Relation of Literature to Life

C >> Charles Dudley Warner >> Relation of Literature to Life


As a result, the volumes here gathered together represent but a limited
portion of the work he accomplished. All his life, indeed, Warner was not
only an omnivorous consumer of the writings of others, but a constant
producer. The manifestation of it took place in ways frequently known to
but few. It was not merely the fact that as an editor of a daily paper he
wrote regularly articles on topics of current interest to which he never
expected to pay any further attention; but after his name became widely
known and his services were in request everywhere, he produced scores of
articles, some long, some short, some signed, some unsigned, of which he
made no account whatever. One looking through the pages of contemporary
periodical literature is apt at any moment to light upon pieces, and
sometimes upon series of them, which the author never took the trouble to
collect. Many of those to which his name was not attached can no longer
be identified with any approach to certainty. About the preservation of
much that he did--and some of it belonged distinctly to his best and most
characteristic work--he was singularly careless, or it may be better to
say, singularly indifferent.

If I may be permitted to indulge in the recital of a personal experience,
there is one incident I recall which will bring out this trait in a
marked manner. Once on a visit to him I accompanied him to the office of
his paper. While waiting for him to discharge certain duties there, and
employing myself in looking over the exchanges, I chanced to light upon a
leading article on the editorial page of one of the most prominent of the
New York dailies. It was devoted to the consideration of some recent
utterances of a noted orator who, after the actual mission of his life
had been accomplished, was employing the decline of it in the
exploitation of every political and economic vagary which it had entered
into the addled brains of men to evolve. The article struck me as one of
the most brilliant and entertaining of its kind I had ever read; it was
not long indeed before it appeared that the same view of it was taken by
many others throughout the country. The peculiar wit of the comment, the
keenness of the satire made so much of an impression upon me that I
called Warner away from his work to look at it. At my request he hastily
glanced over it, but somewhat to my chagrin failed to evince any
enthusiasm about it. On our way home I again spoke of it and was a good
deal nettled at the indifference towards it which he manifested. It
seemed to imply that my critical judgment was of little value; and
however true might be his conclusion on that point, one does not enjoy
having the fact thrust too forcibly upon the attention in the familiarity
of conversation. Resenting therefore the tone he had assumed, I took
occasion not only to reiterate my previously expressed opinion somewhat
more aggressively, but also went on to insinuate that he was himself
distinctly lacking in any real appreciation of what was excellent. He
bore with me patiently for a while. "Well, sonny," he said at last,
"since you seem to take the matter so much to heart, I will tell you in
confidence that I wrote the piece myself." I found that this was not only
true in the case just specified, but that while engaged in preparing
articles for his own paper he occasionally prepared them for other
journals. No one besides himself and those immediately concerned, ever
knew anything about the matter. He never asserted any right to these
pieces, he never sought to collect them, though some of them exhibited
his happiest vein of humor. Unclaimed, unidentified, they are swept into
that wallet of oblivion in which time stows the best as well as the worst
of newspaper production.

The next volume of Warner's writings that made its appearance was
entitled "Saunterings." It was the first and, though good of its kind,
was by no means the best of a class of productions in which he was to
exhibit signal excellence. It will be observed that of the various works
comprised in this collective edition, no small number consist of what by
a wide extension of the phrase may be termed books of travel. There are
two or three which fall strictly under that designation. Most of them,
however, can be more properly called records of personal experience and
adventure in different places and regions, with the comments on life and
character to which they gave rise.

Books of travel, if they are expected to live, are peculiarly hard to
write. If they come out at a period when curiosity about the region
described is predominant, they are fairly certain, no matter how
wretched, to achieve temporary success. But there is no kind of literary
production to which, by the very law of its being, it is more difficult
to impart vitality. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is perfectly true that
the greatest hinderance to their permanent interest is the information
they furnish. The more full, specific and even accurate that is, the more
rapidly does the work containing it lose its value. The fresher knowledge
conveyed by a new, and it may be much inferior book, crowds out of
circulation those which have gone before. The changed or changing
conditions in the region traversed renders the information previously
furnished out of date and even misleading. Hence the older works come in
time to have only an antiquarian interest. Their pages are consulted only
by that very limited number of persons who are anxious to learn what has
been and view with stolid indifference what actually is. Something of
this transitory nature belongs to all sketches of travel. It is the one
great reason why so very few of the countless number of such works,
written, and sometimes written by men of highest ability, are hardly
heard of a few years after publication. Travels form a species of
literary production in which great classics are exceedingly rare.

From this fatal characteristic, threatening the enduring life of such
works, most of Warner's writings of this sort were saved by the method of
procedure he followed. He made it his main object not to give facts but
impressions. All details of exact information, everything calculated to
gratify the statistical mind or to quench the thirst of the seeker for
purely useful information, he was careful, whether consciously or
unconsciously, to banish from those volumes of his in which he followed
his own bent and felt himself under no obligation to say anything but
what he chose. Hence these books are mainly a record of views of men and
manners made by an acute observer on the spot, and put down at the moment
when the impression created was most vivid, not deferred till familiarity
had dulled the sense of it or custom had caused it to be disregarded.
Take as an illustration the little book entitled "Baddeck," one of the
slightest of his productions in this field. It purports to be and is
nothing more than an account of a two weeks' tour made to a Cape Breton
locality in company with the delightful companion to whom it was
dedicated. You take it up with the notion that you are going to acquire
information about the whole country journeyed over, you are beguiled at
times with the fancy that you are getting it. In the best sense it may be
said that you do get it; for it is the general impression of the various
scenes through which the expedition leads the travelers that is left upon
the mind, not those accurate details of a single one of them which the
lapse of a year might render inaccurate. It is to the credit of the work
therefore than one gains from it little specific knowledge. In its place
are the reflections both wise and witty upon life, upon the characters of
the men that are met, upon the nature of the sights that are seen.

This is what constitutes the enduring charm of the best of these pictures
of travel which Warner produced. It is perhaps misleading to assert that
they do not furnish a good deal of information. Still it is not the sort
of information which the ordinary tourist gives and which the cultivated
reader resents and is careful not to remember. Their dominant note is
rather the quiet humor of a delightful story-teller, who cannot fail to
say something of interest because he has seen so much; and who out of his
wide and varied observation selects for recital certain sights he has
witnessed, certain experiences he has gone through, and so relates them
that the way the thing is told is even more interesting than the thing
told. The chief value of these works does not accordingly depend upon the
accidental, which passes. Inns change and become better or worse.
Facilities for transportation increase or decrease. Scenery itself alters
to some extent under the operation of agencies brought to bear upon it
for its own improvement or for the improvement of something else. But
man's nature remains a constant quantity. Traits seen here and now are
sure to be met with somewhere else, and even in ages to come. Hence works
of this nature, embodying descriptions of men and manners, always retain
something of the freshness which characterized them on the day of their
appearance.

Of these productions in which the personal element predominates, and
where the necessity of intruding information is not felt as a burden,
those of Warner's works which deal with the Orient take the first rank.
The two--"My Winter on the Nile" and "In the Levant"--constitute the
record of a visit to the East during the years 1875 and 1876.

They would naturally have of themselves the most permanent value,
inasmuch as the countries described have for most educated men an abiding
interest. The lifelike representation and graphic characterization which
Warner was apt to display in his traveling sketches were here seen at
their best, because nowhere else did he find the task of description more
congenial. Alike the gorgeousness and the squalor of the Orient appealed
to his artistic sympathies. Egypt in particular had for him always a
special fascination. Twice he visited it--at the time just mentioned and
again in the winter of 1881-82. He rejoiced in every effort made to
dispel the obscurity which hung over its early history. No one, outside
of the men most immediately concerned, took a deeper interest than he in
the work of the Egyptian Exploration Society, of which he was one of the
American vice-presidents. To promoting its success he gave no small share
of time and attention. Everything connected with either the past or the
present of the country had for him an attraction. A civilization which
had been flourishing for centuries, when the founder of Israel was a
wandering sheik on the Syrian plains or in the hill-country of Canaan;
the slow unraveling of records of dynasties of forgotten kings; the
memorials of Egypt's vanished greatness and the vision of her future
prosperity these and things similar to these made this country, so
peculiarly the gift of the Nile, of fascinating interest to the modern
traveler who saw the same sights which had met the eyes of Herodotus
nearly twenty-five hundred years before.

To the general public the volume which followed--"In the Levant"--was
perhaps of even deeper interest. At all events it dealt with scenes and
memories with which every reader, educated or uneducated, had
associations. The region through which the founder of Christianity
wandered, the places he visited, the words he said in them, the acts he
did, have never lost their hold over the hearts of men, not even during
the periods when the precepts of Christianity have had the least
influence over the conduct of those who professed to it their allegiance.
In the Levant, too, were seen the beginnings of commerce, of art, of
letters, in the forms in which the modern world best knows them. These,
therefore, have always made the lands about the eastern Mediterranean an
attraction to cultivated men and the interest of the subject accordingly
reinforced the skill of the writer.

There are two or three of these works which can not be included in the
class just described. They were written for the specific purpose of
giving exact information at the time. Of these the most noticeable are
the volumes entitled "South and West" and the account of Southern
California which goes under the name of "Our Italy." They are the outcome
of journeys made expressly with the intent of investigating and reporting
upon the actual situation and apparent prospects of the places and
regions described. As they were written to serve an immediate purpose,
much of the information contained in them tends to grow more and more out
of date as time goes on; and though of value to the student of history,
these volumes must necessarily become of steadily diminishing interest to
the ordinary reader. Yet it is to be said of them that while the pill of
useful information is there, it has at least been sugar-coated. Nor can
we afford to lose sight of the fact that the widely-circulated articles,
collected under the title of "South and West," by the spirit pervading
them as well as by the information they gave, had a marked effect in
bringing the various sections of the country into a better understanding
of one another, and in imparting to all a fuller sense of the community
they possessed in profit and loss, in honor and dishonor.

It is a somewhat singular fact that these sketches of travel led Warner
incidentally to enter into an entirely new field of literary exertion.
This was novel-writing. Something of this nature he had attempted in
conjunction with Mark Twain in the composition of "The Gilded Age," which
appeared in 1873. The result, however, was unsatisfactory to both the
collaborators. Each had humor, but the humor of each was fundamentally
different. But the magazine with which Warner had become connected was
desirous that he should prepare for it an account of some of the
principal watering-places and summer resorts of the country. Each was to
be visited in turn and its salient features were to be described. It was
finally suggested that this could be done most effectively by weaving
into a love story occurrences that might happen at a number of these
places which were made the subjects of description. The principal
characters were to take their tours under the personal conduct of the
novelist. They were to go to the particular spots selected North and
South, according to the varying seasons of the year. It was a somewhat
novel way of, visiting resorts of this nature; there are those to whom it
will seem altogether more agreeable than would be the visiting of them in
person. Hence appeared in 1886 the articles which were collected later in
the volume entitled "Their Pilgrimage."

Warner executed the task which had been assigned him with his wonted
skill. The completed work met with success--with so much success indeed
that he was led later to try his fortune further in the same field and
bring out the trilogy of novels which go under the names respectively of
"A Little Journey in the World," "The Golden House," and "That Fortune."
Each of these is complete in itself, each can be read by itself; but the
effect of each and of the whole series can be best secured by reading
them in succession. In the first it is the story of how a great fortune
was made in the stock market; in the second, how it was fraudulently
diverted from the object for which it was intended; and in the third, how
it was most beneficially and satisfactorily lost. The scene of the last
novel was laid in part in Warner's early home in Charlemont. These works
were produced with considerable intervals of time between their
respective appearances, the first coming out in 1889 and the third ten
years later. This detracted to some extent from the popularity which they
would have attained had the different members followed one another
rapidly. Still, they met with distinct success, though it has always been
a question whether this success was due so much to the story as to the
shrewd observation and caustic wit which were brought to bear upon what
was essentially a serious study of one side of American social life.

The work with which Warner himself was least satisfied was his life of
Captain John Smith, which came out in 18881. It was originally intended
to be one of a series of biographies of noted men, which were to give the
facts accurately but to treat them humorously. History and comedy,
however, have never been blended successfully, though desperate attempts
have occasionally been made to achieve that result. Warner had not long
been engaged in the task before he recognized its hopelessness. For its
preparation it required a special study of the man and the period, and
the more time he spent upon the preliminary work, the more the humorous
element tended to recede. Thus acted on by two impulses, one of a light
and one of a grave nature, he moved for a while in a sort of diagonal
between the two to nowhere in particular; but finally ended in treating
the subject seriously.

In giving himself up to a biography in which he had no special interest,
Warner felt conscious that he could not interest others. His forebodings
were realized. The work, though made from a careful study of original
sources, did not please him, nor did it attract the public. The attempt
was all the more unfortunate because the time and toil he spent upon it
diverted him from carrying out a scheme which had then taken full
possession of his thoughts. This was the production of a series of essays
to be entitled "Conversations on Horseback." Had it been worked up as he
sketched it in his mind, it would have been the outdoor counterpart of
his "Backlog Studies." Though in a measure based upon a horseback ride
which he took in Pennsylvania in 1880, the incidents of travel as he
outlined its intended treatment would have barely furnished the slightest
of backgrounds. Captain John Smith, however, interfered with a project
specially suited to his abilities and congenial to his tastes. That he
did so possibly led the author of his life to exhibit a somewhat hostile
attitude towards his hero. When the biography was finished, other
engagements were pressing upon his attention. The opportunity of taking
up and completing the projected series of essays never presented itself,
though the subject lay in his mind for a long time and he himself
believed that it would have turned out one of the best pieces of work he
ever did.

It was unfortunate. For to me--and very likely to many others if not to
most--Warner's strength lay above all in essay-writing. What he
accomplished in this line was almost invariably pervaded by that genial
grace which makes work of the kind attractive, and he exhibited
everywhere in it the delicate but sure touch which preserves the just
mean between saying too much and too little. The essay was in his nature,
and his occupation as a journalist had developed the tendency towards
this form of literary activity, as well as skill in its manipulation.
Whether he wrote sketches of travel, or whether he wrote fiction, the
scene depicted was from the point of view of the essayist rather than
from that of the tourist or of the novelist. It is this characteristic
which gives to his work in the former field its enduring interest. Again
in his novels, it was not so much the story that was in his thoughts as
the opportunity the varying scenes afforded for amusing observations upon
manners, for comments upon life, sometimes good-natured, sometimes
severe, but always entertaining, and above all, for serious study of the
social problems which present themselves on every side for examination.
This is distinctly the province of the essayist, and in it Warner always
displayed his fullest strength.

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

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

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

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