II IMIII II Nil III I II 
 
 ONAHAN 
 
 (Appreciation 
 
 
 
 Richard Le Gallienne 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UNTVERSr SFORNIA 
 
 DAVIS 
 

 
MICHAEL MONAHAN 
 
MICHAEL MONAHAN 
 
 <An (Appreciation 
 
 by 
 Richard Le Gallienne 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
THIS APPRECIATION IS MADE UP 
 OF TWO SEPARATE REVIEWS 
 WHICH APPEARED ORIGINALLY 
 IN THE NEW YORK Times LIT- 
 ERARY SUPPLEMENT. 
 
******%*:* %*****%***** 
 
 OOKS, yes, let us have talk 
 about books, but well flav- 
 ored with the tabasco sauce 
 of human interest * * * . 
 Say what we will, we love or 
 hate the man behind the book: there is 
 no such thing as impersonality in true 
 literature." So Mr. Michael Monahan 
 provides me with a motto with which to 
 start out these "Adventures in Life and 
 Letters," to borrow a phrase which he 
 in turn has adapted from that prince of 
 causeurs, Anatole France. "Criticism," 
 ran the now proverbial dictum, "is the 
 adventures of the critic's soul among 
 masterpieces." The proverb is some- 
 what musty nowadays, but twenty-odd 
 years ago, as one's eye first fell upon it 
 in Le Temps, or in the reprinted volumes 
 of La Vie Litteraire, it had the freshness 
 
of a new critical gospel, and has since 
 inspired many a good critic with the 
 courage to express his own opinions, in 
 natural human fashion, rather than with 
 the ex cathedra solemnity of an academic 
 authority. Wilde's famous essay on crit- 
 icism came out of it, and many other 
 "Adventures in Criticism," besides Sir 
 Quiller Couch's have started out with it 
 for banner. Criticism as a form of auto- 
 biography! Why not? "I propose to 
 speak of myself a propos Moliere, Shake- 
 speare, Racine." That is really what 
 every critic does, though he may veil 
 himself in Sinaitic thunder clouds, and 
 dart down shafts of anonymous light- 
 ning. 
 
 I am glad to find that a love for 
 Charles Lamb "Carolus Agnus," as he 
 quaintly calls him is one of the many 
 tastes I share in common with "the man 
 behind the book," whose warm humanity, 
 as revealed to us now through some 
 dozen confidential years of THE PAPY- 
 
RUS, has already won for himself a place 
 of similar endearment in our hearts as 
 his whom he confesses to loving no 
 less "for his late suppers, his too many 
 pipes, his clinging to ale and gin," than 
 for the essays and the letters. "Saint 
 Charles," as we have all called him since 
 Thackeray probably because he was 
 such a gentle-hearted sinner. Perhaps 
 some days we shall be saying "Saint 
 Michael," for a similar reason. At all 
 events, St. Michael Monahan has to-day 
 a distinction all of his own, a chimney- 
 corner all to himself, by virtue of his 
 possessing that personal charm of letter- 
 ed bonhomie, which seems almost lost to 
 literature, as at present practised. In an 
 age of would-be literary dandies and su- 
 perior persons, one is fathomlessly grate- 
 ful for his gift of writing like a real hu- 
 man being, for his homely preferences, 
 for his touch of old-world scholarship, 
 for his quoting Horace, for his occasion- 
 al tavern or "coffeehouse" manner, his 
 
air of telling us everything, his Rabel- 
 aisian tang, his gossipy chuckle, his ready 
 tear, his quips, his snatches of song 
 and, above all, for that gift which gath- 
 ers up all these and many other engag- 
 ing characteristics, the gift of a natural 
 style. He does not, thank Heaven, write 
 English as if it were a dead language, 
 nor, on the other hand, does he write it 
 like an advertising man. To write like 
 a human being! If you look around 
 what used to be called the republic of let- 
 ters, you will be surprised to find how lit- 
 tle writing is being done in that way. 
 Everywhere the imitation "style," the 
 pose point of view, the smart, cynical, 
 sophisticated attitude. Yet never have 
 "We felt life's tide, the sweep and surge 
 
 of it. 
 And craved a living voice, a natural 
 
 tone/ 
 more than at this moment. 
 
 Mr. Monahan has a gift of literary 
 humanity, a geniality of nature, a talent 
 
 6 
 
for companionship, a ripe and reassuring 
 point of view, a charm of wise and witty 
 and tender utterance, and generally a 
 broad-shouldered, warm and deep-heart- 
 ed way with him, for which (outside 
 himself, at the moment) we have to look 
 to those older writers, novelists and es- 
 sayists, who still preserve for us an ever 
 present refuge from the smartness and 
 cynicism of the day. 
 
 Much converse with such, and much 
 varied experience of life, lived generous- 
 ly and simple-heartedly, have made of 
 Mr. Monahan "a full man;" and, while 
 these "adventures" of his prove that he 
 is by no means unacquainted or unsym- 
 pathetic with "those evidences of genius 
 which these present times afford," to 
 quote one of his favorite authors Mau- 
 passant, Turgenev, Wilde, George 
 Moore, and so forth (indeed he was, by 
 sundry excellent translations, one of the 
 earliest introducers of Maupassant to the 
 American public) yet his favorite lit- 
 
erary pabulum is found in the beef and 
 brawn and the more wholesome delicacies 
 of the time- weathered masters, Balzac, 
 Dickens, Thackeray, Lamb, Poe, Vol- 
 taire, Cellini, Horace, Heine, Villon; 
 these and such like are the men for him. 
 It is in their company that he prefers to 
 seek his adventures, as it is in the home- 
 lier, broadcast aspects and happenings of 
 life that he finds his satisfactions and 
 "the eternal meanings." 
 
 To the recording of these various "ad- 
 ventures" Mr. Monahan brings, as I have 
 said, a style of uncommon naturalness 
 and personal charm. A style that is at 
 once natural and lettered, easy and yet 
 distinguished, is almost an unknown com- 
 modity at the present moment. Our es- 
 sayists seem to suffer from a positive 
 dread of being natural. They seem to 
 aim at being wearily well-bred, and a la 
 mode. If they have any natural selves, 
 they are at great pains to conceal the 
 fact, and prefer to pose as blase and 
 
superior persons. They are either this, 
 or truculent pamphleteers, or superfine 
 "impressionists." They have no bon- 
 homie, they never unbend, never laugh, 
 never, of course, shed a tear. To read 
 them, one would never realize that men 
 still rejoiced in beef and beer and pipes 
 and tobacco, loved their mothers and 
 wives, begat babies, engaged in warm 
 and friendly talk, indulged in kindly 
 nonsense, pursued love or feared death. 
 They prefer unkindly wit to genial hu- 
 mor, cruel skill and power to generous 
 strength; and pity and pathos and ten- 
 derness seem to them to smack of the 
 unfashionable and the domestic. 
 
 As a contrast to these supercilious ex- 
 quisites of imitation "style," Mr. Mona- 
 han is a boon and a blessing. To open 
 his pages is to breathe the air of a more 
 spacious and friendly era, an era when 
 culture and good-fellowship still walked 
 arm in arm, took their glass together in 
 some snug and lettered tavern, and were 
 
even not above joining in the chorus at 
 some Thackerayan "cave of harmony/ 
 It is as though we had dropped in to 
 supper and gin and water at Charles 
 Lamb's, or were making a learned night 
 of it with the bookish roysterers of the 
 "Nodes Ambrosianae" Nodes Mona- 
 hanae! It is not saying too much for 
 our Michael, and grateful we are to be 
 able to say it, that he most successfully 
 revives that ambrosian tradition of what 
 one might call the Bookish Bacchus. The 
 modern tavern has, alas! lost those gra- 
 cious associations. Things are done dif- 
 ferently at the Mermaid nowadays, and 
 Dr. Johnson's chair at the Cheshire 
 Cheese belongs no less to a past age than 
 Cleopatra's Needle. It is our loss. Let- 
 ters were more truly litterae humaniores 
 when associated with the interchange of 
 good talk, the passage of the humanizing 
 bottle, and the meditative cloud of the 
 tranquilizing clay. 
 
 This atmosphere, however, is most nat- 
 
 10 
 
urally re-created for himself and his 
 reader in Mr. Monahan's volume, in 
 which literary criticisms, personal confi- 
 dences, meditations, impressions, fan- 
 tasies, foot-notes of history, fly-leaves of 
 human story, fables and apothegms, are 
 artfully arranged together, with here and 
 there a ballad, or stave, or a sprig of grav- 
 er, tenderer verse, decorating the prose 
 with a posy of italics, to make one of 
 those literary medleys, "gallimaufries," 
 which, when made by one naturally born 
 to the method, are of all books the most 
 companionable. It belongs to this meth- 
 od that a man should have been born 
 to write naturally and inevitably about 
 himself, to assume that we are as in- 
 terested in listening to his confidences as 
 he in making them. This, too, is well- 
 nigh a lost art, but Mr. Monahan is one 
 of its few surviving practitioners, and 
 he avoids its pitfalls with instinctive tact. 
 Whether he is telling us about his boy- 
 hood, drawing a picture of an old school- 
 
 II 
 
master, confiding his love affairs, or his 
 literary ambitions, his lost dreams, or his 
 eternal verities, personal habits, prefer- 
 ences, or faiths, we never find it other- 
 wise than natural that he should be thus 
 taking us into his confidence. 
 
 We listen to him as simply as we 
 would to Benjamin Franklin or "Elia." 
 He is one of those natural autobiogra- 
 phers, of whom it never occurs to us to 
 ask if they are anybody in particular, 
 that they should thus tell us about them- 
 selves. They are entertaining, human 
 beings, with a gift of making anything 
 they touch upon, particularly themselves 
 and their own histories, good listening 
 matter; and so we are only too glad to 
 listen. 
 
 And with all this familiar, chimney- 
 corner gossip, Mr. Monahan combines 
 many other literary gifts rarely found 
 together. If you would know how mov- 
 ing he can make a simple human story, 
 read "Mary ," or try examples of his gift 
 
 12 
 
for grim and satiric fantasy and fable, 
 read "The Other Face" and 'The Lost 
 God ;" or admire his skill at portrait mak- 
 ing, read "Brother Elias" or "Old Book 
 Men." His sound and illuminative criti- 
 cal gift is in evidence all through his 
 volume, and through it all, too, beats the 
 warm and tender heart of a true poet. It 
 is the presence of that poet everywhere 
 between the lines, not merely in the ad- 
 mirable, spirited, and poignant verses 
 themselves, that is the inspiring, unify- 
 ing soul of all these wise and witty and 
 endearingly human "Adventures." 
 
THE VAN 
 
 R. MONAHAN'S "VAN" is 
 the moving van, and the first 
 section of his book (Ax THE 
 SIGN OF THE VAN) that 
 which gives it its title, is oc- 
 cupied with the migrations of The Papy- 
 rus, that gallant little magazine whose 
 existence seemed to be by miracle, and 
 whose various re-existences encourage a 
 belief in the resurrection. Mr. Mona- 
 han's whimsical humanity, his confiden- 
 tial inclusion of his domestic along with 
 his literary fortunes, make the van seem 
 more like a gypsy van than an ordinary 
 "pantechnicon ;" a delightfully happy-go- 
 lucky circus wagon in which "the fam- 
 ily," including a well-populated nursery, 
 jog along in happy gregariousness, with 
 the editorial desk, the publishing office, 
 and the advertising department all snug- 
 ly aboard. It is a great thing to keep a 
 
 14 
 
romantic eye for one's own enterprises. 
 So they renew their youth like the eagle 
 or I should rather say, like THE PHOE- 
 NIX, which is the latest avatar of The 
 Papyrus long life to it! and, when its 
 turn comes (absit omen!) many glorious 
 resurrections ! In this first section of 
 "The Van" Mr. Monahan, with charm- 
 ing open-heartedness, has allowed us to 
 share with him the romance of making a 
 little magazine all by one's self, and all 
 for one's self and a few friends; a 
 magazine for really "gentle*' readers, and 
 one that really "enjoys" its circulation. 
 The fun of being one's own contributor, 
 able to say what one pleases, because 
 one is one's own editor, of being able 
 to edit with the same freedom, because 
 one is one's own publisher; the vicissi- 
 tudes and surprises of a publication all 
 one's own, including "that exquisite emo- 
 tion induced by opening a letter with a 
 cheque in it," the excitement of a new 
 subscriber, particularly when that new 
 
 15 
 
subscriber happens to be James Whit- 
 comb Riley : 
 
 Here's a dollar from some one in Lock- 
 erbie Street, 
 
 With the name plain as print in a hand- 
 writing neat 
 
 Yes! 'tis his, sure enough, and a pulse 
 of joy fleet 
 
 Says a "Howdy!" to Riley in Lockerbie 
 Street. * * * 
 
 Just a square bit of paper, but on it a 
 
 name 
 That is mellow with genius and golden 
 
 with fame; 
 And memories rising with antiphon 
 
 sweet, 
 Cry a hail to the Poet in Lockerbie 
 
 Street. 
 
 There is no little of the romance of 
 authorship, as it used to be practised in 
 the old days, about Mr. Monahan's art- 
 fully artless revelations as Johnson or 
 Franklin practised it, precariously in gar- 
 rets, or distractedly in the bosom of one's 
 family, or as an itinerant vendor of one's 
 
 16 
 
own wares ; the days before authors rode 
 in motor cars, or had castles, or house- 
 boats, to write in. Mr. Monahan's is a 
 domestic muse, and, in one place, he hu- 
 morously describes how he is liable to 
 be called down from his eyrie at the top 
 of the house, because "the Two Young- 
 est" have "started something," and his 
 assistance is necessary "to loosen a 
 stranglehold." In such human touches 
 his pages abound and they make no little 
 of his charm. He is the soul of candor. 
 "I have just counted the Coop," he says 
 quaintly in another place, "and they are 
 all here, safe and sound.' 1 "Here" was 
 Somerville, New Jersey, whither it had 
 seemed advisable, in the year 1904, to 
 remove the Ark of the Papyrus from its 
 original home in Mount Vernon, whither 
 it was to return again at a later date, a 
 place haloed by Mr. Monahan with un- 
 accustomed rainbows. After all, the only 
 places that are genuinely romantic are 
 the places we have lived in ourselves! 
 
 17 
 
The Van has moved on once more since 
 these pages were written, and the nest 
 of flame from which springs THE PHOE- 
 NIX is South Norwalk, Conn. 
 
 Lovers of a kind of writing hard lo 
 find anywhere else at this moment will 
 rejoice that Mr. Monahan achieved, and 
 is still achieving and pursuing, his own 
 magazine, not only for all the fun he 
 himself has gotten, and is still to get, 
 out of it, but because of the body of 
 good reading that he has thus been able 
 to produce, which could have been pro- 
 duced in no other way. For such writ- 
 ing there is unhappily no place any long- 
 er in the "big" magazines, for the most 
 part edited, as they are, and perhaps have 
 to be, by the capitalist for the populace: 
 nor would a man be likely, or even able, 
 to sit down and write such things, at 
 first hand, in a book. These various con- 
 fidences, and meditations, and criticisms, 
 are of their nature "causeries," born of 
 moods and moments that would have 
 
 18 
 
been lost had the medium not been handy 
 for their being shared with the fit audi- 
 ence, though few. The purely literary 
 papers even would scarcely have been 
 half so good had Mr. Monahan sat him- 
 self down with the solemn intention of 
 writing on Renan or Byron for, say, the 
 "North American Review." Doubtless, 
 Mr. Monahan could command the mag- 
 isterial air proper for such august oc- 
 casions, for, while he is often "very easy 
 in his manners," his style is full of in- 
 nate dignity, and an old school courtli- 
 ness of address is one of his anachronis- 
 tic charms ; yet his dignity is of the spon- 
 taneous, natural kind, humanly devoid 
 of "ex cathedra" formality. In short, he 
 is a writer whose individuality needs its 
 "own particular air to shine in," and that 
 it has been fortunate enough, or sen- 
 sible enough, to find. 
 
 Another advantage that ensues to us 
 from Mr. Monahan having his own per- 
 sonally conducted magazine is that he is 
 
 19 
 
able, as in this volume, to revive for us 
 "the medley," one of the most com- 
 panionable forms taken by the dwellers 
 upon shelves. It is a form, for all its 
 desultory air, that demands no little art 
 of arrangement. It comes not of care- 
 less heterogeneity, and Mr. Monahan has 
 manipulated his variousness with great 
 skill, the first book of "The Van" being 
 followed by three others dealing with 
 "Adventures in Life," "Adventures in 
 Letters," "Adventures o' the Spirit:" a 
 sort of literary "Bouillabaisse" which 
 reminds one that the prose is pleasantly 
 set here and there with sprigs of verse, 
 usually after the manner and sentiment 
 of Mr. Monahan's beloved master, 
 Thackeray, to whom he offers unneces- 
 sary apologies for the spirited ballad of 
 "The New Bouillabaisse," which will, 
 doubtless, keep alive the memory of a 
 certain friendly New York restaurant 
 (unfriendly word! let us say "eating 
 house*') long after it has passed into the 
 limbo of other New York homes of 
 
 20 
 
ancient cheer. Present-day aspects of 
 New York life are made matters of 
 historic record in such refreshingly out- 
 spoken papers as "Old Men for Love," 
 "Sex in the Playhouse," "Babylon," and 
 "Trial by Newspaper," the latter a de- 
 lightfully "knavish piece of work" in the 
 way of satire. Mr. Monahan never min- 
 ces matters. He has the courage alike 
 of his sympathies and his prejudices. 
 
 Another blessed privilege of keeping 
 a magazine ! He bends the knee neither 
 to prohibition nor to the American wo- 
 man. He is as far from being a teeto- 
 taler as he is from being a suffragette. 
 In a chapter of forcible common sense 
 entitled "The Lions" the "two lions in 
 the path of life" being "Drink and De- 
 sire" he has this excellent pronounce- 
 ment a propos men of genius : "The world 
 has learned more from their intemper- 
 ance in drink and love and other things 
 than from the unshaken virtue of a mil- 
 lion parsons. * * * Nature is never 
 less a moralist than when mixing in her 
 
 21 
 
alembic the materials of human great- 
 ness ;" yet, with the caution of another 
 of his masters, Horace, he concludes : 
 "Most of us are the better for having 
 caroused a while there, (that is in "the 
 House of Excess,") and then, admonish- 
 ed by the clock, paid our shot and come 
 on our way." Among aphorisms highly 
 unsuitable for popular magazines are 
 these: "Modesty is much less native to 
 women than we pretend to believe by a 
 social convention." . . . "It is asserted 
 that from time to time a man appears on 
 this earth who thinks only of the One 
 Woman, and never knows or desires an- 
 other during his earthly pilgrimage." 
 But I must not seem to imply that such 
 are the prevailing ingredients of Mr. 
 Monahan's "Bouillabaisse." They but 
 occasionally season it with a robust rel- 
 ish, and are but incidental to the same 
 daring sincerity of expression which en- 
 ables him to say of Shakesepare: "In 
 another generation or so Shakespeare 
 
 22 
 
will be as infrequently acted as the Greek 
 plays." If Mr. Monahan is no "femin- 
 ist," his tenderness and reverence for 
 women are true and deep. Witness his 
 beautiful "Household Psalm." No more 
 touching tribute to a wife was ever pen- 
 ned, and how pertinent its closing word : 
 
 "Think of this now and then during 
 the days she may be yet left to thee." 
 
 Other husbands please copy ! And the 
 lovely letter to a child which follows it. 
 I wish I could quote them both. But 
 I trust that I have at least suggested the 
 individual charm of Mr. Monahan's 
 book, its ripeness, its gusto, its sense of 
 comradeship, its humor and common 
 sense and all its entertaining variety, 
 that the reader will help it to fulfill the 
 end for which every good book was 
 brought into the world first to be 
 bought, then to be read. It is too good 
 a book to be borrowed. It is emphatical- 
 ly a book to be bought. 
 
 23 
 
SO HERE ENDETH THIS LITTLE 
 BOOK OF APPRECIATION BY RICH- 
 ARD LE GALLIENNE, OTHERWISE 
 YCLEPT WITH HONORABLE AD- 
 DITION, RICHARD OF THE QUEST. 
 DONE AT THE PRINTERY OF THE 
 PHOENFX IN THE MONTH OF 
 DECEMBER ANNO DOMINI 
 MDCCCCXIV 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 RENEWED BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE 
 RECALL 
 
 MITED CIRCULATION 
 
 LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS 
 
Le Gallienne, 
 J Michael Monahan, 
 
 025 
 
 LIMITED CIRCULATION 
 
 304430 
 

 
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