Recollections of a Varied Life Part 22

He gave me the substance of what he sought and fortunately I recognized it as a part of a half-remembered pa.s.sage in one of Abraham Cowley's poems. I told Mr. Bryant so, and while he sat I found what he wanted.

Apparently his concern for it was gone. Instead of looking at the book which I had placed in his hands open at the desired page, he turned upon me and asked:

"How do you happen to know anything about Cowley?"

I explained that as a youth, while idling time away on an old Virginia plantation, where there was a library of old books, as there was on every other ancestral plantation round about, I had fallen to reading all I could find at home or in neighboring houses of the old English literature, of which I had had a maddening taste even as a little boy; that I had read during those plantation summers every old book I could find in any of the neglected libraries round about.

[Sidenote: By Order of Mr. Bryant]

My work for the day lay unfinished on my desk, but Mr. Bryant gave no heed to it. He questioned me concerning my views of this and that in literature, my likes and dislikes, my estimates of cla.s.sic English works, and of the men who had produced them. Now and then he challenged my opinions and set me to defend them. After a while he took his leave in his usual undemonstrative fashion.

"Good-afternoon," was absolutely his only word of parting, and after he had gone I wondered if I had presumed too much in the fearless expression of my opinions or in combating his own, or whether I had offended him in some other way. For I knew him very slightly then and misinterpreted a reticence that was habitual with him--even const.i.tutional, I think. Still less did I understand that during that talk of two hours' duration he had been subjecting me to a rigid examination in English literature.

The _Evening Post_ of that afternoon published my review of an important book, which I had tried to treat with the care it deserved. I learned afterwards that the article pleased Mr. Bryant, but whether or not it had any influence upon what followed I do not know. What followed was this: the next day a little before noon, Mr. Sperry came into my den with a laugh and a frown playing tag on his face.

"Mr. Bryant has just been in," he said. "He walked into my room and said to me: 'Mr. Sperry, I have appointed Mr. Eggleston literary editor.

Good-morning, Mr. Sperry.' And with that he left again, giving me no time to say a word. In a way, I'm glad, but I shall miss you from your other work."

I rea.s.sured him, telling him I could easily do those parts of that other work for which he most needed me, and so the matter was "arranged to the satisfaction of everybody concerned," as the dueling people used to say when two bl.u.s.tering cowards had apologized instead of shooting each other.

XLIX

Thus began an acquaintance with Mr. Bryant that quickly became as intimate as I suppose any acquaintance with him ever did--or at any rate any acquaintance begun after the midyears of his life. Once in a while I pa.s.sed a Sunday with him at his Roslyn home, but chiefly such converse as I enjoyed with him was held in the office of the _Evening Post_, and of course it was always of his seeking, as I scrupulously avoided intruding myself upon his attention. Our interviews usually occurred in this way: he would enter the library, which communicated with my little writing room by an open doorway, and after looking over some books, would enter my room and settle himself in a chair, with some remark or question. The conversation thus began would continue for such time as he chose, ten minutes, half an hour, two hours, as his leisure and inclination might determine.

It was always gentle, always kindly, always that of two persons interested in literature and in all that pertains to what in the culture-slang of this later time is somewhat tiresomely called "uplift."

It was always inspiring and clarifying to my mind, always encouraging to me, always richly suggestive on his part, and often quietly humorous in a fashion that is nowhere suggested in any of Mr. Bryant's writings.

I have searched them in vain for the smallest trace of the humor he used to inject into his talks with me, and I think I discover in its absence, and in some other peculiarities of his, an explanation of certain misjudgments of him which prevailed during his life and which endure still in popular conception.

[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's Reserve--Not Coldness]

The reader may perhaps recall Lowell's criticism of him in "A Fable for Critics." The substance of it was that Mr. Bryant was intensely cold of nature and unappreciative of human things. I wish to bear emphatic witness that nothing could be further from the truth, though Lowell's judgment is the one everywhere accepted.

The lack of warmth usually attributed to Mr. Bryant, I found to be nothing more than the personal reserve common to New Englanders of culture and refinement, plus an excessive personal modesty and a shyness of self-revelation, and self-intrusion, which is usually found only in young girls just budding into womanhood.

Mr. Bryant shrank from self-a.s.sertion even of the most impersonal sort, as I never knew any other human being to do. He cherished his own opinions strongly, but he thrust them upon n.o.body. His dignity was precious to him, but his only way of a.s.serting it was by withdrawal from any conversation or company that trespa.s.sed upon it.

Above all, emotion, to him, was a sacred thing, not to be exploited or even revealed. In ordinary intercourse with his fellow-men he hid it away as one instinctively hides the privacies of the toilet. He could no more lay his feelings bare to common scrutiny than he could have taken his bath in the presence of company.

In the intimate talks he and I had together during the last half dozen years of his life, he laid aside his reserve, so far as it was possible for a man of his sensitive nature to do, and I found him not only warm in his human sympathies, but even pa.s.sionate. If we find little of this in his writings, it is only because in what he wrote he was addressing the public, and shyly withholding himself from revelation. Yet there is pa.s.sion and there is hot blood, even there, as who can deny who has read "The Song of Marion's Men," or his superb interpretation of Homer?

There is a bit of literary history connected with "The Song of Marion's Men," which may be mentioned here as well as anywhere else. The venerable poet one day told me the facts concerning it.

When Mr. Bryant issued the first collected edition of his poems, English publication was very necessary to the success of such a work in America, which was still provincial. Accordingly Mr. Bryant desired English publication. Washington Irving was then living in England, and Mr.

Bryant had a slight but friendly acquaintance with him. It was sufficient to justify the poet in asking the great story teller's friendly offices. He sent a copy of his poems to Irving, asking him to secure a London publisher. This Irving did, with no little trouble, and in the face of many obstacles of prejudice, indifference, and the like.

When half the book was in type the publisher sent for Irving in consternation. He had discovered, in "The Song of Marion's Men," the lines:

"The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told."

It would never, never do, he explained, for him to publish a book with even the smallest suggestion in it that the British soldier was a man to "tremble" at any danger. It would simply ruin him to publish this direct charge of cowardice against Tommy Atkins.

[Sidenote: The Irving Incident]

For the time Irving was at a loss to know what to do. Mr. Bryant was three thousand miles away and the only way of communicating with him was by ocean mails, carried by sailing craft at long intervals, low speed, and uncertain times of arrival. To write to him and get a reply would require a waste of many weeks--perhaps of several months. In his perplexed anxiety to serve his friend, Irving decided to take the liberty of making an entirety innocent alteration in the words, curing them of their offensiveness to British sensitiveness, without in the least altering their significance. Instead of:

"The British soldier trembles When Marion's name is told,"

he made the lines read:

"The foeman trembles in his tent When Marion's name is told."

"So far as I was concerned," said Mr. Bryant in telling me of the matter, "what Irving did seemed altogether an act of friendly intervention, the more so because the acquaintance between him and me was very slight at that time. He was a warm-hearted man, who in doing a thing of that kind, reckoned upon a slight friendship for justification, as confidently as men of natures less generous might reckon upon a better established acquaintance. He always took comradery for granted, and where his intentions were friendly and helpful, he troubled himself very little with formal explanations that seemed to him wholly unnecessary. I had asked him to secure the publication of my poems in England, a thing that only his great influence there could have accomplished at that time. He had been at great pains and no little trouble to accomplish my desire. Incidentally, it had become necessary for him either to accept defeat in that purpose or to make that utterly insignificant alteration in my poem. I was grateful to him for doing so, but I did not understand his careless neglect to write to me promptly on the subject. I did not know him then as I afterwards learned to do. The matter troubled me very little or not at all; but possibly I mentioned his inattention in some conversation with Coleman, of the _Evening Post_. I cannot now remember whether I did so or not, but at any rate, Coleman, who was both quick and hot of temper, and often a trifle intemperate in criticism, took the matter up and dealt severely with Irving for having taken the liberty of altering lines of mine without my authority.

"The affair gave rise to the report, which you have perhaps heard--for it persists--that Irving and I quarreled and became enemies. Nothing could be further from the truth. We were friends to the day of his death."

Inasmuch as different versions of the Irving-Bryant affair are extant, it seems proper to say that immediately after the conversation ended I put into writing all that I have here directly quoted from Mr. Bryant.

I did not show the record of it to him for verification, for the reason that I knew him to be sensitive on the subject of what he once referred to as "the eagerness of a good many persons to become my literary executors before I am dead." That was said with reference to the irksome attempts a certain distinguished literary hack was making to draw from Mr. Bryant the materials for articles that would sell well whenever the aged poet should die.

After a seance with that distinguished toady one day, Mr. Bryant came to me, in some disturbance of mind, to ask for a volume of verse that I had just reviewed--to soothe his spirit, he said. Then he told me of the visitation he had had, and said:

"I tried to be patient, but I fear I was rude to him at the last. There seemed to be no other way of getting rid of him."

Alas, even rudeness had not baffled the bore; for when Mr. Bryant died the pestilent person published a report of that very interview, putting into the poet's mouth many utterances directly contrary to Mr. Bryant's oft-expressed opinions.

L

[Sidenote: Mr. Bryant's Tenderness of Poets]

Exigent and solicitous as he was with reference to every utterance in the _Evening Post_ concerning literature, Mr. Bryant never interfered with my perfect liberty as literary editor, except in the one matter of the treatment of poets and poetry.

"Deal gently--very gently, with the poets," he said to me at the time of my a.s.sumption of that office. "Remember always, that the very sensitiveness of soul which makes a man a poet, makes him also peculiarly and painfully susceptible to wounds of the spirit."

I promised to bear his admonition in mind, and I did so, sometimes perhaps to the peril of my soul--certainly at risk of my reputation for critical ac.u.men and perhaps for veracity. One day, however, I encountered a volume of verse so ridiculously false in sentiment, extravagant in utterance, and inane in character, that I could not refrain from poking a little fun at its absurdity. The next day Mr.

Bryant came to see me. After pa.s.sing the time of day, he said:

"Mr. Eggleston, I hope you will not forget my desire that you shall deal gently with the poets."

I replied that I had borne it constantly in mind.

"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head; "what you said yesterday about X. Y. Z.'s volume did not seem to me very gentle."