Show I I IAlKINGTO REPORTERS i t I Some Authors Submit Gracefully But Others Refuse HOWELLS AND TWAINs TWAIN-s HORROR OF INTERVIEWS INTER-VIEWS LARGELY ASSUMED A + A Prosperous Magazine Writer Is Cleveland ZLoffef One of the Shyest Shy-est of American 1oetsW V and The Boy Real ChildrenHorace Scudder Takes a Holiday + Special Correspondence New York March ° 24101 anyone in a position to remark them well itIs interesting to study the differences between f be-tween weIlknown authors In their treatment of reporters and interviewers interview-ers Mr Howells has always stood peculiarly pe-culiarly well with them because he has always dealt with them in the perfectly if perfect-ly sImple and direct fashion in which i7 he seems to deal with all men and all things He almost never denies himself him-self to them and answers freely most of the questions they ask and yet he i seems to have as little trouble as any man and much less than many men with theIr excesses of zeal He has the wisdom not to force them too much on their invention and I think he rarely has cause to complain of misrepresentation misrepresen-tation The harder it is to really come d at a man the greater temptation it is i to seem to have come at him Mark Twain is one who is none too cordial to the interviewers He may have a double reason for this besides the ordinary dislike of a modest and sensitive man to talking about himself through the newspapers there is the < objection that if he makes any jokes or tells any stories and Mark TwaIn can scarcely talk without doing so he may render good lIterary material unavailable un-available to himself An author can work over his ideas a god many times ithout particularly impairing their I commercial value and so if he chances to confide a few fine thoughts 6 to an interviewer he imposes on himself him-self no necessary loss but the case is g obvIously dIfferent with jokes and r anecdotes I dont say that Mark TwaIn really considers this though he very well might but at any rate heis a notoriously tough subject fol the interviewers inter-viewers Yet interviews with Mark Twain are not of infrequent appear ante and a very little reading In them by anyone who is in the least expert in such matters discloses why they are so They are derived much more from Mark Tva1ns published writings than from any other source leas and expressions ex-pressions of hIs already in prInt are gIven a new setting by the ingenuity of interviewer and With those who do not know better Which of course Is the majority of the readers under whose eyes it pomes the thing passes very well for a genuine interview They affect in England a great horror hor-ror of what they represent as American Ameri-can disregard of the sanctities of private prI-vate life but I observe that English authors as a class talk of themselves and their affairs for publication quite as freely as AmerIcan authors do There are a few in both countrIes of whose personal life we hear next to nothing George Meredith is perhaps th most striking instance the pUblic knows not much more of the details of his life than it knows Shakespeares s There are some instances where the very pertinacity with which an author has put off reporters has given him a certain cer-tain publicity Lord Tennysons dread of being written about amounted to almost a disease and yet long before he died he was perfectly veIl known to all the World In all the details and peculiarities of his dally life What kind of a house he lived ml how he wrote his poems whieh op bf them he himself preferred how he read them I to his visitors what wine he lIkedand how much of it he drank how he I dressed and even how he ran into the shrubbery to avoid the reporterswas related again and agaIn so that when I after his death the authorized biography biogra-phy in two goodly volumesl came out you found little hi it regarding the actual man that you did not know before I fore So well defined are the differences between authors In this particular that there might almost be a classificatibn made First we have those who in their dread of the reporter almost kick him out of doors These happily for themselves and everybody are very few Second we have those Who in the like dread pretty generally manage man-age without making any great to Go to keep out of his way These are more numerous and owing to their tact and the sincerity of their reserve usually hold the good will even of the reporter Third we have those who when he presents himself are thrown into spasms neither of dislike nor delight de-lIght quietly hear what he wants and so far as they think they may yield to his requests These I think are the largest number and fortunatelY so for theirs is the attitude most consistent consist-ent with general good sense Fourth and finally we have those who not only receive the report wIth decent cordiality but fairly run after him depending I de-pending on his lifts not a little in making mak-ing their way though not a few of them in his absence affect for him a contempt equal to any shown by those of the first class These are fewer I should say than those of the third class but not nearly so few as those of the first or the second There arent many men to whom when the duty devolved upon them of providing wedding journeys fortune has shown herself so helpful as she ex lrtblted herself to Mr CleveIa d offeih whobas lately made what hIs friends all account a very happy marrIage Xu engagement t6 do a piece or work for Harpers pleasantly compelled him to curry his bride at once to Chicago The specIal task for a man of Mr MofeWs skill In sUch matters waS easy4 mD sing s-ing nothing that was disagreeable ob irksome and the reward tiresmnablY was generous Then returning to New York and pausing only long enough to make readY he set out agamwith his bride of coursefor Europe Ill fulfillment fulfill-ment of another magazine engagement His stay over there promises to be of the Dleasantest HIs commissIons hill carry hIm to London Paris Berlin and perhaps other capitals he wIll nt be particularly hurried in the executl of them and the reward presumably will again be to his satisfaction Mr Mpffett by the way is an example ample of the good that sometimes attends at-tends trusting to ones fortune Five years ago he waS holdIng what they I calla desk position on one of the New York newspapers It was not I agreeable to him the salary was small the work confinIng and without distinction distinc-tion He had already Proved himself somewhat In special writing and maga zinc work and he resolved to cut loose trust no longer to routine duty find fixed salaries and depend solely on his pen He has I thInk never regretted the resolution though there must have been times in the earlier days of hIs endeavor when the Den alone seemed lIttle better a support than a broken reed In the course of two or three years he came to be recognIz by the editors of the leading publications as having no superiors in his own line of work and this came about largely through his constant resolution to make his work a5 far as possible better and better I nave had occasion during the last five years to deal very intimately with the writings of a good many men in what I may call Mr MofCetts line but I know of no other whose improvement has impressed im-pressed me so much and seemed to me so decided and sure as his Most men indeed when they turn to space writing writ-ing make no effort to improve At so much Del word they argue I make so much if I write and sell so many words and on less than so much I cannot can-not live and thus to merely write so much becomes their sole endeavor It is aU hack work in their esteem and the more li ht1y disposed of the better This has not been Moffetts way He has done some things better than others oth-ers he has no doubt slighted Dartic ular tasks but always at bottom he has held faithfully to the design of improving im-proving He hag had always to sustain him in his struggle an exceDtionally good physique he is < strong of body and cheerful in temperament and lie is a pleasant man to look UDon and to talk with and he easily comes into good relations with the people he has to deal with and aU this is of course capital and Is to be taken into account In arrr consIderation of his achievements achieve-ments Ioffett Is a strong man even among his friends a thing not so much a matter of course as It may at first blush seem they are numerous and they like him Immensely The length of his stay In Europe is uncertain but I It 1s likely to extend throuph a good months many < < + J should thlJ1k 110 one who had read Wy Her Book with anya > > roach to appreciation would need to be runJ ning to the author as same one lately nas been + to know is W V and the Boy were real children The book could have had no such charm as It has It they had not been real children and children too with whom the author waS about as intimately aclluainted 2S with his own mind and heart It was through the W v sketches all publIsh pub-lIsh d ivlthin a few years that Mr William Canton the author became at all well known but he is not striCtly a I new wri er nor strictly a young one I Ire is a map 53 years old and he brought out a book of poems as long I ago as 1887 He did not make a second appearance however until 1894 when I The Invisible Playmate afterward published in this country in a volume wIth W V Her Book appeared Mr Canton has never I believe followed literature otherwise than as a diversion tlr subordinate interest He is a business busi-ness man the manager of some sort of 1 I company Hel has his home in the London Lon-don suburb of Highgate and it Is easy tQ imagine him there of an evening diverting hImself with W V and The Boy until they have gone to bed and then turning to his desk and embodying in sketch or poem whIle the ImDres sion Is fresh upon him the best of theIr quaintnesses and drolleries W V I am afrald wIll soon be outgrowIng her literary lit-erary usefulness to him she must be close or quite up to the period of a sophstication br now The announcement that enough unpublished un-published poems by the late Edward Rowland Sill have lately been got together to-gether to make a new volume has interest in-terest for what is at least a very devoted devot-ed if not a large pUbliC Sill died twelve years ago at the age of 45 Since his college days It has been a constant tight with him for life From Connecticut Connecti-cut where he was born feeble health had driven him first to the west and then tp the very shores of the Pacific and had confined him to a vocation that more or less obscured hIm from the I world at large He was by nature one of the most shyest and sensitive of men and his illness made him more so Thus he became personally well known to very few people and the twO small books of poems that have been thus far the sum of his published wri1ng cannot be said to have greatly extended knowledge knowl-edge oC him Yet few men have had amore a-more loving following The people who did come to know him in life found him a man of extraordInary quality and attraction at-traction and the same thing has followed fol-lowed with those who by whatever chance have been led to make acquaintance acquain-tance with him in his writings One of his closest and llliISt sympathetic friends was Mrs Yard Elizabeth Stuart Stu-art Phelps and she has made him some very cordial public testimonies I remember only a year or two agO in whIch she illustrated SIlls extraordinary extraordi-nary sensitiveness with the following anecdote An editor onCe wrote to hIm carelessly care-lessly 61 a certain contribution whIch had the iippearance of beIng less popular pop-ular than ethers Thepebpl lit are Ackley They want somenewtbinr all the tinge Ii is good by to yoit today andwelcome somebody eisetomorron Another marr light have taken thes thoughtless words as lIghtly as they were given 1111 sm vas with difficulty persuaded to write again for that magazine i There have been fern more industrious and productive men of letters than Mr Horace E Scuder who some months ago resigned the editorship of the AtlantIc At-lantIc Monthly and went off forta good long vacation In Europe For over thirty years he had been actively associated I asso-cIated as editor and literary adviser with the house of Houghton Mifflin I Co and the list of his published bdoks covers I should say about thirty titles HIs writing has been unusually various ranging from history and the gravest polemical essays to the liveliest of childrens tales but it has been predom InatIngly in the line of the latter A collection of condrens tales indeed made his first book Seven Little People Peo-ple and TheIr FrIends published when he was 24 When these were written he was living in New York but this period pe-riod was only a threeyear episode devoted de-voted mainly to teaching All the rest of hIs life except for occasional visits elsewhere has been passed in Boston where he was born and his sole vocation voca-tion except the one bit of teaching has been writing and editing Some of his books have had very large sales The familiar Bodley Books for example have nearly all done well and > indeed contihue to do well lIr Scudder is now just 60 years old so there is still much good work to be expected from him E C MARTIN o 13 |