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

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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

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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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THE REDWOOD their folly; they went to Paris and thence to London where they settled themselves. Some of the experiences of those earlier days are divertingly parodied in a play entitled: The Light Sovereign. The Light Sovereign was published in 1889 and was afterwards elaborated into a farcical Comedy in collaboration with Mr. Hubert Crackan- thorpe. But as a Comedy, it was never produced, although Balkan plays and Balkan tales it has suggested to a whole tribe of playwrights and novelists. From 1889, desultorily, in the English Reviews, began to appear stories which were collected and published afterwards by Mr. Heinemann, under the title of Mademoiselle Miss. The stories are re- markable for their humour, their tender presentment of human nature in its less usual and obvious aspects. This book attracted a good deal of attention. Grey Roses followed Madetnoiselle Miss; and after Grey Roses came Come- dies and Errors. The short story, (more ' s the pity) is rarely in book form a success in English-speaking lands. But Grey Roses and Comedies and Errors had the good fortune to capti- vate both the critics and the public. The critics recognized in them Gems of the literary art by the hand of a master, and Mr. Henry James wrote an article about them in The Fortnightly Review and Mr. William Courtney wrote another, I believe in 77 ,? Contem- porary. By this time Mr. Harland ' s house in London had become the centre of an in- teresting group of litterateurs, a brilliant coterie of men and women artists. Letters, music, black and white work, were undergoing a sea-change in Eng- land, a quiet revival; lo! the sound of the turtle was heard in the land. Through The Yellow Book, the move- ment found expression at last; it actual- ly rose to a Renaissance and thus the intrinsic spirit of Art came afresh and for a while, into its own. ' ' How I Passed Thirty-Six Hours in a Boiler! ' ' One had grown so weary of the story, of which one knows the type. As to Black and White Work! A Royal Academy picture translated into terms of photograviug would give a fair exam- ple of its commonplaceness, its banality. Yet from Oxford, from Cambridge, from London, from Glasgow, men came, men who had things to say, things to do, of an original sort; whose vision included far more of life and of its wonders than the rehearsal of the tale: How I Passed Thirty-six Hours in a Boiler, — or a rep- resentation manifold of The Cotter ' s Sat- urday Night sort of picture. It was in truth, then, I make no doubt, very much as it is now, — the Editor of the average Magazine was a timid person; he saw evil everywhere and safety only in Matrimony. Caution prompted him for the most part to print nothing with the slightest touch of individuality, unless indeed, it had pre- viously been sifted and declared wheat, by an audience outside of his dominion. In fact courage was denied him, and he was and is still, — always for the safe side. But on the other hand, those unknown artist-watchers of the skies were in the