Arts and Letters

Henry Mills Alden may be said to have had a dual literary personality. More than his distinguished editorship of a great magazine for half a century, he probably valued the expression of his intimate self which is found in his two philosophical excursions, God in His World and A Study of Death. Here was his ego, his individual creative contribution to the greatest problem of life,—permeated with a subtle mysticism which fascinates even when it baffles. The present writer remembers the deep impression made by the first volume, which was so widely discussed and respectfully considered in the critical comment of the early nineties on both sides of the Atlantic. At fifty-seven—he was born in 1836—Alden thus interrupted the editorial activities of a life devoted to the service of other writers, in order to leave these personal testaments of his own penetrating intellect in the field of speculation. Valuable as may be the work of an editor of Alden's high calling,—there are few such left on earth—there are times when he craves to produce work that stands alone and for himself. It is not enough that from the bank one should encourage and train others in swimming; he covets the plunge into the current, with its measurement of force against force and its thrilling and vital reactions. I remember that Richard Watson Gilder once said to me that he would rather write one good poem than edit a magazine for a year; so doubtless felt his colleague, Alden, Nestor though he was of American magazine editors.

But the historian of the period of our highest achievement in literature as related to the magazines may look at things otherwise. If he does his duty he can discover that the activity of American authorship from 1835 well into the nineties was due in large part to the high standards and the helpful sympathy that were established or promoted by such editors as Lowell, Higginson, and Aldrich in the Atlantic, Alden in Harper's Magazine, Holland and Gilder in the Century, and a few others. Of these Alden from the start had the largest parish, but all were alert, hospitable, well poised, and discriminating. The journalistic spirit with its special virtues and vices had not yet taken possession of the magazine field, and there was still an atmosphere of repose in American life. Alden never learned the meaning of those detestable words and unliterary qualities "punch" and "pep." He once said to me that he was proud to think of Harper's as the solidest magazine in the world. I am not sure that he did not say "heaviest." What he meant was the most substantial, and he must be credited with a great achievement in the large additions to the world's knowledge and entertainment which he conveyed to the three generations of his memorable career.

But his chief influence was upon the fiction of his time. To mention his name to a writer of novels or short stories of that day who had come in touch with him was to call forth grateful report of some incident of his discrimination and generous helpfulness—some discernment of talent in the rough, some divination of a richer vein from indications slightly regarded by the author himself, some clarifying stroke of imagination, some quizzical linking-up of the affair in hand with the literary past. In those days the editor was not a mere shoveler into the hopper of the product of well-known writers, an agent of the counting-house "to haunt, to startle and waylay" the public; he was the friend and counselor and confidential critic of all, ready to give the author reasons for the faith or doubt that was in him, with the chief purpose of making the most of the talent that came before him, and with pride and happiness in the discovery of new writers. For this high function Alden was equipped with a rare sense of proportion, with sane literary and moral standards, and a poise against which the fads and eccentricities of his time made no impression. The literature of revolt, with its barking note of self-consciousness, did not disturb his mastiff-like serenity. The principles of intellectual art were his refuge and joy, and in his last days his sense of humor kept him clear of vers libre, so largely compounded of threadbare fancies, small analogies, and ugly suggestion, set to corduroy movements.

Alden's influence lay in the pervasiveness of his humane, frank, sweet, wholesome, unselfish nature. Much as he did for the art of writing in America, the dominant impression he makes upon us by his career is of a noble spirit profoundly touched by the sacredness of life.

Alden was elected to the Academy in 1910, and died in 1919.