Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise | Page 3

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SUSAN LENOX: HER RISE AND FALL
by David Graham Phillips

Volume I

DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS A TRIBUTE
Even now I cannot realize that he is dead, and often in the city
streets--on Fifth Avenue in particular--I find myself glancing ahead for
a glimpse of the tall, boyish, familiar figure--experience once again a
flash of the old happy expectancy.
I have lived in many lands, and have known men. I never knew a finer
man than Graham Phillips.
His were the clearest, bluest, most honest eyes I ever saw--eyes that
scorned untruth--eyes that penetrated all sham.
In repose his handsome features were a trifle stern--and the magic of
his smile was the more wonderful--such a sunny, youthful, engaging
smile.

His mere presence in a room was exhilarating. It seemed to freshen the
very air with a keen sweetness almost pungent.
He was tall, spare, leisurely, iron-strong; yet figure, features and
bearing were delightfully boyish.
Men liked him, women liked him when he liked them.
He was the most honest man I ever knew, clean in mind, clean-cut in
body, a little over-serious perhaps, except when among intimates; a
little prone to hoist the burdens of the world on his young shoulders.
His was a knightly mind; a paladin character. But he could unbend, and
the memory of such hours with him--hours that can never be
again--hurts more keenly than the memory of calmer and more sober
moments.
We agreed in many matters, he and I; in many we differed. To me it
was a greater honor to differ in opinion with such a man than to find an
entire synod of my own mind.
Because--and of course this is the opinion of one man and worth no
more than that--I have always thought that Graham Phillips was head
and shoulders above us all in his profession.
He was to have been really great. He is--by his last book, "Susan
Lenox."
Not that, when he sometimes discussed the writing of it with me, I was
in sympathy with it. I was not. We always were truthful to each other.
But when a giant molds a lump of clay into tremendous masses, lesser
men become confused by the huge contours, the vast distances, the
terrific spaces, the majestic scope of the ensemble. So I. But he went on
about his business.
I do not know what the public may think of "Susan Lenox." I scarcely
know what I think.

It is a terrible book--terrible and true and beautiful.
Under the depths there are unspeakable things that writhe. His
plumb-line touches them and they squirm. He bends his head from the
clouds to do it. Is it worth doing? I don't know.
But this I do know--that within the range of all fiction of all lands and
of all times no character has so overwhelmed me as the character of
Susan Lenox.
She is as real as life and as unreal. She is Life. Hers was the
concentrated nobility of Heaven and Hell. And the divinity of the one
and the tragedy of the other. For she had known both--this girl--the
most pathetic, the most human, the most honest character ever drawn
by an American writer.
In the presence of his last work, so overwhelming, so stupendous, we
lesser men are left at a loss. Its magnitude demands the perspective that
time only can lend it. Its dignity and austerity and its pitiless truth
impose upon us that honest and intelligent silence which even the
quickest minds concede is necessary before an honest verdict.
Truth was his goddess; he wrought honestly and only for her.
He is dead, but he is to have his day in court. And whatever the verdict,
if it be a true one, were he living he would rest content.
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.

BEFORE THE CURTAIN
A few years ago, as to the most important and most interesting subject
in the world, the relations of the sexes, an author had to choose between
silence and telling those distorted truths beside