Our Philadelphia

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

I had glimpses into other literary vistas, but mostly from a respectful and highly appreciative distance. How I wish I could recapture even as much as the shadow of the old rapturous awe with which any man or woman who had ever made a book inspired me!

DR. FURNESS'S HOUSE, WEST WASHINGTON SQUARE
JUST BEFORE IT WAS PULLED DOWN

There was reason for awe when the man was Dr. Horace Howard Furness, the editor of Shakespeare, and if Philadelphia knew its duty better than to draw attention to so scholarly a performance by a Philadelphian, scholars out of Philadelphia, who were not hampered by Philadelphia conventions, hailed it as the best edition of Shakespeare there could be. I must always regret that in his case I succeeded in having no more than the glimpse. Most of my literary introductions came through my Uncle who, though he knew Dr. Furness, saw less and less of him as time went on, partly I think because of one of those small misunderstandings that are more unpardonable than the big offences—certainly they were to my Uncle. Dr. Furness' father, old Dr. Furness the Unitarian Minister, meeting him in the street one day, asked him gaily, but I have no doubt with genuine interest, how his fad, the school, was getting on. My Uncle, who could not stand having an enterprise so serious to him treated lightly by others, retorted by asking Dr. Furness how his fad the pulpit was getting on. The result was coolness. The chances are that Dr. Furness never realized the enormity of which he had been guilty, but my Uncle could neither forget his jest nor forgive him and his family for it. And his heart was not softened until many years afterwards, when in far Florence he heard that Dr. Furness wished for his return to Philadelphia that he might vindicate his claim, in danger of being overlooked, as the first to have introduced the study of the Minor Arts into the Public Schools.

Mrs. Wister was another Philadelphia literary celebrity whose work had made her known to all America by name, the only way she was known to me. It was my loss, for they say she was more charming than her work. But to Philadelphia no charm of personality, no popularity of work, could shed lustre upon her name, which was her chief glory: literature was honoured when a Wister stooped to its practice. On her translations of German novels, Philadelphians of my generation were brought up. After Faith Gartney's Girlhood and Queechy and The Wide, Wide World, no tales were considered so innocuous for the young, not yet provided with the mild and exemplary adventures of the tedious Elsie. Would the Old Mam'selle's Secret survive re-reading, I wonder? The favourites of yesterday have a way of turning into the bores of to-day. Not long ago I tried re-reading Scott whom in my youth I adored, but his once magnificent heroes had dwindled into puppets, their brilliant exploits into the empty bombast of Drury Lane and Wardour Street. If Scott cannot stand the test, what hope for the other old loves? I risk no more lost illusions.

From no less a distance I looked to Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis who, with Mrs. Wister, helped to supply the country with fiction, in her case original, while her son, Richard Harding Davis, was on the sensational brink of his career. And again from a distance I looked to Frank Stockton, with no idea that he was a Philadelphia celebrity—very likely every other Philadelphian was as ignorant, but that is no excuse for me. I had not found him out as my fellow citizen when I saw much of him some years later in London, nor did I find it out until recently when, distrustful of my Philadelphia tendency to look the other way if Philadelphians are distinguishing themselves, I consulted the authorities to make sure how great or how small was my knowledge of Philadelphia literature. From all this it will be seen that in those remote days I was very much on the literary outside in Philadelphia, but with the luck there to run up against some of the giants.

Into the vista of the poets chance gave me one brief but more intimate glimpse. In a Germantown house—I am puzzled at this day to say whose—I was introduced one evening to Mrs. Florence Earle Coates and Dr. Francis Howard Williams, both already laurel-crowned, at a small gathering over which Walt Whitman presided. In his grey coat and soft shirt I remember he struck me as more dressed than the guests in their evening clothes, but I remember he also struck me as less at home in the worshipping parlour than in the bootblack's corner. The eloquence of his presence stands out in my memory vividly, though I have forgotten the name of the host or hostess to whom I am indebted for enjoying it, and I think it must have been then that I began to suspect there was more of a literary life in Philadelphia than I had imagined. I had no opportunity to get further than my suspicion, for it was very shortly after that J. and I undertook to carry out the plans we had been making on the old bench by the river in Bartram's Garden. Walt Whitman I never saw again, and of the group assembled about him nothing for many years.

THE GERMANTOWN ACADEMY

I came into closer contact with writers to whom literature and journalism were not merely a method of expression, but a means of livelihood. Philadelphia, with its magazines, as with so much else, had shown the way and other towns had lost no time in following and getting ahead. New York was in the magazine ascendant. The Century and Harper's had replaced Graham's and Godey's Lady's Book and Peterson's. But Lippincott's remained, and though the Editor, after his cruel letter of refusal, never deigned to notice me, it was some satisfaction to have been in actual correspondence with an author as distinguished as John Foster Kirk, the historian of Charles the Bold. When Our Continent was labouring to revive the old tradition of Philadelphia as a centre of publishers and periodicals, I got as far as the editorial office—very far indeed in my opinion—and there once or twice I saw Judge Tourgee, who had abandoned his reconstructive mission and judicial duties for an editorial post in Philadelphia, and who at the moment was more talked about than any American author, his Fool's Errand having given him the sort of fame that Looking Backward brought to Bellamy: ephemeral, but colossal while it lasted. Curiously, I recall nothing of the man himself—not his appearance, his manner, his talk. I think it must have been because, for me, he was overshadowed by his Art Editor, Miss Emily Sartain; my interest in him eclipsed by my admiration for her and my envy of a woman, so young and so handsome, who had attained to such an influential and responsible post. I thought if I ever should reach half way up so stupendous a height, I could die content. Louise Stockton, Frank Stockton's sister, and Helen Campbell were on the staff, in my eyes amazing women with regular weekly tasks and regular weekly salaries. I might argue for my comfort that there was greater liberty in being a free lance, but how wonderful to do work that an editor wanted every week, was willing to pay for every week!—wonderful to me, anyway, who had just had my first taste of earning an income, but not of earning it regularly and without fail. My Uncle wrote more than once for Tourgee; J. and I contributed those articles which were further excuses for our walks together: Judge Tourgee, to his own loss, thinking it a recommendation for a contributor to be a Philadelphian as he would not have thought had he known his Philadelphia better. Our Continent was too Philadelphian to be approved in Philadelphia or to be in demand out of it. One symbol of literary respectability the town had in Lippincott's, and one was as much as it could then support. Our Continent came to an end either just before or just after J. and I set out on our travels. There were other women in journalism who excited my envy. Mrs. Lucy Hooper's letters to the Evening Telegraph struck me as the last and finest word in foreign correspondence. I never, even upon closer acquaintance, lost my awe of Mrs. Sarah Hallowell who was intimately associated with the Ledger, or of Miss Julia Ewing, though her association with the same paper had nothing to do with its literary side.