Diversions of the Echo Club: Night the Fourth
ALL the members of the Club were assembled, but the Ancient had not yet made his appearance. He was dining that evening, as it happened, with a wealthy banker, and there was no possibility of omitting one of the seventeen courses, or escaping before the coffee and liqueurs. As the oldest of the members, the duties of chairman were always conferred on him whenever a decision became necessary, and all assumed, as a matter of course, that the Diversions should be suspended until his arrival. But the conversation, meanwhile, settled upon him as its subject. Zoïlus and one of the Chorus were not as old acquaintances as the Gannet and Galahad, which circumstance led, after his nature had been genially discussed, to the following digression ; —
ZOÏLUS (to THE GANNET). I had not often met him familiarly, in this way, before. He is a good, mellow-natured companion, and not at all dogmatic, that is, in a direct way ; but I can see the influence of his Boston associations. There is a great deal of external tact and propriety in that city. Now, our impetuous, keen, incisive atmosphere —
THE GANNET (interrupting). Spare me the “ incisive ” ! It has been overdone, as an effect, and will be the ruin of you, yet. If I had as much faith as Galahad there, I should believe as the Ancient does. But, since you will have the “ incisive,” where can you find sentences more clearly cut — the very intaglio of style — than in Holmes ?
ZOÏLUS(angrily). And do you remember what he wrote of our New York authors,—
Extends— for miles along the Harlem road” ?
THE GANNET. Yes, and don’t you know who they were ? Why, their fame does n’t reach up to Twenty-third Street, now ! It was a deliberate attempt, by a small clique, to manufacture the Great American Literature. The materials were selected in advance, the style and manner settled, and then the great authors went to work. Like the Chinese mechanics who copied a steamboat, the external imitation was perfect; but there were no inside works, and it would n’t move a paddle! When you speak of our legitimate authors, here in New York, what name first comes to your lips ? Bryant, of course ; and have you forgotten how Holmes celebrated him ? and how his was the only garland of verse thrown upon Halleck’s grave ?
ZOÏLUS. Nevertheless, they systematically depreciate what we do ; they are only kind and considerate towards one another. You remember Poe’s experience ?
THE ANCIENT (entering the room). Which one, pray ?
ZOÏLUS. Of Boston. But they did not and have not put him down!
THE ANCIENT. Why, no; he put himself down, that time : I happened to be there, and I saw the performance. I guess that you and the Gannet have been repeating your usual tilt; why not say, as Goethe did of the comparisons made between himself and Schiller, “ Instead of quarrelling about which of us is the greater, people ought simply to be thankful for having us both ” ? Thirty or forty years ago, when Lowell and Whipple were boys, Longfellow and Holmes young authors, Emerson considered little better than daft, and Whittier almost outlawed on account of his antislavery opinions, the literary society here included Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Willis, and Halleck, then the foremost American authors. The chief literary periodicals were here and in Philadelphia; and Boston, although the average of intellectual culture was always higher there than elsewhere, occupied quite a secondary place. But I don’t remember that there was ever any jealousy or rivalry ; and I confess I can’t understand the spirit which fosters such a feeling now.
ZOÏLUS. YOU have passed the age when you care for recognition.
THE ANCIENT. Have I, indeed ? Pray, when does that age cease? If I had a more general recognition, at present, — by which I mean the ascription to me of exactly the literary qualities which I think I possess, — I should be stimulated to do more and possibly better work. I began authorship at a time when there was not much discrimination between varieties of literary talent, when such fearful stuff as “ Agathé, a Necromaunt: in Three Chimæras,” by a man named Tasistro, was published in “Graham’s Magazine,” and when a dentist in Rhode Island wrote a poem in heroic verse, called “ The Dentiad.”
THE GANNET. What was his name ?
THE ANCIENT. Solyman Brown. I must quote to you an exquisite passage : —
The rapid traces of the dark gangrene,
When caries come, with stealthy pace, to throw
Corrosive ink-spots on those banks of snow,
Brook no delay, ye trembling, suffering Fair,
But fly for refuge to the dentist’s care.
His practised hand, obedient to his will,
Employs the slender file with nicest skill;
Just sweeps the germin of disease away,
And stops the fearful progress of decay.”
ZOÏLUS. The latest nursling of Darwin’s “Botanic Garden”! It is not antithetical enough for Pope. Surely, that was not a popular poem ?
THE ANCIENT. I was too young to know. I only mention it as one of the chaotic elements out of which has grown what little permanent literature we now have. Probably three fourths of the writers then commencing their career might have developed some sound practical ability, with a little intelligent guidance ; they were not strong enough to beat their own way out of the wilderness. When I look back upon it, I can see the bones of immortal works bleaching on all sides.
THE GANNET. AS ours will bleach for the young fellows who sit here in 1900 ! While you were speaking, the thought occurred to me that no young poet in England can possibly be as green at his entrance into literature as the most of us must inevitably be. I begin to see that a conventional standard is better than none ; for if it does not guide, it provokes resistance ; either way, therefore, the neophyte acquires a definite form and style.
THE ANCIENT. To that extent, I agree with you. But we also have a standard, only those who accept it are fewer, and so scattered over the whole country that their authority is not immediately felt. They distinguish between what is temporary and what is permanent, in spite of the general public. And this ought to be our great comfort, if we are in earnest, that no power on earth can keep alive a sensational reputation.
ZOÏLUS. How do you account for the popularity of such single poems as “ The River of Time,” (is that the title of it ?) and “ Beautiful Snow,” and “Rock me to sleep, Mother?” Why, hardly a week passes, but I see a newspaper dispute about the authorship of one or the other of them ! To me they are languishing sentiment, not poetry.
THE ANCIENT. “Sentiment” sufficiently accounts for their popularity. Put some tender, thoroughly obvious sentiment into rhyme which sounds like the melody of a popular song, and it will go through hides which are impervious to the keenest arrows of the imagination. But how much more unfortunate for us, if it were not so! This gives us just the fulcrum we need if our literature is ever to be an Archimedean lever. I find myself a great deal happier since I have set about discovering the reason of these manifestations of immature taste, instead of lamenting over them, or cursing them, as I once did.
ZOÏLUS (ironically). Then I have not attained your higher stand-point ?
THE GANNET (offering him the hat). Here, pick out one of the caged birds, and make him sing ! The prelude of chords and discords has lasted long enough ; let the orchestra now fall into a lively melody.
ZOÏLUS. Ha ! How shall I manage Bryant ?
GALAHAD. Or I, Oliver Wendell Holmes ?
THE GANNET. Or I, N. P. Willis ?
GALAHAD. Let us either exchange, or deal again !
THE ANCIENT. NO ! As chairman, I declare such a proposition out of order. You must not pick out those authors with whose manner you are most familiar, or whom you could most easily imitate. That would be no fair and equal test ; and there must be a little emulation, to keep your faculties in nimble playing condition. I am as oddly tasked as either of you, — see, I have drawn Tennyson! — yet, for the sake of good example, I ’ll work with you this time. Let us surrender ourselves, like spiritual mediums, to the control of the first stray idea that enters our brains : anything whatever will do for a point to start from. I am curious to know what will come of it.
ZOÏLUS. So am I. Here goes. (Writes.)
THE GANNET. We must first have our glasses filled ; Galahad, ring for the waiter !
(A silence of fifteen or twenty minutes follows. As the first one who has completed his task lifts his head with a sigh of relief, the others write with a nervous haste ; but all wait for the last one.)
THE GANNET. YOU were ready first, Zoïlus.
ZOÏLUS. Then it was not because I had the least difficult task. Perhaps our Ancient can tell me why it is so difficult to make an echo for Bryant’s verse. To parody any particular poem, such as “The Death of the Flowers,” would be easy enough, I should think ; but I was obliged to write something independent in Bryant’s manner. Now, when I asked myself, “ What is his manner ? ” I could only answer, “ Gravity of subject and treatment, pure rhythm, choice diction, and a mixture more or less strong of the moral element.”
THE ANCIENT. YOU have fairly stated his prominent characteristics, and your difficulty came from the fact that they are all so evenly and exquisitely blended in his verse, that no single one seems salient enough to take hold of. Bryant’s range of subjects is not wide, but within that range he is a most admirable artist. He is of the same blood with Wordsworth,— a brother, not a follower, — and oftentimes seems cold, because his intellectual pitch is high. I confess I find the powers of control, temperance, selfrepression, abnegation of sentiment for a purpose which aims beyond it, in his poems, rather than a negative coldness. His literary position, it is true, is very isolated. He has both kept aloof from the temporary excitements in our poetic atmosphere, and he has rarely given any direct expression of an aspiration for the general literary development of our people, or of sympathy with those who felt and fostered it. Nevertheless, we cannot fairly go beyond an author’s works, in our judgments ; and I suspect we shall all agree, as Americans, in estimating the amount of our debt to Bryant.
GALAHAD. YOU have so put down my natural reverence that I don’t dare to protest. But when I see Bryant in Broadway, with his magnificent Homeric beard, I wonder the people don’t take off their hats as he passes. Why, seventy years ago, the stolid Berliners almost carried Schiller on their shoulders as he came out of the theatre ; the raging mob of ’48 did homage to Humboldt; and every other people, it seems to me, in every other civilized land, has rendered some sort of honor to its minstrels. But I cannot recollect that we have ever done anything.
THE GANNET. Yes, we have done a little, but not much, — after death. A few men have given Halleck a monument, and two men have put up busts of Irving and Bryant in our parks. There was a public commemoration of Cooper, at which Webster (who knew nothing and cared nothing about our literature) officiated; but that was the end of it. The Bryant Festival was almost a private matter ; the public was not represented, and one author belonging to the same club refused to take any part in it, on account of the political views of the poet!
THE ANCIENT. We are forgetting our business. Zoilus has the floor.
ZOÏLUS. I told you I had a hard task; therefore I shall not be vexed if you tell me I have failed. (Reads.)
THE DESERTED BARN.
Against the gray November sky,
Beside the weedy lane, it stands ;
To newer fields they all pass by,
The farmers and their harvest hands.
There is no hay within the mow ;
The racks and mangers fall to dust;
The roof is crumbling in, but thou,
My soul, inspect it and be just.
The sheaves were borne to deck its floor ;
The blue-eyed milkmaid filled her pail,
Then gently closed the stable-door.
The sound of flails afar was borne,
And from his natural pulpit there
The preacher cock called up the morn.
Work elsewhere now for higher pay ;
The blue-eyed milkmaid married Ben,
The hand, and went to Ioway.
Which thresh the grain with equine power ;
The senile cock no longer weans
The folk from sleep at dawning hour.
In that new house which Spurns the old ;
In gorgeous stalls the kine are still,
The horse is blanketed from cold.
And hollow pomp of riches turn,
To muse that ancient barn beside :
Pause, pilgrim, and its lesson learn ;
A mill-pond of the mountain-tarn,
Nor for a gaudy stable take
The timbers of thy ruined barn !
GALAHAD. I vow I don’t know whether that is serious, or a burlesque imitation !
THE ANCIENT. Then Zoïlus has fairly succeeded. The grave, autumnal tone was indispensable, for it stamps itself on the minds of nine out of ten who read Bryant; just as we always associate Wordsworth with mountain walks and solitary musings. Did you ever see Kuntze’s statuette of Bryant ? He is sitting, and beside him, on the ground, there is only a buffalo-skull. Of course, you at once imagine a prairie mound, with nothing in sight, — which is carrying the impression altogether too far; for his poems on the apple-tree and the bobolink are entirely human.
GALAHAD (earnestly). There is much more than that in his poetry ! There is the evidence of a high imaginative quality, which, for some reason or other, he seems to hold in check ! Read “ The Land of Dreams ” and his poem on “ Earth,” where there is something about the
Where darkness dwells all day — ”
I can’t remember all the passage, but it is exceedingly fine ! Generally, he reins himself up so tightly that you cannot feel the fretting of the bit; but rarely, when he lets himself go, for a few lines, you get a glimpse of another nature.
THE ANCIENT. Just therein, I think, lies his greatest service to American literature. There have always been, and always will be, enough of wild mustangs, unbridled foals, who dash off at a gallop and can't stop themselves at the proper goal, but pant and stagger a mile beyond it. With Bryant’s genius, he might have undertaken much more ; but he has hoarded his power, and how freshly it serves him still!
But rising, still rising, then passing away.”
Who wrote those lines ?
THE GANNET. He who speaks through me to-night, — Willis. But Galahad comes next in order.
GALAHAD. I have really a better right to complain of the severity of my task than Zoïlus. One can’t imitate humor without possessing it, — which I’m not sure that I do. Between “ Old Ironsides” and the “ One-Hoss Shay,” Holmes has played in a great many keys, and I was forced to echo that one which seemed easiest to follow. (Reads.)
THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL MUSE.
For all conditions now combine, and so I must begin :
The wind is fresh from west-nor’west, tire sky i deepest blue,
Thermometer at seventy, and pulse at seventy-two.
The peccant acid in my blood by Selters alkalied ;
As far as I can see the works, my old machine of thought
Runs with its cogs and pivots oiled, as if in Waltham bought.
And if “full-jewelled” one should think, let no one scoff at him !
Odi profanum valgus, — well ! the truth is t’ other way;
But one eupeptic as myself can always have his say.
Points to a verse-inspiring theme and there inclines to stand ?
Between the thought and rhythmic speech there often yawns a chasm ;
To bridge it o’er we only need a vigorous protoplasm.
With an unconscious sinciput, a cerebellum free,
I don’t see why the loftiest lays should not be sung by me:
The fitful flushes of the Muse my diagnosis own :
I test her symptoms in the air as surely as ozone.
Like skittish swallows in the air, but none will touch the ground.
With such conditions 't were a sin to lay the pen aside,
But, with the mind close-girt to run, direction is denied.
Save that I fear’t would send the pulse to seventyeight or nine ;
’T is that capricious jade, the Muse ! — I know her tricks of old :
Just when my house is warm for her, she will prefer the cold !
THE GANNET. Ah, you’ve only caught some general characteristics, not the glitter and flash of Holmes’s lines ! His humor is like a Toledo blade ; it may be sheathed in a circular scabbard, but it always springs out straight and keen, and fit for a direct lunge. He is the only poet in the country who can write good “occasionals,” without losing faith in the finer inspiration, or ceasing to obey it.
GALAHAD. You very well know we have no time for selection. I have been reading lately his “ Mechanism in Thought and Morals,” so that my imitation was really suggested by his prose.
THE ANCIENT. That is permitted. For my part, though I like Holmes’s songs in all keys, I have always wished that he had written more such poems as “ La Grisette,” wherein we have, first of all, ease and grace, then just enough of sentiment, of humor, and of a light, sportive fancy to make a mixture wholly delightful, — a beverage that cheers, but not inebriates, in which there is neither headache nor morbid tears. Hood had the same quality, though he does n’t often reveal it; so had Praed ; so, I feel sure, had Willis, but in his case it was a neglected talent. When I say that we most sorely need this naïve, playful element in our literature, you may not agree with me; but, O, how tired I am of hearing that every poem should “convey a lesson,” should “ inculcate a truth,” should “ appeal to the moral sense.” Why, half our selfelected critics seem to be blind to the purely æsthetic character of our art! No man — not even the greatest — can breathe a particular atmosphere all his life, without taking some of its ingredients into his blood ; and just those which seem best may be most fatal to the imaginative faculty. I suspect there has been more of battle in the intellectual life of Holmes than any of us knows.
ZOÏLUS. Now let us hear the Gannet.
THE GANNET. If it had been a leader for the “ Home Journal,” I should have found he task light enough ; but Willis’s poetic style is — as he would have said — rather un-come-at-able. (Reads.)
KEREN-HAPPUCH.
They were anhungered : for the eventide
Sank over Babylon, and smokes arose
From pottage cooked in palace and in tent.
Then Keren-happuch, from her lordly bower
Of gem-like jasper, and the porphyry floors
Swept by the satins of her trailing robe,
Came forth, and sat beside her father Job,
And gave him comfort, ’mid his painful boils,
And scraped him with a potsherd ; and her soul
Rebelled at his unlovely misery,
And from her lips, that parted like a cleft
Of ripe pomegranates o’er their ruby teeth,
Broke forth a wail:
And for the men and maidens of thy train,
And for thy countless camels on the plain,
More than thou didst require :
Thou mightst have sold them at the morning dawn
For heavy gold : at even they were gone !
With agate braids and pearls from Samarcand
Have died ; there is no handmaid in the land,
To make my visage fair :
Unpainted and unpowdered, lo ! I come,
Gray with the ashes of my gorgeous home !
The prince who wooed me fled in haste away
From thine infection : hungered here I stray,
And find not any bone ;
For famished cats have ravaged shelf and plate.
The larder, like my heart, is desolate !
My sire, whose wealth and beauty were my pride,
To see thee so disfigured at my side,
Nor leech nor poultice near,
To save thy regal skin from later scars ;
Yea, thou art loathsome by the light of stars !
And I will gather marjoram and nard,
And mix their fragrance with the cooling lard,
And thus avert thy doom.
A daughter’s sacrifice no tongue can tell:
The prince will stay away till thou art well !”
GALAHAD. NOW I must say, although I have enjoyed the travesty with you, that this gives me a pang. I can't forget Willis’s sunny, kindly, and sympathetic nature, and the dreary clouding of his mind at the last. There was something very tragic in the way in which he clung to the fragments that remained, as one faculty after another failed him, and strove to be still the cheerful, sparkling author of old. I was hardly more than a boy when I first went to him, a few years ago, and no brother could have been kinder to me.
THE ANCIENT. There never was a poet more free from jealousy or petty rivalry, none more ready to help or encourage. As an author, he was damaged by too early popularity, and he made the mistake of trying to retain it through exaggerating the features of his style which made him popular; but neither homage nor defamation — and he received both in full measure — ever affected the man’s heart in his breast. There was often an affectation of aristocratic elegance in his writings ; yet, in his life, he was as natural a democrat as Walt Whitman, gentle, considerate, and familiar with the lowest whom he met, and only haughty towards ignorant or vulgar pretension. Poe said that he narrowly missed placing himself at the head of American literature, which was true of his career from 1830 to about 1845. By the by, I wish some one would undertake to write our literary history, beginning, say, about 1800.
ZOÏLUS. Set about it yourself! But, come, we are not to be cheated out of your contribution to-night; where is your Tennyson ?
THE ANCIENT. I have added another to his brief modern idyls. (Reads.)
EUSTACE GREEN;
OR, THE MEDICINE-BOTTLE,
The hollies prick, and burr-weed grows too near, We ’ll air our eyesight o’er the swelling downs.
And so not mind them. While the Medoc chills
In ice, and yon champagne-flask in the sun
Takes mellower warmth, I ’ll tell you what I did
To Eustace Green — last Cambridge-term it was,
Just when the snowball by the farmer’s gate
Made jokes of winter at the garden rose.
You know him, Hal, —no high-browed intellect,
Such as with easy grab the wrangler’s place
Plucks from the clutching hands of college youth,
But home-bred, as it were ; and all the stock,
His stalwart dad, and mother Marigold
(We called her), Kate, Cornelia, Joseph, Jane,
A country posy of great boys and girls.
But she, the mother, when the brown ash took
A livelier green beside the meadow-stile,
And celandines, the milky kine of flowers,
Were yellow in the lanes, hung o’er the fire
A caldron huge — oh me, it was a sight
To see her stir the many herbs therein !
Of yarrow, tansy, thyme, and camomile —
What know I all? — she boiled and slowly brewed
The strange concoction : ’t was an heirloom old,
The recipe, a sovran cure, and famed
From Hants to Yorkshire : this must Eustace take.
Not that the lubber lad was ill — O, no !
You did but need to punch him in the ribs,
To feel how muscle overlaid the bone ;
And as for trencher-practice, — trust me, Hal,
A donkey-load of lunch were none too much,
Were he here with us. Where was I ? — Ah, yes,
The medicine ! She gave it me with words
Many, and thrice repeated ; he should take,
Eustace, the dose at morn, and noon, and night,
For these were feverous times : she did not know,
Not she, what airs blew o’er the meads of Cam :
Preventive ounces weighed a pound of cure.
At last, I thrust the bottle in my sack,
And left her.
Some devil tickled me to turn the thing
To joke, or was it humors in the blood,
Stirring, perchance, when, oysters out of date
And game prohibited, the stomach pines?
Think as you will; but to myself my mind
Thus reasoned : need to him of medicine
Is none : the green cicala in the grass
Chirps not more wholesome ; wherefore swiftly I
Will cast this useless brewage to the winds,
Yea, to the thistled downs ; and substitute —
Haply some ancient hostel glimmering near —
Laborious Boreal brandy, equal bulk.
And this, the thing accomplished, then did I
Proffer to Eustace Green, all eager he
For news of home and mother Marigold,
His dad and Kate, Cornelia, Joseph, Jane,
And Bloss, the ox, and Bounce, the plough-horse old,
One-eyed, and spavined. But the medicine
He took with : “ Pshaw ! that beastly stuff again ?
Am I a rat that she should send the dose? ”
Then I : “ Dear Eustace, times are feverous :
Malarial breezes blow across the Cam :
Preventive ounces weigh a pound of cure.”
“ O, damn your ounces ! ” he profanely cried;
“ But if I must, I must; so summon Giles,
The undertaker, when I take this dose,
And gently coffin me when now I die.”
So drank ; and then, with great eyes all astare,
Cried : “Taste it, you ! Fourth-proof, O. P. and
S. T. X. ! -
His mother, did we pledge in steaming punch,
She knowing not : and tears of laughter ran
Down both our cheeks, and trickled in the bowl,
Weakening the punch.
And warm the sweet champagne ; so, while the copse
Clangs round us like the clang of many shields,
Down the long hollows to the dusky sea,
Let us, with sandwich and the hard-boiled egg,
Enjoy both nature’s beauty and our own !
OMNES. Well done !
ZOÏLUS. Why, you have caught the very trick of Tennyson’s blank-verse ! If you had only warmed the Medoc and chilled the champagne, I should hardly know the difference. But how did you ever happen to invent a motive, or plot, all complete, on the spur of the moment ?
THE ANCIENT. Ah, you force me to confess; I did n’t invent it. It was a trick I played myself, on a friend, in our young days ; and, by good luck, it came to my memory just at the right time. Therefore, having the subject, the imitation of Tennyson’s manner was easy enough. I ’m glad, however, that you think it successful ; for it justifies me in holding fast to the principle we accepted, and which I was obliged to enforce to-night. You know that my own scattering poems are quite unlike — however long the interval between— anything of Tennyson’s; but I have made it a point, for years past, to study the individual characteristics of the poets, and this proves how easily those which are superficial and obvious may be copied.
ZOÏLUS. May I ask what your private estimate of Tennyson, as a poet, is ?
THE ANCIENT. Of course ! While I might, possibly, agree with his keenest critics in regard to many details of style or expression, especially in his earlier poems, I yield to no one in the profoundest respect for his noble loyalty to his art. Tennyson is a poet, who, recognizing the exact quality of his gift, has given all the forces of his mind, all the energies of his life, to perfect it. I can see that he has allowed no form of knowledge, which this age has developed, to arise without assimilating, at least, its substance ; but all is employed in the sole service of his poetic art. He began with something of the rank, “ lush ” luxuriance of style which Keats was just leaving behind him when he died : he now rises, often to a majestic simplicity and dignity which nearly remind me of Milton. Not that the two are similar, in any particular ; but Tennyson, like scarcely any other except Schiller, has achieved high success as a poet by comprehending clearly both his powers and their limitations. How easily, by mistaking his true work, he might have scattered his rays, instead of gathering them into a clear focus of light ! All honor to him, I say, in this age, when so many writers degrade their gift by making it subservient to worldly ends !
GALAHAD (with enthusiasm). You make me happy !
THE GANNET. I should say, nevertheless, that he was well paid in ringing guineas. For instance —
ZOÏLUS. “The continuation in next week’s New York Ledger ! ” Do you know that it is one o’clock ?
OMNES (starting up). We go — but we return ! [Exeunt.