Strenuous Americans

Strenuous Americans*

Happily, all the strenuous Americans herein arbitrarily assembled are dead. Mr. Dibble has nothing to fear in the way of retaliatory protest. But the reader cannot quite escape a not unpleasant tingle of tremulous anticipation observing the trustful juxtaposition of P. T. Barnum and James J. Hill, or Admiral Dewey at bay between Jesse James and Brigham Young. Among the seven names represented between the strenuous cloth covers are one woman (Frances E. Willard); one capitalist (J. J. Hill); one sailor (Dewey); one politician (Mark Hanna); one showman (Barnum); one Latter-day Saint (Young); one bandit (James).

Mr. Dibble writes in part as a protest against the large mass of American biography--against its "sprawling incoherence," "parochial banalities," "maddening prolixity," "heavy slabs of adulation." His own portraits are characterized by refreshing brevity, a swift, strenuous manner, a sincere endeavor to get at the man behind the legend.

Jesse James. The Robin Hood of America ". . . there was no ultimate evil and no ultimate good that the dashing highwayman did not accomplish." Behind the fantastic and villainous hero of the yellow backs, Mr. Dibble finds a not unlovable young man, more sinned against than sinning, indomitable, humorous, fighting a dauntless fight against inconceivable odds, downed in the end only by treachery.

Admiral Dewey. As a sailor Dewey was vigorous, commanding, resourceful. As a politician he was a fumbling schemer. Mr. Dibble uses him as a peg for a searching criticism of the whole conduct of the war in the Philippines--its disingenuous policies, double-faced dealings with natives and foreign countries, masked imperialism, hidden atrocities by and upon the invading army.

Brigham Young. Out of the welter of "spoken and written mendacity" concerning Mormonism, Mr. Dibble draws the picture of a gargantuan figure--ignorant, unscrupulous, tyrannical, lecherous and all- powerful. On the spiritual wife system he was "sealed" for all eternity to "more women than anyone could count."

Frances E. Willard. Here is a woman who has been regarded as the embodiment of the aggressively virtuous. Her very humanity has been squeezed from her by her admirers. Mr. Dibble means to change all that. He tries to show the irrepressible naughtiness underlying the intolerable perfection. She is interesting for two reasons: her career marks "the definite entrance of woman into the field of political and moral reform"; and "she was a woman who led an unusually rich and varied existence."

James J. Hill. He had two major ideals: the complete control of the entire Northwest and a final "rule over the immeasurable resources of Oriental commerce." Hill failed in the greatest of his ideals. The realization that there were in the world forces greater than his own, "Napoleon of Railroads" though he was, saddened his old age, left him bent and broken. But he has left a mark on the world and on his country that can never be erased.

P. T. Barnum. Joice Heth, Jumbo the Great, Tom Thumb, "The Great Model of Niagara Falls, Real Water," the "Fejee Mermaid,"--yet "Hamlet without Hamlet would not be more impossible than the Museum would have been without Barnum."

Mark Hanna. "Thus began one of the most fascinating chapters in political history: the actual making of a President by a private citizen who was possessor of much money, more enthusiasm and extraordinary ability as an administrator and political adventurer. ... As Senator . . . his governmental functions were almost as numerous as those of Pooh-Bah in Titipu."

The Significance. Mr. Dibble tells a plain, straightforward story in a vigorous way. His vision is unclouded by prejudice, he is quick, observant, interested and interesting. His style is rather anecdotal than analytic, rather active than beautiful. Unassigned quotations are frequent. Meticulous accuracy of detail, one is tempted to suspect, occasionally is permitted to give way to the larger accuracy of the complete picture. His manner is rather journalistic than literary. His irony, running through the sketches in a constant undercurrent, is a little heavy. His stiletto lacks the keenness of Strachey's. But his subjects are well chosen and looked at with freshness and originality. The book as a whole gives a very complete and vivid picture of the opening of the Century.

Good Books

The following estimates of books much in the public eye were made after careful consideration of the trend of critical opinion:

MONSIEUR JONQUELLE--Melville Davisson Post -- Appleton ($2.00). Twelve ingenious tales in which the suave M. Jonquelle, Prefect of Police of Paris, deciphers an extraordinary cryptogram, solves an odd murder, outwits the man with steel fingers, finds the secret of the mottled butterfly, etc. A series of admirable detective puzzles, dexterously contrived.

ROGER BLOOMER--John Howard Lawson--Seltzer ($1.75). Produced last March by the Equity Players, Roger Bloomer at once gave rise to acrid critical warfare. "Arresting, daring, stimulating, fine," cried some. "Trash, hocuspocus, ineffective nonsense," muttered others. No doubt the publication of the play in book form will arouse an equally lively discussion. The story is that of a dreamy kid from Iowa--his adventures, struggles and failures with life and New York. A novel dramatic experiment well worth reading even by those who will be most irritated by it.

THE HARP WEAVER AND OTHER POEMS--Edna St. Vincent Millay-- Harper ($2.00). Lyrics, sonnets and one unforgettable ballad by one of the very first of our poets.

THE FAMOUS TRAGEDY OF THE QUEEN OF CORNWALL -- Thomas Hardy--MacmiUan ($3.50). Mr. Hardy treats the legend of Tristram and Iseult characteristically. His emphasis is on the sweeping, almost cosmic tragedy of inevitable love. The strange beauty of the legend takes on new meaning under the sharp observation of Hardy. The medievalism of the legend is caught in its form--a "play for mummers, without scenery."

Henry Holt

The Younger Men Are Twittering Magpies

Having just finished reading Garrulities of an Octogenarian Editor,* I find myself wanting somehow to pay a tribute to a man who has been an acquaintance, in a sense, from earliest childhood. Once only, at a meeting of the Authors' Club, I met Henry Holt; but I have seen him often and often. This fine, majestic, stalwart figure of a man--old, yet vigorous--might often be seen walking in the grounds of his summer home at Burlington, Vt., where, as a boy, I used to go to watch for birds, to see spring flowers, to enjoy vistas of wood and of mountains.

I have known his sons, and I have seen him with them in the office, affectionate, gracious, courtly. He is a publisher who would shrink from methods often resorted to in these days. He is a writer of charm and power. He has known many of the great men of the past century and has published their books. He is something of a philosopher and a good deal of a mystic. He has lived to an old age made glorious by continued activities and by health perfected by his ability to turn a stern character to discipline of both body and mind. Nor is he unmindful of the soul.

As I read his Garrulities I became conscious that a man of such grace and refinement, of wisdom and of tolerance, was not uncommon in Mr. Holt's generation, and I am wondering if the young and the middle-aged revoltees realize (most of them seem to come from the Middle West) that in New England and in New York men of real culture and breeding existed and exist, men whose background includes friendships with the major figures of literature and science both here and abroad. Against such a noble presence as that of Mr. Holt, the younger men must feel themselves twittering magpies.

How rich the wisdom that guides the pen to this:

"From these sources I have been gradually making up my own religion. I once asked Whitney, the great philologist, what dictionary he relied on, and he answered: 'Why, I'm my own dictionary.' It took me a little while to think it out. So the ideal seems to me unquestionably that each man should have his own religion. The other day I was astonished to read in Dean Inge: 'We cannot make a religion for others, and we ought not to let others make a religion for us.' But aren't those things just what the church and the faithful have always been doing?"

American Books Who Reads Them?

"Who reads an American book?" quoth the carping foreign critic who found Americans so vulgar in the earlier days of the Republic. The critic did not append "except, of course, Americans--and what do they count?"--the slur was hardly worth the critic's while, then. But the sting of the first query has ceased to rankle now, as one can easily see by glancing over the English publishers' lists of the current year.

Doubtless there was a time when American books were hardly read outside of America, though Whitman received both encouragement and puzzled dispraise from England, and Mark Twain's royal reception there is a matter of record. But at this present moment it would seem from a hasty perusal of foreign booknotes as if American publications of any merit or any conspicuous salability were rather sought after than frowned on by foreign publishers.

Witness the sensational success of Babbitt in England, after the comparative failure there of Main Street--a failure due, says Hugh Walpole, to the fact that there is no organism in English society at all comparable to our own Gopher Prairies. The Blind Bow-Boy, the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Being Respectable, One of Ours, the earlier novels of Sinclair Lewis--these are a few of the familiar faces one meets in the sedate advertisements of English publishers--and there are many more. Hergesheimer appears in the paper covers of Tauchnitz or his supplanter, beloved of globe-trotters--Three Soldiers is seen Teutonified to Drei Soldaten--Theodore Dreiser's Twelve Men makes a Gallic bow as Douse Hommes. And as for our most avowed best-sellers--they slay their thousands universally, in all tongues, including the Scandinavian. Gradually but surely, the Continent is beginning to revise the theory! that American literature is entirely composed of Edgar Allan Poe, Jack London and Upton Sinclair.

Of course there are exceptions. Much excellent work by American authors is not published even in England--much that is published is. a trifle provincially, misunderstood. But, on the whole "Who reads an American book?" has departed into the limbo of forgotten questions like "Who struck Billy Patterson?" and "Who chased who three times round the walls of what?"

S. V. B.

*STRENUOUS AMERICANS--Roy Dibble-- Boni ($3.00).

*GARRULITIES OF AN OCTOGEHARIAN EDITOR--Henry Holt--Houghton Mifflin ($4.00).