Читать книгу Children's Stories in American Literature 1861-1896 - Henrietta Christian Wright - Страница 10
Оглавление1829-
Charles Dudley Warner was born in Plainfield, Mass., in that lovely and picturesque region which has become celebrated in American literature as the birthplace of William Cullen Bryant. The country has scarcely changed since those early days when the boy Bryant used to wander over its fields and hills and hear in the neighboring forests the cries of the wolves and bears which made their home there. The Warner family belonged to the farmer race, which at that time made up the larger part of New England life. The father was a man of fine tastes, having a good library and being in frequent correspondence with people in various parts of the country who were interested in the public questions of the day. But while Charles was still a very young child his father died, and the family was broken up for some years. The boy was taken to the home of an aunt, who owned a homestead on the Deerfield River, and it is here that his first recollections centre. The lad's first school was in one of those little school-houses which have been described in the verses of Whittier and Bryant, and his life may in every respect be said to have corresponded to that so lovingly portrayed in "The Barefoot Boy." This life makes a boy healthful and manly, and the close communion with nature fosters those poetic impressions to which the young mind is so susceptible. Warner was happy in the care of his aunt and an older cousin, but there was one great drawback to this otherwise contented life. At the Deerfield farm-house there were no books except the Bible and one or two religious works, and to a book-loving boy this was a great deprivation. The family held to the strict observance of the New England Sabbath, which extended from six o'clock on Saturday evening to six o'clock on Sunday evening, and though much of this time was occupied with church-going, there were many hours in which a book would have been a boon. The imaginative child, however, has always a little kingdom of his own to which he may retreat when disappointed with the actual world, and in this fairy realm Warner spent many a happy hour planning and dreaming of the future. He was but repeating the experience of so many other New England boys in whose early days seems to have lain the best training for the intellectual life.
But a lack of reading does not make a boy poor when he has at command the fruits of meadow, field, and wood; when trout-streams exist for him alone; when sunny days and rainy weather alike have their special joys, and when nature is forever watching a chance to teach him lessons of truth and beauty. The atmosphere of this quiet, uneventful life was an influence for good—an influence which Warner afterward gratefully appreciated.
Many a boy whose actual life has been bounded by the narrow confines of farm life has had his first glimpse of the world beyond through the pages of a book. In Warner's case this book was the Arabian Nights, which his seat-mate brought to the little school-house one day and hid amid the other boyish treasures in his desk. A district school-teacher cannot see all that happens in his restless kingdom, and the urchin had more than one stolen glance into the wonderful book while he was supposed to be studying his spelling or doing sums. And what an ideal world this was which the young discoverer had thus sailed into! Here were genii, fairies, enchanted carpets, valleys of diamonds, and masquerading pedlers who gave "old lamps for new." In this realm, which the geographies so ignorantly omitted to mention, farm work and even farm pleasures had no place. All was glittering, dazzling, beautiful! Every day held new adventures, and one's intimate friends owned miles of treasure-houses and inexhaustible mines of wealth. When school was done Warner succeeded in borrowing this treasure, and hurrying home, announced to his aunt and cousin that he had found "the most splendid book in the world." Imagine his surprise and disgust when these relatives, after an inspection of the precious volume, said, gravely: "No, you cannot read this, Charles, it is not true."
But the boy evidently thinking that in such cases aunts and cousins were as fallible as primary geographies, carried the book to the barn and hid it in the hay, and there spent many an hour devouring the enchanting tales.
Another book which he began at this time was Cook's Voyages Around the World, the second volume of which had drifted somehow up to the old farm-house door. These two books with the Bible were absolutely all that Warner knew of the vast treasures of literature while he remained at the Deerfield River farm.
But life broadened into wider channels when in his twelfth year he was taken by his mother to Cazenovia, N. Y., and placed in the academy there. The life at Deerfield had been that of the river, and fields, and woods, but at Cazenovia Warner became emphatically the studious boy, to whom books and study meant more than anything else in the world. At the academy he was fortunate in his boy acquaintances, and there he made friendships which have lasted through his life. One of his friends was the son of a bookseller, in whose shop Warner was allowed to browse at will. And here he learned to know Irving and Cooper, Hawthorne, Prescott, and Bryant, and the other writers who were founding American literature. This education which went on outside the academy was also greatly stimulated by the talks and discussions on literary matters between him and his comrades. And by and by, as always happens in the case of boys who read and read, they all began to write. Their first efforts took the form of poetry, which somehow always seems to the boyish mind the easiest thing to write, and thenceforth much of their interest in life lay in listening to and criticising one another's verses. One of these boys while still a youth wrote that celebrated song of how
In their ragged regimentals
The old Continentals
rallied to the defence of American liberty in the stormy days of the Revolution.
Another has since become a famous scholar in literature and the arts, whose name is known to two continents. Warner himself, who soon forsook poetry for prose, can date his literary career from these days when his chief ambition was to write and to write well. It was his habit then and long afterward to walk up and down his room while writing and repeat the sentences over and over, changing and polishing them until they sounded rhythmic. The study of the best poetry of America and England still went on steadily, and the boys often played a guessing game as to author and verse. Sometimes the giver of the verse would slip in a couplet of his own, and then laugh at the wild guesses which placed his effusions among the English classics.
One of the most luminous memories of Warner's youth is that of a visit to Irving at Sunnyside, whither he went under the guidance of one of these early friends. The famous author received his young admirers kindly and gave to Warner an ivy-leaf from the vine which had grown from a slip plucked from the cottage of Burns's "Bonnie Jean." Neither giver nor receiver foresaw, then, the link that was to be established later by Warner's biography of America's first great man of letters.
In 1851 Warner was graduated from Hamilton College, which he entered from Cazenovia Academy, taking the first prize for English. He had already become somewhat known to the literary world through contributions to the Knickerbocker and Putnam's Magazine and from occasional visits to New York, when he became for a time a member of that Bohemian world in which the younger generation of writers lived.
But although he had made a good beginning, literature was exchanged two years after his graduation for the wild life of the Mexican frontier, whither he went with a surveying party in 1853. After this experience he studied law and practised it in Chicago for a few years. But in 1866 he returned to his first ambition, and became editor of the Hartford Press, which a year later was incorporated with the Courant. Warner made of this newspaper one of the best-edited journals of its class, and in its conduct won an enviable reputation as an editor.
A year or two later he took his first journey to Europe, and on his return contributed those papers to the Courant which in 1870 made their appearance in book-form under the title My Summer in a Garden. It is in this little volume that Warner struck that vein of humor which makes his work a delight to his large audience.
Another book which added greatly to his reputation at this time is that called Saunterings, which contains his impressions of Europe in this first journey. Very much of Warner's work has for its background his journeyings in Europe and at home. His Winter on the Nile, In the Levant, and Notes of a Roundabout Journey in Europe are among his most delightful reminiscences of foreign travel, while Studies in the South, Studies in the Great West, and Our Italy, show his wide familiarity with the scenes of his native land. He is a sympathetic, cultivated traveller, by whom new impressions of art and social life are appreciated, but who, nevertheless, sees all things through that half-humorous light which delights American readers. He is never too learned to extract fun out of a pyramid or cliff dwelling, and, though an ardent patriot, he has no hesitation in laughing at the foibles and eccentricities of his countrymen. His characterizations of foreign and home life possess all the flavor and freshness of the mind which looks at life from a new point of view. He is the author of some charming essays, printed as Back Log Studies and As We Were Saying, and he has published several successful novels. If he is not a creator in the realm of art, he is a keen observer and man of the world, deeply interested in his fellow-travellers. His records of his impressions, although thrown into the form of novels, are valuable chiefly for their sympathetic view of every-day life.
One of our author's most charming books is that reminiscence of his childhood, Being a Boy. Here we have the actual life of the New England boy sixty years ago. All the little humble incidents of farm life, all the simple pleasures, the delights of fishing and nutting, of maple-sugar gathering, and the first party are noted with a sincerity that makes the little narrative genuine history. Whittier read this book more than once, and said it was a page out of his own life-story. Outside its literary merit it is valuable as one more truthful picture of the simple life of New England; a life whose healthful duties and pleasures left wide spaces for the soul to grow up to noble conceptions of manhood.
Besides his other work Mr. Warner has contributed a department to Harper's Magazine, and has made some valuable additions to the social science papers of the day. He has also served on the commission for establishing prison reform, and he is well known as a successful lecturer. Throughout his career he has followed mainly the lines laid down for himself in his student days, and has bounded his ambitions by the literary life. Since 1867 his home has been at Hartford. One of our most successful humorists, he is also a striking example of those earnest toilers whose work well supports the dignity of American literature.
