Confessions of a Book-Lover

by Maurice Francis Egan

amused, or to recall the adventures of a time not far away when we were less sophisticated. Still, whether my compatriots are in the habit of looking into books for a philosophy or not, or of considering the faiths or unfaiths of the writer in hand, it does not follow that it is to their credit if they neglect an analysis which cultivated readers in other countries seldom omit.

If I thought that any words of mine would deprive anybody of the gaiety which Mark Twain has added to life, I should not write these words; but as this little volume is a book of impressions, and sincere impressions, I may be frank in the full understanding that the average American reader will not take seriously what I say of Mark Twain, since he has become an integral part of American literature. There may perhaps come a time when his works will be sold in sets, carefully arranged on all self-respecting bookshelves, pointed to with pride as a proof of culture, and never read. They will perhaps one day be the Rogers's statuettes of literature. But that day is evidently far off. I do not think that any jester of the older day—the day of Touchstone or of Rigoletto, with a rooted sorrow in his heart, could have been more pessi

mistic and more hopeless than Mark Twain. To change the words of Autolycus—"For the life to come, I jest out the thought of it!"

"You who admire Don Quixote," said an infuriated Mark Twainite, "should not talk of coarseness. There are pages in that romance of Cervantes which I would not allow my son or daughter to read."

One should give both sides of an argument, and I give this other side to show what may be said against my views. But the coarseness of Cervantes is, after all, a healthy coarseness. Modern ideas of purity were not his. Ignorance in those days—the days of Cervantes—did not mean innocence. Even the fathers of the Church were quite willing to admit that the roots of water lilies were in the mud, and there was no conspiracy to conceal the existence of the mud. Mark Twain's coarseness, however, is more than that of Cervantes or Shakespeare. Neither Cervantes nor Shakespeare is ever irreverent.

To them, even the ordinary things of life have a certain sacerdotal quality; but Mark Twain abhorred the sacerdotal quality as nature abhors a vacuum. To say that he has affected the Amer

ican spirit or the American heart would be to go too far—for Americans are irreverent only on the surface. It seems to me that they are the most reverent people in the world toward those essential qualities which make up the spiritual parts of life. Curiously enough, however, Mark Twain is just at present the one author to whom all Europe and all outlanders point as the great typical American writer!

That a delightful kind of American humour may exist without exaggeration, or the necessity of debasing the moral currency, many joyous books in our literature show. There are a few, of course, that are joyous without self-consciousness; but for real joyousness and charm and innocent gaiety, united to a knowledge of the psychology of the American youth, none so far has equalled Booth Tarkington's "Penrod," or, what is better, "Seventeen."

Now nobody has yet done anything so delightful, so mirth provoking, so pathetic, in a way, as "Seventeen." In my youth I was deprived of the knowledge of this book, for when I swam into the tide of literature, Booth Tarkington was in that world from which Wordsworth's boy came,

bringing rainbows, which moved to all the music of the spheres. It was during the late war that "Seventeen" was cast on the coasts of Denmark, at a time when American books scarcely reached those coasts at all. St. Julian, the patron of merry travellers, must have guided it through the maze and labyrinths of bombs and submarines in the North Sea. It arrived just when the world seemed altogether upside down; when death was the only real thing in life, and pain as much a part of the daily routine as the sunshine, and when joy seemed to have been inexplicably crushed from the earth, because sorrow was ever so recurrent that it could not be forgotten for a moment. Then "Seventeen" arrived.