Ohio History Journal

The OHIO      HISTORICAL            Quarterly

VOLUME 67 * NUMBER 2 ~                                   A P R I L 1958

 

 

 

 

Paul Laurence Dunbar and

William Dean Howells

 

By JAMES B. STRONKS*

 

 

 

IN THE SUMMER OF 1896 William Dean Howells, then the most

influential author and critic in the United States, favorably reviewed

a book of poems by a young Dayton Negro, Paul Laurence Dunbar.

The review, in the Harper's Weekly of June 27, 1896--by a happy

coincidence it was Dunbar's birthday--instantly and dramatically

created a national reputation for the struggling four-dollars-a-week

elevator boy. The relationship of the two Ohioans--Howells,

America's chief man of letters, and Dunbar, the son of former

slaves--is so full of interest, both human and literary, that it

deserves to be reconstructed here, making use of some hitherto un-

published letters between the two.

Himself a young Ohio poet and newspaperman in the 1850's,

Howells by 1871 had become the chief editor of the mighty Atlantic

Monthly in Boston, where his reviews were to constitute what Mark

Twain called "the recognized critical Court of Last Resort" in this

country. Long before he first heard of Dunbar, Howells had become

our most prominent novelist and critic.

Out in Dayton in 1896, Paul Dunbar, five years after graduation

from Steele High School, had been able because of his black skin

to do no better than win the job of piloting the elevator up and

down the Callahan Building (now the Gem City Savings Building)

 

* James B. Stronks is assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois

in Chicago.

• 1
 

96    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

and running errands in the courthouse.1 At his own expense he had

already printed two modest volumes of verse (Oak and Ivy in

December 1892, and Majors and Minors in January 1896) and had

earned a local reputation as a reciter of them. He had also gained

the moral and financial support of Dr. Henry A. Tobey, superinten-

dent of the Toledo State Hospital, who was loyally to help him at

every turn of his career. It was at Dr. Tobey's shrewd suggestion

in early 1896 that the shy Dunbar sent a copy of his Majors and

Minors to James A. Heme when the actor and dramatist was play-

ing in his Shore Acres in Toledo. In a few days Heme wrote ad-

miringly of the book to Dunbar, promising to pass it on to his

friend William Dean Howells.

He did so--the crucial link in the chain of events--and Howells,

pleased "by the little countrified volume, which inwardly was full

of a new world,"² soon devoted to it the whole 3,500 words of his

"Life and Letters" department in the Harper's Weekly of June 27,

1896.

First to see that number of the magazine, Dr. Tobey triumph-

antly fired off a postcard to Paul from Toledo: "Get a copy of

Harper's Weekly and read what William Dean Howells thinks of

you."³ Because that issue featured news of McKinley's nomination

at Minneapolis and sold out fast in Ohio, Dunbar at first had trouble

finding a copy. But when he did get one into his hands he breath-

lessly and half-deliriously devoured the article while standing on

the sidewalk by the newstand.

 

There has come to me [wrote Howells] from the hand of a friend, very

unofficially, a little book of verse, dateless, placeless, without a publisher,

which has greatly interested me. Such foundlings of the press always appeal

to one by their forlornness; but commonly the appeal is to one's pity only,

which is moved all the more if the author of the book has innocently

printed his picture with his verse.

 

1 Any undocumented Dunbar facts come from a collation of his three biographies,

the last of which is the most useful single source: Lida Keck Wiggins, The Life and

Works of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Naperville, Ill., 1907); Benjamin Brawley, Paul

Laurence Dunbar, Poet of His People (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1936); and Virginia

Cunningham, Paul Laurence Dunbar and His Song (New York, 1947).

2 Letter to Dunbar's biographer. See Wiggins, p. 57.

3 Cunningham, p. 144.

• 2
 

DUNBAR AND HOWELLS             97

 

To hook his readers' attention at once, Howells took up an un-

comfortably candid, even offensive, vein which was strikingly unlike

his usual genteel blandness:

 

In this present case I felt a heightened pathos in the appeal from the

fact that the face which confronted me when I opened the volume was the

face of a young Negro, with the race traits strangely accented: the black

skin, the woolly hair, the thick out-rolling lips, and the mild, soft eyes of

the pure African type. One cannot be very sure of the age of these people,

but I should have thought that this poet was about twenty years old; and

I suppose that a generation ago he would have been worth, apart from

his literary gift, twelve or fifteen hundred dollars under the hammer.

Confident of an audience, Howells then relaxed into a low-pres-

sured and leisurely analysis of Majors and Minors which, as it turned

out, was to set the direction of most Dunbar criticism for the rest

of the poet's career. Dunbar's poems in proper "literary" English,

said Howells, show "honest thinking and true feeling," but they

are not "specially notable" except that their author is black. It was

the other poems that he found remarkable:

It is when we come to Mr. Dunbar's [verses in Negro dialect] that we

feel ourselves in the presence of a man with a direct and fresh authority

to do the kind of thing he is doing. I wish I could give the whole of the

longest of these pieces . . . but I must content myself with a passage or

two. They will impart some sense of the jolly rush of its movement, its

vivid picturesqueness, its broad characterization; and will perhaps suffice

to show what vistas into the simple, sensuous, joyous nature of his race,

Mr. Dunbar opens.

 

And where he had quoted a mere twelve lines of Dunbar's verses

in straight English, Howells now proceeded, here and there

throughout the review, to quote 145 lines of those in dialect--

a partiality which was thereafter the poet's greatest asset and

sorest irritation.

Howells was impressed too by the historical uniqueness of what

he called

the first man of his color to study his race objectively, to analyze it to

himself, and then to represent it in art as he felt it and found it to be; to

• 3
 

98     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

represent it humorously, yet tenderly, and above all so faithfully that we

know the portrait to be undeniably like. A race which has reached this

effect in any of its members can no longer be held wholly uncivilized; and

intellectually Dunbar makes a stronger claim for the Negro than any

Negro has yet done.⁴

 

And after some characteristically liberal philosophizing on the

phenomenon of a good poet who happened to be of purely African

descent, the practical Howells ended by telling the reader that the

printers of the "significant little book" were Hadley and Hadley

of Toledo.⁵

"Mr. Howells has made you famous," Dr. Tobey now told Paul;6

and proof of the critic's influence was the flood of orders which

instantly poured into Hadley and Hadley from all parts of the

country, and those which came among the hundreds of letters which

began to choke the Dunbars' mailbox.

But it was more than two weeks before the grateful young poet,

after painstaking revision of his letter, felt confident enough to

post off his thanks to Howells. Now in the Howells Collection

in the Harvard library, Dunbar's letter reads exactly like many others

there which over the years came to the critic from grateful new

authors whom he championed:

 

Dayton Ohio 7/13--1896.

Dear Mr. Howells:

I have seen your article in Harpers and felt its effect. That I have not

written you sooner is neither the result of wilful neglect or lack of gratitude.

It has taken time for me to recover from the shock of delightful surprise.

My emotions have been too much for me. I could not thank you without

"gushing" and I did not want to "gush."

Now from the very depths of my heart I want to thank you. You your-

self do not know what you have done for me. I feel much as a poor, insig-

nificant, helpless boy would feel to suddenly find himself knighted.

I can tell you nothing about myself because there is nothing to tell. My

4 Howells at this time did not know--it was not generally known at this time--

that Charles Waddell Chesnutt, the Cleveland lawyer whose stories had appeared in

the Atlantic Monthly in the 1880's, was partly Negro. Howells was later to praise

Chesnutt's work on several occasions.

5 The review appeared in Harper's Weekly, XL (1896), p. 630, and is reprinted,

fairly accurately, in the Cunningham biography, pp. 144-148.

6 Wiggins biography, p. 59.

• 4
 

DUNBAR AND HOWELLS              99

 

whole life has been simple, obscure and uneventful. I have written my

little pieces and sometimes recited them, but it seemed hardly by my volition.

The kindly praise that you have accorded me will be an incentive to

more careful work. My greatest fear is that you may have been more kind

to me than just.

I have written to thank Mr. Herne for putting the book into your hands.

I have only seen the man on the stage, but have laughed and cried with

him until I love him.

Again thanking you, Mr. Howells, for your more than kindness,

I am Sincerely Yours,

Paul Laurence Dunbar

140 Ziegler St. Dayton O.⁷

 

Some of Dunbar's advisors now wrote to Howells asking his help

in getting the young author accepted by a lecture manager, for no

poet can live on the sale of his books. Howells wrote recommending

to each other Paul and Major James B. Pond, the platform agent

for Mark Twain (and later Howells himself), who already had

managed appearances by two eminent Negroes, Booker T. Wash-

ington and Frederick Douglass. Pond sent for Dunbar to come to

New York, and, wearing a new suit paid for by Dr. Tobey and

with money in his pocket from Toledoans Brand Whitlock and

"Golden Rule" Jones,⁸ Paul at once went East and signed with

the manager.

Major Pond quickly booked him into readings around New York,

meanwhile sending him with letters of introduction to several pub-

lishers. And soon he directed Paul out to William     Dean Howells'

summer home at Far Rockaway, on Long Island, for the first meeting

of the two writers.

It was after lunch on August 19, 1896, that the shy young Negro

approached the great man's door with a sinking heart, which was

not helped when a maid coolly left him standing outside as she

 

7 The letter was first printed in the Cunningham biography, pp. 148-149. Like

the rest of Dunbar's letters in this paper--all previously unpublished--this is in

the Howells Collection at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and is printed

here with the generous permission of the poet's niece, Mrs. Helen Gillim of Dayton,

Ohio, and of Mr. William A. Jackson of the Houghton Library. Wherever it would

confuse the printer or distract the reader, Dunbar's punctuation and capitalization

have been corrected in these letters.

8 James H. Rodabaugh, "Paul Laurence Dunbar House," Museum Echoes (Ohio

Historical Society), XXIX (1956), 13.

• 5
 

100    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

carried in his name. But at once Howells hurried to greet his guest

warmly, taking both of his hands in his own and leading him into

the house. Ten years later, after Paul's death, Howells told Dunbar's

biographer that he had found the poet to be "one of the most

refined and modest men I had ever met, and truly a gentleman."⁹

The two Ohioans talked about Dayton, where Howells himself

had lived in 1849-50, when his family was putting out the Tran-

script. In those days twelve-year-old Will sometimes had to set type

until 11 P.M. and then rise at 4:30 A.M. to deliver papers.10 The

distinguished elder in whose home Paul Dunbar now sat had worked

as hard as any boy or man to earn his position, and had done it on

much less formal schooling than Dunbar had enjoyed.

Their talk naturally turned to Dunbar's work, and Howells is

said to have counseled the young man: "Write what you know.

Write what you feel. Analyze detail. Build the picture. Make it

real."¹¹ By teatime the two were still talking, possibly joined by the

Howells family, and not until a good deal later did the visit come

to an end. By then Dunbar was shivering--it was an unusually

chilly evening and the house was near the ocean--and his host

insisted upon bundling him in his own overcoat. According to his

family, Howells was "touched and shocked" to find afterward that

Dunbar thought there was anything unusual in the gesture.l²

Two days later, on the office stationery of Major Pond in New

York, Dunbar wrote a well-bred and witty thank-you letter:

 

August 21--'96

Dear Mr. Howells:

This note should have been written yesterday when I returned your coat

by the National Express.

Let me thank you again for your kindness, although the circumstances

brought to my mind the old fable of the ass in the lion's skin.

 

9 Wiggins biography, p. 63. A slightly different version of the meeting appears

in Cunningham, p. 155.

10 William Dean Howells, Years of My Youth (New York, 1916), 41.

11 Cunningham biography, p. 155.

12 Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, edited by Mildred Howells (Garden

City, N. Y., 1928), II, 67-68.

• 6
 

DUNBAR AND HOWELLS               101

 

Notwithstanding all my precautions I have taken cold. I hope that you

are more fortunate and that this note will find both you and your family well.

With warmest regards,

To Mr. W. D. Howells                               I am Sincerely Yours

Far Rockaway, L. I.                                      Paul Dunbar.13

To this the busy Howells at once took the time to reply in one

of his characteristically gracious and shapely little notes:

 

Far Rockaway, L. I.

Aug. 23, 1896.

Dear Mr. Dunbar:

The coat came back safely and promptly; but I am sorry to learn that it

did not save you from taking cold. May it cover, hereafter, as good and

gifted a man as when you wore it.

We were all greatly pleased to meet you and make your acquaintance,

and we shall watch your fortunes with the cordial interest of friends.

Yours sincerely

W. D. Howells.¹4

As a piece of astute promotion, Howells was now appealed to

for a preface to a forthcoming Dunbar book, and he obliged

speedily. His introduction was a 1,500-word digest of the points

he had first made in Harper's Weekly, but it was better written and

more emphatic than the review had been. His agreement to lend

his prestige to the book was worth money in the bank to Dunbar,

and also put him in good company artistically, for Howells had

recently introduced two other books by promising young authors

whose debuts he had also heralded--Hamlin Garland's grimly

realistic Main-Travelled Roads (1893 edition), and Stephen Crane's

avant-garde Maggie (1896 edition).

Howells wrote the Dunbar introduction so promptly--even before

seeing the book it was to escort before the public--that Paul had

been back home from New York only a short time before he again

 

13 Howells Collection, Harvard University.

14 Previously unpublished, the Howells letters in this paper are among the Dunbar

collection at the Ohio Historical Society Library in Columbus. They appear here with

the kind permission of the Howells heirs, especially of Prof. W. W. Howells. I am

also grateful to Miss Jean Blackwell of the New York Public Library and to Miss

Frances L. Goudy of the Ohio Historical Society Library for their help.

• 7
 

102     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

owed his thanks to the critic. It was just one month after his visit

in the Howells home that he wrote again to his benefactor:

 

Dayton Ohio Sept. 19th 1896.

Mr. W. D. Howells,

My Dear Sir:

As you see, my home holds me once more, but I have brought with me

many pleasant memories of New York and the kindness I received there.

There are many people whom I have to thank for favors shown and none

more than yourself.

Not the least source of my gratitude, by any means, is your excellent

introduction to my new book. It was no little thing for you to introduce

a book of verse by an obscure black writer and I believe that I fully appre-

ciate the nobility of your act.

You may be pleased to know that my affairs have very materially changed

for the better, and entirely through your agency.

Thanking you again and with regards to yourself and family,

I am Sincerely Yours

To Mr. W. D. Howells.                                                                      Paul Dunbar

Far Rockaway, L. I.                                                                   140 Ziegler St.15

When Dodd, Mead and Company agreed to publish the new

book, they had offered him fifteen percent royalties and a four

hundred dollar advance.¹⁶ It was the equivalent of two years' wages

for the elevator boy, and liberal terms for a novice author, especially

in poetry. Able to pay off his debts, Paul now found more frequent

--and more profitable--engagements to recite his poetry. Well

merited, but heavily indebted to Howells, his vogue had begun.

In putting together the new book for Dodd, Mead, he had selected

the best pieces from his earlier two volumes and added eleven new

ones. Always to be his best-known book, Lyrics of Lowly Life ap-

peared in handsome green and gold on December 2, 1896, in good

time for the Christmas trade. Making use of the name of William

Dean Howells, it was an immediate success, especially for a book

of poetry, selling 3,000 or 4,000 yearly for several years and even-

tually rolling up a large total.¹⁷

 

15 Howells Collection, Harvard University.

16 Cunningham biography, p. 153.

17 Brawley biography, p. 58, and letters to me from Dodd, Mead and Company,

December 13 and 31, 1957. It was to be reprinted at least eleven times by 1928.

Allusions to the book in literary magazines of the time invariably spoke of Howells'

• 8
 

DUNBAR AND HOWELLS             103

 

A few weeks later, in February 1897, Dunbar returned East on

his way to England, where he would chance his fortunes under the

management of Major Pond's daughter. Again Howells gave prac-

tical help, this time by writing letters of introduction to some pos-

sibly useful persons across the Atlantic. One of the letters--one

that Dunbar never used--was to Howells' Edinburgh publisher and

friend, David Douglas, to whom he wrote:

 

New York, Feb. 4, 1897.

My dear Mr. Douglas:

Allow me to present my friend, Mr. Paul Dunbar, the first of his race to

put his race into poetry. I hope he will show you his book, and let it say

for his worth the things he is too modest to say for himself.

Yours sincerely

W. D. Howells.18

In England, Dunbar met with mixed experiences. He enjoyed

some gratifying attentions: "I am the most interviewed man in

London," he wrote to his mother, and one correspondent to an

American paper reported:

Paul Dunbar, the Negro poet, who owes to William Dean Howells his

introduction to the public, is being lionized in London in most flattering

fashion. The color line is not drawn in English society, and the colored

versifier, being the latest literary novelty, is much sought for receptions,

garden parties, and similar gatherings. His readings of his own verses have

been highly praised by the press, nor are the criticisms of the verses

themselves less friendly.¹⁹

And he once read his poetry before the guests of the United States

ambassador, Howells' friend John Hay, one-time Clevelander, who

had in his own youth published dialect verses.

But when the London season came to an end, Dunbar found him-

self stranded almost without a cent, and in difficult straights with

his manageress. When Miss Pond had agreed to handle Dunbar,

 

good opinion of Dunbar. The sole disagreement seems to have come from William

Morton Payne, generally a sound and conservative critic, who wrote in the Chicago

Dial for February 1, 1897, that Dunbar's work hardly justified the praise Howells

gave it.

18 Dunbar Collection, Ohio Historical Society Library.

19 Cunningham biography, p. 164.

• 9
 

104     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

she had asked him if he was a good swimmer, warning him that if

business proved bad they might have to swim back to America.²⁰

That was just about the case now, and Dunbar holed up in a cheap

London room and began to work on a novel--something that might

earn some money. It was a dreary chapter in his life and it produced

some down-in-the-mouth letters back home. In one he complained

to a friend about Howells' widely publicized preference for his

Negro dialect poems over those in formal English. With partial

truth, Dunbar wrote:

One critic says a thing and the rest hasten to say the same thing, in many

cases using the identical words. I see now very clearly that Mr. Howells has

done me irrevocable harm in the dictum he laid down regarding my dialect

verse. I am afraid that it will even influence English criticism.²1

To Howells himself, however, he seems not to have brought up

the sore point--which was perhaps just as well, inasmuch as the

critic had been right in the first place. But in a blue mood one day

in late April 1897 he wrote a moving personal report to his eminent

friend. It began stiffly, but loosened up as it went along:

3 Northumberlun Ave--[sic]

Trafalgar Sq.

London W.

Lane's Agency 26th April 1897

Dear Mr. Howells:

I have been long promising myself the pleasure of writing to you. But

I have foreborn for lack of something really interesting to say, nor even

now is this disability removed.

As you possibly know Mr. Lane was in America when I reached England

and did not return for nearly a month. I have not been to Edinburgh and

hence have not had a chance to present your letter to Mr. Douglas. However

I thank you sincerely for them both.

Messrs. Chapman and Hall are to bring out my book [i.e., the 1897

English edition of Lyrics of Lowly Life].

In the matter of reading here, I have done very little. The season was

not open when we arrived here and little was to be done except in

clubs and at hotel smoking concerts a sort of work which I despised. I was

20 The Critic, XXX (1897), 166.

21 Brawley biography, p. 60. Though his Negro dialect is considered to be the

best ever written, Dunbar came to disparage such verses as "jingles in a broken tongue."

The best discussion of dialect as an artistic problem for Dunbar is by J. Saunders

Redding in To Make a Poet Black (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1939), 51-67.

• 10
 

DUNBAR AND HOWELLS                105

 

put in upon programs between dancing girls from the vaudeville and clowns

from the varieties. At one place I went on at midnight when half or three

fourths of the men were drunk. Miss Pond cooly [sic] informed me that

in such cases as this I was to tell vulgar stories! She has treated me in the

most brutal and dishonest way. Mr. Dodd kindly came to my rescue when he

was here and deposited sufficient [sic] for my fare home. I tried to get

redress from my manager by threatening to leave, but she disciplined me by

going away to Paris and leaving my board bill unpaid. She has scrupled

at nothing to repress and annoy me, but I shall not come home without

accomplishing something to keep from being marked a "failure."

The Savage Club entertained me at dinner and gave my work a most

enthusiastic reception. I shall recite next Sunday evening for Mr. Moncure

D. Conway, who in conversation with me the other day spoke very feelingly

and affectionately of you.²²

Although I distrust my ability very much, I am hard at work upon a

novel and have made some progress with it. The press here has been

uniformly kind to me, but I am wondering what they will say about my

book, they are so conservative here. Mr. Oswald Crawford [sic], however,

thinks very well of the work and hopes great things for it.23 If I once

get really started in the literary line, no more readings for me--forever.

I have had my fill of readings and managers. If I can make my living by my

pen I will not use my voice. This will be hard I know but I have not

entirely lost heart.

I hope that you and your family are well and that when you have leisure

you will write to me.

Thanking you for many favors,

I am Sincerely Yours,

Paul Laurence Dunbar.²⁴

 

Returning finally to the states, Dunbar began working at a new

job, at the Library of Congress in Washington, while at night he

pushed ahead on his novel, "The Uncalled," and turned out various

"impressions" of London for an eager magazine market.²⁵ Marry-

22 The Savage Club was made up of artists and writers. Moncure Conway--

liberal clergyman, editor of the Cincinnati Dial, and a prolific writer--was a long-

time friend of Howells.

23 Dunbar is referring again to the English edition of Lyrics of Lowly Life. Oswald

Crawfurd was, among other things, a poet and poetry anthologist.

24 Howells Collection, Harvard University.

25 One of these, "England as Seen by a Black Man," a moralistic article in the

Independent for September 16, 1897, might seem to echo Howells' letter of intro-

duction to Douglas (above) when it says, "To be sure it is a great thing to have

been accepted upon the basis of worth alone; to have found a people who do

not assert color as a badge of degradation." And almost certainly Howells was

thinking of Dunbar when in his next novel he made his semi-autobiographical hero,

Basil March, say that a Negro poet in America was well justified in speaking bitterly

of his lot there. Their Silver Wedding Journey (New York, 1899), 552.

• 11
 

106    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

ing in 1898 and supporting a wife as well as a mother, he began

his years of greatest productivity, overtaxing his health to capitalize

on his remarkable popularity.

Poems, articles, short stories, novels, new collections of verse and

fiction, musical comedy lyrics, and constant recitals--with the tiring

travel and Jim Crow troubles they involved--all cut into Dunbar's

limited vitality. Finally a crisis came in April of 1899, when his

weakened system gave way to pneumonia and he lay critically ill in

a shabby New York apartment house for weeks, too sick to be

moved to a hospital. Learning of this, Howells, the most eminent

literary man in America, and a stout sixty-two, labored up many

flights of dark stairs to the apartment's back door to inquire in a

whisper after Paul's condition and to express his personal concern

--a picture cherished by Dunbar's Negro biographers.

A month later, in May 1899, when the poet still lay weakly con-

valescent, Howells published a third discussion of his work. Writing

of "The New Poetry" in the North American Review, he dealt with

a dozen young English and American authors, and in what he now

said about Dunbar a new tone appeared. Loyalty and liberality

were still there, but also a note of disappointment:

 

I could not leave out the name of Paul Dunbar, the young Negro poet,

who has won popularity as well as recognition. It is a proof of the love of

poetry in a time and country apparently so prosaic as ours that he has

quickly made himself widely known, and has found not only favor but

affection. It is not as a phenomenon that he has done this, not merely as

the first Negro who has been able to deal objectively with Negroism; it is as

something far more positive, it is as an absolute poet. In the verse that he

has written since his earliest volume was published, he has carried his work

on rather than up; but if he went no higher than the mark he struck at first

he would still have made good his claim to our attention, and would have

become unalienably a part of our literary history.²⁶

These mild words are perhaps not so much those of a hard-headed

critic as of a soft-hearted friend, a friend who in the next year

would again allude to Dunbar, not as one of the best, but as "among

the truest of our poets."²⁷ The fact was that the still young author

26 North American Review, CLXVIII (1899), 590.

27 Atlantic Monthly, LXXXV (1900), 701.

• 12
 

DUNBAR AND HOWELLS            107

 

was not really fulfilling the promise which Howells had heralded in

1896. In his earliest letter to Howells, Dunbar had said that the

critic's good opinion would be an incentive to more careful work,

but thereafter Dunbar had been increasingly forced, or lured, into

mediocre journalism and sometimes less-than-mediocre fiction. And

because even his poetry tended--as Howells had gently written--to

go "on rather than up," the critic no longer had much reason to

speak publicly of the talented young man whom he had once hailed

so conspicuously.

But that he continued to be privately helpful to the poet in a

practical way is clear from a letter which the ailing Dunbar, his

pneumonia having given way to tuberculosis, wrote a few weeks

later from the Catskills:

Broadhead's Bridge, Ulster Co, N.Y.

July 24th 1899

My Dear Mr. Howells:

I have been wanting to write and thank you for your letter to me and

the personal advice it contained. Fortunately, the matter has been adjusted.

Lippincotts retained the serial rights of the stories and relinquished the

book privileges to Messrs. Dodd & Mead. But more than all I want to

thank you for coming and climbing away up stairs to inquire for me when I

was ill. The act may have meant very little to you, but it meant very much

to me.

I am very much better now though my health seems to be permanently

impaired and my physicians forbid my return to Washington and I shall

have to make a home for myself elsewhere.

Thanking you again for your kindness & interest,

I am Sincerely Yours,

Paul Dunbar.²⁸

Howells' first letter to Dunbar had said, "We shall watch your

fortunes with the cordial interest of friends." He could only have

been sorrowful, therefore, at the young author's steady decline.

Dunbar continued to publish largely--but also to suffer largely

from marital troubles, from the ravages of advanced tuberculosis,

and from distressingly unsteady ways. Finally separated from his

wife Alice and periodically struck by massive hemorrhages, tired

 

28 Howells Collection, Harvard University. Howells was to allude to Dunbar in

complimentary fashion once again, in the North American Review of August 1901.

• 13
 

108    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

and aware of his approaching end, Dunbar returned in late 1903 to

the home which he had bought for his mother and himself at 219

North Summit Street in Dayton. In the lines entitled "Worn Out,"

he now wrote, "I bear/A pain beyond my years." He lingered only

thirty more months before dying of tuberculosis in February 1906 at

the age of thirty-three.²⁹

In the place of a eulogy, the Bookman reprinted Howells' intro-

duction to Lyrics of Lowly Life.³⁰ And the famous piece appeared

still again at the head of the Complete Poems of Paul Laurence

Dunbar in 1913 and 1916, when Howells, then the venerable "dean

of American letters," was still a prestigious name in the business

of book-making. The name and the introduction were still worth

reprinting with the Collected Poems of 1940.

Howells' widely-read Harper's Weekly review of Majors and

Minors in 1896, re-worked into the much-quoted introduction to

Lyrics of Lowly Life, had linked his name with Dunbar's from the

start. Possibly the greatest single event in American Negro litera-

ture to this day, that perceptive and large-minded criticism by the

country's chief man of letters had given a priceless boost to the

sorrowfully short but significant career of Paul Dunbar, whose

black skin and idiom made him unique among the other talented,

hungry young authors whom Howells championed and befriended

over the decades.

29 Since the death of Dunbar's mother in 1934, the Dunbar House--with the

poet's books and other personal belongings--has been maintained as a State Memorial

by the Ohio Historical Society. It is pictured in the Society's publication Museum

Echoes for February 1956.

30 Bookman, XXIII (1906), 185-186.

• 14