Our Philadelphia

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

IV

One is that the last quarter of a century has interested the Philadelphia writer in Philadelphia as he had not been since the days of John Watson. Most Philadelphians owned a copy of Watson's Annals. I have one on my desk before me that belonged to J.'s Father, one must have been in my Grandfather's highly correct Philadelphia house, though I cannot recall it there, for a Philadelphian's duty was to buy Watson just as it was to take in Lippincott's, and Philadelphians never shirked their obligations. They probably would not have been able to say what was in Watson, or, if they could, would have shrugged their shoulders and dismissed him for a crank. But they would have owned the Annals, all the same. Then the Centennial shook them up and insisted on the value of Philadelphia's history, and Philadelphians were no longer in fashion if they did not feel, or affect, an interest in Philadelphia and its past. After the Centennial the few who began to write about it could rely upon the many to read about it.

THE DOUBLE STAIRWAY IN THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL

Once, the Philadelphian who was not ashamed to write stories made them out of the fashionable life of Philadelphia. Dr. Weir Mitchell inaugurated the new era, or the revolt, or the secession, or whatever name may be given it with the first historical novel of Philadelphia. It is fortunate, when I come to Hugh Wynne, that I have renounced criticism and all its pretences. As a Friend by marriage, if such a thing is possible, I cannot underestimate the danger. Only a Friend born a Friend is qualified to write the true Quaker novel, and I am told by this kind of Friend that Hugh Wynne is not free from misrepresentations, misconceptions and misunderstandings. This may be true—I breathe more freely for not being able to affirm or to deny it—but, as Henley used to say, there it is—the first romantic gold out of the mine Philadelphia history is for all who work it. Since these lines were written the news has reached me that never again will Dr. Mitchell work this or any other mine. I cannot imagine Philadelphia without him. When I last saw him, it seemed to me that no Philadelphian was more alive, more in love with life, better equipped to enjoy life in the way Philadelphia has fashioned it—the Philadelphia life in which his passing away must leave no less a gap than the disappearance of the State House or the Pennsylvania Hospital would leave in the Philadelphia streets. If Dr. Mitchell's digging brought up the romance of Philadelphia, Mr. Sydney George Fisher's has unearthed the facts, for Philadelphia was the root of the great growth of Pennsylvania which is the avowed subject of his history. And the men who helped to make this history have now their biographers at home, though hitherto the task of their biography had been left chiefly to anybody anywhere else who would accept the responsibility, and my Brother, Edward Robins, Secretary of the University of Pennsylvania, has written the life of Benjamin Franklin, without whom the University would not have been, at least would not have been what it is. And in so many different directions has the interest spread that my friend since Our Convent Days, Miss Agnes Repplier, has taken time from her studies in literature and from building a monument to her beloved Agrippina to write its story. When she sent me her book, I opened it with grave apprehensions. In the volumes she had published, humour was the chief charm, and how would humour help her to see Philadelphia? I need not have been uneasy. There is no true humour without tenderness. If she had her smile for the town we all love, as we all have, it was a tender smile, and I think no reader can close her book without wanting to know still more of Philadelphia than it was her special business in that place to tell them. And that no vein of the Philadelphia mine might be left unworked. Miss Anne Hollingsworth Wharton has busied herself to gather up old traditions and old reminiscences, dipping into old letters and diaries, opening wide Colonial doorways, resurrecting Colonial Dames, reshaping the old social and domestic life disdained by historians. The numerous editions into which her books have gone explain that she has not worked for her own edification alone, that Philadelphia, once it was willing to hear any talk about itself, could not hear too much. And after Miss Wharton have come Mr. Mather Lippincott and Mr. Eberlein to collect the old Colonial houses and their memories, followed by Mr. Herbert C. Wise and Mr. Beidleman to study their architecture: just in time if Philadelphia perseveres in its crime of moving out of the houses for the benefit of the Russian Jew and of mixing their memories with squalor. Of all the ways in which Philadelphia has changed, none is to me more remarkable than in this rekindling of interest out of which has sprung the new group of writers in its praise.

Nor were the Philadelphia poets idle during my absence. Dr. Mitchell had not before sung so freely in public, nor had he ranked, as I am told he did at the end, his verse higher than his medicine. Mrs. Coates' voice had not carried so far. Dr. Francis Howard Williams had not rhymed for Pageants in praise of Philadelphia. Mr. Harrison Morris had not joined the Philadelphia choir. Mr. Harvey M. Watts had not been heard in the land. I have it on good authority that yearly the Philadelphia poets meet and read their verses to each other, a custom of which I cannot speak from personal knowledge as I have no passport into the magic circle, and perhaps it is just as well for my peace of mind that I have not. Rumour declares that, on certain summer evenings, a suburban porch here or there is made as sweet with their singing as with the perfume of the roses and syringa in the garden, and I am content with the rumour for there is always the chance the music might not be so sweet if I heard it. I like to remember that the poets on their porch, whether their voices be sweet or harsh, descend in a direct line from the young men who wandered, discoursing of literature, along the Schuylkill. And Philadelphia's love of poetry is to be assured not only by its own singers but by its care, now as in the past, for the song of others. Horace Howard Furness, Jr., has taken over his father's task and, in so doing, will see that Philadelphia continues to be famous for the most complete edition of Shakespeare.

There had been equal activity during my absence among the story-tellers. Since Brockden Brown, not one had written so ambitious a tale as Hugh Wynne, not one had ever laughed so good-humouredly at Philadelphia as Thomas A. Janvier in his short stories of the Hutchinson Ports and Rittenhouse Smiths—what gaiety has gone out with his death! Not one had ever seen character with such truth as Owen Wister,—if only he could understand that as good material awaits him in Philadelphia as in Virginia and Wyoming. And John Luther Long is another of the story-tellers Philadelphia can claim though, like Mr. Wister, he shows a greater fancy for far-away lands or to wander among strange people at home.

There is no branch of literature that Philadelphia has not taken under its active protection. Who has contributed more learnedly to the records of the Inquisition than Henry Charles Lea, or to the chronicles of the law in the United States than Mr. Hampton L. Carson and Mr. Charles Burr, duly conscious as Philadelphia lawyers should be of the Philadelphian's legal responsibility? Who can compete in knowledge of the evolution of the playing card with Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer or rival her collection? Who ever thought of writing the history of autobiography before Mrs. Anna Robeson Burr? The time had but to come for an admirer to play the Boswell to Walt Whitman, and Mr. Traubel appeared. When Columbia wanted a Professor of Journalism, Philadelphia sent it Dr. Talcott Williams. When England seemed a comfortable shelter for research there was no need to be in a hurry about, Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith showed what could be done with an exhaustive study of Dr. Donne, though why he was not showing instead what could be done with the Loganian Library, where the chance to show it was his for the claiming, he alone can say. When such recondite subjects as Egyptian and Assyrian called for interpreters, Philadelphia was again on the spot with Mrs. Cornelius Stevenson and Dr. Morris Jastrow. And for authorities on the drama and history, it gives us Mr. Felix Schelling and Dr. McMaster,—but perhaps for me to attempt to complete the list would only be to make it incomplete. Here, too, I tread on dangerous ground. It may be cowardly, but it is safe to give the tribute of my recognition to all that is being accomplished by the University of Pennsylvania and its scholars—by Bryn Mawr College and its students—by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania—by other Colleges and learned bodies—by innumerable individuals—and not invite exposure by venturing into detail and upon comment. It is in these emergencies that the sense of my limitations comes to my help.

CARPENTER'S HALL, BUILT 1771