Down at Caxton's 4

Down at Caxton's 4

Charles Warren Stoddard was born in Rochester, N. Y., 7th August, 1843.

At an early age he left his native state, with his family and emigrated

to California, that fertile foster-mother of American literary men.

In that delightful state, region of plants and flowers, was passed his

boyhood, a boyhood rich in promise, strengthened by a good education.

With a natural bent for travel, fed by the tales of travellers and the

waters of romance, it was his happy luck, at the age of twenty-three

to find himself appointed to that really bright journal, the _San

Francisco Chronicle_, as its correspondent. The commission was a roving

one, and the young correspondent was left free to contribute sketches

in his own inimitable way. Let us believe that the editor well knew

the choice mind he had secured in the young writer, and so knowing was

unwilling to put restrictions of the common newspaper kind in his way.

How could such a correspondent be harnessed in the dull statistics

and ribald gossip of these days? It was otherwise, as we his debtors

know. He was to wander at his own sweet will. The slight vein of sweet

melancholy that came with his life, drove him far from the grimy haunts

of civilization, far from the sickening thud of men thrown against the

cobble-stones of poverty. He sailed away with not a pang of sorrow to

those golden isles embedded in summer seas, where the moon

 

“Seems to shine with a sunny ray,

And the night looks like a mellowed day.

 

Isles where all things save man seem to have grown hoar in calm.

In calm unbroken since their luscious youth.”

 

To a man of Stoddard’s genius and delicate perception, one thing could

have been foreseen. These lands yet warm with the sunshine of youth

would play melodies on his soul, as the winds on Æolian harps; melodies

hitherto unknown to the jaded working world. That he could catch these

airs and give them a tangible form, was not so sure. Others had heard

these siren airs, but failed to yoke them to speech. Melville, now and

then, had reproduced a few notes; notes full of dreamy beauty, making

us long for the master who was to give the full and perfect song. That

master was found in Stoddard. He produced, as Howells so finely has

said, “the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that ever were

written about the life of that summer ocean,” things “of the very make

of the tropic spray,” which “know not if it be sea or sun.” Whether you

open with a prodigal in Tahiti and see for yourself “that there are

few such delicious bits of literature in the language,” or follow the

writer, who, thanking the critics, prefers to find out for himself the

worth of a writer, commences at the beginning with the charming tale

of “Kana-ana,” you will be in company with the acute critic who has

pronounced the life of the summer sea, “once done,” by Stoddard, “and

that for all time.” What should we look for in such a book? “Pictures

of life, for melody of language, for shapes and sounds of beauty;”

and these are to be found without stint in the “South Sea Idyls.” The

form of Kana-ana haunts me, “with his round, full girlish face, lips

ripe and expressive, not quite so sensual as those of most of his

race; not a bad nose, by any means; eyes perfectly glorious—regular

almonds—with the mythical lashes that sweep.” Kana-ana, who had tasted

of civilization, finding it hollow, pining for his own fair land, and

when restored to the shade of his native palms, wasting away, dying

delirious, in his tiny canoe, rocked to death by the spirit of the

deep. Or is it Taboo—“the figure that was like the opposite halves

of two men bodily joined together in an amateur attempt at human

grafting, whose trunk was curved the wrong way; a great shoulder

bullied a little shoulder, and kept it decidedly under; a long leg

walked right around a short leg that was perpetually sitting itself

down on invisible seats, or swinging itself for the mere pleasure of

it,” meeting him by the enchanting cascade. Or is it Joe of Lahaina,

whose young face seemed to embody a whole tropical romance. Joe, his

bright scape-grace, met with months after in that isle of lost dreams

and salty tears, the leper-land of Molokai. Who shall forget the end of

that tale, where the author steals away in the darkness from the dying

boy?

 

“I shall never see little Joe again, with his pitiful face, growing

gradually as dreadful as a cobra’s, and almost as fascinating in its

hideousness. I waited, a little way off in the darkness, waited and

listened, till the last song was ended, and I knew he would be looking

for me to say good night. But he did not find me, and he will never

again find me in this life, for I left him sitting in the dark door of

his sepulchre—sitting and singing in the mouth of his grave—clothed all

in Death.”

 

It matters little whether it be Kana-ana, Taboo or Joe of Lahaina,

the hand of a master was at their birth, the spell of the wizard is

around them. The full development of Stoddard’s genius is not found

in character-drawing, great as that gift undoubtedly is, but in his

wonderful reproduction of the ever-changing hues of land and sea, under

the tropical sun. What description is better fitted to fill the eye

with beauty, the ear with melody, than these lines from the very first

page of his “South Sea Idyls?”

 

“Once a green oasis blossomed before us—a garden in perfect bloom,

girdled about with creamy waves; within its coral cincture pendulous

boughs trailed in the glassy waters; from its hidden bowers spiced

airs stole down upon us; above all the triumphant palm trees clashed

their melodious branches like a chorus with cymbals; yet from the very

gates of this paradise a changeful current swept us onward, and the

happy isle was buried in night and distance.”

 

It is not easy to make extracts from this charming book. It is a

mosaic, to be read as a whole. A tile, no matter how beautiful it may

be, can give no adequate conception of the mosaic of which it forms a

part. It may, however, stimulate us to procure it. These extracts taken

at random, would that they might have the same effect. The book, once

so rare, is now within the easy reach of all. The new edition lately

published by the Scribners is all that one could ask, and is a fitting

home for the undying melodies of the summer seas. To read it is to be

reminded of the opening lines of Endymion.

 

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but will keep

A bower quiet for us and a sleep,

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

 

Stoddard’s other works are a volume of poems, San Francisco, 1867;

“Mashallah,” a work that produces, as no other work written in English,

the Egypt of to-day. In this work his touch is as light as that of

Gautier, while his eyes are as open as De Amicis; and a little volume

on Molokai. At present he is the English professor at the Catholic

University.

 

With the quoting of a little poem, “In Clover,” a poem full of his

delicate touches, I close this sketch of a writer to whom I am much

indebted for happy hours under Italian skies and in Adirondack camps.

 

“O Sun! be very slow to set;

Sweet blossoms kiss me on the mouth;

O birds! you seem a chain of jet,

Blown over from the south.

 

O cloud! press onward to the hill,

He needs you for his falling streams

The sun shall be my solace still

And feed me with his beams.

 

O little humpback bumble bee!

O smuggler! breaking my repose,

I’ll slily watch you now and see

Where all the honey goes.

 

Yes, here is room enough for two;

I’d sooner be your friend than not;

Forgetful of the world, as true,

I would it were forgot.”

 

 

 

 

MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN.

 

 

The poet-critic Stedman, in his book on American poetry, gives a few

lines to what he terms the Irish-American school. His definition is a

little misleading, as some of the poets he cites were more American

than the troop of lesser bards that grace his polished pages. It

is rather a strange notion of American critics that Prof. Boyesen,

having cast aside the language of Norseland to sport in the larger

waters of our English tongue, is metamorphosed into a true American,

while the literary sons and daughters of Irish parents, born and

striking root in American soil, are marked with a foreign brand. It

is the old story of English literary prejudice reproduced by American

critics. American _modistes_ go to Paris for their fashions, American

critics to the Strand for their literary canons. It is pleasant to

know that the bulk of the people stay at home. In this Irish-American

school one meets with the name of Maurice Francis Egan. “A sweet and

true poet” is Stedman’s criticism. Coming from a master in the art

of literary interpretation, it must occupy a place in all coming

estimates of Mr. Egan’s poetry. This criticism is, nevertheless,

short and unsatisfactory, it gives no true idea of the poet’s place

in the letters of his country. It merely, if one is inclined to agree

with Stedman, establishes that Mr. Egan has a place among the bards.

In the hall of Parnassus, however, there are so many stalls that the

ordinary reader prefers to have the particular place assigned to each

bard pointed out. The author of this sketch, while not accredited to

the theatre of Parnassus, may be able to give to those who are not

under the guidance of a uniformed usher some hints whereby Mr. Egan’s

particular place may be discerned; that place is among the minor poets.

The major stalls are all empty, waiting for the coming men, so glibly

prophesied about by the little makers of our every-day literature.

 

Maurice Francis Egan, poet, essayist, novelist, journalist, and

all-round literary man, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., May 24, 1852.

His first instructors were the Christian Brothers, at their well-known

La Salle College in that city. From La Salle he went to Georgetown

College, as a professor of English. After leaving Georgetown he edited

a short-lived venture, _McGee’s Weekly_. In 1881 he became assistant

editor of the _Freeman’s Journal_, and remained virtually at the head

of that paper until the death of its founder and the passing of the

property to other hands. The founding of the Catholic University, and

the acceptance of its English professorship by Warren Stoddard, made

a vacancy in the faculty of Notre Dame University. This vacancy was

offered to and accepted by Mr. Egan.

 

There are few places better fitted as a poet’s home than Notre Dame.

Beautiful scenery to fill the eye, brilliant society to spur the

mind, and a spacious library freighted with the riches of the past.

In comparison with the majority of the Catholic writers, the poet’s

journey in life has been comparatively smooth, though far from what it

should have been. He has published the following volumes:—“That Girl of

Mine,” 1879; “Preludes,” 1880; “Song Sonnets,” London, 1885; “Theatre,”

1885; “Stories of Duty,” 1885; “Garden of Roses,” 1886; “Life Around

Us,” 1886; “Novels and Novelists,” 1888; “Patrick Desmond,” 1893;

“Poems,” 1893. To this list must be added innumerable articles in

magazines and weekly journals. Judged by the signed output, it is safe

to write that the English professor of Notre Dame is a very busy man.

The wonder is that a mind so occupied by so many diverse things can write entertainingly of each.