Portrait of a Professor

I

I HAD been away for the week-end. When I got back to town on a Sunday night I found, along with some other mail on my desk, a package bearing the label of the fine old publishing house of Howison & Metcalfe. I guessed at once that Casement had sent me a copy of his Life of James Horton.

As I unfastened the wrappings I was aware of a considerable curiosity, for I knew that Casement had been engaged on this work for the better part of two years and that he had high hopes for it. I stood the book on my desk and looked at it. It was a very handsome volume. It was two inches thick and correspondingly tall and broad. I guessed it would sell for about $6.00 a copy, and sell very well, too. Casement’s books are popular in California.

It was generous of my old friend to make me so substantial a gift, yet I felt no intense gratitude and I was a little annoyed because I could not at once hit on a plausible reason why he had so honored me. Of course I recognized that in casting about for an ulterior motive I might have been doing Casement an injustice. He might merely have been feeling in a generous mood and so have yielded to an impulse to do a kindly act for a fellow writer. It was possible, but I doubted it. Casement has many excellent qualities; he is as widely admired as any literary man in the state, but acts of generosity to other authors are a bit out of his line. Surely, I told myself, he would hardly do a favor to a writer who cultivated somewhat the same field as he did. That would be expecting too much of human nature.

Casement has been writing so voluminously on California history, and so successfully, and over a period of so many years, that he has come to feel a sort of proprietary interest in the whole subject. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that he regards the publication of a book on California by someone other than himself as a personal affront, but one often gets that impression. Because of his standing in academic circles and his wide popular following, his services as a reviewer are in demand both by the scholarly journals and the literary weeklies. Casement has reviewed almost every California book of importance, except his own, that has appeared during the past twenty years. His reviews are always models of impartiality. He goes into the subject in detail and with authority. He weighs the book’s good and bad qualities, points out errors of fact and interpretation, and tells what field the author has attempted to cover and why he has failed. After reading one of these comprehensive analyses no one ever feels any desire to look into the book itself. Moreover, although Casement invariably finds that the volume under discussion is worthless, his reasons for reaching that conclusion are stated so fairly and with so engaging an air of detachment that no one (except, perhaps, the wretched author) ever thinks of accusing him of bias.

The fact that writers of books on California fail to gain Casement’s approval is very largely their own fault. He has ideas on the subject and he has never hesitated to express them. I suppose he has delivered ‘The Winning of the Golden Empire’ — the most popular of his lectures — at least five hundred times during the past twenty years. If there is a Chamber of Commerce or a Rotary or Lions or Kiwanis club from Redding to El Centro that has not heard that spirited talk it can only be because their managers lacked the enterprise to invite him. I once heard Casement lament the fact that his services as a lecturer were so much in demand, and I don’t doubt that his constant traveling up and down the state is a drain on even his abundant energy. But when I asked him why, if lecturing was burdensome, he continued to do it, Casement confessed that he enjoyed it.

‘I’ve never been an armchair historian,’ he added, ‘and I guess I’m too old to begin now. It’s not that I don’t envy you fellows who can retire to your studies and come out in a few weeks with a new book under your arm. It’s just that I can’t work that way — I often wish I could. I can’t let myself get detached from my subject. I’ve got to get out where I can see it and touch it, where I can grapple with it at close quarters. You know what I mean, Walter?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I suppose it is different with you fiction writers,’ he acknowledged. ‘You don’t have to worry about names or dates or the reliability of sources or the hundred other things that give us historians gray hairs. You invent your tales as you go along, and stir in a bit of love interest and a complication or two and presto! you’ve got another novel. Another “gripping romance of Old California.” ‘

I was well aware of the source of Casement’s grievance against us fiction writers who sometimes use California as the locale of our tales. The fact that every now and then one of these novels has a mild popularity and outsells his own solid historical works doesn’t alter his conviction that all such books are trash. His chief complaint is that their authors haven’t a proper knowledge of the periods of which they presume to write. If, in a review of one of these innocuous romances, he finds a historical error (he usually finds more than one) he drags it out and corrects it, citing chapter and verse to prove his point. But his attitude is more often one of sorrow than of anger; no fair-minded reader ever believes there is any rancor behind his judgments. He leaves one with the feeling that he would gladly have said something nice about the book if only its author had done one thing right and so have given him an opportunity to be generous.

Anyone who has listened to Casement’s Golden Empire lecture — and who has not? — will recall that telling phrase of his: ‘When it comes to history, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll take mine straight.’ That is a good example of his informal platform manner. He is not afraid to say that something he likes is ‘swell’ (twenty-five years ago he would have said ‘bully’) or that something he doesn’t like is ‘lousy.’ That puts his audiences at their ease and, as he says, takes the curse off his academic connection. Than Casement there is not in all California a more striking exemplification of the fact that a college professor can be, in another of his phrases, a good egg.

Of course, Casement’s prestige here on the Coast is not based solely on such grounds. He has been writing industriously for a third of a century and he has produced more than a score of books. Besides that, he has held a series of progressively more important jobs at his university, and there are those who think he is in line for even higher honors when old President Van Amberg retires, as he inevitably will soon. Casement has been a leading spirit in the Historical Association from its founding, and a director since 1926 of the First National Bank of his home town. And of course everyone recalls his venture into politics a few years ago, when he ran far ahead of his ticket and missed becoming Lieutenant Governor only because of the Democratic landslide that year.

But Casement’s reputation is primarily based on his historical writings. Although I feel that his books make heavy going, I must add that this is a personal reaction and that many think otherwise. Besides, my belief that he is a bad writer does not prevent my recognizing that he is an influential one. It is well known that the inability to express oneself lucidly has never prevented a scholar from receiving the homage to which his other talents entitle him. At worst this is looked on as a minor blemish that throws other qualities into relief, like a wellplaced mole on the cheek of a beauty.

Casement’s theories are not in the least complicated. I am not oversimplifying when I state that his entire professional career has been devoted to furthering the belief that from the early nineteenth century until about the year 1865 every man who entered California from the East Coast underwent a remarkable transformation at the moment he set foot on our soil, and that everyone who came from any other place whatsoever suffered changes equally drastic, but for the worst. The convenience of such a belief is evident. Once Casement had established that point in mind he was relieved from the necessity of ever giving it another thought. In his subsequent writings his heroes and villains fell automatically into their proper categories and thereafter they gave him no further trouble. It is a great boon to a member of any of the learned professions to be able to do all one’s thinking at the outset of one’s career.

It has done a lot for Casement. While he was still at college he decided what was to be his life’s work. He would teach California history and he would write about California history, and his field should be that period from the coming of the first Yankee until the close of the Civil War. Both his theory and his method are well exemplified in the work that first established his reputation, his two-volume Conquest of California, published in 1916. Many thousands of sets have been sold; one sees the stout red volumes on the shelves of every California library that amounts to anything, and I don’t doubt that most of their owners have made conscientious attempts to read them. That the Conquest is not easy going Casement himself candidly admits. ‘You won’t find the nuggets lying on the surface,’ he tells his students in History B-l, the most popular of his lecture courses. ‘You’ve got to dig for them.’ Six generations of college students have heard that warning — Casement never hesitates to make his own books required reading in his courses — and it must be admitted that those who dig industriously enough often feel that they are rewarded.

Those who believe that California was conquered and annexed and settled by a race of idealists who acted on all occasions out of motives of pure benevolence will find in Casement’s books much to admire. On the other hand, anyone who suspects that the rough shirts of the Yankee trappers and traders and miners did not invariably conceal hearts of pure gold are likely to regard much of Casement’s writings as pernicious nonsense.

II

In the next morning’s mail I found a note from Casement.

He was, he stated, asking his publisher to send me a copy of his book, and he hoped that I, who had known the Hortons well, would enjoy glancing through it. He added that he didn’t know how well he had done the job, — the old man had been a devilishly difficult subject, — but he had done his best and he knew his friends would look leniently on its shortcomings. Then followed this paragraph, which I read with particular interest: —

‘I’m not afraid of what the public will think, or the critics. I’m reasonably sure, too, of the old-timers who knew Horton, and of Horton’s daughter, although it’s hard to know what the reaction will be in that quarter. It’s not important, really, but if you chance to see Aunt Julie, I hope you’ll sound her out. I am sending her a copy too. It will be interesting to have her reaction, don’t you think? As I recall, she is always ready to state her opinions, and they are always worth listening to. Please give her my warm regards.’

I was not deceived by this offhand reference to Aunt Julie. Casement is an old hand at writing biography (for years it has been a sort of by-product of his work as a historian) and he must surely have had a wide experience with the granddaughters and nephews and cousins of those of whom he has written. For no one has so large an acquaintance among the descendants of an illustrious figure as the man who has just written his biography. Before his book has been out a month he is likely to have met, either personally, or over the telephone, or through the mail, positively everyone who has any claim to relationship with his subject. And let no one suppose that these strangers look him up in order to congratulate him on the excellence of his characterization, or to thank him for rescuing a forebear from the obscurity into which his memory has fallen (and so enhancing their own importance), or to commend his discretion in soft-pedaling that deal in C. P. & R. bonds, or for failing to mention the lawsuit filed in 1868 by that Marysville waitress. Not at all. They seek him out so that they can set him right on any errors that may have slipped into his narrative, and to chide him for his blindness for failing to get in touch with them before he committed his half-baked notions to print.

But these matters never bother Casement. He really enjoys such visitors and he knows exactly how to handle them. When some tottering grandson of a pioneer looks him up, Casement is seldom at a loss to know how to smooth his ruffled feelings. If the caller charges that Casement has erred in a date or omitted a middle initial, he acknowledges the fault with manly frankness, gratefully thanks his caller for setting him right, and promises to correct the slip in the next printing of the book.

The visitor usually ends by staying to lunch. Afterwards, they walk across the campus together and Casement drops in at the office of the college daily and introduces his new friend all around. The result is often an entertaining story in the next morning’s issue, in which Casement’s book is praised for its accuracy and general excellence by a descendant of the man about whom it was written. Casement keeps on the best of terms with the staff of the college paper. When he has a chance to throw a story that way he is delighted to do it. But he makes it clear that his only aim is to help the boys get out a lively sheet. If, as often happens, the San Francisco papers pick up and elaborate such stories, Casement is annoyed, but in a perfectly good-natured way. ‘It’s all right to print such stuff in the Maroon,’ he says, ‘where it’s all in the family. But when the outside papers get hold of it, that’s another matter. You never know where the thing will end. You may recall that the time the Maroon quoted from my lecture on the Vigilance Committee of ‘56 — the part where I drew a rough parallel between conditions then and now — the city papers got my remarks rather badly garbled. What’s worse, the news services sent the story all over the country. I got clippings from the most surprising places. The newspapers have got me in a lot of hot water.’

‘Why don’t you forbid the Maroon to quote you?’ I asked.

‘Well, since that Vigilance business I make them submit their stories to me before they print them. But one can’t shut down on them entirely. It wouldn’t be fair to the boys. Many of them are campus correspondents for the state papers and they work on space rates. It’s their livelihood.’

‘Besides,’ I pointed out, ‘when they graduate, some of them get jobs on papers up and down the Coast.’

Casement nodded. ‘You’d be surprised to know how many of our old Maroon boys are working on the state press. Many of them have quite responsible positions. I’ve kept in touch with most of them. It never hurts a writer to have some friends in the newspaper game.’

‘Or a politician?’ I suggested.

‘I suppose you’re referring to that Lieutenant Governor business,’ he laughed. ‘ As a matter of fact the newspaper boys were most helpful. At least they saved me from disgracing myself completely.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘keep your fences in repair. You never know.’

Casement shook his head. ‘No, Walter, I’ve learned my lesson. I’m a historian, not a politician. When it comes to practical politics I’m a babe in arms.’

III

That Casement was anxious to know what Aunt Julie thought of his biography of her father did not surprise me.

It is hard to explain the position Juliet Horton occupies in San Francisco. Rightly or not, our town has acquired over the years a reputation for tolerance. It is said that anyone who refrains from making a nuisance of himself may be, or say, or do, very much what he pleases. For a long time now it has been the custom to cite the case of Aunt Julie as the most conspicuous example of our collective broad-mindedness. I think there has not been in the past forty years any worthwhile movement for civic betterment launched locally that Aunt Julie has not fought tooth and nail. She has a sharp tongue, an unstable temper, and a pretty talent for vituperation. The one sure way to get in her good graces is to scold her for being a hard and selfish old woman with no more sense of her duty toward society than a Digger Indian. She boasts that she has led a thoroughly frivolous life and that she has enjoyed every minute of it. She claims to be eighty, but that is a mild exaggeration. I happen to know that she was born in 1863. She is worth about four million dollars.

I have always had a high regard for that reprehensible old lady. On the other hand I have never felt any really warm enthusiasm for her brother Cliff, who was unlike her in all ways. I am not alone in this, and it is hard to explain why. When Cliff Horton died everyone of importance in the city attended his funeral. The officiating clergyman stated that by his death San Francisco had lost its most valuable and generous and public-spirited citizen, and no fair-minded person in the crowded church could possibly have objected. Yet on looking about I failed to see on any of the hundreds of solemn faces an expression that could be said to reflect genuine regret. Who can explain why it is that when we part from the good and the just we are able to keep our emotions under such admirable control, whereas tear-filled eyes and the grief-stricken blowing of noses form an invariable accompaniment to the funerals of scoundrels?

Cliff Horton died about midway in his fifty-ninth year, at half past two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. His passing was unexpected, for he had been in the best of health — the Hortons are a long-lived family — and there was reason to hope that San Francisco would continue to have the benefit of his sound advice and open purse for at least another decade. The cause was acute indigestion brought on, it was said, by overindulgence in California shrimps, a delicacy for which he had long had a weakness. Some professed to see a note of irony in the fact that the career of this great benefactor of our city had been prematurely terminated by a food so typically San Franciscan as a plate of shrimp Louis. Next day both our morning papers had his picture on their front pages and each devoted a column to an outline of his life and good deeds.

The list of his benefactions was a long one: the James Horton Scholarship Fund for Research in San Francisco History (administered by his friend Dr. Casement); the admirably equipped playground, Horton Field, in the Potrero; the Music Bowl in Golden Gate Park, one of the most charming open-air theatres in the country, attractively placed on a wooded, but chilly, hillside near Stow Lake; the North Beach Boys’ Club; the Horton Lecture Fellowship in Sociology at the state university; the Americanization Center in the alley off Grant Avenue (where the elder Horton once owned some highly profitable houses of prostitution); the Clifford Horton Endowment for the Advancement of Industrial Peace, and many others. This was in addition to his membership on the board of practically every charitable and cultural and civic organization in the city. Clifford’s life had been one board meeting after another.

A citizen with a finger in so many pies was naturally not permitted to have a perfunctory funeral. His body lay in state all one day in the city hall — an honor usually reserved for defunct politicians — while thousands filed past his bier. In San Francisco there has always been a numerous group who can be depended on to show up at any public function, provided only that it has been prominently mentioned in the newspapers and that admission is free. Both these conditions of course prevailed at Cliff’s funeral, and the turnout was remarkable. He would have been gratified had he been permitted to know that so many had personally paid their respects to his memory, but he would also have been ill at ease. He was by nature an austere man with a distaste for display.

He detested crowds and he appeared at public gatherings only when his admirable social sense informed him that he could not properly remain away. He was never at his ease among strangers, particularly among those of the lower orders. His manner then was likely to be so reserved that in some quarters he gained a reputation as a purse-proud snob. This caused him a great deal of regret; he would have liked to be popular in the hearty, back-slapping manner of his friend Casement. Besides, he had a real interest in the problems of those less fortunate than himself and a genuine desire to improve their lot. But he preferred to deal with them at second hand. Like many another philanthropist, he loved the common man as a type and heartily disliked him as an individual. When some recipient of his generosity waylaid him on the street or in the corridor outside his office, Clifford could never quite conceal his distaste for the fellow. He always broke away at the earliest possible moment. Gratitude is one of the most admirable of human virtues and by no means the commonest, and the sentiment is not less beautiful when it is expressed in a breath that smells of garlic and stale wine, by a man whose shirt has been too long away from the tub and whose affably extended hand needs scrubbing. Clifford realized all that. But he was naturally fastidious, and personal untidiness revolted him. He often wished that the deserving were more sanitary.

His will contained a diplomatically worded paragraph concerning Aunt Julie. It stated that through the liberality of their father she already had an income ample for her needs during the remainder of her life. His executors were instructed to permit her to select from his personal belongings any article of furniture, piece of jewelry, or objet d’art she might wish as a token of brotherly affection. Aunt Julie, who had hoped for half a million, swallowed her disappointment and, with no hesitation, chose as her memento Clifford’s beautiful little Titian madonna, the only really valuable painting in his mediocre collection.

The long document contained this clause: —

Because I have long felt that the present preëminent position of my beloved city is mainly due to the courage and enterprise of her pioneer citizens, and in order that San Franciscans of this and succeeding generations may have placed before them the inspiration to be found in the career of one of the first of the pioneers, I bequeath the sum of Ten Thousand Dollars for the purpose of having prepared and written and published a suitable life of my father, James Horton, and I direct that the disbursal of this sum be under the exclusive supervision of my friend Dr. Henry Custer Casement.

When the will was published Casement granted an interview, in which he spoke of Clifford’s bequest with a good deal of enthusiasm. No city, he stated, has a more inspiring past than San Francisco, and among those who had forged the metropolis none was more worthy of remembrance than James Horton. His story was one that well deserved to be told. By directing that his father’s life be written, and by providing so liberally for the work, Clifford had performed not the least notable of his services to the city. Casement made it clear that he would undertake with pleasure the responsibility of seeing that the fund was wisely expended. When he was asked to whom he intended to entrust the writing of the life, he replied that he was keeping an open mind on the point. There were many men and women in California well qualified for the work. It was his aim, however, to find exactly the right person.

As a matter of fact it took Casement almost three years to make up his mind. Meantime he was subjected to a great deal of annoyance. California contains an uncommonly large number of men and women who aspire to literature, and it was not long before the ambition to write a biography of James Horton was burning in the breasts of practically all of them. Their demands proved a strain even on Casement’s good nature, but it must be said that he behaved admirably.

When we chanced to meet one day at the house of a friend (who always invites a few authors to her cocktail parties in the erroneous belief that they tend to brighten the conversation), Casement told me that he was still interviewing applicants.

‘I see them all, and I answer all their letters,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot of work but I want to be fair. Most of these people have no qualification for the job and I have to tell them so, but I hope I do it kindly. Few of them have any real interest in Horton. They’re thinking mainly of the money.’

I looked sympathetic.

‘I try not to be cynical. I tell myself there’s always a chance that someone with exactly the right equipment and viewpoint will show up.’

Casement fixed me with a solemn gaze. ‘You know, Walter, I’m awfully keen on this matter. I simply can’t permit myself to make a mistake.’

My friend’s expression of noble determination was a little more than I could stomach. ‘Nonsense,’ I protested. ‘Horton wasn’t Napoleon. There must be dozens of fellows who can do a decent life of him.’

‘I’m sure you’re right. Some first-rate biographical writing is being done on the Coast these days. But my problem’s to find the right man.’

‘You might have a raffle.’

‘I’ve been trying to follow a somewhat more — ah — scientific method. There are many factors to be considered. It wouldn’t be wise to choose a man solely on the basis of his technical competence, although that’s important, naturally. But his viewpoint’s important, too; his attitude toward Horton and his period. As I see it, no man can write convincingly about the old man unless he has a sympathetic understanding of his environment. Jim Horton was a complex individual. Most of his contemporaries completely misjudged him.’

‘So far as my observation goes,’ I said, ‘most of his contemporaries thought he was a — ‘

‘He wasn’t popular in many quarters,’ Casement admitted, ‘ and it was his own fault. He cared little for public opinion. His methods were direct. He was no diplomat. But he got things done. You’ll have to grant that he helped immensely to build up the city. I want a man who not only recognizes that but who will give it the importance it deserves.’

‘I take it you’re not looking for a muckraker.’

‘Certainly not. On the other hand we shouldn’t try to whitewash the old man. We must strike a balance. I want someone who’ll put the emphasis where it belongs: on Horton’s really great services to the city and state. To do that properly, some of the less attractive phases of his character will have to be minimized, certain imperfections overlooked.’

‘For ten thousand dollars,’ I observed, ‘a writer will overlook a great many imperfections.’

‘That will occur to many people. I’ve foreseen that danger. In a way it’s too bad Cliff was so liberal. The fact that so much money is involved only confuses the issue.’

‘Why don’t you have a whirl at it yourself? ‘

Casement looked startled. ‘What’s that you say?’

‘Why don’t you write the old man’s life yourself? ‘

Casement shook his head decisively. ‘No, Walter, that’s out, definitely. I’ll admit I’ve thought about it, but I’ve put the idea aside. I’m not competent.’

‘Nonsense. You’re just, being modest. No one can hold a candle to you in that field. You’re the logical man.’

Casement gave me a pained smile. ‘That’s nice of you, Walter. Of course it’s true that I’ve some familiarity with the period. And I know the way the thing should be slanted, if you understand what I mean. But damn it all, a man can’t appoint himself to a tenthousand-dollar job. There’d be a terrific row.’

‘Why worry about that? You’re expected to find the most competent man, aren’t you?’

‘Decidedly.’

‘Well, who’s better qualified than you are?’

There are times when Casement overcomes his natural modesty, and this was one of them. ‘I can’t think of anyone,’ he admitted.

‘Then appoint yourself. You can’t honestly do anything else.’

He looked at me hard. ‘I can’t do it, Walter,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got the moral courage.’

But it presently grew clear that Casement’s moral courage was stronger than he thought. Not many weeks later, the papers announced that the uncertainty as to who would be James Horton’s biographer was at an end: Dr. Casement himself would do the job. In his statement, Casement made it clear that he was shouldering the task reluctantly. He was all too conscious of his limitations; to do full justice to the subject required an abler pen than his. But he would do his best and he hoped the public would look charitably on the book’s shortcomings.

His statement made an excellent impression. It was a straight-from-the-shoulder talk by a man who had faced a difficult problem and had solved it according to the dictates of his conscience. To be sure, a few of the town’s writers professed to be disappointed. There was bitterness and some profanity in the sordid dens where the literati forgathered. But their abuse was perfunctory and not ill-natured. Not one of them had seriously believed that Casement would let that ten thousand slip through his fingers.