Curtis as a Man of Letters
MR. CARY, in the concluding chapter of his well-proportioned book on George William Curtis,1 says : ” In writing the life of Mr. Curtis as an ‘ American Man of Letters ’ I have not forgotten his claim to such a designation, though I have tried to give as nearly as possible within the limits of the book the materials for an estimate of his course as a man of public affairs.”And he goes on to say : “ Had he devoted himself to letters only, or were he known only by his literary work, his reputation in that kind would have been more distinct, and might be more lasting.” It happens that along with Mr. Cary’s study we have a collection of distinctively literary papers by Mr. Curtis from which to form some judgment of his capabilities in this direction.2 The volume contains his estimates of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thackeray, Longfellow, Holmes, and Irving, as well as papers on Rachel and Sir Philip Sidney ; and they range in time from 1853 to 1891, so that they cover nearly the whole of his active period as a writer. They show the sympathetic side of his nature rather than the specially critical, and are interesting as appreciations of personality quite as much as studies in literature. The substance of his printed work is to be sought elsewhere, in the dignified volumes of his speeches, and in the successive numbers for many years of a magazine and a weekly journal, in which he spoke to an audience which was almost as much his own as a congregation is the personal property of a minister.
Of course we do not measure the literary production of a man by the extent of his writing on literary themes. Prue and I is a better example of what Mr. Curtis might have contributed to literature, had he been more exclusively a man of letters, than this group of essays. But the deliberate appraisal which a writer makes of other writers is often a somewhat unconscious disclosure of his own relations to the craft, and in reading Mr. Curtis’s essays one is reminded constantly of his idealistic temper. Always graceful and unfailingly cheerful, he regards literature and literary men with the perceptions of a man of taste. Books, pictures, music, the drama, all interested him, but his love may be said to have been given to the acted drama. He had that kind of imagination which is fed and exhilarated by harmonies of color and form : a stage well set, and the scene of well-equipped men and women acting and singing, contributed that fullness of enjoyment which was essential to his artistic temperament ; but it must be choice and clean ; it must have simple meaning ; mere ornateness had no power to entrap him. Mr. Cary tells a capital story of a competition in eloquence in which Curtis and Senator Conkling indulged ; Curtis reciting the peroration of Emerson’s Dartmouth address, and laughing over Conkling’s recitation of a bit of meaningless rhetoric.
It is tolerably clear from what Curtis accomplished in pure literature, as from what he failed to accomplish, that his attitude was rather that of a man of fine taste than of one who had creative power. He was an appreciator, and some of his most delightful writing is in his reminiscences of men and women in literature or art who had given him pleasure. His taste was a discriminating one, and he gave excellent reasons for his likes and dislikes ; but literature did not exist for him as an end in itself, it did not compel him, and he had not that studious regard for it which might have made him an artist in criticism when he failed of being an artist in creation.
The impelling force in him was moral, and the idealism which was so distinct an element in his nature was made to serve large moral ends. With his fine presence and beautiful voice, there was no profession in which he could take his place so naturally as that of lecturing ; and at the time when he came forward into the world the platform was a more effective place for Archimedes than the editor’s chair. His ascent of the rostrum was also coincident with the awakening of the moral sense of the nation in its application to national problems, and Curtis easily caught fire from the flame which was rising. He was an artist in his lecturing ; he used his exquisite taste to refine and make persuasive the demand which his moral nature thrust upon the attention of his hearers. Phillips had a greater oratorical power, rendered forcible by a stinging invective. Curtis brought his grace and playfulness, his rich harmonies of rhetorical art, to compass the same end. These two would be listened to by men who hated their doctrines, but paid a willing tribute to their oratorical charm. Later, Curtis passed readily from the platform to the editor’s chair in a weekly journal ; and here, as there, the moral force applied to questions of public concern was the controlling impulse. Literary form was an important constituent in his work as a publicist, but his editorial articles were not designed for their attractiveness to the critical mind ; they had something to accomplish in the way of stirring the public conscience, of quickening the sense of right action. He did not regard literary effect as an end in itself, but his artistic sense was not therefore ignored.
We think Mr. Curtis made no mistake in thus yielding his life to the guidance of his morally didactic spirit. Indeed, literature has much to gain from such an example, and the young man who has literary aspirations, and will read Mr. Cary’s interesting and manly narrative of the career of a noble American citizen who had by nature a beautiful instrument at his command, and made it do a great and needed work for his country, may well take to heart the lesson implied, but never obtrusively thrust upon him. It is of the utmost consequence to the man of letters in America that, lacking as he does any very close connection with the practical concerns of life through the medium of his profession, he should avail himself of every opportunity to ally his work with those large interests of his fellows which meet them whenever they lift their eyes from the daily task. The man of letters, by virtue of his calling, is almost necessarily an idealist, and it is one of the most desirable features in the discussion of public affairs that the idealist view should be presented. In the case of Mr. Curtis, such was the stress of the times, and such the insistence of the moral force in him, that he subordinated, in obedience to the law of his being, literary to moral activity. In the case of other men, it will be found that, with a primary regard for letters, they have yet so allied themselves with matters of public concern as to leave their impress upon their time. The more the man of letters can identify himself with the interests of the community and the nation as expressed in institutions and organizations, the more sure he is of deliverance from that airy bondage to self which is the chief peril of his vocation.