Atlantic Shop-Talk

Swans and Geese

A good phrase should never be permitted to perish. Some years ago an English critic coined, or reminted, one when he complained of an American volume of literary reminiscences that it was too much given to ‘the cygnifying of geese.’ This applies equally to persons and to books. It defines a perilous tendency, of which none must be more wary than a talker of shop. The opposite tendency — the anserizing of swans — has no dangers for him. The birds in his aviary are much more likely to rise than to fall in the scale of winged things. It is for him of all men, however, to make sure, when his own flights are boldest, that he has a swan for his companion: else he may find himself the goose of the party.

Unless he were sure of the forthcoming Atlantic books, the Shop-Talker would venture no such preliminary observations.

He talked a month ago of the Eighteenth Century and The Ladies!, by E. Barrington, of which a typical chapter, ‘The Golden Vanity,’ appears, in part, in this issue of the Atlantic. So no more of that at present, nor, for similar reasons, of Memories of a Hostess; the pages on ‘Bret Harte and Mark Twain m the ’Seventies’ will also have fallen under the eye of the methodical reader of the Atlantic before these words confront him. But nearing publication there is another Atlantic book of which this very reader will be glad to hear.

Flesh, Blood, and Steel

In recent issues of the magazine he has followed with an interest of which there have been many tokens a series of four ‘Chapters in Steel.’ These, with others — besides an introduction telling how the author, Charles Rumford Walker, graduating from Yale six years ago, sharing the experiences of his college generation in the army, threw in his lot with the workers in a steel mill near Pittsburgh, and an epilogue setting forth some conclusions drawn from all he saw and did — are brought together in a volume under the title, Steel: The Diary of a Furnace-Worker. Especially in these days of need for a clearer understanding between those for whom the ‘twelve-hour day’ and the ‘twenty-four-hour shift’ are stark realities and the rest of us, who know them but by hearsay, the book will fulfill a valuable purpose. It depicts a daily drama, by no means of unrelieved tragedy, with the realism of which only the younger generation is capable, and with that greater quality of sincerity and truth which is not a matter of years or art.

A Civil War Book

Theodore Lyman was a Harvard classmate of Alexander Agassiz, Phillips Brooks, General Francis C. Barlow, and others who attained distinction in American life. As a young scientist, working under Louis Agassiz, he went to Florida in the winter of 1856, immediately after his graduation, and there fell in with a captain of engineers in the United States Army, George Gordon Meade by name. From the resulting friendship came the opportunity, in September, 1863, for Colonel Lyman to join General Meade’s Staff at the Headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. In this post of extraordinary advantage for seeing the progress and conclusion of the war he remained until the end.

Fortunately, this man of the world and of science was also an admirable letter-writer, and the many letters which he wrote to his wife, a sister of Mrs. Alexander Agassiz, have been preserved. They are filled with vivacious and intimate pictures of the workings of the Headquarters Staff of a notable general, and illustrate memorably both the human and the military aspects of what we were wont to call — until 1914 — ‘The War.’

The volume, under the title, Meade’s Headquarters, 1863-1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman, from the Wilderness to Appomattox, is scheduled for October publication by the Atlantic Monthly Press, which issues it on behalf of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The letters have been selected and arranged by Mr. George R. Agassiz, the biographer of his father, Alexander Agassiz. He has produced what we believe to be a valuable contribution to military and biographical literature.

The Dartmouth Shade of Webster

With a cover of Dartmouth green, adorned with a design of lighter hue, showing the cottage that sheltered Daniel Webster when he was a student at his beloved college, The Next-to-Nothing House, a second volume by Alice Van Leer Carrick, author of Collector’s Luck, who now lives in the ‘Webster Cottage,’ will make a strong appeal to the snappers-up of unconsidered trifles in the way of domestic objects of antiquity. This writer has made a habit of bargains, for which her eye is true and trained, and has written about them and their disposition within her four walls in a spirit of such contagious enthusiasm that the simple-minded possessors of ‘antiques’ should really be warned against the results of making her successes generally known. In some this knowledge will provoke to emulation; in others, merely to a passive envy. To all who care for ancient things — and their number is vast — the abundant illustrations of the contents of The Next-to-Nothing House will prove hardly less exciting than the lively text.

Masculine Views of a Feminine Book

When the Atlantic was middle-aged, and Professor C. T. Copeland of Harvard was a young dramatic and literary critic in Boston, he used to contribute to the magazine. Now, having read The Notion-Counter, those Notes about Nothing, by Nobody, recently published by the Atlantic Monthly Press, he reappears between our tawny covers in the following condensed expression of his opinion of the book: —

Evidently ‘the work of a very clever woman, Sir,’ This book is so witty, indeed, that not all readers will find its wisdom and social philosophy. — The text is well brothered with merry drawings;

A more frequent contributor to the Atlantic in recent years, Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, has also been reading The Notion-Counter, and, in greater detail, has recorded the impression it made upon him. Thus he writes: —

It is pleasant to turn from the hurry and rush of contemporary life, that surrounds and smothers us, to an hour of relief and diversion with the gracious little book so aptly called The Notion-Counter. From realistic novels, from long-winded presentations of psychoanalysis, from the pompous self-assertion of the eternal feminine under the delusive disguise of the new woman, we often sigh wearily, ‘Good Lord, deliver us’; and then we appreciate the comfort of such a dainty and soothing, yet stinging, trifle as this little volume of essays.

Not that great and serious subjects are not touched upon in these facile pages. We are brought, against solemn matters of to-day: the proper moral elevation of the young, the enlarged sphere of the gentler sex, and the desperate efforts made to fill it. Automobiles whirl about us and movie reels spin dizzily before us. Also the eternal topics that matter to all of us appear and disappear — the great ones, like marriage and death; the little ones, like the check-book, the address-book, and the butcher’s bill.

But all these things, great and little alike, are brushed with a butterfly’s wing. There is no tedious drawing-out, no dull and definite elaboration, such as makes you begin by fearing that you are being instructed and end by falling asleep. The charm of the book is that it is written as a clever woman talks. It. has the easy grace of delicate social converse, in which every side of life is touched for a moment, touched with a light, gay persiflage that has no bitterness in it. touched aptly, exactly on the point that calls for touching, then left before you have a chance to stifle the faintest shadow of a yawn.

Democratic society is too hurried, too jaded, too crowded to have much of that light, witty interchange still left in it. Even more rarely does it make its way into a book.

A Few Laurels

The Firelight Fairy Book, by Henry B. Beston, has recently been listed, together with Alice in Wonderland and the Just, So Stories, by a commission working with the libraries of the country, as one of the books selected for the reading of school children of the fourth grade. Almost simultaneously, the Book Selection Section of the New York State Library includes seven ‘Atlantic’ titles in the list of Best Books for 1921.

Our flock of swans appears to be justifying itself.