THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT BIOGRAPHY
Reading edition
PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF LIFE AND LETTERS
BY
JOSEPH COLLINS
AUTHOR OF “THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT LITERATURE,” “TAKING THE LITERARY PULSE,” “IDLING IN ITALY,” “MY ITALIAN YEAR,” ETC.
NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT BIOGRAPHY —B— PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
LIGHTNER WITMER
Psychologist and Educator
TO RECALL STUDENT DAYS IN GERMANY
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author expresses his thanks to the editors of The Bookman, McNaught’s Monthly, The International Book Review, and The New York Sun for permission to elaborate material used by them into certain chapters of this volume.
CONTENTS
Part I: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Page
I Biography 15
II Autobiography 43
Part II: INTERPRETATIONS
III Litterateurs: American Writers 63
Sherwood Anderson William D. Howells Lafcadio Hearn Mark Twain Henry Thoreau Henry James
IV Litterateurs: Foreign Writers 98
Anatole France Sainte-Beuve Leonid Andreyev Joseph Conrad John Donne Thomas Burke Robert Louis Stevenson
V Poets 147
Alfred Kreymborg William Blake John Keats Edgar Allan Poe Arthur Rimbaud
VI Warriors 179
Lord Wolseley Robert E. Lee
VII Editors 188
Edward P. Mitchell Edward W. Bok Joseph Pulitzer J. St. Loe Strachey
VIII Clergymen 202
Dr. Frank Crane W. J. Dawson
IX Artists and Musicians 212
Walter Damrosch Irving Berlin Maria Jeritza Emil Fuchs
X Actors and Actresses 225
Eleonora Duse Charles Hawtrey Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson Otis Skinner George Cohan The Unsuccessful Actor Weber and Fields
XI Statesmen 242
Woodrow Wilson Brigham Young Abraham Lincoln Theodore Roosevelt
XII Educators 277
Sir William Osler G. Stanley Hall
XIII Prize Fighters 291
John L. Sullivan James J. Corbett
XIV Fictional Biography 300
Ariel The Divine Lady The Nightingale
XV Miscellaneous 308
A. Henry Savage Landor Eric Horne
XVI The Ladies 314
Madame Récamier Rebekah Kohut Kathleen Norris Rheta Childe Dorr Yang Kuei-Fei
Books Cited 331
Index 337
PORTRAITS
FACING PAGE
Mark Twain 74
Anatole France Courtesy of Edward Wassermann 98
Thomas Burke 136
John Keats in his Last Illness By permission of “The Century Magazine” 158
Joseph Pulitzer Courtesy of “The New York World” 196
Walter Damrosch Photograph by Gutekunst 212
Eleonora Duse 226
Brigham Young Courtesy of Harcourt, Brace & Co. 252
Sir William Osler Reprinted from “The Annals of Medical History” 278
J. J. Corbett By permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons 296
Lady Hamilton as Circe Courtesy of Dodd, Mead & Co. 302
Mme. Récamier 314
Part I: BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY
But all the world’s coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, So passed in making up the main account: All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man’s amount: Thoughts hardly to be packed Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped: All I could never be, All men ignored in me, This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. Rabbi Ben Ezra.
THE DOCTOR LOOKS AT BIOGRAPHY
Part I: Biography and Autobiography