Literature in the Making Part 2

Of course many young writers come to Mrs. Norris for advice. And some of them excellently ill.u.s.trate the tendency which she deprecates, the tendency to write about the unknown instead of the familiar.

"I was talking the other day to a young girl of my acquaintance who is a costume model," she said. "She has literary aspirations. Now, her life itself has been an interesting story--her rise from a shopgirl to her present position. And every now and then she will say something to me that is a most interesting revelation--something that indicates the rich store of experience that she might, if she would, draw upon in her stories. On one occasion she said to me, 'I went home and put my shoe-drawer in order.'

"'What do you mean?' I asked. 'What is your shoe-drawer?'

"'Why, my shoe-drawer!' she answered. 'You see, we costume models have to have a drawer full of shoes, because we must change our shoes to match every costume.'

"Why is it," asked Mrs. Norris, "that a girl like that cannot see the value of such an incident as that? That shoe-drawer is a picturesque and interesting thing, unknown to most people. And this girl, who knows all about it, and wants to write, cannot see its literary value! And yet what more interesting subject is there for her to write about than that shoe-drawer? I do not see why writers will not appreciate the importance of writing about the things that are around them."

Mrs. Norris gave a somewhat embarra.s.sed laugh. "I really shouldn't attempt to lay down the law in this way," she said. "I can speak only for myself--I must write of the people and things that I know best, but I ought not to attempt to prescribe what other people shall write about."

Mrs. Norris's chief literary enthusiasm seems to be Charles d.i.c.kens.

"When we were all infants out in the backwoods of California," she said, "we battened on d.i.c.kens. d.i.c.kens and a writer whom I don't suppose anybody reads nowadays--Henry Kingsley. The boys read Sir Walter Scott's novels, and left d.i.c.kens to me. I read d.i.c.kens with delight, and I still read him with delight. I have found pa.s.sages in d.i.c.kens of which I honestly believe there are no equal in all English literature except in Shakespeare. I do not think that there is ever a year in which I do not read some of d.i.c.kens's novels over again. Of course, any one can find d.i.c.kens's faults--but I do not see how any one can fail to find his excellences."

"What is it in d.i.c.kens that especially attracts you?" I asked.

Mrs. Norris was silent for a moment. Then she said: "I think I like him chiefly because he saw so clearly the joys of the poor. He did not give his poor people nothing but disease and oppression and despair. He gave them roast goose and plum pudding for their Christmas dinner--he gave them faith and hope and love. He knew that often the rich suffer and the poor are happy.

"Many of the modern realists seem ignorant of the fact that the poor may be happy. They think that the cotter's Sat.u.r.day night must always be squalid and sordid and dismal, and that the millionaire's Sat.u.r.day night must be splendid and joyful. As a matter of fact, the poor family may be, and often is, healthier and happier in every way than the rich family. But these extreme realists are not like d.i.c.kens, they have not his intimate knowledge of the life of the poor. They have the outsider's viewpoint.

"Too many writers are telling us about the sorrows of the poor. We need writers who will tell us about the joys of the poor. We need writers who will be aware of the pleasures to be derived from a good dinner of corned beef and cabbage and a visit to a moving-picture theater. Often when I pa.s.s a row of mean houses, as they would be called, I think gratefully of the good times that I have had in just such places."

The thought of that little Celtic Californian reading d.i.c.kens among the redwood-trees appealed to me. So I asked Mrs. Norris to tell more about her childhood.

"Well," she said, "we hear a great deal about the misery, the bleak and barren lives of the children who live in the tenements of New York's lower East Side. But I think that an East Side tenement child would die of ennui if it should be brought up as we were brought up. We had none of the amusing and exciting experiences of the East Side child--we had no white stockings, no ice-cream cones, no Coney Island, nothing of the sort.

"We never even went to school. We would study French for a while with some French neighbor who had sufficient leisure to teach us, and then we'd study Spanish for a while with some Spaniard. That was the extent of our schooling.

"My parents died when I was eighteen years old. I went to the city and tried my hand at different sorts of work. For one thing, I tried to get up children's parties, but in eighteen months I managed only one. Then I did settlement work, was a librarian, a companion, and society reporter on a newspaper. Then I got married--and wrote stories."

Mrs. Norris was at one time opposed to woman suffrage. Now, however, she is a suffragist, but she refuses to say that she has been "converted" to suffragism.

"I can't say that I have been converted to suffragism," she said, "any more than I can say that I have been converted to warm baths and tooth-brushes. And it does not seem to me that any women should need to defend her right to vote any more than she should need to defend her right to love her children. There is a theme for a novel--a big suffrage novel will be written one of these days."

It may be that the author of _Mother_ will be the author of this "big suffrage novel." But at present she disclaims any such intention. But she admits that there is a purpose in all her portrayals of normal, wholesome American home life.

"I don't think that I believe in 'art for art's sake,' as it is generally interpreted," she said. "Of course, I don't believe in what is called the commercial point of view--I have never written anything just to have it printed. But I do not believe that there is any one standard of art. I think that any book which the people ought to read must have back of it something besides the mere desire of the writer to create something. I never could write without a moral intention."

_NATIONAL PROSPERITY AND ART_

BOOTH TARKINGTON

Mr. Booth Tarkington never will be called the George M. Cohan of fiction. His novel, _The Turmoil_, is surely an indictment of modern American urban civilization; of its materialism, its braggadocio, its contempt for the things of the soul.

It was with the purpose of making this indictment a little clearer than it could be when it is surrounded by a story, that I asked Mr.

Tarkington a few questions. And his answers are not likely to increase our national complacencies.

In the first place, I asked Mr. Tarkington if the atmosphere of a young and energetic nation might not reasonably be expected to be favorable to literary and artistic expression.

"Yes, it might," said Mr. Tarkington. "There may be spiritual progress in America as phenomenal as her material progress.

"There is and has been extraordinary progress in the arts. But the people as a whole are naturally preoccupied with their material progress. They are much more interested in Mr. Rockefeller than in Mr.

Sargent."

The last two sentences of Mr. Tarkington's reply made me eager for something a little more specific on that subject.

"What are the forces in America to-day," I asked, "that hinder the development of art and letters?"

Mr. Tarkington replied: "There are no forces in America to-day that hinder the development of individuals in art and letters, save in unimportant cases here and there. But there is a spirit that hinders general personal decency, knows and cares nothing for beauty, and is glad to have its body dirty for the sake of what it calls 'prosperity.'

"It 'wouldn't give a nickel' for any kind of art. But it can't and doesn't hinder artists from producing works of art, though it makes them swear."

"But do not these conditions in many instances seriously hinder individual artists?"

Mr. Tarkington smiled. "Nothing stops an artist if he is one," he said.

"But many things may prevent a people or a community from knowing or caring for art.

"The climate may be unfavorable; we need not expect the Eskimos to be interested in architecture. In the United States politicians have usually controlled the public purchase of works of art and the erection of public buildings. This is bad for the public, naturally."

"I suppose," I said, "that the conditions you describe are distinctively modern, are they not? At what time in the history of America have conditions been most favorable to literary expression?"

Mr. Tarkington's reply was not what I expected. "At all times," he said.

"Literary expression does not depend on the times, though the appreciation of it does, somewhat."

I asked Mr. Tarkington if he agreed with Mr. Gouverneur Morris in considering the short story a modern development. He did not.

"There are short stories in the Bible," he said, "and in every mythology; 'folk stories' of all races and tribes. Probably Mr. Morris's definition of the short story would exclude these. I agree with him that short stories are better written nowadays."

"But you do not believe," I said, "that American literature in general is better than it used to be, do you? Why is it that there is now no group of American writers like the New England group which included Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Th.o.r.eau?"

"Why is there," Mr. Tarkington asked in turn, "no group like Homer (wasn't he a group?) in Greece? There may be, but if there is just such a modern group it would tend only to repeat the work of the Homeric group, which wouldn't be interesting to the rest of us.

"The important thing is to find a group unlike Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, and Th.o.r.eau. That is, if one accepts the idea that it is important to find a group."

Mr. Tarkington's criticisms of the modern American city have been so severe that I expected him to tell me that all writers should live in the country. But again he surprised me. In reply to my question as to which environment was more favorable to the production of literature, the city or the country, he said:

"It depends upon the nerves of the writer. A writer can be born anywhere, and he can grow up anywhere."

There has recently been considerable discussion--Professor Edward Garnet and Gertrude Atherton have taken a considerable share in it--on the relative merits of contemporary English and American fiction. I asked Mr. Tarkington if in his opinion the United States had at the present time novelists equal to those of England.

"That is unanswerable!" he answered. "Writers aren't like baseball teams. What's the value of my opinion that _The Undiscovered Country_ is a 'greater' novel than _A Pair of Blue Eyes_? These questions remind me of school debating societies. Nothing is demonstrated, but everybody has his own verdict."

Until I asked Mr. Tarkington about it I had heard only two opinions as to the probable effect on literature of the war. One was that which William Dean Howells tersely expressed by saying: "War stops literature," and the other was that the war is purifying and strengthening all forms of literary expression.