The Earlier Letters of Walter H. Page

The Earlier Life and . Letters of Walter H. Page. 1855- 1913. By Burton J. Hendrick. (Heinemann. 21s. net.)

MR. BURTON J. HENDRICK, the collector and editor of Page's

famous letters, rightly felt that the thirst for more letters would not be satisfied until he had produced Page's letters from his youth up to his Ambassadorship in London. It could not be expected that these letters would have the historical value of those written during the War ; they certainly have not ; but they serve to round off biographically the picture of one of the greatest letter writers of modern times. The chief interest of the volume is that it reveals a letter writer in the making. It is noticeable that Page's best remembered journalistic achievements were open letters addressed to those whose political consciences he wished to stir.

Page came of good farming stock in North Carolina. When one follows his early career, however, one can see quickly that he had in him from the beginning a certain iconoclastic bias against the kind of life, and the kind of ideas, which used to be called typical of the Southern States. Southern life has been over-traditionalized ; a convention has been hammered out which throws men of Southern derivation, of land-owning dignity, of gentlemanlike manners and speech, into sharp contrast with a money-grubbing commercialized North.

The contrast has the modicum of truth and the volume of falsity which such contrasts usually have. Page was a devoted Southerner because he was born south of the Mason-Dixie line, but he agreed with every Northerner about slavery, and he revered the memory of Jefferson because of those very doctrines—such as that about the power of education—for which a Northerner would also have respected him.

At his first college—Trinity College, North Carolina—Page was by no means academically distinguished, and it was not till he had migrated to Randolph-Macon College that he blossomed under the influence of an accomplished and enthusiastic Hellenist, Professor Price. If anyone could have made Page believe in the convention of the South, Price would have done it, for he had all the chivalry and gallantry, all the reverence

for women, and the high feeling of honour among men, that was attributed to the Virginian gentleman. Mr. Hendrick describes the beginning of Price's liking for Page.

" One day, in the Greek class, Price called upon Page to read a chorus of Sophocles. Sophocles was Price's favourite among the Greek tragedians, as Plato was his favourite among the philo- sophers. Page read the passage with such an exquisite pro- nunciation of the Greek, such a fine response to its rhythm, and such a clear insight into the meaning of every syllable, that Price was entranced. From that moment, the young man from Cary held a preferred position in Price's affections. Against one of Page's earliest reports, still extant, appear the words, written in Price's microscopic script ` A young scholar of extraordinary promise.' "

Under Price's tutorship Page made such progress that he was offered a Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. The tolerance at leading American Colleges, even in those days, may surprise the modern reader. Randolph-Macon, although it was a Methodist foundation, had enthroned two Deists as what Mr. Hendrick calls its " patron saints " ; and Johns Hopkins, while Page was a Fellow, gave a whole-hearted welcome to Huxley.

_ It has often been said that Page conceived a mistrust of Germany when, as a very young man, he visited Germany for the first time. On the contrary, he was attracted by the friendliness and, simplicity of the Germans he met. If any criticism of German methods of thought is discernible in his early days it may be discovered in a letter he wrote from Johns Hopkins.

" I have had placed, not in books and tales, but right before my e3 es, the manner of life of the professional German student. It would perhaps not seem so shocking a thing in Germany ; but that it should be here in a southern city is to me at least unnatural. Deliver me from such a life These men know the classics, to be sure, better than any other men. But they read Homer to cata- logue the grammatical peculiarities ; they see nothing in Sappho but forms of grammar 1 For a practical example, there is a gentleman here with whom I am studying Sanskrit. He lives in a back third-story room of a desolate old house. His apartment is uncomfortably bare of all comfort-giving things ; but one end of the room is stocked with the most desirable collection of the Greek, Latin, German, French, Sanskrit, and Arabic classics. Not an English book (with two or three unimportant exceptions) there I He can make dictionaries but can no more appreciate the soul beauties of literature than a piano manufacturer can appreciate Wagner."

Page's letter describing his first glimpse of England is amusing, because it shows the typical American traveller (but was he typical ?—for this view, too, may be a false convention) looking eagerly for something " old," something charming yet shockingly feudal.

" Thus I was much later than usual in retiring and this morning almost before daybreak, some one gave the sign of delight and a whole score of men and women, too freshly awakened to look Angelic, rushed adeck to see a castle ! The boys caught the excite. merit and I was aroused; bless you, to see a castle ! I was tempted to curse the castle and not to bless the fellow—but the persistent wretch began a long roll of nonsense about King Arthur's time— old England, &c. And then somebody said we were off the Isle of Wight. Immediately the castle became Tennyson's home ! I suggested that no doubt the old man could be seen on top waving his hat at us, and succeeded in driving the castle-mad man away. But I couldn't sleep any more and I was gratified, just as I did make my appearance, to learn that the grand castle was only a lighthouse ! '

It was lucky for journalism and for the missionary side of the publishing business, and ultimately for diplomacy, that Page failed to get an academic post in the State University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One of the Methodist preachers at that University described him as a " talented monster," but there is no evidence that this opinion was pressed against him officially. After this disappointment Page made up his mind to be a journalist.

He applied to almost every newspaper in North Carolina and none would give him work. Probably his work had too high a quality for local newspapers. Besides, the shrivelled old " mummies " of the South, as Page used to call the people who were content to live upon the glories of their reputed past, instead of building up a new era of education and agricultural progress, did not at all want to be startled out of their illusion. W. D. Howells, the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, however, with his quick eye for what was good and what mattered, heartily welcomed one of Page's sketches of Southern life. It was a sketch tenderly sympathetic yet reproving.

Page must have been one of the very few journalists who, instead of answering advertisements, have published adver- tisements offering their services and enumerating their qualifications. He was probably also the first American who " syndicated " his own articles. Lovers of Uncle Remus will be delighted, but not surprised, to learn that Page was one of the first to pronounce that there was a greatness destined for immortality in the writings of Joel Chandler Harris. Harris meant as much to Page as Artemus Ward meant to Lincoln. And we can quite believe that Page's friends were as astonished in the one case as Lincoln's friends were in the other. Nothing would satisfy Page until he had sought out Harris. He was astonished to find that " Joe Harris," the plodding Editor, did not appreciate " Mr. Joel Chandler Harris."

After various vicissitudes Page joined the staff of the New York World, which in those days was an old-fashioned paper held in very high esteem, dignified, and written by scholars and gentlemen, but (it must be admitted) carrying its gravitas to the point of ponderosity. Page was extremely happy there until the paper was bought by the modernizing Pulitzer, who was a brilliant entrepreneur of newspapers, but had no understanding of the saving graces of seriousness. Mr. Page describes the catastrophe : " ' Gentlemen,' said Mr. Pulitzer, ' you realize that a change has taken place in the World. Heretofore you have all been living in the parlour and taking baths every day. Now I wish you to understand that, in future, you are all walking down the Bowery.' The little band of newspaper classicists quietly reached for their hats and silently left the hallowed ground of the now extinct old World."

Alas for the impotence of classicism in too many of its encoun- ters with commerce ! Page, with a missionary fervour in his heart and immense courage (for he had now a family to support), determined to run a newspaper in North Carolina after his own ideas. He failed. Against his will he had to return to the North.

As Editor of the Forum—in whose pages, it seems, classi- cism was sufficiently appreciated—he enormously raised the

repute and circulation of the magazine. Then came another of those catastrophes which seem to wait upon the occupation

of the journalist. Page had drafted a great scheme for enlarging the opportunities of the Forum as a leader of thought, but a body of commercially-minded shareholders took alarm

and voted the scheme out of existence.

By this time Page was famous, and it was promotion,

after all, to pass from the Forum to the Editorship of the Atlantic Monthly. His editorial policy in the Atlantic Monthly may be described as reporting and interpreting American civilization. And so it was again when he became a publisher ; to his mind a publisher had a plain opportunity of conducting himself as a good or a bad citizen. The publisher civilized or degraded the readers of his books, and

Page was; of course, on the side of civilization.

We must end by quoting a delightful example of Page's

penetration and wit. A contributor to the Atlantic Monthly had suggested that his story had been rejected because Page did not appreciate what was " sensational."

" If I were a sensational editor,' you write. I am ! Not a lover of a tinsel, cheap, mechanical sensation : that is of course dull and indecent ; but every piece of literature (I mean the real thing) is sensational : moreover,, must be sensational. I am growing prematurely old (while I ought yet to be a mere youth) because of the barren lack of such sensations."