The Contributors' Column

‘WRECK and Rescue,’ a simple record written by a twenty-five-year-old boy to his mother without thought that the world outside would wish to read it, is now published through the friendliness of Mrs. Kathleen Norris, the novelist. Here is a saga of the sea which human experience can scarcely parallel, yet with genuineness written on every page. Mrs. Norris gives her testimony: —

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIAOctober 8, 1929
DEAR ATLANTIC, - The teller of this extraordinary sea story is my friend, from whose own lips I had it a few months ago. It seemed to me so fresh, so thrilling, and so favorably comparable to beloved pages of Conrad’s Nigger of the Narcissus and Tomlinson’s Sea and Jungle, and all other immortal pages about storms and the sea, that the natural hope for it was a wider audience, through magazine pages. I am very grateful once again to you, who took my first story of all, for this opportunity.
It was when we were guests on a friend’s yacht, on a rather rough day in San Francisco Bay, that Captain Garland Rotch quietly said, apropos of ugly weather, ‘ I did find myself in that position once, as we all dream of finding ourselves. I mean leaping, in the blackness of night, into a tropic sea, without a life preserver, without any expectation except of immediate death.’
This story followed, perhaps more convincingly even than the letter makes it — although that was written just after it all happened, and bears, I think, the authentic stamp of the emotion of that rescue.
One little point was omitted from the letter. The Chief Officer of the Tana was on watch at daybreak, but did not notice the raft. The Captain of the Tana came on deck about 6 A.M. and, sweeping the horizon with his eyes, he noticed a speck for a moment. He asked the Chief Officer what it was, but the Chief could see nothing. They looked with their binoculars and still saw nothing. But, not satisfied, the Captain went below and brought up his oldfashioned long telescope and, searching the horizon, caught sight of a tiny speck. So it was that the forlorn little raft, drifting south, and manned by men almost insane, was discovered, and to this incident six men owed their lives.
That seems to add the last incredible touch to the whole. The wrecked boat was the Admiral Clark, of the Admiral Line, now the Pacific Steamship Company, Captain James Daniels. The date of the shipwreck was August 16, 1916. Mr. Herbert F. Alexander was then president of the line, and is so to this day. Our author is Garland Rotch, now a yacht broker in San Francisco; he was twenty-five years old in 1916.
With all good wishes,
KATHLEEN NORRIS

Alexander Irvine came, in his own trenchant phrase, ‘up from the bottom of the world.’ His is one of the rare intelligences which make life educate. Dr. Irvine sees by flashes. In New York be saw the innermost meaning of destitution, and marshaled the forces of social sympathy to meet it. In the war he saw that the will meant the power to win, and worked mightily to screw that will to the sticking point. After the war the world grew sicker still, and he understood it. Successive chapters from his story will be published in the Atlantic. André Siegfried, master diagnostician of the character and health of nations, explains his own people. The two articles printed in the Atlantic will thereafter be published as chapters in his book to be issued by the Yale Press. The Reverend Joseph Fort Newton preaches in the Memorial Church of Overbrook, Pennsylvania. A. W. Smith used to direct a couple of thousand elephants piling teak at Rangoon. Now he has followed the teak to America, and if you want a rare wood he has it. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., is Professor of Art at Princeton University.

Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861 and privately educated. Not until he was forty did he found his famous school at Santiniketan, Bengal, which since then has been his life. In the discussion which followed in the wake of Keyserling’s Atlantic paper on Negro culture, our friend Mr. Bolton Smith, of Nashville, sent us a copy of the Crisis, from which we quote this remarkable letter. Color speaks to color.

SANTINIKETAN, BENGAL
July 12, 1929
What is the great fact of this age? It is that the messenger has knocked at our gate and all the bars have given way. Our doors have burst open. The human races have come out of their enclosures. They have gathered together.
We have been engaged in cultivating each his own individual life, and within the fenced seclusion of our racial tradition. We had neither the wisdom nor the opportunity to harmonize our growth with world tendencies. But there are no longer walls to hide us. We have at length to prove our worth to the whole world, not merely to admiring groups of our own people. We must justify our own existence. We must show, each in our own civilization, that which is universal in the heart of the unique.
RABINDRANATH TAGORE

It is pertinent to remember that, after the massacre of Amritsar, Tagore refused to make use of the Knighthood conferred on him by the British Government.

Mrs. Leonore Hamilton Wilson writes of that South round which her earliest memories congregate. J. Milton French teaches at Dartmouth College. ∆ If you have ever read Black Sheep you will know how well Jean Kenyon Mackenzie knows her Africa. Harriet Sampson is a poet of the younger generation and the older tradition. Edgar J. Goodspeed is Professor of Theology at Chicago University. Eugenie Courtright is new to the Atlantic.

Miles H. Krumbine has just resigned as the minister of Parkside Lutheran Church, Buffalo, to accept a call from Plymouth Church, Cleveland, Ohio. Henderson Daingerfield Norman grew up, as you might guess, in Virginia. ∆ Of Hollen Viney’s paper this interesting coincidence should be told. A year ago the Atlantic published under the title, ‘An Apostle to Youth,’ a paper on the ministry of F. N. D. Buchman, by John McCook Roots. A chance copy of the magazine fell into the hands of a young graduate of Oxford, who found himself dissatisfied with a business career. The impression went deep: Viney entered a theological college which as part of its curriculum sent its classes for a semester in Jerusalem. There the singular events described in his article took place. The New York Times mentioned his name in the casualty list, and the editor, noting his Oxford training, cabled him: —

Atlantic Monthly greatly interested in your personal story fanatical outbreak. Six thousand words.

Thus for the second time in his life Mr. Viney heard from the Atlantic. K. K. Kawakami is a political and social observer long resident in the United States. Herbert B. Elliston was formerly Peking correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, and is now assistant director of research for the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City.

The little prickly paper in the October Contributors’ Club, ‘Thru All My Thots,’ seems to have aroused many a literary consciousness.

DEAR ATLANTIC, -
The author of ‘Thru All My Thots’ seems to be the proper person to sympathize with a poor stenographer who daily takes such dictation as this: —
‘We have your letter of October 5th with regard to your order for a carload of widgets.
4 In reply to same we beg to state that we have been badly delayed in receiving the necessary raw material, but the Company who furnish it have promised that they will give it special, personal attention and we therefore wish to advise that shipment of your order will be made immediately we receive the raw material and can rush it through the factory.
‘The writer wishes to further state that I will make a special rush item of this order and will keep after it and do all in my power to see that the order is shipped promptly.’
As an experiment I once ventured to use the third person singular pronoun when the dictator referred to himself us ’the writer,’ but his scorn of my ignorance was so crushing that I never will do it again.

The above letter has not been written as a horrible example; the only change I have made is in the name of the product.
Very truly yours,
LOUISE HAICH

It is fortunate that Count Keyserling is a philosopher. Otherwise the critics might pierce his armor. Their number is so great that to give other discussions a chance we were obliged to close the Atlantic’s door to this debate. But it should be opened just wide enough to allow this lyric which Arthur Guiterman contributed to the New York Times to slip past.

Mamie Hall Porritt’s international adventures chronicled in the October Atlantic have interested a number of fellow sufferers. In the hope that the gods who watch over the folly of our naturalization laws may weep, as well as langh, we print the following from Mrs. Erskine Douglas Williamson, of Washington, D. C.

1945 CALVERT STREET, N.W.
DEAR ATLANTIC, -
In 1918, prior to the law which permitted the American wife of an alien to retain her citizenship, I married a Scotsman — or perhaps he married me. At any rate we were married. I thereby automatically became a British subject, for my husband, who was doing scientific work and expected to return to Scotland, had not become an American citizen.
Five years later he died, and it fell to me to administer his estate, as he had named me executrix in his will.
My attorney, an old friend, proceeded with the usual petitions for probate of the will, stating innocently that ‘your petitioner, a citizen of the United States,’ etc. The court promptly informed him that I was not a citizen and could not, unless naturalized, act as executrix under American law. The attorney advised me to take out papers, the alternative being the appointment of a citizen as administrator. As the estate was small this would have been rather absurd; and as I expected to live in America it seemed best for me to resume my citizenship. In the meantime the estate must languish.
Accordingly, with two kind friends as sponsors, I applied to the Bureau of Naturalization for papers.
I was required to state, in writing, the facts of the case, the number of times I had been absent from this country, the names of the ships whereon I had sailed, the dates of departure, and the length of my visits. I complied with this formality by furnishing the details of my two absences from the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave — the first had been for six weeks; the second, for eight. And it may be of interest to state here that on returning to this country I paid on each occasion a head tax as an immigrant. I did not greatly mind being an immigrant to the country of my birth once, but twice seemed to imply a habit.
After this I received a notice to appear at the end of three months (half the usual time — a great concession) to be examined as to my fitness for enrollment, as a daughter of Uncle Sam. Not knowing just what would be expected of me, I feverishly crammed history and civil government, dragging out long-idle schoolbooks. I was prepared to discuss referendum and recall, to recite the Fresidents in their order — in short, I aimed to satisfy the most critical of judges.
On the appointed day I presented myself, still under the care of my trusty American friends, colleagues of my husband, for examination. This took place, perhaps appropriately, in the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia. After all my agonized study I was merely asked to verify the statements that I had been born in Manassas, Virginia, on such and such a date, and had lost my citizenship through marriage. (Actually the examiner said through birth and hastily corrected himself!) There seems to be no adequate reason for not informing me that I need undergo no detailed examination.
As each candidate was quizzed and passed on, he or she was sent to sit in the jury box. When all had been accepted or dismissed, the crowd, consisting mainly of Italians, Greeks, and other Europeans, was asked to rise. We then were sworn en masse and renounced our allegiance to George of England, Alexander of Greece, the Akhoond of Swat, and so forth, all in a string, being expected, so to speak, to reject our own monarch as he went by. I suppose this is common practice, but it was new to me. I had a sort of sneaky feeling, however, that perhaps George of England (and Scotland) would feel less keenly this wholesale renunciation than he would a special one.
The rest of the procedure is rather hazy in my mind, but I am now restored to my pristine state of pure Americanism, being probably little contaminated by my six and eight weeks’ sojourn on alien shores.
Perhaps this rigmarole, with its attendant delays, is necessary, but it seems to me that in the case of a person born in America, educated in America, living in America for over thirty years, except for fourteen weeks, there might be some simpler way of settling matters. In other words, the Law might, as Jeff says to Mutt, ‘ use some discretion.’
ALICE BOOKMAN WILLIAMSON

Best of all replies to criticism is the Christian method of gathering it to your own bosom. Thus here and now does the Contributors’ Column gather in the shafts of this illustrious Illyrian.

ILLYRIA, OHIO
October 25, 1929
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I was born of strict Unitarian, Abolitionist parents. In the Berkshire town, already mellowed by two and a half centuries of history, where I was brought up, I was used to seeing the Atlantic on the family table from my earliest years. But my tongue has always been a little limping in praise — perhaps because a word of commendation in my youth had to be stoutly earned. I trust that you will understand my respect without my expressing it at length.
I have always felt that one department of the Atlantic has never quite lived up to its possibilities. Perhaps I misinterpret its character under the influence of my own predilections. As I grew up, I began to take a peculiar interest in satire. Swift, Rabelais, appeared on my shelves early in life, and now that I am sinking into dry old age, and my grandchildren regard me as a desiccated oak leaf of Puritan morality, I reread my favorite passages of Aldous Huxley while they are all innocently asleep. Am I quite wrong in thinking that your Contributors’ Club is really meant by the editors as an invitation to that all-too-little cultivated gift, polite and edifying irony? There is no weapon like it for moral fervor — I inherited a long tradition of moral fervor — or for the urbane expression of humorous prejudice and fancy. Why do not your contributors give us more of it, in the appointed corner, where you enforce the rule of anonymity? For anonymity belongs to the best tradition of satire. If Swift’s Modest Proposal had immodestly made known its authorship, what effect would it have had? None. In your Contributors’ Club, one would think, every variety of sportive attack on contemporary foibles would flourish, and every sort of personal conviction, however at odds with society, frankly avow itself.
Recently America held a grand jubilee for the bigwigs of psychology from every nation. The European authorities were hospitably received at New Haven, and regaled with upwards of four hundred solemn papers, the titles of many of which read as though they had been devised in the Academy of Lagado, where sunbeams were extracted from cucumbers, rather than in our universities of science and pure reason. Why does not some professor, able to perceive the idiosyncrasies of his trade, take advantage of the protection you offer, and report the proceedings for us, embroidering them with a few Attic mockeries? We hear much of intolerance in these days. Why does not some apostle of enlightenment cleverly don the robes of the bigot and make him doubly odious by a solemn dramatic monologue, tongue in cheek, telling what the Prohibitionist would really do with the Wet if he had the power, or the churchman with the scientist, or the censor with the intellectual? Why does not some social critic point out that hypocrisy is the one necessary prop without which our whole civilization would tumble together and expire in a puff of smoke? I make these random suggestions — personal applications will occur freely to all who nourish an intellectual grudge or carry a burden of truth and insight which has hitherto been suppressed for whatever reason. You might even revive the vanishing tradition of satiric verse, if you could persuade your poets to go unsigned — for I take it that you really mean to insist on anonymity in this one department. Recently you made a capital gesture in this direction with some verses entitled ’The Traveler.’ Why not give us more?
Yours sincerely,
JAMES D. EMERSON

Space fails us, unfortunately, or we should print the full reply of Miss Edith Franklin Wyatt to very highly competent professional criticism of her characterization of Gilbert Imlay’s The Emigrants as the first American novel. We should like, however, to say that her paper was far from a haphazard venture. Whether she was right or not depends not upon the facts, with which she is perfectly familiar, but upon a point of view.

First, in general, it is ‘the first American novel,' not ‘the earliest American fiction,’ that she entitled her essay. The Century Dictionary defines a novel as ‘a fictitious prose narrative or tale involving some plot of more or less intricacy, and aiming to present a picture of real life in the historical period and society to which the persons, manners, and modes of speech, as well as the scenery and surroundings, are supposed to belong.’ This is a reasonable definition, and according to it, in Miss Wyatt’s opinion, none of the books listed before 1794, with the exception of The Emigrants, in either Mrs. Loshe’s delightful monograph or Mr. Wegelin’s comprehensive fiction list, come under the proper heading of a novel.

To be more specific, Mr. Wegelin lists as the first American ‘fiction,’ though he does not list it as a novel, Francis Hopkinson’s A Pretty Story (1774). The principal characters in this story are Great Britain personified and the Colonies personified, which seems to Miss Wyatt — and to us — adequate ground for refusing it the title of novel.

Mrs. Morton’s The Power of Sympathy (1789) hardly answers the definition better. It is a kind of religious tract in the cause of female education, and little more than 20,000 words long. Some six or perhaps ten novels have been put forward as written in this country and printed in England before 1793. But each of these, when analyzed, seems to forgo the characteristics which mark a novel.

For any interested professional inquirer we shall be glad to go further into the intricacies of this historical subject.

To which Professor Ellis, of the University of Maine, not unnaturally replies: -

October 23, 1929
DEAR ATLANTIC, - I have been much interested to learn on what grounds Miss Edith Wyatt claimed priority for The Emigrants, published in England in 1793, over The Power of Sympathy, published in Boston in 1789, as the first American novel. I cannot help feeling, however, that she has acted somewhat cavalierly in ignoring the claims of the latter work on the pretext that it is ‘merely a religious tract in the cause of female education.’ If Miss Wyatt chooses to adopt a ‘traditional and special’ definition of the novel which would eliminate rival claimants for priority, she owes the reader at least a footnote to inform him what she is doing.
ThatThe Power of Sympathy is a poor novel, as Miss Wyatt also admits is true of The Emigrants, is indisputable; that it is not a novel at all is decidedly for Miss Wyatt to prove. It was certainly written as a novel, advertised as a novel, criticized in the press as a novel, and suppressed as a novel, at the time of its publication. A century later it was twice reprinted as a novel; and it has always subsequently been referred to and discussed, so far as I have discovered, as a novel in the histories of literature which deal with the origin of the type in America. Professor W. P. Trent, for example, remarks in his American Literature (1908), ‘ The Power of Sympathy, perhaps the earliest real novel written by an American, appeared in 1789’; and Dr. Carl Van Doren, in The American Novel (1921), says that ‘to the influence of Richardson, with something from Sterne, must be credited the first regular American novel, The Power of Sympathy, a poor and stilted narrative in epistolary form.’ Each of these gentlemen is probably an authority of at least equal claims with Miss Wyatt.
I can imagine the amazement and amusement of the author of The Power of Sympathy — who was probably not Mrs. Morton — on hearing that his efforts to disarm puritan hostility to novel reading in the Boston of the 1780’s by emphasizing the supposed moral influence of his novel of seduction had resulted in its being disqualified, as ‘a religious tract in the cause of female education.’
MILTON ELLIS