The Contributors' Column

Arthur Clutton-Brock, an English man of letters, lecturer, essayist, and lover of gardens, is art critic of the Times. He contributed ‘Religion Now’ to the Atlantic for July last. Wilson Follett, an American essayist and critic, well known to readers of this magazine, makes, with ’The Dive,’ his first adventure in fiction. The author of the Letters that were never sent desires to remain anonymous.

Our excerpts from the letters of Raden Adjeng Kartini, which, in this number, describe the wedding of her sister, will be concluded in January with some account of her own experience as a married woman. The Atlantic constituency wall welcome the reappearance of Agnes Repplier. Laura Spencer Portor (Pope) is connected with an important woman’s journal in New York. Her Adventures in Indigence is one of the permanently charming volumes of contemporary essays. The author of ‘The Importance of Being a Professor’ gives in that paper plain reasons for wishing to retain his anonymity.

Walter Lippmann, an editor of the New Republic, continues in this number, from another angle, his discussion of the problem of securing honest and unbiased news. Margaret Sherwood, an old and wellloved contributor, is Professor of English at Wellesley College. Lisa Ysaye Tarleau, of New York, contributes another of her fanciful brief sketches.

A. N. Brubacker, a new contributor, is President of the State College of Teachers, Albany, N.Y. The following brief summary of the first installment of Anne Douglas Sedgwick’s story may be of value.

Mrs. Delafield is an elderly widow who has known much sorrow, — her only daughter killed in a horrible hunting accident, and that daughter’s two sons both fallen in the war, — but whose strong character always gains new strength; she is as determined and indomitable as her favorite Christmas roses. In a letter from her brother Tim she learns that his daughter Rhoda, whose eccentric and uncertain character has been constant source of anxiety to parents and aunt alike, has left her soldier husband, Niel Quentyn, and her baby, to go with one Christopher Darley, a poet, and that the baby has been sent to her, Mrs. Delafield, in the country. Her brother tells her also that he has induced Rhoda to come to her to talk over the situation.

The arrival of the little girl,—Jane Amoret,— whom she had not seen for some time, awakens a storm of affection for her in Mrs. Delafield’s breast, and before Rhoda appears, the desire to keep the child becomes so overpowering that she determines to stifle her ‘ mid-Victorian conscience’ and to encourage Rhoda to remain with her poet rather than urge her to return to her marital duty. The interview with her niece which follows confirms her in this determination, the more because she is convinced of Rhoda’s entire lack of maternal affection. And so, as she feels that Rhoda has begun to tire of Darley and that ‘she had come hoping to have her way made clear for a reëntry, dignified if not triumphant, into the old life,’ she declares herself against the advisability of her return to her husband and incidentally, while apparently circumventing her, lays herself open to much satirical comment from Rhoda, who finally takes her leave ‘without even kissing Jane Amoret good-bye.’

Laurence Binyon, an English poet of long-established reputation, whose work is not unfamiliar to our readers, is Keeper of Prints at the British Museum. William Charles Scully, still a dweller in South African wilds, will be remembered for his entertaining descriptions of various African creatures. To the temperamentally incredulous the editor would add that, by way of corroborative evidence, he has received from the late owner of the trained baboon mentioned in the narrative a photograph of the intelligent animal at work. It must, of course, be remembered, that this work was done under his master’s eyes, and that the baboon had the immense advantage of this moral support. The creature’s achievements are sufficiently remarkable under any conditions. Henry Noyes Otis is a lawyer of Boston. Henry S. Pritchett was President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when, in 1906, he was called to the head of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, whose important policies he has shaped from the beginning.

Gordon S. Watkins is connected with the Department of Economics of the University of Illinois, at Urbana. Major Doremus Scudder comes of a famous missionary family. His grandfather spent a beneficent life preaching and civilizing in India, a field which was later the scene of his father’s labors. The author of the present article was long the pastor of the Union Church in Honolulu, and later of the Union Church in Tokyo, where his work was among English-speaking foreigners. As a member of the executive committee of the Red Cross for Japan, which had headquarters in Tokyo, and as a man of trained and respected judgment, Major Scudder was invited by Ambassador Morris to become Director of Civilian Relief in Russia. He worked first in Eastern and then in Western Siberia, covering the vast territory between Vladivostok and Ufa. In prosecuting this work. Major Scudder lived for seven months aboard a private car placed at his disposal, and had opportunities to talk freely and frankly with Russians of every class. Of Admiral Kolchak he saw a good deal, and the impressions he sets forth in his article are firsthand. Anything favorable that is said of Admiral Kolchak in print creates an apparently concerted outcry. The author of the present paper is, fortunately, safe from criticism, because of his hard-earned reputation, and the obvious disinterestedness of his argument. Clara Savage sends us from New York this vivid account of her experiences in Budapest. George W. Anderson, long identified with the investigation of economic and industrial problems, was a member of the Massachusetts Public Service Commission when he was appointed by President Wilson United States District Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. At the end of his term he was made a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission; but after a brief service in that important body, he was appointed justice of the United States District Court.

It may be worth noting that no one of the four contributors whose papers are printed under the rubric ‘The New World’ has previously written for the Atlantic.

Everyone who knows the Atlantic well knows Abbé Dimnet, professor at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, eloquent defender and lover of France, and incidentally an old friend and contributor of ours. We commend the letter he sends us to all who care for learning — and for France.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., 24 October, 1919.
DEAR ATLANTIC,— No, I am not here merely to give the Lowell lectures, or for any selfish literary purposes. I have been sent over to America to complete if possible a fund of $100,000 to tide the hospitals of Lille (Northern France) over a terrible crisis.
You know Lille: it is — at least, it used to be — the French Boston — same industry, culture, and wealth. Now the city is in a melancholy plight. Testimonies which I have collected from such witnesses as Colonel Mygatt, Mr. Hoover, Mrs. Duryea, and Philip Gibbs, are agreed that nine in ten Lille children show signs of consumption. The hospitals are full. But these hospitals, at least, those in which I am interested, are so poor that they have been unable for a while to give even cod-liver oil free, and their very existence is threatened. These hospitals used to be endowed more richly than any others in France; but where did the money come from? From 157 mills which gave the town its life. Now 149 of these mills are still in the gutted condition in which they were left by the Germans, and it will be so until machinery can come from America. So this is the welcome which Lille has been able to give to her home-coming soldiers, men who were all mobilized, even men of forty-seven, on July 31, 1914, and fought during four years on one cent a day and never any news from home, beyond the news that their wives and daughters had been deported.
I do my best to interest Americans, but alas! what with having done so much already, and with high taxation, and drives so enormous that they dazzle as much as they tantalize me, I find things difficult. If you knew of anybody or any group of people who would give $12,000 to endow a freemilk distribution, which would save hundreds of young lives, it would be a splendid thing. Some people seem to think that conditions are the same in Belgium and in Northern France. I may ask you to dispel the error some day: stricken as she was, Belgium is prosperous compared to Northern France. This I know because I saw.
Yours very sincerely,
ERNEST DIMNET.

If any reader will contribute to this good cause, the Atlantic will be responsible for the acknowledgment and transmission of his check.

We were in reminiscent mood the other day when this pleasant letter of an earlier time and manners came to us from the editor of the Rural New-Yorker. It will amuse many of the Atlantic’s friends.

October 16, 1919.
DEAR ATLANTIC— I have been thinking over some of the things that occurred to me as a little boy while working for Osgood & Company in the old Tremont Street building. It was a rare experience, and as I went straight from Boston to a cattle ranch in Colorado, the associations in that old business were driven in upon me in such a way that I have never been able to forget them. It is said that a man can never be a hero to his valet, but I know from experience that a great author can be a superman to a small errand-boy. I am sure that those authors used a form of indelible chalk when marking on the little blackboard of my life. Your note has brought to mind many incidents connected with the old Atlantic Monthly.
I remember that I was paid $3.00 a week when I started working for Osgood & Company. It cost me $4.00 a week for board. I was a war-orphan, with all that meant in those old days, and you may realize that the search for the needed $1.00 a week in old Boston was a strenuous undertaking. I could unfold a tale about that life which would seem to be now nearer the head. I remember that one Saturday night I found four dollars in my little pay-envelope. There never was a New England conscience more severely torn by temptation than mine was all through that Sunday. I remember that in the evening I went to hear Edward Everett Hale preach. Of course, I supposed it was the book-keeper’s mistake. On Monday morning I put my hand in my pocket, shut my eyes, and ran past several shop windows without daring to look at them. I finally went to the book-keeper and handed him the dollar.
‘ Oh! no,’ he said, ‘ we are going to pay you that extra dollar hereafter.’
I did not know until long after that this dollar, for a number of months, came out of the bookkeeper’s pocket; and the book-keeper was Edwin D. Mead.
Mr. Osgood was a man of few and rather direct words, particularly when he was troubled with rheumatism. He told me that my little business was to keep quiet, tell the truth, answer questions and not ask them, and give facts as I knew them; for he evidently believed that even an errand-boy must be responsible for a few facts. Once, in the authors’ room, when I came in for some errand, I overheard a discussion which impressed me deeply. They were criticising some author’s style, and someone — either Emerson, or, as I remember, E. P. Whipple— said something like this.
‘ I would advise a young writer to try and tell the truth in single syllables. The common man thinks in words of one syllable, and when you get out of that he begins to be suspicious. The world will finally have to go to the common man for an audience. Let your young writer take any famous sentence that he remembers, and see if he can write the exact meaning in words of one syllable. That is the working dress of common thought. As this nation develops, and newer people come into it, authors will be obliged to put on this working dress if they desire to hold the public.’
That is about what Whipple said. I cannot, of course, quote the exact language, but I have always remembered that, and found the one-syllable idea a great help in my work. Shortly after that the Atlantic Monthly printed T. B. Aldrich’s story, Marjorie Daw. It was the hit of the season, the best thing the house had done since Bret Harte wrote short stories for Every Saturday. Nine out of ten who read it, without looking ahead to the last page, were completely fooled at the last sentence, —

THERE IS N’T ANY MARJORIE DAW.

At the time it was printed, the very first postalcards ever seen in Boston were issued, and I remember that the authors each bought half a dozen cards and wrote witty sentences on them to be mailed to their friends. I took them to the Post Office, and naturally read them all over. I remember that Aldrich wrote his first card to his mother, and printed on it, ‘Would you like to adopt Marjorie Daw? ’ It was a jolly company that went out to lunch after writing those cards. At the door, Aldrich turned to me, and in mock dignity said, with a low bow, ‘If anyone is so unfortunate as to inquire for me, tell them that we have all gone out for the purpose of becoming intoxicated.’

That struck me as a good sentence on which to try Whipple’s famous plan. Shortly after they disappeared, two very dignified ladies came in, and inquired for Mr. Aldrich. I remembered my instructions about telling the truth and answering questions, and also Whipple’s remark on style; so, when I was asked, I came right to the front.

‘Gone out to get drunk.’

The firm moved away from the old building to Franklin Street. There was a private wire between the office and the old University Press in Cambridge. At that time Alexander Graham Bell was experimenting with his first telephone, and he used this short wire. I have often, as a boy, seen him shouting into that first rude contrivance in a vain effort to make himself heard a few miles away. One day a group of well-known Boston men watched Bell as he shouted and screamed, and laughed at his efforts. One of them said, —

‘ Bell, I can walk to Cambridge, deliver a letter, and walk back with the answer, before you can ever get it, in all your life, with that thing.’

And that, as it seems to me as now I look back at it, was the greatest trouble with old Boston. Too many of us were banking on the noble fact that our ancestors came over in the Mayflower, and therefore we were qualified to sail through life on flowery beds of ease. Too many of us had gone to seed, without realizing it, and without seeming to know that seed must be planted and cultivated if we expect a future crop. That wonderful group of authors clustered around Osgood’s bookstore represented the mental glory of New England, and that section concluded that it could live permanently on glory without providing more substantial food. At the time I speak of, practically every large business in Boston was carried on under some true Yankee name. When Gilmore conducted his Peace Jubilee in Boston, the old firm got out a little daily paper and called it Jubilee Days. I remember a famous joke printed in that little sheet. The point was that some countryman wanted to know who this Jew Billee was down on the Back Bay.

I have just been looking up figures in the last issue of Bradstreet, and I ran upon some singular things. Among the names of Boston men who are entitled to credit in this good year 1919 are, —

36 with the name of Adams

2 Endicotts

5 Hancocks

6 Bradfords

2 Carvers

13 Burnses

7 Ameses

17 Warrens

7 Putnams

100 Cohens.

There are, to be exact, in this list of Boston business men, two by the name of John Smith, and eighteen A. Cohens. Those old days of horsecars, kerosene lamps, ball-games on the Common, and cord wood, have passed on. About all there is left of the old-time standard of thought and literary culture is the Atlantic Monthly, now as then, like a shadow of a rock in a weary land of so-called ’New Thought.’

MR. WELLS IN ERUPTION

Mr. H. G. Wells’s genius for saying what he means finds interesting expression in the following letter.

DEAR ATLANTIC, - You publish a review of Barbellion’s Diary which is so offensive, not simply to me, but to ordinary literary good manners, that I feel bound to ask you to give this letter of protest at least an equal publicity. The chief insult lies in the extraordinary presumption — which yours is not alone among American reviewers in making — that an English writer is a barefaced cheat and liar, that he will say he has not written a book which he has written, and that he will persist in this falsehood until he is exposed by the sleuthlike activities of ‘critics’ between the lines of the suspected document. I have said clearly that I have had nothing to do with the writing of Barbellion’s Diary. I would repeat it here and now. ‘Barbellion ' is what he professes to be, a dying man, an ex-assistant at the Natural History Museum; he and his circumstances are quite well known to Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Frank Swinnerton, and a number of equally reputable witnesses. Yet this silly and insulting campaign about the Barbellion hoax goes on and goes on in American ‘literary’ publications. It is even sillier than the persistent attribution to Sir James Barrie — in spite of his plain denial — of The Young Visiters. People over here know all about Daisy Ashford; the book is just exactly what it professes to be. ‘Barbellion’ manifestly wrote up his diary for publication and introduced a self-contradication; Daisy Ashford picked up a quaint use of ‘oozed’ from one of Barrie’s books; these things are to weigh against our word. What sort of idiotic world of cheating, forging, and hoaxing does your critic imagine we live in? The reviewer finds no difficulty in identifying Barbellion’s style and personality with mine, which establishes his literary quality pretty conclusively. With an air of profound research, he writes of correlating the careers of W. N. P. Barbellion and myself. Well, there is a marvelous correlation. I was a student of biology, among other subjects, at the Royal College of Science in South Kensington between 1885 and 1888; Barbellion was an assistant in zoölogy (which is notoriously a branch of biology) at the Natural History Museum at South Kensington — which from America looks very close to the Royal College— in 1914. Our parentage, private circumstances, everything else in our lives, has been widely divergent — but that biology! Most suspicious! The differences of style are really so great that they reach out at, and positively prod your critic. The diary has passages of a kind, for which I am — how shall I say it? — temperamentally indisposed. They cannot stay him on his foolish course. They merely produce this, one of the most stupid sentences ever written by a critic: ‘Such passages make me feel that a great novelist may, perhaps, be ridding his spirit of some accumulation that has been held in check in works published under his own name.’ So where Barbellion is like me, it proves him me, and where he is unlike me, it proves me a dirty rascal. Well, — I ask you, — is this American criticism?
I am, dear Atlantic,
Yours very sincerely,
H. G. WELLS.

THE PROOF-READER’S LAMENT (For the higher critics of the Atlantic’s pages)

WHEN Diocletian got ‘cold feet’ and straightway abdicated,

To raise string beans and cabbages, and peddle them at Rome,

The craven-hearted monarch surely never contemplated,

When making the selection of his future rural home.

That after twenty centuries, a beastly little vowel

Would darken the glad outlook of a hapless, harmless wight,

And force him, ’gainst his conscience, to spread curses with a trowel

On Diocletian’s memory and cruel Fate’s despite.

For he knew no other difference ‘twixt Spalato and Spoleto

(So he set the old Atlantic’s sharp-eyed critics by the ears)

Than that one rhymes with tomäto and the other with tomāto —

And he’ll never hear the last of it in twice ten thousand years.

This startling telegram comes as we go to press: ‘Are you interested in American Motherhood? Wire collect.'

We are replying: ‘Only vicariously.’ But possibly the inquiry relates to a magazine.