There are other English writers who have “arrived” during the past half-dozen years—a sufficient number, indeed, to make us feel that there must be some deep-seated cause for the comparatively slow progress which our own literature has made in the same time.
It is no easy matter to fairly estimate the literary worth of writers who have been before the public such a short time, especially when we take into consideration the wide difference in personal tastes, and therefore I have sought the aid of a number of critical and learned friends in the preparation of a list of writers which I confess is not exactly the one that I would print had I consulted only my own personal tastes.
This is the list which I offer as a result of many consultations with people who are supposed to understand the subject: J. M. Barrie, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Hall Caine, Rudyard Kipling, Conan Doyle, Barry Paine, J. K. Jerome, I. Zangwill, Marie Corelli, Quiller Couch, S. R. Crockett, Sarah Grand, Beatrice Harraden, Anthony Hope, and Stanley J. Weyman—fifteen in all besides Mr. Du Maurier.
From this catalogue of talent and genius it is possible to select ten whose position in letters is assured, although tastes will differ as to the names on the last end of the list.
Now let us see how many writers have been raised to maturity in the carefully watched and over-cultivated magazine soil during the same period of time—say half a dozen years. Can we point to sixteen, or ten, or even five who have made their way into the great white light within that time?
No; we have precisely one writer to show as the fruit of American literary endeavor during six years, and that writer is a woman who has confined herself—and wisely, too, I suspect—to the portrayal of life and character among the New England hills and villages. A narrow field, it may be said, but she has surveyed it with the true artistic eye, and at her touch it has yielded truthful, appreciative, honest literature—stories with an underlying note of sadness that rings true as steel and is a bit of the very essence of rural New England life. Of course this writer is in an enviable position because she enjoys all the advantages of magazine authorship and the prestige which accompanies it, and is, to all practical purposes, exempt from the ordeal of the pruning-hook to which other authors are obliged to submit. I do not say this in disparagement of her great talents; I only mean to say that her stories all lie within the necessary magazine limitations, and she can write to the very top of her bent without getting within gunshot of the barbed-wire fences which restrict the endeavors of authors whose natural impulse it is to work in the deeper and broader strata of humanity.
I do not deny that there are several bright and clever young men and women who have done excellent literary work in the magazines and will undoubtedly live to do even better in the future. I know of two or three who are, according to my way of thinking, better entitled to mention than some of the English authors whom I have named; but the woman whom I have in mind is the one recent acquisition to American letters, who draws truthful pictures from a proper point of view, writes fully as well to-day as she did six years ago, and has, moreover, given us one good novel. I do not know of a single other bright young American writer—and very clever some of them are, too—of whom nearly as much as this can be fairly said.
If the names of Hamlin Garland or Edward Bellamy occur to any of my readers it should be remembered that they sprang up by the wayside and are not the product of the rich magazine soil.
In bringing my modest preachment to a close, it is with a hope that my readers will pardon any errors of humor into which I may have fallen, or at least find in them a reasonable excuse for my effrontery in offering advice while I am still under ninety-seven years of age. I hope that I have done full justice to the established literary dynasty which began with Robert Bonner and of which Mr. Johnson is now the acknowledged head.
And let my last word be one of thankfulness because that dynasty has at least kept our national literature clean—as clean as a whistle or a pipe-stem.