Frank CarpenterUU Tracts On-Line
Last revised: March 22, 1997
"There is Curtis," said one of them; " he is an intelligent man."
Yes," said the other somewhat reluctantly, it an intelligent man."
Said the first one: " Curtis is a very intelligent man."
"Yes, Yes," said the other man, " you may call him a very intelligent man for a literary man," [Laughter.]
We did not use to hear it said that Abraham Lincoln was a very intelligent man for a rail-splitter, or that General Grant was a very intelligent man for a tanner. The literary man is also a man and a brother, and why should it be surprising that he, like other American citizens in humble avocations, should sometimes exhibit intelligence also ?
I sometimes think, therefore, that with all the real sympathy with and often enthusiasm for literature in America, it is not always quite a complimentary enthusiasm. It is a little too much like the enthusiasm that the Agricultural Society shows for what they call the Ladies' Department at the annual exhibition. They set apart for it the nicest room in the whole building. They devote their best accommodations to the little dogs in worsted and the little cats in canvas and fine cane frames, but after all, you will find the farmers themselves outside, among the two-year olds and the mowing-machines. I might go further and compare the condition of literature to those old-fashioned toll-bridges you still find in Vermont, where everybody who is anybody pays to go over, but ministers and women were accustomed to cross without paying toll.
Now, it is not at all strange when you look at the origin of this country that there should be some divided feeling. This Nation was not born like Greece, with the ideal State always to the front. It was born like Rome, where states manship came first, and, as we know of Rome, all poetry, all literature, was for a time regarded with distrust.
In the early days of this Republic, literature could not be expected to have a footing; the conditions were too stern and the imagination too serious to give place to literature at first. The men who settled this Nation were, to an unusual extent, to all extent, for instance, unequaled in the older British colonies, men of education, college bred men, men that brought with them books and libraries. John Harvard, who was not a college-bred man of the Church of England, but of what was then a less trained body, representing the dissenting clergy of England -- John Harvard, in the library which he bequeathed to Harvard College, and of which only one book now remains, gave books that represented then not only the theology but the literature of the human race - Homer and Herodotus, Hesiod and Juvenal and AEschylus. It was a race of cultivated men who settled New England, and, though to a less degree, Virginia. But the contact of actual life in the Colonies as unfavorable, if not to the substance, at least to the graces, of literature. The explanation was that everything was concentrated on the training of clergymen of profound theology. All was secondary to that.
It was an exceptional class of clergymen who founded especially the Puritan commonwealths, and all the commonwealths then were more or less Puritan in America. It was not, therefore, that these men did not appreciate literature. They appreciated theirs. The difficulty is for us to appreciate it as much as they. The impression that often exists that the Puritan clergymen set themselves against literature and science is quite wrong. The clergymen were the educated class of the people, and all there was of literature and science belonged to them, and they filled all the functions of the State, and therefore had the knowledge useful to the State.
Professor Goodale, of Harvard, has lately shown that the first introduction of the natural sciences at Harvard came, not from the love of science, but because the clergy man of that period, being also the physician of his parish, needed to know how to do something for their bodies as well as their souls; and he studied his chemistry and got a rather formidable materia medica, to correspond with his rather formidable theology. Everything concentrated itself on the training of the clergy. The clergy were the lawyers and were the militia officers. The clergyman who became a judge opened his court with prayer. The clergyman who would become a militia captain opened his spring training with prayer. It was all a part of the same thing. And when we say that those men did not love literature, we say, only, that we do not love the literature they produced.
If you read, for instance, that most entertaining book of the second generation of the Puritans, that American Pepy's diary, the narrative, the journals and letter-books of judge Samuel Sewall, you will find that he not only did not ignore poetry but that lie wrote it on every imaginable occasion. If there was a law-suit going on in the court, he always would pass around little copies of verses. If there was a funeral it was always celebrated in song.
On one occasion Samuel Sewall, noticing a remarkable circumstance at a funeral, recorded it in this couplet-it was the funeral of Mrs. Mary Coney:-
That was literature a little before the year 1800 You can see that such poetry must have added new terrors to death, litigation, and courtship. [Laugliter and applause.] In the days of the early Republic President John Adams rejoiced that there were no artists in America, and never likely to be, because it seemed clear to the men of those times that art and literature belonged to the degradation of the Government. In the year 1808 Fisher Ames, who was the first person to pronounce an address on American literature, devoted the whole address to saying that the subject of his address never by any possibility could exist, at least while America retained its freedom. "The time will come," he said, "when our liberties have been over thrown, and when our future emperor shall have killed off all his rivals and surrounded himself with a voluptuous court - when he will have art and literature to amuse his leisure." Ten years after that time, the liberties of America being still intact, American literature was born. [Applause.]
"The North American Review" was established in 1815; Bryant's "Thanatopsis" was published in 1817; Cooper's "Spy" in 1815; and when the good-natured Monroe, after a Presidency that was called "the era of good feeling," went out of office, although Whittier was still a boy on his father's farm, and Longfellow and Hawthorne were still undergraduates at Bowdoin College, and Emerson was still a country school-teacher, American literature was born. The thing was settled. The voluptuous court that Fisher Ames apprehended has never come in. I have seen a variety of criticism upon the present estimable and respectable Administration at Washington, but never in the most ardent opposition newspaper have I seen it denounced as voluptuous. Literature in America, therefore, may fairly be considered as a thing which belongs to the future, and which is one of the careers which young people can boldly enter upon, and one which has won its place among the great moving activities of the country. And there are certain advantages which literature enjoys in a republican country, and especially in a country like this, which no other form of government or type of society can rival. I am constantly struck with this, as between American and English authors, for instance. There is a certain professional self-respect possible in a community like ours for the literary class which hardly exists in a country where there is a special aristocracy, and where, by its very nature, literature takes an humble part in the social demarcation. Fancy a man like Anthony Trollope, for instance, after his long and brilliant career of letters, writing his autobiography and giving a considerable space to the question as to the manner in which the literary man ought to treat his social superiors. I have never yet encountered a literary man in America who felt for an instant that he had such a thing as a social superior. The humblest little Gallagher on the smallest country newspaper, who talks about "me and the editors," recognizes, perhaps, that there is a class in the community who might fancy themselves his superiors, but as it takes two to make a quarrel, it takes two to make a superior. [Applause.]
As Mr. Howells well said, "The peculiarity of all that calls itself aristocracy in America is that, although it may look down, other people don't look up." There is the difference. It is a curious fact that the great source and organizer and recognized definer of all that claims to be an artificial aristocracy in America should remain unheard of and unknown in the world - he and his favorite phrase, the Four Hundred, alike - until he stepped into the ranks of authorship and became a comic writer. [Applause.]
I maintain there is a distinct character to American literature. There was a time when the mere existence of a highly organized and hereditary aristocracy was sufficient to crush the most famous among men in literature. Think, for instance, what the conditions of a monarchy did to crush the greatest purely intellectual power of his age, Voltaire. When Voltaire was in Paris, a young man of twenty-one, the most brilliant person of his time, he was sought everywhere for his companionship, his wit, his brilliancy. On one occasion, at the table of a Duke, he met a man of some hereditary note, but none otherwise, Chevalier Rohan-Chabot. They had a little discussion and Voltaire was too strong for the Chevalier in his arguments, who turned brutally upon him and said: " Who is this young man who dares to talk so loudly to me?" "It is a young man," said Voltaire, " who, if he did not inherit any distinguished name, at least does some honor to the name he bears." The Chevalier said nothing. He probably had nothing to say, but there was something he could do, and the next time he had Voltaire down at that Duke's table that nobleman had his servants ready in the hall to take Voltaire and drag him from the table, beat him with rods from the hall and eject him from the front door. For what? For getting the better of a nobleman in an argument! And the Duke, his entertainer, who ought to have laid down his life in the protection of the humblest, guest, looked on and laughed, thought it was a good joke, served him right, what business had he to speak disrespectfully to one of superior rank?
Voltaire, the moment he left that house, went straight to his lodgings; he sent for the best fencing-master in Paris, and for a fortnight took fencing lessons - a thing he had never done before - and sent a challenge to Chevalier Rohan-Chabot. The answer to that challenge was an order from the King to commit Voltaire to prison, but with a notice that he might escape if he would go to England and remain for six months; and the biographers of Voltaire believe, justly, that a large part of the bitterness, and the serious, malignant hostility to so much that was good, which characterized his life, was due to that terrible early contest with the established powers of society.
You may say that is an old story; nothing of the kind can happen now. But to a sensitive person, and authors are sometimes found to be sensitive, to a sensitive person there may be social slights which cut like rods or imprison like the Bastille.
Many years ago a young American girl, whom I knew, found herself in London as the guest of a relative, who was the wife of an Ambassador to England from a continental State, and a person of great social standing and influence. This young lady, only seventeen years of age, was, in a way, to enter upon easy terms the most exclusive society. You can imagine how she enjoyed it. What American girl would not like to go to England at seventeen and find herself among the honored, dining with lords and ladies, with princes and princesses, observing all these royal and noble creatures close at hand, and even at feeding times, which is always the most interesting period in any menagerie.
This young girl enjoyed it enormously. At the first of these entertainments to which she went, she found herself shrinking into a humble corner, looking around her to try to decide who were the most distinguished or the most high-born of those she saw. Most of them looked to her rather commonplace, very much like other well-bred gentlemen and ladies. But her eye fell on one very distinguished-looking old man in the opposite corner, who seemed to her a person who might be worthy of any social position; not handsome, rather ugly than otherwise, but keenly intellectual, and in every way distinguished. She resolved to fix her eye upon him and find out who he was.
After a while the summons was given to the dinnertable - they were summoned to the dining-hall in that complicated and elaborate order of precedence which you will find at the end of the English books of etiquette. It is a very complicated order of precedence, and this yound girl saw every stripling lordship, and every young damsel, the scion of an honorable house, pass her by, and she watched from her corner. Still they went, two and two, two, and two and two, like Noah's more ancient families on a similar occasion. And still she watched for her distinguished-looking old man in the opposite corner, until the last of all, at the very end of that brilliant procession, walked the only two untitled plebeians in the room, that young American girl, and that fine-looking old man, who turned out to be Samuel Rogers, the distinguished poet of those days, and the recognized head of literary society in London.
My young friend said that she got two things at that entertainment - she got the most delightful companion she ever had at a dinner-party, and she got a lesson in the utter shallowness and folly of mere hereditary rank that would last a lifetime. Samuel Rogers's poems are not read so much now as formerly, but at that time the highest literary honor a man could have was to dine with Rogers. He was one of the richest bankers in London, and was probably or possibly the only person in the room who had won for himself a reputation outside of his own little island; but he was next to nobody in that company, and the little American girl was the nobody. [Laughter.]
Whatever may be said of the evils or the follies of the aristocracy of wealth in this country, it may at least be said of it that it knows its own place better than that. I can easily conceive of circles of wealth where Longfellow and Emerson might not be invited as guests, and where the hosts might never have heard of them. I remember just after the fall of the Tweed dynasty having pointed out to me a New York alderman who had been conspicuously identified with it, and who took a friend to drive through the Park. As they passed the statue of Alexander von Humboldt, the alderman said to his friend: "There is the statue of Dr. Helmbold, though why they should have put it there I do not know. He was nothing but an apothecary, any way." [Laughter.] I do not undertake to claim that that man would have invited Emerson or Longfellow to an entertainment, but if that man had ever heard of me or did invite me, it would not be to put me at the wrong end of the dinner-table. That is what I mean in saying of the literary life in America - it gives or permits a man a certain self-respect.
Then, again, we have another great advantage in literature in a republic, and especially in this republic, in the greater variety of intercourse which prevails among all sorts and conditions of people. Some years ago at Chautauqua a distinguished English clergyman was astonished when he went there to find people of all denominations mingling with perfect freedom, whereas, he said: "In England the mere presence, of one-half of those people would drive the other half out of the room." That is as striking in all circles in England to an American as he indicated. It is just as striking in circles of reformers and freethinkers in England as in any other circle. English society is not merely divided by the successive strata of social distinction, but also by infinite collateral, infinite cross ramifications of distinction.
Moncure D. Conway, who lived so long in England and always liked it, said: "People talk about London literary magazines. There is no such thing as a literary magazine in London. The things they call magazines are a series of circular letters, each of them addressed by a certain set of people to a few gentlemen who belong to the same clubs with themselves, and agree in their general opinions." No magazines, but circular letters. That is why our magazines displace them so easily.
The breadth of American discussion is always a source of astonishment to the people of older nations, and it is a point of immense value. The whole world is wiser than any man in the world, even if the man is an author. That literature is the strongest, therefore, which reaches the widest basis for discussion. And still again, in America this advantage reaches, as I maintain, to the very language of literature and to the language ultimately, of the community at large. We get a vast deal of criticism, of course, upon American slang, from visitors, who, when left to themselves, acquire slang enough to take the most experienced American's breath away. [Applause.] We are constantly confronted in society in London with American phrases such as we never heard of in America. A very accomplished lady said to me once: "It seems to me very strange that you Americans who seem so kindly, should always address every man you meet as 'stranger,' whereas in England men always greet each other as 'my friend.' " I could scarcely convince this lady that it had been many years since I had been addressed as stranger." She said: " I thought you began every sentence with 'Well, stranger, I guess.' " I admit frankly that we have any number of Americanisms, any number of obsolete phrases still preserved among us; but what I believe is this: that the English language like all other languages is in constant process of development. Slang is only good English. I solemnly believe that this development goes on best in a democratic community. And why? What is the root of all language? Actual life -- the life of every day. Where do the strong words come from? From the life of every day. The literary man does not make them. If he is not true to everything else he is a little afraid of a new word. The dictionary makers do not make them. Their office is to record and define the language of other people.
The people themselves are the source of strong language; and Emerson himself, the most refined of scholars, points out that if you want a vigorous vocabulary you must not go to the clubs and universities, but you must go to the men around the anvil, the shoemakers on their benches, and the gossips in the village shops. They make the words, they make them strongly -- their words go like bullets to the mark. Once in my native town in my youth, when we had put in a highly educated college graduate for Mayor, there occurred a large fire in the outskirts of the town. At the ringing of the bells the Mayor took his gold-headed cane and walked in the direction of the fire. People were running across his way and were busy in their efforts to put out the flames. There was one man running with a fire-bucket in his hands, and as the Mayor stood resting with his hands upon his cane he accosted the man and said: "Can you inform me as to the probable origin of this alarming conflagration?" "Sot, I guess," replied the man, and ran on with his fire-bucket. That is where language comes from; that is the vigor of language. [Applause.]
Some of you can recall the time, a great many years ago, when, as we had done the Indians a good deal of injury, it seemed as if something ought to be adopted by way of return, the men took up the fashion of wearing blankets around their shoulders. I was then young and ardent, and bought a blanket. I went out and walked down the street of the rural city where I lived, and as I approached a building where the rat-tat-tat of the carpenters' hammers were very busy on the roof, I noticed that it diminished gradually, and then ceased altogether. I was conscious of attracting attention. That did not surprise me. At certain periods of youth it does not seem strange that all business should stop to look at a new garment; and presently a voice "fell like a morning star," as Longfellow expresses it, to this effect: "H'm -- horseblankets is riz." All the persuasion of the fairest lips could not have induced me that day to lay aside that blanket. But it never occurred again, and it passed out of use, except as a lap-robe in traveling in the railway-car or the carriage.
But this is what I mean by vigor of language. Yet this tendency, if left to itself in the uneducated people, would simply separate that people, and make of them a class with a wholly different dialect. When it belongs to a people among whom education is universal, or becoming universal, it keeps the language in its vigor; keeps it from decaying; keeps it alive. You need the education. Without the education, the vigor remains, but the language grows narrower and narrower, for want of education. We see this much more in the Southern blacks, for instance. A very few words do for their vocabulary, but these few retain their vigor. Once in a negro regiment during the war I was talking with a stately, jet black Nubian woman, characterized by that majesty of bearing which results from the carrying of baskets on their heads, about a child in whom she was interested, and whom some other person had inveigled away from her. She described to me the relations she bore to the child, and said: "I take she when she am dat high, and now if him wants to leave we let her go." It was not perfect grammar, but the thought was there. And as I believe the best language in the world is destined to be produced among the democratic races. All classes share something of the vigor which is the root of language, and all share something of the culture, without which, language retaining its vigor becomes dry and narrow and disappointing. [Applause,]
But perhaps I ought to speak distinctively as I go on, about literature as a profession, desirable or undesirable, for the young. I see here, possibly, before me, many young men or maidens who are penetrating that question. I find myself sometimes in a minority with literary men who do not ask for advice on that question, but carry out "Punch's" advice to young men about to marry, and say don't.
Literature as a profession has an advantage in this country. The disadvantage you are constantly told just now in the newspapers in the discussion growing out of the copyright discussion, is that literature is not paid well; that a man cannot make his living out of it; that a man is tempted into other occupations, or to combine other occupations, because he cannot live by literature. There is no doubt in my mind that the thing can be done.
The criticism comes, perhaps, from those who either have not done it or have not been willing to do it, or have not been satisfied to the extent to which they can do it. When a patient dies, everybody in the house is convinced that if they had brought in the other doctor instead of that one, he would have been cured. When a man does not make a living at literature you cannot convince that man that he wouldn't, if he had only had the wisdom in early life to become a dentist, or a civil engineer, have been a howling success.
People are not easily convinced that they have made a mistake. It is much easier to convince them that the whole community is making a mistake in not appreciating them. There is no doubt that the maximum rewards, pecuniarily, in this country are withheld from literature; they are withheld from law, they are withheld from medicine. It is not necessary to say that they are withheld from the pulpit: that requires no argument.
If you wish your son or daughter to go in for the immense prizes, do not make him a literary man, or her a literary woman, of course, but do not make them lawyers, do not make them doctors, do not make them anything of what we call the educated professions. Fling them in among the bulls and bears of the Stock Exchange, and if they come out alive, which they probably will not, they may come out with millions to their credit in the bank, but think of the risk that is involved. I do not speak of it morally; we will let that go for the moment; but the risk on the other side. The comparative safety of the literary man's life is one of its great advantages. He is safer than the lawyer, he is safer than the physician, he is so much safer than the great capitalist of Wall Street, that there is not a moment's comparison to be made.
Once when I was living at Newport I lived next door to a man who received a salary Of $30,000 a year for doing nothing. He could do anything he wished except to use the family name in the manufacture of tobacco. He was given this immense salary to keep out of the business, the money being given him by his elder brother. I know of many young men who would take that contract with perfect security of fulfilling it. The brother of the man I have just spoken of made, it is said, $700,000 a year out of his monopoly. There is the standard. I do not pretend that I know many literary men who make $700,000 a year by literature. [Laughter.] If that is what you aim at you had better inquire at some other establishment. You will not find it there. No professional man makes that. The lawyer who makes $100,000 a year is not to be found, I am told, in New York. The lawyer who makes $50,000 a year, the physician who makes $50,000 a year is rarely to be found anywhere. I have heard of one clergyman who was said to have an income Of $20,000 a year, and believing it somewhat incredible, I took the liberty to write to him on the subject - an eminent clergyman of New York - and he wrote to me that it was all nonsense, and he could not imagine where the report came from.
There have been authors in America who for several years in succession made $20,000 a year. I doubt if there was ever in America an author who made more than $10,000 a year for several years in succession - ten years we will say. The number of authors in America who make $5,ooo a year by their pen is said to be no greater than you can count on the fingers of both hands, although I observe myself, especially when international copyright is under discussion, a singular humility about my brother authors as to announcing their receipts, and they are all so anxious to plead poverty that you can hardly find one here and there, like Mr. Cable or Mr. Clement, who is willing to admit that on the whole he earns an honest living.
But taking $5,000 a year as a respectable standard for a reasonably successful man, and it certainly is a reasonable standard, because it is the standard upon which we pay our members of Congress, and, inasmuch as they fix their own rate of pay, or at least for ensuing years, if they do not know how much they are worth, who should? As we pay our judges that amount, except in the larger cities, why should we have such profound pity for the literary man, to whom, if he is tolerably successful and willing to work as hard as men would work in those other professions, an income of $5,000 a year is as practicable as it is for them? [Applause.]
It is my hope that, if there is one who is led into pleasant paths of literature through any words I have said to-night, it is my hope that it will be in this spirit of self-respect and of true nationality. I am glad to express the belief that literature, as a profession in America, has an end that may worthily command the attention of the young and the ambitious, and if it exists at all it is surely one of the highest forms of human activity. Without a great literature no nation is permanently great. Without literature history has no lasting heroism, beauty no chronicle, emotion no echo, and without it all the vast achievements and sacrifices of our great civil strife, all the coming achievements and glories of our great Exposition, will have nothing to secure for us a permanent place. [Applause.]
Frank Carpenter