through it he will reveal — unconsciously,
it may be — ^the forces which impel the
flow of events, the deeps from which hu-
man acts well up, and into which they
return and dissolve. He must have no
specialty except truth; and yet, though
he must write neither as poet nor dram-
atist, philosopher nor man of science,
he will need at times the skill of each
of them; they will all find in his history,
as in life itself, the substance of their
specialty. For he is always aware of the
Presences, invisible and immaterial,
ceaselessly passing, shaping, completing,
and renewing; not merely weavers at
the loom of Destiny, but Destiny itself;
and he seeks in human motives to dis-
cover the transcendent motive, the liv-
ing will, which causes and sustains the
world.
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THE FUTURE FIGHT
By Richard Burton
I stand at gaze upon an autumn knoll,
Whose interwoven harmonies of green
And gold and russet red make music deep,
Somber, yet beautiful, and full of thought;
No tripping melody of spring, but rich.
Grave tones orchestral played by dreamful gods
Upon the season's resonant instruments
Of earth and air.
A mood of memory
Broods all along the hills and o'er the fields
And down the river reaches; and where now
The forests steal the sunset pageantries
A universal harvesting is spread,
With augury of winter's stored-up fruit.
October's oracle sounds in mine ear:
"My name is peace and plenty. Lx)ok afar.
And list, and take the lesson to your heart."
And I, obeying, let my vision roam
Beyond this scene of goodly garnering.
Over the lands, across the sundering seas.
And up and down the hell-tracks dug by hate
And horror; see the carrion pools of slain.
The anguished wriggle of the dying; hear
The shrieks, the oaths, the ravings; mark how sure
The beast in man, unleashed, springs up to kill.
And circling far beyond this central pit
Of frenzy and of lust there comes a moan
Vast, vague, and terrible, filling the air.
From violated shrines of hearth and home
Where women wait and stretch out asking arms —
Mothers whose wails once brought those bodies forth.
Who prayed above their breathing, little babes.
So frail, so tender, come to such as this.
The mothers whose gray doom for birth and death
It is to suffer and to lose the loved.
But, soaring up above all other cries
Of battle, in my dazed ear there throbs
Deep-mouthed, reiterant, a sullen word.
The boom and boom of cannon, detonant.
That is war's antichrist and deadliest cry:
No, No, it seems to say, again the No,
With intervals of silence sent to mock
All hope of ceasing. Now it stabs the air.
Forever No and No, a muttering
3'5
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36 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Of devils kenneled in their smoke and smell.
The drab horizon pulses with that pain;
The great denial of man's will to turn
Away from hate to labor and to love;
The hideous negation of the guns.
As if released from out a torturing trance
In some black night, lo! I awake to see
The sweet, full sunlight flood about my feet.
October slumbers, smiles, and richly dreams
Her dream of wisdom, while sky amethysts
And opals blend to make the vault above
A miracle, the soul's own halcyon hour
Of reverie, a time to guess God's plan
For earth, and glimpse the meaning of the years.
"Surely," I said, the while the vision fades
Of hate and horror, and the autumn fields
Glow more benignant to mine eased eyes —
"Surely, Earth fought her way to scenes of tilth
And bounty and the fullness of the ear?
The spring's sharp labor pains bring in the ripe
Fruition and the reaping of the sown?
Surely, the grim, long struggle up from dust
To meet divinity means only this.
Warfare eternal, strong subduing weak,
And weak a sacrifice unto the strong:
Might has been right from sod to throne of God?"
No answer from October; distantly
That sullen No still sounds. The air is cleft
With red reverberations masked in reek
That gives the lie to every dream of peace
And laughs at Love.
Again I face the month
So mellow in her fruitage. "Say to me,
O glamour of the hills, is it not so?
Shall not the Right be precious down the years
That linger at Time's portal? Shall not we
In after days still strive to make it reign.
Opposing wrong with arms, our fathers' way.
And sanctified by blood their fathers shed?
For naught is precious but the Right; it shines.
And shall forever shine, God's luminous gem;
And man must alway band himself against
The leaguered hordes of devildom. Of old
So stormed the angels epically, and drove
Dark Lucifer from out their boundaries.
And so saved heaven, and made him lord of hell."
A silence; then, behold! a wonder-thing!
For sudden looms against the purple leagues
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THE FUTURE FIGHT 37
Of harvest hill and mountain magicry
A figure, white-robed, eloquent of face.
With gracious majesty of mien, whose eyes
Seemed all ayearn and sad beyond compare.
And in a voice more sweet than any bird's
That haunts the summer, spoke:
"O foolish ones
The shows of earth bedazzle, who so blind
As they who will not see? The law of life
Begins in age-long struggle — ^woe the years
Innumerous, the never-noted tears —
Before there blossoms from the slime of hate
And immemorial shocks of enmity
(Blind, blind the impulse, and the mystery strange)
A wee, white flower that grows and waxes great
Until, where once red passion-growths were rife
And yellow flauntings of earth's sin, uprears
A stately lily, like a light from God,
To lead life onward, upward to the Good
That knows no law but this: Love lifted up
Aloft, and to be seen of all the lands;
The law of lust become the law of love
By high, supernal fiat; and the law
Of killing, that which shames the victor's way.
Become that law diviner named good will.
Of which the soul is peace."
The tones thrilled through
The throb of autumn, but the Presence melted
Into the purple mists that crowned the hills
As with a coronal of grapes.
I cried,
Left lonely, and my doubts in-rushing swift:
"1 cannot see it!" All my soul was in
That cry of agony. "I cannot see
How man shall ever cease from troubling man.
Wrath, lust of power, and pride, and love of gain
(Words, words, that only stand for selfhood), these
Will sway him, and his weapons be unsheathed
To challenge all who seek to stem his will.
Grant that he love: his foe who comes with hate
Must in that mood be met and beaten down
Into the better mood which in the end
Rounds into amity and soothfast hands.
Ah, how can endless eons alter this?"
So said 1, and my soul yearned through the words.
Again the flute-like voice (how strange a flute
Can pierce the orchestra's assembled cries
As if it were alone — that gentle voice!)
Enriched the air; the messenger returned.
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38 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
"Faith is the evidence of things not seen,
And Love, belovfed, ye of little faith.
The greatest is of these: great to endure.
To conquer, and to bring the benison
Of perfect concord. Then earth's coarse huzzas
Shall in the twinkling of an eye resolve
Into divine hosannas, and the lamb
Couch with the lion. This, the dream, can be
If only mortals, rousing from their swoon.
Love-wonder in their eyes, dare stoutly believe.
Such strength is from on high; no battlements
Or engines of destruction or defense
But they shall crumble at one pleading strain
Piped by the Shepherd whose poor sheep ye are
This long time gone astray."
Silence. And still
The golden pulse of Indian summer-time.
Grape-purpled, winy-breathed, and drowsed in dream.
Throbbed sentiently along the vistas veiled
To where, unseen, incredible, yet true,
A world-war ravaged men.
My restless mind.
Awed by the semblance of this Spokesman sweet,
Lulled by such silver speech, must question on.
"Is it not true," I said (the Shape seemed gone.
And once again I stood and gazed alone
On flushed October in that memoried mood
When Nature meets the spirit like a friend
For balm of kindly counsel) — "surely, life.
The highest, holiest, must be wrestled for,
Ever the wished-for goal be won by pain,
The step ahead be taken inch by inch
In the brow's sweat; and how be won at all.
Unless in conquering, the conqueror
Stand on his slain?
And shall not man wax weak.
And in a supine ease grow fat, unthewed.
If ne'er in crush of conflict be he roused
To martial doing and to deeds that blazon
The record brave? To lay down arms is well.
To take them up is well, when clear the call
To master evil, save our faith, or be
A friend in day of peril to a friend.
To fight is but to live; perpetual peace
Spells death."
Then through the autumn mists again
The form, the figure white, reshapes, the voice,
A strain of music, moves the vibrant air:
"Yea, man with man, shut in by years and spheres,
Must struggle; life, the while ye earthlings are,
Issue in conflict that is sent to bring
Out of the atom-dance a wondrous pact.
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THE FUTURE FIGHT 39
Ancient antagonists made meek at last
Through ever-surer seeing.
So will come
The mist-hid summers of that fuller day
To be, if only ye have faith. The fight
Is but begun. No more ensanguined fields
And hecatombs of dead and stricken homes;
No more the sequent lack of bread, the maimed
And miserable leavings of the strife.
Nor shifted barriers to bicker o'er.
Sure cause for further parley: nay, instead,
No man shall "seek to rend his fellow-man.
But each shall kill the evils in himself.
Combat undying, asking all his strength
And courage, never o'er till heaven and earth
Are as one home for all the tribes of men
Beneath the roof-tree of the universe,
Where Gipsy-like they wander now.
For aye
The fight to make insensate nature yours;
Harness the elements, uncover caverns
That hide the precious stones, make clouds and winds
The subject of your pleasure, and enchain
The mountains, and bring verdure to the deserts.
Making them smile.
And starry souls shall strive.
Forgetting cold and hunger and despair,
To reach the far earth-ends and leave a flag
On perilous peaks, and outposts ne'er attained
By earlier emprise. This battle-front
Shall never waver, nor one drop of blood
Shall soil its footsteps; all its paths are peace.
Forever also shall the fight be fought
To bring good tidings unto heathen hearts,
Heal wounds, and comfort them in darkness. God,
Great Captain of these hosts, His soldiery calls
To such endeavor; nor may any wight
Escape from shame if he be written down
Deserter.
Ever does the roll-call ring
In mighty cities, too, that harbor sin,
And so shall harbor till we take the van.
Fighters with God, to make the crooked straight.
Pour sunlight's cleansing into darkling dens
And sodden shambles, and in triumph set.
Where once was only brawl and devious deed.
And each man's hand was raised against his brother.
The undefeated flags of fellowship!
Yea, these good contests ne'er shall pass from earth ;
They are the goads to prick earth toward heaven.
Whose very saints contend to please the King
In loving service. Heaven shows earth the way."
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40 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
The voice, in ceasing, was like muted song.
But yet again 1 spoke the earthly view:
"How often man becomes more beautiful
By sacrifice, through hero deeds and love
Of kin and country; spirits valorous,
How they do hearten us, and gleam, and sing
The steps of laggards into marching time!
A man, a people, find their better selves
Only when called to conquer."
Answer came:
"There is in evil things a strain of good.
And e'en war's murders sometime sow a seed
To feed a soul anhungered; and the crop
Is not all wasted on the blood-bought fields.
But hero deeds and dauntless deaths, and strength
. That is the strength of ten since it is pure,
May find full use, may blossom and grow fair
Without one blow against a brother; keep
The fighting fervor, let the blood-rage die.
Transform brute violence, that tears the flesh.
Into a heavenly anger, ardor of
The soul whose enemy is evil done.
Not men the foe, but all that ugly is ^
In men; and hence how foolish-fond the will
To kill the body, let the spirit live.
And grow to greater power because we mar
And maim and straight destroy the spirit's shell.
Up-piling blows; whereas each act of grace —
The cup of water held to alien lips.
The blow forborne, the trickery forgiven.
The kindness in the stead of cruelty —
Flies up the blue, clear of the carnage smoke,
To join the others that go sailing there
Like air-ships manned of angels. For One said:
'And if ye do it to the least of these,
Ye do it unto me.' Treasure the words."
Sweet meanings flowed along the river of
This discourse, as a flower might float upon
The buoyant current of some spring-urged stream;
Yet still my reason answered :
"Men are men
So long as time is time, and we must meet
The fashion of this world as those who dwell
Within the world. In other stars, who knows?
This earth-star teaches us to walk our ways
In earth's sad wisdom."
Once again the voice:
"Yea, men are men, and men are beasts, and men
Are angels in the making; dimly glimpsed
In Marcus, him the golden emperor.
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THE FUTURE FIGHT 41
With words like honey dropping; or in him,
A-Kempis, soul abrood; or Plato, who
Dreamt him a state for which men yearn to-day;
And, plainlier seen, and lovelier to our hope,
In Christ, who said. They know not what they do!' "
For the last time my brain-bom question rose:
"How may we in this present state perform
These high behests and counsels? For, alack!
Stem is the call, and instant is the stress.
And Love now lies a-bleeding."
As the voice
Floated in flute-like cadence, lo! it seemed
Diminished and the speaker far away.
Dimmer and dimmer heard: •
"Ye believe in love:
Ask any pair of lovers. Ye are bound
In ties of blood where household gods protect
The homes whose name is legion; and full oft
The bond of native land makes fealty
Not less than claims of kin; it sometimes haps
The hostile folk across hate's barriers
Suddenly smile, strike hands, and are at one,
Though momently. Oh, will ye see at last?
The magic of this love from out the sky
Shall blend all lesser loves — ^the ties of kin
And country, and of lands which side by side
Seek the same freedom, worship the same shrines;
Till, rounding out its destiny, it find
But brother man wherever mortal breathes.
Made one by loving-kindness, blind no more;
The children of that love that spins the stars
In harmony down august lanes of air.
Such changes are in nature, so in men.
E'en as the pomp and pageant of the fall
Gives way to winter, winter ushers in
The April raptures of the crescent year.
How can that dead womb blossom forth with life?"
And as the voice became a silence, where
The Shape had passed, a breath of fragrancy
Stirred in the trees and hovered o'er the grain.
Then hail, O power beyond our pitiful
Earth-ken I Most j)otent of the gifts of God,
The love that is the heart of every song,
And opes the lily to release her scent;
This love that works through life, and bids the stars
Quiver, yet keep their orbits; the same love
That makes man die for men; this holy thing,
This love, must be the future's battle-cry
In some far land, in some unguessed-of place
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42 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
Where kindness is the one felicity.
O country dim, but dear, truer than time
Or any present seeming, recompense
For seeing darkly and for waiting long!
O sweet, hid land, bring in the hoped-for day.
And give us patience in this night of pain !
And if it be His will, be ours that land,
Saved by the seas from greed, with room for men
Of gentleness to grow in, and with hope
Of comrade joy to halo our great chance!
Help us to nurse the vision far and fair:
New dream of battle, bloodless, beautifyl;
No lazy paradise of sinews slacked,
But a confederated brotherhood
• Of work and worship and of sun-topped heights.
Because life thrills with purpose, even death
(That old, dark name we give the spirit's leap
Beyond the dark) turns radiant; rosy-lipped,
The while we brace us to go forward! Hark!
The morning trumpets cleave the clearing mists!
Not drum-taps, but reveille is our mood.
The conquering mood that leaves the ultimate
To Him, the Great Commander; and we march
As soldiers in the ranks, soul-satisfied
But to obey, and trust beyond the guns
Are robin songs and rainbow promises;
Deep graven in each heart this word of fire:
"Love conquers all. Press on; God asks our aid."
• •••••
Day glimmers, wanes; more duskly broods the hour;
Now steals the twilight up the heaven; no sound
Of guns across the seas: but murmurously
Rises athwart the gloaming witcheries
The intersong of night. A vast content
Is on the land; and, look! above the line
Of warder hills a new-born splendor shines
To turn the dun warm gold — low-hung and large.
The mellow magic of October's moon !
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A FEW ETERNAL VERITIES OF THE ARTS OF DESIGN
By Will H. Low
To justify the title of my paper, I was
seeking my authority. I consulted Va-
sari's "Lives of the Painters" to verify
the date of Cimabue's birth. I had
found it, the pretty phrase which recites
how, "by the will of God, in the year
1240, Giovanni Cimabue, of the noble
family of that name, was born in the
city of Florence, to give the first light to
the art of painting." I turned from the
book to find that I was not alone, and
the next moment 1 recognized my visitor
as Vasari. I knew him at a glance from
his portrait in the Uffizi, which, you may
remember, hangs in the collection of
self-portraits by the world's most fa-
mous artists, upon the third row, about
three pictures from the window on the
left.
That it was Vasari in person, and not
his astral body, became at once evident,
as he stood between me and the light,
and, thus seen, was quite opaque. In
our subsequent and at times heated con-
versation he appeared to attribute some-
thing of this thickness to me; but, if 1
understood him, it was mental rather
than physical attributes to which he re-
ferred. He began abruptly:
"Are you a painter, a modern
painter?"
"Yes," I answered, and then, noting
his qualification, I added, "Although I
am a member of the Academy of Design,
and there are those — "
"No matter; there are always some
who dispute," he interrupted. "By your
age I see that you have lived through
a considerable period of so-called mod-
em art, and you may be able to explain
some things which puzzle me, especially
in your new country."
"I am tolerably familiar with what we
have tried to do here," 1 graciously as-
sented, "and having since my early
youth made many voyages to Europe — "
"Don't speak to me of Europe," he
broke in. "I am newly come from there,
and they are mad, battling on a scale
which reduces the little strifes I knew in
my time to the proportions of a polite
duello. They are paying no particular
attention to the arts of design in Europe
to-day, and we will not speak of the war.
Of course you are neutral, whereas I am
pro-Ally— "
Here it was my turn to interrupt, and
leaning forward, 1 lapsed into the ver-
nacular, saying:
"Shake."!
After a hand-shake that was no wise
clammy, Vasari resumed:
"There are those of course to whom
art means life, and they' are thinking,
and thinking seriously. There seems to
be a hope of their return to the gods
whom they have forsaken; so that I may
be wrong in calling Europe mad, for,
from my point of view, they were far
more mad before the war in all that re-
lates to art."
"You refer to the Autumn Salon," I
interjected, desiring to show that my
own knowledge of art was more than
parochial.
"Yes, to that and the kindred mani-
festations that masqueraded in the guise
of art, which France tolerated, which
Germany praised, and even bought, and
which almost penetrated the barbed-wire
barrier that surrounds English art."
"As for its toleration in France, it was
never more than that," I protested.
"Was it not, on the contrary, a proof of
liberality for those who control art in
France to give ear to the clamor of the
Independents, the Futurists, the Cubists,
the Illusionists, and the Intentionists,
1 Of course this paper was read before the
Academy and the Institute at a date preceding
the declaration of war, when some of our com-
patriots were endeavoring to remain neutral
—even in thought.— W. H. L.
43
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44 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
and to open wide the doors of their
Palace of Fine Arts, in order that they
might win their spurs, if they could,
upon the field where the greater battles
of militant art had been fought for more
than a century? As for the Germans,
was it not a gentler trait than many they
have shown recently confidingly to ac-
cept this manifestation as the art of the
future, it being so visibly unlike the art
of the past or the present? And, believe
me, the attack upon the intrenched art
of Great Britain was but the slightest of
skirmishes."
"And here," inquired Vasari, "was
there not an ultra-modern show which I
saw in an armory?"
"Yes, indeed, with some admirable
work by Weir, Hassam, and others.
'Que diable allaient-ils faire dans cette
galeref And a charming picture by
Theodore Robinson, together with an
ultra-modern work by Puvis de Cha-
vannes, which I first saw in 1873 in the
galleries of Durand-Ruel in Paris, since
when it had acquired almost the patina
of an old master. And there were others.
Doubtless you saw the 'Nude Descend-
ing a Staircase'?"
"No," said Vasari; "I did not see it."
"Why, how did you miss it?" I ex-
claimed in surprise; "it was the most-
talked-of work in the show."
"I heard the talk," responded Vasari,
"saw the title in the catalogue, and
found the canvas bearing the number
printed there; but I did not see the
'Nude Descending a Staircase.' "
"Well, now you mention it, I 've never
found any one that did," I agreed. "But
we need not quarrel over movements
like these. They undoubtedly serve a
purpose in 'stirring up the gold-fish,' and
from them occasionally emerges a real
artist. The 'Salon des Refuses' of 1863,
after all, gave Manet, Monet, and Whis-
tler to the world, and though it is dis-
appointing that the ten or twelve suc-
cessive years of the Autumn Salon have
not done as much, the reason is un-
doubtedly that all our official exhibitions
to-day are so liberal in spirit that the
new-comer who shows the slightest sign
of talent is welcomed rather more
warmly then are men of established and
merited reputation."
"Then," replied Vasari, with scorn in
his tone, "I see that you are one of those
trifling optimists who hold that 'all is
best in this best of worlds.' "
"Not in the least. Aphorism for apho-
rism, I give you 'eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty.' There always remain
the 'eternal verities.' "
"Fine words," quoth Vasari. "Do you
know what are these 'eternal verities' of
which you prate?"
"As well as you," I replied. "Indeed,
we shall find the answer in your own
written words." Evidently mollified, my
questioner agreed.
"Undoubtedly there is much of worth
in what I have written; but the world is
five hundred years older since then, and
your modern art — "
"Modern art," I replied quickly, "is a
question of epoch. I defy any artist, no
matter how hard he may try, to cast his
work in the mold of another period than
that in which he lives, to escape entirely
contemporary and, consequently, mod-
ern influences."
"That is in a measure true," asserted
Vasari; "for since you have studied my
writings, you will recall that in the thir-
teenth century certain Greek painters,
having been called to Florence to paint
a chapel in Santa Maria Novella,
worked 'not in the excellent manner of
the ancient Greeks, but in the rude mod-
ern style of their own day. Wherefore,
though Cimabue imitated his Greek in-
structors, he very much improved the
art, relieving it greatly from their un-
couth manner.' And his methods were
those of to-day, for on the same page
you will find, 'After this he painted a
small picture of St. Francis, in panel on
a gold ground, drawing it from nature, a
new thing in these times.' "
" 'The more it changes, the more it
remains the same thing,' " I muttered in
fluent French. "But let us begin at the
beginning. What is art?"
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A FEW ETERNAL VERITIES OF THE ARTS OF DESIGN
45
At this Vasari's face clouded, and, re-
lapsing into his native tongue, he poured
out a sonorous array of vowels, quite
untranslatable and probably unfit for
publication. Mastering himself, he re-
sumed: "By our Lady, but you are rash.
Do you not know that blood has been
shed in Florence many, many times
upon that question? If Benvenuto were
here—"
"Of course," 1 quickly responded.
"I 've even seen the Century Club agi-
tated upon the subject. Nevertheless,
every artist has a workable theory as to
what constitutes a work of art, derived
from his personal intuition, and con-
firmed, to the degree of his ability, by
his practice. Many have cast these defi-
nitions into maxims, of which Zola's re-
mains one of the shortest and best: 'Na-
ture seen through a temperament/ But
that hardly accounts for more than the
external aspect of nature. I should pre-
fer to extend it so far as to say that the
artist's task is to render the outward and
visible aspect of the world about him,
and to endow it with whatever inner
and spiritual grace his spirit may receive
and, transmitting, convey to others."
"The first part of your definition
might pass," assented Vasari, ungra-
ciously, "but the rest of it is rank non-
sense."
"But surely," I urged, "the noble men
whose lives you have written were not
mere copyists; surely they mixed their
colors with the essence of their spiritu-
ality."
"They mixed their colors to make
them flow," answered my doughty op-
ponent, "the earlier ones with egg and
vinegar, and after the secret of the
Flemings was brought to Italy, with
oil. The men of whom I wrote were
above all craftsmen. From their child-
hood they had but one thought — to
learn their trade. I have seen since those
days, in countries where princes and
governments have thought to foster the
arts, strange pretensions arise, putting
the artist as a man apart from other
men, permitting to him a strange code
of manners, and ofttimes of morals as
well. Here in this country, I am told,
there is comparatively little affectation
of that sort, owing to the fact that so few
are interested in art or artists, save the
practitioners themselves, and that, con-
sequently, they remain con^paratively
decent citizens. This is well, for no one
less than the artist should adopt this
attitude of aloofness; for such tribute as
he brings to the treasure of the world
is the work of his hands, cunningly
wrought, demanding, if you will, a skill
beyond that of other craftsmen, but, by
this quality, taking its place among the
products of skilled labor. We saw
clearly that the mystery of the arts of
design fell within the category of the
crafts, and so enrolled our artists in a
gild, with the grades of apprentice, ac-
cepted workman, and master, precisely
as in the other arts. The greatest of our
artists rose from this. Children, they
moistened the clay, they ground the col-
ors; later, as their aptitude grew, they
were employed on details of the masters'
work; advancing even as their skill in-^
creased to more and more important
tasks until such proficiency was attained
that, from my time to yours, men of the
trade and inquiring critics have disputed
as to where the apprentice left off and
the master completed the work. Were a
detail needed, the apprentice was sent
to nature, and, the drawing made, the
master incorporated it into his design;
or, contrariwise, the master gave the
apprentice the study to weave into the
work in hand. Thus, between reference
to nature and the continued influence of
the master's work, there gradually grew
a third element derived from the per-
sonality of the apprentice. Very faint
at first was the evidence of individual
expression, even when, by independent
work, the docile apprentice sought ad-
vancement to the grade of accepted
workman. There has been over-much
talk since concerning the danger of
stifling the originality of the young art-
ist by too great subservience in his stu-
dent days; but those who continue to
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46 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
prattle in the dialect of the nursery
throughout their adult years are the
weaklings who have naught to say of
their own. The grammar which the
young Raphael was taught in the school
of Perugino made his first speech
strangely like that of his master; but his
tongue once loosed, he spoke with a
voice of his own. So each of these men
learned his trade and, as the succession
of masters grew, each one adding some
little or great secret wrested from the
store of nature to increase the knowledge
of the arts of design, so art progressed;
and every new aspirant saw clearly
spread before him the astonishingly sim-
ple task which nature prescribes to each
and every sincere artist."
"Astonishingly simple!" I exploded.
"Of all the complex, puzzling, baffling
tasks prescribed to man ! How to paint,
what to paint, what when done is a work
of art? Don't you know that no two
men are agreed upon this?"
Vasari smiled reminiscently.
"We had our disputes in Florence
also. You must have noticed that, nu-
merous as are the lives of artists I have
transcribed, they are but few as com-
pared with the many who practised in
my time. These last, the lesser men, were
frequently disturbed by such questions,
and in their practice showed the lack
of conviction, the shifting, time-serving
direction which imperfect vocation fas-
tens uj)on such as these. Yes, we had
much dispute, for there were also those
who, lacking technical knowledge and
misapprehending the artist's aim, wrote
on art; as well as those who, loudly
proclaiming that they knew nothing of
art, knew what they liked."
"What, already?" I queried.
"Yes, already and in great numbers.
But it mattered little. The serene and
sincere artist looked on nature and
found her infinite. Each day he tried to
add some particle, some new veracity,
to his accumulated store, the while ob-
serving the conventions of his art, the
precious tradition which bound him to
his predecessors, but bound him with so
loose a chain that within its tether his
forward progression was in no wise ham-
pered."
"True," I assented; "but the world
was young then, and painting, lost in
Greece, devitalized in Byzantium, was
reborn with the vigor of youth. This
to-day we can feel almost as keenly as
the joyous artists who gave it form.
They had much to learn that is the com-
monplace of the artist to-day; but
though Botticelli's 'Venus' stands on her
feet in a way that a tyro in our art
school would disdain to draw, yet the
fair body of the gracious lady rises
over the conventionalized sea, relieved
against a pale sky, her presence endowed
with a gracile charm as moving in this
year of grace as when, five centuries ago,
la bella Simonetta disrobed before her
painter. But the world was young then,
and to-day the painter's task is far more
complicated."
"Did Millet find it complicated? Did
not Puvis de Chavannes paint with all
the serenity and conviction that the
earlier masters j)ossessed? And Corot,
phe Corot, fairly whistled like a thros-
tle through his art life, the embodiment
of joyous art production. Around all
these men was waged a war of words
for or against them, even the few who
stood by them creating strange legends
as to the purpose and meaning of their
work, while their simple intent was to
paint what they saw as well and as
truly as they knew how."
By this time I was somewhat in the
position of the devil's advocate, arguing
against the canonization of saints in
whom I devotedly believed; but, to
make clear certain points, I returned to
the attack.
"Apparently you claim that the art-
ist has only to seek nature, copy her
with skill, and a work of art results.
But how about choice, how about the
subconsciousness of the artist, his mem-
ory of other work? How about his pos-
sible desire to reduce the actual fact be-
fore him into something less incidental
and more typical than his model? Be-
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A FEW ETERNAL VERITIES OF THE ARTS OF DESIGN
47
yond doubt your great men had these
thoughts, common to all artists endowed
with the slightest imagination."
"Common to them all," rejoined Va-
sari, "and all contributory to the great
variety of their work. Leonardo, for
instance — "
"Yes, Leonardo," I interrupted.
"Surely there was one who painted 'the
light that never was, on sea or land,' a
mystic dominating the scientist, the un-
wearied searcher through the vast arcana
of speculative theory. Consider all that
he dreamed, all that he wrote."
"His writings are indeed voluminous,"
quoth Vasari, "but of them all I most
esteem a single paragraph in a letter
which he wrote to the Duke of Milan in
1482. Addressing a warlike lord, he
dwells most upon his achievements as a
military engineer, with a pride alone
justifiable in a man like Da Vinci. But
to the artist the real Leonardo speaks at
the conclusion of the letter, where he
says: 'Furthermore, 1 can execute works
in sculpture, marble, bronze, or terra-
cotta. In painting also 1 can do what
may be done as well as any other, be he
who he may.' "
"In painting, then, you insist that his
chief merit is due to his close adherence
to nature?"
"Most certainly. 1 was but a strip-
ling when he died and never spoke with
the master; but I fancy that if I had
questioned him concerning his methods,
he would have answered as did one of
the most esteemed of living French
painters, M. Bonnat, to a like question.
'At my first sitting for a portrait,' said
M. Bonnat, 'I make it as much like what
1 see before me as possible; at the sec-
ond sitting 1 try to make it more like;
at the third 1 add what more of truth
I am able to do; and so on to the con-
clusion.' "
"The results are very different with
Bonnat and Leonardo," 1 objected.
"They always have been and always
will be," responded Vasari, impatiently.
"As you call yourself an artist, you must
know that no two men, looking on na-
ture, see her alike or render her infinite
visage the same."
"Even in a mere portrait," I repeated
obstinately, "Leonardo did more than
merely copy what he saw before him.
The 'Mona Lisa,' for instance. Think
how the world has dreamed before that
picture! Have you read the pages of
Thfophile Gautier or Walter Pater, to
name but two of the scores who have
seen the history of an epoch, the quin-
tessence of a certain type of femininity,
in that 'simple woman's face'?"
"Fine literature," fairly snorted Va-
sari in reply. "Again overmuch inter-
pretation concerning great works of art.
Remember your English artist Turner,
who said of Ruskin that there was an
Oxford graduate who saw far more in
his work than he had ever put there, or
another great living painter who smarts
under the accusation of being an acute
psychologist. Being told that he had
torn the veil from a certain woman's
face, he answered simply: 'Rot! If she
had had a veil, I should have painted
it.' If all that you speak of is in 'Mona
Lisa's' face, it was the special vision of
the artist, subconscious, if you will, that
put it there. What he was trying to do
in simple fashion was to do justice to
the model before him. Before men's
brains grew sick with much splitting of
hairs, we looked not for fourteen
o'clock at noon; and if you would
know what Leonardo's contemporaries
thought of the 'Mona Lisa,' turn again
to my book and read what is written
there."
Obeying him, I opened the book and
read:
Whoever shall desire to see how far art can
imitate nature, may do so to perfection in
this head, wherein every peculiarity that
could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of
the pencil has been most faithfully repro-
duced. The eyes have the lustrous brightness
and moisture which is seen in life, and around
them are those pale, red, and slightly livid
circles, also proper to nature, with the lashes
which can only be copied, as these are, with
the greatest difficulty; the eyebrows, also, are
represented with the closest exactitude, where
fuller and where more thinly set, with the
separate hairs delineated as they issue from
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48 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
the skin, every turn being followed, and all the
pores exhibited in a manner that could not
pe more natural, than it is; the nose, with its
beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils,
might be easily believed to be alive; the
mouth, admirable in its outline, has the lips
uniting the rose-tints of their color with that
of the face in the utmost perfection, and the
carnation of the cheek does not appear to be
f>ainted, but truly of flesh and bloiod : he who
ooks earnestly at the pit of the throat can-
not but believe that he sees the beating of the
pulses, and it may truly be said that this
work is painted in a manner well calculated
to make the boldest master tremble, and as-
tonishes all who behold it, however well ac-
customed to the marvels of art.
With sadness at the thought of the
time-embrowned, though beautiful, ruin
that we alone can know as the "Mona
Lisa," I turned to Vasari.
"Again we are more agreed than would
appear. I believe that Leonardo sat at
the feet of physical perfection, and
through his insight copied that which
his eyes beheld. There remain, however,
numbers of beautiful works which from
their nature must have first found con-
ception in the mind, in what we call the
imagination of the artist. In their exe-
cution nature has served as the instru-
ment of their fulfilment; but, in order
that they might attain the character de-
sired by their creator, the element of
exact transcription, the quality desira-
ble in a portrait, has been studiously
avoided."
"No one leaps save from a firm foun-
dation," replied Vasari, sententiously.
"The conception, the composed pictures
which spring full fledged in the mind of
the artist, may all be traced back to
some fact of nature, sometimes far re-
moved from the resulting image, but a
tangible impression, nevertheless. The
special aptitude of the artist, trained as
it is by practice, stores these impres-
sions, and, cunningly concealed in the
cells of his brain, there they remain im-
prisoned until such time as he may need
them, when, presto! they appear at his
half-conscious bidding. Think you that
when Raphael, on being asked whence
came the model for one of his works,
replied that it was painted 'from a cer-
tain lady who resided in his brain' —
think you that he spoke of an empty
brain?"
"It is true," I answered, "that Blake
maintained that he actually saw the fig-
ures of his visions, and drew, as any
artist does from nature, 'the morning
stars as they sang together.' Nor will I
soon forget the earnestness and convic-
tion with which Puvis de Chavannes as-
sured me that he sat before the empty
space in the Sorbonne which his great
decoration now adorns until he saw his
picture on the wall. 'And you would
be surprised,' he said, with fine simplic-
ity, 'if you could see how exactly the
complete work corresponds with the vis-
ion that came to me before I touched
brush to canvas.' "
"Two confirmations," boasted Vasari,
"the one from a 'genius to madness near
allied,' the other from one who was the
embodiment of the sanity and clarity of
the highest French intellect. Not that I
expect you to agree with me fully even
now, for the essence of all art discussion
is that it is as eternal as is art itself.
And the hour is late, and I must return
to the happy painting-ground of the art-
ists beyond. But this much we may
conclude. With a decent knowledge of
his craft, an untiring effort to improve
his technical methods, a single-hearted
devotion to and reliance upon nature
seen through his own peculiar vision,
and a hearty respect for the lessons of
his great predecessors, the path of the
artist lies before him to-day as clear as
it was to the forefathers seven hundred
years ago. The aim has never changed.
Even the tools remain the same. A
lump of clay, a few primary colors suf-
ficed for Michelangelo and Titian in
their trade, as they suflliced for Augustus
Saint-Gaudens so little time ago, for
William Merritt Chase the day before
yesterday."
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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
WILLIAM MERRITT CHASE ^
By Kenyon Cox
In the death, on October 25, 191 6, of
William Merritt Chase, the American
Academy of Arts and Letters lost a
member who had been one of the fore-
most figures in American art for nearly
forty years and a painter of interna-
tional reputation for at least a quarter
of a century. From the moment of his
return to this country, in 1878, from his
studies in Munich he became a leader of
what was then the younger school, and
during all succeeding changes he never
lost his dominating position. As a
teacher he probably exercised a wider
influence on American painting than any
other artist has ever done.
He painted a great variety of subjects,
from the nude figure, through portrait,
genre, and landscape, to still life; and
in a variety of manners, now precise and
minute and again broad and even sum-
mary, dark and bituminous in tone in
his early work, later often cool and
bright, more generally in an interme-
diate tone neither somber nor over-
brilliant. But with all the appearance
and the presence of versatility, there is
yet a singular unity in all his work, and
a perfectly definite point of view, which
never changes.
He was entirely of his time, that lat-
ter third of the nineteenth century,
which was essentially naturalistic in its
aims, and he never attempted to paint
anything more than can be seen with the
bodily eye. After his first few costume
pieces, he scarcely, went so far as to ar-
range the things he would paint, but
preferred to take what came as it came,
knowing that wherever he might be,
there could be no lack of good, paintable
material all about him, and devoting his
acute vision and his skilled hand to the
registering of his discoveries of the world
in which he lived.
Yet, naturalist as he was in his
choice of materials, he entirely escaped
that besetting danger of naturalism, the
scientific temper. He was never among
the strenuous investigators of form or
light or color; he was essentially the
painter, using so much of the attain-
ments of his time as he could readily
compel to his own end of facile produc-
tion, but with no notion of sacrificing
his art that his successors might benefit
by the invention of new tools or the
acquisition of greater knowledge. Pos-
sessed of great energy and bodily vigor,
of a cool, if keen, vision and of extraor-
dinary technical ability, unbiased by
theories and untroubled by emotion,
never attempting more than he could do
easily, however difficult the doing of it
might be to others, he poured forth with
a genial fecundity a long series of works,
ever new, yet ever the same, demonstra-
tions of his lively interest in the differ-
ing aspects of nature and of his even
livelier joy in the exercise of his own
powers. His message to the world was
no other than that simple yet profound
one which Stevenson expressed in his
"Child's Garden of Verses":
The world is so full of a number of things,
I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.
Few of us can have been happier than
Chase himself, whose life was devoted to
the continuously successful accomplish-
ment of tasks in which he delighted.
Profoundly convinced of the truth that
the business of a painter is to paint, —
inclined, perhaps, to the more doubtful
1 Read before the Academy, March 8, 1917.
49
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50 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
belief that the sole business of a painter
is to paint — ^the same qualities that made
William M. Chase seem revolutionary
and protestant in his youth, when paint-
ing was lingeringly academic, literary,
and sentimental, made him a conserva-
tive in his age, when painting was trying
to purge itself of its representative ele-
ment and to transform itself into an art
of pure expression. At both extremes
his influence was a wholesome one. It
was well for us in America, in his early
time, to be taught that it is not enough
to have feelings, ideas, and knowledge,
that one must also learn one's trade. It
is well for all the world to-day to be
reminded that the art of painting exists.
that it is by its nature an imitative art,
and that just observation and beautiful
workmanship must always have their
place in it and will always retain their
value.
As man, as artist, and as teacher he
had lived his life, had done what he had
to do and said what he had to say. We
who knew him will miss the invigorating
contact with his intensely vital person-
ality, but a longer life would scarcely
have added greatly to the sum of what
he was. His place in American art is
fixed, and as long and as widely as
that art may interest mankind, so long
and so widely will his name be remem-
bered.
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JOHN W. ALEXANDERS
By Edwin H. Blashheld
In John White Alexander a frail body
lodged a tireless, eager spirit — ^tireless
and unquenched by illness to the very
end, eager not only in search for beauty,
but in service to his fellows. Among
artists, some are recorders, some ar-
rangers, some are creators, and some are
dreamers of dreams.
Now and then comes a man who may
belong to any one of these groups, but
who adds to his artistic gift and his
technical acquirement a capacity for
communication of enthusiasm to others
and an instinctive desire to stimulate, to
push at the wheels wherever he sees that
they turn slowly. Such a man soon be-
comes a leader. Toward leadership
John Alexander gravitated instinctively,
and in it he established himself solidly,
using the experience of one official posi-
tion to affirm that of another, touching
the circle of the arts at many points in
its circumference, and strengthening him-
self by every fresh touch. If a man is
strong enough physically to withstand
the demands of such arduous effort, he
gains enormously in the power to syn-
thetize that effort and to build up from
one department to another.
Alexander was not strong enough, and
he paid the physical penalty; but while
his life lasted he never relaxed that ef-
fort, and he made it fruitful, feeding it
always with persistent enthusiasm.
For an instance in this synthetizing of
effort, he worked first as a member of
the Metropolitan Museum's board at in-
creasing and safeguarding that muse-
um's treasures; next as a member of the
School Art League he worked at the
provision of intelligent appreciation of
those treasures — appreciation planted in
the minds of the children of the city to
grow till it should reward the museum's
effort with understanding adult and
trained.
He talked to the children who flocked
to see the painting and sculpture and the
artobjectsof all kinds. And when the chil-
dren went away, he followed them to their
East Side clubs and schools and talked
to them again, encouraging them to try
experiments of their own in painting and
modeling, and he stimulated them with
prizes that adjudged and sometimes in-
stituted. He loved this work among the
children, and he told me, with a twinkle,
and more than once, of how these very
young people managed to fortify the
doubtful experiment of a journey into
art by the undoubted pleasure of at
least beginning that journey on roller-
skates. "Dozens of them," said he,
"skate to their lecture." If he was busy
with the children's welfare, the interests
of his comrades of all ages busied him
still more. He was a painter through
and through; nevertheless, the sister arts
of music and the drama claimed and
obtained his time in one of his favorite
fields of effort, the MacDowell Club.
To the plastic presentation of the
drama, its costuming, lighting, and col-
ors, he gave enthusiastic attention, aided
almost always by Mrs. Alexander. It
was an easy progression for him from
his canvases to the moving-pictures of
a pageant or a play, and his swift in-
ventiveness enabled him to get through
a prodigious amount of work in a short
time, in such productions, for instance,
as Miss Maude Adams's "Jeanne d'Arc"
at the Harvard Stadium, or in the many
series of tableaux which he arranged for
charity. "If you have a frame and some
gauze," said he to me, "you have no idea
how much you can do in a moment with
a few colored rags." 1 had an idea, for
1 had seen him juggle with them and
had admired the effects which he pro-
duced so easily, for he seemed to take
pains easily, and with a geniality which
Read before the Academy, March 8, 1917.
5>
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52 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
relieved his beneficiary from a sense of
too great obligation. This graceful
suavity was a potent factor in his help-
fulness; but he was so smiling and
kindly that I fear one did not always
realize how much his ready service some-
times tired him.
During the last year of his life I saw
him many times a week, and we often
came home together from the Academy
council or from other committee meet-
ings.
Although, as I have said, his spirit
was not tired, his body was. Again and
again he rose from a sick-bed to preside
upon a platform. His delicate features,
which recalled some cavalier's portrait
by Vandyke, were at times during his last
year almost transparent-looking. And
yet he was so resilient, he so responded
to the stimulus of work to do, he had
recovered so many times from severe
attacks, that his death, when it came,
was not only a great shock, but was a
surprise.
Critics, writers of books, will talk to
us at length of his art; there is time to-
day for only the briefest impression of
it. One would say that a refinement ris-
ing to distinction was its most obvious
quality. Pattern and lighting were what
seemed to interest him most of all. Lx)ng,
sweeping, curving lines he sought for or
rather seemed to find without searching,
and they gave a decorative character to
all his portraits.
In his color restraint was a notable
quality, a notable preservative, a nota-
ble insurance against either crudity or
lushness, against vulgarity of any kind.
Now and again he composed large and
elaborated groups, as in his panels for
the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh,
which make up one of the most consid-
erable extensive series of decorations
ever painted. But he loved simplicity,
and thought simply in his painting, and
he seemed to like best and be happiest
in his treatment of single figures. It was
peculiarly in these that his sense of pat-
tern and of line, of long, sweeping
curves, never failed him.
He was very personal in lighting,
which was simple and large, yet at the
same time was often extremely pictur-
esque in its arrangement. Its effect was
not a little enhanced by his predisposi-
tion toward masses of reflected light,
which he used with great skill.
Restraint reaching to sobriety marked
most of his color. He liked to use a
warm gray in wide planes, and then to
strike into it one or two dominant spots
of rich or brilliant colors. Just before
his death he built a very large studio in
the Catskills, and I believe that the trees
and hills of his beloved Onteora got into
the color of his pictures and helped to-
ward that predilection for a whole
gamut of greens which one may easily
note on the wails of his exhibitions —
gray greens, blue greens, olive greens,
yellow greens, greens of the color of
thick glass. His pigment was brushed
easily and flowingly. Sometimes he
painted a whole portrait with what art-
ists would call a "fat brush," but usu-
ally the color was thin, with occasional
loaded passages, the canvas being some-
times hardly more than stained.
The sureness of his recording was re-
markable, and its swiftness was phe-
nomenal. This of course was an extraor-
dinary insurance against any kind of
heaviness in his color, since over-paint-
ing is one of the worst enemies to fresh-
ness of surface. His swiftness of record-
ing must be emphasized again. I should
hardly dare to say in how short a time
he executed one or two portraits that
hung upon the walls of his drawing-
room, and which he called unfinished,
though they were very satisfying, cer-
tainly, to me.
Much as I should like to linger over
his painting, I cannot keep away from
the subject of his eagerness to help other
artists to find a gallery adequate to the
housing of their painting. The search
for a home for the National Academy of
Design was the central preoccupation of
the last years of his life. It was inter-
esting, indeed, when he spoke upon any
platform and any subject, to see how
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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 53
many angles of approach he could find messenger, bringing stimulus of words
to that one subject which was nearest his and example, writing his name with Ben
heart, the new gallery, which should Adhem's as a lover of his fellow-men.
some day house a dozen different so- And a dreamer he was of dreams — of a
cieties of artists. dream which we fully believe will come
I have said that some artists are re- true, when New York will have a great
corders, some creators, and some are gallery all its own, and which we may
dreamers of dreams. Recorder and ere- link in our thought with the memory of
ator he certainly was. While he was still that brilliant artist and devoted presi-
a child he was for a while a little mes- dent of the National Academy of De-
senger-boy, and he never ceased to be a sign, John White Alexander.
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GEORGE BROWNE POST^
By Thomas Hastings
George Browne Post, the son of Joel
B. and Abbey M. Post, was born in New
York City, December 15, 1837. His ca-
reer was most intimately associated for
almost sixty years with the architectural
development of this metropolis. In
order to provide for the rapid increase
of population during this time, there was
an unparalleled growth in building. An
endless variety of new problems had to
be solved in order to meet the vast di-
versity and multiplicity of demands.
Not only was the city reaching out
along new avenues and over new areas
of what were once fertile pasture-lands,
but, alas! for want of legislative re-
straint, and not for want of space, one
city was actually being builded over an-
other, several times in height, reaching
into the clouds, like so many Towers of
Babel, scattered about in a confusion of
styles. During this period Mr. Post was
perhaps the most active and successful
architect in finding a solution which
would best meet the constructive difficul-
ties of the modern tall building, involv-
ing the engineer's method of skeleton
framework construction, accompanied
by the development and general use of
the passenger-elevator.
When designing the old Produce Ex-
change, one of our notable buildings, he
employed for the first time, in the inner
court of this building, iron columns and
beams to support several stories of floors
and walls. This was one of the first
contributions to the evolution of the
modern steel-frame building.
There were no traditions in the his-
tory of the art which would seem to sug-
gest the solution of this problem, and
there was a real demand for originality
to meet such a hopeless situation. It is
difficult to realize to what an extent Mr.
Post paved the way for others to follow.
In the art of architecture more than in
any other creative pursuit, perhaps, the
general public ofttimes finds it difficult
to discern the true author of what may
be a very original conception. Lost in
the many modifications and slight vari-
ations, the same idea is so often repro-
duced by others that it becomes com-
monplace. A conspicuous example
might be cited in Michelangelo's dome
of St. Peter's, one of the most original
designs ever conceived by the genius of
man. Its originality can be appreciated
only when one realizes that other domes,
such as the Val-de-Grace, Les Invalides,
Soufflot's Pantheon, or Wren's St. Paul's,
were all built at a later date, and that no
dome of this character, with the pen-
dentive and the drum, preceded this
most original masterpiece of architec-
ture.
Mr. Post was really doing pioneer
work at a time when the educational
advantages and the condition of Ameri-
can architecture were not to be compared
with those of the present day. In his
early life he served his country in the
Civil War as aide on the staff of Gen-
eral Burnside, who commanded the
Army of the Potomac in 1862, at the
first battle of Fredericksburg. He was
at one time colonel of the Twenty-third
Regiment of the National Guard of New
York.
Mr. Post was first educated as an en-
gineer, being graduated from the scien-
tific school of New York University in
the class of 1858. What we now recog-
nize as engineering, with the innovation
of steel and railroad construction, is
comparatively a modern science, which
rapidly became differentiated from the
art of architecture. At that time there
was little design in construction. As
Mr. Post saw rather the qualitative than
the quantitative side of construction, he
was attracted to architecture, and he
1 Read before the Academy, March 29, 1917.
54
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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
55
studied for three years with Richard
Morris Hunt. Perhaps his first conspicu-
ous work was the old Chickering Hall,
on lower Fifth Avenue, now destroyed.
He was one of the principal architects
who conceived and constructed the Co-
lumbian Exposition of Chicago. I
might almost say, without further men-
tion, that we need only to look about
us to see his many works. As a man he
was fearless and strong, with a true
sense of proportion and justice. He had
unusual executive and administrative
ability, and notwithstanding his great
enthusiasm and impulsive temperament,
there were always a quiet restraint and
dignity which made him one of the most
representative men of his profession.
He was frequently called upon by both
federal and municipal governments to
render public service, both because of
his generous willingness to give his valu-
able time and because of his distin-
guished personality, which made its
impression upon men. The long and
eventful life of our friend and fellow-
Academician was ended November 28,
1914.
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BRONSON HOWARD
By Augustus Thomas
Bronson Howard died in August of
1908 in his sixty-sixth year. He was at
that time, and had been for thirty years,
the foremost dramatist of America. He
was a vice-president of the National In-
stitute of Arts and Letters, which he
helped to organize, and he was a mem-
ber of this Academy.
He was the son of a prominent mer-
chant of Detroit, and the great-grandson
of an English ensign who fought under
General Wolfe at the capture of Quebec
and who in later manhood died in the
sight of General Washington, whom he
followed at Monmouth. Behind that
Revolutionary soldier the family traced
itself directly to the Howards of Nor-
folk, premier dukes of England.
At the usual age Bronson Howard pre-
pared for admission to Yale University,
but, owing to a serious trouble with his
eyes, did not enter. As a later writer
has said of himself, he was forced to
choose between journalism and an edu-
cation. He turned his attention to hu-
morous writing for the Detroit "Free
Press."
In 1865 he came to New York City to
work as a reporter on the "Tribune" un-
der the direction of Horace Greeley. Mr.
Howard was then twenty-three years
old. He worked for the "Tribune" and
later for "The Evening Post." On these
two papers, before he left them to em-
bark altogether upon play-writing as his
profession, he labored seven years, the
historic time of service that Jacob
agreed upon with Laban.
Between the years 1870 and 1899 he
was the author of seventeen plays, the
greater part of which were successful.
In a profession that has no curriculum
but sympathetic living and understand-
ing, and no diploma but the smiles and
tears of his fellow-men, he won a first
distinction.
Very soon after he began to write for
the stage his accurate observation, his
fine apprehension of motive, his delicate
measurement of effect, his truthful tran-
scription and vivid presentation of life,
placed him in a class by himself among
American playwrights. In an epoch of
hurried and commercial and very con-
ventional production his careful, lifelike,
and unhackneyed offerings were in the
main artistic masterpieces, valuable not
only for the fef reshing qualities that they
served to the public of that time, but
as examples of considered workmanship,
and as models to men already in his pro-
fession and to those preparing to join it.
This is especially true of the work of his
matured and ripened years. His pains-
taking amounted almost to genius, and
its effect upon a play was a finish less
enamel than it was bloom. The body
of the play was solid, too. It gave an
impression of life. The happenings
seemed not only true, but intimate and
inevitable. The people were like our-
selves; like us not only in their better
and heroic moments, when we hoped
they were our very kindred, but like us
in their shortcomings, their failings, and
their meannesses, when we knew they
were.
The blue pencil of the city editor had
taught Bronson Howard the unpardon-
ableness of being dull. He had learned
our general incapacity for sustained
attention, our thirst for variety, our
delight in surprise, our readiness to
laugh, and our blindness to the ambush
of the pathetic. He knew that skilful
counterpoint was the way to keep us
rocking and susceptible, and he could sit
at his table and dramatize not only the
people of his play, but those dim gather-
ings beyond the barrier of the footlights
that should lean and listen, gasp and
inhale and laugh, frown and be tender.
1 Read before the Academy, March 29, 1917.
56
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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
57
weep and clap hands, like reflected
moods invoked in a magic, but shad-
owed, mirror.
The older theater-goers will remember
with respect and affection his great suc-
cesses, "The Banker's Daughter" and
"Young Mrs. Winthrop," "Shenandoah"
and "The Henrietta"; and while his
reputation will probably rest upon these
four fine plays, his other work was of
wide range and high merit.
Mr. Brander Matthews, the writer
most qualified by acquaintance with the
man and his epoch and with the theater
to write of them all, has called our atten-
tion to the fact that Bronson Howard's
career as a dramatist covered the transi-
tion period of the modern drama, when
it was changing from the platform stage
to the picture-frame stage; that period
that was dismissing "the rhetorical em-
phasis, confidential soliloquies to the au-
dience, and frequent change of scene in
the course of an act." And almost as
though he were being guided by the wis-
dom of Polonius on fashions, he was
... not the first by whom the new is tried.
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
He moved with his time, and so dis-
creetly that men working under the tacit
acceptance of his leadership suffered
neither martyrdom nor neglect.
His associates were the leading man-
agers and the foremost actors of the
time. His material circumstances
changed from the embarrassing lack of
an overcoat during his reportorial ad-
venture in New York to a life of com-
fort and the means to make an endow-
ment to the American Dramatists' Club,
with substantial bequests in other direc-
tions.
The Dramatists' Club was an out-
growth of the unusual modesty that was
a Bronson Howard characteristic. He
had had some success in England, and
our insular brethren there insisted on re-
garding him not only as an American
playwright of prominence, but as the
only one existing. With the avowed pur-
pose to answer and inform and correct
this attitude, he got together in 1890
fifty men in America who had profes-
sionally produced their plays. A society
was formed that still exists, and includes
in its membership the principal drama-
tists of the United States. Mr. Howard
was its first president, and held that
office until his death. He left to the
society his dramatic library, one of the
largest in the country, and also left a
fund to maintain and to increase it. He
so arranged his affairs that upon the
death of Mrs. Howard a sustaining en-
dowment came to the society itself, to-
gether with the valuable rights to his
plays.
But if Bronson Howard had never
written a play or delivered a lecture upon
that art, or established and endowed a
society of dramatists, he would still be
a notable figure in the history of the
drama in America, as it was owing to his
initiative and persistence, his advocacy
and persuasion, that dramatic composi-
tions finally obtained proper protection
under the United States copyright law,
and in the various States similar protec-
tion under the common law for plays
that had not been copyrighted. This
achievement was the work of many
years, embracing repeated trips to Wash-
ington, many appearances and contests
before committees, and volumes of cor-
respondence with authors, journalists,
attorneys, and legislators. This monu-
ment to the man is the finer from the
fact that for many years before its ac-
complishment he personally had virtu-
ally retired from the field.
To commemorate only this profes-
sional side of his life, however, would be
to neglect the larger and the finer part
of the man. Play-writing seemed rather
the avocation of a full and broad and
deep and vibrant soul, the chief expres-
sion of which was life itself. His under-
standing was so complete, his sympathy
so general, his patience so detached and
yet so fraternal, his justice of such even
balance, his humor so lubricant and
healing, that any business he might have
chosen would have seemed an equal ab-
dication of his larger rights. He looked
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58 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
like a successful general who had quit
the arts of war to practise medicine. He
smiled like a righteous judge who hesi-
tated to convict because he understood
the promising humanity of the offense.
He listened like a father who had been a
playmate, and all who knew him remem-
ber, and many have commented in some
fashion upon, his singularly blue eyes,
and the steadiness of their gaze, encour-
aging, not disconcerting, and which
seemed not to pierce, but to infiltrate.
He was an adequate and noticeable fac-
tor of any assembly, the most delightful
associate in the ideal companionship of
two, and perfectly sufficient to himself in
the longest hours of self-chosen solitude.
I remember visiting him for two
or three short consultations during a
winter in the middle nineties, when it
was his daily custom to leave New York
in the morning, with his lunch in a pa-
per, and spend the day in a little, eight-
by-ten-foot wooden cabin built in the
corner of the back yard of a cottage he
had owned at New Rochelle. The furni-
ture of this cabin was two wooden chairs,
a deal table, a little cannon stove, a coal-
hod, and a brierwood pipe. He found
there the isolation and the quiet that his
work required, and traveled in a virtu-
ally empty train both ways, as the com-
muting tide was opposite to his direc-
tion at his hour. This was at the
period of his greatest artistic and finan-
cial success. His home in New York at
that time was a comfortable, but unpre-
tentious, apartment in a quarter not
fashionable. Both the apartment and
the cabin could be closed and left at the
shortest notice, and their owner was free
to follow where his whim invited. He
knew that real happiness did not attach
to things, and Fortune in her most en-
ticing moods could deceive him no more
than she had frightened him with her
frowns. We must record him a man
equipped with the emotional power of
an artist, the generosity of a cavalier,
and the temperance of a gentleman.
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JOHN BIGELOW^
• By William Milligan Sloane
The man of letters in public life prac-
tises a fine art second to no other. It is
useless to analyze the causes which lead
members of the Academy to choose their
colleagues, for the finer senses are elusive
in their action. But in the case of John
Bigelow there was no mystery. He was
not only a distinguished writer: he was
also a famous publicist, statesman, and
diplomat, with a genius alike for leader-
ship and cooperation. In every impulse
and instinct he was a colleague: when
others faltered about the place of our
organization in American life he was
secure in his judgment, placing time,
energy, and money at the service of this
Academy. His convictions as to the
work it had to do and his unshaken
faith that in time its place would be
established in American life were a
source of inspiration to us all.
This was due to the fullest knowledge
of men and their institutions in all lands,
and to his comparative study of life in
America with that elsewhere. He was
born at Maiden on the Hudson River in
1817 and died at ninety-four. For him
there was neither youth nor old age, but
a beautiful childhood and adolescence
until he was graduated at eighteen from
Union College, when he seems to have
entered instantly on a maturity which
lasted without withering for over seven-
ty-five years. And such years ! — ^the years
during which his own and every other
.civilized land was totally reconstructed.
He studied law, was admitted to the bar,
and built up a handsome practice. But
his heart was not absorbed in his profes-
sion, because he was a born publicist and
pamphleteer. His fixed purpose was to
earn a competence so that he might as
early as possible become a public ser-
vant. This he accomplished by the time
he was fifty; but long before that he
began to write, and was a welcome con-
tributor to no fewer than seven news-
papers and periodicals. Of one, "The
Plebeian," he became the literary editor.
It was about 1838 that the magnet of
this metropolis drew him from Hudson,
the local capital, to New York. At once
he became a member of an association,
known as "The Column," composed of
brilliant young lawyers, taking them-
selves most seriously, which was in itself
an embryo Academy. Their purpose was
to broaden their culture and magnify
their influence by the force of organiza-
tion. Sooner or later they all became
members of the Century Association,
and the two venerable survivors, Parke
Godwin and John Bigelow, while the lat-
ter was president of that famous guild,
placed their emblem, a handsome col-
umn surmounted by the lamp of learn-
ing, in the keeping of the Association.
Their notable careers were measurably
due to their reactions upon each other,
and this was one of the facts which in-
fluenced John Bigelow in his devotion
to the National Institute with its Senate,
the Academy.
Having found his powers and solidi-
fied his convictions, he entered the field
of national politics as an ardent Free-
Soil Democrat. So skilful and convinc-
ing was his polemic in favor of Van
Buren that William Cullen Bryant se-
cured him as a partner in the ownership
and as a co-editor of "The Evening
Post." The struggle to prevent the ex-
tension of slavery into the Territories
was regarded by that paper as most im-
portant, and to this the new editor par-
ticularly devoted himself. In journalism
he had the "heavy fist" of stern convic-
tion; but simultaneously, until he sold
his shares to Parke Godwin in 186 1 and
withdrew, he was busy with literary
work. He traveled in Jamaica, Hayti,
and Europe, writing almost continuously
^ Read before the Academy, April 18, 1917.
59
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6o PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
social and political studies of the lands
he visited, all of which were printed.
Some were collected into book form.
For long years he continued his contri-
butions to the press, and to the end of
his life he was as famous a pamphleteer
as any man employing the English lan-
guage.
It was in 1845 that his public service
began. For three years he was an in-
spector of New York prisons, and it was
by his measures that Sing Sing peniten-
tiary became the model prison it once
was. This was the moment when Tilden
was beginning his political career as
assemblyman. Three years older than
Bigelow, he was not yet a Free-Soiler.
But the two young statesmen of similar
faith formed about this time an acquain-
tance, which, considerably later, ripened
into a friendship extremely important in
molding the character of both. Tilden
was a distant and reticent man, with a
comparatively small circle of friends,
even of acquaintances; but he knew how
to bind a select few both to his person
and his interests. Almost the last act
of John Bigelow was to reject with scorn
the proffer of Congress for a Tilden bust
to be placed in the Capitol at Washing-
ton. He thought his friend worthy of a
monumental statue. It was he who
remedied the results of Tilden's defec-
tive will, which was likely, as an invalid
document, to thwart every desire Of the
would-be testator. By his influence the
City of New York secured the great
Tilden Foundation for a public library;
and, as far as word or deed could accom-
plish it, the memory of Tilden was im-
pressed on posterity as a man of feeling,
of power, and of rectitude. Such loyalty
was characteristic of John Bigelow; it
was that quality in him which gave us
the Bryant monument in Bryant Park.
His public life was destined to shine
with great luster. In 1861 he was sent
as consul to Paris, when the admirable
Dayton was head of the legation. The
barriers between consular and diplo-
matic service were not then so high as
to-day, and in 1864, when Dayton died.
Bigelow was put in charge of the office.
So admirable had been his foreign career
that he was speedily made envoy and
minister, a position he held until 1867.
These seven years in Paris at least
parallel, if they do not surpass, in ser-
vice rendered any similar period in the
career of an American diplomat. By an
important volume written in French and
published in 1864 he set the situation of
his country clearly before the French-
men of the Empire, then as always
dumbly hostile to America. The Napo-
leonic government had connived with
secret agents to permit the escape from
French harbors of four armed and iron-
clad cruisers. Bigelow not merely dis-
covered and collected the necessary evi-
dence, but so presented it to the French
Government as to prevent the escape of
a single ship. When we recall what hap-
pened in the case of the Alabama and the
Georgia, built in England, we may esti-
mate what his work as a diplomat meant
during and after the war. His, too, were
the negotiations, backed by a stalwart
administration in Washington, which
compelled Napoleon III to abandon the
dream of his uncle that a great Latin
empire should embrace the Gulf of Mex-
ico. It was in Paris, too, that he obtained
and published to the world the original
and complete manuscript of Franklin's
"Autobiography," so shamefully muti-
lated by a grandson under the guise of
editing.
The influences of European life on
John Bigelow were culturally very pro-
found; he returned to its various coun-
tries again and again after his public
service was completed. It would be dif-
ficult to recall a great name of his epoch
with whose possessor he was unac-
quainted; with most of the highly emi-
nent he was at times in personal touch;
with Gladstone he waged a bitter con-
troversy in America's behalf. There is
a type of American, largely represented
over the seas, who beholds and admires
Europe only to weaken his loyalty and
make him apologize for his origin. Of
such was not Bigelow. He was a severe
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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES
6i
critic of his country, as he was of him-
self, but the intrinsic truth and power of
the American system was a part of his
gospel, a faith from which he never wa-
vered; his highest aim was to illuminate
it by comparative study. At the time of
his death it was recalled that he had
lived under every President of the coun-
try except Washington, and was even a
contemporary of Napoleon. His mental
range was as extensive as his life and
experience of living; but everything fo-
cused in a land which was his as it
belonged to few others: his family had
been on the soil since 1642.
His passion for liberty made him a
strong individualist. He was in eco-
nomics the most extreme free-trader of
his day. Socially he was exquisitely con-
siderate of others, but his time was the
capital of which his creator had made
him the steward, and his style of life was
delightfully original. At a festival in
the house of his birth a loyal son once
put in use the pulpit and pews from the
old Maiden Presbyterian Church, of
which his grandsire had been an elder
and upon which his famous father had
sat as a child; but spiritually John
Bigelow was a rebel against the historic
faith of his sires. While in the island
of St. Thomas when he was about forty
years of age a Swedish gentleman had
drawn his attention to the work of
Emanuel Swedenborg, as an interpreter
of the Bible, the literary supremacy of
which volume then as ever fascinated
Bigelow, though some of the contents
were to him, literally construed, a hard
saying. He was attracted by the doc-
trine of the Stockholm philosopher as to
"correspondences" between nature and
spirit, and was until his sixtieth year or
longer a devoted and critical student of
that type of theosophy. Later his ardor
was somewhat diminished, and he told to
me, as doubtless to others, when he was
far advanced in the eighties, that he
could not consider himself a regular
member of the sect with which he had
long identified himself. Yet he had
found and stored deep in his mind the
"arcana ccelestia," and never lost the se-
rene optimism or the implicit trust of a
childlike faith. As few others, he was a
spiritually minded man.
Besides his fugitive writings, there are
nineteen titles to John Bigelow's credit
in the history of American letters. Most
of these represent substantial books, in
the biographies of Tilden, Bryant, and
Franklin, as well as in his own recollec-
tions, two and three volumes. In all
those thousands of pages there is not a
careless word or thought. He was a con-
scientious writer, with a clear, vivid,
trenchant style, and he expounded the
truth without fear as it was given to
him. To such as he was the world gives
its confidence and imposes on them great
trusts. He was, of course, connected
with the leading historical societies,
those of the nation and his native State
among the number; he sat on the manag-
ing boards of the Public Library and the
Metropolitan Museum; he was a mem-
ber of the Municipal Art Commission,
and president of the Century Associa-
tion. Such were his known activities,
but there was the commanded reticence
between his two hands in the matter of
private beneficence; not even his nearest
and dearest were in that secret of the
Lord, which is with them that fear Him.
A philosopher in thought, a citizen in
action, a paragon in domestic life, he
reaped in full measure where he had
sown. Thinkers, statesmen, and a cir-
cle of worth-while friends respected and
loved him. His person was always at-
tractive and to the end he wisely culti-
vated the style of dress in which he was
most at ease, that of his fifties and six-
ties. As ever-advancing age bestowed its
abundant bounties upon him, he became
the first citizen of New York, in a meas-
ure, of the nation, and was on all occa-
sions unfailingly recognized as such by
those present. His features were boldly
cut, generous but firm in line and di-
mension. His eyes were brilliant even
in his latest years, and with his strong
frame, his pleasant address, and self-
respecting dignity there was something
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62 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
leonine in his personality. His humor wealth of sympathy. His advice and
was a never-failing buckler against an suggestions were never perfunctory, and
adversary's darts or his own petulance, his sagacity generally indicated the tac-
an affliction carefully concealed if he tics of practical common sense suited to
had it. His wit was spontaneous, genial, each one of the many who consulted him.
and of his soul's very essence. For rising He was an asset of the greatest, impor-
men and writers struggling with the ad- tance to this Academy, and his memory
verse conditions of the hour he had a will abide in its history and traditions.
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PRESENTATION TO MR. JOHN BURROUGHS OF THE
GOLD MEDAL OF THE INSTITUTE
At the opening of the third session,
November 17, Mr. Edwin Howl and
Blashfield, President of the Institute, an-
nounced that at the annual meeting of
the Institute held at the University Club,
November 16, the Gold Medal for Es-
says or Belles-Lettres had been awarded you all."
to Mr. John Burroughs. Mr. Blashfield
then presented the medal to Mr. Bur-
roughs, who said:
"This is a surprise to me. I will not
even attempt to make any response.
You do me a very great honor. 1 thank
THE INSTITUTE MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Institute is
awarded to any citizen of the United
States, whether a member of the Insti-
tute or not, for distinguished services
to arts and letters in the creation of
original work.
The conditions are that the medal
shall be awarded for the entire work of
the recipient, without limit of time dur-
ing which it shall have been done; that
it shall be awarded to a living per-
son or to one who shall not have been
dead more than one year at the time
of the award; and that it shall not be
awarded more than once to any one
person.
The medal was designed by Adolph
A. Weinman, member of the Institute,
in 1909.
The first award — for sculpture — ^was
to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. The medal
was presented to Mrs. Saint-Gaudens at
the meeting held in memory of her hus-
band, November 20, 1909.
The second medal — for history — ^was
awarded to James Ford Rhodes, 1910.
The third medal — for poetry — ^was
awarded to James Whitcomb Riley,
1911.
The fourth medal — for architecture —
was awarded to William Rutherford
Mead, 1912.
The fifth medal — for drama — ^was
awarded to Augustus Thomas, 191 3.
The sixth medal — for fiction — ^was
awarded to William Dean Howells in
1915.
The seventh medal — for essays or
belles-lettres — ^was awarded to John
Burroughs in 19 16.
THE ACADEMY MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the Academy is
conferred in recognition of special dis-
tinction in literature, art, or music, and
for the entire work of the recipient, who
may be of either sex, and must be a
native or naturalized citizen of the
United States, and not a member of the
Academy. It was first awarded to Dr.
Charles William Eliot, at the annual
meeting in Boston, November 18, 191 5,
and the presentation was made in behalf
of the Academy by Dr. Nicholas Murray
Butler in New York, January 27, 19 16.
The medal was designed and modeled
by James Earle Eraser, member of the
Institute.
63
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ADDRESS OF MONSIEUR BERGSON
By invitation of the Directors of the
Academy, Monsieur Henri Bergson, of
the Academie Frangaise, addressed the
Academy on the 8th of March, 191 7, on
the subject of "The French Academy in
its Relation to France at the Present
Time." In introducing Professor Berg-
son Chancellor William M. Sloane said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues of
the Institute and the Academy, we es-
teem it a privilege to make this session
one of homage to M. Bergson, to the
French Academy, of which he is a dis-
tinguished member, and to his great
country, exhibiting as she does such a
degree of moral, intellectual, and physi-
cal courage under terrible trial as may
well serve us and posterity as a con-
spicuous example in virtue. Our guest
has reached the highest eminence as an
exponent of the intuitive philosophy and
as a man of letters. At an age when
fame generally rewards the deserving
with serenity of life he has sprung to
obey the call of his country, and is
gladly heard when he expounds her faith
and develops her purpose. America
needs no propaganda to keep her heart
warm toward France. We feel pro-
foundly and can never forget the re-
ciprocity of affection and service be-
tween us. But to learn from M. Berg-
son's lips the place taken by the first
and oldest among Academies in efficient
support of the people who have cher-
ished it for centuries is an experience
absolutely unique. It can be nothing
less than an inspiration for our own so-
ciety, whose directors have already as-
sured their fellow-member, the President
of the United States, of their personal
and collective support, and have re-
ceived from him a grateful reply."
Professor Bergson spoke first in Eng-
lish and afterward in French to a large
and enthusiastic audience. In the course
of his address he referred to the Ameri-
can Academy as "the very dear and
cherished younger sister of the French
Academy."
GREETINGS TO THE ACADEMY FROM THE ACADEMIE
FRANgAlSE AND THE ACADEMIE DES BEAUX-ARTS
Following are letters from the two great Academies of France, addressed to the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, felicitating it on the granting of its charter by Congress, ex-
tending to it cordial greetings, and requesting it to be the medium of conveying to Americans
the appreciation of the sympathy and the service which they gave to France during the pres-
ent conflict in Europe before the declaration of war by the United States.
[The Academie Fran^aise to the Members of
the American Academy of Arts and Letter s\
INSTITUT DE FRANCE
academie fran9aise
Messieurs,
Votre secretaire perpituel, M. R. U.
Johnson, nous ayant inform^ que, par
un acte du 17 avril de cette annee, votre
compagnie est devenue institution na-
tionale, I'Academie frangaise s'empresse
de vous envoyer ses felicitations.
Elle n'a pas oubli^ Taccueil qu'a re^u
de vous M. Eugene Brieux, qui la repri-
senta il y a deux ans aux fetes oil vous
nous aviez invites. Notre confrire nous
a dit combien il fut touchi de vos senti-
ments amicaux k regard de rAcad^mie
f rangaise, imu de votre vive et profonde
sympathie pour la France.
Notre pays est tr^ sensible aux
marques d'estime et d'affection qui nous
viennent de la grande Republique am6-
ricaine. De communs nobles souvenirs,
plus que siculaires, vivent dans la m6-
moire de nos deux peuples.
Au temps de la Revolution amiri-
64
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CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE FRENCH ACADEMIES
65
caine et de la Revolution f rangaise, nous
avons congu, vous et nous, un id^al de
justice, de liberte, de dignite: justice,
liberte, dignite pour la personne hu-
maine individuelle et pour ces per-
sonnes collectives, n^s de la nature et
de rhistoire, qu'on appelle les nations.
A cet ideal, nous sommes demeur^s
fideles, vous et nous, au cours de nos
histoires.
Une preuve de ce permanent accord
nous a 6x6 donn^ ces jours-ci. Un
manifeste signe par cinq cents citoyens
notables des Etats-Unis a proclame en
termes clairs et vibrants qu'avec nos
allies nous combattons pour "la civilisa-
tion" et pour la defense et le maintien
des "lois morales de Thumanite." A
rheure ou nos soldats luttent avec tant
d'hero'isme' pour une si grande cause,
nous avons ete heureux de nous en-
tendre dire par vos compatriotes que
"leurs sympathies et leurs esperances
sent avec nous," et qu'ils sont "sOrs
d'exprimer les convictions de I'immense
majorite des Americains."
Messieurs et chers confreres, I'Aca-
demie frangaise, qui bientot celebrera
son troisieme centenaire, souhaite longue
et glorieuse vie a I'Academie naissante
qui porte le beau nom d'Academie ame-
ricaine des arts $t des lettres.
Le Directeur de VAcademie Fran^aise,
E. Lavisse.
Le Cbancelier, M. Don nay.
Le Secretaire perpetuel, E. Lamy.
[response]
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
70 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
Gentlemen: August 22, 1916.
It is an official privilege to thank you
for your letter congratulating this Acad-
emy upon its nationalization by Act of
Congress, and offering from the French
Academy a recognition more precious
than any oth^ that could be given us.
We wish to read in your welcome an
expression of friendship from the gener-
ous nation which you represent in the
highest things, and we assure you that
we have been deeply touched by your
advertence to those historic ties which
have allied our peoples from the time of
our own struggle for independence. As
Americans we gratefully remember the
vital assistance which France rendered
us in that ds^rkest hour, and as artists
and men of letters we feel gladly bound
with all the world in our sense of the
magnanimous hospitality which she has
shown to the arts and letters every-
where.
We trust that we have a peculiar right
to claim kindred with you in those ideals
of liberty and humanity which form the
noblest incentive to aesthetic as well as
civic endeavor; and we beg you to be-
lieve that our hearts respond warmly to
yours in the feelings which animate your
Republic in its devotion to the enlight-
enment and amelioration of mankind.
We remember the visit of your distin-
guished colleague Mr. Brieux with a full
sense of the unique favor done us by
your Academy in permitting us to wel-
come that great dramatic humanist be-
yond the limits prescribed to the public
appearance of French Academicians;
and we shall not cease to prize above
any other the honor of your welcome
to historic association with yourselves,
which we would so willingly believe in-
cludes our Academy within these limits.
As a first effect of this welcome, may we
be among the earliest to proffer you the
felicitations upon the approach of your
Three Hundredth Anniversary, in which
all civilization will unite.
Yours very truly,
W. D. HowELLS, President.
William M. Sloane, Chancellor.
Robert Underwood Johnson,
Permanent Secretary.
Messieurs
E. Lavisse, Directeur,
M. Don NAY, Cbancelier,
E. Lamy, Secretaire perpetuel,
de I'Academie Frangaise.
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66
CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE FRENCH ACADEMIES
11
[The Acadimie des Beaux-Arts to the Secre-
tary of the American Academy of Arts
and Letters^
INSTITUT DE FRANCE
ACADEMIE DES BEAUX-ARTS
Paris, le 8 juillet, 1916.
TRfeS HONORS ET CHER CoLLfeGUE,
L' Academic des Beaux-Arts de Tlnsti-
tut de France a et^ heureuse d'ap-
prendre qu'une Academie nationale des
Arts et des Lettres venait d'etre officiel-
lement reconnue par le gouvernement
americain.
Elle en salue cette consecration avec
une joie fraternelle et Taccueille de ses
voeux les plus chers. Elle en augure le
glorieux avenir avec une afTectueuse et
confiante certitude.
Nous connaissons et admirons vos
peintres, vos sculpteurs et vos archi-
tectes; nous nous enorgueillissons d'en
compter parmi nos confreres. Nous
aimons vos artistes presque comme des
camarades, si nombreux sont ceux qui
ont partage la vie de nos ateliers, con-
tribui a T&lat de nos salons, et si fideles
ils sont demeures, apres avoir itudi^ a
coti de nous, au souvenir de leurs pro-
fesseurs et a I'amiti^ de leurs condis-
ciples. Et quelles emouvantes preuves
ne nous ont-ils pas donnees de leur at-
tachement par Taction et la parole, au
cours de ces deux terribles ann^es, se-
courant, soulageant, consolant nos re-
fugi^s et nos blesses, partageant nos
revoltes et nos fiertes, nos angoisses et
nos espoirs, affirmant leur foi et confir-
mant la notre dans la bonte et la beauts
de notre cause!
Pour leur porter k tous I'expression
de notre gratitude, nous nous adressons
a vous le repr^sentant de la Compagnie
ou si^gent les maitres de Tart.
Et puisque Elle reunit aussi ceux de la
Litterature, qu'en elle toutes les forces
et toutes les illustrations de I'intelligence
am^ricaine se doivent grouper, comme
sur I'azur de votre ^tendard les 6toiles
de tous les Etats de TUnion, nous la
prions d'etre, par votre entremise, I'in-
terprete de nos sentiments aupr^ des
universites, aupres des Cinq Cents, elite
de toutes les classes sociales et de toutes
les professions, aupres de tous ceux en-
fin qui nous ont, dans notre dur combat,
donne le concours de leur industrie et
de leur richesse, la sympathie de leur
coeur, et par-dessus tout, le temoignage
murement reflechi de leur conscience.
Unie a votre Academie par une egale
passion pour ces biens supremes que les
Grecs jugeaient inseparables, verite,
justice et beauti, dans un culte commun
pour toutes les nobles choses que les
Latins resumaient dans le mot d'Huma-
nite, notre Academie lui tend cordiale-
ment la main et I'assure de ses senti-
ments confraternels.
Veuillez, tres honor^ et cher collegue,
lui en transmettre I'expression, et agreez
vous-meme I'assurance de notre haute
consideration.
Le President, Ch. Waltner.
Le Vice-President, Th. Dubois.
Le Secretaire perpetuel, Ch. M. Widor.
[response]
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS
AND LETTERS
70 fifth avenue, new york
Dear and Honored Colleagues:
The friendly letter of welcome and
felicitation which the Academie des
Beaux-Arts has addressed to the Ameri-
can Academy of Arts and Letters, on the
occasion of the granting of the National
Charter, has been transmitted to all of
its members, and has given a satisfac-
tion which it is difficult to express. The
touching messages of appreciation to
others of our countrymen which you
have honored us by entrusting to our
care we have delivered through official
organizations and the press.
The special bonds that exist between
your great institution and American ar-
tists bear witness to the high plane on
which your country has always regarded
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CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE FRENCH ACADEMIES
67
the arts. It has never been necessary
among you to plead the cause of the
beautiful, and your love and cultivation
of it have not been merely for your-
selves but for all the world. At your
flame the artists of every nationality
have caught inspiration. Your laws
have fortified the rights and dignity of
Literature and Art. Your schools, re-
nowned for standards and discipline,
have made every American pupil a fos-
ter-child of France. It is no wonder,
therefore, that you have transmitted to
our artists the same affection, the same
sense of justice, and the same chivalrous
loyalty to your ideals that you have
nourished in your own. We assure you
that you do not exaggerate the depth,
the strength, or the extent of this sym-
pathetic feeling.
Justice is indeed a kind of Beauty, and
it is the spirit of the artist, expressing
itself in the field of moral judgments,
that has made France the apostle of al-
truism to the world.
We beg of you to accept our deep ap-
preciation of the fellowship to which
your distinguished body has so cordially
admitted us. In our effort to promote
in this country an inspiring comradeship
of men of letters and of the arts, a com-
radeship that shall be of constant and
permanent service, we shall be cheered
and strengthened by remembrance of
your sympathy and by the vision of
what you have shown may be accom-
plished by such cooperation as yours.
Pray accept, valued and honored col-
leagues, for the Acadimie and for your-
selves, our thanks, our highest respect,
and our most sympathetic consideration.
William Dean Howells,
President
William Milligan Sloane,
Chancellor,
Robert Underwood Johnson,
Permanent Secretary,
Messieurs
Ch. Waltner, President,
Th. Dubois, Vice-Prisident,
Ch; M. WiDOR, Secretaire perpetuel,
de VAcadimie des Beaux- Arts,
Paris,
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FORM OF BEQUEST
1 hereby give, devise, and bequeath to the American Academy
OF Arts and Letters, incorporated under an Act of the Congress
of the United States, approved April 17, 19 16, the sum of
dollars, to be applied to the uses of said corporation.
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