The books have come, and among them is another lady’s literary effort to make a garden. Judith it is this time, following hard upon the sunburned heels of Elizabeth, Evelina, and I do not know how many more hairpin gardeners. Why does not some man with a real spade and hoe give his experience in a sure-enough garden? I am wearied of these little freckled-beauty diggers who use the same vocabulary to describe roses and lilies that they do in discussing evening toilets and millinery creations.
VI
JESSICA TO PHILIP
My dear Mr. Towers:
We have had a visitor, Professor M——, the doctor of English literature in E—— College, which you will remember is not very far from Morningtown. He came to examine a few first editions father has of some old English classics—(I have neglected to tell you that this is father’s one carnal indulgence, dead books printed in funny hunchbacked type!). He is a young man, but so bewhiskered that his face suggests a hermit intelligence staring at life through his own wilderness. His voice is pitched to a Browning tenor tone, and I have good reasons for believing that he is a bachelor.
Still we had some talk together, and that is how I came to practise a deceit upon you. Seeing a copy of The Gazette lying on the table this morning, Professor M—— was reminded to say that there was a “strong man,” Philip Towers by name, connected with that paper now. I cocked my head at once like a starling listening to a new tune, for that was the first time I had heard your name praised by a literary man in the South. He went on to say that he had been delighted with your last book, Milton and His Generation, and asked if I had observed your work in the literary department of The Gazette. I admitted demurely that I had. He praised several reviews (all written by me!) particularly, and said that you were the only critic in America now who was telling the truth about modern fiction. Then he incensed me with this final comment:
“I do not understand how he does this newspaper work so forcefully, almost savagely, and is at the same time capable of writing such delicate, scholarly essays as this volume contains!”
“I have seen Mr. Towers,” I remarked, mentally determining that you should suffer for that distinction.
“Indeed! what manner of man is he?”
“His dust has congealed, stiffened into a sort of plaster-of-Paris exterior, and he has what I call a disinterred intelligence!”
“A what?”
“A man whose very personality is a kind of mental reservation, and whose intelligence has been resurrected up through the thought and philosophy of three thousand years.”
M—— looked awkward but impressed.
And I hoped he would ask how you actually looked, for I was in the mood to give a perfectly God-fearing description of you.
But from the foregoing you will see that I am capable of sharing your literary glory on the sly, and without compunction. Indeed, the false rôle created in me a perverse mood. And I entered into a literary discussion with M—— that outraged his pedantic soul. It was my way of perjuring his judgment, in return for his unwitting approval of my reviews. Besides, the assumption of infallibility by dull, scholarly men who have neither imagination nor genius has always amused me. And this one danced now as frantically as if he had unintentionally grasped a live wire that hurt and burned, but would not let go! Finally I said very engagingly:
“Doctor M——, I hope to improve in these matters by taking a course of instruction under you next year.”
“Now God forbid that you should ever do such a thing, Miss Doane! I would sooner have you thrust dynamite under the chair of English Literature, than see you in one of my classes!”
Thus am I cast upon the barren primer commons of this cold world! And that reminds me to say that I have been reading the essays by Arnold and Brownell which you gave me, with no little animosity. Brownell’s criticism of Thackeray is very suggestive, and brushes away a deal of trash that has been written about his lack of artistic method. But I never supposed such loose sentences would be characteristic of so acute a critic. They do not stick together naturally, but merely logically. And I am sure you would not tolerate them from me. But of all the books you have given me I like best George Santayana’s Poetry and Religion. Who is he anyhow? It may be a disgraceful admission to make, but I never heard of him before. His name is foreign, and his style is not American. For when an American says a daring thing, particularly of religion, he says it impudently, with a vulgar bravado. But this man writes out his opinion coolly, simply, with that fine hauteur that will not condescend to know of opposition. I think that is admirable. Arnold’s courtesy and satirical temperance in dealing with what he discredits is a pose by the side of this man’s mental grace and courage. And you know how we usually denominate style: it is the little lace-frilled petticoat of the lady novelist’s mincing passions, or the breeches that belong to a male author’s mental respirations. But with this man, style is a spirit sword which cleaves between delusions and facts, which separates religion from reality and establishes it in our upper consciousness of ideality.
Is it not absurd for such a barbarian as I am to discuss these gospel-makers of literature with you? But it is much more remarkable that one or any of them should excite my admiration and respect. Really, if you must know it, Mr. Towers, this is where I grow humble-minded in your presence. I am fascinated with your ability to deal with the usually indefinable, the esoteric side of art—the esoteric side of life by interpretation. And here I discover a shadowy, ghostly likeness between you and this George Santayana. You do not think toward the same ends, or write in the same style, but you know things alike, as if you had both drunk from the same Eastern fountain of mysteries.
And now I am about to change my gratitude into indignation. For I begin to suspect that you sent me these books to inculcate the doctrine of literary humility. If so, you have succeeded beyond your highest expectations. Until now, writing has been a series of desperate experiments with me. I progressed by inspiration. But these fellows—Arnold especially—discredit all such performances. And he does it with the air of an English gentleman inspecting a naked cannibal. He makes my flesh creep! He regards an inspiration as a sort of vulgarity that must be dressed and stretched before it can be used. From his point of view I infer that he considers genius as a dangerous kind of drunkenness that fascinates the world, but is really closely related to bad form in literature. On the other hand, father says that if Matthew Arnold had known of me he would have purchased me, placed me in a cage with a fountain pen, and exhibited me to his classes at Oxford as a literary freak!
VII
PHILIP TO JESSICA
My dear Miss Doane:
I will remember your amused hostility to “hairpin gardeners” and see that no more out-of-door books come to you until I have one with a stimulating odour of burning cornstalks and rotting cabbages. Meanwhile let me assure you that your reviews of Elizabeth, Evelina, Judith, and their sisters have been none the less delightful for a vein of wicked impatience running through them. The books I am now sending. …
You ought not to be amazed at my dismal comments on latter-day literature. The fact is, you have dissected our present book-makers better than I could do it myself, for the reason that I am too amiable (I presume, you see, that I have the wit) to judge my fellow-workers with such merciless veracity.
But I have just read an article in the Popular Science Monthly which throws an unexpected light on the subject. The paper is by Dr. Minot and is a biologist’s comment on “The Problem of Consciousness.” You might not suppose that an argument to show how “the function of consciousness is to dislocate in time the reactions from sensations” (!) would have much to do with the properties of literature, but it has. Let me copy out some of his words, as probably