Love Conquers All | Page 2

add that I
refer to what is known as the "Benchley-Whittier Correspondence."
The big question over which both my biographers and Whittier's might
possibly come to blows is this, as I understand it: Did John Greenleaf
Whittier ever receive the letters I wrote to him in the late Fall of 1890?
_If he did not, who did? And under what circumstances were they
written_?
I was a very young man at the time, and Mr. Whittier was, naturally,
very old. There had been a meeting of the Save-Our-Song-Birds Club
in old Dane Hall (now demolished) in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Members had left their coats and hats in the check-room at the foot of
the stairs (now demolished).
In passing out after a rather spirited meeting, during the course of
which Mr. Whittier and Dr. Van Blarcom had opposed each other
rather violently over the question of Baltimore orioles, the aged poet
naturally was the first to be helped into his coat. In the general mix-up
(there was considerable good-natured fooling among the members as
they left, relieved as they were from the strain of the meeting) Whittier
was given my hat by mistake. When I came to go, there was nothing
left for me but a rather seedy gray derby with a black band, containing
the initials "J.G.W." As the poet was visiting in Cambridge at the time I
took opportunity next day to write the following letter to him:
Cambridge, Mass. November 7, 1890.

Dear Mr. Whittier:
I am afraid that in the confusion following the Save-Our-Song-Birds
meeting last night, you were given my hat by mistake. I have yours and
will gladly exchange it if you will let me know when I may call on you.
May I not add that I am a great admirer of your verse? Have you ever
tried any musical comedy lyrics? I think that I could get you in on the
ground floor in the show game, as I know a young man who has written
several songs which E.E. Rice has said he would like to use in his next
comic opera--provided he can get words to go with them.
But we can discuss all this at our meeting, which I hope will be soon,
as your hat looks like hell on me.
Yours respectfully,
ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.
I am quite sure that this letter was mailed, as I find an entry in my diary
of that date which reads:
"Mailed a letter to J.G. Whittier. Cloudy and cooler."
Furthermore, in a death-bed confession, some ten years later, one Mary
F. Rourke, a servant employed in the house of Dr. Agassiz, with whom
Whittier was bunking at the time, admitted that she herself had taken a
letter, bearing my name in the corner of the envelope, to the poet at his
breakfast on the following morning.
But whatever became of it after it fell into his hands, I received no
reply. I waited five days, during which time I stayed in the house rather
than go out wearing the Whittier gray derby. On the sixth day I wrote
him again, as follows:
Cambridge, Mass. Nov. 14, 1890.
Dear Mr. Whittier:

How about that hat of mine?
Yours respectfully,
ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.
I received no answer to this letter either. Concluding that the good gray
poet was either too busy or too gosh-darned mean to bother with the
thing, I myself adopted an attitude of supercilious unconcern and
closed the correspondence with the following terse message:
Cambridge, Mass. December 4, 1890.
Dear Mr. Whittier:
It is my earnest wish that the hat of mine which you are keeping will
slip down over your eyes some day, interfering with your vision to such
an extent that you will walk off the sidewalk into the gutter and receive
painful, albeit superficial, injuries.
Your young friend,
ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.
Here the matter ended so far as I was concerned, and I trust that
biographers in the future will not let any confusion of motives or
misunderstanding of dates enter into a clear and unbiased statement of
the whole affair. We must not have another Shelley-Byron scandal.

II
FAMILY LIFE IN AMERICA

PART I

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state
that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not
include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who
spills food down the front of his vest. If this school progresses, the
following is what we may expect in our national literature in a year or
so.
The living-room in the Twillys' house was so damp that thick, soppy
moss grew all over the walls. It dripped on the picture of Grandfather
Twilly that hung over the melodeon, making streaks down the dirty
glass like sweat on