Arts and Letters

By the death of William Milligan Sloane the American Academy of Arts and Letters has been deprived of its second President and one of its most distinguished and delightful members.

He was born, of good Covenanting stock, on November 12, 1850. He received his bachelor's degree at Columbia in 1868, his doctorate of philosophy at Leipzig in 1876, and subsequent honorary degrees from Rutgers and Princeton. From 1873 to 1875 he was personal secretary to the Honorable George Bancroft, the American Minister in Berlin and a celebrated historian of the United States of America. This intimate early association doubtless strengthened Dr. Sloane's natural inclinations to the study and writing of history. It also brought him into contact with many famous scholars and statesmen of Germany,—a contact which was always gratefully remembered, and which, was repeated on a larger scale when he was sent to Berlin in later years as American exchange professor from Columbia University.

In 1876 he entered the faculty of Princeton, where he served with great efficiency for twenty years. It was while I was a student in the Seminary there that I had the good fortune to begin a friendship with him that lasted over half a century. In 1896 he was elected to the Seth Low Professorship of History in Columbia University. In this position he did a great work, not only as head of the historical department, but also as a promoter and illustrator of right-minded methods of research and production in the field of history throughout the United States. He was not superficial and sensational in gathering his materials, nor was he dry and tiresome in presenting his results. His aim was to base his work upon a careful study of all the documents, monuments, and records available, and then to draw his own mature conclusions and set them forth in a broad picture which would have the two marks of veracity and vividness.

This was the method which he followed in his magnum opus, The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, published first, in part, by the Century Magazine, and then, in four massive and richly illustrated volumes, by the Century Co. in 1896. During the years which he devoted to this congenial task, he went through the enormous mass of Napoleonic literature which had accumulated in several languages; he unearthed and studied original materials which had never before been used; and then he gave his own view of one of the most remarkable persons and the most extraordinary career that can be found in secular history.

Let this American historian of Napoleon speak for himself in regard to his aims and methods:

"Until within a very recent period it seemed that no man could discuss him or his time without manifesting such strong personal feeling as to vitiate his judgment and conclusions. This was partly due to the lack of perspective, but in the main to ignorance of the facts essential to a sober treatment of the theme. In this respect the last quarter of a century has seen a gradual but radical change, for a band of dispassionate scientific scholars have during that time been occupied in the preparation of material for his life without reference to the advocacy of one theory or another concerning his character. European archives, long carefully guarded, have been thrown open; the diplomatic correspondence of the most important periods has been published; family papers have been examined, and numbers of valuable memoirs have been printed. It has therefore been possible to check one account by another, to cancel misrepresentations, to eliminate passion—in short, to establish something like correct outline and accurate detail, at least in regard to what the man actually did. Those hidden secrets of any human mind which we call motives must ever remain to other minds largely a matter of opinions, but a very fair indication of them can be found when once the actual conduct of the actor has been determined."

Now, of course, it is inevitable that a work produced in this way and with this purpose should at times move somewhat slowly, with conscientious caution and reserve. It is not to be expected that it should have the pervasive pepper, the oleaginous cocksureness, and the vinegary delight in the mistakes and failings of the great, which serve as French dressing to some recent histories and biographies and give them an instantaneous vogue as "best sellers." Undoubtedly they have their place and use. But Sloane's book belongs in a different class and is marked by other qualities. It is first of all a work of scholarship, patient, unpretending, thorough, nonexplosive. Then it is a work of human letters, broad-minded, unpartisan, generous in scope and judgment,—a work aware of the great mystery which underlies all human life and which took such weird and tragic forms in the era of the French Revolution and of Napoleon's meteoric rise to a world-wide imperatorship, half beneficent and half malign.

But if one wishes to know how well and with what variety Dr. Sloane could write, one should not stop with the Life of Napoleon, but go on to some of his later books which are based upon his travels and his personal experiences: The Balkans, a Laboratory of History (1914); Party Government in the United States (1914); The Powers and Aims of Western Democracy (1919); Greater France in Morocco (1924). Here are chapters full of clear observation, wise inference, and vivid comment.

But it was not in his books that the very best of William M. Sloane was revealed to those who knew him. It was in his rich and racy talk, his warm friendship, his active and genial cooperation in the tasks of life and in the pleasures that belong to the avocation of a confirmed angler. Here he shone. He knew so much of books and men; his fund of stories, true or well-imagined, was so inexhaustible; his sympathy with good things was so wide and hearty, his detestation of bad things so frank, fearless and witty, that a talk with him in a camp beside Moosehead Lake, or in his book-room at Princeton, or around his dinner-table in New York (where ladies were always present, and reporters absent), was a joy to the heart and a liberal education.

In 1920 he was elected President of the American Academy in succession to the well-beloved William Dean Howells. The duties of this office he performed with dignified efficiency. In its social accomplishments he was a large and easy master. The Academy has had many loyal and devoted members whose names will be long remembered in its halls. But to no three men does it owe more than to William M. Sloane, its second president, Robert U. Johnson, its first secretary, and Archer M. Huntington, its generous benefactor.

In the autumn of 1925, Dr. Sloane was struck down by a grave illness which left him physically helpless. With a clear mind and an indomitable courage he did his best to regain his health. In this to some extent he succeeded by sheer pluck and the favor of Providence. He was able to enjoy his family, the visits of his friends, and long daily drives in the country. His mind was clear though his nerves were broken. His sickroom was a cheerful place. The award of the National Institute's Gold Medal for History, in November, 1927, gave him a well-earned joy. His days of working were done, but not his days of loving.

For three years he waited thus, in Christian patience and manly fortitude, resigned but never conquered. On a calm September day in 1928 the word of release came to him, and he went into the world of light. America has lost a fine scholar, an upstanding man; and we have been parted, for a little time, from a loyal friend, a dear comrade.