Jonathan and His Continent Part 19

"This story is for my paper; you have no right to take it down, it was told especially to me."

"Not at all," would cry the others; "it was told to all of us."

In spite of this, the harmony of the meeting was not disturbed; and it was easy to see that an excellent spirit of fellows.h.i.+p prevailed in the fraternity.

With the exception of a phrase or two occasionally jotted down, they took no notes of my answers to their questions; and I wondered how it was possible that, with so few notes, they would manage to make an article of a hundred or two hundred lines, that would be acceptable in an important paper, out of an interview so insignificant and so devoid of interest, according to my idea, as this one.

After having spent nearly two hours over me, the reporters shook hands, expressed themselves as much obliged to me, and went their way.

How childish these Americans are! thought I. Is it possible that a conversation such as I have just had with those reporters can interest them?

Next day I procured all the New York morning papers, more from curiosity, I must say in justice to myself, than from vanity; for I was not at all proud of my utterances of the day before.

Judge of my surprise, on opening the first paper, to find two columns full of amusing details, picturesque descriptions, well-told anecdotes, witty remarks; the whole cleverly mingled and arranged by men who, I had always supposed, were simple stenographers.

Everything was faithfully reported and artistically set down. The smallest incidents were rendered interesting by the manner of telling.

The Major, for instance, who, accustomed to this kind of interview for many years, had peacefully dropped asleep, comfortably installed, with his head on the sofa pillows and his feet on the back of a chair; my own gestures; the description of the pretty and elegantly furnished office--all was very crisp and vivid. They had turned everything to account; even the arrival of the lemon squash was made to furnish a little paragraph that was droll and attractive. You might have imagined that the whole thing was the first chapter of a novel, commencing with the majestic entry of a steamer into New York harbour.

Well, I said to myself, the American journalist knows, at any rate, how to make a savoury hash out of very little.

Three years ago, when Mr. Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, married the prettiest and most charming of his countrywomen, he chose Deer Park as a suitable place to pa.s.s his honeymoon in, far from the world and its bustle, and, above all, far from the reporters.

However, the ex-President knew only too well the spirit of enterprise that possesses his countrymen; and to put himself out of reach of the interviewers, and make sure of tranquillity, he thought it well to employ eight detectives to guard the approaches to his retreat. This number was soon found insufficient, for the enemy made his appearance in the neighbourhood. The pickets had to be reinforced, and a week later twelve Argus-eyed watchers were on the alert to prevent any person whomsoever from getting within three hundred yards of the cottage. The interviewers were outdone, and had to admit themselves baffled. The papers had no details worth giving to their readers.

This must have been enough to make any enterprising editor tear his hair, or go and hang himself.

To have in one's editorial drawer such headings as "Grover in Clover,"

or "Drops of Honey Sipped in Deer Park," and not to be able to use them!

It was hard lines.

A little anecdote to finish with:

A young American lady had married a man well known as a young political orator of great promise.

The day after the wedding, her husband having gone out, she heard some little struggling outside her drawing-room door; and suddenly there entered a very well-dressed man, who made her a most polite bow.

She gazed at him, quite bewildered.

"Excuse me, madam; but you married Mr. John D. yesterday, I believe?"

"I did, sir; but ..."

"I am the Interviewer!"

_Tableau!_

CHAPTER XXI.

_Literature in the United States.--Poets.--Novelists.-- Essayists.--Critics.--Historians.--Humorists.--Journalists.-- Writers for the Young.--Future of American Literature._

America has not yet produced a transcendent literary genius; but she has the right to be proud of a national literature which includes poets, historians, novelists, essayists, and critics of a superior order.

The English admit that the best history of their literature has been written by a Frenchman, M. Taine. The _Athenaeum_ acknowledged, a short while ago, that the best criticism on the English poets of the Victorian era was that written by Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, himself one of the most graceful bards of contemporary America.

In this rapid sketch, I must needs confine myself to the mention of merely the princ.i.p.al names which adorn the different branches of American literature.

In poetry, the bright lights are William Cullen Bryant and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both pure and n.o.ble, and as much appreciated by the English as by their own compatriots; Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Bayard Taylor, John Greenleaf Whittier, Walt Whitman, Richard Watson Gilder, Edgar Fawcett, William Winter (the celebrated dramatic critic of the _New York Tribune_), Maria Brooks, and a number of women, who form a graceful garland in this garden of poets. In the Western dialects, a young poet, Mr. Whitcombe Riley, knows how to draw tears through the smiles which his humour provokes: he promises to be the future Jasmin of America.

In the domain of romance, we find writers whose reputation is as firmly established in Europe as in America. Who has not read in his youth the novels of Fenimore Cooper? Who has not thrilled over the weird tales of Poe? Among the most famous names in fiction are also Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, Parker Willis, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Marion Crawford, Frank Stockton, George W. Cable, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Henry James, W. D. Howells, Julian Hawthorne, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Charles Dudley Warner, Bret Harte (who is also a poet), Edward Eggleston, Brander Matthews, Eliza Wetherell. All these names are household words wherever the English tongue is spoken. The greatest success of the century has been attained by an American novel, directed against slavery, and instrumental in its destruction.

Its author, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, is a sister of the celebrated Henry Ward Beecher, whom America still mourns.

In the philosophical essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Ingersoll are unapproachable in their different styles. The first s.h.i.+nes by his originality and a subtle power of reasoning; the second by the grandeur of his language, his keen, clear reasoning power, and his humour and pathos.

In literary criticism must be named George William Curtis, as well as Stedman and Winter, already named among the poets.

History is perhaps, of all the branches of American literature, that which has found its highest expression. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, with his _History of Columbus_; Prescott, with the _History of Ferdinand and Isabella_, the _History of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru_, and the _History of Philip II._; Bancroft, with a _History of the American Revolution_; Hildreth, Sparks, and others, have produced a national history from the discovery of their country down to our own days.

It seems curious that the vast and grandiose regions they inhabit should not have inspired the Americans with taste and talent for descriptions of Nature. Fenimore Cooper is the only great scene painter produced by the immensities of the great Western Continent.

Humorists swarm in the United States. Artemus Ward and Mark Twain are two pseudonyms justly famous at home and abroad. There is a third on the road that leads to similar celebrity. Bill Nye has the same droll way as Mark Twain of droning out irresistible comicalities with that solemn _sang froid_ which is not met with outside the frontiers of Yankeeland.

When he mounts the platform, the audience prepares to be dislocated with laughter.

Although the names of Charles A. Dana, Whitelaw Reid, Park G.o.dwin, and many others, are well known to the reading public of America, it is in the large Reviews, and not in the newspapers, that really literary articles are to be found.

Children--if there are any children in America--are not forgotten by literature. It is safe to affirm that there is no country where children are so well written for, by authors who have the secret of instructing them while they charm and amuse them. Love and sympathy for children must be a spontaneous outgrowth of the gay and tender American character. Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the late Louisa Alcott, Mrs. Lippincott (better known as Grace Greenwood), and f.a.n.n.y Fern, will for ages to come fascinate the whole of the English-speaking juvenile world.

In these rapid outlines, I must have omitted many names. I hope I have mentioned enough to show a guarantee of a brilliant literary future for the country.

A nation so intelligent, so energetic, so prominent in the world of action, could not possibly be sterile in the domain of thought.

CHAPTER XXII.

_The Stage in the United States.--The "Stars."--French Plays.

Mr. Augustin Daly's Company.--The American Public.--The Theatres.--Detailed Programmes.--A Regrettable Omission._

The American stage boasts some excellent actors; but it owes its prestige rather to the talent of a few brilliant individualities than to distinction of _ensemble_.