I can’t recall exactly when I first became aware of “men of letters” as a designation for a particular class of erudite and literate individuals. Upon seeing this designation in print for the first time, I immediately thought of uncle Ned’s funeral in which I thought the B.P.O.E after his name would qualify him as a “man of letters”. Unfortunately, I shortly learned that being a life member of the Brotherhood of the Paternal Order of the Elks did not qualify him for entrance into these lofty literary circles.
Upon reflection and some study, I’m inclined to put “men of letters” in two piles. In the first pile are those who by virtue of their devotion to literary or scholarly activities have become noted by others as a classical scholar of the liberal arts and who have turned to the classics and philosophy as a way to become closer to a meaningful life. Most often, they were also gifted writers who could convey, in an interesting way, what they had learned to others. Yes, I know that’s a mouthful, but there’s no short way of saying it.
Many, if not most, of these rare creatures have had roots long planted in western civilizations; however, in the earliest days of the American adventure, we find them also as the products not just of European educational traditions, but also as spawn of our own elite educational institutions. You know many of the names: Thoreau, Dreiser, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Franklin, Mencken, Emmerson, Mailer, Stein (as in Gertrude), and my personal favorite, Mark Twain who is also known as Hal Holbrook, er, I mean Samuel Clemens. No, I don’t intend this as an exhaustive list, and yes, I show my own prejudices by those I have chosen to cite. You will note at least one similarity and one almost similarity. They all lived, were educated, thought and wrote within shouting distance of the east coast of the United States, and they are all of the male persuasion (excepting the aformentioned Gertrude Stein). You know these names, for the most part, because you were bullied, as was I, by a series of high school and college english and literature teachers/professors into reading, or pretending to read their offerings. In the second pile, I put a few good men of Texas who got their letters (so to speak) far from the elite educational and intellectual tradition of the eastern United States. It’s this group that I’m inclined to say a few more words about, and to prod you to turn a few of their pages. The former group should not be ignored either, because their works are reflective of the considerable literary tradition upon which new generations of authors continue to build. In fact, I’ve only recently reread Mencken’s A Religious Orgy in Tennessee which is a compilation of his reporting on the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 and Twain’s Innocents Abroad which is his travel journal of his world voyage in the second half of the 19th century. You can’t do better than this.
In the second pile I nominate my Texas trio of men of letters is J. Frank Dobie (1888-1964, Roy Bedichek (1878-1959), and Walter Prescott Webb (1888-1963). I suspect you’ve heard of and read Dobie, but unless you’re hopelessly anal about Texas literature, the later two may be something of a mystery. You can see they are all of the same era and thus, could be expected to share common experiences and values of the time. Two of them (Bedichek and Webb received undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Texas, while Dobie got his diploma down the road at Southwestern University in Georgetown. They all worked for much of their life in Austin. Dobie as a professor, Webb as president of the Texas Historical Society, and Bedichek as Executive Director of the University Interscholastic League. Each of them cast a long literary shadow on the course of Texas and Texans.
These three Texans were men of letters both literally and figuratively. They wrote exhaustively and well for the general public. My own book shelves are populated substantially with their offerings. Dobie’s writings are well known, particularly those dealing with the myths and lore of Texas. My personal favorite, however, is his A Texan in England which he wrote during his tenure as Professor of American History at Cambridge University during the last half or WWII. In Dobie’s well documented effort to decline the original invitation to teach, he explained that he hadn’t read the American Constitution since he was a boy and he didn’t understand it even then, but that he did know the length of the horns of longhorn steers, the way mother rattlesnakes swallow their young, the music inherent in coyote howling, the speed of the Pacing White Mustang and the smell of coffee boiled over mesquite wood. You can see why they loved him.
In Three Friends by William A. Owens (of Pin Hook, TX and East Texas Normal College), opined that “these were remarkable men. It is fully as remarkable that they should have been at the same place at the same time, that their lives should have followed parallel courses for so many years, that their commingling should have so enriched and strengthened all three.” Those of you who idled away a part of your youth in the infamous Zilker Park, might recognize the tall shade tree that served as a forum as these three friends “discussed various aspects of life on this planet and where humankind fit into it–in particular how we might fit into Texas nature”. Oddly, none of these literary giants of Texas were particularly prolific when measured against others of their ilk. Dobie was the most published with twenty-six books, Webb had a dozen, and Bedichek only published four. Dobie was the most popular and best known. His classes at the University of Texas were always oversubscribed and his writings on the myth, lore and legend of Texas and the Southwest were read far and wide. Webb became known as a philosopher/historian and as the definitive interpreter of the development and history of the American west. It is Bedichek, however, who wrote the book that will most likely stand the test of time. His Adventures with a Texas Naturalist is a lyrical rendering of his life long love affair with Texas and its fauna and flora. Interestingly, he borrowed a small cabin owned by his friend Webb, as his writer’s gallery on his year long sabbatical during which he wrote the book. Let me give you but a taste: “…a cluster of living forms had already begun to gather…until every nook and cranny, hole, channel or minute interstice of this many chambered mansion would be crowded with life flowering in winter water.” This is his description of a small spring on Webb’s ranch in wintertime.
Webb was no slacker when it came to slinging words around as well. Memorialized on the wonderful Glenda Goodacre sculpture (also in Zilker Park) are his words: “Civilization shouts, gives orders, writes rules, puts man in institutions and intimidates him with a thousand irritating directives. In return it offers him protection, soul salvation and a living if he can find it. Nature looks down on him and broods in silence. Its noises of running streams and wind in the trees are its own, not directed at but soothing to him because he heard them before he heard the noises of civilization.” Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?
As good as their books are, and I think I’ve read them all, it’s their letters that set them apart. One report counts their accumulated correspondence at fifty thousand letters. Yes, there was no email or instant messaging or iPhones in those days long past, but fifty thousand. Let’s see, divide by three, that’s almost seventeen thousand each. Over thirty years that’s about five hundred fifty per year. And these were’t a hundred and forty character tweets. I’ve read many of these letters and they are in a word – delicious. They paint a picture of three lives intertwined in a way that we would not understand or tolerate today. They contain learned discussion of events of the day, personal advice, comments on others of their society, inquires on family and mutual friends, and observations about the world around them. They contain literary allusion, bits and pieces of poetry and doggerel, scientific citation, and quotes from famous and near famous authors around the world. Both Webb and Bedichek are reported to have described letter writing as a literary art form, and as such, they took it to a new, high level.
So then, is it fair for me to hold up these three Texas men of letters as equals of those upon whom the American literary tradition is founded? I dunno for sure, but let me use the words of Walter Prescott Webb in a letter to his friend, Roy Bedichek as he urged him to proceed with the publication of his letters. “I have concluded that the time has come for us here in the South and Southwest to have our say, through publication of letters, diaries, and autobiographies. The New Englanders never suffered under the inhibitions of false modesty which stops the Southerner dead in his tracks. What is the result? They have dominated for more than a century the literary scene, and made New England until recently almost synonymous with American literature.”
I agree with his sentiment for another reason. I think that no three writers, well known to one another, have ever captured the essence of a time and place as well as Dobie, Webb and Bedichek.
