Archibald Henderson Bjr C. ALPHONSO SMITH, Ph.D., LL.D., L.H.D. HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH U. S. NAVAL ACADEMY, ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND PREPARED FOR THE LIBRARY SOUTHERN LITERATURE VOL. XVII, NEW EDITION, 1923 THE MARTIN AND HOYT COMPANY Atlanta, Georgia ©be iLitirarp of tt>e Onitiersitp of iSortb Carolina Collection of j|2ott& Catolimana 'fE&ts booK teas? ptesenteb ht [ Arcln'i ba^lci m:vtclbfJoW Coft V\ 4 \ c ! 23 Archibald Henderson By C. ALPHONSO SMITH, Ph.D., LL.D., L.H.D. Head of the Department of English, U. S. Naval Academy Annapolis, Maryland PREPARED FOR THE LIBRARY OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE 17 Volumes Now Published Editors in Chiej EDWIN ANDERSON ALDERMAN C. ALPHONSO SMITH PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA U. S. NAVAL ACADEMY Literary Editors CHARLES W. KENT JOHN CALVIN METCALF Assistant Literary Editors MORGAN CALLAWAY, JR. FRANKLIN L. RILEY UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS WASHINGTON AND LEE UNIVERSITY GEORGE A. WAUCHOPE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA THE MARTIN AND HOYT COMPANY Atlanta, Georgia 1923 | UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA Copyright 1923 by The Martin and Hoyt Company Atlanta, Georgia Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill https://archive.org/details/archibaldhendersOOsmit - . , . .. 1 i .!. . 1 1 . ■■ ' Archibald Henderson ARCHIBALD HENDERSON [1877— ] C. ALPHONSO SMITH LETTER recently received from Archibald Henderson con- l \ tains this passage: “I think the greatest contribution to human thought in my time is Einstein’s generalized theory of relativity— the most profound and fecund projection of human thinking I have ever matched my mind against. It has taxed me greatly in recent months; and I am still digging in the depths. But I see the sun shining at the end of the tunnel. I see my way out of the maze.” The letter is characteristic. Back of it is seen a man who feels the instant challenge of the complicated and problematical, who couches his lance for the big things of life, and who will not draw rein or sound retreat until victory, seeming or real, has been achieved. He is not only mathematician, dramatic critic, biographer, essayist, lec¬ turer, and historian, but breaks through the boundaries of each for predatory excursion into other domains. I know no one who keeps a larger intellectual area under intensive cultivation than Archibald Henderson. Browning has somewhere spoken of the central and unifying thought of a poem as “the imperial chord which steadily underlies the accidental mist of music springing therefrom.” Is there such an imperial and unifying chord in Dr. Henderson’s writings? I think so. Glance at the appended Bibliographj^. There is great variety, it is true, but greater unity. Each of his more notable works, in other words, is the study not of something stationary but of a move¬ ment. Subjects attract him in proportion as they resolve themselves into modes of motion. He shoots his game only on the wing. If I understand him aright, it was not the humor of Mark Twain that stirred Dr. Henderson’s instinct for appraisal; it was rather the humanist beneath the humorist, a humanist whose attitude to so¬ ciety seemed to sum a passing and to project a coming era. It was not Shaw per se that gripped him; it was the career of one who views the achievements of the past as mere scaffolding for the future. It was not the captivating style of William James that drew his atten¬ tion to Boutroux’s essay; it was the beckoning of the new psychol¬ ogy that recognized in James its most illustrious champion. It was not the modern ‘ drama as a superior form of literature that chal¬ lenged his championship; it was the battle between the new and the old sociology, a battle that finds its central arena in the modern 305 £ 306 SOUTHERN LITERATURE drama. It was neither the lure of misjudged leaders nor the ro¬ mance of colonial history that drew him to the Old Southwest; it was the drama of evolution, “the thin and jagged line of the frontier,” that seemed to him to epitomize in concrete form the evolving genius of a democratic people to whom what has been is only the matrix of what is to be. It was not because Southern literature was South¬ ern that he entered the lists as one of its historians; it was because he saw in Southern literature as in Southern life a movement forward to wider fields and ampler horizons. Dr. Henderson is preeminently and distinctively the foe of the static, the interpreter of the changing, the herald of the frontier, the tracer and poursuivant of the skyline. Archibald Henderson, head of the department of mathematics in the University of his native State, was born in Salisbury, North Car¬ olina, on June 17, 1877. He took his A.B., A.M., and Ph.D., at the University of North Carolina and in 1915 received a second Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, mathematics being his major sub¬ ject. He holds also a D.C.L. from the University of the South, at Sewanee, Tennessee, and an LL.D. from Tulane. His marriage in 1903 to Minna Curtis Bynum marked the union of two families long distinguished for legal attainments in North Carolina and the blending of two lives that have ministered each to each in all high inspirations of mind and character. It may have been an accidental coincidence but shortly before his marriage he pub¬ lished a brilliant paper in The American Mathematical Monthly en¬ titled “Harmonic Pairs in the Complex Plan.” His marriage at any rate signalized the covenanting of one such pair. In words not un¬ worthy of Browning he thus dedicates his ‘Changing Drama’: I lay this book upon her shrine Whose lifted torch has lighted mine. Sweet Heart—great Heart of tenderness: Strong Hands to help—dear Hands to bless: Clear Brain whose vision dwells in light: Fire Spirit, winged flame of white: Oh! Soul—true Sword Excalibur: Body—fit sheath for soul of her! I lay this book upon hear shrine — Her s—since herself has made it mine. The year 1910-1911 he spent abroad, putting in part of his time at the University of Cambridge, part at the University of Berlin, and part at the Sorbonne. This was a year of splendidly maturing power and as I crossed his trail several times in Germany it seemed to me that I could note at each meeting a growth and widening of outlook, ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 307 a broadening range of interest, and an intensity of intellectual pur¬ suit that was not so much a surprise as a constant invigoration. Hol¬ brook Jackson said of him during this year, in Black and White , Lon¬ don: “You could not by any stretch of the imagination label Hen¬ derson ‘Tourist.’ But it would be wrong to say he was not a sight¬ seer, because in a way that is just his game. He is a sightseer, but a sightseer of a new type. He is not out primarily to' see the ruins of dead ages, crumbling buildings, dim old masters’ canvases; he is out to hunt ideas and personalities, to track the Zeitgeist to its lair. He feels that we are in the midst of a remarkable intellectual awaken¬ ing, and he is impelled by some urgent sub-conscious imp to give his complex and multiplex period a coherent voice.” The works published during the annus mirabilis of 1911 sweep the gamut of Dr. Henderson’s major interests with the single excep¬ tion of his interest in the westward trend of American expansion, which he was later to treat in his study of the Old Southwest. In every case, however, the publications of 1911 were the fruits of many years of study. They were culminations, not inaugurations. Six years before 1911, for example, he had published in an issue of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society, ‘A Memoir on the Twenty-Seven Lines Upon the Cubic Surface,’ and the problem had been con- . stantly upon his mind ever since. His ‘Interpreters of Life’ had been preceded by detailed and published studies of every dramatist treated. Mark Twain’s writings had been the companions of his boyhood and articles about him had already appeared from Dr. Hen¬ derson’s pen in Harpers Magazine, Deutsche Revue , and The North American Review. His elaborate interpretation of Bernard Shaw was but the expression of a cumulative interest that can be traced back to an early presentation of ‘You Never Can Tell’ which Dr. Llenderson had witnessed in Chicago nine years before, and after the determination to write Shaw’s life had been formed in 1904 hardly a month had passed without its quota of Shavian studies. That the brilliant French interpreter of William James was no new subject to’ Dr. Henderson can be read between the lines of “M. Boutroux and His Inspiring Work” which appeared in The North Carolina Review for December 3, 1911. Dr. Henderson’s intellectual output during 1911 was remarkable for sheer bulk, but still more remark¬ able for unity and continuity of effort and for the solid foundation of original research that underlay it. Among Dr. Henderson’s most significant contributions to life and letters must be ranked his study of Mark Twain. It was the first real biography of Mark Twain to appear after the great hu¬ morist’s death and, in spite of the multiplied florescence and efflores- 808 SOUTHERN LITERATURE cence of Mark Twain literature since then, it remains the best in¬ terpretation to be found within the compass of a single volume. As I write these words, the latest issue of Englische Studien (Leipsic, January, 1922) comes in the morning mail. It contains an article by Dr. Friedrich Schonemann, of Munster, a specialist in Amer¬ ican literature, on “Amerikanische Mark Twain Literatur, 1910 1920.” The list of works collated is an imposing one, but Dr. Schonemann rates Dr. Henderson’s book as marking “the beginning of the really scientific interest in Mark Twain.” He considers it superior in breadth of interpretation to Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine’s three-volumed treatment and to Mr. Howells’s more intimate but less critical ‘My Mark Twain’ (1910). The study of Shaw has proved the most educative influence ever brought to bear upon Dr. Henderson. The theme was a congenial one, however, for it meant the tracing not of one complicated move¬ ment but of five. “When the history of the last quarter of the nine¬ teenth century comes to be written,” says Dr. Henderson in chap¬ ter IX of ‘George Bernard Shaw,’ “it will be seen that the name of Bernard Shaw is inextricably linked with five epoch-making movements of our contemporary era. The Collectivist movement in politics, ethics, and sociology; the Ibsen-Nietzschean movement in morals; the reaction against the materialism of Marx and Darwin; the Wagnerian movement in music; and the anti-romantic movement in literature and art—these are the main currents of modern thought for which Shaw has unfalteringly sought to open a passage into modern consciousness.” I am not an admirer of Shaw. On the first page of Dr. Hen¬ derson’s Introduction the dramatist sounds an egocentric note that, to my ear at least, echoes and re-echoes to the end. I cannot help ad¬ mire the man’s career, his overcoming of obstacles, his amazing deft¬ ness, his genius in sensing public opinion, his quickness in seeing an opening, his easy command of the resources of popular appeal, his mastery of the entire gamut of expression except the pathetic, the beautiful, the heartening, and the noiselessly suggestive; but in all that Shaw says and does, in even his quietest and most confidential self-revelations, I detect the buzz of an undeviating centripetal force, and the center is always George Bernard Shaw. At every witty sally of his own, his laugh rings loudest; at every seeming triumph, his applause is the most deafening; at every puncture of popular con¬ viction or long cherished idealism, his is the voice that first an¬ nounces a permanent victory for enlightenment, not omitting the implied suggestion that due recognition be publicly paid to the vic¬ tor. The highest tribute to Dr. Henderson’s biography is that, to ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 309 this reader at least, in spite of the clamancy of Shaw, there is not a dull page among its more than five hundred. I never open it with¬ out renewed admiration of the courage that tackled so formidable a task, the initial elan that held the author to it, and the sheer intel¬ lectuality that rounded it to its triumphant conclusion. As long as Shaw remains an object of public interest, this book will be indispen¬ sable. In ‘Interpreters of Life’ and ‘European Dramatists,’ Dr. Henderson approaches the modern drama via its creators. The unit is the individual dramatist. There are chapters on August Strind¬ berg, Henrik Ibsen, Maurice Maeterlinck, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, Granville Barker, and Arthur Schnitzler. These studies are not biographical; they are interpretative, only enough biography being given to clarify and confirm the central idea or ideas for which each dramatist stood. Of course character is not ignored but it, too, is ancillary to the new conceptions that the dramatist illustrates or the old conceptions that he revitalizes. Almost every chapter ends with a condensed but illuminating summary. Thus the last paragraph of the chapter on Strindberg begins: “Strindberg is the supreme uni- versalist of our modern era”; that on Ibsen: “Ibsen’s efforts at the emancipation of modern society inevitably took the form of life strug¬ gles”; that on Wilde: “Wilde called one of his plays ‘The Import¬ ance of Being Earnest.’ In his inverted way he aimed at teaching the world the importance of being frivolous.” The concluding pages of the chapter on Shaw are given in the excerpt that follows. The last paragraph does not seem to me in Dr. Henderson’s best manner, the terminal comparison of Shaw with eleven other artists tending to dissipate rather than to clinch what has gone before. Would not the paragraph that precedes be a better and more convergent ter¬ mination ? In ‘The Changing Drama’ the unit is not the individual dramatist but the drama itself as the expression of a general move¬ ment in human consciousness. The drama is here viewed as the trysting-place or battleground of individual will and social obliga¬ tion. There are chapters on the relation of the modern drama to the new age, to the new ethics, to the new science, to the new form, to the new freedom, to the new technic, to' the new content, and to the new tendencies. This is Dr. Henderson’s best book in the field of dramatic criticism because it gives ampler play to his faculties of p-eneralization and wider scope to his analysis of dramatic effects. It is based on his previous studies of individual dramatists, but there 310 SOUTHERN LITERATURE is little repetition of analysis or opinion. It is a distillation rather than a rearrangement. The mere change of angle, the substitution of drama for dramatist as point de repere, releases a host of suggest¬ ive comparisons that could hardly have found place in the earlier books without digression and weakening. The work marks also a distinct advance in Dr. Henderson’s thought about the drama. He had hitherto almost ignored technique. Only in his study of Ibsen in ‘European Dramatists’ was there the presentation of the technical craftsman as distinct from the social philosopher; and the most in¬ teresting and informing part of the essay, to me at least, has always been that dealing with what Poe would have called Ibsen’s “philos¬ ophy of composition.” Dr. Henderson breaks new ground here and throws new light not only on the genesis of Ibsen’s dramas but on the conjectural genesis of all literary types. ‘The Changing Drama’ continues the discussion of structural technique and suc¬ ceeds in relating form to content and content to form with a clear¬ ness and convincingness that put the book in a class by itself. As there is an advance in directness of style and economy of words from Dr. Henderson’s earlier works to his ‘Changing Drama,’ so there is a corresponding advance from his ‘Changing Drama’ to his ‘Conquest of the Old Southwest.’ In the latter book, though there is a mass of dates and minor events through which the narrative must flow, the story is not clogged nor is the style en¬ cumbered. The introduction names the four determining principles of the westward movement and the sequent pages keep close to the trail thus marked out. Dr. Henderson conceives the movement as a great American drama, the great American drama, and tells it with dramatic vigor and vividness. The twenty pages of bibliography that the author appends prove his prolonged study of the period, and his previous contributions to the subject in The American Historical Review, The North Carolina Booklet, The Tennessee Historical Magazine, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, and The American Historical Magazine show that as usual he was on famil¬ iar ground. The book, however, has an added interest. The lead- ing figure is Colonel Richard Henderson, grandfather of Dr. Hender¬ son’s grandfather. Colonel Roosevelt in his ‘Winning of the West’ had said: “Richard Henderson had great confidence in Boone; and it was his backing which enabled the latter to turn his discoveries to such good account. . . . He was a man of the seacoast regions, who had little in common with the backwoodsmen by whom he was ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 311 surrounded; he came from a comparatively old and sober commu¬ nity, and he could not grapple with his new associates.” This, though a tribute to Colonel Henderson’s social culture, is plainly an underestimate of his leadership. Note the following ex¬ tract from a letter written early in April, 1775, by Daniel Boone to Colonel Henderson at a crisis in the southwestern movement and a turning point in American history: “On March the 25 a party of Indians fired on my Company about half an hour before day, and killed Mr. Twitty and his negro, and wounded Mr. Walker very deeply, but I hope he will recover. “On March the 28 as we were hunting for provisions, we found Samuel Tate’s son, who gave us an account that the Indians fired on their camp on the 27th day. My brother and I went down and found two men killed and sculped, Thomas McDowell and Jere¬ miah McFeters. I have sent a man down to all the lower compa¬ nies in order to gather them all at the mouth of Otter Creek. “My advice to you, Sir, is to come or send as soon as possible. Your company is desired greatly, for the people are very uneasy, but are willing to' stay and venture their lives with you, and now is the time to flusterate their [the Indians’] intentions, and keep the coun¬ try, whilst we are in it. If we give way to them now, it will ever be the case.” Colonel Henderson both sent and went, and among those who joined him was, strangely enough, Abraham Hanks, the maternal grandfather of Abraham Lincoln. The Indian danger was averted, Kentucky was held, Colonel Henderson’s leadership was vindicated, and the imperial southwestern domain came permanently into Amer¬ ican history. Like his distinguished ancestor, Dr. Henderson is a frontiersman. His frontiers, however, are not territorial but intellectual. He is also an ardent Southerner and validates his Southernism by being national in his sympathies, international in his interests, and Amer¬ ican to the core. “In the ranks of the younger generation of au¬ thors,” wrote Edwin Markham four years ago, “I see against the American background of the present day no more striking figure of international culture and literary attainment than Archibald Hen¬ derson, educator, orator, litterateur, and historian.” To this ap¬ praisal I should like to add the prophecy of a former editor-in-chief of The Library of Southern Literature: “The ideal Southern writer must be Southern and cosmopolitan as well; he must be in¬ tensely local in feeling, but utterly unprejudiced and unpartisan as 312 SOUTHERN LITERATURE to opinions, traditions, and sentiment. Whenever we have a genuine Southern literature it will be American and cosmopolitan as well. Only let it be a work of genius, and it will take all sections bv storm.” Archibald Henderson merits the tribute of Edwin Markham because he is fulfilling the forecast of Joel Chandler Harris. BIBLIOGRAPHY The Twenty-Seven Lines Upon the Cubic Surface. Cambridge Uni¬ versity Press, England, 1911. Reprinted by the University of Chicago Press, 1915. Interpreters of Life, and the Modern Spirit. Duckworth and Com¬ pany, London, 1911. Mitchell Kennerley, New York, 1911. Mark Twain. Duckworth and Company, London, 1911. Freder¬ ick A. Stokes Company, New York, 19n. George Bernard Shaw, His Life and Works. Hutchinson and Company, London, 1911. Stewart and Kidd Company, Cin¬ cinnati, 1911. Boni and Liveright, Inc., New York, 1918. William James. Translation from the French of Emile Boutroux by Barbara and Archibald Henderson. Longmans, Green and Company, New York, 1911. European Dramatists. Stewart and Kidd Company, Cincinnati, 1913. Grant Richards, London, 1913. Enlarged edition, 1918. The Changing Drama. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1914. Grant Richards, London, 1914. Stewart and Kidd Company, Cincinnati, 1919 (with new introduction). The Prince of Parthia. By Thomas Godfrey. With Critical, Bio¬ graphical, and Historical Introduction. By Archibald Hender¬ son. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1917. The Conquest of the Old Southwest. The Romantic Story of the Early Pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, 1740-1790. The Century Company, New York, 1920. Among Dr. Henderson’s more notable studies in Southern Lit¬ erature may be mentioned: Literature in the South, Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, North Caro¬ lina, March 27, 1904. ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 313 John Charles McNeill, Charlotte Observer, November 2, 1907. Wake Forest Student, Wake Forest, North Carolina, Decem¬ ber, 1907. Mrs. Frances C. Tiernan (“Christian Reid”), Charlotte Observer, June 1, 1909. Library of Southern Literature, volume XII, 1 910. The New Carolina Magazine, Chapel Hill, June, 1921. Margaret Busbee Shipp. Sky-Land, Winston-Salem, North Caro¬ lina, September, 1914. News and Observer, Raleigh, Septem¬ ber 13, 1914. The American Nights Entertainment: O. Henry, North Carolina Review, Raleigh, October 8, 1911. A Proposed Memorial to O. Henry. North Carolina Review, March 2, 1913. Sky-Land, August, 1913. O. Henry. Memorial Essay. Published as a souvenir in connec¬ tion with the unveiling of the tablet to O. Henry at Raleigh, December, 1914, funds for which were raised by Dr. Hender¬ son. Mutual Publishing Company, Raleigh, 1914. O. Henry and North Carolina. The Nation, New York, January 14, 1915. O. Henry: His Life and Art. Alumnae News. State Normal and Industrial College, Greensboro, North Carolina, April and June, 1916. O. Henry: A Contemporary Classic. The Dial, Chicago, De¬ cember 28, 1916. O. Henry ana. The Yale Review, April, 1917. O. Henry After a Decade. The Southern Review, Asheville, North Carolina, May, 1920. O. Henry: Artist and Fun-Maker. The New Carolina Maga¬ zine, November, 1920. Appraisals of Dr. Henderson may he found in: Black and White, London, April 22, 1911. By Holbrook Jackson in his Weekly Causerie. The Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, North Carolina, November 30, 1913. By Miss Emilie W. McVea. Sky-Land, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, January, 1915. By Maurice Garland Fulton. The Sewanee Review, Sewanee, Tennessee, October, 1918. By Ed¬ win Markham. 314 SOUTHERN LITERATURE BERNARD SHAW. From ‘European Dramatists.’ Copyright, Stewart Kidd Company, and used here by permission of author and publishers. Bernard Shaw is the most versatile and cosmopolitan genius in the drama of ideas that Great Britain has yet produced. No juster or more significant characterization can be made of this man than that he is a penetrating and astute critic of contemporary civilization. He is typical of this disquieting century—with its intellectual brillancy, its staggering naivete, its ironic nonsense, its devouring scep¬ ticism, its profound social and religious unrest. The re¬ lentless thinking, the large perception of the comic which stamp this man, are interpenetrated with the ironic con¬ sciousness of the twentieth century. The note of his art is capitally moralistic; and he tempers the bitterness of the dis¬ illusioning dose with the effervescent appetizer of his bril¬ liant wit. His philosophy is the consistent integration of his empirical criticisms of modern society and its present or¬ ganization, founded on authority and based upon capitalism. A true mystic, he sees in life, not the fulfilment of moral laws, or the verification of the deductions of reason, but the satisfaction of a passion in us of which we can give no ac¬ count. Evolution, in Shaw’s view, is not a materialistic, but a mystical theory; and, after Lamarck and Samuel Butler, he understands evolution, not as the senseless raging of blind mechanical forces with an amazing simulation of design, but as the struggle of a creative Will or Purpose, which he calls the Life Force, towards higher forms of life. Socialism is the alpha and omega of his life. He believes in will, en¬ gineered by reason, because he sees in it the only real in¬ strument for the achievement of Socialism. Like all pioneers in search of an El Dorado, he has found something quite different from the original object in mind. Indeed, in his search for freedom of will, he has really succeeded in dis¬ covering three checks and limitations to its operation; and he has long since abandoned the paradox of free will. For he has discovered, as first limitation, the iron law of personal responsibility to be the alternative to the golden rule of per- ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 315 sonal conduct. Second, the desirability of the sacrifice of the individual will to the realization of the general good of society through the progressive evolution of the race. And third, the personal, temperamental restriction which forbids him to accept anything as true, to take any action, to allow any free play to his will which would seriously militate against the progressive advance of collectivism. He has achieved the remarkable distinction of embracing collectiv¬ ism without sacrificing individualism, of preaching intel¬ lectual anarchy without ignoring the claims of the Collective Ego. In Bernard Shaw rages the daemonic, half-insensate intuition of a Blake, with his seer’s faculty for inverted truism; while the close, detective cleverness of his ironic paradoxes demonstrates him to be a Becque upon whom has fallen the mantle of a Gilbert. In the limning of charac¬ ter, the mordantly revelative strokes of a Hogarth prove him to be a realist of satiric portraiture. The enticingly audacious insouciance of a Wilde, with his nonchalant wit and easy epigram, is united with the exquisite effrontery of a Whistler, with his devastating jeux d’esprit and the ridentem dicere verum. If Shaw is a Celtic Moilere de nos jours, it is a Moliere in whom comedy stems from the individual and tragedy from society. If Shaw is the Irish Ibsen, it is a laughing Ibsen—looking out upon a half-mad world with the riant eyes of a Heine, a Chamfort, or a Sheridan. WHAT IS A PLAY? From ‘The Changing Drama.’ Copyright, Stewart Kidd Company, and used here by permission of author and publishers. In the light of the contributions of the experimental and pioneering dramatists of the contemporary era, I shall make an effort to formulate a working definition of a play. It is important to note that our vocabulary of dramatic criticism is deficient in the requisite terms for including all the species of plays which find a place on the boards. We have no exact analogue, pithy and concise, for the German term Schau- spiel . The bourgeois drama is only imperfectly rendered by 316 SOUTHERN LITERATURE domestic drama; an even less desirable term is the drama of middle-class life. The very thing we are discussing has it¬ self become suspect. A drama is, from its very derivation, a branch, not of statics, but of kinetics. It really means a doing, an action of some sort, through the intermediary of human beings. Yet we are confronted to-day with a star¬ tling contradiction in terms; for, as we have shown, many contemporary dramatists produce theater-pieces which are successfully produced before popular audiences, in which the tone is contemplative and not active. In such plays the stress is thrown upon being to the virtual exclusion of doing. We are driven, finally, to a definition, not of the drama, but of the play. A play is any presentation of human life by human in¬ terpreters on a stage in a theater before a representative audience. The play intrinsically, and its representation by the interpreters, must be so effective, interesting, and mov¬ ing as to induce the normal individual in appreciable numbers to make a sacrifice of money and time, either one or both, for the privilege of witnessing its performance. The sub¬ ject of a play may be chosen from life on the normal plane of human experience or the higher plane of fantasy and imagination. Both the action and the characters of the play may be dynamic, static, or passive. By action is designated every exhibition of revelative mobility in the characters themselves, whether corporeal or spiritual, rele¬ vant to the processes of elucidation and exposition of the play; as well as all events, explicit or implicit, in the outer world of deed or the inner life of thought, present or an¬ tecedent, which directly affect the destinies of the characters, immediately or ultimately. The characters may be evolu¬ tional, static, or mechanical—ranging from the higher forms of tragedy, comedy, tragi-comedy through all forms of the play down to the lower species of melodrama, farce, and pantomime. A common, but not an indispensable, attribute of the play is a crisis in events, material, intellectual or emotional, or a culminating succession of such crises; and such crisis gen¬ erally, but by no means invariably, arises out of a conflict ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 317 involving the exercise of the human will in pursuit of desid¬ erated ends. A play may be lacking in the elements of con¬ flict and crisis, either or both; since the pictorial and plastic, in an era of the picture-frame stage in especial, are them¬ selves legitimate and indispensable instrumentalities of stage representation. A play cannot be purely static, cannot whol¬ ly eliminate action. Physical, corporeal action may never¬ theless be reduced to its lowest terms; and in such plays the action consists in the play of the intellect and of the emo¬ tions. All dramas are plays; all plays are not dramas. The drama may be defined as the play in which there is a distinc¬ tive plot, involving incidents actively participated in by the characters; a plot must be of such a nature that it can be clearly disengaged and succinctly narrated as a story. A drama involves the functioning of the human will, whether in the individual or in the mass; and includes within itself a crisis in the affairs of human beings. Dramatic is a term descriptive of the qualities inherent in, indispensable to, the drama. A play may or may not be dramatic. A drama is a particular kind of play. The characteristic features of the contemporary play, as the result of the revolution of technic, may now be de¬ tailed. They are, concretely, the transposition of the crucial conjuncture from the outer world to the inner life; the en¬ largement of the conception of the dramatic conflict in order to include the clash of differing conceptions of conduct, standards of morality, codes of ethics, philosophies of life; the participation in such conflicts not only of individuals, but also of type embodiments of social classes or even segments of the social classes themselves; the elimination of both con¬ flict and crisis without denaturalization of the literary species known as the play; the invention of the technic by which a single subject is explored from many points of view, as distinguished from the earlier technic in which many sub¬ jects are exhibited from a single point of view. Most pro¬ found and far-reaching of all changes has been the change wrought by the revolutionary spirit in morals, ethics, and social philosophy. The social has been added to the in¬ dividual outlook; the temporal has been surcharged with the 318 SOUTHERN LITERATURE spirit of the eternal. The contemporary playwright devotes his highest effort to the salutary, if not wholly grateful task, of freeing mankind from the illusions which obsess and mis¬ lead. Until the scales fall from his eyes, the modern man cannot stand high and free, cannot fight the great fight against physical, social, institutional, and moral determin¬ ism. The drama of the modern era is essentially the drama of disillusion. INTRODUCTION. To ‘The Conquest of the Old Southwest/ Copyright, The Century Company, and used here by permission of author and publishers. The romantic and thrilling story of the southward and westward migration of successive waves of transplanted European peoples throughout the entire course of the eight¬ eenth century is the history of the growth and evolution of American democracy. Upon the American continent was wrought out, through almost superhuman daring, incredible hardship, and surpassing endurance, the formation of a new society. The European rudely confronted with the pitiless conditions of the wilderness soon discovered that his main¬ tenance, indeed his existence, was conditioned upon his in¬ dividual efficiency and his resourcefulness in adapting him¬ self to his environment. The very history of the human race, from the age of primitive man to the modern era of enlightened civilization, is traversed in the Old Southwest throughout the course of half a century. A series of dissolving views thrown upon the screen, picturing the successive episodes in the history of a single family as it wended its way southward along the eastern val¬ leys, resolutely repulsed the sudden attack of the Indians, toiled painfully up the granite slopes of the Appalachians, and pitched down into the transmontane wilderness upon the western waters, would give to the spectator a vivid concep¬ tion, in miniature, of the westward movement. But certain basic elements in the grand procession, revealed to the sociologist and the economist, would perhaps escape his scru¬ tiny. Back of the individual, back of the family, even, lurk ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 319 the creative and formative impulses of colonization, expan¬ sion, and government. In the recognition of these social and economic tendencies the individual merges into the group; the group into the community; the community into a new society. In this clear perspective of historic development the spectacular hero at first sight seems to diminish; but the mass, the movement, the social force which he epitomizes and interprets, gain in impressiveness and dignity. As the irresistible tide of migratory peoples swept ever southward and westward, seeking room for expansion and economic independence, a series of frontiers was gradually thrust out toward the wilderness in successive waves of ir¬ regular indentation. The true leader in this westward ad¬ vance, to whom less than his deserts has been accorded by the historian, is the drab and mercenary trader with the In¬ dians. The story of his enterprise and of his adventures be¬ gins with the planting of European civilization upon Ameri¬ can soil. In the mind of the aborigines he created the pas¬ sion for the fruits, both good and evil, of the white man’s civilization, and he was welcomed by the Indian because he also brought the means for repelling the further advance of that civilization. The trader was of incalculable service to the pioneer in first spying out the land and charting the track¬ less wilderness. The trail rudely marked by the buffalo be¬ came in time the Indian path and the trader’s “trace”; and the pioneers upon the westward march, following the line of least resistance, cut out their roads along these very routes. It is not too much to say that had it not been for the trader —brave, hardy, and adventurous however often crafty, un¬ scrupulous, and immoral—, the expansionist movement upon the American continent would have been greatly retarded. So scattered and ramified were the enterprises and ex¬ peditions of the traders with the Indians that the frontier which they established was at best both shifting and un¬ stable. Following far in the wake of these advance agents of the civilization which they so often disgraced, came the cattle-herder or rancher, who took advantage of the exten¬ sive pastures and ranges along the uplands and foot-hills to raise immense herds of cattle. Thus was formed what 320 SOUTHERN LITERATURE might be called a rancher’s frontier, thrust out in advance of the ordinary farming settlements and serving as the first serious barrier against the Indian invasion. The westward movement of population is in this respect a direct advance from the coast. Years before the influx into the Old South¬ west of the tides of settlement from the northeast, the more adventurous struck straight westward in the wake of the fur- trader, and here and there erected the cattle-ranges beyond the farming frontier of the piedmont region. The wild horses and cattle which roamed at will through the upland barrens and pea-vine pastures were herded in and driven for sale to the city markets of the East. The farming frontier of the piedmont plateau con¬ stituted the real backbone of western settlement. The pion¬ eering farmers, with the adventurous instincts of the hunter and the explorer, plunged deeper and ever deeper into the wilderness, lured on by the prospect of free and still richer lands in the dim interior. Settlements quickly sprang up in the neighborhood of military posts or rude forts established to serve as safeguards against hostile attack; and trade soon flourished between these settlements and the eastern cen¬ ters, following the trails of the trader and the more beaten paths of emigration. The bolder settlers who ventured farthest to the westward were held in communication with the East through their dependence upon salt and other neces¬ sities of life; and the search for salt-springs in the virgin wilderness was an inevitable consequence of the desire of the pioneer to shake off his dependence upon the coast. The prime determinative principle of the progressive American civilization of the eighteenth century was the pas¬ sion for the acquisition of land. The struggle for economic independence developed the germ of American liberty and became the differentiating principle of American character. Here was a vast unappropriated region in the interior of the continent to be had for the seeking, which served as lure and inspiration to the man daring enough to risk his all in its acquisition. It was in accordance with human nature and JL the principles of political economy that this unknown extent of uninhabited transmontane land, widely renowned for ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 321 beauty, richness, and fertility, should excite grandiose dreams in the minds of English and Colonials alike. England was said to be Aew Land mad and everybody there has his eye fixed on this country.” Groups of wealthy or well-to-do individuals organized themselves into land companies for the colonization and exploitation of the West. The pioneer promoter was a powerful creative force in westward expan¬ sion; and the activities of the early land companies were decisive factors in the colonization of the wilderness. Wheth¬ er acting under the authority of a crown grant or proceed¬ ing on their own authority, the land companies tended to give stability and permanence to settlements otherwise hazardous and insecure. The second determinative impulse of the pioneer civil¬ ization was wanderlust —the passionately inquisitive instinct of the hunter, the traveler, and the explorer. This restless class of nomadic wanderers was responsible in part for the royal proclamation of 1763, a secondary object of which, ac¬ cording to Edmund Burke, was the limitation of the colonies on the West, as “the charters of many of our old colonies give them, with few exceptions, no bounds to the westward but the South Sea.” The Long Hunters, taking their lives in their hands, fared boldly forth to a fabled hunter’s paradise in the far-away wilderness, because they were driven by the irresistible desire of a Ponce de Leon or a DeSoto to find out the truth about the unknown lands beyond. But the hunter was not only thrilled with the passion of the chase and of discovery; he was intent also upon collect¬ ing the furs and skins of wild animals for lucrative barter and sale in the centers of trade. He was quick to make “tomahawk claims” and to assert “corn rights” as he spied out the rich virgin land for future location and cultivation. Free land and no taxes appealed to the backwoodsman, tired of paying quit-rents to the agents of wealthy lords across the sea. Thus the settler speedily followed in the hunter’s wake. In his wake also went many rude and lawless charac¬ ters of the border, horse thieves and criminals of different sorts, who sought to hide their delinquencies in the merciful liberality of the wilderness. For the most part, however, 322 SOUTHERN LITERATURE it was the salutary instinct of the homebuilder—the man with the ax, who made a little clearing in the forest and built there a rude cabin that he bravely defended at all risks against continued assaults—which, in defiance of every re¬ straint, irresistibly thrust westward the thin and jagged line of the frontier. The ax and the surveyor’s chain, along with the rifle and the hunting-knife, constituted the armorial bearings of the pioneer. With individual as with corpora¬ tion, with explorer as with landlord, land-hunger was the master impulse of the era. The various desires which stimulated and promoted westward expansion were, to be sure, often found in com¬ plete conjunction. The trader sought to exploit the Indian for his own advantage, selling him whiskey, trinkets, and firearms in return for rich furs and costly peltries; yet he was often a hunter himself and collected great stores of peltries as the result of his solitary and protracted hunting- expeditions. The rancher and the herder sought to exploit the natural vegetation of marsh and upland, the cane-brakes and pea-vines; yet the constantly recurring need for fresh pasturage made him a pioneer also, drove him ever nearer to the mountains, and furnished the economic motive for his westward advance. The small farmer needed the virgin soil of the new region, the alluvial river-bottoms, and the open prairies, for the cultivation of his crops and the graz¬ ing of his cattle; yet in the intervals between the tasks of farm life he scoured the wilderness in search of game and spied out new lands for future settlement. This restless and nomadic race, says the keenly obser¬ vant Francis Baily, “delight much to live on the frontiers, where they can enjoy undisturbed, and free from the con¬ trol of any laws, the blessings which nature has bestowed upon them.” Independence of spirit, impatience of restraint, the inquisitive nature, and the nomadic temperament—these are the strains in the American character of the eighteenth century which ultimately blended to create a typical democ¬ racy. The rolling of wave after wave of settlement west¬ ward across the American continent, with a reversion to primitive conditions along the line of the farthest frontier, ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 323 and a marked rise 'in the scale of civilization at each suc¬ cessive stage of settlement, from the western limit to the eastern coast, exemplifies from one aspect the history of the American people during two centuries. This era, constitut¬ ing the first stage in our national existence, and productive of a buoyant national character shaped in democracy upon a free soil, closed only yesterday with the exhaustion of cul¬ tivable free land, the disappearance of the last frontier, and the recent death of “Buffalo Bill.” The splendid inaugura¬ tion of the period, in the region of the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, during the second half of the eighteenth century, is the theme of this story of the pioneers of the Old Southwest, COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY I. Books. 1911. Interpreters of Life, and the Modern Spirit. Duckworth & Co. (London). Mitchell Kennerley (New York). Mark Tzvain. Duckworth & Co. (London). Frederick A. Stokes (New York). George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Work. Hutchinson & Co. (London). Stewart & Kidd Co. (Cincinnati). William Janies. Translation (by Barbara, and Archibald Henderson) of the French work by Emile Boutroux. 1913. European Dramatists. Steward and Kidd Co. (Cincinnati). Grant Richards (London). 1914. O. Henry: a Memorial Essay. Mutual Publishing Co. (Raleigh, N. C.) The Changing Drama. Henry Holt and Co. (New York). Grant Richards (London). 1915. Modern Drama and Opera. Volume II. Edited, with introduction and three bibliographies, by Archibald Henderson. Boston Book Co. A False Saint. By Franqois de Curel. Translated by B. H. Clark, with critical introduction by Archibald Henderson. Drama League Series of Plays. Double¬ day, Page & Co. (New York). 1917. The Prince of Parthia. By Thomas Godfrey. With critical, biographical, and historical introduction by Archibald Henderson. Little, Brown & Co. (Boston). 1918. European Dramatists. Enlarged edition, containing new essay, on Arthur Schnitzler. Stewart and Kidd Co. (Cincinnati). George Bernard Shaw: ILis Life and Works. Popular Edition. Boni and Liveright, Inc. 1919. The Star of Empire. Seeman (Durham, N. C.). The Changing Drama. New edition, with introduction to new edition. Stewart and Kidd Co. (Cincinnati). 1920. The Conquest of the Old Southwest. With sub-title: The Romantic Story of the Early Pioneers into Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky. 1740-1790. The Century Company (New York). ARCHIBALD HENDERSON II. Periodical Publications. Below appear the titles of some representative essays and articles chosen from the entire range of the author’s periodical contribution. 1901. Modern Science in Modern Fiction. “North Carolina University Magazine” (April). 1902. Maurice Maeterlinck and the Drama of Suggestion. Ibid. (May). 1903. Edmond Rostand. “Charlotte Daily Observer,” Sunday, Sept. 27. Signed “Erskine Steele.” Social Dramas of Henrik Ibsen. Ibid. Sunday editions, October 11 and 25. Signed “Erskine Steele.” 1904. Literature in the South. Ibid. March 27. Maurice Maeterlinck as a Dramatic Artist . “Sewanee Review” (April). The Present Vogue of Mr. Shaw. “Reader Magazine” (June). The Duel of Sex. Being a review of G. B. Shaw’s “Man and Superman.” “The Dial” (July 16). Arnold Daly and Bernard Shaw. “The Arena” (No¬ vember). 1905. Henrik Ibsen and Social Progress. Ibid. (January). Gerhart Hauptmann: Social Idealist. Ibid. (March). 1906. Fiction and Social Ethics. “South Atlantic Quarterly” (July) 1907. George Bernard Shaw. “North American Review” (June 7). George Bernard Shaw. “Deutsche Revue,” Stuttgart and Berlin. (August.) In German. John Charles McNeill. “Charlotte Observer” (No¬ vember 2). 1908. The Real Bernard Shaw. “Munsey’s Magazine” (Jan- uary)., La Carriere de Bernard Shaw . “La Societe Nouvelle,” Ghent and Paris. (May.) In French. The Ibsen Harvest. “Atlantic Monthly” (August). George Meredith. “North American Review” (Septem- • ber). SOUTHERN LITERATURE 1909. The Philosophy of Bernard Shaw. “Atlantic Monthly’ 7 (February). , The Evolution of Dramatic Technique. “North American Review” (March). 1909. Mark Twain. “Harper’s Magazine” (May). Academic Ambassadors. “Outlook” (June 19). Old Edinburgh. “Harper’s Magazine” (October). Meredith in Broken Doses. “Forum” (October). Mark Twain—wie er ist. “Deutsche Revue” (November). In German. 1910. Henrik Ibsen: the Evolution of his Mind and Art. “North Carolina Review”; May, June, July, August, Sep¬ tember. Christian Reid. “Sewanee Review” (April). New Light on Ibsen. “Twentieth Century Magazine” (May). The Real Mansfield. “Forum” (June). How Ibsen Made His Plays. “Bookman” (July). How Ibsen Created a Masterpiece. “Sterling Magazine” (October). 1910. Votes for Women in England. “Forum” (November). The Passion-Play at Ober-Ammergau. “Theatre” (No¬ vember) . In Praise of Bridges. “Harper’s Magazine” (November). Wagnerian Musical Festival at Munich. “Theatre” (December). The International Fame of Mark Twain. “North Ameri¬ can Review” (December). 1911. The Message of Tolstoy. “Forum” (February). Mark Twain also Philo soph, Moralist, und Sociologe. “Deutsche Revue” (February). In German. George Meredith. “Deutsche Revue” (April). In German. England: Phases and Impressions. “T. P.’s Magazine,” London. (April.) Bernard Shaw also Dramatiker. “Deutsche Revue” (June). In German. Bernard Shaw. “Finsk Tidskrift,” Helsingfors. (June.) The New Drama in England. “Forum” (June). Bernard Shaw Intime. “Mercure de France” (June 1). In French. ARCHIBALD HENDERSON 1911. Richard Strauss. “Forum” (October). 1912. Interpreting American Literature for the Germans.” “Dial” (May 1). H. Granville Barker. “Mercure de France” (May 16). In French. Elizabeth Maxzvell Steel. “North Carolina Booklet” (October). The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. “Journal of American History.” Vol. vi, No. 4. Arthur Schnitzler. “North American Review” (No¬ vember) . 1913. Forerunners of the Republic. “Neale’s Monthly” (Jan¬ uary-June). Democracy and Literature. “South Atlantic Quarterly” (April). The Printed Play: a New Technic. “Drama” (November). 1914. Transvaluation of Contemporary Dramatic Values. “Drama” ( August). Margaret Busbee Shipp. “Skyland” (September). The Creative Forces in Westward Expansion. “American Historical Review” (October). 1914. Richard Henderson and the Occupation of Kentucky . “Mississippi Valley Historical Review” (December). 1915. 0 . Henry and North Carolina. “Nation” (January 14). Hymns of Hate and Songs of Love. “Nation” (March 11). The Published Play. “Drama” (May). “Self-Consciousness of the States.” “New York Evening Post” (August 7). Sense and Nonsense About Bernard Shaw. “Dial” (Sep¬ tember 16). 1916. America and the Drama. “Texas Review” (January). Origin of the Regulation in North Carolina. “American Historical Review” (January). The Revolution in North Carolina in 1775. Privately printed. The Founding of Nashville. “Tennessee Historical Magazine” (September). 1917. 0 . Henryana. “Yale Review” (April). A Federalist of the Old School. “North Carolina Book¬ let.” (July and October). SOUTHERN LITERATURE From Primitive Man to Modern Civilization. “Bookman’' (November) “H. C. L.” “Bookman” (December). The Spanish Conspiracy in Tennessee. “Tennessee His¬ torical Magazine” (December). 1918. Democracy and American Ideals. “Bookman” (May). 1919. John Steele. “North Carolina Booklet” (January and April). 1920. An Interesting Colonial Document. “Virginia Magazine of History and Biography” (January). Daniel Boone and the American Pioneer. “Century Magazine” (September). 1921. The Litchfield Law School. “Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine” (April). Bernard Shaw Redivivus. “New York Times Book Re¬ view” (June 12). 1922. George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest. “Alumni Bulletin,” University of Virginia (January). The University of Virginia. “Literary Review.” (January). George Washington Swings the Circle. “New York Times Book Review” (February 19). Andrew Jackson: North or South Carolinian? Ibid. (September 3). The Human Estimate of Washington. Ibid. (October 22). Mr. Shaw Takes Up Prison Reform. Ibid (October 29). The South in Art. “Carolina Magazine”—Southern Arts Number (December). T' " ' A I -• ■ '■'S.Av n { - A , » JT > . )'• ="y.yi3 I XaKJitf 't - - ’■ y »v<-liar^-s, ■t ■ V.® /p. ? ^ >1 V 1 / &?> '. ' , , , V - - ■ > • u