The Relation of Literature to Life

by Charles Dudley Warner

Hawley, now United States Senator from Connecticut, was Warner's senior by a few years. He had preceded him as a student at the Oneida Conference Seminary and at Hamilton College. Practicing law in Hartford, he had started in 1857, in conjunction with other leading citizens, a paper called the Evening Press. It was devoted to the advocacy of the principles of the Republican party, which was at that time still in what may be called the formative state of its existence. This was a period in which for some years the dissolution had been going on of the two old parties which had divided the country. Men were changing sides and were aligning themselves anew according to their views on questions which were every day assuming greater prominence in the minds of all. There was really but one great subject talked about or thought about. It split into opposing sections the whole land over which was lowering the grim, though as yet unrecognizable, shadow of civil war. The Republican party had been in existence but a very few years, but in that short time it had attracted to its ranks the young and enthusiastic spirits of the North, just as to the other side were impelled the members of the same class in the South. The intellectual contest which preceded the physical was stirring the hearts of all men. Hawley, who was well aware of Warner's peculiar ability, was anxious to secure his co-operation and assistance. He urged him to come East and join him in the conduct of the new enterprise he had undertaken.

Warner always considered that he derived great benefit from his comparatively limited study and practice of law; and that the little time he had given up to it had been far from being misspent. But the opening which now presented itself introduced him to a field of activity much more suited to his talents and his tastes. He liked the study of law better than its practice; for his early training had not been of a kind to reconcile him to standing up strongly for clients and causes that he honestly believed to be in the wrong. Furthermore, his heart, as has been said, had always been in literature; and though journalism could hardly be called much more than a half-sister, the one could provide the support which the other could never promise with certainty. So in 1860 Warner removed to Hartford and joined his friend as associate editor of the newspaper he had founded. The next year the war broke out. Hawley at once entered the army and took part in the four years' struggle. His departure left Warner in editorial charge of the paper, into the conduct of which he threw himself with all the earnestness and energy of his nature, and the ability, both political and literary, displayed in its columns gave it at once a high position which it never lost.

At this point it may be well to give briefly the few further salient facts of Warner's connection with journalism proper. In 1867 the owners of the Press purchased the Courant, the well-known morning paper which had been founded more than a century before, and consolidated the Press with it. Of this journal, Hawley and Warner, now in part proprietors, were the editorial writers. The former, who had been mustered out of the army with the rank of brevet Major-General, was soon diverted from journalism by other employments. He was elected Governor, he became a member of Congress, serving successively in both branches. The main editorial responsibility for the conduct of the paper devolved in consequence upon Warner, and to it he gave up for years nearly all his thought and attention. Once only during that early period was his labor interrupted for any considerable length of time. In May, 1868, he set out on the first of his five trips across the Atlantic. He was absent nearly a year. Yet even then he cannot be said to have neglected his special work. Articles were sent weekly from the other side, describing what he saw and experienced abroad. His active connection with the paper he never gave up absolutely, nor did his interest in it ever cease. But after he became connected with the editorial staff of Harpers Magazine the contributions he made to his journal were only occasional and what may be called accidental.

When 1870 came, forty years of Warner's life had gone by, and nearly twenty years since he had left college. During the latter ten years of this period he had been a most effective and forcible leader-writer on political and social questions, never more so than during the storm and stress of the Civil War. Outside of these topics he had devoted a great deal of attention to matters connected with literature and art. His varied abilities were fully recognized by the readers of the journal he edited.

But as yet there was little or no recognition outside. It is no easy matter to tell what are the influences, what the circumstances, which determine the success of a particular writer or of a particular work. Hitherto Warner's repute was mainly confined to the inhabitants of a provincial capital and its outlying and dependent towns. However cultivated the class to which his writings appealed—and as a class it was distinctly cultivated—their number was necessarily not great. To the country at large what he did or what he was capable of doing was not known at all. Some slight efforts he had occasionally put forth to secure the publication of matter he had prepared. He experienced the usual fate of authors who seek to introduce into the market literary wares of a new and better sort. His productions did not follow conventional lines. Publishers were ready to examine what he offered, and were just as ready to declare that these new wares were of a nature in which they were not inclined to deal.

But during 1870 a series of humorous articles appeared in the Hartford Courant, detailing his experiences in the cultivation of a garden. Warner had become the owner of a small place then almost on the outskirts of the city. With the dwelling-house went the possession of three acres of land. The opportunity thus presented itself of turning into a blessing the primeval curse of tilling the soil, in this instance not with a hoe, but with a pen. These articles detailing his experiences excited so much amusement and so much admiration that a general desire was manifested that they should receive a more permanent life than that accorded to articles appearing in the columns of newspapers, and should reach a circle larger than that to be found in the society of the Connecticut capital. Warner's previous experience had not disposed him to try his fortunes with the members of the publishing fraternity. In fact he did not lay so much stress upon the articles as did his readers and friends. He always insisted that he had previously written other articles which in his eyes certainly were just as good as they, if not better.

It so chanced that about this time Henry Ward Beecher came to Hartford to visit his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Warner was invited to meet him. In the course of the conversation the articles just mentioned were referred to by some one of those present. Beecher's curiosity was aroused and he expressed a desire to see them. To him they were accordingly sent for perusal. No sooner had he run through them than he recognized in them the presence of a rare and delicate humor which struck a distinctly new note in American literature. It was something he felt which should not be confined to the knowledge of any limited circle. He wrote at once to the publisher James T. Fields, urging the production of these articles in book form. Beecher's recommendation in those days was sufficient to insure the acceptance of any book by any publisher. Mr. Fields agreed to bring out the work, provided the great preacher would prefix an introduction. This he promised to do and did; though in place of the somewhat more formal piece he was asked to write, he sent what he called an introductory letter.

The series of papers published under the title of "My Summer in a Garden" came out at the very end of 1870, with the date of 1871 on the title-page. The volume met with instantaneous success. It was the subject of comment and conversation everywhere and passed rapidly through several editions. There was a general feeling that a new writer had suddenly appeared, with a wit and wisdom peculiarly his own, precisely like which nothing had previously existed in our literature. To the later editions of the work was added an account of a cat which had been presented to the author by the Stowes. For that reason it was given from the Christian name of the husband of the novelist the title of Calvin. To this John was sometimes prefixed, as betokening from the purely animal point of view a certain resemblance to the imputed grimness and earnestness of the great reformer. There was nothing in the least exaggerated in the account which Warner gave of the character and conduct of this really remarkable member of the feline race. No biography was ever truer; no appreciation was ever more sympathetic; and in the long line of cats none was ever more worthy to have his story truly and sympathetically told. All who had the fortune to see Calvin in the flesh will recognize the accuracy with which his portrait was drawn. All who read the account of him, though not having seen him, will find it one of the most charming of descriptions. It has the fullest right to be termed a cat classic.

With the publication of "My Summer in a Garden" Warner was launched upon a career of authorship which lasted without cessation during the thirty years that remained of his life. It covered a wide field. His interests were varied and his activity was unremitting. Literature, art, and that vast diversity of topics which are loosely embraced under the general name of social science—upon all these he had something fresh to say, and he said it invariably with attractiveness and effect. It mattered little what he set out to talk about, the talk was sure to be full both of instruction and entertainment. No sooner had the unequivocal success of his first published work brought his name before the public than he was besieged for contributions by conductors of periodicals of all sorts; and as he had ideas of his own upon all sorts of subjects, he was constantly furnishing matter of the most diverse kind for the most diverse audiences.

As a result, the volumes here gathered together represent but a limited portion of the work he accomplished. All his life, indeed, Warner was not only an omnivorous consumer of the writings of others, but a constant producer. The manifestation of it took place in ways frequently known to but few. It was not merely the fact that as an editor of a daily paper he wrote regularly articles on topics of current interest to which he never expected to pay any further attention; but after his name became widely known and his services were in request everywhere, he produced scores of articles, some long, some short, some signed, some unsigned, of which he made no account whatever. One looking through the pages of contemporary periodical literature is apt at any moment to light upon pieces, and sometimes upon series of them, which the author never took the trouble to collect. Many of those to which his name was not attached can no longer be identified with any approach to certainty. About the preservation of much that he did—and some of it belonged distinctly to his best and most characteristic work—he was singularly careless, or it may be better to say, singularly indifferent.