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Title: The Dead Men's Song
       Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its
              Author Young Ewing Allison

Author: Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

Release Date: September 17, 2006 [EBook #19273]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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The Dead Men’s Song:

Being the
Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch
of Its Author

YOUNG EWING ALLISON

Together with a Browse Through Other
Gems of His and Recollections
of Older Days

by

His Friend and Associate

CHAMPION INGRAHAM HITCHCOCK

Incorporated with which are Facsimiles of Certain Interesting Manuscripts

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

1914

copyright by
Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

1914

IN THESE PAGES

A Word Said Beforehand

Explaining How a Certain “Chap” Lost His Temper and Found It Again Very Quickly.

Derelict, By Young Ewing Allison

A Reminiscence of Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” Based On the Quatrain of Captain Billy Bones.

Picturing the Individual

With Some Observations About A Man Whom I Have the Honor to Call Friend.

Man and Newspaper Man

A Peep Into Personal Records of the Past With Some Comments of a Current Nature.

Just Browsing Around

Excursions Into the “Higher Altitudes” With Something About the Books Up There.

In the Operatic Field

Being a Look Behind the Scenes With Some Glimpses of a Pursuing Jinx.

Ballad of Dead Men

The Same Being Mostly About Able Pirates And the Very Able Descendant of a Pirate.

If There Is Controversy!

Just a Few Bits From the Olden Days With Some Comment On a Certain Critic.

Some Clippings—And a Letter

Which Tells How One Who Did Not Know Set Himself Up As a “Chanty” Authority.

Yo-Ho-Ho And A Bottle Of Rum

Discussed As a Chanty Entertainingly By a Mariner and With a Deep-Sea Flavor.

SUPPLEMENTING the TEXT

Young Ewing Allison (By Cusick)Frontispiece.

A “Sitting” for Which Photograph Forms A Story Known Only to This Writer.

Derelict Illuminating the Poem

Facsimiles of the Original Illustrations in Rubric (Vol. 1, No. 1, 1901) to Which Certain Piratical Tints Have Been Added.

“A Tempting Bauble”

Said “Bauble” Being a Check (to Cover the Cost of a Certain Book) Which Allison Returned in a Frame With a Few Comments of His Own.

Young E. Allison (By Wyncie King)

Louisville Herald Demon Caricaturist’s Conception of a Pirate’s Poet, With a Cigarette Replacing the Customary “Stogie.”

The Infallible (By Charles Dana Gibson)

A “Type” in Every Old Daily Newspaper Office, Reproduced from Century (October, 1889), Illustrating “The Longworth Mystery.”

Book of “The Ogallallas”

Being a Facsimile (Slightly Reduced) of the Cover of Allison’s First Opera Pursued and Captured By a Jinx.

From The Old “Prompt” Book

Page (slightly reduced) From “The Mouse and the Garter,” Showing Allison’s Characteristic Penciled Notations.

“A Piratical Ballad” (Words And Music)

Facsimile in Miniature of the First Printed Verses of “Derelict” Published and Copyrighted by William A. Pond & Co., 1891.

---

Together With Certain Letters and Memoranda, Proofs, Mss., etc., About “Fifteen Dead Men,” in Facsimile of Young E. Allison’s Characteristic Handwriting, which are to be Found in a “Pocket” in the Inside Back Cover of This Volume.

11

A WORD SAID BEFOREHAND

If a careless and uninformed writer in The New York Times Book Review had not hazarded the speculation in his columns that it was very doubtful if Young Ewing Allison wrote the famous poem “Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest,” the creation and perfection of which took him through a period of about six years, the idea of undertaking a sketch of him and the stuff he has done might never have occurred to me. While not exactly thankful to the New York editor, I have abandoned a blood-thirsty raid on his sanctum and a righteous indignation has been dissipated in the serene pleasure I have found in expressing an appreciation of Allison’s genius in this private volume for our friends. God bless the Old Scout! In all of our intimate years there has been such a complete understanding between us that spoken words have been largely unnecessary, and so the opportunity of saying publicly what has ever been in my heart, is a rare one, eagerly seized.

C. I. H.

Louisville, November, 1914.

13

DERELICT

A Reminiscence of “Treasure Island”

YOUNG E. ALLISON

20

21

PICTURING the INDIVIDUAL

One of my earliest recollections of my friend and business associate for very many, very short and very happy years, is a conversation in the old Chicago Press Club rooms on South Clark Street, near Madison, in the early 90’s, about three o’clock one morning, when the time for confidences arrives—if ever it does. What his especial business in Chicago was at that particular moment makes no particular difference. He might have been rehearsing “The Ogallallas,” or mayhap he was on duty as Kentucky commissioner to the World’s Fair. As a matter of mere fact he was there and we had spent an evening and part of a morning together and were bent on extending the session to daybreak. Sunrise on Madison Street always was a wonderful sight. The dingy buildings on that busy old thoroughfare, awakening to day-life, then appeared as newly painted in the mellow of the early morning.

My companion knew something was coming. Our chairs were close together—side by side—and we were looking each in the other’s face. He had his hand back of his ear. “Allison,” I said—and I suppose that after a night in his company I was so impregnated with his strong personality that I had my hand back of my ear too, and spoke in a low, slightly drawling nasal, like his—“Allison,” I repeated, “don’t you miss a great deal by being deaf?” Now, it is said with tender regret, but a deep and sincere regard for truth, that my friend makes a virtue of a slight deafness. He uses it to avoid arguments, assignments, 22conventions, parlor parties—and bores—and deftly evades a whole lot of “duty” conversations as well. Of course I know all this now, but in those days I thought his lack of complete hearing an infirmity calling for a sort of sympathy on my part. Anyway it was three o’clock in the morning, and…!

“Well,” he replied, after a little pause, “I can’t say that I do. You see, if anyone ever says anything worth repeating, he always tells me about it anyway.” Such is the philosophical trend that makes Allison an original with a peculiar gift of expression both in the spoken and written word. He is literary to his finger tips, in the finest sense of the word, for pure love, his own enjoyment and the pleasure of his friends. There is an ambition for you! With all his genuine modesty (and he is painfully modest) by which the light of his genius is hid under even less than the Scriptural bushel, he has a deep and healthy and honorable respect for fame—not of the cheap and tawdry, lionizing kind, but fame in an everlasting appreciation of those who think with their own minds. Almost any pen portraiture could but skim the surface of a nature so gifted and with which daily association is so delightful—an association which is a constant fillip to the mind in fascinating witticisms, in deft characterizations of men and things, and in deep drafts on memory’s storehouse for odd incidents and unexpected illuminations. A long silence from “Allison’s corner” may precede a gleeful chortle, as he throws on my desk some delicious satirical skit with a “Well, I’ve got that out of my system, anyway!”

Allison has a method of prose writing all his own. If you could see him day in and out, you would soon recognize the symptoms. An idea strikes him; he becomes abstracted, reads a great deal, pull down books, fills pages of particularly ruled 23copy paper with figures from a big, round, black pencil until you might think he was calculating the expenditures of a Billion Dollar Congress. He is not a mathematician but, like Balzac, simply dotes on figures. Then comes the analytical stage and that he performs on foot, walking, head bent forward, upstairs, downstairs, outdoors, around the block, in again, through the clattering press room and up and down the hall. When the stride quickens and he strikes a straight line for his desk, his orderly mind has arranged and classified his subject down to the illuminating adjectives even and the whole is ready to be put on paper. Though his mind is orderly, his desk seldom is. He is the type of old-school editor who has everything handy in a profound confusion. He detests office system, just as he admires mental arrangement. I got a “rise” out of him only once when making a pretence of describing his very complex method of preserving correspondence, and then he flared: “It saved us a lot of trouble, didn’t it?” The fact was patent, but the story is apropos. Allison was complaining to a friend of office routine.

“Hitch has no heart,” he said. “He comes over here, takes letters off my desk and puts ’em into an old file somewhere so no one can find them. That’s no way to do. When a letter comes to me I clip open the end with my shears, like a gentleman, read it, and put it back in the envelope. When in the humor I answer it. Of course there is no use keeping a copy of what I write; I know well enough what I say. All I want to keep is what the other fellow said to me. When it is time to clean the desk, I call a boy, have him box all the letters and take them over to the warehouse. Then whenever I want a letter I know damned well where it is—it’s in the warehouse.” It really happened that certain important and badly needed 24letters were “in the warehouse” and so Allison’s system was vindicated.

Just the mere mention of his system brings up the delightful recollections of his desk-cleaning parties, Spring and Fall, events so momentous that they almost come under the classification of office holidays. The dust flies, torn papers fill the air and the waste-baskets, and odd memoranda come to light and must be discussed. While wielding the dust cloth Allison hums “Bing-Binger, the Baritone Singer,” has the finest imaginable time and for several day wears an air of such conscious pride that every paper laid upon his desk is greeted with a terrible frown.

Musical? Of course. His is the poetic mind, the imaginative, with an intensely practical, analytical perception—uncanny at times. He is perfectly “crazy” about operas, reads everything that comes to his hand—particularly novels—and is an inveterate patron of picture shows. “Under no strain trying to hear ’em talk,” he confidences. While such occasions really are very rare, once in an age he becomes depressed—a peculiar fact (their rarity) in one so temperamental. After the fifth call within a month to act as pall-bearer at a funeral, he was in the depths. A friend was trying to cheer him.

“Isn’t it too bad, Mr. Allison,” the friend suggested, “that we can’t all be like the lilies in the field, neither toiling nor spinning, but shedding perfume everywhere?”

“That lily business is all right,” was Allison’s retort, “but if I were a flower it would be just my luck to be a tube-rose and be picked for a funeral!”

In all our years of association and friendship, I have never known him to do an unkind or dishonorable act. He is considerate of others, tender-hearted, sentimental. But, believe 25me, in “contrariwise,” he is flinty obsidian when it comes to his convictions. Shams and hypocrites and parading egotists are his particular and especial abomination and when he gets on the editorial trail of one of that ilk, he turns him inside out and displays the very secrets of what should be his immortal soul. He is always poking fun at friends and they laugh with him at what he writes about them, which recalls one of his earliest and best bits of advice—“never to write about a man so that others will laugh at him, unless your intention is deliberately to hurt his feelings. Write so that he will laugh with you.”

If I could have one grand wish it would be that everybody could know him as I do: the man; the book-worm; the toastmaster; the public speaker; the writer; the sentimentalist; the friend. Absolutely natural and approachable at all times with never the remotest hint of theatricalism, (unless the careless tossing over his shoulder of one flap of the cape of a cherished brown overcoat might be called theatrical), he is yet so many sided and complex that, without this self-same naturalness, often would be misunderstood. That he never cultivated an exclusiveness or built about himself barriers of idiosyncrasy is a distinct credit to his common sense. He’s chock-full of that!

Let us see just how versatile Young Allison is. Years ago—twenty-six to be exact—he took the dry old subject of insurance and week in and out made it sparkle with such wit and brilliancy that every-day editorials became literary gems which laymen read with keenest enjoyment. Insurance writing might be said to be his vocation—a sort of daily-bread affair, well executed, because one should not quarrel with his sustenance—with librettos for operas, and poems and essays as an avocation. Fate must have doomed his operas in the very beginning, for despite some delicious productions, captivating in words 26and spirit, and set to slashing music, they go unsung because a a malign Jinx pursued.

While Allison is an omnivorous reader of novels and every other form of book, which he carries to and from his home in a favorite brown-leather handbag of diminutive size, he never had an ambition to create novels, though to his everlasting credit wrote two for a particular purpose which he accomplished by injecting the right tone or “color” into tales depicting the inner life on daily newspapers. We of the old Press Club used to grow choleric as we would read stories about alleged newspaper men, but a serene satisfaction fell upon us when Allison’s reflections appeared. They were “right!” And while “resting” (definition from the private dictionary of Cornelius McAuliff) from the more or less arduous and routine and yet interest-holding duties of newspaper-man, Allison’s relaxation and refreshment come in studies of human nature in all its mystifying aspects, whether in war or in peace; or in the sports—prize-fighting and baseball; or in the sciences; in politics; in the streets or in the home. Or they come from pleasure in the creation of essays on books—novels; of lectures; of formal and serious addresses; of tactful and witty toasts.

From my viewpoint Allison appears in public speaking to best advantage at banquets, either when responding to some toast, or as toastmaster. On such occasions he very quickly finds the temper of his listeners and without haste or oratorical effect, for he never orates, and almost without gesture, he “gets ‘em” and “keeps ‘em.” Knowing how little he hears at public functions his performances at the head of the table, when acting as toastmaster, to me are only a shade removed from the marvelous. Either he has an uncanny second-sight, or that vaunted deafness is all a big pretense, for I have heard him “pull 28stuff” on a preceding speaker so pat that no one else could be made to believe what I knew was the truth: that—he—had—not—heard—a—single—word—uttered!

27

Perchance as a character note, should be added here a line or two about a work undertaken in behalf of a friend on a few hours notice for which he received a reward only in thanks. This friend had contracted to write certain memoirs but was incapacitated by illness and hung out the distress signal. Allison responded, shut himself up for a month, and produced a smooth and well balanced work of five hundred and fifty pages. Once I sent him a check to cover the cost of one of his books but he declared the check a “tempting bauble” and returned it framed. But I got a copy just the same inscribed “With the compliments of the Author” which I prized just as much as if I had paid for it with a clearing house certificate.

Physically he is of medium height, rather slight in form and, when walking, stoops a bit with head forward and a trifle to one side. In conversing he has a captivating trick of looking up while his head is bent and keeping his blue eyes nailed to yours pretty much all the time. Around eyes and mouth is ever lurking a wrinkling smile and its break—the laugh—is hearty and contagious with a timbre of peculiar huskiness. His face is a trifle thin through the cheeks, which accentuates a breadth of head, now crowning with silvery—and let me whisper this—slowly thinning hair. Stubby white mustaches for facial adornment, and cloth of varying brown shades to encompass the physical man, complete the picture.

Such is Young Ewing Allison as I see him.

29

MAN and NEWSPAPER MAN

Young Allison is a Kentuckian (Henderson, December 23, 1853) and proud of it with a pride that does not restrain him from seeing the peculiarities and frailties as well as the admirable traits of his fellow natives and skillfully putting them on paper to his own vast delight—and theirs too. What he gives, he is willing to take with Cromwell-like philosophy: “Paint me warts and all!” To speak of Allison in any sense whatever must be in the character of newspaper man, since to this work his whole life has been devoted. And if I may speak with well intentioned frankness: He’s a damn good editor, too! However little our lay friends may understand this message, aside from its emphasis, I rest secure in the thought that to the brotherhood it opens a wide vista of qualifications to which reams might be devoted without doing full justice to the subject. Today he might not be the ideal city editor, or night editor, or managing editor of our great modern miracle-machines called newspapers, but I have yet to meet the man who can more quickly absorb, analyze, sum-up and deliver an editorial opinion, so deliciously phrased and so nicely gauged. He who can do this is the embodiment of all staff editors!

If I may be pardoned for a moment, I will get myself associated with Allison and proceed with this relation. In 1888 he left daily newspaper work to found The Insurance Herald, 30though he continued old associations by occasional contributions, and in 1899 sold that publication and established The Insurance Field. In the fall of 1902 when presented with the opportunity of becoming editor-in-chief of The Daily Herald in Louisville, he gave up temporarily an active connection with The Insurance Field and in January, 1903, chose me to carry on this latter work, from which I am thankful to say he was absent only three years.

Allison is newspaper man through and through and was all but born in the business for he was “a devil in his own home town” of Henderson in a printing office when thirteen, “Y. E. Allison, Jr., Local Editor” on the village paper at fifteen and city reporter on a daily at seventeen. Up to this point in his career I might find a parallel for my own experience, but there the comparison abruptly ceases. He became a writer while I took to blacksmithing according to that roystering Chicagoan, Henry Barrett Chamberlin, who thinks because he once owned a paper called The Guardsman in days when a new subscription often meant breakfast for the two of us, that he is at liberty to cast javelins at my style of writing. And yet, to be perfectly frank, I have always been grateful for even his intimation that I had a “style.” Allison once accepted—I can hardly say enjoyed—one of those subscription breakfasts———But that is a matter not wholly concerned with his newspaper experience, which has extended through nearly all the daily “jobs:” reporter and city editor of The Evansville Journal, dramatic and city editor of The Louisville Courier-Journal; managing editor of The Louisville Commercial, and after a lapse of years as previously told, editor-in-chief of The Daily Herald.

31Fifteen years or more ago, long before we dreamed of being associated in business, Allison wrote me with the frankness that has characterized our friendship from the first, just how he came to enter newspaper work. Where he was concerned I was always “wanting to know” and he seemed ever willing to tell—me. The letter was as usual written in lead pencil on soft, spongy, ruled copy paper and that portion having reference to the subject named is given verbatim:

Allison’s newspaper years are rich with experience, for while he could never be classed as a Yellow Reformer, his caustic, or amusing, or pathetic pen, as the case demanded, has never been idle. Away back in the old days the gambling 32element in Louisville fairly “owned the town” and he attempted to curtail their power. They tried to cajole him and to bribe him and when both alike failed, intimidated the millionaire owner of the Commercial out from under him! He either had to sacrifice Allison or his street railway interests, and chose Allison to throw to the lions. But he made Mr. Dupont go the whole length and “fire” him! He wouldn’t resign when asked to do so. And of course while it all lasted Allison had his meed of personal amusement. For no editor ever took himself less seriously. Prominent citizens came with fair words and he listened to them and printed them; bribes were offered and accepted only for publication; while threats were received joyously and made the subject of half-whimsical comment.

As a newspaper man Allison prided himself on never having involved any of his papers in a libel suit, though he was usually the man who wrote the “danger-stuff.” He had complaints, yes; libel suits, no. Dick Ryan, known in prehistoric newspaper circles in Louisville as “Cold Steel,” because his mild blue eyes hardened and glinted when his copy was cut—the typical police court reporter who could be depended upon for a sobbing “blonde-girl story” when news was off—always said that when a party came in to complain of the hardship of an article, Allison talked to him so benevolently that the complainant always went away in tears, reflecting on how much worse it might have been if Allison hadn’t softened the article that seemed so raw. “Damned if I don’t believe he cries with ’em, too!” said Ryan. “If I had that sympathetic stop in my own voice I know I’d cry during ordinary conversations, just listening to myself.”

33

34But of course the libel suit had to come to spoil an otherwise perfect record. And of course it was political and sprang out of a red-hot state campaign, while he was editor-in-chief of the Herald, in which his pen went deep enough to enrage the adversary and force the libel case. Like all political cases of this kind it was not a suit for damages, but an indictment for criminal libel, found by a complaisant political grand jury at the other end of the state—intended to cause the greatest amount of annoyance and to die out slowly. By that means it costs the accused both time and money while the state pays all expenses for the prosecution.

Judge “Bill” Smith, one of the greatest of Kentucky lawyers on constitutional points, or rather Judge William Smith of the Jefferson Circuit Court—because he has passed over now, taking his kindly and childlike, yet keen and resourceful personality out of life’s war for good and all—Judge Smith told me the story of that case one night after we had discussed down to the water-marks in the paper, his treasured copy of Burns. And at my very urgent solicitation he transcribed the salient features, not in all the intimate details of the spoken words, but with deep poetic feeling and rare conception of their human aspects. He wrote:

I shall always believe this to be the most graceful, sympathetic and poetic relation involving a legal case I ever heard and never will cease to give thanks that my always strong and constantly growing admiration for Allison led me to insist upon its transcription.

37As soon as the trial fizzled I called on Allison at the Herald office, to extend congratulations and with eager requests for details.

“Well,” Allison ruminated, with that ever present twinkle in his eye, “my experience was very interesting. I found I had friends; and discovered traces of a family unknown to history claiming direct kinship with President Thomas Jefferson!”

When the “sports” brought about Allison’s discharge from the Commercial to stop his articles on the gambling control of Louisville, unconsciously they added a forceful factor to insurance publishing and I might truthfully say to the insurance business itself. I cannot begin to tell how much has been encompassed in these twenty-six years, but our bound volumes are full of his editorials and articles—the serious, the analytical, the constructive, the caustic, the witty and the amusing. He created The Piney Woods Clarion and in quotations from that mythical publication put a new light on the business. “Insurance Arabian Nights” which he declared were “translated from the Persian,” contained more of the odd conceits that fairly flowed from his pen and these two series, with a marine policy-form insuring the “contents” of Noah’s Ark, concocted in collaboration with good old Col. “Tige” Nelson (gone long ago, but not forgotten) are the classics of the business.

During his insurance newspaper work Allison was once called upon to give a public endorsement to a friend and very kindly expressed conviction that had his management continued “all the interest of the company would have been secured.” When later on he was forced to criticise extraordinary acts of this whilom friend, the endorsement was called 38up against him in a broadside affidavit, which he promptly reviewed in the most deliciously sarcastic editorial concluding:

39

JUST BROWSING AROUND

One who has never read around the clock in a virtual debauch of novel reading cannot appreciate Allison’s “Delicious Vice;” no more can he Field’s “Dibdin’s Ghost” who has not smuggled home under his coat some cherished volume at the expense of his belly—and possibly someone else’s too! “The Delicious Vice!” What a tart morsel to roll on one’s tongue in anticipation and to speculate over before scanning the pages to discover that the vice is not “hitting the pipe” or “snuffing happy dust” but is as Allison paints it with whimsical but affectionate words, “pipe dreams and fond adventures of an habitual novel-reader among some great books and their people.” These are the all too skimpy pages through which its author rhapsodizes on the noble profession, makes a keen distinction between novel readers and “women, nibblers and amateurs,” brings up reminiscences of “early crimes and joys” and discourses learnedly, discerningly and entertainingly upon “good honest scoundrelism and villains.” Every page is the best and when the last has passed under your eye, you again begin square at the beginning and read it all over. You are here only to have the appetite spiced by one single gem quoted from the first novel for the boy to read which of course is “Robinson Crusoe:”

I wish I might tell the reason why no scoundrel was ever a novel reader; that I might browse for the benefit of those who have never been translated into ecstacies over “good old 41honest scoundrelism and villains” or describe my friend’s first blinding and unselfish tears that watered the grave of Helen Mar, but these are among the delicious experiences of the “Vice” itself, so sacred that other hands, no matter how loving, may not be laid upon them.

††††

Allison has a very happy faculty of hitting upon titles for essays and addresses that stir the imagination and whet the appetite. Probably the best example is “The Delicious Vice” to which reference has just been made. This title was more or less an evolution from an address delivered before the Western Writers Association “On the Vice of Novel Reading” that started a discussion lasting through one whole day. Allison is a warm champion of The Novel as an institution, and as well an avowed and confirmed reader of novels, which he declares are poetry in essence, lacking only the form and rhyme but having measure, the accent and the figures of the whole range of poetry. He says that in all literature—

At that time the word “microbe” and the theory of its significance was in the full swell of popular use. Allison took it to illustrate the essence of spiritual intellectuality struggling against the swarming bacteria of animalism that made up the rest of the human body controlled by the brain. He pointed out that the difference between types of brains was two ounces 42of grayish pulp, almost wholly absent in the unthinking herd of men. But it enlarged in gradually lessening groups of men to the intellectual few that dominate thought, thus:

††††

43

As an active, enthusiastic and successful newspaper man, every time Allison read a novel depicting the reporter as a sharp-featured and half-disreputable young man running about with pencil and note-book in hand and making himself personally and professionally obnoxious, it produced apoplectic tendencies that permanently threatened health and peace of mind. Hence with the characteristic energy devoted to writing, he proceeded to get it out of his system and produced “The Longworth Mystery,” published in Century,† † Century, October, 1889. (which it is interesting to note was illustrated by Charles Dana Gibson who then signed himself “C. D. Gibson”), and “The Passing of Major Kilgore,” appearing in Lippincott’s,† † Lippincott’s January, 1892. both depicting 44newspaper life. When this latter novelette was printed it soothed me so that I had the paper covers protected with more permanent boards and sent it on many pilgrimages from which it safely returned enriched with further messages of thanks to the creator for his good job. Having browsed deeply behind the bindings of many books I have yet to find others written in the first person, where the pronoun “I” is used by the relator so seldom as in either “The Longworth Mystery” or “The Passing of Major Kilgore,” the intimacy of the relation the while being maintained very adroitly by the observations of the “City Editor” who tells both stories. Major Kilgore in the latter tale, is financial man on the Banner. He is an old school gentleman and profound student of finances who finally goes mad over the study of the market and while dreaming himself possessed of vast wealth, is seeking to further the happiness of others where riches will assist. Of course the denouement shattered many sumptuous air castles but it left the profession the richer by a faithful portrayal. It is in the development of this tale that Allison, ever seeking an opportunity to draw amusement from his friends, created a fine occasion through a reminiscent conversation between Major Kilgore and Colonel Hamilton to inject a famous Southern quartette, Clarence Knowles, Col. John D. Young, James A. Thomas and Col. W. C. Nelson, then in their prime, but who have since passed on to swell the silent throng. Colonel Hamilton is trying to divert Major Kilgore, already showing signs of mental unbalance:

Only one who knows Allison intimately can measure the delight, expressed in chuckles of joy, with which he marked this passage in Lippincott’s and mailed copies to the friends he had whimsically pilloried.

††††

When one browses around among Allison’s productions he runs across many odd conceits as in “The Ballad of Whiskey Straight” which he declares was “prepared according to the provisions of the Pure Food Law, approved 1906.” Whatever quarrel one might have with the subject itself, or the sentiment, he cannot fail to fall a victim to the soft cadences of the rippling rhyme.

††††

No one, like Allison, who has made the newspaper profession a life work, has failed to study its weak spots and to note its imperfections; or on the other hand, to grasp its marvelous 47opportunities for studying the wonderful mystery of the variations of human nature. In the very essence of things therefore, he recognizes the human elements in his own profession and does not hold that the newspaper man is perfect or that it does not harbor types of black sheep the likes of which may not be found in other flocks. At the same time nothing raises his gorge quicker than to hear the uninformed or unthinking deliver themselves, parrot-like, of the formula “that’s only a newspaper lie” or to see some man climb high by the aid of the newspaper and then kick down the ladder by which he rose. Allison once discussed this subject skillfully in an address on “Newspaper Men and Other Liars” which is worth a half-hour of any man’s time. The only difficulty would be experienced in finding a copy, for so far as known, I have the only one extant. Allison believes and says that by the very nature of his occupation and training the newspaper man is the least of liars among men and proves to his own complete satisfaction that the reporter gets his undeserved reputation for lying from his very impersonality—an impersonality that may be condemned with perfect safety. Fact, he declares, is a block of granite that the whole world may see without wrangling over, but once inject the human interest, with its divided opinions, into the occult mystery of the printed type and you have the newspaper “lie” in so many of its aspects, an analysis that leads him to arrive at this rather remarkable deduction:

And what about a comparison of those “other” liars with the newspaper man? Allison makes it very adroitly this way:

Well, browsing time is up! I wish I might open the pages of other gems and quote from their wit, their satire and their sentiment, but any reference to Allison’s productions must of very necessity touch only the high spots and besides that—

This volume wouldn’t be big enough!

49

IN the OPERATIC FIELD

Did I remark in some preceding breath that Allison is more or less “dippy” over music? Well, the statement, though made kindly, is severely and unqualifiedly true and whenever there is “big music” in town I can always find him in a front seat where he won’t miss a single note. This inherent love of music was what first led him to listen by the hour to Henry Waller at the piano and later into setting words to Waller’s big creations. When Philip Sousa was in Louisville five or six years ago and told Allison that the time was ripe to revive “The Ogallallas,” which embraced, he said, some of the finest music he had ever heard, I inquired of Waller’s whereabouts. “Heaven knows!” Allison replied, “And I wish I did, too!” Some years prior to that time they had “lost” each other; that is, Allison lost Waller.

Henry Waller was the adopted son of Mrs. Scott Siddons, the English actress and dramatic reader—a famous beauty. He had been an infant prodigy as a pianist, but was overdriven by his father and Mrs. Siddons intervened and bought his freedom. She sent him to Woolwich Academy, the great Royal Artillery and Engineering School of Great Britain, where, curiously enough for a musician, he graduated at the head of his class in mathematics. Waller was a class-mate and friend of the ill-fated Prince Imperial of France, killed by the Zulus, and afterwards spent three years in Franz Liszt’s house as the master’s pupil. Strangely enough, too, Waller’s piano 50performances on the stage were almost mediocre, but to private audiences of those known to be appreciative, he was a tireless marvel. Allison was a frequent visitor at Waller’s quarters and here his idea germinated for an American opera. At that time he had no intention of writing the libretto but, after outlining the plot, at Waller’s urgent request he wrote the scenario. Waller was enthused by Allison, the past master in creating enthusiasm, to a point where he had entered into its spirit and was composing great accompanying music, so there was nothing left for him but to complete the job. While they worked together the mode of procedure was about this: Allison would sketch out an idea and raise Waller to a seventh heaven over some dramatic scene until he struck fire and evolved its musical conception. Whereupon Allison would fit words to the music. So “The Ogallallas” was completed, submitted to The Bostonians, accepted at once, rehearsed in New York, Washington and Chicago, making its first public bow at the Columbia Theatre in the latter city in 1893, where I heard it. The plot is simple enough and is all worked out in the opening conversation of the “Scouts” while waiting for their leader. Here it is:

51

Imagination could finish the story, but the old, old Beadle Dime Novel of the Scout, the Girl and the Redskins—capture, threatened death, beautiful Indian maidens, villain, hero, heroine and rescue, “You set fire to the girl and I’ll take care of the house”—excellently executed in dialogue and verse, briefly represent the whole thing. The cast of characters in the first night’s production, February 16, 1893, which was widely reviewed and complimented by the critics in next day’s Chicago dailies, was as follows:

“Bill” MacDonald, the big baritone, as “War Cloud,” seized the opportunity of his life. He almost ran away with the piece and anyone ever after, who would say “Ogallallas” could get a conversation out of him that would wind up with “that was the greatest stuff ever written.” When costumed and wearing the Chief’s head-dress (old-timers may recall having 53observed it hanging in Harry Ballard’s city room of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, at Madison and Dearborn) MacDonald boomed out the War Song of the Ogallallas, he scored the big hit of the opera.

Mr. Barnabee (Professor Andover—dignified, staid and circumscribed; a misogynist if there ever was one) took huge delight in accentuating the satire of his character’s advice to the bevy of school girls in his charge to—

Quite in contrast, is the delicate little waltz song of Edith’s (Camille D’Arville) in which the ring of the blue bells sounds the gladsomeness of springtime and the intoxication of love.

55

In greater contrast is the roystering drinking song of Cardenas, the Mexican bandit, who was characterized by Eugene Cowles without in any way overdoing a part easily overdone.

57Jessie Bartlett Davis was cast for “Minnetoa, an Indian Girl,” but didn’t take the part until Flora Finlayson had made a hit and even then she wanted certain changes made in the finale, which Waller refused.

Well, “The Ogallallas” deserved a better fate and probably would have been a go, if there had been tenors enough to carry Waller’s big themes. They were really Grand Opera parts and the average—and better than average—tenor could not continue night after night without breaking down. It was great! Too bad it was so far ahead of the times—and failed.

That was Jinx No. 1.

††††

Allison was everlastingly encouraging Waller to musical creations by exciting his imagination with suggestions and in the end writing the story, although he tried faithfully to find a librettist who, he too modestly believed, might do better work than he. In the end, however, each of the children of his brain came back to its creator. The fact was that Waller couldn’t or wouldn’t work with others. So was conceived “Brother Francesco,” an opera set in a monastery in Italy during the Seventeenth Century, and bringing up a vivid picture of monks, medieval chapels—dark, massive and severe—and the dank scent of deep tragedy. There were but four main characters, a quartette of voices, in “Brother Francesco,” which was in one act of about an hour and ten minutes, the whole story unravelling itself in the public chapel between the ringing of the church bell and the conclusion of the mass of the Benediction of the Holy Virgin. The altar lights have not been lit. Enter Francesco, a novice, to light them. A candle flashes 58on the altar; then another—and the tale unfolds. Francesco, sorrowing over his lost love, Maria, observes the Father Confessor enter the Confessional and, reminded of his too worldly thoughts, kneels and sings an aria, “The Confession,” in which the tragedy of his life is revealed.

In very irony, it would seem, to the simplicity of his nature, the outpourings of the novitiate’s sorrowing heart have been confessed to his wife, the scarred-faced Lucretia, who inhabits the monastery in the guise of the Father Confessor (not an unknown historical fact) thus in its very inception lending an intense dramatic effect to the story. Now, at the ringing of the bell, the villagers enter the public loft, Maria—his lost love—in the foreground unrecognized either by Francesco or Lucretia, singing an “Ave Maria:”

60

Again the bell rings and the monks pass before the altar with genuflections and sink in their stalls in prayer, while a male chorus chants the Office of the Benediction. During the singing of the anthem, Francesco enters with cowl thrown back and a lighted taper in his hand. He is recognized by Maria and at her exclamations starts to her but is restrained by the Father Confessor now disclosed to him for the first time as his discarded wife. After a trio of great dramatic force, Francesco seizes a dagger drawn by Lucretia to kill him, and stabbing himself, expires in Maria’s arms, while Lucretia, still disguised as the Father Confessor, takes back her place unnoticed among the monks who hold their crosses in horror against the suicide!

Waller wrote the entire service in imitation of the sombre Gregorian Mass, and then over the face of this dark background sketched in modern passionate music the lyrical and dramatic lightning of the action. This wonderful conception, both in idea, words and music, was “passed by censors” of the church—that is, Archbishop Corrigan and the Archbishop of Paris both 61said that while they did not approve of representations of the Church on the stage, it had been done before, and would no doubt be done again. Otherwise there was nothing objectionable in it.

Yet when it was produced in Berlin at the Royal Opera, under the wing of Emperor William, even though horribly mutilated by the Public Censor, the Catholic party, (aided and abetted by the musical cabal that has always existed in Berlin), made it the cause of protests against the German Government and Jinx No. 2 came to life in riotous uprisings against it during its three performances. Whereupon it was withdrawn. These simple facts are gleaned from Mr. Waller’s descriptive letters. Jean de Reszke thought so well of “Brother Francesco” that he proposed—nay promised—to have it produced at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. But the old Jinx proceeded to put his No. 3 seal on de Reszke’s voice that year, and he and the opera were heard from no more under the proscenium arch.

††††

Then there was “The Mouse and the Garter,” a travesty on Grand Opera in two acts that Clarence Andrews was to produce at the opening of the Waldorf-Astoria ballroom-theater. Many has been the pleasurable moment I have had in examining the old “prompt 62book” in use during rehearsals, for the company was picked, the scenery modeled, the costumes made and the “fancy,” as Allison called it, ready to be staged, when Oscar Hammerstein, who had a contract with Andrews to transfer successes to the old Victoria Theater, blew up in one of his bankruptcies. The Jinx was again monarch of all he surveyed—and Monte-Cristo-like held up four fingers! That old “prompt book” mentioned shows the wear and tear of much use and is filled with odd notes in Allison’s characteristic handwriting. No less interesting were the “Librettist’s Notes on Characters in the Opera and the Business,” dated October 21, 1897, and taken from an old letter-press copy that turned up in our archives. There we find that—

Good stuff! And who were these innocent villagers? Well, there was Tenor Robusto, in love with Soprano and fated to be left at the post; Tenor Di Grazia, his twin brother; Giovanni Baritono, a Soldier of Fortune; Piccolo, an innkeeper; Fra Tonerero Basso, a priest; Signorina Prima Soprano, a bar maid; Signorina Mezzo, also a bar maid, and Signora Contralto, Piccolo’s wife, besides villagers, eight topers, musicians, five couples of rustic brides and grooms, and a dancing bear and his keeper. Let us not forget the mythical mouse and the ribbon from which The Garters were made, though neither appears among the “properties” scheduled by Allison.

63

Robusto and Soprano flirted. He gave her a ribbon and she promised to marry him. Just a bluff! And then he wanted his ribbon back, but she had already made it into garters, and when he tried to take them by force she boxed him smartly. He got fussy, drank a gallon of gooseberry wine, smoked two cigarettes and making out that he was a great bounder, threatened her with sudden death. Great dialogue! He would have gone to war, only there was no war at the time and anyway 64his “mother wouldn’t let him”—the topical number. After smacking Robusto good and plenty before all the villagers, Soprano, who seems to know how to take care of herself, swears that she’ll marry no one unless he has the wit “to get—that! And this!”—the garters. Baritono, Soldier of Fortune, comes on the scene. Lots more bully dialogue and song and then Baritono hears of Soprano’s oath. It’s easy for him and he bides his time—you always have to bide your time—to indicate a point behind Soprano, when she is in a wholly unsuspecting mood, and shout “Ha! A mouse!! A mouse!!!” Village maidens scream and scatter. Soprano, skirts to knees, hurdles into a chair, while Baritono deftly seizes the loose ends of the now visible “lover-knots” and holds aloft the precious talismen. Wedding. Finis!

But the Jinx got it.

65 Click to play music.

66

67

68

69

BALLAD of DEAD MEN

If Young Allison is vain of anything he has done I have yet to hear such an expression from him. He just writes things and tucks them away in odd corners and it has devolved upon me to collect them and keep them. So it is that, while not a literary executor—because Allison, thank God, is scandalously healthy and I am making no professions—it falls to my satisfied lot to be a literary collector in a certain sense—if he who gathers and preserves and gloats over the brain products of others may thus be described. That is why, treasured among my earthly possessions—scant enough, the good Lord knows, but full of joy and satisfaction to me—are extensive lead-pencil manuscript memoranda in Allison’s writing showing the painstaking stages by which “Fifteen Dead Men,” characterized by James Whitcomb Riley as that “masterly and exquisite ballad of delicious horrificness,” reached its perfection. Under whatever name it may be sung, be it “The Ballad of Dead Men,” or “On Board the Derelict” or “Derelict,” it is a poem big enough to fix the Jewel of Fame firmly over the author’s brow.

Away back in the Allison strain somewhere must have been a bold buccaneer, for who else but the descendant of a roystering, fighting, blood-letting pirate could have seen the “scuppers glut with a rotting red?” Through all the visible mildness of his deep and complex nature there surely runs a blood-thirsty current, in proof of which 70I submit this single paragraph from certain confessions† † The Delicious Vice. Pages 23-24. First Series, 1907. of his:

So it is, naturally enough, that to Allison, “Treasure Island” is the ne plus ultra and composite of all pirate stories, and this marvel of delight he called to Waller’s attention while they were incubating “The Ogallallas.” No sooner had Waller read it than the quatrain of Old Billy Bones took possession 71of him and converted itself into music. The two of them, as so many other thousands had done, bewailed the parsimony of Stevenson in the use and development of the grisly suggestion and Waller declared that if Allison would complete the verse he would set it to music. That same night Allison composed three ragged but promising verses, at white heat, while walking the floor in a cloud of tobacco smoke of his own making. Next morning he gave them to Waller, who by night had the score and words married and a day later the finished product went forward to Wm. A. Pond & Co., and was published under the title of “A Piratical Ballad”† † A Piratical Ballad. Song for Bass or Deep Baritone. Words by Young E. Allison; Music by Henry Waller; New York. Published by William A. Pond & Co. Copyright 1891. [See pages 65-68.]. Note that these initial verses are described as “ragged” and in this I am also quoting Allison himself who in our various chats on his reminiscence of “Treasure Island” has often given them this characterization. Be that as it may these three verses were the foundation for the perfect six that were to emerge after several years more of intermittent but patient development and labor.

This is the requiem of the Fifteen Dead Men that Eugene Cowles would sing so effectively in his booming bass after rehearsals of “The Ogallallas.” It must have been great!

Allison felt that he had done little justice to an idea full of great possibilities and made a number of revisions during the polishing process until it was raised to five verses. I have the original manuscript† † Reproduced in facsimile. of the first revision of “A Piratical Ballad” unearthed from a cubby-hole in an old desk of his to which I fell heir, the only change being in the title to “A Ballad of 73Dead Men,” the elimination of one of the concluding lines “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” from the refrain of each verse, (it had been added originally to fit the musical cadence), and the strengthening of the final verse by the substitution of—

Many will no doubt recall “The Philosophy of Composition”† † Stone & Kimball Edition. Vol. 6; page 31. by Edgar Allen Poe, and those who by some mischance have missed it, can spend a delightful hour in the perusal of what, beyond the least doubt, is the most skillful analysis of poetic composition ever written, even though it fails to carry conviction that “The Raven” was ever produced by the formula described. Poe declared that—

And so he proceeds to detail how he composed “The Raven.” First he decided on a length of about one hundred lines that could be read at one sitting; on beauty as its province; on sadness as its tone; on a variation of the application of the refrain—it remaining for the most part unvaried—to obtain what he 74termed “artistic piquancy;” proceeding only at that stage to the composition of the last verse as the first step. All this of course has little to do with “Derelict” and yet I cannot but see a sort of analogy of effect by processes wholly divergent, particularly as Allison once told me that the central idea of the last verse for consigning the bodies to the deep was ever in his mind and that this verse was first projected, although its development was the most difficult and its perfection did not come until later. So much for that! In the five verses he had arrived approximately at a consummation of the sea burial, the introduction very properly repeating the quatrain of Billy Bones before concluding:

While this composition is fine and tight as a drum in poetic meter and conception, the real perfection was not arrived at until he made it “Ten fathoms deep on the road to hell.” In the five-verse revision a part of the last verse as it appeared in “A Piratical Ballad” went into the second, a part of the second verse was shifted to the third and a fourth was added to give an implied reason for the riot of death in an inferred quarrel over the “chest on chest full of Spanish gold, with a ton of plate in the middle hold.” Strangely enough all these shifts and additions do not appear to have altered the sentiment in the least and at times I am amazed, in reading over old versions, 75that I do not appreciably miss certain lines and ideas that seem vital to the finished product.

Shortly after the five verses had been privately printed for his friends on a single slip, Allison conceived the rather daring idea of injecting the trace of a woman on board the Derelict which up to this time he had very closely developed in the Stevensonian spirit. While there was no woman in “Treasure Island,” he proved to himself by analysis that his new thought would do no violence to Stevenson’s idea, because Billy Bones’ song was a reminiscence of his own past and not of Treasure Island. Hence the trace of a woman, skillfully injected, might be permissible. Here, too, his analysis gave him the melancholy tone—of which Poe speaks as so highly desirable—greatly accentuated by doubt of whether she was “wench” or “maid,” and a further possible incentive for the extermination of the whole ship’s list. This verse† † Reproduced in facsimile. has undergone little change since the woman trace was first injected:

There were certain niceties of word adjustment to follow as for instance the substitution of “a thin dirk-slot” for “a 76dagger-slot,” the word “thin” carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy. The very acme of touches came in the punctuation† † Reproduced in facsimile. of the concluding lines—pauses that emphasize with so much ingenuity the very question that lends the speculatively mournful cadence to the whole:

And as a cap-sheaf came the thought of differentiating the whole verse† † Reproduced in facsimile. by an Italicized setting! That is almost the last word of the conception of poet-printer.

The dogged persistency that Allison applied to the completion of this masterpiece has always won my deepest admiration. And the admiration of many others too, for this poem, first publicly printed in the Louisville Courier-Journal, has been reprinted in one form or another, in almost every newspaper in the country and has an honored place in many scrap books. What great and painstaking effort was encompassed in its composition only one can know even partly who has been privileged to “peep behind the scenes” at the “properties of the literary histrio”—the manuscript notes and memoranda, a few of which accompany this volume in facsimile.

77

IF THERE is CONTROVERSY!

If any one in this wide, old world, after reading the wealth of evidence in this little volume, still thinks Young E. Allison did not write “Derelict,” let him come to me like a man and say so and I’ll give him a good swift stab in the eye, with my eye, and say: “You don’t want to be convinced.” This includes the editor of The New York Times Book Review. When he made an egregious blunder by stating that “Derelict” was an unskilled sailor’s jingle, a wave of protest reached him. He then printed Walt Mason’s letter describing the poem as a work of art and altered his editorial characterization of it to “famous old chanty.” In the same breath he wrote that it was not likely that Mr. Allison was the author—but why not likely? It is plain that somebody must have written it. Nobody else’s name had ever been associated with it. The Times man had nobody to suggest as the author. Why, then, maintain that Mr. Allison was not the author? His sole reason is that the “Bowdlerized” and bastard version which he printed had been copied from a manuscript written into an old book printed in 1843! What does the ink say about dates? What do the pen marks say? Great gods and little fishes! If ever I shall desire to antiquitize a modernity I’ll copy it into an old book and send a transcript to that delightful Babe of the Woods of The New York Times Book Review.

When Rubric, a Chicago magazine venture of attractiveness, but doomed in advance to failure, published Allison’s 78poem under the title “On Board the Derelict,” I detached three sets of the eight illustrated and illuminated pages on which it was printed, had the sheets inlaid in hand-made paper and neatly bound. This was accomplished with the sage advice of my old playmate, Frank M. Morris, the bookman of Chicago. One of these volumes was made for Mr. Allison, (so that he would surely have at least one copy of his own poem), a second was for my bookish friend, James F. Joseph, then of Chicago and now of Indianapolis, and a third was for my own library. The mere fact that Allison was five years autographing my particular copy has no bearing whatever in this discussion, but leads me to say that I felt amply repaid in the end by this very handsome inscription on the fly-leaf:

Well, because “Derelict” was a delight and Allison my friend, I gave away Rubrics by the score and, among others, saw that a copy went to Wallace Rice, literatus—and Chicago book reviewer—to whom I owe an everlasting debt of gratitude for precious moments saved by good advice on modern stuff not to read. In presenting “Derelict,” the Rubric publishers left an impression that the poem had but then been completed† † See letter to “The New York Times Book Review”. for its pages. I knew better; Wallace had read it 79before, in whole or in part and raised a question. It so worked upon me that later I decided to submit it to Allison himself. Sometimes we do things, and know not why, that have a very distinct later and wholly unexpected bearing upon situations, and when the opportunity for this volume arose, the memory that I had saved Allison’s penciled reply came over me. A patient search had its reward. Here is the letter† † Reproduced in facsimile. written with the same old lead pencil on the same old spongy copy paper:

That this narrative may be complete, the articles and comment that appeared in The New York Times Book Review are reproduced, together with a letter to the editor written by the author of this volume, which, neither acknowledged nor published by him, obtained wide circulation through The Scoop,† † Issue of October 10, 1914. a 80magazine issued every Saturday by The Press Club of Chicago. It was quite characteristic of Allison to decline the very urgent requests of many friends to jump into the arena and make a claim for that which is his own creation and in coming to a negative decision, his reasons are probably best expressed in a letter to Henry A. Sampson, who himself writes poetry:

81

SOME CLIPPINGS; and A LETTER

The controversial comments on Allison’s “Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest,” heretofore mentioned, appeared in The New York Times Book Review of September 20, 1914, and October 4, 1914, while the inquiry that precipitated the discussion was published July 26. The printed matter, verbatim et literatim, and the matter not printed, are subjoined:

July 26, 1914.

††††

September 20, 1914.

††††

September 20, 1914.

††††

October 4, 1914.

††††

89

YO-HO-HO and a BOTTLE OF RUM

It has not been the purpose of this sketch of a poem’s history, with which has been joined other matters, reminiscent or germane, to enter into a discussion relative to the origin of chanties, or to attempt to trace the four lines of Captain Billy Bones’ song to any source beyond their appearance in “Treasure Island.” In a more or less extensive, though desultory, reading of a little of almost everything, the writer has never stumbled upon any chanty or verse from which the famous quatrain might have sprung. Nor has he ever met anyone who remembers to have read or heard of anything of the kind. This includes Allison himself, an omnivorous reader, a Stevenson admirer and student, a friend of many of Stevenson’s friends, and who, since the appearance of “Treasure Island,” has had hundreds of letters and conversations bearing on the subject.

While “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” as a line, occasionally has since been used in modern versification, but without any of the Stevenson flavor and seldom with much poetic or dramatic instinct, all authorities appear to be agreed that he evolved the quatrain. This however is not a point at issue here. What seems to be of prime importance to this narrative though, is that Allison, taking this quatrain as a starting point, wrote a wholly modern versification in words and meter so skillfully used as to create not only a vivid atmosphere of piracy and antiquity, but of unskillfulness and coarseness. That is the highest expression of art.

90Since The New York Times Book Review very unjustly raised a question of the authorship of “Derelict,” it has been my privilege to read the really remarkable correspondence that has reached Mr. Allison from men all over the country who have been treasuring newspaper clippings of perverted versions of the poem out of pure admiration for its classical lines and the bold portrayal of a grewsome story. These letters have increased since The Scoop of the Press Club of Chicago printed the correspondence [See “The Unpublished Letter”] addressed to The New York Times Book Review. The Scoop continued its interesting discussion of the poem in the issue of October 24, under a caption of “Yo-ho-ho!” and incorporated a communication from “our Bramleykite Pilling” on chanties in general, submitting also a criticism of Allison’s sea-faring knowledge of the consistency of mainsails and the size of hawsers. If anything were needed to prove that “Derelict” is not “of the sea,” this in itself would be sufficient. The Scoop article is worthy of production in toto:

My personal interest in “Derelict” from its earliest stages has led me to discuss it with many people, some of them A. B.’s, and this is the first criticism I have ever heard of the technic of the words used to convey the picture. I do not mean to say that Bramleykite Filling’s points are not well taken, technically, but I do say that qualified sailors, with literary judgment, have been carried over these delinquencies of technic, if that expresses it, by the very vividness but simplicity of the picture, which could not be so were there a false note in either sentiment or portrayal. Thus for this purpose a mainsail is a piece of jute bagging, if you please, or ordinary canvas, and a hawser is a flexible rope.

93When The Scoop reached my hand with its entertaining and not unjust criticism, I besought Allison for a few lines of comment to add to my collection of “Derelict” treasures. In the same old characteristic way (same old black pencil; same old spongy copy paper) he wrote me the following note with which this volume closes:

The Pocket

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