You are graduating from a Catholic college with high aims, you have had many advantages, more than are accorded usually in our time to men of your years in the training of heart and will as well as intellect, and much is expected of you. You are rich in real education and a stewardship of great intellectual and moral wealth is given over to you, and you must be better than others and be, above all, ever helpful to others. Your education was not given for your benefit, but for that of the community. Your neighbors are all round you. See that at the end of your life they shall all be happier because you have lived. If you do not do so you shall sadly disappoint the hopes of your teachers and, above all, you shall be false to the trust that has been confided to you.
Pa.s.s on the torch of charity. Let all the world be dear to you in the old-fashioned sense of that dear old word charity, not merely distantly friendly in the new-fangled sense of the long Greek term philanthropy. Be just while you are living your lives and you will not have the burden of philanthropy that so many rich men are now complaining of in your older years, and, above all, {430} you will not have the contempt and aversion of those who may accept your bounty, but who know how questionably you acquired the means of giving it and are not really thankful.
I have done but for just one word. Be just and fear not. If you will be just in your dealing with men, you will have no need for further advice and no need for repentance. I thank you.
{431}
NEW ENGLANDISM
{432}
"It isn"t so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain"t so."
--Josh Billings, _writing as "Uncle Esek" in the "Century."_
{433}
NEW ENGLANDISM [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: The material for this was collected for a banquet address in Boston on Evacuation Day, 1909, before the Knights of Columbus. It was developed for various lectures on the history of education, in order to ill.u.s.trate how easy it is to produce a tradition which is not supported by historical doc.u.ments. In its present form it appeared as an article in the _West Coast Magazine_ for July, 1910, at the request of the editor, Mr. John S. McGroarty, with whom, more years ago than either of us care to recall now, I had learned the New England brand of United States history at a country school.]
There is a little story told of a supposed recent celestial experience, that seems, to some people, at least--perhaps it may be said without exaggeration, to most of those alas! not born in New England--to ill.u.s.trate very well the att.i.tude of New Englanders, and especially of the Bostonese portion of the New England population, towards all the rest of the world and the heavens besides. St. Peter, the celestial gate-keeper, is supposed to be disturbed from the slumbers that have been possible so much oftener of late years because of the infrequent admissions since the world has lost interest in other-worldliness, by an imperious knocking at the gate. "Who"s there?" he asks in a very mild voice, for he knows by long experience that that kind of knocking usually comes from some grand dame from the terrestrial regions. The reply, in rather imperative {434} tone, is, "I am Mrs. Beacon from Boston," with emphasis on the Boston, "Well, madam," Peter says in reply, "you may come in, but," he adds with a wisdom learned doubtless from many previous incidents of the same kind, "you won"t like it."
Of course, the thoroughgoing admiration of New England people, and especially of Bostonians, for all that is New England, and, above all, all that is Boston, has been well recognized for a long while and has not failed of proper appreciation, to some degree at least, even in New England itself. To Oliver Wendell Holmes we owe that delightful characterization of it in the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,"
"Boston State House is the hub of the solar system. You could not pry that out of a Boston man (and _a fortiori_ I think it may be said out of a Boston woman) if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar." James Russell Lowell expressed the same idea very forcibly in other words in some expressions of his essay on "A Certain Condescension in Foreigners," that have been perhaps oftenest quoted and are dear to every true New Englander"s heart. Of course, he meant it a great deal more than half in jest, but who of us who know our Down Easterners doubt that most of them take it considerably more than half in earnest? Their att.i.tude shows us very well how much the daughter New England was ready to take after mother England in {435} the matter of thinking so much of herself that she must perforce be condescending to others.
Lowell"s expression is worthy to be placed beside that of Oliver Wendell Holmes for the guidance of American minds. They are keys to the situation. "I know one person," said Lowell, "who is singular enough to think Cambridge (Ma.s.s.) the very best spot on the habitable globe. "Doubtless G.o.d could have made a better, but doubtless he never did."" It only needed his next sentence fully to complete the significance of Boston and its academic suburb in the eyes of every good Bostonian. "The full tide of human existence may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing Cross and in a larger sense."
Of course there is no insuperable objection to allowing New Englanders to add to the gayety of nations in this supreme occupation with themselves, and we would gladly suffer them if only they would not intrude their New Englandism on some of the most important concerns of the nation. But that is impossible, for New Englandism is most obtrusive. It is New England that has written most of the history of this country and its influence has been paramount on most of our education. It has supplied most of the writers of history and moulded most of the school-teachers of the country. The consequence has been a stamping of New Englandism all over our history and on the minds of rising generations for the better part of a century, with a {436} perversion of the realities of history in favor of New England that is quite startling when attention is particularly directed to it.
The editors of the "Cambridge modern History," in their preface, called attention to the immense differences between what may be called doc.u.mentary and traditional history. They declare that it has become "impossible for historical writers of the present age to trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities. The honest student finds himself continually deserted, r.e.t.a.r.ded, misled, by the cla.s.sics of historical literature, and has to hew his own way through mult.i.tudinous transactions, periodicals, and official publications in order to reach the truth." Most people reading this would be p.r.o.ne to think that any such arraignment of American history, as is thus made by the distinguished Cambridge editors of history in general, would be quite out of the question. After all, our history, properly speaking, extends only over a couple of centuries and we would presumably be too close to the events for any serious distortion of them to have been made. For that reason it is interesting to realize what an unfortunate influence the fact that our writers have come mainly from New England and have been full of the New England spirit has had on our American history.
Every American schoolboy is likely to be possessed of the idea that the first blood shed in the Revolution was in the so-called Boston Ma.s.sacre. {437} It is well known that that event thus described was nothing more than a street brawl in which five totally unarmed pa.s.sers-by were shot down without their making the slightest resistance, as an act of retaliation on the part of drunken soldiers annoyed by boys throwing s...o...b..a.l.l.s at them. This has been magnified into an important historical event. Two months before it, however, there was an encounter in New York with the citizens under arms as well as the soldiers, and it was at Golden Hill on Manhattan Island and not in Boston that the first blood of the Revolution was shed.
Miss Mary L. Booth, in her "History of the City of New York," says: "Thus ended the Battle of Golden Hill, a conflict of two days"
duration, which, originating as it did in the defense of a principle, was an affair of which New Yorkers have just reason to be proud, and which is worthy of far more prominence than has usually been given it by standard historians. It was not until nearly two months after that the Boston Ma.s.sacre occurred, a contest which has been glorified and perpetuated in history, yet this was second both in date and in significance to the New York Battle of Golden Hill."
Practically every other incident of these times has been treated in just this way, in our school histories at least. Every American schoolboy knows of the Boston tea party, and usually can and does tell the story with great gus...o...b..cause {438} it delights his youthful dramatic sense. Not only the children, but every one else seems to think that the organization of the tea party was entirely due to the New England spirit of resistance to "taxation without representation."
How few of them are taught that this destruction of the tea had been definitely agreed upon by all the colonies and that it was only by chance that Ma.s.sachusetts happened to be first in the execution of the project. My friend, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, in his article on "Some Popular Myths of American History," in the _Magazine of History_ (February, 1905), has stated this aspect of the question very forcibly. "Previous to the arrival of the ships in Boston, concerted action had been agreed upon, as has been already shown, in regard to the destruction of the tea, from Charleston, S. C., to Portsmouth, N.
H. The people of Philadelphia had been far more active and outspoken at the outset than they of Boston, and it was this decisiveness which caused the people of Boston to act, after they had freely sought beforehand the advice and moral support of the other colonies."
It would be utterly unjust to limit the movement which culminated in the Boston Tea Party to any one or even several of the colonies; to make so much of the Boston incident is to falsify history in fact, but, above all, in the impression produced upon the rising generation that Boston was a leader in this movement. The first {439} tea-ship arrived in Boston November 28, 1773, and two others shortly after, but it was not until the evening of December 16th that their contents were thrown overboard. Over six weeks before this a precisely similar occurrence had taken place in New York without any such delay, and though the movement proved futile because it was undertaken on a false alarm, it is easy to understand that due credit should be given to those who took part in it for their thoroughgoing spirit of opposition to British measures. On this subject once more Dr. Emmet, whose great collection of Americana made him probably more familiar with he sources of American history than any one of our generation, has been, in the article already quoted, especially emphatic.
"On November 5, 1773, an alarm was raised in the City of New York to the effect that a tea-ship had entered the harbor. A large a.s.sembly of people at once occurred, among whom those in charge of the movement were disguised as Mohawk Indians. This alarm proved a false one, but at a meeting then organized a series of resolutions was adopted which was received by the other colonies as the initiative in the plan of resistance already determined upon throughout the country. Our schoolbooks are chiefly responsible for the almost universal impression that the destruction of tea, which occurred in Boston Harbor, was an episode confined to that city, while the fact is that the tea sent to this country was either {440} destroyed or sent back to England from every seaport in the colonies. The first tea-ship happened to arrive in Boston and the first tea was destroyed there; for this circ.u.mstance due credit should be given the Bostonians. But the fact that the actors in this affair were disguised as Mohawk Indians shows that they were but following the lead of New York, where this particular disguise had been adopted forty-one days before, for the same purpose."
Just as the Boston Ma.s.sacre has been insistently pointed out as the first blood shed for American liberty, so the Battle of Lexington has been drilled into our school children"s minds as the first organized armed resistance to the British. Without wishing at all to detract from the glory of those who fought at Lexington, there is every reason not to let the youth of this country grow up with the notion that Ma.s.sachusetts was the first to put itself formally under arms against the mother country. Lexington was not fought until April 19, 1775. The battle of Alamance, N. C., which occurred on May 16, 1771, deserves much more to be considered as the first organized resistance to British oppression. The North Carolina Regulators rather than the New England Minute Men should have the honor of priority as the first armed defenders of their rights against encroachment. The subject is all the more interesting because the British leader who tried to ride rough-shod over stout Americans in North Carolina and met {441} with open opposition was the infamous General Tryon of subsequent Connecticut fame. Every one knows of his pernicious activity in Connecticut, very few that he had been previously active in North Carolina. That is the difference between history as "it has been written" for New England and the South. That the Battle of Alamance was no mere chance engagement, and that the North Carolinians were aflame with the real spirit that finally gave freedom to the colonies, can be best realized from the fact that the first Declaration of Independence was made at Mecklenberg in North Carolina, and that some of its sentiments, and even perhaps its phrases, were adopted in the subsequent formal Declaration of Independence of all the colonies.
For those who may be surprised that North Carolina should have been so prominent in these first steps in Revolutionary history and these primary developments of the great movement that led to the freedom of the Colonies, for we are accustomed to think of North Carolina as one of the backward, unimportant portions of the country, it may be well to say that at the time of the Revolution she was the third State in the Union in population, following Virginia and Pennsylvania in the number of inhabitants, exceeding New York in population by the total census of New York City and Long Island, and ahead of Ma.s.sachusetts, which immediately followed it in the list by almost as many. The st.u.r.dy {442} inhabitants of the northern of the Carolinas had been for a decade before the Revolution constantly a thorn in the side of the British government and had been recognized as leaders in the great movement that was gradually being organized to bring all the colonies together for mutual help against the encroachments of the British government on their rights. Our school children fail almost entirely to know this because they have been absorbed by Ma.s.sachusetts history--but then North Carolina did not have the good fortune to have writers of history. New England had them and to spare, and with a patriotic zeal for their native heath beyond even their numbers. Of course it may be said that these are old-time historical traditions which have found their way into history and are difficult to get out, though most of those who know any history realize their absurdity, and the modern historian, even though he may be from New England, holds the balance much more equitably between the different portions of the country. Apparently this is just what is not true, for New England professors of history and writers of history still continue to write in the same old strain of such surpa.s.sing admiration for New Englanders that every other portion of the country is cast into shadow. It was a distinguished professor of history at Harvard who, within five years, in an important historical work, [Footnote 28]
said: "Whatever the social mixture {443} of the future, one thing is certain; the standards, aspirations and moral and political ideas of the original English settlers not only dominate their own descendants, but permeate the body of immigrants of other races--the Puritans have furnished the little leaven that leavens the whole lump."
[Footnote 28: "The American Nation," 27 vols.]
One wonders just what such a sentence means and, of course, finds it in many ways amazingly amusing. One would think that the only English settlers were the Puritans, and that they had had great influence in the origin of our government. Apparently, for the moment at least, this Harvard professor forgot in his enthusiasm for the forefathers in Ma.s.sachusetts that the other branch of English settlers, those of Virginia, were ever so much more important in the colonial times and for long afterwards, than the Puritans. Of the first five Presidents four were from Virginia. It is possible they forget now, in Ma.s.sachusetts, that only one was from Ma.s.sachusetts, and that that one did more to disturb government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" than any other, so that after four short years the country would have no more of him and no more of these Ma.s.sachusetts Puritans for more than a quarter of a century. This dear, good professor of Harvard has deliberately called all the non-English elements in our population foreigners because of his absorption in New England. He said: "If the list of American {444} great men be scanned the contribution of the foreigner stands out clearly. The two greatest financiers of America have been the English West Indian Alexander Hamilton and the Genevan Albert Gallatin. Two Presidents, Van Buren and Roosevelt, are of Dutch stock; five others, Jackson, Buchanan, Grant, Arthur and McKinley of Scotch and Scotch-Irish descent." All "foreigners" except the New Englanders! Save the mark!
It is rather interesting to find that their contemporaries of the Revolutionary period did not share that high estimation of the New Englanders which they themselves clung to so tenaciously and have writ so large in our history that the tradition of New England"s unselfish wonder-working in that olden time has never perished. Most of us are likely to know something about the rather low estimation, at most toleration, in which during the Revolutionary period many of the members of Congress from New England were held by fellow-members of Congress from other portions of the country. They were the most difficult to bring into harmony with others, the slowest to see anything that did not directly enhance the interests of New England; they were more constantly in opposition to great movements that meant much for the future of the colonies themselves and the government of the United States afterward than any others. We are p.r.o.ne to excuse this, however, on the score {445} of their intolerant Puritanism, and taught by our New England schoolmasters, most of us, at least, fondly cherish the notion that all the New Englanders made supreme sacrifices for the country and did it with a whole-hearted spirit of self-forgetfulness that made every man, above all in Ma.s.sachusetts, an out-and-out patriot. It is curious to find how different were the opinions of those from other portions of the country who came in contact with New Englanders at this time, from that which is to be found in their histories.
Washington, for instance, had by no means the same high opinion of the New Englanders, and, above all, of the New England troops, that they had of themselves and that their historians have so carefully presented of them. It is said that Sparks edited many of Washington"s criticisms of New Englanders out of his edition of the "Life and Letters." Certain it is that some of the letters which Sparks did not consider it proper to quote from, contain material that is very interesting for the modern historian who wants to get at contemporary doc.u.ments, and for whom contemporary opinions such as that of Washington cannot but seem especially valuable. In a letter from the camp at Cambridge, August 20, 1775, to Lund Washington at Mt. Vernon, Washington said: "The people of this Government [Ma.s.sachusetts] have obtained a character which they by no means deserve; their officers, generally {446} speaking, are the most indifferent kind of people I ever saw. I have already broke one colonel and five captains for cowardice, and for drawing more pay and provisions than they had men in their companies. There are two more colonels now under arrest and to be tried for the same offenses; in short, they are by no means such troops, in any respect, as you are led to believe of them from the accounts which are published; but I need not make myself enemies among them by this declaration, although it is consistent with truth. I dare say the men would fight very well (if properly officered), although they are an exceedingly dirty and nasty people. Had they been properly conducted at Bunker"s Hill (on the 17th of June) or those that were there properly supported, the regulars would have met with a shameful defeat, and a much more considerable loss than they did, which is now known to be exactly 1,057, killed and wounded. It was for their behavior on that occasion that the above officers were broke, for I never spared one that was accused of cowardice, but brought them to immediate trial."
One of the most interesting perversions of the history written by New Englanders is that in their emphasis of New Englandism they have sometimes signally failed to write even their own history as the doc.u.ments show it. There has been much insistence, for instance, on the supposed absolute purity of the English origin of {447} the settlers in New England and especially in Ma.s.sachusetts until long after the Revolution. Palfrey, in the introduction to his "History of New England," says: "The people of New England are a singularly unmixed race. There is probably not a county in England occupied by a population of purer English blood than they are." Senator Lodge, forty years later, in his "History of the Revolution," re-echoes Mr.
Palfrey"s words, and says that "the people were of almost pure English blood, with a small infusion of Huguenots and a slight mingling in New Hampshire of Scotch-Irish from Londonderry." During the past ten years the Secretary of State of Ma.s.sachusetts, by order of the Legislature, has been compiling from the state archives the muster roll of the Ma.s.sachusetts soldiers and sailors of the Revolutionary War. This does not bear out at all what Mr. Palfrey and Mr. Lodge have a.s.serted so emphatically as to the exclusively English origin of the population of New England and, above all, of Ma.s.sachusetts at this critical time.
There is not a familiar Irish name that does not occur many times. The fighting race was well represented. There were 167 Kellys and 79 Burkes, though by some unaccountable circ.u.mstance only 24 Sheas. There were 388 O"Briens and other O"s and Macs galore. There are Aherns and Brannigans and Bannons and Careys and Carrolls and Connellys, Connors and Corcorans and Costellos and Cosgroves and {448} Costigans, and so on right through the alphabet. Curiously enough there are no Lodges on the muster roll, but there is not an Irish name beginning with "L"
that is not represented. There are no less than 69 Larkins and some 20 Learys and Lonergans and Lanigans and all the other Celtic patronymics in "L."
Dr. Emmet, who has investigated very carefully the question of the deportation of the Irish to this country under Cromwell, says that many shiploads of them were sent to Ma.s.sachusetts in the seventeenth century. He declares that enough Irish girls were sent over to Ma.s.sachusetts at this time to furnish wives for all the immediate descendants of the Puritans. There are certainly many more Irish names than are dreamt of in the very early times. Priscilla Alden"s name before she tempted John to give her his rather pretty name, has never found its way into poetry because no poetry would stand it--it was Mullen or Mullins.
Even after the Revolution the place of New England, but especially Ma.s.sachusetts, in the Republic has been sadly misrepresented in our American history as a rule, because our school historians at least have usually been Bostonians. When Washington, in 1789, made his first visit as President of the United States to New England, he was received very enthusiastically in Connecticut, though this state had not been wholly favorable to the new government, but in {449} Ma.s.sachusetts his reception was distinctly cold, and indeed, almost insulting. John Hanc.o.c.k was Governor of this State and he absolutely refused to meet the President at the State line, though most other Governors had done this, and while President Washington was in Boston he declined even to call on him. The reason for this was the a.s.sumption of a characteristic Ma.s.sachusetts att.i.tude. There seems no doubt now that John Hanc.o.c.k, not because he was pompous John Hanc.o.c.k, not because he was the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts--and this idea had been fostered among his people--honestly believed that the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts was a greater man in every way than the President of the nation.
There are many who might say that this state of mind has endured even to the present time. Certainly Ma.s.sachusetts" representative men have constantly set the interests of their commonwealth above those of the Union. New England has always had a tendency that way. During the newspaper agitation over the recent tariff bill one of the cartoonists represented the United States as a puppy dog with New England as the tail, with the caption, "How long is the tail going to wag the dog?"
During the second war with Great Britain in 1812 New England was the most recalcitrant portion of the Union, and another conceited Governor of the State hampered the nation in every way. Our histories for {450} schools, at least, have been so written as to produce the impression that only the South ever was dissatisfied with the Union, inclined to be rebellious and ready to talk about the nullification of the compact which bound the states together. The Hartford convention is mentioned, but not given near the place that it deserves, since it represents the feeling, very rife at that time, that such a procedure as nullification was quite justifiable. Twelve delegates from Ma.s.sachusetts were present in this convention and there was a decided spirit of rebellion against the general government because, forsooth, the war had injured Boston"s business.
It is not alone in history, however, that New England"s thoroughgoing admiration for herself has served to disturb the attainment of truth by the rising generation of Americans. Besides exaggerating the comparative influence of New England in the affairs of the country, they have exaggerated the place of favorite New England authors in the literature of the world to such a degree that growing young America cannot help but have a number of false notions of comparative literary values, which he has to rid himself of before he is able to attain any proper appreciation of world literature or even of English literature.
A little group of New England literary folk came into prominence about the middle of the nineteenth century. Because they were the best that New England could produce, {451} apparently they were considered by New Englanders as the best in the world. English critics, of course, laughed at their self-complacency, but our New England schoolmasters took New England"s writers so seriously and proceeded to write so much about them and make them so much the subject of teaching not alone in New England but in every part of the country, that now it is almost impossible to get our people to accept any true standards, since admiration for these quite unimportant New England writers has ruined any proper critical literary appreciation.
As a consequence our rising generations for some time have been inclined to take Emerson seriously as a great philosopher, writer and thinker. They have been very p.r.o.ne to accept dear old Oliver Wendell Holmes, kindliest of men, charmingest of writers, as a great literary man. There have literally been hundreds of English writers such as these in the past three centuries of English literary history, who now take up at most but a few lines in even large histories of English literature. Taking Emerson seriously is fortunately going out of fashion. If one wanted a criterion of the depth of thought of the generation that accepted him originally and pa.s.sed him along as a significant philosophic prophet, then surely one need go no farther.
Our optimistic Carlyle, writing in a minor key, looms up so much smaller now than a generation ago that we can readily realize how {452} New Englandism infected literary and philosophic standards. What is thus said of Emerson may be repeated, with perhaps a little less emphasis, of the other writers whom New England has insisted on proclaiming to the world as representative of all that was best and highest in literature--because for a moment they commanded attention in New England.
There was a time, not so long ago, when it was considered the proper thing in this country to talk of Longfellow as a great poet. Of course, no one does so any more. The devotion to him of so much time in our schools, while so many much more important contributions to our English poetry have but scanty attention paid them, is still producing not only a false impression on children"s minds as to his proper place in literature, but is playing sad havoc with literary standards generally, so far as they may be the subject of teaching. Longfellow was, of course, nothing more than a pleasant balladist and a writer of conventional thoughts on rather commonplace themes in reasonably smooth verse. For really profound thought Longfellow"s poetry has never a place. His loftiest flights of imagination do not bring him anywhere near the great mysteries of human life or the deep thoughts that run through men"s minds when they are touched to the quick. Of the sterner pa.s.sions of men he had scarcely an inkling.
Whittier, of course, has much more real poetry {453} in his little store of verse than Longfellow, but Whittier"s voice is only a very low treble and his religious training was too narrow to permit him any breadth of poetic feeling. No one thinks now that anything that Whittier wrote will live to be read by any but curious students of certain anti-slavery movements in connection with the history of our civil war. He will have an interest for antiquarian litterateurs, scarcely more than that. Of James Russell Lowell"s rather charming academic verse one would prefer to say nothing, only that the serious study of it in our schools leads the present generation to think that he, too, must be considered seriously as a poet. It is doubtful if Russell Lowell ever thought of himself as a poet at all. Appropriate thoughts charmingly expressed for occasions, in verse reasonably tuneful, he could do better than most men of his time in America--that was all. Of real poetic quality there is almost none. Lowell"s verse will not be read at all except by the professional critic before another generation has pa.s.sed, and I am sure that no one realized this better than Lowell himself.
What Longfellow and Lowell will be remembered for in the history of nineteenth century literature, most of the rising generation of Americans know very little about and the great majority of them completely ignore. It is for their critical and expository work in introducing great foreign authors--really great poets--to the {454} knowledge of their countrymen that both Longfellow and Lowell will deserve the grat.i.tude of all future generations and some of their work in this regard will endure when their verse is forgotten. Longfellow"s edition of Dante was not only well worth all the time he gave to it during thirty years, but represents a monument in American literature that will be fondly looked back to by many a generation of English-speaking people. Very probably of his work in verse the "Golden Legend" will mean more to a future generation than almost anything else that Longfellow has done. Above all, it was precious in making Americans realize how profound and how beautiful had been the work of the poets of Europe seven centuries ago.
In the light of this gradual reduction of the value of New England"s literature to its lowest terms it is extremely amusing to find occasionally expressions of the value of the New England period in English literature as expressed by enthusiastic New Englanders and, above all, by ardent--what, for want of a better term we must call--New Englanderesses. One of these, Miss Helen Winslow, has recently and quite deservedly been made great fun of by Mr. H. W.
Horwin in an article in the _National Review_ (England), headed, "Are Americans Provincial?" which brings home a few truths to us in what concerns our complacent self-satisfaction with ourselves. Miss Winslow declares that the {455} great Bostonian period was "a literary epoch, the like of which has scarcely been known since the Elizabethan period." She proclaims that "The Papyrus Club [of Boston] is known to men of letters and attainments everywhere." She notes that "Scott, Balzac and Thackeray received a legal training," just when she is going to add that "Robert Grant is also a lawyer." She adds that "young people everywhere adore the name of Sophie Sweet" (whoever she may be). Is it any wonder that the ordinary non-New-England American "gets hot under the collar" for his countrymen under such circ.u.mstances?
Two really great masters of literature we had in America during the nineteenth century, Poe and Hawthorne. Because of our New England schoolmasters, as it seems to most of us, Poe has never come into his own proper appreciation in this country. The French consider him the great master of the short story, and that has come to occupy such a prominent place in our so-called literature in America, that one might look for an apotheosis of Poe. He is the one writer whose works in both prose and verse have influenced deeply the literary men of other countries besides our own. No other American writer has been given the tribute of more than a perfunctory notice in the non-English-speaking countries. In spite of this Poe"s name was kept out of the Hall of Fame at New York University, {456} which was meant to enshrine the memory of our greatest thinkers and literary men, though we had generally supposed that the national selection of the jury to decide those whose names should be honored, would preclude all possibility of any narrow sectional influence perverting the true purpose of the inst.i.tution. Poe has never been popular in New England, nor has he been appreciated at his true worth by the literary circles of New England. Their schoolmasterly influence has been pervasive enough to keep from Poe his true meed of praise among our people generally, though all our poets and literary men look up to him as our greatest poetic genius.
As for Hawthorne, there is no doubt that he is our greatest American writer in prose. He was the one man in New England with a great message. His writings came from deep down in the human heart, from the very wellsprings of human pa.s.sion, and had their origin not far from where soul touches body in this human compound. The English, usually supposed to be slow of recognition for things American, acknowledged his high worth almost at once. Some of us here in America, indeed, have had the feeling that to a great extent our people have had to learn the lesson of proper appreciation for Hawthorne from the English-speaking people across the water. To Americans, for years, he was little more than a story-writer, not so popular as {457} many another writer of stories, and his really great qualities were to a great extent ignored. Because Puritan New England was out of sympathy with the mystical spirit of his writings only a late and quite inadequate appreciation of the value of his work was formed by his countrymen. Something of this unfortunate lack of appreciation crept into the schoolmastering of the country, and Hawthorne is probably not as highly valued in his native land as he is in England, though France and Germany have learned to look up to him as our greatest of American literary men--the one of our writers who, with Poe, attracts a world audience.
When there is question of anything else besides literature, of course, New England has no claims at all to make, and she has stood for many unfortunate austere tendencies in American life. For anything like public spirit for art or music or aesthetics in any department the Puritan soul had no use. Consequently our artistic development was seriously delayed as a nation by the influence that New England had as the schoolmaster of the country. The consequence was that our churches were bare and ugly, our homes lacking in the spirit of beauty and our munic.i.p.alities mere places to live and make money in, but with no provision for the enjoyment of life. It is in this that New England has doubtless done us most harm and it is for this reason that many people will re-echo that expression of a {458} descendant of the Puritans who declares that it would have been "an awfully good thing when the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock if only Plymouth Rock had landed on the Puritans." It would have saved us an immense deal of inhibition of all the art impulses of this country, which were almost completely choked off for so long by the narrow Puritanism so rampant in New England and so diffusively potent in our educational system.
In conclusion one feels like recalling once more Lowell"s "Essay on a Certain Condescension in Foreigners." Surely the daughter New England, consciously or unconsciously, has treated the rest of the country very much like Mother England used to treat nascent English America long ago. There are many of us who in recent years have come to know New Englandism and its p.r.o.neness to be condescending, who have felt very much like paraphrasing, with the addition of the adjective "new" here and there, certain of Lowell"s best-known sentences. The new version will make quite as satisfactory a bit of satire on our Down East compatriots as Lowell"s. .h.i.ts on the mother country and our English cousins across the water. Very probably there are more people who will appreciate the satire in this new application of the great American essayist"s words than they did in its original form: "It will take (New) England a great while to get over her airs of patronage toward us, or even pa.s.sably {459} to conceal them. She has a conviction that whatever good there is in us is wholly (New) English, when the truth is that we are worth nothing except so far as we have disinfected ourselves of (Neo-) Anglicanism."