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

[Letter Commenting on Garland in California in 1933]

[137] X [Letter Commenting on Garland in California in 1933] Paul Jordan-Smith Paul Jordan-Smith (1885–1971) was the book review editor for the Los Angeles Times from 1933 to 1957. Paul Jordan-Smith to Eldon Hill, 6 July 1950 Hamlin Garland was a pleasant and friendly neighbor, and he liked to help young men in their writing careers. John Hodgdon Bradley was a favorite of his, and he is mentioned in the letters [that Jordan-Smith received from Garland]. Bradley was teaching at the Univ. of Southern California at the time, and wrote several books that interested Garland.1 At first it was interesting to visit at Mr. Garland’s lovely home. [H]e was full of talk about Stephen Crane, Howells, Clemens and the writers he knew in Boston, Chicago and New York. One of the very few occasions I remember was a birthday party for Julian Hawthorne, held at Julian’s beach cottage, at Balboa Beach, California. It was during the summer of 1933, just about a year before Julian’s death. The two grand old men gossiped a lot about early days and mutual friends, but Julian seemed stiffer than usual. Then, when Garland left, Julian (then 87) stretched like a cat and said, “Now let’s relax and have some wine and a smoke. The idea of Garland trying to fix his hair to look like my father!”2 Towards the last many of us were embarrassed about going to Garland’s, much as we liked and admired him. For he always had a medium around and held nightly séances with Whitman, Howells and some Indian. That was amusing for one evening, but most of us were skeptics and did not want to offend the dear old man. Then there were the lead (or zinc) crosses which he exhibited in good faith when they were obvious fakes. We looked at them in a silence that hurt us and must have hurt his family. So it came garland in his own time [138] about that younger men stayed away even though our consciences burned. [M]ine still burns, for I know how lonely he was. Once he said to me,—“In other days when I went to a club scores of eager young men rushed up to greet me, even men I did not recognize: now when I go to my New York club I hear men say, ‘Who is that old fellow?’” I have several of H. G.’s later books, inscribed to me. The only early one is Jason Edwards (1892). Most of the people who went with me to his home have now joined him in the shades, so I begin to feel like he did! If I can be of any assistance, please let me know. Paul Jordan-Smith Notes 1. John Hodgdon Bradley (1898–1962) was a professor of geology at the University of Southern California and the author of Parade of the Living (1930) and Patterns of Survival: An Anatomy of Life (1938), both of which Garland admired. 2. The son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Julian Hawthorne (1846–1934) published novels and memoirs of his family, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife (1884), Hawthorne and His Circle (1903), Shapes that Pass: Memories of Old Days (1928), and The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne (1938). Following his attendance at Hawthorne’s birthday party on 28 August 1933, Garland recorded in his diary of the man he had first met forty years earlier, “He has failed in mental strength and vigor since I saw him last. He has shrunk in size and has in the face the shadow of approaching death” (Hamlin Garland’s Diaries , 144). Paul Jordan-Smith to Eldon Hill, 6 July 1950, Eldon Hill Collection, Walter Havighurst Special Collections Library, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. ...