And so you go and come, you go and come, and we learn to count on your regular appearance every four weeks as we would on any stated gesture of the zodiac. You come eager to pick up the threads of what has been happening in this our town, what books people are talking about, what is the latest jape, and what (your tastes being so catholic!) "Percy and Ferdie" are up to. And you, in turn, bring news of what they are saying in Sauchiehall Street or Fleet Street, and what books are making a stir on the other side. You take copies of American books that catch your fancy and pass them on to British reviewers, always at your quixotic task of trying to make each side appreciate the other's humours. For, though we promised not to give you away too personally, you are not only the sea captain but the man of letters, too, eminent in that field in your own right.
There must be some valid reason why so many good writers, and several who have some claim on the word "great," have been bred of the sea. Great writing comes from great stress of mind—which even a journalist may suffer—but it also requires strictness of seclusion and isolation. Surely, on the small and decently regimented island of a ship a man's mind must turn inward. Surrounded by all that barren beauty of sky and sea, so lovely, and yet so meaningless to the mind, the doomed business of humanity must seem all the more precious and deserving of tenderness. Perhaps that is what old George Herbert meant when he said, He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.
THE END
This and the following are advertisements of Mr. Morley's books.
A modern humorist with
the tang of an Elizabethan
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
Once upon a time Christopher Morley was coerced, against the objections of a well-nigh blushing modesty, to dictate some notes which we may go so far as to call autobiographical. In part they were:
"Born at Haverford, Pa., in 1890; father, professor of mathematics and a poet; mother a musician, poet, and fine cook. I was handicapped by intellectual society and good nourishment. I am and always have been too well fed. Great literature proceeds from an empty stomach. My proudest achievement is having been asked by a college president to give a course of lectures on Chaucer.
"When I was graduated from Haverford in 1910, a benevolent posse of college presidents in Maryland sent me to New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes scholar. At Oxford I learned to drink shandygaff. When I came home from England in 1913 I started to work for Doubleday, Page & Company at Garden City. I learned to read Conrad, and started my favorite hobby, which is getting letters from William McFee. By the way, my favorite amusement is hanging around Leary's second-hand book store in Philadelphia. My dearest dream is to own some kind of a boat, write one good novel and about thirty plays which would each run a year on Broadway. I have written book reviews, editorials, dramatic notices, worked as a reporter, a librarian, in a bookstore, and have given lectures." Mr. Morley should have added that he is now conductor of "The Bowling Green" on the editorial page of the New York Evening Post.