18                                    Robert A. Colby

lent thing for us. Can we try for a year?'' While allowing Matthews
a free hand, he exerted some editorial direction:

We do not want personal details—a few may help the understanding
of a book, e.g. that Cable is a Louisiana man (It is also interesting but
not for publication to have seen him & to know what an u^y crea¬
ture he is). Then we want to know what is going on in the literary
world—its clubs—papers etc.—I assure you there is great scope. The
writer might be the means of introducing to us some most valuable
writers.

"Remember that our ignorance of American literature is really
colossal," Besant remarked earlier in the letter, recalling that he
found his countrymen well represented in bookshops in Boston and
New Haven, "but in our shops—where are your books?" On this
trip Besant also swooped up "all the living American poets that
Messrs Little & Co. could rake together for me" to bring back with
him. He thought American poets in general rather shabbily treated
in English reviews, with reference specifically to one of Matthews's
colleagues on the Columbia faculty, who had participated in the
Chicago Authors' Congress: "George Woodberry for instance. I
brought him over & gave him to a man to read and not to deride.
The result at all events was a short notice of appreciation in the
S[aturday] R[eview]."

His own animadversions fueled by Besant's charge, it is not sur¬
prising that a note of chauvinism pervades Hallett Robinson's letters
to the Author. He begins by boasting that with the quadrupling of
the population of the United States since the days of the Knicker¬
bockers, literary production has fanned out through the land, and
by now "there are many more accomplished writers than there
were formerly and the average of merit is undoubtedly higher." A
later piece announces the establishment of New York branches by
the venerable firms of Longman's and Macmillan's, pointedly add¬
ing that they are flourishing on their American authors. In other
columns he refutes with facts and figures assertions of superiority in
the British press, such as that English novelists still outsell American
in the United States, and that no American magazine approaches
the Strand in circulation.