The Complete Essays of C. D. Warner

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As it now stands, authors who annually produce the raw material for
manufacturing purposes to an amount in value of millions, supporting vast
populations of people, authors whose mental produce rivals and exceeds in
commercial value many of the great staple products of our fields, are the
only producers who have no distinct property in their products, who are
not protected in holding on to the feeble tenure the law gives them, and
whose quasi-property in their works, flimsy as it is, is limited to a few
years, and cannot with certainty be handed down to their children. It
will be said, it is said, that it is impossible for the author to obtain
an acknowledgment of absolute right of property in his brain work. In our
civilization we have not yet arrived at this state of justice. It may be
so. Indeed some authors have declared that this justice would be against
public policy. I trust they are sustained by the lofty thought that in
this view they are rising above the petty realm of literature into the
broad field of statesmanship.

But I think there will be a general agreement that in the needed revisal
of our local copyright law we can attain some measure of justice. Some of
the most obvious hardships can be removed. There is no reason why an
author should pay for the privilege of a long life by the loss of his
copyrights, and that his old age should be embittered by poverty because
he cannot have the results of the labor of his vigorous years. There is
no reason why if he dies young he should leave those dependent on him
without support, for the public has really no more right to appropriate
his book than it would have to take his house from his widow and
children. His income at best is small after he has divided with the
publishers.

No, there can certainly be no valid argument against extending the
copyright of the author to his own lifetime, with the addition of forty
or fifty years for the benefit of his heirs. I will not leave this
portion of the topic without saying that a perfectly harmonious relation
between authors and publishers is most earnestly to be desired, nor
without the frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradition and in the
present experience, many of the most noble friendships and the most
generous and helpful relations have subsisted, as they ought always to
subsist, between the producers and the distributors of literature,
especially when the publisher has a love for literature, and the author
is a reasonable being and takes pains to inform himself about the
publishing business.

One aspect of the publishing business which has become increasingly
prominent during the last fifteen years cannot be overlooked, for it is
certain to affect seriously the production of literature as to quality,
and its distribution. Capital has discovered that literature is a product
out of which money can be made, in the same way that it can be made in
cotton, wheat, or iron. Never before in history has so much money been
invested in publishing, with the single purpose of creating and supplying
the market with manufactured goods. Never before has there been such an
appeal to the reading public, or such a study of its tastes, or supposed
tastes, wants, likes and dislikes, coupled also with the same shrewd
anxiety to ascertain a future demand that governs the purveyors of spring
and fall styles in millinery and dressmaking. Not only the contents of
the books and periodicals, but the covers, must be made to catch the
fleeting fancy. Will the public next season wear its hose dotted or
striped?

Another branch of this activity is the so-called syndicating of the
author's products in the control of one salesman, in which good work and
inferior work are coupled together at a common selling price and in
common notoriety. This insures a wider distribution, but what is its
effect upon the quality of literature? Is it your observation that the
writer for a syndicate, on solicitation for a price or an order for a
certain kind of work, produces as good quality as when he works
independently, uninfluenced by the spirit of commercialism? The question
is a serious one for the future of literature.

The consolidation of capital in great publishing establishments has its
advantages and its disadvantages. It increases vastly the yearly output
of books. The presses must be kept running, printers, papermakers, and
machinists are interested in this. The maw of the press must be fed. The
capital must earn its money. One advantage of this is that when new and
usable material is not forthcoming, the "standards" and the best
literature must be reproduced in countless editions, and the best
literature is broadcast over the world at prices to suit all purses, even
the leanest. The disadvantage is that products, in the eagerness of
competition for a market, are accepted which are of a character to harm
and not help the development of the contemporary mind in moral and
intellectual strength. The public expresses its fear of this in the
phrase it has invented--"the spawn of the press." The author who writes
simply to supply this press, and in constant view of a market, is certain
to deteriorate in his quality, nay more, as a beginner he is satisfied if
he can produce something that will sell without regard to its quality. Is
it extravagant to speak of a tendency to make the author merely an
adjunct of the publishing house? Take as an illustration the publications
in books and magazines relating to the late Spanish-American war. How
many of them were ordered to meet a supposed market, and how many of them
were the spontaneous and natural productions of writers who had something
to say? I am not quarreling, you see, with the newspapers who do this
sort of thing; I am speaking of the tendency of what we have been
accustomed to call literature to take on the transient and hasty
character of the newspaper.

In another respect, in method if not in quality, this literature
approaches the newspaper. It is the habit of some publishing houses, not
of all, let me distinctly say, to seek always notoriety, not to nurse and
keep before the public mind the best that has been evolved from time to
time, but to offer always something new. The year's flooring is threshed
off and the floor swept to make room for a fresh batch. Effort eventually
ceases for the old and approved, and is concentrated on experiments. This
is like the conduct of a newspaper. It is assumed that the public must be
startled all the time.

I speak of this freely because I think it as bad policy for the publisher
as it is harmful to the public of readers. The same effort used to
introduce a novelty will be much better remunerated by pushing the sale
of an acknowledged good piece of literature.

Literature depends, like every other product bought by the people, upon
advertising, and it needs much effort usually to arrest the attention of
our hurrying public upon what it would most enjoy if it were brought to
its knowledge.

It would not be easy to fix the limit in this vast country to the
circulation of a good book if it were properly kept before the public.
Day by day, year by year, new readers are coming forward with curiosity
and intellectual wants. The generation that now is should not be deprived
of the best in the last generation. Nay more, one publication, in any
form, reaches only a comparatively small portion of the public that would
be interested in it. A novel, for instance, may have a large circulation
in a magazine; it may then appear in a book; it may reach other readers
serially again in the columns of a newspaper; it may be offered again in
all the by-ways by subscription, and yet not nearly exhaust its
legitimate running power. This is not a supposition but a fact proved by
trial. Nor is it to be wondered at, when we consider that we have an
unequaled homogeneous population with a similar common-school education.
In looking over publishers' lists I am constantly coming across good
books out of print, which are practically unknown to this generation, and
yet are more profitable, truer to life and character, more entertaining
and amusing, than most of those fresh from the press month by month.

Of the effect upon the literary product of writing to order, in obedience
to a merely commercial instinct, I need not enlarge to a company of
authors, any more than to a company of artists I need to enlarge upon the
effect of a like commercial instinct upon art.

I am aware that the evolution of literature or art in any period, in
relation to the literature and art of the world, cannot be accurately
judged by contemporaries and participants, nor can it be predicted. But I
have great expectations of the product of both in this country, and I am
sure that both will be affected by the conduct of persons now living. It
is for this reason that I have spoken.




THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE

By Charles Dudley Warner




CONTENTS:

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY.
THE RELATION OF LITERATURE TO LIFE




BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

The county of Franklin in Northwestern Massachusetts, if not rivaling in
certain ways the adjoining Berkshire, has still a romantic beauty of its
own. In the former half of the nineteenth century its population was
largely given up to the pursuit of agriculture, though not under
altogether favorable conditions. Manufactures had not yet invaded the
region either to add to its wealth or to defile its streams. The villages
were small, the roads pretty generally wretched save in summer, and from
many of the fields the most abundant crop that could be gathered was that
of stones.

The character of the people conformed in many ways to that of the soil.
The houses which lined the opposite sides of the single street, of which
the petty places largely consisted, as well as the dwellings which dotted
the country, were the homes of men who possessed in fullness many of the
features, good and bad, that characterized the Puritan stock to which
they belonged. There was a good deal of religion in these rural
communities and occasionally some culture. Still, as a rule, it must be
confessed, there would be found in them much more of plain living than of
high thinking. Broad thinking could hardly be said to exist at all. By
the dwellers in that region Easter had scarcely even been heard of;
Christmas was tolerated after a fashion, but was nevertheless looked upon
with a good deal of suspicion as a Popish invention. In the beliefs of
these men several sins not mentioned in the decalogue took really, if
unconsciously, precedence of those which chanced to be found in that
list. Dancing was distinctly immoral; card-playing led directly to
gambling with all its attendant evils; theatre-going characterized the
conduct of the more disreputable denizens of great cities. Fiction was
not absolutely forbidden; but the most lenient regarded it as a great
waste of time, and the boy who desired its solace on any large scale was
under the frequent necessity of seeking the seclusion of the haymow.

But however rigid and stern the beliefs of men might be, nature was there
always charming, not only in her summer beauty, but even in her wildest
winter moods. Narrow, too, as might be the views of the members of these
communities about the conduct of life, there was ever before the minds of
the best of them an ideal of devotion to duty, an earnest all-pervading
moral purpose which implanted the feeling that neither personal success
nor pleasure of any sort could ever afford even remotely compensation for
the neglect of the least obligation which their situation imposed. It was
no misfortune for any one, who was later to be transported to a broader
horizon and more genial air, to have struck the roots of his being in a
soil where men felt the full sense of moral responsibility for everything
said or done, and where the conscience was almost as sensitive to the
suggestion of sin as to its actual accomplishment.

It was amidst such surroundings that Charles Dudley Warner was born on
the 12th of September, 1829. His birthplace was the hill town of
Plainfield, over two thousand feet above the level of the sea. His
father, a farmer, was a man of cultivation, though not college-bred. He
died when his eldest son had reached the age of five, leaving to his
widow the care of two children. Three years longer the family continued
to remain on the farm. But however delightful the scenery of the country
might be, its aesthetic attractions did not sufficiently counterbalance
its agricultural disadvantages. Furthermore, while the summers were
beautiful on this high table land, the winters were long and dreary in
the enforced solitude of a thinly settled region. In consequence, the
farm was sold after the death of the grandfather, and the home broken up.
The mother with her two children, went to the neighboring village of
Charlemont on the banks of the Deerfield. There the elder son took up his
residence with his guardian and relative, a man of position and influence
in the community, who was the owner of a large farm. With him he stayed
until he was twelve years old, enjoying all the pleasures and doing all
the miscellaneous jobs of the kind which fall to the lot of a boy brought
up in an agricultural community.

The story of this particular period of his life was given by Warner in a
work which was published about forty years later. It is the volume
entitled "Being a Boy." Nowhere has there been drawn a truer or more
vivid picture of rural New England. Nowhere else can there be found such
a portrayal of the sights and sounds, the pains and pleasures of life on
a farm as seen from the point of view of a boy. Here we have them all
graphically represented: the daily "chores" that must be looked after;
the driving of cows to and from the pasture; the clearing up of fields
where vegetation struggled with difficulty against the prevailing stones;
the climbing of lofty trees and the swaying back and forth in the wind on
their topmost boughs; the hunting of woodchucks; the nutting excursions
of November days, culminating in the glories of Thanksgiving; the romance
of school life, over which vacations, far from being welcomed with
delight, cast a gloom as involving extra work; the cold days of winter
with its deep or drifting snows, the mercury of the thermometer clinging
with fondness to zero, even when the sun was shining brilliantly; the
long chilling nights in which the frost carved fantastic structures on
the window-panes; the eager watching for the time when the sap would
begin to run in the sugar-maples; the evenings given up to reading, with
the inevitable inward discontent at being sent to bed too early; the
longing for the mild days of spring to come, when the heavy cowhide boots
could be discarded, and the boy could rejoice at last in the covering for
his feet which the Lord had provided. These and scores of similar
descriptions fill up the picture of the life furnished here. It was
nature's own school wherein was to be gained the fullest intimacy with
her spirit. While there was much which she could not teach, there was
also much which she alone could teach. From his communion with her the
boy learned lessons which the streets of crowded cities could never have
imparted.

At the age of twelve this portion of his education came to an end. The
family then moved to Cazenovia in Madison county in Central New York,
from which place Warner's mother had come, and where her immediate
relatives then resided. Until he went to college this was his home. There
he attended a preparatory school under the direction of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, which was styled the Oneida Conference Seminary. It was
at this institution that he fitted mainly for college; for to college it
had been his father's dying wish that he should go, and the boy himself
did not need the spur of this parting injunction. A college near his home
was the excellent one of Hamilton in the not distant town of Clinton in
the adjoining county of Oneida. Thither he repaired in 1848, and as he
had made the best use of his advantages, he was enabled to enter the
sophomore class. He was graduated in 1851.

But while fond of study he had all these years been doing something
besides studying. The means of the family were limited, and to secure the
education he desired, not only was it necessary to husband the resources
he possessed, but to increase them in every possible way. Warner had all
the American boy's willingness to undertake any occupation not in itself
discreditable. Hence to him fell a full share of those experiences which
have diversified the early years of so many men who have achieved
success. He set up type in a printing office; he acted as an assistant in
a bookstore; he served as clerk in a post-office. He was thus early
brought into direct contact with persons of all classes and conditions of
life.

The experience gave to his keenly observant mind an insight into the
nature of men which was to be of special service to him in later years.
Further, it imparted to him a familiarity with their opinions and hopes
and aspirations which enabled him to understand and sympathize with
feelings in which he did not always share.

During the years which immediately followed his departure from college,
Warner led the somewhat desultory and apparently aimless life of many
American graduates whose future depends upon their own exertions and
whose choice of a career is mainly determined by circumstances. From the
very earliest period of his life he had been fond of reading. It was an
inherited taste. The few books he found in his childhood's home would
have been almost swept out of sight in the torrent, largely of trash,
which pours now in a steady stream into the humblest household. But the
books, though few, were of a high quality; and because they were few they
were read much, and their contents became an integral part of his
intellectual equipment. Furthermore, these works of the great masters,
with which he became familiar, set for him a standard by which to test
the value of whatever he read, and saved him even in his earliest years
from having his taste impaired and his judgment misled by the vogue of
meretricious productions which every now and then gain popularity for the
time. They gave him also a distinct bent towards making literature his
profession. But literature, however pleasant and occasionally profitable
as an avocation, was not to be thought of as a vocation. Few there are at
any period who have succeeded in finding it a substantial and permanent
support; at that time and in this country such a prospect was practically
hopeless for any one. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that
Warner, though often deviating from the direct path, steadily gravitated
toward the profession of law.

Still, even in those early days his natural inclination manifested
itself. The Knickerbocker Magazine was then the chosen organ to which all
young literary aspirants sent their productions. To it even in his
college days Warner contributed to some extent, though it would doubtless
be possible now to gather out of this collection but few pieces which,
lacking his own identification, could be assigned to him positively. At a
later period he contributed articles to Putnam's Magazine, which began
its existence in 1853. Warner himself at one time, in that period of
struggle and uncertainty, expected to become an editor of a monthly which
was to be started in Detroit. But before the magazine was actually set on
foot the inability of the person who projected it to supply the necessary
means for carrying it on prevented the failure which would inevitably
have befallen a venture of that sort, undertaken at that time and in that
place. Yet he showed in a way the native bent of his mind by bringing out
two years after his graduation from college a volume of selections from
English and American authors entitled "The Book of Eloquence." This work
a publisher many years afterward took advantage of his later reputation
to reprint.

This unsettled period of his life lasted for several years. He was
resident for a while in various places. Part of the time he seems to have
been in Cazenovia; part of the time in New York; part of the time in the
West. One thing in particular there was which stood in the way of fixing
definitely his choice of a profession. This was the precarious state of
his health, far poorer then than it was in subsequent years. Warner,
however, was never at any period of his life what is called robust. It
was his exceeding temperance in all things which enabled him to venture
upon the assumption and succeed in the accomplishment of tasks which men,
physically far stronger than he, would have shrunk from under-taking,
even had they been possessed of the same abilities. But his condition,
part of that time, was such that it led him to take a course of treatment
at the sanatorium in Clifton Springs. It became apparent, however, that
life in the open air, for a while at least, was the one thing essential.
Under the pressure of this necessity he secured a position as one of an
engineering party engaged in the survey of a railway in Missouri. In that
occupation he spent a large part of 1853 and 1854. He came back from this
expedition restored to health. With that result accomplished, the duty of
settling definitely upon what he was to do became more urgent. Among
other things he did, while living for a while with his uncle in
Binghamton, N. Y., he studied law in the office of Daniel S. Dickinson.

In the Christmas season of 1854 he went with a friend on a visit to
Philadelphia and stayed at the house of Philip M. Price, a prominent
citizen of that place who was engaged, among other things, in the
conveyancing of real estate. It will not be surprising to any one who
knew the charm of his society in later life to be told that he became at
once a favorite with the older man. The latter was advanced in years, he
was anxious to retire from active business. Acting under his advice,
Warner was induced to come to Philadelphia in 1855 and join him, and to
form subsequently a partnership in legal conveyancing with another young
man who had been employed in Mr. Price's office. Thus came into being the
firm of Barton and Warner. Their headquarters were first in Spring Garden
Street and later in Walnut Street. The future soon became sufficiently
assured to justify Warner in marriage, and in October, 1856, he was
wedded to Susan Lee, daughter of William Elliott Lee of New York City.

But though in a business allied to the law, Warner was not yet a lawyer.
His occupation indeed was only in his eyes a temporary makeshift while he
was preparing himself for what was to be his real work in life.
Therefore, while supporting himself by carrying on the business of
conveyancing, he attended the courses of study at the law department of
the University of Pennsylvania, during the academic years of 1856-57 and
1857-58. From that institution he received the degree of bachelor of law
in 1858--often misstated 1856--and was ready to begin the practice of
his, profession.

In those days every young man of ability and ambition was counseled to go
West and grow up with the country, and was not unfrequently disposed to
take that course of his own accord. Warner felt the general impulse. He
had contemplated entering, in fact had pretty definitely made up his mind
to enter, into a law partnership with a friend in one of the smaller
places in that region. But on a tour, somewhat of exploration, he stopped
at Chicago. There he met another friend, and after talking over the
situation with him he decided to take up his residence in that city. So
in 1858 the law-firm of Davenport and Warner came into being. It lasted
until 1860. It was not exactly a favorable time for young men to enter
upon the practice of this profession. The country was just beginning to
recover from the depression which had followed the disastrous panic of
1857; but confidence was as yet far from being restored. The new firm did
a fairly good business; but while there was sufficient work to do, there
was but little money to pay for it. Still Warner would doubtless have
continued in the profession had he not received an offer, the acceptance
of which determined his future and changed entirely his career.

Hawley, now United States Senator from Connecticut, was Warner's senior
by a few years. He had preceded him as a student at the Oneida Conference
Seminary and at Hamilton College. Practicing law in Hartford, he had
started in 1857, in conjunction with other leading citizens, a paper
called the Evening Press. It was devoted to the advocacy of the
principles of the Republican party, which was at that time still in what
may be called the formative state of its existence. This was a period in
which for some years the dissolution had been going on of the two old
parties which had divided the country. Men were changing sides and were
aligning themselves anew according to their views on questions which were
every day assuming greater prominence in the minds of all. There was
really but one great subject talked about or thought about. It split into
opposing sections the whole land over which was lowering the grim, though
as yet unrecognizable, shadow of civil war. The Republican party had been
in existence but a very few years, but in that short time it had
attracted to its ranks the young and enthusiastic spirits of the North,
just as to the other side were impelled the members of the same class in
the South. The intellectual contest which preceded the physical was
stirring the hearts of all men. Hawley, who was well aware of Warner's
peculiar ability, was anxious to secure his co-operation and assistance.
He urged him to come East and join him in the conduct of the new
enterprise he had undertaken.