Mark Howe of Boston

by ARTHUR STAN WOOD PIER

I

SPECULATING with a group of friends on the possibility of interplanetary travel, the late Pro1 fessor Alfred North Whitehead remarked that the Earth’s first visitors to Mars should be persons likely to make a good impression. “Whom would you send?” someone asked. “My first choice would be Mark Howe,” replied the venerable sage.

To Mark Howe’s friends, his qualifications for such a mission are obvious. His quick interest in new people and fresh points of view, his hospitality to ideas, and his courtesy should make him a welcome visitant in any sphere. In his terrestrial career his interests have led him into the field of biography, where his exploration of personalities, widely diverse, some of them eccentric, has yielded, under his sympathetic proving, a revelation of character and expression. For his success as a writer of biography he laid the foundation by what he terms his steam-shovel qualities, his persistence and thoroughness in excavating significant facts from masses of documents and letters. But to the grubbing industry of the antiquarian were added the poet’s imaginative insight and the artist’s skill in rounding out and lighting the portrait.

No more self-effacing biographer over lived, nor one more industrious. Mis first biography, a short volume on Phillips Brooks, appeared in 1899, then came The Life and Letters of George Bancroft, The Life and Labors of Bishop Hare, and The Letters of Charles Eliot Norton; Memories of a Hostess; Barrett Wendell and His Letters (which received a Pulitzer Prize), John Jay Chapman and His Letters, Holmes of the Breakfast-Table. So run the titles in biography to a total of eighteen, not including the Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the First World War under his editorship: a labor of love in the performance of which he actually wrote over of the sketches. Incidentally, he holds the present Marathon record in the Atlantic: his first contribution appeared in May, 1893, and his most recent, a poem entitled “After Eighty,” fifty-five years later.

As an undergraduate at Lehigh in the eighties he found his best friend in Richard Harding Davis. Together they wrote for the Lehigh Burr and it was Howe who succeeded Davis as the managing editor. Out of this friendly competition came the determination to make writing his profession. Howe’s father, who was Bishop of Central Pennsylvania, would have preferred to have him study for the ministry, and thought that the impediment in his speech which would certainly have prolonged unduly his conduct of a church service could be overcome by the exercise of will power. In his later years Howe has acquired comparative ease and fluency of speech — simply, he thinks, in the process of growing old. Although he rejoices in the new freedom, his friends have always felt that whatever he had to say was worth waiting for, and sometimes gained a special pungency from the explosive force with which it was finally delivered.

After Lehigh came two years of graduate study at Harvard: then with his M.A. degree and a letter of introduction from Professor Child he applied for a job at the Atlantic. Horace Seudder, the editor, had nothing to offer, but passed him along with a friendly word to the editor of the Youth’ s Companion, in whose leisurely routine Howe served for five years as one of numerous assistant editors. Mr. Scudder, however, kept him in mind and when an opening occurred in the Atlantic office invited him to fill it. before the offer became binding Howe had to interview Mr. Henry O. Houghton, ihe venerable bead of Houghton, Mifflin and Company, then the proprietors of the magazine. The interview took place shortly after the old gentleman had returned from his customary hearty luncheon at the Union Club. In the middle of a sentence Howe suffered a characteristic paraiysis of speech; his lips worked convulsively but uttered no sound; pawing the floor with his foot, sometimes efficacious, brought norelease. Mr. Houghton closed his eyes and went to sleep. Under the stimulus of chagrin Howe became suddenly articulate. He exploded. The publisher awoke, smiled benignly, and named a salary that was satisfactory.

One who had been accustomed to the flexible routine of the Youth’s Companion was dismayed to learn that every employee ol the Houghton Miffin firm had to enter daily in a black book the time of his arrival at the office, of his going out for lunch and his return, and of his departure at the end of the day. With a temerity that seems out of character the new assistant editor wrote on the title page of the black book, “The Short and Simple Annals of the Poor. “ Instead of reprimanding him for impudence the firm took the hint and discontinued ihe use of the book.

Howe had been assistant editor but a short time when his chief, who was planning to retire, gave him a copy of a small book he had written, in which were inscribed the words, “H. E. Scudder, to his understudy. The promise of promotion that was implied was foiled by the serious trouble that Howe began to have with his eves. The oculist’s prescriptions were of no avail; he had to give up reading, resign from the Atlantic, and retire to the family farm at Bristol, Rhode Island, where for the next five years he saw the world through dark glasses. He farmed and he fumed. Drastic and painful treatments slowly began to restore his sight. As the light came back he began to write again—poems enough lo fill a slim volume and then, as the first in a series of Beacon Biographies, a 20,000-word biography of Phillips Brooks.

On September 21, 1899, he married Miss Fanny Quincy, the younger sister of the Mayor of Boston. Her wit, her delightful humor, her judicious skepticism, were a stimulant which quickened and sharpened his work. She was herself a writer of distinction, but her essays in the Atlantic— “My Wife’s Address-Book,”“My Wife’s Check-Book,” “A Guilt-Edged Conscience,” to name but three — were always published anonymously, as were her books, though their authorship could not long be kept secret. When any of them was praised in her presence, she would declare severely that it should no more be mentioned than if it were an illegitimate child. Upon her husband’s proposal to dedicate one of his books to her, she ironically suggested the following: —

Walter Hines Page had succeeded Mr. Scudder as editor of the Atlantic when at last, in his midthirties, Howe was able to return to editorial work. There was no opening in the Atlantic office, but once again the Youth’s Companion was hospitable. It was then installed in a fine new building with imposing arched entrance and marble hall at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Berkeley Street. Never in one office were there so many editors with so little to do and such ample space to do it in. On the top floor in a room about the size of a tennis courl the manuscript readers, six in number, sat at their roll-top desks, which with the accompanying chairs and a long table in the middle were the only furniture. Their hours were from 9.30 in the morning until 4.00 in the afternoon, with as much time off for lunch as they might require or find it agreeable to take. A dozen other editors of slightly more advanced status enjoyed additional privileges, each being secluded in a room of his own, where he was often able in a couple of hours to dispatch the work of the day. Nearly all the editors passed considerable time visiting one another, exchanging the newest stories, or strolling outdoors to enjoy the relaxation of a cigarette, smoking in the building being forbidden. Sometimes one passing the open door of an editorial room might see the solitary occupant comfortably asleep. In the readers’ room where Howe was installed his gift for song was frequently invoked.

It was a delightful place of employ ment for a group of congenial and not too serious young men, bul for those who felt strongly that life is real, life is earnest, it was frustrating. “In this office,” remarked John Mack, who was quite as witty as his distinguished brother-in-law, Bourke Cockran, “Ellery Sedgwick is like a locomotive lying on its back, with its wheels going round and round.”

2

ONE day three enormous Saratoga trunks were brought in and set down in Howe’s corner, making a barrier around his desk. Any little happening out of the ordinary was sufficient to draw the readers from their swivel chairs; they all stood by while Howe, pacing about in a circle and tapping the palm of his hand with a trunk key, had more than the usual difficulty in communicaling the information that they waited to receive, Ultinnately they learned that he had agreed to write the biography of George Bancroft and had obtained permission from the management of the Youth’s Companion to have the historian’s papers deposited in the readers’ room; he had not anticipated, however, any such formidable consignment as confronted him. A view of the contents of the trunks dismayed the idlers looking on. Indeed the masses of papers and bales of letters might have daunted anyone blessed with strong eyes as well as sturdy character. Fortunately the cure that Howe had undergone proved to be permanent. After four years during which he devoted virtually all his spare time to Bancroft, the monumental two-volume biography of the historian and diplomat was finished. It won for the author immediate recognition by American scholars.

AHowe looks upon his biographical writings as an extension of his editorial work. His method as a biographer has been to let the subject, as far as possible, tell his own story. Most of the persons with whom he has dealt were highly articulate; in their letters they left records of their thoughts and activities, often buried under much unimportant detail. To release what was vital and interesting, to supply explanatory comment and bridge narrative gaps, called for editorial skill and wide collateral reading. Howe thinks that he may look forward lo a small immortality in footnotes, for the reason that his biographies are source material for historians. The authors of books and articles relating to the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905, must consult his life of George von L. Meyer, who at that time was the American Ambassador at St. Petersburg. So too, those who would interpret the New England of past days are inadequately equipped for the task unless they have read Howe’s books dealing with some of its eminent figures and presenting for the first time material essential to complete understanding.

The late Gamaliel Bradford, himself a most industrious writer, remarked in a letter to Howe about the biography of Barrett Wendell, “I am especially struck with the immense amount of labor involved. . . . You have done more work on ibis [book] than I have done in the last twenty years.” In the “Wendell,” Howe quoted his subject’s opinion of a biographers duty: Whoever would tell the truth about any man must be in the literal sense his apologist ... I mean that the first and perhaps the only duty of an honest biographer is, so far as may be, to set forth the man whom he writes as that man saw himself, and to explain him on his own terms.

That theory may lead to satisfactory results when the subject is conspicuously an extrovert, who lakes an objective view of himself; it cannot be successfully applied to one who, like Barrett Wendell, was introspective and given to underrating himself. In order to show Wendell in action Howe had to seek out other sources than his letters. A revealing passage, for example, is the brief report of an occurrence when Wendell with his wife and daughter was returning from Cambridge to Boston after witnessing a football game. “As they were boarding an electric car a man in the crowd thrust Mrs. Wendell aside and was pushing through the door when Wendell managed to arrest his progress by hooking ihe man’s umbrella with the crook of his own walking-stick. ’Be careful, sir!' came the protest,’‘you are breaking my umbrella! ‘On the contrary, said Wendell, I am mending your manners.”

The accuracy and perceptiveness of Howe’s appraisal of character are nowhere better shown than in his closing words on Barrett Wendell: “Honest, pure, and original of mind; chivalrous and generous to the verge of the quixotic; given to decking serious thought in the motley of jest and caprice; but to the core of his being, faithful, and wise, and kind.”

It is a biographer’s duty to bring vividly before the reader a man’s outward form and appearance. Howe describes John Jay haprnan as follows; “One saw him approaching on a New York street, perhaps Fifth Avenue, and felt at once the nearness of a notable figure. Tall, with the commanding presence to which a prophet or poet might lay claim, bearded, in his later years, and then of a grizzled grayness, with small, piercing, friendly eyes and clean-cut features, bonding slightly forward as he walked with shorter step than most men of his height, dressed with something of the sweet neglect that sits best upon the well dressed and well formed, wearing a woolen scarf about his neck and shoulders in almost all weather, and singular above all else through the lack of a left hand.”

In all the biographies Howe’s talent for making pictures shows attractively. Memories of a Hostess his old friend Mrs. James T. Fields — is not properly a biography; it is a succession of charming scenes and sketches. One of the most delightful is the description of a dinner party at Mrs. Fields’s Charles Street house in Boston at which Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, then nearly ninety years old, rose in response to her septuagenarian hostess’s request and recited “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic,” accompanying ihe line “... be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!" with a little clap of her hands and a decorous prancing of her feet, while from across the table Henry James gazed with rapt attention at the liny figure. Afterwards Howe escorted her lo her carriage and, having seen her comfortably bestowed, was about to bid her good night when she remarked with satisfaction, “Annie Fields has shrunk.”

3

A BIOGRAPHER is the richer for the poet’s gift of divination. Its vivifying influence in Howe’s work has been well recognized by Van Wyek Brooks in the following passage from New England: Indian Summer:—

“The biographer of Phillips Brooks. Bancroft, Norton, Moorfield Storey, and later of Wendell, Hlolmes, and John Jay Chapman, was a poet all the time; and that is why, in Mark Howe’s books, the Pharaohs came to life again, as they died again in Other ‘Lives and Letters.’ He shared in whatever was human because it was human. . . . Most of the other biographers were dazzled by their heroes, or they were humdrum themselves; and they so swathed the mummies of the Pharaohs that it took a generation to unwrap them.”

Howe, who is, as Mr. Brooks truly says, a poet all the time,” naturally has tried his hand some of the time at being a poet. He has published six books of verse, in which his light and subtle touches enable him to suggest individual graces and to bring fresh charm to classical legends and modern themes.

“Fire of Apple Wood,” for example, illustrates the individual quality of his descriptive verse. Through his storm-beaten study windows the poet looks out on the shattered old trees of the orchard. Fragments from them are burning on his hearth.

A few of the epigrams with which he has amused himself and delighted others illustrate his wit. A frequent contributor to the Atlantic, though not an invariably successful one, he penned a genial quatrain for Bliss Perry during the latter’s editorship:

At a dinner in honor of Oliver Wendell Holmes the younger, celebrating his appointment to the Supreme Court, Howe produced the following: —

His cleverness in parody is demonstrated in lines on John Marquand’s Wickford Point which were circulated among a few friends soon after the book appeared. Now that the family grudges which the novel did nothing to abate have been aired in court, the rhymes may be released to amuse a larger audience: —

The tart flavor of these lines is, however, not characteristic of Howe’s verse. His serious poems are inspired by warm feeling and generous sentiment. Those readers who may care to look up his volumes of verse entitled Harmonies and Songs of September will be rewarded.

A compact figure in sober clothes, round-faced, with grizzled, close-clipped mustache and eyes twinkling benignly behind horn-rimmed spectacles, Mark Howe in his eighty-sixth year might sit for the portrait of the elder brother of the Cheeryble Brothers had Dickens provided them with one. He lives in his apartment on Louisburg Square surrounded by old piet ures, old books, old furniture. As editor or biographer he has seen some forty volumes through the press; he has served for long periods? On the staffs of the Atlantic, the Youth’s Companion, the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, and the Harvard Alumni Bulletin.

One of the most considerate of men, he has given practical advice and a helping hand to many a young writer and editor. And he has had the supreme gratification of reading the successful works of his three talented children. His older son, Quiney, editor of several books on contemporaneous matters, well-known news analyst and commentator with the Columbia Broadcasting System, has recently published the massive first volume of a definitive World History of Our (hen Times. The younger son, Mark, who had a distinguished warrecord and is now a professor in the Harvard Law School, was secretary to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes almost up to the time of the jurist’s death and is writing Mr. Holmes’s “authorized” biography. Some confusion may await future historians in distinguishing between two Mark DeWolfe

Howes, father and son, as biographers of two Oliver Wendell Holmeses, father and son. Helen, Howe’s daughter, comes naturally by the double portion of wit that animates her monologues and novels. To the three, “beloved tutors in adult education,” Howe dedicated his delightful autobiography, A Venture in Remembrance.

Lach May at the annual meeting of the Tavern Club—of which he has been a member for more than fifty years— Howe is called on for his song, “The Presidential Range,” commemorating the eight presidents of t he club, of whom the first was

In the low-studded dimly lighted dining room, the Dean of Boston letters stands by the piano and trolls out his verses in a voice that is still clear and resonant. And while he sings the stanza about the third president,

he is quite unaware that the lines

apply with equal fitness to himself.