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“Besides,” said Boon, “we must have one of our literary peers because of America.”
“You’re unjust to America,” I said.
“No,” said Boon. “But Aunt Dove—I know her ways.”
That led to a long, rambling discussion about the American literary atmosphere. Nothing that I could say would make him relent from his emphatic assertion that it is a spinster atmosphere, an atmosphere in which you can’t say all sorts of things and where all sorts of things have to be specially phrased. “And she can’t stand young things and crude things——”
“America!” said Wilkins.
“The America I mean. The sort of America that ought to supply young new writers with caresses and—nourishment.…Instead of which you get the Nation…. That bleak acidity, that refined appeal to take the child away.”
“But they don’t produce new young writers!” said Wilkins.
“But they do!” said Boon. “And they strangle them!”
It was extraordinary what a power metaphors and fancies had upon Boon. Only those who knew him intimately can understand how necessary Miss Bathwick was to him. He would touch a metaphor and then return and sip it, and then sip and drink and swill until it had intoxicated him hopelessly.
“America,” said Boon, “can produce such a supreme writer as Stephen Crane—the best writer of English for the last half-century—or Mary Austin, who used to write—— What other woman could touch her? But America won’t own such children. It’s amazing. It’s a case of concealment of birth. She exposes them. Whether it’s Shame—or a Chinese trick…. She’ll sit never knowing she’s had a Stephen Crane, adoring the European reputation, the florid mental gestures of a Conrad. You see, she can tell Conrad ‘writes.’ It shows. And she’ll let Mary Austin die of neglect, while she worships the ‘art’ of Mary Ward. It’s like turning from the feet of a goddess to a pair of goloshes. She firmly believes that old quack Bergson is a bigger man than her own unapproachable William James…. She’s incredible. I tell you it’s only conceivable on one supposition…. I’d never thought before about these disgraceful sidelights on Miss Dove’s career….
“We English do make foundlings of some of her little victims, anyhow…. But why hasn’t she any natural instinct in the matter?
“Now, if one represented that peculiar Bostonian intellectual gentility, the Nation kind of thing, as a very wicked, sour lady’s-maid with a tremendous influence over the Spinster’s conduct….”
His mind was running on.
“I begin to see a melodramatic strain in this great novel, ‘Miss Dove.’… ‘Miss Dove’s Derelicts.’… Too broad, I am afraid. If one were to represent Sargent and Henry James as two children left out one cold night in a basket at a cottage in the village by a mysterious stranger, with nothing but a roll of dollars and a rough drawing of the Washington coat-of-arms to indicate their parentage….
“Then when they grow up they go back to the big house and she’s almost kind to them….
“Have you ever read the critical articles of Edgar Allan Poe? They’re very remarkable. He is always demanding an American Literature. It is like a deserted baby left to die in its cradle, weeping and wailing for its bottle…. What he wanted, of course, was honest and intelligent criticism.
“To this day America kills her Poes….”
“But confound it!” said Wilkins, “America does make discoveries for herself. Hasn’t she discovered Lowes Dickinson?”
“But that merely helps my case. Lowes Dickinson has just the qualities that take the American judgement; he carries the shadow of King’s College Chapel about with him wherever he goes; he has an unobtrusive air of being doubly starred in Baedeker and not thinking anything of it. And also she took Noyes to her bosom. But when has American criticism ever had the intellectual pluck to proclaim an American?
“And so, you see,” he remarked, going off again at a tangent, “if we are going to bid for American adhesions there’s only one course open to us in the matter of this presidential address…. Lord Morley….”
“You’re a little difficult to follow at times,” said Wilkins.
“Because he’s the man who’s safest not to say anything about babies or—anything alive…. Obviously a literary congress in America must be a festival in honour of sterility.
“Aunt Dove demands it. Like celebrating the virginity of Queen Elizabeth….”