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

From “A Memoir: Hamlin Garland” (1968)

[225] X From “A Memoir: Hamlin Garland” (1968) Floyd Logan The following reminiscence was delivered as an address on the twenty-eighth anniversary of Garland’s death, 4 March 1968, at a meeting of the James Whitcomb Riley Memorial Association. Logan, who had retired as a journalist for the Fort Wayne, Indiana, News-Sentinel, was the field secretary for the association , an organization dedicated to raising funds for the Riley Children’s Hospital and to maintaining Riley’s home in Indianapolis, a National Historic Landmark. garland was a superlative lecturer. He cultivated accents, inflections, idioms , timing, delivery, tones, pauses, rhythms of speech and such vocal nuances with the same loving care and aura of perfection as a dedicated rose grower exhibits for the blooms in his garden. He loved Mark Twain, and J. W. Riley; he had great admiration for Shaw, Kipling and Barrie. But he could “do” any of these, complete with gestures and facial mugging, so effectively as to make his mimicry sound like a recording of the original. It was all done in good taste, with wonderful humor and a kind of expressive joy wherein he showed how much, really, he derived from such friendships. But he was not a wit in the usual sense, for he did not like to be so devastating as to attempt to destroy or expose to public ridicule any of the mannerisms of his friends or otherwise exhibit them in a bad light. And I think he rather liked to be mistaken for Mark Twain. He was of heavier, more solid frame than Mr. Clemens. But he had the roached mane of hair, the mustache and he now and then wore white suits. I remember the first time I saw him, after years of schoolboy and college youth admiration of his work from my obscurity, that I was amazed at the size of his hands. Not for him were the long-fingered delicately veined hand of the dandy literary darling. His hands were solid fists. When he wrote, a pen or pencil seemed a thin, fragile sliver swallowed in the immensity of his grasp. Mr. Gross mentioned this “determined grip” in the editorial I quoted previously.1 garland in his own time [226] Even though he was far from heroic stature, he was notable in any crowd or in any group. His photographs show this characteristic. He had a direct and challenging look. He had not, at any time in his literary career, affected a bohemian or “arty” dress. Indeed, he dressed correctly whether for a formal dinner at the White House or in London with one or the other of his great contemporaries there, or for riding along a mountain trail or hiking through the desert. Like a Frank Lloyd Wright house, designed to fit into its scene and background, he always looked to be an authentic article in his surroundings. Garland was a complete family man. His love, friendship and affection for his wife, Zulime Taft Garland, are to be detected and observed in the eight volumes of his reminiscences, whether in the personal account as seen in the Middle Border books or in the less biographical narratives found in what he called his “Literary Log.” I would not want to say I envied his daughters, but I have looked with longing and wistful appreciation of the lives they had as they shared not only the literary associations of their father, but the gaiety and charm of the background of their mother, who had studied as an artist in this country and abroad. She had not been long home from Paris before she met Hamlin Garland. Their courtship was no whirlwind of hasty adolescence . . . he turned 40 before the wedding!2 . . . Both Garland daughters have been interested in my paper and both have responded to my invitation to prepare comment for me to include here in. Ecclesiastes, if he is looking over my shoulder, would agree, I think, that this is the “time for my purpose” in the use of their contributions. These comments, in themselves are touching. But I am particularly sensitive to what the daughters have written because I know they had that priceless relationship with both their parents: Of knowing them as friends, counselors and as individuals. These, as I see them, are intimate and privileged perspectives on a man, known in his time as the Dean of American Letters, who was their father. But they are also eloquent appraisals of a man they knew as...