Literary Boston as I Knew It (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. Among my fellow-passengers on the train from New York to Boston, when I went to begin my work there in 1866, as the assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, was the late Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield Republican, who created in a subordinate city a journal of metropolitan importance. I had met him in Venice several years earlier, when he was suffering from the cruel insomnia which had followed his overwork on that newspaper, and when he told me that he was sleeping scarcely more than one hour out of the twenty-four. His worn face attested the misery which this must have been, and which lasted in some measure while he lived, though I believe that rest and travel relieved him in his later years. He was always a man of cordial friendliness, and he now expressed a most gratifying interest when I told him what I was going to do in Boston. He gave himself the pleasure of descanting upon the dramatic quality of the fact that a young newspaper man from Ohio was about to share in the destinies of the great literary periodical of New England

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819948186
Langue	English

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LITERARY BOSTON AS I KNEW IT
Among my fellow-passengers on the train from NewYork to Boston, when I went to begin my work there in 1866, as theassistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, was the late SamuelBowles, of the Springfield Republican, who created in a subordinatecity a journal of metropolitan importance. I had met him in Veniceseveral years earlier, when he was suffering from the cruelinsomnia which had followed his overwork on that newspaper, andwhen he told me that he was sleeping scarcely more than one hourout of the twenty-four. His worn face attested the misery whichthis must have been, and which lasted in some measure while helived, though I believe that rest and travel relieved him in hislater years. He was always a man of cordial friendliness, and henow expressed a most gratifying interest when I told him what I wasgoing to do in Boston. He gave himself the pleasure of descantingupon the dramatic quality of the fact that a young newspaper manfrom Ohio was about to share in the destinies of the great literaryperiodical of New England.
I.
I do not think that such a fact would now move thefancy of the liveliest newspaper man, so much has the West sincereturned upon the East in a refluent wave of authorship. But thenthe West was almost an unknown quality in our literary problem; andin fact there was scarcely any literature outside of New England.Even this was of New England origin, for it was almost wholly thework of New England men and women in the “splendid exile” of NewYork. The Atlantic Monthly, which was distinctively literary, wasdistinctively a New England magazine, though from the first it hadbeen characterized by what was more national, what was moreuniversal, in the New England temperament. Its chief contributorsfor nearly twenty years were Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Whittier,Emerson, Doctor Hale, Colonel Higginson, Mrs. Stowe, Whipple, RoseTerry Cooke, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Prescott Spofford, Mrs.Phelps Ward, and other New England writers who still lived in NewEngland, and largely in the region of Boston. Occasionally therecame a poem from Bryant, at New York, from Mr. Stedman, from Mr.Stoddard and Mrs. Stoddard, from Mr. Aldrich, and from BayardTaylor. But all these, except the last, were not only of NewEngland race, but of New England birth. I think there was nocontributor from the South but Mr. M. D. Conway, and as yet theWest scarcely counted, though four young poets from Ohio, who werenot immediately or remotely of Puritan origin, had appeared inearly numbers; Alice Cary, living with her sister in New York, hadwritten now and then from the beginning. Mr. John Hay solelyrepresented Illinois by a single paper, and he was of Rhode Islandstock. It was after my settlement at Boston that Mark Twain, ofMissouri, became a figure of world-wide fame at Hartford; andlonger after, that Mr. Bret Harte made that progress Eastward fromCalifornia which was telegraphed almost from hour to hour, as if itwere the progress of a prince. Miss Constance F. Woolson had notyet begun to write. Mr. James Whitcomb Riley, Mr. Maurice Thompson,Miss Edith Thomas, Octave Thanet, Mr. Charles Warren Stoddard, Mr.H. B. Fuller, Mrs. Catherwood, Mr. Hamlin Garland, all whom I nameat random among other Western writers, were then as unknown as Mr.Cable, Miss Murfree, Mrs. Rives Chanler, Miss Grace King, Mr. JoelChandler Harris, Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, in the South, which theyby no means fully represent.
The editors of the Atlantic had been eager from thebeginning to discover any outlying literature; but, as I have said,there was in those days very little good writing done beyond theborders of New England. If the case is now different, and the bestknown among living American writers are no longer New-Englanders,still I do not think the South and West have yet trimmed thebalance; and though perhaps the news writers now more commonlyappear in those quarters, I should not be so very sure that theyare not still characterized by New England ideals and examples. Onthe other hand, I am very sure that in my early day we werecharacterized by them, and wished to be so; we even felt that wefailed in so far as we expressed something native quite in our ownway. The literary theories we accepted were New England theories,the criticism we valued was New England criticism, or, morestrictly speaking, Boston theories, Boston criticism.
Of those more constant contributors to the Atlanticwhom I have mentioned, it is of course known that Longfellow andLowell lived in Cambridge, Emerson at Concord, and Whittier atAmesbury. Colonel Higginson was still and for many years afterwardsat Newport; Mrs. Stowe was then at Andover; Miss Prescott ofNewburyport had become Mrs. Spofford, and was presently in Boston,where her husband was a member of the General Court; Mrs. PhelpsWard, as Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, dwelt in her father's houseat Andover. The chief of the Bostonians were Mrs. Julia Ward Howe,Doctor Holmes, and Doctor Hale. Yet Boston stood for the wholeMassachusetts group, and Massachusetts, in the literary impulse,meant New England. I suppose we must all allow, whether we like todo so or not, that the impulse seems now to have pretty well spentitself. Certainly the city of Boston has distinctly waned inliterature, though it has waxed in wealth and population. I do notthink there are in Boston to-day even so many talents with aliterary coloring in law, science, theology, and journalism asthere were formerly; though I have no belief that the Bostontalents are fewer or feebler than before. I arrived in Boston,however, when all talents had more or less a literary coloring, andwhen the greatest talents were literary. These expressed withripened fulness a civilization conceived in faith and brought forthin good works; but that moment of maturity was the beginning of adecadence which could only show itself much later. New England hasceased to be a nation in itself, and it will perhaps never againhave anything like a national literature; but that was somethinglike a national literature; and it will probably be centuries yetbefore the life of the whole country, the American life asdistinguished from the New England life, shall have anything solike a national literature. It will be long before our larger lifeinterprets itself in such imagination as Hawthorne's, such wisdomas Emerson's, such poetry as Longfellow's, such prophecy asWhittier's, such wit and grace as Holmes's, such humor and humanityas Lowell's.
The literature of those great men was, if I maysuffer myself the figure, the Socinian graft of a Calvinist stock.Their faith, in its varied shades, was Unitarian, but their art wasPuritan. So far as it was imperfect— and great and beautiful as itwas, I think it had its imperfections— it was marred by the intenseethicism that pervaded the New England mind for two hundred years,and that still characterizes it. They or their fathers had brokenaway from orthodoxy in the great schism at the beginning of thecentury, but, as if their heterodoxy were conscience-stricken, theystill helplessly pointed the moral in all they did; some pointed itmore directly, some less directly; but they all pointed it. Ishould be far from blaming them for their ethical intention, thoughI think they felt their vocation as prophets too much for theirgood as poets. Sometimes they sacrificed the song to the sermon,though not always, nor nearly always. It was in poetry and inromance that they excelled; in the novel, so far as they attemptedit, they failed. I say this with the names of all the Bostoniangroup, and those they influenced, in mind, and with a full sense oftheir greatness. It may be ungracious to say that they have left noheirs to their peculiar greatness; but it would be foolish to saythat they left an estate where they had none to bequeath. Onecannot take account of such a fantasy as Judd's Margaret. The onlyNew-Englander who has attempted the novel on a scale proportionedto the work of the New-Englanders in philosophy, in poetry, inromance, is Mr. De Forest, who is of New Haven, and not of Boston.