MR. HOWELLS'S REMINISCENCES.*
MIL HOWELLS, the doyen of American " belle-lettaists "—to borrow a convenient if ugly word used by De Quincey—recently entered on his eightieth year, but there are no signs of waning powers in this delight- ful volume in which he tells the story of his youth and early manhood up to the year in which he accepted the post of Consul at Venice. It is written throughout in a spirit which, though not untouched by regret for the older and simpler days, is one of cheerfulness, kindliness, mellow wisdom, and above all of filial and fraternal piety. Mr. Howells, who was born in Ohio on March 1st, 1837, came of a mixed stock— Welsh on his father's side, German and Irish on his mother's—and he remarks that it is because of this mixture that he feels himself so typically American and that he is " of that imaginative temperament which has enabled me all the conscious years of my life to see reality more iridescent • Year of My Youth. By William Dean Howells. London : Sarver and Brothers. Rs. 6d. uct.j and beautiful, or more lurid and terrible, than any make-believe about reality." His grandfather, a manufacturer of Welsh flannels, settled in America in the first decade of the last century, and after many removals and vicissitudes of fortune ended as an unsuccessful farmer. His father continued the family wanderings in the search for a living, and was successively a printer, publisher, house-painter. and finally news- paper proprietor and editor. In these various ventures, generally launched on credit, and sometimes ending in disaster, involving frequent changes of residence and constant anxiety, one is impressed not merely by the courage and high ideals of Mr. Howells's father, but by the devotion and loyalty of his children. The elder Howells was a remarkable man, of many gifts intellectual and practical, but destitute of the money- getting instinct. He never shrank from advocating unpopular views ; he was a convinced anti-abolitionist and a social reformer, and suffered again and again in pocket from his championship of minority views. His forebears had been Quakers; he himself was successively a Methodist and a Swedenborgian, but for all his interest in transcendentalism he was more concerned with making the world better and happier than with the advocacy of quietism or millennial doctrines. He was an ingenious and handy man, who built more than one of his houses with his own hands, and always took a keen interest in the mechanical as well as the intellectual side of his profession. He was also a source of unfailing cheerfulness in the home circle, encouraged his children in their studies, and set them a fine example in his aims, his tolerance, and his industry. Yet we gather that it was his wife who was the real centre of the home life, who was in fact home itself, who by her perfect loyalty to her husband and her impartial devotion to all her children created an atmosphere of content and happiness which no troubles could dispel. And the debt which the children owed their parents was nobly repaid. What they received in love and encouragement and moral stimulus they gave back in devotion and hard work. But for their co-operation—for they were all bread-winners—the family must have gone down. It was through their exertions that the ship was at last brought into port—that the business was cleared of debt and the house they lived in became their own. Mr. Howells does not exaggerate his share in this achievement, perhaps the finest thing in a long and honourable life, or dwell unduly on the overwork thatit some- times entailed. He always assigns the lion's share of the credit to his elder brother, but, as he puts it, " we were duteous children and willing."
His education was irregular ; the printing office was his true school. "The printer's craft was- simply my joy and pride from the first things I knew of it. I know when I could not read, for I recall supplying the text from my imagination for the pictures I found in books, but I do not know when I could not set type. My first attempt at literature was not written, but put up in type, and printed off by me." His father had a sound bat limited taste in letters, and used to read aloud standard works in the evenings. Mr. Howells went to various schools, but the wanderings of the family were not conducive to con- tinuous instruction. We hear nothing byname of his schoolmasters; he was virtually self- or home-taught, and never went to a University, though in after years frequent offers of professorships were showered upon him— all of them declined for reasons which, if not always convincing, only enhance our respect and admiration. But he was an inveterate and omnivorous reader and writer from his earliest days, studying various foreign languages by himself, without ever attaining a conversational fluency, but getting an insight into their literature, their spirit, and their forms of expression. His father encouraged him, but showed no foolish pride in his clever son. Thera was sympathy, but not always a complete understanding. For after all, as Matthew Arnold says, "we mortal millions live alone," or, as Mr. Howells observes, "the generations cannot utter themselves to each other till the strongest need of utterance ie past." But at least he was given a complete latitude in his studies and never encouraged to be self-conscious. As a small boy he excelled in spelling, geography, and reading, " but arithmetic was not for me " any more than it was for Dean Stanley. Indeed, Mr. Howells is relentless in the admission of his academie limitations, while at the same time revealing how sound in the main his literary instinct was, and how free from pedantry. Don Quixote, Gulliver, Poe's Tales, Goldsmith's ancient histories, and classical myth- ology were his favourite reading as a boy entering on his teens in the momentous year 1848. Poetry early claimed his affection, and the extent to which he played the " sedulous ape " before finding his feet is shown in a really remarkable essay in discipleship in the manner of Pope, printed on pp. 76-77. Mr. Howells has long outgrown his admiration of Pope, and he has told us of his literary preferences in another volume, but for a boy of fourteen this " plaster-of-paris masterpiece," as he calls it, is an extraordinary performance, and fully explains his early aspira- tions after poetic honours, justified later on by his appearances in the Atlantic Monthly, which won for him the appreciation and friendship of Lowell. Of late years Mr. Howells has occasionally reverted to the medium of verse, as readers of the Spectator will gratefully remember, but no one will quarrel with his decision to adopt prose as the true vehicle of expression—a decision to which the reading public on both sides of the Atlantic owes the swift passage of so many happy hours. It must not be supposed, however, that Mr. Howells was a bookish, indoors boy. The various towns in Ohio in which his father edited newspapers or carried on the business of printing were none of them large ; country pleasures were always within easy reach ; and in one
of his ventures—the management of a saw- and grist-mill—the family lived for a year in a log cabin on the Miami River. Mr. Howells was never robust, but he swam, rode, shot, and skated, helped in the garden and farm, and recalls this episode with a delight undimmed by the lapse of more than sixty years. Indeed, the only serious grief of those early years was brought about by home-sickness on the few occasions when he was separated from his family.
On his later experiences as a journalist and correspondent in the years before the war of North and South we have not left ourselves space to dwell in detail. These pages abound in affectionate portraits of his early associates and grateful tributes to those who befriended and encouraged him. His characteristic diffidence presented him from entering into personal relations with Lincoln, of whom ho wrote a Campaign life, and of whom he was an ardent supporter. When the Civil War broke out we gather that ho joined a volunteer camp, but for reasons which are not disclosed he took no part in the campaign, and in 1861 accepted the post of Consul at Venice.
Mr. Howells wr:tes of his memory as being "perversely eclectic," and he sometimes tantalizes us by his omissions; fos instance, when he just alludes to an evening spent at the office of a paper he was connected with by Artemus Ward, whom, by the way, he is not afraid to describe as a " unique genius." But in the main his memory has served him singularly well. On the political side there is much that is interesting about the old Whigs and Freesoilers, and an admirably dispassionate estimate of John Brown in which Mr. Howells revises the enthusiastic verdict of his youth. Of the charm of the book it is difficult to speak in overpraise. Sir George Grove used to say that Scott's Journal was greater than any of his novels, and we should not be surprised if some of the most devout admirers of Mr. Howells's stories were disposed to rank still higher this beautiful record of his early years—at once a salutation of youth, a memorial of friendship, a noble tribute to his nearest and dearest, and a revelation of self that is never tedious or complacent.
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