Los Angeles herald., 1891-05-27

1t would have been impossible to receive
in the cozy parlors of the Authors club
the tenth part of all the women in this
country who have made fame for Them
selves by their writings. Such women as
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Miss Story, Mrs
Barr and Anna Catharine Green were there
and seemed greatly to enjoy the occasion
The women writers of New York have O
sort of club of their own. Many of them
are also members of Sorosis, end they de
light to attend its meetings, and seem as
much fascinated by the beauty and
grace of Mrs. Ella Dietz Clymer as all
men are who look upon her beauty.
Mrs. Clymer, as president of Sorosis, has
gained fame even greater than that which
she won when she was Ella Dietz, the
actress, and under her administration this
most famous of women's clubs in this
country has prospered greatly
While the women writers celebrate their
achievements and take courage from NUT
ual counsel in formal way, the authors
at the Authors club go to the other ex-
treme, and are most delightfully."- informal.
They smoke pipes, many of them initiating
the habit of Tennyson asad Carlyle, usisg
long, old fashioned clay pipes. Such OF
them as are so disposed quaff with moder-
alton good beer or tobies of ale, and they
sit about the reception room chatting with
utmost informality of one another's sue
cesses, discussing the latest novel, orana-
lying the qualities which have made Rud-
yard Kipling famous, or which preserve
William d. Howells' fame. Here on al
most any evening when he is in the city
George Parsons Lathrop may be found,
looking far more solemn and serious than
he feels, shaking his shaggy black hair as
he gets excited in argument, and insisting,
as he sometimes does, that the literary de-
velopment of Americans, at least in the
line of fiction, is just now in state of
transition.
Here, too, may be found the sedate and
yet slyly humorous countenance of Frank
Stockton, who seems to be as popular with
authors as he is with readers, and who,
since fame has also brought him fortune,
and therefore enabled him to get rid OF
more irksome pursuits, has mellowed
greatly. He will become the center of a
group, such men as Edgar Fawcett, La
throp, sometimes Edmund Clarence Sted-
man, Edward Eggleston and his brother,
George Cary Eggleston, standing around,
whom he convulses with laughter, as he
tells his dryly humorous stories.
Now and then Mr.. Howells himself OF
George W. Cable or Mark Twain is visi-
tor at the club, and they are specially hon
ored, not with fulsome homage, but with
that delicate courtesy which implies the
greatest respect. If Mark Twain is in the
humor, and he has not been bothered with
litigations over his plays and copyrights
he usually comes brimful of new and
quaint suggestions, which are more humor
GUS, many of them, than many of his pub
hshed sketches. Howells is always quiet
when there, not saying many things, but
saying much; but he never can be got tc
speak of his own works. He talks enter
tainingly of the criticisms which his theory
of fiction has caused, and he is ready to de
fend that theory until the small hours o.
the morning. He does not defend it by
any analysis or suggestions which might
arise from his own works, but upon gen
eral principles.