Garland in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

From My Life in Publishing (1965)

[220] X From My Life in Publishing (1965) Harold S. Latham Latham later expanded his earlier tribute as the first portrait in a gallery of reminiscences about his editorial career. Hamlin Garland Hamlin Garland is first, perhaps because, as I look out of my New Jersey study window, I see green trees, a garden, and distant hills, and I am reminded of the Catskills and Onteora, where I spent several summers in close association with him. Hamlin Garland was striking in appearance, with a deliberate effort on his part—I always felt—to make himself look like Mark Twain. Nature contributed to this end by giving him features that resembled those of Samuel Clemens, and Garland assisted nature by the way he combed his hair and groomed his moustache. He made a fine appearance, looking every inch the way a distinguished author should look. Garland had several books published before he came to Macmillan and had had some moderate success with them. The first Macmillan book was A Son of the Middle Border which became his best known, partly, perhaps, because it won the Pulitzer Prize the year of its issue.1 This book and its successor, A Daughter of the Middle Border, together tell the story of Garland ’s life and that of his father and mother in days of Spartan living on the farm in Iowa (“Ioway” H. G. always called it). The narrations describe the rugged sort of life that is a part of our growth as a nation. Garland caught its qualities: its warmth, its hardships, its satisfactions, its tragedies. The volumes, especially A Son, are considered important contributions to our national literature and are often found on school reading lists. Although Garland published a good many books after A Son of the Middle Border, he never again enjoyed the popularity that came with this work. This fact embittered him. He felt that some of his later writings were just as significant as their well-known predecessors, and he tended to resent the [221] indifference with which the younger critics treated him. Many a time he said to me sadly: “It’s a new and different crowd now running the show, and to these critics I have outlived my time.” I loved the old gentleman and spent many happy hours in his company. In particular, I remember one weekend in Onteora, a club community, two miles out of Tannersville, N.Y., in the heart of the Catskills. Here, on top of Onteora Mountain, at an elevation of 2,500 feet, the Garlands had a large rambling house painted red. It was October, and the view from the porch was breathtaking with its wild profusion of autumn colors in the valley below. In the evening we left the study where a log fire was burning in an enormous fireplace, to walk the trail around Onteora Mountain, a distance of some two or three miles. I hesitated to leave the comfort of that cozy room, but I have never been sorry that I did. One of the most vivid memories I have of Garland is this one of him as he led the way over the narrow trail, now through moonlit patches, now into dark, overgrown stretches, pausing from time to time to point out some spot of special interest or beauty in the valley below. The evening was clear and crisp. Garland was inspired by the glories of the night and talked of many things, from literature to local oddities. Bundled in a great coat and leaning on a six-foot staff he had fashioned for himself from a curiously shaped tree limb, he made an impressive figure silhouetted sharply against the moon. I fell so in love with Onteora on this brilliant Columbus Day that I decided , at Mr. Garland’s suggestion, to buy a home in the community. He sponsored me for membership in the club, and soon I had a cottage within a stone’s throw of his. Years of happy association followed. The charming Mrs. Garland, sister of Lorado Taft, the sculptor, and the two Garland daughters would informally drop in on my mother, and Hamlin was always showing up with a bit of manuscript or literary gossip. It was a delightful and rewarding period , the only cloud being Garland’s growing dissatisfaction with the recognition (or lack of it) which he was receiving. Somehow he felt betrayed. I think perhaps it was this disappointment that led him to concentrate on psychical research...