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

“A Little Story of a Friendship” (1940)

[183] X “A Little Story of a Friendship” (1940) Irving Bacheller Irving Bacheller (1859–1950) founded the Bacheller Newspaper Syndicate in 1884 and was responsible for drawing attention to Stephen Crane through the serialization of The Red Badge of Courage in 1894. In 1898 he became the Sunday editor of the New York World and later a full-time novelist with the publication of the best seller Eben Holden in 1900. From 1894 to 1896, Garland published at least fifteen stories through the Bacheller Syndicate, including “Old Mosinee Tom,” referred to below, on 1 November 1894. it was in the late 80’s that I got my first look at Hamlin Garland—a stalwart , full bearded young man from the middle west. I was then the editor and manager of the first newspaper syndicate in the United States. If I remember rightly, he had written a short story entitled “Mosinee Tom” and I bought it from him. We liked each other and talked of our early days. They were much alike, although his had been spent in Wisconsin and on a prairie farm in Iowa, mine in the St. Lawrence valley. In the early nineties he came often to see me and I bought a number of his sketches of country life in the west. He told me a little story that amused me. It was about the first bananas he had ever seen. They were hanging in front of a little store on a prairie road. A number of young men were looking at them. One brave spirit bought a banana, shoving an end of it into his mouth and chewing thoughtfully as the others looked at him. In a moment one of the spectators asked: “Well, Bill, how does it taste?” Bill bit off the banana about half way down and took a minute to clear his mouth and give an honest opinion. Then he said: “The rind ain’t much but the peth is purty good.” His work was coming along in the best magazines, and people were talking about it. “Main-Travelled Roads” came out and Garland was soon a garland in his own time [184] famous man. He told me that he aimed to present the exact truth about the people he had known—their pleasures, their troubles and their motives. I sold my business and moved to Tarrytown, where I began my first literary enterprise of any importance. The task was interrupted by Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, who wanted me on the editorial staff of “The World.” I went there and loved the job. For a time I did not see Garland. I got a leave of absence and finished my book and never returned to newspaper work. The book was immediately in great demand and going out to the people by hundreds of thousands. I was amazed by its success. There were no sensational adventures in the story. It was a quiet chronicle of country life among the transplanted New Englanders in northern New York—sturdy, honest folk, many of whom had an engaging humor. Garland and I met again. He liked my book. He was one who loved the undistorted truth about things and he thought it was because the truth of the book was so easily and quickly recognized that it became popular. Garland was a realist like Howells. An intimate friendship between us had begun. It lasted forty years. He had married Zulime Taft—a beautiful girl—in 1899. His beard had come to the dead line when he met her. It may be true that the girls of her generation were largely responsible for the doom of whiskers. Hamlin and I were familiar with a time when the church and the theatre seemed to be in a kind of partnership. The aim of both was the improvement of the spirit of man. The theatre was no doubt the greater force among men and women. Who could ever forget the lessons in Irving’s “Bells,” in Booth’s “Macbeth,” in Salvini’s “Conrad and Othello”? Barrett, McCullough , Jefferson, Modjeska were doing a like type of thing. A great civilization had been built up, and it came to its climax in the eighties. One may question if our world had seen the like of it. Garland and I saw and felt much of its coming and all of its going. We were often together in New York, Riverside, Florida, and Chicago. We talked much of our literary plans. We took long tramps...