University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD TfiE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HENRY HARLAND (1861-1905) ii ]I R- Harland, said Htmy ly Harland ' s secretary one day to him, will you give me some facts concerning your life and your work for the Editor of who wants an article about you in his Mag- azine? Tell him, laughed Harland, That I was born. And that, thank God, I ' m still alive. This was all the information the Sec- retary got and this resumes Harland ' s attitude toward self-revelation. I Henry Harland ' s life was a direct, vigorous, gracious and open one, with- out much to-do. The achievement of the life might divide itself into an A- merican and an European Episode. As to Henry Harland ' s personality,it laughs, loves, suffers in each one of bis charac- ters; while his spirit sparkles through all the manner of his writing, his style: and Le Style c ' est P homme. ' ' Thomas Harland, Henry Harland ' s father, was a New York Barrister and Counsellor-at-law;he was a cultivated and an able man with a great heart, who died in May, 1898. Henry Har- land ' s mother still lives, a distinguished and remarkable woman. On the mater- nal side Thomas and Irene Harland came from Puritan and Quaker stock. But on the Harland side of the house the ancestry was English. Thomas Harland, eldest son of one Admiral Sir Robert Harland, having quarrelled with his people in England, came to Norwich, in Connecticut, in 1773. He fell in love with a New England girl, married her, built a house and settled in her town, which was Norwich. The Harland family has lived there ever since, in the same house which has been altered and enlarged for succeed- ing generations. On the rise of ground which domi- nates the house stood, once, a shelter, during King Philip ' s war, for the Sen- try on the lookout for invading Indians; the hill is now a fine, peaceabe old apple-orchard; but the Sentinel ' s or Sentry ' s Box gave its name to the house and to the place, Sentry Hill; which, in Henry Harland ' s posthumous novel, The Royal End, is called Barrack ' s Hill. It is there quite accurately de- scribed. Henry Harland, born on March i, 1861, was as a youth, educated at the College of the City of New York. In 1881 he went to Harvard University, where he stayed for one year as a student of theology. But Cambridge did not give him what he wanted, and when his parents offered him a year abroad he left Cambridge with relief to spend another year in Italy, the better part in Rome. With zest — all the zest of his ardent tern-

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Entered Dec. , igo2, at Santa Clata, Calif, as second-clais matter, under Act of Congress of March ?, [879. Vol. X SANTA CLARA, CAL.. OCTOBER, 1910. No. 1 THE WANDERER f eve has dropped a i-ear upon ihe rose hose ne2i]m£ peials sparkle s oft and shine; he stars their eyes do ope and entJij £low nd J am wandering far from home and mine. (From that vast vault of £lintin£ £ems sublime The moon rays down its £oiden mellow ii£hi ; nd when J think of him no longer here hitter tear betrays and dims my si£ht. The dews upon the £rass shine each like stars nd insects hum the heavy-scented air fawn from thicket deep beside the way Jloth spring and run as J draw near its lair. ' is thus J wander through the perfumed eve Jlnd throw my soui upon the softened wind hile a loving Qod der ail these beauties rare J ooks down on me and all the homeless kind. Jiodney . JoeJJ.

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THE REDWOOD perament and humor and keen intelli- gence, Henry Harland threw himself in- to the sport of the artist ' s life here; and as he was fortified with letters of intro- duction, be saw, too, much of the best Roman Society, Black and White; when he returned to America, in 1883, still scarcely more than a lad, he had found himself. Wholly — in mind and heart, — Harland was a Catholic and he was an artist. However, he did not then make his obedience to the Catholic Church for he had fallen in love with a young girl who like himself was of New England stock, but in whom had been noarished a violent prejudice against the Catholic faith. The young people were married a year after Harland ' s return from Europe. II Henry Harland ' s sensitive and re- sponsive mind was teeming with im- pressions. All his genius spoke in the direction of literature and in order to write he adopted the plan of rising at 4 A. M. and on a brew of coffee, of setting to work until eight. At nine he was at his OflBce in the Surrogates ' Court of the City of New York. He had, before his marriage, made the ac- quaintance of a young Jew, a member of Mr. Felix Adler ' s Ethical Culture Society, and as the acquaintance grew into a friendship everything Jewish be- came of interest to Henry Harland, who was nothing if not whole-souled in his attachments. The Jewish element of New York appealed to his imagina- tion, perpetually athirst for picturesque material; he saturated himself with the romantic traditions of the Jewish race and weaving together its past ar.d pre- sent wrote his first novel: As It Was Written; A Jewish Musician ' s Story. The poet critic, Mr. Clarence Stedman, was Henry Harland ' s godfather. De- lighted with the finished Ms. when it was put in his hands, he took charge of placing it with a publisher. The novel appeared,— -proved one of the successes of the season and brought the young man more demands for his work than he could possibly meet, so that he felt justified in giving up his post in the Civil Service, an exhausting one, — and in devoting himself absolutely to literary life. Mrs. Peixada and The Yoke Of The Thorah succeded As It Was Written. The three novels form a sort of Jewish trilogy, which afterwards Harland was wont gaily to term: Mes peches de jeu- nesse, for they did not meet at all with his artistic approval. They are, and notwithstanding this, very vivid, humourous, and in the case of hero and heroine, profoundly tragic studies, of the New York Jewish world and its problems, in the eighties; and it has been said of them that in their broad lines, their vigor and hardihood of treatmen t, they suggest a type of talent similiar to that of Rodin, the French Sculptor. Ill The young couple in 1887 had the wisdom of their genius, their youth and