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Title: New Brooms
Author: Shores, Robert J. (Robert James)
Language: English
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NEW BROOMS
by
ROBERT J. SHORES
[Illustration]
Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
Copyright 1913
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Press of
Braunworth & Co.
Bookbinders and Printers
Brooklyn, N. Y.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I A PHILOSOPHICAL COOK 1
II A BACHELOR ON WOMEN 16
III ON PENSIONING WRITERS 20
IV A PURITAN IN BOHEMIA 27
V AN ARRAIGNMENT OF ORIGINALITY 42
VI A FLATTERING TRIBUTE 51
VII THE RIDDLE OF A DREAM 53
VIII BEDS FOR THE BAD 61
IX IS CHESTERTON A MAN ALIVE? 69
X FROM A HUNCHBACK 77
XI FROM A HOTEL SPONGE 89
XII FROM SARAH SHELFWORN 96
XIII FROM ANNA PEST 104
XIV FROM SETH SHIRTLESS 110
XV SARTOR-PSYCHOLOGY 118
XVI MR. BODY PROTESTS 126
XVII ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FASHION WRITERS 138
XVIII OF LOOKING BACKWARD 146
XIX THE LITERARY LIFE 155
XX THE POETIC LICENSE 162
XXI THE NECESSITY FOR BEGGARS 168
XXII THE ABUSES OF ADVERSITY 173
XXIII THE SCIENCE OF MAKING ENEMIES 182
XXIV THE FATE OF FALSTAFF 192
XXV THE REWARD OF MERIT 202
XXVI THE BLESSINGS OF THE BLIND 212
XXVII A TALE OF A MAD POET’S WIFE 224
XXVIII THE LOCK-STEP 232
XXIX THE FRUIT OF FAME 250
NEW BROOMS
A PHILOSOPHICAL COOK
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Though I am not one of your subscribers I am, I believe,
one of your most faithful readers. I do not take your magazine, it is
true, but I am at present employed in a family some member of which is
evidently a subscriber, as the maid brings it out in the waste-paper
basket regularly, once a month, when, according to her custom, she
permits me to select from the month’s periodicals such journals as seem
to me to be worthy of my attention in my leisure hours. I shall not
conceal from you the fact that my fancy was first attracted to your
publication by the fact that I always found it fresh and clean, with
the leaves still uncut, and not soiled, bedraggled and often coverless
as are some of the others which suffer more usage before reaching me.
But having once cut the leaves with a convenient bread-knife and looked
through one of your numbers, I perceived at once that you are, in
your way, something of a philosopher, and I have ever been partial to
everything that smacked of philosophy. Could you step into my pantry at
the present moment you would find upon my shelves Plato and Aristotle
as well as the immortal Mrs. Rorer, for I am, in my humble fashion, a
philosopher as well as a cook. I do not at all agree with that learned
and talented French gentleman who declared that to study philosophy was
to learn to die; on the contrary, I hold that to study philosophy is
to learn to live, and I see no reason why the study of philosophy is
not as fitting an occupation for a cook as for a collegian. Therefore I
cook or philosophize according to my inclination, and if it seem to you
that I philosophize like a cook, my employer, I am proud to say, will
tell you that I cook like a philosopher.
In youth I had the advantage of a grammar school education, and that
education I have supplemented with reading and observation. If, as
Pope has said,
“The proper study of mankind is man,”
then I have entered the right school for the completion of my
education; for the kitchen is, it seems to me, a natural observatory
for the study of human nature. Working away at my chosen profession
in the seclusion of my kitchen, I can, without ever having laid eyes
upon him, give you a complete character of the head of the household. I
can not with certainty say whether he is a large or small man, because
the appetite is sometimes deceptive in this respect, and I have known
a small man to eat as much as would suffice for two stevedores, and
I have known an athlete to peck at a meal that would leave a child
hungry. It is not, then, by his physical character that I judge him,
but by his mental and psychological symptoms. I do not gage him by
how much he eats, but by what he eats. I can not tell you whether he
is large or small, but I can tell you whether he is voluptuous or
esthetic, good-natured or crabbed, rich or poor, wise or foolish.
It is really remarkable the knowledge I come to have of this person
whom I have never seen, or it would be if the method by which I reach
my conclusions were not so simple. If he keeps fast days and eats only
fish upon Fridays, I know, of course, that he is a churchman. If he
persistently eats food which is bad for any man’s digestion, I know
that he is both irritable and obstinate, for no man can continue to
eat what does not agree with him without becoming irritable, and no
man will continue such a course in the face of his better judgment
unless he is obstinate. If he eats only of rich food and shows a
constant preference for _taste_ over _nutrition_, I know that he is a
voluptuary; it is seldom that a man indulges himself in a passion for
over-eating who does not indulge himself in other passions as well,
and even though his one indulgence be eating, he is none the less a
voluptuary by nature. If he eats little and that in an abstracted
manner, sometimes overlooking a favorite dish or allowing his soup
to grow cold so that it is returned half-eaten, I know that he is
absent-minded and eats merely because he has to, not because he loves
eating for its own sake. If he insists upon having his toast an exact
shade of brown and his coffee at a given degree of temperature, I know
that he is exacting and particular as to details; that he thinks well
of himself and thinks of himself often.
So, as you see, there are hundreds of these moral symptoms which are
as familiar to me as physical symptoms are to a physician. Thus I
supplement my theoretical knowledge of philosophy by my observation of
life.
When I was casting about me for an occupation I had, being an orphan,
a perfectly free choice. Had I followed my first impulse, I think I
should have gone to live in a tub like Diogenes, and have resolved to
spend my life, like Schopenhauer, in thinking about it. But a little
observation soon convinced me that the man who lives in the fashion of
Diogenes is not held in high favor in these days and that philosophy,
as a profession, would be likely to prove unremunerative. Now I am not
one who desires riches or who can not be happy without wealth, but I
soon decided that I must be possessed of a certain amount of money in
order to indulge my taste for personal cleanliness. I soon gave over
the tub of Diogenes, but I was loath to forego all intercourse with the
ordinary domestic tub.
Having determined, therefore, to enter upon some profession in which
I could make a reasonable amount of money without requiring a great
preliminary outlay, I looked about me for a vocation which might supply
my physical needs, and at the same time, afford me some mental and
spiritual satisfaction. I dismissed the study of the law or medicine as
beyond my means, and I did not find myself sufficiently religious to
permit me to enter the ministry with a clear conscience. For trade I
had your true philosopher’s distaste, and I confess no sort of manual
labor, except as cooking may be so described, held any attraction for
me. I shuddered at the thought of becoming a barber, chiropodist or
hair-dresser, and my pride would not permit me to suffer the rebuffs
which fall to the lot of a pedler, book agent or commercial traveler.
It was then that I was struck with my happy inspiration. I would become
a member of an old and honorable profession--I would become a cook.
If I could not be a philosopher and nourish men’s minds, I would be a
cook and nourish their bodies. I would make dishes so delicious and
enticing that men upon the brink of suicide would turn back to life
with new hope in their hearts. I would impart energy to the weary,
peace to the troubled in mind and happiness to the discontented. I
would become such a cook as might have won the praise of Lucullus; I
would become an artist worthy to take the hand of Epicurus. Such were
the extravagant hopes I hugged to my breast when I matriculated at the
best cooking-school of my native state. It is true that my achievements
have fallen far short of my ambitions, but I have never swerved from my
allegiance to my ideal of the Perfect Dinner.
Upon finishing my course at cooking-school, I utilized my savings in
indulging myself in a post-graduate course abroad. I went to Paris, and
there I made the acquaintance of the immortal Frederick of the Tour
d’Argent, he of the famous pressed ducks, and of other masters of the
culinary art.
This, then, was my preparation for a life of cooking. Possibly you will
think that I took my profession too seriously; possibly you do not
hold the same high opinion of the art of cooking that I have always
held--there are many so minded. It is a never-failing source of wonder
to me that men are so quick to recognize the services of those who feed
their minds and so slow to acknowledge the debt they owe to those who
feed their bodies. I have never regarded cooking in the light of mere
manual labor. Labor, it seems to me, is work that is distasteful and
only performed from necessity; a “labor of love” seems to me to be a
paradox. Work, on the contrary, may be as keen a source of pleasure
as recreation. Work may be the striving of an artist to attain his
ideal. The very word “labor” suggests pain and exhaustion. We speak of
an author’s “works,” but who would think of referring to them as his
“labors”?
I do not believe, as many seem to believe, that any man or woman who
can juggle a skillet or wield an egg-beater is a cook. Merely to follow
a formula in a cookery book does not make one a cook any more than the
compounding of a prescription makes one a physician. Cooking is an art
as well as a science. The violinist can not express his personality
in the strains of his instrument more fully than can the cook in his
cooking. The favorite dishes of a race are characteristic of that
race. The Spaniard, like his _chili con carne_ and his tamale, is hot,
peppery and economical. The Frenchman, like his many concoctions, is
full of spice, imagination and extravagance. The Italian is indolent
and averse to exertion, as is evidenced by his macaroni and spaghetti.
The Englishman is red and hearty like his roast beef. The German is fat
and fair like his sausages. The Russian is odd and interesting like
his caviar. The American, like his diet, is cosmopolitan. And as the
cooking of a nation or race is characteristic of that nation or race,
so the cooking of an individual is characteristic of that individual.
Coarse people do not prepare dainty dishes. A cook may strike a discord
as surely as a musician.
To be a good cook, a cook worthy of one’s calling, one must have the
soul of an artist. One must be clean, self-respecting, industrious,
ambitious, earnest, quick to learn and trained to remember. Do other
professions require more?
The cook wields a tremendous influence for good or for evil. Over a
good dinner the most cynical or the most brutal man must relax into
something like human kindness. It is indeed true that
“All human history attests
That happiness for man,--the hungry sinner!--
Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner!”
If there be even the feeblest spark of charity in a man’s breast, a
good dinner will fan it into flame. A bad dinner, on the other hand,
will bring to the surface all that is mean and ignoble in his nature.
Indigestion, I surmise, has been the cause of most of the cruelty of
men. Viewing history in this light, it is easier to understand the
apparently wanton slaughter among barbarians. Fed upon ill-conditioned
food, the barbarian is attacked in his most sensitive part--his
stomach. He is upset, distrait; his nerves are set upon edge and he
knows not what ails him. He grows irritable and quick to anger, and
he wrecks his unreasoning and unreasonable spleen upon the first
convenient victim. It is to be observed that the science of cookery and
the progress of civilization advance together. Well-fed men are slow to
wrath and easily appeased. At the height of the Roman civilization the
Romans became epicures and ceased to be warriors. War has no charms for
the man who is at peace with his own stomach.
It may be urged by some that cooking, in rendering a man unwarlike,
does him an ill service because it makes him effeminate. But the same
may be said of all the cardinal virtues except, perhaps, bravery.
Forbearance, loving kindness, gentleness, faith--all these and many
others are essentially feminine virtues. Nay, civilization itself is a
feminizing influence. Under our modern civilization, which as far as
we know is the highest the world has ever experienced, men are reduced
to the condition of dependents. Men no longer rely upon their personal
prowess and valor for redress for their injuries or the defense of
their natural rights. The law has become the protector of men, just as
men were once the protectors of women. And this feminizing influence
of civilization is, I take it, a wise provision of Providence for the
benefit of cookery. The less men are concerned with battle, murder and
sudden death, the more they are concerned with their dinners; and the
more solicitous they become for their dinners, the more they desire
the safety of the home, the peace of nations and the prosperity of
mankind--all things, in short, which help to make possible the Perfect
Dinner, perfectly chosen, perfectly cooked and perfectly eaten.
I say “perfectly eaten” because it seems to me that there is an art
of eating as well as an art of cooking. It is said that a musician
does his best when playing before an appreciative audience; and so
the cook is at his best when cooking for an appreciative diner. It
is a discouraging thing for an actor to peep out from behind the
drop-curtain and see the pit all but empty of spectators; but it is
a heart-breaking experience for a cook to peep through the swinging
doors of his sanctum sanctorum and to behold the diners distant and
indifferent, this one idly chattering and that one buried in a late
edition of a newspaper, while his delicious soups, his super-excellent
omelets, his heart-warming coffee, his inspiring steaks and his
magnificent pâtés grow cold and unpalatable upon the unregarded plates!
To see one’s chef-d’œuvres treated as hors-d’œuvres--that is a tragedy
of the soul!
To attain the Perfect Dinner we must attain the Perfect Civilization.
The diner must be as free to enjoy his dinner as the cook is to
prepare it; and, in like manner, the Perfect Dinner is the concomitant
of the Perfect Civilization. Man is civilized when he is well-fed and
uncivilized when he is ill-fed. This is a truth which you need not
accept upon my unsupported authority; any housewife will tell you as
much. If the earth were to be visited by a plague which attacked only
those who could cook and carried them off all at one time, I believe
that the world would relapse into anarchy in the space of thirty days.
It seems to me that the profession of cooking is not at all
incompatible with the study of philosophy. As I apply my philosophy
to my cooking, so I apply my cooking to my philosophy. Some of my
philosophers I take raw, some I boil down to the very juice and some I
season; for philosophy, I believe, is often more digestible when taken
_cum grano salis_.
I may be wrong, and it may seem egotistical in me to say it, but
really, Mr. _Idler_, I believe that if more people were of my mind
to mix their philosophy and their cooking, there would be many more
intelligent cooks and not a few more palatable philosophers.
I am, Sir, your humble servant,
BARTHOLOMEW BATTERCAKE.
A BACHELOR ON WOMEN
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have lately been the subject of many animadversions upon
the part of literary critics because of a novel of mine, recently
published, which these critics have been pleased to term “a study in
feminine psychology.” My story has been criticized severely and my
observations upon the female character mercilessly condemned, and in
every one of these adverse criticisms which has been brought to my
attention, the reviewer has taken occasion to say, in substance, “This
book was evidently written by a bachelor.”
Now, the fact of my bachelorhood I have no wish to deny, nor could I if
I would, for it is well known to my many friends and acquaintances that
I am a single man. But is the fact that I am a bachelor conclusive,
or even _prima facie_, evidence of my incompetency to discourse upon
feminine psychology? I do not see why it should be so considered. It is
plain that a great many people are of the opinion that the man who has
married a woman must know more of women in general than the man who has
not. But, after all is said, Mr. _Idler_, why should the married man
know more of women than the bachelor knows? He is married only to one
woman--not to all womankind.
No man becomes an expert entomologist through the study of one insect.
There is no one insect which can furnish him with a general knowledge
of entomology. Nor is there any one woman who can furnish us with a
general knowledge of women. There is no one woman so typical of her
sex that all other women may be judged by her. Yet the only advantage
which the married man enjoys over the unmarried man is his intimate
knowledge of one particular woman. The married man has not the same
liberty of observing women which is the perquisite of the bachelor. The
only time when a married man has an opportunity to observe women other
than his wife is when his wife is not with him, and then, for a short
time, he possesses the same degree of liberty which the bachelor enjoys
all of the time. The bachelor observes, not one woman, but many. It is
true that his knowledge of women differs from that of the married man
in one particular: if he has any intimate knowledge of woman at her
worst it is likely to be a knowledge of Judy O’Grady, rather than of
the colonel’s lady. The bachelor sees good women at their best and bad
women at their worst. The married man sees one good woman at her best
and at her worst.
The question, then, is, which sort of knowledge is more likely
to enable a man to form a just estimate of the female character?
Personally, I think the bachelor has all the best of it. And, Sir,
if none of these arguments has weight with you, there remains one
supreme argument which proves that the bachelor knows more of women
than the married man, and that, Sir, is the simple fact that he _is_ a
bachelor, as
I am, Sir,
FORTUNATAS FREEMAN.
N. B. The editor disclaims all responsibility for the sentiments
expressed in the above communication.
ON PENSIONING WRITERS
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I observe by the daily press that the English government
has just issued a list in full of such authors as have been selected
for the receipt of a pension. In this list I find the names of a
number of widows and orphans of authors as well as the names of living
authors, and this is no doubt as it should be. I have heard certain
hypercritical persons object to the late project of the “Dickens stamp”
upon the ground that no man is entitled to anything which he has not
earned and that literary heirs are entitled to no more consideration
than monetary heirs. Now, personally, I can not understand what is
so objectionable about the inheritance of money. It seems to me that
a man’s heirs are quite as much entitled to receive the benefits of
his fortune or the fruits of his industry after his death as they
are during his life; and no one has yet gone so far as to say that
a man may not, with perfect propriety, bestow upon his heirs and
relatives such pecuniary gifts and benefits as he may see fit during
his lifetime. It seems to me that the heirs of an author inherit as
great an interest in his work as the heirs of a banker or broker. But,
however this may be, there is one feature about this pensioning of
authors which convinces me that the British government has gone about
the matter in a very wrong fashion.
I find in looking over the list that pensions have been granted
because of writings upon ornithology, Elizabethan literature, poetry,
socialism, philosophy and so on. While I must confess that I am
unfamiliar with the majority of the names which appear upon the list,
I assume from the manner in which they have been selected that the
British government considers their work to have been of really great
value, although not popular. The British government, in fact, appears
to be offering encouragement, in the shape of pensions, to such writers
as can not hope to please the general public with their work. The
government is supplying a pension in lieu of popular appreciation.
Now, this is all very well if the government is merely going into the
business of being philanthropic and is willing to extend its system
of pensions to include worthy shoemakers who have been unable to
secure a sufficient custom to keep them in food and clothing because
of the inroads made upon the cobbler’s trade by the manufacturers
of machine-made shoes; lawyers who are learned in the law, but who
have been unable to secure the business of the great corporations;
doctors who are efficient, but who chance to live in unusually healthy
neighborhoods; ministers of the Gospel who are unfortunately assigned
to meager or irreligious parishes; music teachers who are excellent
instructors, but who find formidable foes to business in the automatic
piano and the phonograph. If the British government is bent upon making
up for public indifference to such authors as are willing to benefit
mankind, but who can not make mankind take note of their efforts in
that direction, then, I say, the British government shows a kindly and
courteous disposition, but it should not stop with authors; it should
carry on the good work in every walk of life.
But if, as I suspect to be the case, the British government is
establishing this system of pensions in the hope that the system will
result in more and better books, then I must say I think the system is
more likely to fail than to succeed.
One has but to glance back at the history of literature to be convinced
that poverty has never been an effective check upon literary genius.
Poets have starved and philosophers have gone about clad in shabby
raiment rather than forsake their chosen work. Herbert Spencer did not
go clad in rags, to be sure, but where mediocre writers were reaping
fortunes from their literary labors, he was expending fortunes in the
effort to bring his philosophy to the attention of the world. Doctor
Johnson never wrote so prolifically or so well as when he was starving
in a Grub Street garret.
An empty stomach does not mean an empty head where authors are
concerned. The fact of the matter is, it is easier for men to write
great poetry and to think deeply when they are poor than when they
are well-to-do. A wealthy and famous man has to suffer innumerable
distractions from the work he has in hand; his time and attention
are not his own to command. At every turn he is harassed by the
responsibilities of his position. In obscurity and poverty, on the
other hand, a man is not only brought more closely in touch with life,
but he is absolute master of his own time and effort. Providing he be
not married, and so responsible for others, the obscure and poor author
is absolutely his own master. Whether he drop his greater work for the
sake of earning a meal is a matter which is entirely optional. He does
not have to eat if he does not care to do so. The rich and successful
author, on the contrary, is expected to observe certain social duties
and to return courtesy for praise and patronage. If he treats his
public cavalierly and refuses to admit himself bound by the amenities
of ordinary life, he is in grave danger of losing both his popularity
and his eminence.
“O Poverty,” wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau, “thou art a severe teacher.
But at thy noble school I have received more precious lessons, I have
learned more great truths than I shall ever find in the spheres of
wealth.”
Had Louis the Little actually taken up François Villon from his squalor
and wretchedness, his stews and taverns, his thieves and slatterns, and
made him the Grand Marshal of France, as he is made to do in Justin
Huntley McCarthy’s romance, _If I Were King_, he would have spoiled a
good poet to make a poor courtier. When poor and writing for posterity,
the author is at his best; when rich and writing for more money, he
is usually so anxious to make hay while the sun shines that his work
suffers in proportion to his output. No, poverty has never spoiled a
good poet--even the youthful Chatterton might have lost his magic with
the disillusionment which follows on the heels of affluence.
And since the really great authors can not be kept from writing in any
case, it would seem to me that a much better scheme would be to pension
those who were better idle. Let the British government pension, not
the good authors, but the bad. Let the penny-a-liner be retired in
comfort where he will never need to write another poem, novel, play or
philosophic treatise. Since the inspiration which moves him to labor is
the desire for money, when he has the money he will no longer have any
temptation to write. But for the great authors, who will write whether
or no, let them be kept on their mettle, stung to action by “the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune,” inspired by their faith in their
work and close to the hearts of humanity, so that they may continue to
pour out the riches of literature, philosophy and science, unimpeded
by the obligations and worries attendant upon the possession of a bank
account!
I am, Sir,
A LOVER OF LITERATURE.
A PURITAN IN BOHEMIA
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: You will often hear it asserted by those who assume to speak
with authority, that there is no longer any such thing as Bohemia in
New York; that the Bohemians are scattered hither and thither and that
their haunts are given over to seekers after sensation, sight-seers and
the like. The seeming sophistication of those who speak thus is, more
often than not, entirely _sham_, and is assumed by pert reporters for
the daily press who wish, by appearing worldly, to divert attention
from their patent callowness and youth.
There _is_, Sir, such a thing as Bohemia, and there _are_ such people
as Bohemians, and this I know to my sorrow, and the way in which I
discovered this I shall presently relate. Bohemia, as I have found
it, is not a place, but a state of mind and a manner of life. The
Bohemians have a fixed abode no more than the Arabs of the desert or
the wild tribes of Tartary. If one of their citadels is wrested from
them by the invasion of the Philistines, they fall back upon another,
and being, for the most part, unencumbered with Lares and Penates,
they have no difficulty in finding another retreat in which they are
soon as happy and content as in the one which they formerly occupied.
They may be said to be a people without attachments (if we except
the writs so called by those of the legal profession), and if they
pay devotion to any god, I know not whom it may be, unless, indeed,
Bacchus, who was always a roving deity, as like to be found in one spot
as another, whose chief attributes are liberty and license, and whose
rites, therefore, may be celebrated wherever his devotees are given the
liberty of a place that has a license.
But do not let me, by the use of these terms, lead you to fall into the
vulgar error that these Bohemians are people without conventions and
who observe no rules of conduct, but act solely according to the whim
of the moment, for indeed the contrary is the case. The Bohemians,
Sir, are as jealous of their customs and conventions as any class of
people, and they even have certain ideas of caste to which they adhere
as rigidly as the most fanatical of the Hindus. To lose caste in
Bohemia is like losing one’s “face” among the Chinese and results in
ostracism quite as surely.
The customs and conventions of the Bohemians, as I shall presently
show, are, in truth, very different from the customs and the
conventions of what is known as “good society”; so that it is not
surprising that those who have only, so to speak, touched upon the
frontiers of this country of the imagination, should declare it to
be a land of absolute freedom and of individualistic philosophy.
Myself, when I first came among them, was as astonished and confused
as Gulliver among the Houyhnhnms, for here I found everything turned
about from the manner in which I was used to seeing it. That which I
had been accustomed to consider worthy, I found here to be unworthy,
and that which I had been taught to hold a fault I found here to be a
virtue. I had been taught to admire thrift, but here I found it held to
be the meanest of qualities. The Beau Ideal of a Bohemian I discovered
to be the young man who is free with his purse and careless of his
obligations. I found it a humorous thing to defraud one’s creditors but
a shameful thing to deny one’s purse to a fellow Bohemian. I had been
taught to be circumspect in my conversation with the ladies, but here
I found them conversing upon all subjects with utter freedom and an
entire lack of embarrassment. I had been used to admire innocence, but
here I found that innocence was considered as ignorance and a subject
for mirth or censure. Religion, patriotism, respect for established
customs, reverence for those in power--all those things, in short,
which had been so carefully impressed upon me at home, I found to be
nowhere admired among these people.
To acquaint you briefly with the manner of my coming among these
citizens: I fell among them by design and not, as you may have
supposed, by accident. Possessed of some talent in a musical way and
having something of a turn for original composition, I had secured
a position in an orchestra in one of the local theaters. Though I
had been brought up in the most orthodox manner by my father, who
was a professor in a small New England college, I chafed under the
restrictions of social life in my native village, where intellectual
attainments were held in such high repute as to overshadow completely
all natural talent and genius, and where a man was more respected
for knowing Boethius than for knowing beans. I had neither taste
nor inclination for pedagogy, but yearned with all my heart for the
artistic life. I had, in short, a somewhat exaggerated attack of what
is known as the _artistic temperament_, and finding that my own people
considered music as a parlor accomplishment rather than a serious art,
I was more than ever impatient of their narrow-minded Puritanism and
more than ever determined to leave the little college town and all that
it stood for, and to go out into the world to seek companionship with
those who shared my own ideals and ambitions.
The final rupture with my people came when I announced to my father my
intention of becoming a professional violinist, and he replied that
if I were determined to disappoint his hopes of my future I might at
least have hit upon something respectable, and not brought upon him the
reproach of having a fiddler in the family. “I can only hope,” said he,
“that you will be a total and abject failure in your misguided efforts,
for if you were to succeed and I were to come upon your name flaunted
in shameless fashion from the boards of some play-house, I should
certainly die of mortification.” With these good wishes ringing in my
ears, I packed my meager belongings, tucked my violin case under my
arm and turned my back upon my native village and respectability, as I
thought, forever.
A few weeks of playing in the orchestra at a theater convinced me
that I had yet to seek the intellectual sympathy for which I left
home. My fellow players, with one exception, were all phlegmatic
Germans who played well enough, to be sure, but who appeared to be as
devoid of spiritual aspirations and artistic appreciation as so many
day-laborers. They worked at their music as a barber works at his
trade, and when the evening’s task was done, they retired to a corner
saloon where they drank beer, ate Limburger and talked politics like
so many grocers. There was, as I have said, one exception; a young man
like myself, who seemed to scorn the middle-class ideas and ideals
of our companions and who never joined in the beer-drinking or the
political discussions at the corner. This young man, said I to myself,
has been here for some time, and he, if any one, should be able to
direct me to the haunts of the true friends of art; he, of all these,
is the only one fitted to act as my guide, philosopher and friend.
Timidly I approached him upon the subject nearest to my heart, and
heartily he replied that not only could he introduce me into the
free-masonry of art, but that he would do so the very next night.
Accordingly, when the curtain fell the following evening, we set off at
once and arrived shortly at a restaurant and café, upon the East Side,
which was situated in a basement. A large wooden sign proclaimed it to
be “Weinstein’s Rathskeller,” but my companion assured me that it was
known to the _elect_ as the “Café of the Innocents,” because those who
came there were yet young and comparatively unknown in the world of art
and letters.
To describe my sensations upon that evening, Sir, would require the
pen of a Verlaine. My own poor efforts can never do them justice. I
can make shift to express emotion upon the strings of my instrument,
but when I exchange my bow for a pen my fingers become as thumbs and
my emotions defy expression, so that I am as helpless as a six weeks’
infant plagued by a pin, and can no more make clear my meaning than a
sign-painter could imitate Rubens.
Suffice it to say that I was overcome, charmed, enchanted! In stepping
through the portals of that dingy East Side resort, I seemed to have
stepped over the border-line that divides the world of the dull and the
practical from the world of romance and desire. I had entered the land
of dreams, the country of magnificent distances! I was as astonished
as William Guppy would have been had he stumbled unwittingly into the
rose garden of Hafiz. Here were men and women after my own heart; men
and women who saw the world as a whole, unbounded by the petty lines of
counties, states and nations. Here the names of the masters of art and
literature were bandied about as familiarly as the names of our local
professors were at home. Here were lights, here music, and here the
good glad laughter of youth! Here were women--not the slim spinsters
and prim matrons that I had known, but hearty healthy women who seemed
to be _alive_. Ah, that was it--they were all, all of them, so much
alive! Between their fingers they held, not knitting-needles, but
dainty cigarettes! Here was wine, wit and winsomeness--a dangerous, a
deadly combination for such as I!
Well, Sir, to be brief, I was enthralled. I grew so greedy of that
atmosphere that I began to begrudge my work the hours that it called
me away from such good company. Finally I exchanged my place at the
theater for a position in the orchestra at the café. And so I came to
live among the Bohemians and become one of them.
From the first I was enamored of the conversation of these stepchildren
of Genius, and I soon began descending from the platform and mingling
with the _habitués_ of the place; for at Weinstein’s the only snobbery
is of the Bohemian variety, and those who would blush to be seen dining
with a prosperous bourgeois, were not at all averse to drinking with
an humble member of the orchestra--for was not I, too, an artist? It
was not long before I began to care more for talking of my art than for
practising it, and all the time that I was playing I was impatient to
be down among the tables enjoying the praise which my performance, or,
as I am now inclined to suspect, the subsequent order for drinks, never
failed to secure. Thus I ceased to practise and played no more except
when I was at work.
Of course I did not come to realize all this in a moment.
It was some months before I woke from the daze into which I fell at
the first. It came to me gradually as I began to make unpleasant
discoveries. It was disconcerting to find that I had fled my own world
to escape conventions only to come upon others, or rather upon the same
lot, turned topsy-turvy. It annoyed me to find that to be accounted
a true Bohemian one must hold only certain views, and those always
opposed to the views of acknowledged authorities; that one must not
dress too well, eat too well or drink too well. Which was not at all
the same thing as saying _too much_. But this was by no means the most
shocking of my disillusions. I soon learned that while the Bohemians
are forever talking and thinking of success and wishing success for
their friends, the moment one of them really succeeds he is no longer a
member of the company; and for this reason it is said, with some truth,
that there are no successful Bohemians. When one of them who has made
a marked success intrudes himself into the old gathering place, he is
given such a cold shoulder that he never ventures there again. A small
triumph furnishes the occasion for a feast of congratulation, but a
real “arrival” excites the whole company to sneers and innuendoes, so
that such felicitations as are offered are bitter with envy. They have
a sort of optimism of their own, but it is all a personal optimism.
Each one hopes and believes that he will succeed, but each one believes
and secretly hopes that the others will not. A cynical smile and a
shrugging of shoulders is the tribute to the absent artist.
Well, Mr. _Idler_, the longer I remained among these people, the more I
came to be of the mind of _Alice in Wonderland_, that though some may
be marked off from the pack and may look like kings and queens, they
are nothing but playing-cards after all.
But there was one young woman who held my waning interest and who bound
me by sentimental ties to the life of which I now began to be somewhat
weary. If I had not made her acquaintance I believe that I should long
ago have left Bohemia and shaken the sawdust of Weinstein’s from my
feet. She was a demure young person, a newcomer from the West, who was
studying art. She seemed so different from the others, so fresh, so
ingenuous, that I could not but believe her to be genuine. She smoked
her cigarette and drank of the _table d’hôte_ wine, it is true (she
could do no less in the face of Bohemian convention), but she did
it all with such a pretty air of youth and innocence as touched me
greatly. For I was by now as strongly attracted by a quiet woman as I
had formerly been by a lively one.
To spare you a tedious recital of my passion, I determined to ask her
to marry me, thinking that she might arouse in me the old ambition to
become a great musician--the ambition which my long sojourn in the
Lotus land of Bohemia had all but killed. And so one night I put the
question gently over our cups of black coffee, asking her, “Would
you--could you--share with me my career?” Then, Sir, that happened
which you will scarce believe. Yes, she said, she would be glad to
share my career with me, but I must be under no misapprehension; she
could not marry me; she already had a husband in the West; but inasmuch
as she had not seen him in three years and had never found him very
congenial in any case, he need not in any way interfere with our plans.
As you may imagine, I was thunderstruck. I concealed my confusion as
best I might by pretending to choke upon a bit of cheese, and at the
first opportunity I made my escape and sought the seclusion of my
chamber where I faced my problem. I had striven to become a Bohemian,
but I had been born a Puritan and there was a limit to my acquired
unconventionality. I could not confess my prudery to the lady; could
not ignore the incident. Therefore I have determined to accept the one
course left open to me. I shall fly. I am now going out to pawn my
fiddle and with the money I get I shall buy me a ticket to that little
New England town where I first saw the light of day.
Others may seek for inspiration at the Café of the Innocents, but as
for me, I am going where a modest young man may live in the protection
of the old-fashioned conventions. I am going where I can be moral
without being queer. _I_ am going home. And so, Sir,
Farewell,
TIMOTHY TIMID.
AN ARRAIGNMENT OF ORIGINALITY
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am, I doubt not, one of your most devoted readers, and
the reason of my devotion, if I may say so, is because you so seldom
say anything original. Nay, Sir, this is not said in jest, but in
very earnest, for in truth I am vastly wearied of originality in all
its forms. We are so beset upon all sides by “originals” of one sort
or another, that it is a positive relief to open a book or pick up a
magazine which is decently dull and warranted harmless. To sit down for
a quiet evening with one of our sensational monthlies is like lighting
one’s self to bed with a giant cracker--there is no peace or quiet to
be had with ’em.
From my earliest youth it has been my ambition to keep myself well
informed of the affairs of the day, and to this end I have made it a
practise to glance at least through the monthly numbers of our popular
magazines. I regret to say that I have been compelled to break off
this lifelong habit, as my physician has strongly advised me against
continuing it. The startling and alarming articles which make up the
bulk of the month’s offerings in these periodicals have a very bad
effect upon my heart and my imagination. More than once in the last two
or three years I have been troubled with evil dreams and nightmares
brought on by reading these publications shortly before going to bed.
More than this, I am by nature somewhat irritable and short of temper,
and I have been thrown into a very fury of indignation upon reading
the recital of my wrongs in these magazines; so much so, indeed, that
I have narrowly escaped apoplexy, a disease to which, my doctor says,
I am peculiarly liable. And since I had rather be swindled upon every
hand, as long as it is in happy ignorance, than to die of indignation,
I have left off reading them altogether.
I can say without dissimulation that I do not miss them greatly.
To say the truth, I have small fondness for the originality which
is everywhere urged upon us in these days. I have small patience
with the spirit which drives us on from one extravagance to another
until there is no telling to what base uses the human intellect may
eventually fall. Sir, I have taken it upon myself to raise my voice in
protest against the prevalent craze for originality and to say a word,
which needs to be said, in defense of imitation. If in so doing I am
unintentionally original, I can only crave your indulgence.
If I read the signs of the times aright, we are in imminent danger of
falling into the ways of the Greeks, “ever seeking some new thing”;
considering in our art, music and literature not the qualities of
beauty, sense and melody, but only the quality of _newness_, which is
to say, novelty. We do not ask of a musician, is his work harmonious?
But only, is it _different_? We do not ask of a painter, is he
artistic? But only, is he _clever_? We do not ask of an author, is he
sound? But only, is he _witty_? Is it not a sad commentary upon our
insane desire for change, Mr. _Idler_, that our artists, musicians and
authors should urge only these claims upon our consideration, that they
are different, clever and witty? Sir, the music of an Ojibway Indian
is different; a sign-painter may well be clever; and the most ignorant
street urchins are often witty. Are these, then, the only qualities we
should seek in those who presume to instruct and elevate the human mind
and soul? Are we to pass by sound sense for the sake of empty wit? Are
we to forsake harmony for the novelty of a mad jumble of absurd sounds?
Are we to value cartoons above masterpieces?
For a convenient example of the depths to which we have sunk, let me
cite you, Sir, the case of dancing. Dancing was, I believe, originally
a religious exercise. Like music, it was employed to express the nobler
emotions of the soul. I confess that it may have been sensuous, even
at a very early date, but the most sensuous dance of the ancients,
the bacchante, was, nevertheless, performed in honor of a god. In the
minuet of our grandfathers there was both dignity and grace. There,
Sir, was such a dance as might enhance the noble bearing, the beauty
and the gentility of those who danced it. There was a dance fit for
ladies and gentlemen, a dance which had in it nothing incompatible with
innocent womanliness or manly dignity. Who, let me ask you, can say as
much for the unspeakable modern _original_ dances, the kangaroo, the
grizzly bear, and the bunny hug? Sir, can you bring yourself for one
moment to think upon the spectacle of George Washington dancing the
kangaroo? Can you conceive of such an unthinkable thing as Henry Clay
performing the grizzly bear? Can you, by any force of imagination,
picture Abraham Lincoln lost in the mazes of the bunny hug? God forbid!
As it is with dancing, so it is with art. The poster insanity has
hardly passed away and we are already overwhelmed with a horde of
symbolists of one sort or another, who appear to agree upon one
point only--that pictures should not in any way resemble nature.
These ambitious daubers, Sir--I can not bring myself to call them
artists--have the impertinence to assume that they can express life
more fully and clearly upon their hideous canvases than the Author of
the Universe has expressed it in nature. As to the absurdity of their
pretensions, I need say nothing; it is apparent to all who can lay
claim to even the most ordinary degree of intelligence. But as to the
effect this nonsense has upon the weak, the easily impressed, I could
never say enough. This insanity has spread like a plague from painting
to poetry, and from poetry to all the arts that are known. Originality,
like charity, is made to cover a multitude of sins. The creative artist
who has not the strength or the patience to win distinction along
recognized lines produces something that is grotesque and defies us
to criticize his work, saying, “There is no standard by which you can
measure this, for it is absolutely new. Nobody ever did anything just
like this before.” The obvious retort to this would be that nobody ever
wanted to do anything like it before, but this would be lost upon the
artist, for the “original” of to-day is as impervious to ridicule as he
is to criticism.
That music is better for being original, I do not believe. Such an
assumption is without warrant in nature. There is no purer sweeter
melody than that of the birds. What says the poet?
“Hark! that’s the nightingale,
Telling the self-same tale
Her song told when this ancient earth was young:
So echoes answered when her song was sung
In the first wooded vale.”
Year after year, century after century, these natural musicians
continue to ravish and delight all mankind with those same songs they
warbled on creation morn. It is no care of theirs to mingle melody with
horrid sounds; to weld their notes into a dagger of discord wherewith
to stab men through the ear. They do not strive to produce those
damnable gratings, shriekings and rumblings which so often pass for
music in these days. Where, Sir, is the originality of the nightingale,
or of the mocking-bird? Sir, all music may be noise, but that all noise
is music I do deny with all my heart. That a noise is new does not
recommend it to my ear.
Sir, I lay it down as a proposition not to be refuted, that a good
imitation is better than a poor original, and while many men may create
passable imitations, very few can produce anything which is both
original and good. I do not hold it against an author that he is not
wholly original. On the contrary, if he imitate good models, I regard
his imitation as an evidence of sound sense. And, what is more, Sir, I
believe that most people are no more enamored of originality than I am.
Here is a secret, Mr. _Idler_, known to only a few: We never grow
tired of the things we really like, but only of the things which have
appealed to us momentarily because of their novelty. When we really
like an author, we like another author who is like him. When we really
like a melody, we like another melody which is like it. When we really
like a place, we have no desire to leave it. Early in life we form
attachments for certain things--our homes, our parents, _Mother Goose_
and the like. This fondness we never entirely outgrow. We like the
books we used to like, the pictures, the songs and the places. I am
speaking now, Sir, of normal human beings. There are some, ever seeking
new things, who never learn to like anything. To them, old books are
wearisome, old pictures are uninteresting, old tunes insipid. To them,
all places are places to go from or go to, but never to stay in. For
them, the past is closed and history is out of date.
“Beware of imitations!” say the advertisements. “Beware of
originality!” say I. If we were all original, there would be no
living with us. The original genius is well enough when we wish to be
entertained, but it is the old-fashioned reliable imitator who makes
this world the pleasant place it is. And let us not forget, Sir, that
the most original thing in the world is sin.
I am, Sir,
DAVID DUPLEX.
A FLATTERING TRIBUTE
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Some months ago I read in your magazine an article in which
you advocated the keeping of a journal or diary, saying that by this
means one might always keep one’s self well informed as to what
progress one might be making spiritually, morally and mentally upon
the journey through life. This suggestion struck me very forcibly; so
much so, indeed, that I straightway determined to act upon your advice
and to begin forthwith such a record of my intimate life as would
enable me, at any time when the spirit moved me, to inform myself in
this respect. Up to the time when I read the article of which I speak,
I had always considered the writing of a diary as rather a senseless
occupation, since I could not see why one need put down that which
was already well known to one’s self; but when I had read your advice
upon the subject, I soon came to see that there is much which will
inevitably escape, not only the memory, but the attention as well,
unless committed to paper.
Convinced, then, of the usefulness of such an intimate record, I set
myself to writing down with great particularity all that I saw, heard,
said, did or read; so that I may now look back at the end of the year
and review each day in all its details. As you may suppose, I was much
surprised to find myself given to habits of which I had formerly been
quite unaware. I discovered that much of my reading, for instance,
was of a decidedly frivolous and unprofitable sort. After considering
this for some time, I have come to the conclusion that it is time for
me to mend my ways and to abandon my habit of indiscriminate and idle
reading, and I therefore request that you will cancel my subscription
to _The Idler_.
Thanking you for the article on diaries, which will, I am sure, prove a
most valuable suggestion to me, I am, Sir,
Truly yours,
LUCY LACKWIT.
THE RIDDLE OF A DREAM
“Set a beggar on horseback and he will ride a gallop.”
--_Shakespeare._
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have had a curious dream and I am at a loss to account for
it. I have consulted an old dream book, which I have in my possession,
and which was formerly the property of my old nurse, Aunt Betty S., but
for all my diligent searching therein, I have failed utterly to find
anything which might serve as an interpretation of my vision. I called
at the public library of our village and asked for the latest and most
up-to-date work of this character, but the librarian only laughed at
my request and assured me that she possessed no such work and that as
far as she knew there had never been any such work upon her shelves.
To my protest that no library could be complete without at least a
few volumes of this character, she retorted that only fools and old
fogies any longer had any faith in the meaning of dreams, and that if I
was troubled with nightmare the best thing I could do would be to stop
lying on my back or be more careful of what I ate before going to bed.
It would seem that I am a bit old-fashioned in my faith in the meaning
of dreams, though I do not see how any one who pretends to a belief in
the Christian faith can scoff at the interpretation and significance of
them in the face of the many notable instances cited in the Bible, as,
for example, the vision of Jacob and the dream which caused Joseph to
flee into Egypt. I suppose, however, that I should not be surprised at
the light and irreverent fashion in which the young people of to-day
treat this subject, when I reflect that a Christian clergyman has
recently suggested a revision of the Ten Commandments. Notwithstanding
the apparently widespread heresy concerning the futility and emptiness
of dreams, I trust that I am not the only Christian gentleman now
living who clings to the faith of his fathers and who has sufficient
faith in the inspiration of the Gospels to believe that a dream is
something more than a result of injudicious eating. It is in the hope
that some such person may be a reader of your journal and that the
result may be a correct interpretation of my own dream, that I am
writing this to you. I observe that your journal is somewhat behind the
times in many respects and therefore I assume that some of your readers
are likely to be as old-fashioned and as “superstitious” as myself.
The dream which I am about to relate came to me in the following
circumstances. I had been out rather late the night before and had
partaken of a number of fancy dishes such as I am not in the habit of
eating at my own table, but which my daughter, who is just back from a
young ladies’ finishing school, assures me are much more pleasing if
not more nourishing than the ham and eggs which I was upon the point
of ordering for our supper after the theater. It was in the morning
of the next day and we were out in our new automobile which had only
come from the factory the day before. The automobile, or “car” as my
daughter calls it, is of rather expensive make and luxurious to a
degree. Being somewhat fagged by my unaccustomed dissipation of the
night before, I leaned back upon the cushions and presently I fell
asleep.
It appeared to me that I was no longer in the automobile, but trudging
along the road as I was in the habit of doing in my younger years. As I
came to a turn in the road I was confronted with a troop of horsemen,
who were by all odds the strangest company it has ever been my lot
to behold. All of them were splendidly mounted on magnificent horses
which were caparisoned like the mounts of the knights in some rich and
gorgeous medieval tapestry. Their bridles were of chased leather with
bits and buckles of solid gold; their stirrups were of platinum and
silver, and their saddles were of silver and gold, upholstered in plush
and velvet. Silk and satin ribbons floated from the bridles of the
horses and flaunted in the wind in gay and beautiful streamers. But
with the horses and their trappings the magnificence came to a sudden
end. The riders themselves were the most incongruous riders for such
noble animals that one could imagine. They were, without exception,
tattered and bedraggled to the last degree of unkempt frowsiness. Their
faces were gaunt and drawn as with hunger and their hair hung unbrushed
and uncombed upon their frayed collars. In more than one instance a
foot was thrust through a silver stirrup while the toes of the rider
came peeping through the broken ends of his boot. A more wretched
company mounted upon more beautiful chargers it would be difficult to
imagine.
At sight of me the whole company came to a sudden halt, checking their
mounts as at the command of a leader, though no word was spoken. The
leader of the cavalcade, who bestrode a handsome gelding, rode out a
little in advance of his fellows, and removing his crownless hat, swept
me a bow, leaning low over the pommel of his saddle. And when I had
returned his salutation, he addressed me in these words: “I give you
good morrow, gentle sir, and I beg you in the name of Christ and this
our company that you spare us a few coins of silver or of gold that we
may partake of food and drink, for the way is long and weary and we can
not travel without meat and wine to sustain us on our journey.”
Now this speech greatly astonished me, as I had never seen so large a
company of beggars journeying together, and I was the more astounded
that men mounted in such splendid fashion should be asking alms.
“What!” I cried in amazement, “are you begging then, while you ride
upon such fine horses, and your bridles and saddles are worth a king’s
ransom?”
“Even so,” replied the leader, “and much as I loathe discourtesy, I
must remind you that our time is short, so pray give us what funds
you can spare and let us be on our way, for we hope to reach our
destination by nightfall.”
“And what is your destination?” I asked.
“The City of Vain Display,” he replied. “But we dally.”
“But if you need money,” I protested, “why do you not sell your horses
and trappings?”
At this the whole company cried out in protest, and the leader
answered: “Sell our mounts? Never! Look at them. Are they not
beautiful?”
And truly they were. And as I looked at them I was seized with a great
desire to feel a horse of like magnificence between my knees, and I
cried, “I wish that I, too, had a horse like that!”
“Give me all the money that you have,” said the leader, “and you shall
have one.”
So I gave him the money. Presently I found myself riding with them and
my clothes were as tattered and torn as the clothes of the others.
And we set off at a furious pace, faster and faster, until the horses
panted with exertion, and after a time one stumbled and fell, sending
his rider over his head to the hard road. But nobody stopped, and
looking back, I saw the unfortunate fellow sprawling in the roadway
with his neck broken. On, on we went, one horse after another giving a
final gasp and falling down in the road, and as each one fell we who
were left urged our mounts to greater exertions, plying whip and spur
without ceasing, until finally only the leader and I were riding on.
Then his horse stumbled to its knees and rolled over on its side, and I
rode on alone. Lashing my horse I strained onward till the poor beast
came crashing down with a jar that threw me headlong upon the highway,
where I fell so heavily that I woke.
I have pondered over this dream ever since, but I confess I can make
nothing of it. I must draw this letter to a close now, for my daughter
informs me that the automobile is waiting, and I have not mortgaged my
house to secure the thing for the purpose of letting it stand idle.
I hope, Sir, that if you or any of your readers can read me the riddle
of this dream they will be good enough to forward the solution to
Your humble servant,
TIMOTHY TINSELTOP.
BLUFFTOWN, NEW YORK.
BEDS FOR THE BAD
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: It was Sancho Panza, if my memory serves me right, who
invoked a blessing upon the head of the man who first invented sleep; I
think he had done better to bestow his blessings upon the man who first
invented beds. I think it extremely doubtful if sleep can be classed as
an invention of man; it is, rather, a function, like breathing, and I
doubt not that Adam fell a-nodding before ever he knew the meaning of
sleep at all. The bed, upon the contrary, is without question of human
origin, for no other living thing has constructed anything resembling
it except the bird, who makes his nest serve him as both bed and house,
and certainly no deity could have occasion to use such an article,
seeing that eternal wakefulness is a necessary attribute of godhood.
The bed, in my opinion, is the greatest of all human inventions,
without which sleep were robbed of half its pleasure. Nowhere do we
enjoy such delicious refreshing repose as when snugly ensconced in a
proper bed, and for my part, there is no other luxury which I could
not spare better than my bed. Napkins, tablecloths, knives, forks,
spoons--even the table, I could forego without great loss of appetite,
but I can rest nowhere else than in a bed, and I can rest well in no
bed but my own. So strong is my regard for this article of household
furniture, that, were I a poet, I should ask no greater glory than to
be the author of those beautiful lines of Thomas Hood--
“O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head!”
No truer words were ever spoken than those of Isaac De Benserade when
he said:
“In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,
And, born in bed, in bed we die;
The near approach a bed may show
Of human bliss to human woe.”
A man may be without land or money and still be happy; he may endure
the loss of friends and fortune, and he may preserve his courage even
in the face of shame and disgrace; but, Sir, a man who has not a good
bed is no more than half a man. Without this refuge from the trials and
troubles of the world, a man is robbed of the one consolation which it
should be the right of every man to enjoy. Without a bed, his vitality
is sapped, his courage is broken down and his moral sense is impaired.
I maintain, Sir, that no man can go bedless without becoming a menace
to the community, and this brings me to the subject I had in mind when
I sat down to write this letter.
I have observed, Mr. _Idler_, that though a great many people of
excellent intentions devote themselves to the task of reforming and
reclaiming members of the criminal class, the result of their labors
is very far from being satisfactory. In spite of the great number
of reformatories, prisons and houses of refuge erected in all parts
of the world; in spite of numberless soup kitchens, missions, free
sanatoriums and the like, men continue to break the laws and all our
efforts to eradicate crime appear to go for little or nothing. Now I
am convinced that there is a very good reason why this is true, and
it is my conviction that our failure to abolish crime is directly due
to our stupidity and block-headedness in attacking the problem from
the wrong angle. Instead of trying to reform our criminals by the fear
of punishment, we should prevent crime by diverting their minds from
evil-doing and direct them into proper paths by the simple expedient
which I am about to lay before you.
There is nothing in the world which is more likely to put a man into a
good humor with himself, with other men and with existing conditions,
than a good night’s rest. As I have said before, every man who lacks a
bed is a potential criminal and there are a number of reasons why this
is so. To lack repose naturally wears upon the nerves and reduces a man
to a condition bordering upon insanity. It is conducive to cynicism,
self-pity, a feeling of resentment against all other men and a strong
sense of injustice. No matter what the cause of his bedless condition
may be, no man can preserve an even temper when he wants to go to bed
and has no bed to which he may go. Again, being out of bed and out of
temper, he is ripe for various sorts of evil deeds from which he would
turn in loathing after a good night’s rest. He is driven for shelter
and divertisement into the haunts of vice and the dens of iniquity. He
beguiles his sleepless hours in the company of vicious and dissolute
persons. He regards the world from an entirely different point of
view from the man who has just passed seven or eight pleasant hours
in restful slumber. Sleeplessness and crime are as closely related as
insomnia and insanity. Crime leads to sleeplessness and sleeplessness
leads to crime.
Now, Sir, what I propose is just this: let us put the criminals to bed.
Instead of offering the outcast a cold plate of soup or an inane tract,
let us offer him a warm comfortable bed where he may lie down and pass
at least eight hours of the twenty-four in dreaming that he is John D.
Rockefeller or some other such harmless illusion. Let us offer him an
opportunity to recover his strength, his courage and his moral balance
in innocent sleep. I do not believe that the perfect social state can
ever be brought about until such time as every person in the world
shall own his own bed; until such time as beds shall be assigned by law
to all those who can not purchase them upon their own account; until
such time as a man’s bed shall be sacred to his own use, exempt from
taxation or seizure by writ or other legal process and as inviolate as
the clothes upon his back. I do not believe a perfect social state will
ever be attained until it shall be a crime for a chambermaid to make a
bed improperly or for a merchant to sell an imperfect spring or a lumpy
mattress. I do not believe a perfect social state can ever be reached
until every man in the world, and every woman and child, is guaranteed
a good night’s rest every night in the year.
But as we have not yet advanced to a state of civilization where it
would be practicable to provide every human being with a personal
bed of his own, let us do what we can. Do you believe, Sir, that any
but the most callow of youthful roisterers prefer the disgusting
atmosphere of the all-night saloon or the bleak cheerlessness of a
park bench to the heavenly comforts of a good bed? If you do, Sir,
you are vastly mistaken. Throw open to these men an absolutely free
lodging-house filled with clean comfortable beds, where all may come
and go unquestioned as long as they enter at a certain hour and remain
a stipulated time, and I warrant you that lodging-house will be filled
to its capacity every night in the year. Let every community erect as
many of these lodging-houses as its financial condition will permit.
Let the vast sums that are now being wasted upon futile missions and
piffling soup-kitchens be diverted to this legitimate end. Once we
have our criminals and our outcasts in bed, we shall have them out of
the streets, out of the parks, out of the gambling hells, out of the
brothels and out of mischief!
The state plays the father in chastising disobedient citizens; let the
state also play the mother in tucking them into bed. Go look upon them
when every face is wiped clean of frown and leer; go look upon them
when every face is smooth and quiet as the resting soul within
“And on their lids
The baby Sleep is pillowed ...”
and I warrant you, you shall find them, not outcasts and outlaws, but
poor tired children whom you can not forbear to wish, as I now wish you,
Good night, and happy dreams!
CADWALLADER COVERLET.
IS CHESTERTON A MAN ALIVE?
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: If I were a writer of biographical sketches, I should begin
these remarks with the statement that Gilbert Keith Chesterton was
born in the year 1874; but I am not a writer of biographical sketches.
On the contrary, Sir, I am one who aims to tell the truth as often
as it is possible to tell the truth without appearing eccentric. I
do not begin these remarks in the fashion I have suggested because
I am restrained by scruples which would never trouble a writer of
biographies. The fact of the matter is, I do not know that Gilbert
Keith Chesterton was born in 1874. I do not know that he was ever born
at all--at most I only suspect it. I suspect it because I never knew a
man who had never been born to attract so much attention. His books may
be urged as evidence of his birth, but they are by no means conclusive
evidence. So far as my personal information goes, he may be nothing
more than a name, like _Bertha M. Clay_. Perhaps he is only a creature
of the imagination, like _Innocent Smith_, created by some author who
chooses to write under the name, “Gilbert Chesterton.” I do not suggest
these things as probabilities, but only as possibilities. And yet, what
could be more improbable than Chesterton himself? Is it not, after all,
more probable that he has been evolved from pen and ink, than from the
clay of Adam?
We come now to the question which I borrow from the title of this
paper: Is Gilbert Keith Chesterton a man alive? Is he not, rather, a
very amusing conception of what a man might be? Let us consider the
matter.
Of course the fact that you and I have no positive proof of his having
been born does not argue that he is not a living man. Every day we
meet men who are unquestionably as real as ourselves (providing we do
not lean to the theory of Bishop Berkeley, that we can be sure of no
existence but our own), yet we know little or nothing of the origin
of these men. They may have been born, or they may not. If you were to
ask them, they would probably insist that they were born at one time
or another. They believe this because they can not account for their
existence upon any other hypothesis. But they believe it on hearsay
evidence. Not one of them really remembers anything at all about it.
People sometimes grow up to learn that they are changelings; that
they are not at all the people they had thought they were. Is it not
possible, then, that here and there may live a man who was never born
at all? I should not be so bold as to deny the possibility. There have
always been legends of men who can not die--men who live on in spite
of age and accident. I see no reason why one man should not escape
birth if another may escape death. I do not, therefore, insist that Mr.
Chesterton prove himself to have been born. It is only that I find it
hard to believe that he really exists in the flesh.
Now, Mr. Chesterton, in all his works, dwells upon the subject of
madness or insanity. Does this prove that Mr. Chesterton is mad? By
no means. As he himself has said, the man who is really mad seldom
suspects that he is unbalanced; it is the man who fears madness who
finds madness a fascinating subject. Sir, Mr. Chesterton is not mad,
but I think he fears madness. It is almost impossible to find one of
his essays in which there is no mention of madness. I think it fair to
assume that he writes of madness because he has a fear--not necessarily
a terror, you understand, but still a fear--that some day he may be
afflicted with this malady. Mr. Chesterton also writes a whole book
upon the subject of being alive. Are we to assume, because of this,
that he _is_ alive? By no means. It is quite possible that he only
fears he may some day come alive; that he may some day cease to be the
whimsical creation of some author’s fancy and become a real man of
flesh and blood.
Do you see no reason why he should fear such a metamorphosis? Surely
you must. From time immemorial, men have shuddered at the thought of
becoming a spirit, an infinite being composed chiefly of memory; a
purely intellectual organism having nothing material in its make-up.
Now if men are disturbed, as they are, at the prospect of becoming
ideas, why should not ideas be disturbed at the prospect of becoming
men? Is it likely that an idea, immune from all the evils of mortal
existence, superior to the weaknesses of the flesh and possessing, at
least, a potential immortality, would be pleased with the prospect of
becoming mere man? Would an idea willingly abandon the clear atmosphere
of a purely intellectual plane for the muggy mists and murky fogs of
London? Assuredly not.
Lucretius, ridiculing the theory of reincarnation in his work, _De
Rerum Natura_, drew a ludicrous picture of disembodied spirits eagerly
awaiting their turn to enter a vacant human tenement. Lucretius was
thoroughly appreciative of the absurdity of his picture. He knew that
no disembodied spirit would be so foolish as to desire imprisonment
in a mortal frame. And as it is with spirits, so we may suppose it to
be with ideas. It is one thing to be put into a book; it is quite
another to be put into a body. No matter how often an idea may be put
into a book, it can not be confined therein. It is still free to travel
where it lists. It can leap from London to Overroads in the twinkling
of an eye--or it can be in both places at one and the same time. It
may appear to a dozen different men in a dozen different aspects. It
possesses the Protean faculty of being all things to all men. But
confine that idea in a human body; transform that idea into a human
being--and what is the result? Why, the result is an immediate loss of
liberty. The man, who was formerly an idea, can no longer flit about
with lightning-like rapidity. If he wishes to travel from Overroads
to London, he must go by train or motor-car. He can by no ingenuity
contrive to be in both places at the same time. He must wear the same
face wherever or in whatever company he may be. Whether the body which
he inhabits is known to its neighbors as Smith or Chesterton, the
result is the same--he has lost his liberty. And what has he gained? He
has gained the ability to prove his mortal existence--the right to say
that he has been born.
It is easy enough to see why an idea should fear to become a man.
And when we consider such an idea as Chesterton, the matter is even
clearer. Whimsicalities and contradictions which may have been useful
and even ornamental in the fictitious Chesterton--in Chesterton the
idea--might, Sir, prove most embarrassing to Chesterton the British
Subject. You can not prosecute an idea for treason, nor sue it for
damages. You can not even confine an idea in a mad-house for being
crazy. Most ideas are crazy; none more so perhaps than the one which
I am presenting to you now. It is true that a few ideas have been
confined in a mad-house, but of those few which have been shut up with
the persons claiming them, the great majority have been quite sane.
Just as many sane men are devoted to crazy ideas, so many sane ideas
are devoted to crazy men; so devoted to them that they will follow them
anywhere--even to a mad-house.
If my idea that Mr. Chesterton is an idea is correct, I am sure I do
not know whose idea he may be; but he is just such a crazy idea as
might belong to a sane man and should therefore be safe in sticking
to his originator. If Mr. Chesterton _is_ an idea and is thinking of
becoming a man, I should strongly advise him against adopting any such
course. I like him much better as an idea. He is so much more plausible
that way.
I am, Sir,
A. VISIONARY.
FROM A HUNCHBACK
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, to be
born a hunchback. This, in itself, Sir, is an affliction sufficient
to render my life a hard one and to embitter such happiness as I may
snatch from the hands of fate; but it is an affliction for which, as
far as I know, nobody is to blame, and one, therefore, which I must
bear with such patience and fortitude as I can command. But I bear in
common with other cripples a far greater burden than mere physical
disability, and that is the contempt and pity of my fellow men.
I find that some men regard me with contempt alone, some with contempt
and pity intermingled, and some with simple pity--and of the three I
think the last is, perhaps, the hardest to endure with equanimity,
since it is the most sincere feeling of superiority which prompts it.
I do not ask the pity of my fellows; I consider myself in much better
case than many men who have straight backs and smooth shoulders; and
certainly I can not see why I should deserve the contempt of any one
merely because I happen to have been born with a body unlike that of
the majority of men. Yet I find the hump upon my back a hindrance in
every venture that I undertake.
A few years ago when I was younger and more sanguine than I am now,
when I still had faith in the innate fairness of human nature and in
the spirituality of the love of women, I fell in love. Fortunately,
as I thought then, I had not come into the world naked if I had come
crooked, for I possessed a comfortable balance at the bank; a sum
of money in point of fact which was far in excess of the financial
resources of any of the other young men of my acquaintance. Counting
upon the good times which my supply of ready money seemed likely to
afford them, a number of the more prominent young men of my native town
had taken the trouble to cultivate my society during their college
days when they were often short of money and found it convenient to
have a friend who could always be relied on to help out in a pinch and
who was not at all inclined to play the dun if payments were somewhat
slow. Having, as I say, availed themselves of my generosity and
cultivated my company in those lean years of study, these young men,
upon entering into the world of business and society, could not, with
a good grace, begin to ignore me altogether, and they therefore made
it a point to look me up now and then and to invite me about with them
to such functions and entertainments as I might enjoy, and at the same
time, enter into unhandicapped by my physical deformity.
I could not, of course, play tennis, golf or any game of that sort.
I was, in truth, deterred from entering into any such sport more by
my natural horror of appearing ridiculous than by reason of an actual
lack of the strength necessary to swing a racket or handle a club. The
fact is, I am not especially weak physically, having always taken great
care of my health and having practised with some success such physical
exercises as might be practised in the privacy of my own chambers
or such as would not be likely to excite comment. But no matter how
muscular a man may be, he can not but appear absurd when he goes about
carrying a golf club nearly as tall as himself or rushing about a
tennis net like a lame camel.
But though, as I say, I was not in demand for such games as these, I
did play an excellent hand at whist, could thrum the guitar a bit, play
accompaniments upon the piano, sing a little in a fairly good baritone
voice and carry on a conversation light or heavy as the occasion seemed
to require. Of course, I did not dance, but I often sat at the piano
and furnished music for the others, thus making myself useful and at
the same time diplomatically avoiding drawing notice to the fact that
I was disqualified as a dancer. Although I always had a secret longing
for theatricals and knew myself to be possessed of histrionic ability
in no mean degree, I never joined our local amateur dramatic club. I
think perhaps I might have done so had not some tactless member of
the club once sent me an invitation to take part in a performance of
_Richard the Third_, which so incensed me that I never again so much as
attended a play given by that organization.
It was during this time, when I was almost enjoying life like an
ordinary man, owing to the careful manner in which my acquaintances
concealed their dislike and contempt for my crooked back, that I met
and fell in love with a girl who seemed to me, at the time, a charming
and sweet-souled young woman. I saw a great deal of her, owing to the
fact that we were both of musical tastes and often played and sang
together, and it was not long before I came to the conclusion that if
I were ever to marry I might as well be about it then as any time, and
especially since I had the necessary mate at hand, so to speak. To
think was to act with me in those days, and I put the matter to her
bluntly the very first time I saw her after forming my resolution in
this respect. You may not believe me, but I swear to you that I am
telling the truth when I say that I had grown so accustomed to having
my friends ignore my infirmity that I had quite forgotten to take it
into account in the case of the young woman. In fact, I would have
considered it an unjust aspersion of her character to think her capable
of holding such a thing against me, our relations having been always of
the most spiritual.
You can imagine, then, the shock it gave me when I saw the horror
growing in her eyes which I had so often surprised in the eyes of
strangers! You can fancy, perhaps, the physical and mental anguish I
suffered in that moment when I realized that even to her I was not as
other men--that she had played with me as one might play with a child,
and that she would no sooner think of becoming my wife than she would
think of wedding with an educated baboon. And yet, Sir, within the
space of two years I saw that same young woman stand at the altar with
a senile and decrepit old roué who had never possessed the tenth part
of my own intellectuality and who had absolutely nothing to recommend
him but a fortune, somewhat smaller than my own, and a straight back. I
am told that she is not happy with him, and small wonder, since he is
never at home save when he is too drunk to be elsewhere; but even so,
I doubt if she has ever regretted her answer to me, so strong is the
prejudice of the normal person against all forms of physical deformity.
The fact that her husband is more crooked in his morals than I am in my
back would, I dare say, have no weight whatever with her.
I have heard people say that women are often attracted by men of odd
and unusual personal appearance and that many women find an almost
irresistible fascination in cripples and the like, but I have never
encountered anything in my personal experience to incline me to this
view. It is an idea upon which Victor Hugo dilates in his romance,
_The Man Who Laughs_, where the duchess becomes enamored of a monster.
But I am of the opinion that Hugo treated this matter more truthfully
and realistically in _The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame_, where the white
soul and brave heart of Quasimodo count for nothing with Esmerelda
when weighed against the physical attractions of the philandering
captain, who is a thoroughly bad lot. I have heard it asserted that
Lord Byron owed much of his popularity with the ladies to his club
foot, but this I take to be the sheerest nonsense. The fascination
which Lord Byron exercised upon the women was not, I am convinced, due
to his physical deformity, but to what we may call his mental and moral
deformity. And this, Sir, brings us to the milk in the cocoanut and
the point of this letter. I wish to ask you, and to ask your readers,
what I have so often asked myself: Why is it that men and women find
physical deformity so hateful while they so often find mental and moral
deformity attractive?
Shakespeare, learned in the ways of human nature, laid particular
stress upon the physical shortcomings of Richard the Third, well
knowing that no amount of mere wickedness would serve to turn the
audience against him so strongly as a hump upon his back. The villain
of the play, if he be handsome and brave, will often oust the hero from
his rightful place in the esteem of the audience, so that presently
the pit, the galleries and the boxes are united as one man in wishing
him success in his villainy, or at least in wishing him immunity from
his well-deserved punishment. Instead of hissing him, the spectators
are moved to applaud him. And for this reason the playwrights and
the novelists have, until late years when the worship of virtue is
no longer considered an essential part of art, caused the villain to
appear a coward or burdened him with some physical deformity. And the
devil of it all is, Sir, that most of the villains in real life are
like the villains of the stage who oust the hero. Charles Lamb once
said that it is a mistake to assume that all bullies are cowards; and
in my opinion it is an even greater mistake to assume that a villain
can not be attractive. If villains had no charm, villainy would soon
cease through want of success.
In the case of Byron, since I seem to have chosen him for an example,
the women were attracted on the one hand by his reputation as a genius
and upon the other hand by his reputation as a rake. Byron, though a
cripple, was an unusually handsome man of the poetic type, and I think
we may safely assume that the aversion which may have been created by
his club foot was more than offset by the fact that he was otherwise of
pleasing appearance and was known to be an athlete. Now, of course, it
would be impossible to say whether more women were fascinated by his
genius or by his rakishness, but on a venture I would be willing to
wager that nine out of ten of the women who knew him would rather have
read his love letters than his poetry. Genius is a thing apart from
love, and, say what they will, I believe that the mistress of such a
man is more like to be jealous of her lover’s genius than proud of it,
and especially so where she can not flatter herself that it has been
inspired by love of her. She is interested in a poem in which she can
find herself, not because it is poetry, but because _she_ is in it.
Therefore I incline to the belief that Byron’s conquests were due to
his reputation as a rake, rather than to his reputation as a poet. But
given the combination of a poet, a rake, a handsome man and a lord, it
would be unnatural if women did not love him.
But Byron’s case is not the only one I have in mind. It is a common
thing for murderers in jail to receive flowers and sentimental letters
from women. Women, too, who have never so much as set eyes upon
them and who know them only by the stories of their crimes in the
newspapers. The maddest of religious fanatics can always count upon a
goodly number of women as converts. The taint of insanity itself seems
to be less repulsive to women than physical deformity. And the men are
little better than the women. A man will often knowingly wed with a
fool because she has a pretty face, or vote a rogue into office because
he thinks him clever. The juries of men which try women murderers are
ready to grow maudlin over them if the women happen to be good-looking.
It is a problem, Sir, which I can not solve, turn and twist it as I
may. Sometimes I think that we who are deformed in body are granted
the only straight minds to be found among men, by way of compensation.
And at such times, Sir, I am inclined to thank God that He has seen fit
to put the hump upon the back and not upon the mind or soul of
HAROLD HISHOULDER.
FROM A HOTEL SPONGE
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I feel it my duty to publicly express my disapproval of
the recent ruling of certain hotel proprietors of this city, and to
publicly protest against their hasty and ill-advised agreement that
hereafter they will discourage, in every way possible, the visits of
outsiders who make use of their lobbies and halls.
I am myself one of the best-known non-resident patrons of the hotels in
this city, or, in the vulgar language of the innkeepers themselves--a
hotel _sponge_. That is to say, I do not register at these hotels as a
guest, but I do make it a point to drop into one or two of them every
afternoon and evening, and I think I may say, without undue egotism,
that you will seldom see a more debonair and smart-looking man than I
appear upon these occasions. I am, I believe, as my tailor says, “an
ornament to any assembly,” and my presence in a hotel lobby or corridor
is sufficient to stamp that hotel as a proper place in the minds of all
those who are sufficiently acquainted with the hall-marks of the _haut
ton_ to recognize a gentleman when they see one.
I have been a familiar figure about a certain hotel on Thirty-fourth
Street for the last ten years, and though the tide of fashion which
once flowed through those corridors is now somewhat diminished, having
set in a northerly direction, yet that hotel continues to hold its own
with the visitors from out of town. And do you know why this is so, Mr.
_Idler_? Do you know why it is that this hostelry is still enabled to
present an appearance of smartness and exclusiveness? I presume that
you do not, and so I shall tell you. It is simply that I have chosen
to continue to appear there. Though the social leaders whose names
are known across the continent desert the place for the newer and no
less pretentious hotels farther up-town, this place, by reason of my
loyalty, has suffered no loss of standing. I, Sir, am to the hotels of
New York what John Drew is to the American stage. I am that rosy-faced,
perfectly groomed, elegant gentleman of leisure who saunters through
the halls and corridors at tea time and at dinner time, and who
confirms the out-of-town guest in his opinion that he has selected as a
place to stop the one hotel which is the resort of fashion.
If it were not for me and for the other members of my class, how long
do you suppose these hotels could go on charging the enormous prices
they now charge for food and lodging? How long do you suppose they
could induce the thrifty countryman to part with such sums of his
hard-earned money if he were not provided with the inspiring spectacle
which I present when arrayed in my full regalia? Not one month, Sir.
In less than a fortnight the word would go forth to all parts of the
United States that these hotels had lost caste and were becoming back
numbers.
It is to me, and to others like me, that the great modern hotels of
this city owe their prosperity; indeed, I might say, their very
existence. It is we who set the pace in luxury and style. The hotels
merely live up to our standards. The manager of a shabby hotel can
not see me walk into his lobby without feeling instantly ashamed of
the poor accommodations he has to offer me. The hotel managers were
so irked at being put out of countenance by the obvious superiority
of the casual hotel visitor that they set out to provide for him a
proper setting. Do you suppose, Sir, that the expensive furniture, the
music, the luxurious reading and smoking-rooms, the glittering bars
and the comfortable armchairs of the modern, up-to-date New York hotel
were necessary to obtain the custom and patronage of the provincial
visitors, or even necessary to hold that patronage? No, Sir! But _I_
am necessary to hold the business of these people, and the luxuries
are necessary to hold me. All this is so plain, so perfectly apparent
to any observing person, that it seems almost incredible that these
managers should dare to risk our indignation. Drive us out, indeed!
They will be very lucky if we do not withdraw altogether of our own
accord, after such a gratuitous insult. A strike of waiters, Sir, would
not prove one-half so demoralizing as a strike of the _atmosphere
creators_, or, to use the insulting term of the hotel men, the “hotel
sponges.”
Can you imagine, Sir, trying to paint a forest scene without a tree in
sight? That task would be as easy as trying to conduct an aristocratic
hotel without an aristocrat in sight. “But,” you say, “you fellows
are not really aristocrats--you are only imitation aristocrats.” In
so saying, Sir, you fall into the same error into which these hotel
men have fallen. We are aristocrats. We are the ideal aristocrats,
and let me tell you, Sir, we are much more convincing than those whom
you would doubtless call the real aristocrats. I have not lived as a
man-about-town for the last ten years without coming to know these
dyed-in-the-wool aristocrats of yours very well indeed. I assure you
that you would be much surprised and disappointed should you see
them, as I have seen them, at our leading hotels. They would no more
correspond to the countryman’s idea of an aristocrat than an Indian
Chief would fulfil the romantic maiden’s ideal of a ruler of men.
Sir, where I am urbane, they are ill at ease. Where I am clad in the
very pink of fashion, they are often dowdy, not to say shabby. Where
I appear indifferent and slightly bored, they are often irritable,
easily upset and worried-looking. Oscar Wilde once said that he was
very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean, and I can imagine that
his disappointment was not deeper than that of the rural visitor who
happens to stumble upon a member of what is known as our best society.
Doubtless you fancy that I and the others of my kind concern ourselves
with aping the dress and manners of these society people. If so, you
were never more mistaken in your life. It is they who copy and imitate
us. They go where we go, they wear what we wear, they eat what we
eat and they drink what we drink. Only, as is always the case with
imitators, they fall far short of their models. How is it possible
that any man can appear the perfect gentleman of leisure unless,
indeed, his life is actually a life of ease and pleasure? We have no
cares and no responsibilities. They have a thousand. We have no social
duties to distract our attention. They are constantly consulting their
watches. And, lastly, Sir, we have art, and they have none.
I can not imagine what has led these misguided innkeepers to think
that they can do without us. But I can tell you, they will soon regret
their recent action, whatever motives may have moved them to take it,
for they will find very shortly that their hotels are not nearly so
necessary to us as we are to their hotels. I am, Sir,
PERCIVAL PIGEONBREAST.
FROM SARAH SHELFWORN
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have to complain of an abuse which is daily growing
greater and which, if not checked, will soon assume the proportions of
a national menace. It is my purpose, Sir, to call to your attention
and to the attention of all earnest thinking people, a pernicious
influence exercised by a certain portion of our daily press--by those
vulgar flaunting publications known as “yellow journals”. Now do not
misunderstand me, Mr. _Idler_; this letter is no ill-considered general
attack upon the press; no incoherent or fanatical outcry against the
publication of disagreeable facts. It is, on the contrary, a protest
against a certain idealism which pervades the pages of these newspapers
and which unduly excites the imagination of our young men. I do not
refer to stories of crime, extravagance or anything of that sort--but
to the publication of pictures of beautiful women.
You may ask, what possible harm can come of the publication of these
pleasing portraits? Well, Sir, I will tell you; but in order that you
may understand my point of view, I must first tell you something of
myself and explain somewhat, my own experience.
I, Sir, am a school-teacher--an instructor in English literature--and
since the school where I am employed is a public high school, it is
hardly necessary to add, I am a woman. Or perhaps it would be more
truthful to say I _was_ a woman once upon a time. When I was young
and fairly pretty, there was no more womanly woman than I in all this
section of the country, but let me tell you, Sir, ten years of teaching
school is an experience calculated to unsex any person, man or woman.
We veteran school-teachers constitute what a magazine writer recently
referred to as “an indeterminate sex.” We have left in us nothing of
the masculine or feminine nature. We think, feel, argue and reason
like one another and like nobody else in the world--we are neuter
throughout. It is, perhaps, for this reason that I can now look back
upon my wasted life with only a passing regret, and that I can, without
any feeling of outraged modesty or womanly reserve, lay bare to you the
dreams of my girlhood and the thoughts of my maturity.
To begin, then, I have always lived in the little town where I am
now teaching, though to be sure, since I became a teacher, I have
traveled more or less during my vacations. I have visited many places
in Europe and America at one time or another. I have made a pilgrimage
to Stratford-on-Avon six times in as many years, and it is perhaps for
this reason that I have never found time to read any of Shakespeare’s
works beyond the four or five plays which we read in class. Be that as
it may, when I was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, I was a bright,
merry-hearted young creature who had not a care in the world, nor a
thought for anything but pleasure. Not that I was without sentiment,
for truth to tell, I was as sentimental as any, and let me tell you,
Sir, one girl of eighteen has more sentiment in her composition than
all of the old men in the world. I say “old men,” because I have
observed that whereas sentiment comes to a woman early in life, so
that she is soon done with it, men seldom become sentimental until
they have passed middle age. And that is why, Sir, you will observe
in the restaurants and cafés of your city, young men with old women
and old men with young women. Like is naturally attracted to like. The
old man loves the young woman for her romanticism which is akin to his
own, and the young woman loves the old man because he is not ashamed
to admit his infatuation and glories in his subjection to her charms.
The young man, upon the other hand, is attracted to the older woman by
her knowledge of the world, her masculine view-point, her independence
of mind, her air of good-fellowship, and her frank acceptance of a
temporary affection. The old woman finds in the young man the only
sensible, sober and sane being that wears trousers.
As I say, Sir, I was as sentimental as any; I had my girlish dreams of
home and fireside, of husband and little ones, but I was not obsessed
with this pleasant dreaming. I took all that for granted as my natural
birthright, and a career which was guaranteed to me by virtue of my
very womanhood. I was cheerful, a capable housekeeper, possessed of a
clear complexion, good eyes, sound teeth, a fair figure--in short, I
was passably good-looking. Why should not I be married in due time,
as my mother was before me, and as the girls of my native village had
always been? I was not hump-backed, bow-legged, nor squint-eyed. I
was neither a shrew nor a prude. I could manage a house and (I had no
doubt) I could manage a husband; how could I fail to get him?
Alas! Sir, my youthful optimism was my undoing. I delayed my choice
and I lost my opportunity. I refused one or two offers of marriage
that came to me in the first flush of my womanhood--and I have never
since received another! The young men of our town had always married
our home girls. With the exception of a few prodigals who left home
to see the world and who never returned, some going to jail and some
to congress, none of our young men sought their wives among strangers.
They were well content with what they found at home. How, then, could I
anticipate a sudden exodus of eligible young men? An exodus, I say! For
an exodus it was, and an exodus it has continued, year by year, ever
since that fatal day when Willie Titheridge Talbott went over to Ithaca
and married Minna Meyerbeer who won the Tompkins County beauty contest!
No sooner do our young men arrive at that age when they can don a
fuzzy hat and coax a mustache without exciting the ridicule of their
little brothers, than they shake the dust of this town from their
feet and set out to find a wife among those vampire beauties whose
portraits decorate the pages of our Sunday papers. As for our girls,
they are left as I was, to choose between frank spinsterhood at home,
or to follow the young men out into the world, there to become chorus
girls, manicures, stenographers--or to engage in some other similar
profession which exerts such a glamour and fascination over the men as
to make up for their lack of classical beauty.
And who, Sir, is to blame for this lamentable state of affairs? The
beauties? No, not altogether, for if they were not so exploited by the
newspapers, our young men would never suspect that they existed. For,
Sir, even if he were to meet her face to face, the ordinary young man
is so lacking in sentiment, so matter-of-fact, that he would never
suspect one of those beauties of being anything extraordinary if her
beauty were not vouched for by some newspaper. The young man who has
not been corrupted in this way, and who has not had fostered in him by
these newspapers the silly notion that he is a knight errant searching
the world for beauty in distress, is a docile creature, easily captured
and easily managed. He treats matrimony as he treats his meals, he
takes what is set before him and afterward grumbles as a matter of
course, but deep down in his heart he is very well satisfied. It is the
editors, Sir, who have caused all of the trouble; the editors with
their silly beauty contests and their simpering half-tone, half-world
women of the stage flaunting their coquettish graces and flirting with
our young men from the pages of the Sunday papers.
Now, Sir, I hope that you will not dismiss this letter as a matter of
no consequence and the peevish complaint of a disappointed spinster,
for I assure you the roots of this evil go deeper than appears at first
glance. Our magazines are asking, “Why do young men leave the farm?”
Our sociologists are asking why are our villages becoming depopulated?
Superficial observers often reply that the young men go to the city
for the sake of money-making. But I, Sir, know better. The young men
are leaving the farms and the villages to hunt for wives because the
newspapers, with their photographs, have made them dissatisfied with
what they find at home. And now that you know the cause of it, Mr.
_Idler_, is there no hope that you may devise some way to put a stop to
it?
I am, Sir,
SARAH SHELFWORN.
FROM ANNA PEST
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Doubtless you are familiar with some of the newer schools
of poetry, as for instance, that one which has abandoned rhyme for
assonance, which has led an ignorant and prejudiced critic to say of it
that its poetry may be rich in assonance, but that he finds in it more
of asininity. Such is the treatment accorded all independent artists by
the hidebound adherents of outworn ideals!
Now, Mr. _Idler_, nobody is more convinced than I am that we need new
forms of poetry. I have been writing poems for a number of years and
I feel that I speak with authority when I say that the old classical
forms are entirely inadequate for modern poetic expression. I have
tried them all and I have found them all wanting, for though I have
written poems in the form of sonnets, lyrics, triolets, quatrains,
couplets, rondels--and even in blank verse--I was never able to produce
a decent poem in any of them. I therefore conclude that what every
modern poet needs is to shake off the shackles of poetic convention
and follow a form suited to his nature. I have been greatly encouraged
by the introduction of the _vers libre_ in France and I am heartily
in accord with the aims of those pioneers of the new poetry who are
laboring to educate the public taste to modern ideals, but I fear that
in one or two instances they have overshot the mark.
Much as I admire the courage of Monsieur Alexandre Mercereau, who has,
with splendid audacity, forsaken verse altogether and determined to
write all of his poetry in prose, I do not believe it advisable to
attempt to accomplish the poetic revolution at one step. I am more in
sympathy with those who have abandoned rhyme, but retained rhythm.
For my own part, I have invented a form which I think better than
either. I believe that this form is as superior to the sonnet as the
sonnet is to the limerick. I call this form the _duocapet_ because
it is, in a sense, double-headed, having two rhyming words in every
line--one at each end. I have discarded rhythm but retained rhyme. I
had good reasons for adopting this course. I regard meter as a useless
encumbrance. It is meter, not rhyme, which hampers the true poet. The
poet should be free--free as the air--free as the birds. It is a crime
against art to bind him with silly meaningless meters and rhythms
which distract his attention from his theme and serve only to furnish
critics with an excuse for picking flaws. I hope that the happy day
will soon arrive when laymen will leave to the poets the settling of
all questions of form, but in the present state of public ignorance and
prejudice I think it advisable to concede them something in order that
they may realize that we are writing poetry. Later, when the public is
sufficiently educated to recognize poetry without any of its ancient
ear-marks, I may discard rhyme also.
For the present I think the _duocapet_ is the most logical and
artistic of existing forms. Writing in the _duocapet_, the poet has
only one rule to observe--that the first word of every line shall rhyme
with the last. I have, in fact, reduced the couplet to a single line,
making the two rhyming words come one at each end of that line, where
they logically belong, one opening and one closing the line, instead
of placing them one under the other in the manner of Pope. Standing
in this position they may be likened to two sentries that guard the
thought of the poet. It is as if the rhyme at the first end of the
line called out, “Who goes there?” and the other responds, “A friend!”
In the _duocapet_ the poet may make his lines short or long as best
pleases him without regard for the length of lines that go before or
that follow.
This poetry is produced as all true poetry should be produced, a line
at a time. No whole can be perfect which is defective in any part.
In the _duocapet_ every line is a perfect poem, complete in itself,
every line contains a distinct thought, and though the sentence may
sometimes extend from one line to another, this is never necessary and
rests with the discretion of the poet. Should he choose, he might write
a whole poem consisting of nothing but complete sentences, a sentence a
line, with a period at the end of each. The poem can be made ten lines
in length or ten thousand, and asterisks and italics can be introduced
at will. With the exception of the rhyme, the poet is as free in this
form as in any form of _vers libre_. I append an example of _duocapet_
which should give you a good idea of the possibilities of this form:
MIDNIGHT
Gone is the day and I look out upon
Night bathed in Luna’s sad illusive light ...
Dark are the shadows out in Central Park;
Hushed are the streets through which the traffic rushed ...
_See! Underneath that weeping-willow tree
Prone lies a figure on a bench alone!_
Why should he lie there ’neath the sky?
Is there no home he can call his?
Creeps now the moonlight where he sleeps ...
Shakes then the outcast as he wakes,
Chill with the bitter winds that fill
All of the Park from wall to wall.
Slinks then away in search of drinks.
Soon he will be in a saloon.
Still as I lean upon the sill
And see the sky on every hand
Sprinkled with those same stars that twinkled
Bright on that blessed Christmas night
When angels sang good-will to men ...
Sore is my heart unto the core!
Sick is my soul unto the quick!
Sick is my soul ... my soul ... how sick!
I hope that you will publish this poem and letter in the interest of
Poetic Art, and in order that the world may know that we poets of
America are almost, if not quite, as progressive as those of France.
I am, Sir,
ANNA PEST.
FROM SETH SHIRTLESS
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am the victim of a most peculiar affliction. I am
suffering from what appears to be a sort of disease and which can not
be classified. As I am not able to find the true explanation of this
matter myself and as physicians seem to be equally at a loss in regard
to it, I have decided to appeal to the public at large in the hope that
some one who reads my communication will be able to suggest a cure or
at least some method of alleviation.
There is an old saying, Mr. _Idler_, borrowed from some author, if I
mistake not, that “the apparel oft proclaims the man.” This I consider
a true saying aptly put; but I believe, Sir, that apparel sometimes
does more than proclaim the man--that it sometimes actually _makes_
the man. It is well known that men are often affected by the clothes
they wear. Good clothing has a tendency to inspire confidence in the
breast of the wearer, while poor clothing robs a man of his assurance,
if not of his self-respect. That all men are more or less subject to
the influence of their garments, there can be no doubt, but I, Sir,
am peculiarly susceptible to it. It has been so all my life. Even in
childhood I became supercilious and insolent with pride when clad in
my best, and most envious and depressed the moment I had changed to my
every-day wear.
Since I have come to manhood, I have felt this weakness growing upon me
despite my most earnest efforts to resist it, until now, Mr. _Idler_,
my character and my wardrobe are so inextricably mixed together that
I may be said to change my nature with my clothing. When I am richly
dressed I _feel_ rich, and my thoughts and sentiments are those of a
wealthy person. At such times I am a firm believer in all measures
for the protection of property and vested rights. I am a hearty
adherent of the established order and I am distinctly suspicious of all
so-called reforms and innovations in governmental machinery. When,
on the other hand, I am dressed shabbily, my views and my feelings
undergo a complete change. I am no longer a believer in the sacredness
of property rights. Indeed, I look upon all rich men as so many
robbers who have seized upon the land and the natural resources which
should, of right, be the common property of all mankind. I feel that
I have been defrauded of everything they have which I have not. Their
insolence vexes me and their display drives me into a very fury of
rage which is partly inspired by just indignation and partly by simple
envy. At these times I am fiercely radical in politics. No measure of
reform can be too revolutionary for my taste. My dearest wish is that
the whole social fabric may be rent to shreds and rewoven in a pattern
after my democratic heart.
To such extremes of sentiment do my clothes carry me. When I am
fashionably clad a Socialistic pamphlet irritates me as a red rag
enrages a bull. But when I am poorly dressed and shod, _I write such
pamphlets_. Write them, and, Sir, incredible as it may seem, leave
them lying about my quarters for the very purpose of irritating
myself, and well knowing that when my eyes light on them while in my
conservative frame of mind I shall fall upon them and tear them to
tatters. I, Sir, am as a house divided against itself--I am a man at
war with his own soul!
You have heard, I doubt not, of the celebrated case of Doctor Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde, and of other instances of double personality, where men,
by reason of contending spirits within them, have been forced to lead
double lives. I do not hesitate to say that such are blessed when their
lot is compared to my own unhappy state, for I lead, not a double,
but a _treble_ existence. In addition to these two personalities,
which I term for want of a better nomenclature my Aristocratic and my
Proletarian selves, I am also possessed of a Normal self which is in
evidence only when I am completely disrobed.
Can you fancy, Sir, what this means to me? Can you imagine in what
straits a man must be who can think clearly and logically only
when he is naked, and who, before he can decide upon any matter of
importance, must hurry home and throw off his clothes lest he be led
astray by rabid prejudice or blind enthusiasm? That, Sir, is precisely
my situation. When I awake in the morning I am compelled to make a
choice between my two antagonistic personalities. My wardrobe stares
me in the face as if asking the eternal question, “Which is it to be
to-day--Aristocrat or Proletariat?” Always, upon falling asleep at
night, I am haunted by the specter of the ordeal which awaits me in the
morning.
In addition to this, my Aristocratic and my Proletarian selves have
recently conceived a violent dislike for each other and they have begun
to vent their spite in many petty ways, much to the disgust of my
Normal self who has small use for either of them. For example, about a
fortnight ago, my Proletarian self indulged himself freely in gin, a
drink which is loathsome to my Aristocratic self. He stayed in this
condition for a matter of four days and upon his return to my--perhaps
I should say _our_ chambers, he wantonly destroyed a new top hat which
my Aristocratic self had carelessly left lying upon the hall table. By
way of retaliation, my Aristocratic self seized some overalls belonging
to my Proletarian self and flung them into the ash-barrel. Altogether,
they behave, Sir, in a fashion to make me thoroughly ashamed of them
both.
Possibly you are wondering how it comes that I am in the habit of
changing my clothing so frequently and varying the quality of my
dress in this way. I may as well tell you that for many years I was a
professional politician, much in demand as an orator, and that I was
called to speak before audiences of widely different character, so that
I sometimes found it expedient to dress in evening clothes and at other
times it was necessary for me to appear a workingman. My constantly
changing political convictions made it impossible for me to continue
in this work, but by the time I gave it up I had come to know these
two personalities so well that I was unwilling to trust myself for long
in the hands of either of them. I have thought of purchasing a decent
outfit of ready-to-wear clothing, but I realize that the result of such
a step would be to render me hopelessly middle-class, a condition I
have hitherto escaped. I have no desire to add a fourth personality to
those I already possess.
I have consulted my tailor without good result, and the best that my
physician has been able to do for me was to suggest a period of rest
in the country. I am now very comfortably lodged in a quiet house in
the suburbs, where I came upon the advice of my doctor and two of his
colleagues with whom I discussed my trouble.
I am very well content here for a man who is virtually a prisoner. Not
that I am confined by force, Sir, but I have determined never to put on
another suit of clothes until I have solved the problem which confronts
me, and I can not leave my room without dressing; the landlord of this
place objects to my doing so. Here, then, I expect to remain until I
hit upon some solution of my difficulty or until some other person is
good enough to suggest a way out of my dilemma. I am, Sir,
SETH SHIRTLESS.
SARTOR-PSYCHOLOGY
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am a social worker, and it is in this capacity that
I address you upon a subject which appears to me to be of vital
importance to all classes of society. I have, Sir, hit upon a plan
which will, if generally adopted, work the greatest reform that has
ever been effected, and which will, I am convinced, completely do away
with the necessity for long-term sentences to imprisonment. In simple
honesty I must admit that this idea is not entirely my own. It was
suggested to me by the extraordinary and very interesting communication
from Mr. Seth Shirtless which appeared in your January issue.
The influence of clothing upon character has long been recognized,
but I do not remember ever to have heard of another case so well
illustrating that influence as the case of Mr. Shirtless. His story of
his experiences was profoundly interesting from a psychological point
of view, and while reading it I conceived the plan of which I spoke
just now. It occurred to me that the influence of dress might be of
great use in reforming men of evil habit and temperament. It is well
known to all social workers that many criminals cherish a spirit of
bitter animosity toward society at large, and that not a few habitual
criminals have embarked upon a career of crime urged on by the mistaken
belief that the hand of every man was against them. Having once plunged
into evil ways, these misguided creatures come to be more and more of
the opinion that they are not as other men; that they have lost for all
time to come any hope of being treated with respect and that they must
live and die outside the pale of respectability.
It must be confessed that the treatment now accorded them, both in jail
and after their release, lends some color of truth to this conviction.
To win these men back to a useful way of life it is only necessary to
show them that they are wrong; that a temporary fall from grace does
not involve an eternal and perpetual atonement. They must be made to
feel that they are still members of the Brotherhood of Man and that
they may again become members in good standing. Once they are convinced
of this, they will certainly mend their ways and gladly conform to
right standards of living. Society is coming to realize, as it never
did before, that the true purpose of imprisonment is to reform, and not
to punish; that our criminals and law-breakers are susceptible to the
same methods as our children, and that our proceedings against them
should be corrective, rather than retaliatory. These men are sick, sick
in mind if not in body, and it is the duty of the state to reclaim them.
In consequence of this awakening to the real purpose of imprisonment,
many of our prisons have given up the hideous practise of dressing
convicts in the degrading and brutalizing uniforms which were formerly
so common as to be almost universal in penal institutions. Men have
pretty generally come to see that the use of the striped zebra-like
suit for prisoners was a mistake; an added infamy which served no good
purpose, but only deepened the convict’s sense of shame and resentment.
But though the old garb for prisoners is rapidly becoming obsolete,
all reform of this character has, so far, been negative in its nature.
The method which I propose is positive. Why should we be content with
relieving the convicts of their shameful uniforms? Why not go a step
further and institute a constructive reform in their dress? Why not
array them in such a fashion that their self-respect must be reawakened
and their sense of responsibility quickened into life? Why not bring
to bear upon their characters the influence of clean linen and a
respectable wardrobe?
What I propose, Mr. _Idler_, is just this: Let every convict and
prisoner be clad in clothing suitable for a substantial citizen and
a respected member of the community. Let every inmate of our prisons
and penitentiaries be supplied each week with a liberal allowance of
clean linen and underwear. Let every man of them be furnished with a
decent wardrobe; say, two or three business suits of good quality and
correct cut, a walking-coat or frock for afternoon wear, evening dress,
a silk hat and a dinner coat. We already provide for them good books to
elevate their minds; let us now give them such attire as will increase
their respect for their persons.
Now, there is no denying that a well-dressed man makes a better
impression upon strangers than a sloven; and if this is true of
strangers, what shall we say of the effect upon the man himself? While
few of us are so strongly affected as Mr. Shirtless, yet we are all
of us, I think, affected in some degree. A pleasing image in a mirror
increases our self-respect, but when we see ourselves unkempt and
ill-clad we are ashamed. When we have made our prisoners presentable,
I believe we should give them the satisfaction of seeing how much they
are improved, and I therefore suggest that a mirror be placed in each
cell where the inmate can see himself at full length. Thus, if in spite
of his new outfit he occasionally feels a disposition to backslide, he
has only to glance into the glass to be restored to respectability. In
this way he can be led to see the possibilities within him. Let a man
look into a looking-glass and see there a reflection which might well
be that of a statesman, and his subconsciousness will at once inquire
_why not_? The inspiring sight will reawaken his ambition.
Though it will be a great step forward to dress these convicts
like decent citizens, yet this is hardly enough. There must be a
corresponding reform in their occupations and employments. There is
certainly something incongruous in the thought of a man clad in a
frock coat and silk hat breaking stones with a hammer. Such a thing
must appear bizarre even to the dullest of these unfortunates. To keep
them at such labor would seem as if we were making sport of them. It
will therefore be advisable to devise for each inmate of our prisons
some employment which will be in keeping with his clothes and, at the
same time, congenial and respectable. Here is a man, let us say, who
has been convicted of larceny. We will make a promoter of him. Here
is another who has been sentenced for gambling. He would make a good
broker. A third, who has been an anarchist, will make a good magazine
editor. A fourth, confined for highway robbery, can be transformed into
a hotel proprietor. And so on down the list.
Of course it will be necessary to release some of them upon parole when
the time comes for them to begin the practise of their professions,
but by the time they have mastered the details of their new callings
this will probably be safe enough. If a carpenter has been sent to
prison for burglary, it is not reasonable to keep him employed at the
same trade while in confinement, for then he is released knowing no
more--and no better off--than he was when incarcerated. Perhaps it was
carpentry which drove him to crime. No, Mr. _Idler_, we should elevate
him.
As for those who are merely dissolute and idle, we will make gentlemen
of them. We will dress them in the latest fashion and establish for
them a club where they may follow their natural bent and continue in
their usual habits, only now with the sanction of society.
If the system I have outlined should be adopted in all of our prisons,
Sir, I see no reason why our convicts should not soon be a credit to
the community.
I am, Sir,
AL. TRUIST.
MR. BODY PROTESTS
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: It is with a feeling of dismay--nay, I may even say
terror--that I read in my morning paper the statement that during
last year there were made and sold in the United States no less than
8,644,537,090 cigarettes! Nearly nine billion of these devil’s torches,
or almost one hundred of them for every man, woman and child throughout
the country. And not only that, but an increase of 150,000,000 cigars
and 15,000,000 pounds of manufactured tobacco over the production of
the preceding year.
To what, Sir, is this country coming, when such things are possible?
Can it be that the whole nation is bent upon suicide? I have read that
a single drop of the pure essense of nicotine dropped upon the back
of a healthy and robust flea will cause the unfortunate beast to
fall into convulsions, frequently terminating in a partial paralysis
or total dissolution. Now, it is well known to all who make the
slightest pretense to any knowledge of entomology that the flea, or
_Pulex irritans_, is one of the most hardy insects known to man and is
extremely hard to kill. Indeed, it is a matter of record that the fleas
of Mexico encountered the army of Bonaparte and Maximilian and gave
such a good account of themselves that the French soldiers were more
in awe of the fleas than of the natives. If nicotine, then, has such a
disastrous effect upon such a hearty and well-protected beast as the
flea, what must be the effect of its poison upon man, who is, perhaps,
the most easily killed of all living creatures? It is too horrible
to contemplate! I have, by most careful calculations, proved to my
entire satisfaction that the American people have already been totally
exterminated through their persistence in this evil habit of using
tobacco; and if, as may be said, the facts do not seem to fit in with
my figures, I can only say that I am convinced that their survival is
in nowise due either to their hardiness or to the innocuous character
of the herb, but solely to the kindly interposition of Providence,
who, unwilling to see so young and so promising a nation perish by
reason of this folly, has deliberately set at naught the wiles of
the Devil and robbed him of his prey by fortifying and strengthening
the constitutions of this people to withstand the dread effects of
this evil practise. But how long can people given over to this wicked
practise look to Providence for patience and protection?
I have but now spoken of the American people as a promising nation,
but I am not sure but that I should amend this to “a once promising
nation.” I believe that this nation can never become truly great until
it has become a nation of non-smokers. Did the Greeks smoke? No. Did
the Romans smoke? No, again. Not in the history of any of the great
nations of antiquity do I find a single reference to tobacco smoking.
The Boers are reputed to be great smokers, and it is to this that I
attribute their defeat at the hands of the English. I have heard that
the Boers even went into battle with their pipes alight, and I have no
doubt that it was due to their distraction and lack of attention caused
by their habit of scratching matches to keep their pipes burning, that
they lost many important engagements. Do you imagine, Sir, that Troy
could have withstood the assault of the Greeks for ten long years, had
Hector and his fellow warriors lolled upon the battlements puffing on
cigarettes? Can you fancy, Sir, the grave and dignified Cicero pausing
in the midst of one of his philippics to expectorate tobacco juice?
Yet I am told upon good authority that this may be witnessed among the
learned justices of our own Supreme Court.
The almost total destruction of the American Indian, I attribute
chiefly to the debilitating effects of this narcotic. Of all of
the American Indians, the Peruvians attained the highest state of
civilization. And why? Because, Sir, they alone used tobacco only as a
medicine and in the form of snuff. Had they forborne the use of snuff,
it might well have been that the Incas had conquered the Spanish and
colonized the coast of Europe. Snuff, I consider the least harmful
of all forms of tobacco; but only because it is the least frequently
used. There is a lady of my acquaintance, in all other respects a most
estimable woman, who so far forgets her duty as a mother as to permit
her offspring to utilize as a plaything a handsome silver snuff-box
which she inherited from her grandfather. I, Sir, should as soon think
of giving my children a whisky-flask for a toy. I am well aware that
many who have been termed “gentlemen” have been addicted to the use of
snuff; nay, that it was even at one time a fashion among men and women
of the mode to partake of it. But I think none the better of it for
that. As much might be said for rum.
Lord Chesterfield said that he was enabled to get through the last five
or six books of Virgil by having frequent recourse to his snuff-box;
but I say, if the taking of snuff is necessary to the enjoyment of
Virgil, why then, it were better never to read that poet. I had rather
fall asleep over Virgil than to inhale culture tainted with snuff.
I had rather, indeed, snore over the classics, than sneeze at them.
_Trahit sua quemque voluptas_--I suspect that his Lordship did not so
much find snuff an aid to Virgil as Virgil an excuse for snuff.
Tobacco, Sir, won its way into Europe by a ruse--a pretense. It wormed
its way into the confidence of the European peoples masquerading as
a medicine--a panacea. Introduced by Francesco Fernandez, himself a
renowned physician, and endorsed by many other men supposed to be
learned in _materia medica_, it was taken on faith and retained through
weakness. At the very outset some of the wiser heads saw the danger of
it. Burton sounded a note of warning in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_:
“Tobacco, divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco, which goes far
beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, is a
sovereign remedy in all disease. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous
herb if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medically used;
but, as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers
do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purge of goods, lands,
health,--hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow
of body and soul.”
King James, of blessed memory, was not deceived by the fictitious
virtues of this plant, and he condemned it in his noble work, _The
Counterblaste_. Would that more had been so blessed with wisdom!
The absurdity of the extravagant claims made for the curative powers
of this herb is well illustrated in the words of Master Nicholas
Culpepper, author of _The English Physitian_, published so late as 1671:
“It is a Martial plant (governed by Mars). It is found by good
experience to be available to expectorate tough Flegm from the Stomach,
Chest and Lungs.... The seed hereof is very effectual to expel the
toothach, & the ashes of the burnt herb, to cleanse the Gums and make
the Teeth white. The herb bruised and applied to the place grieved by
the Kings-Evil, helpeth it in nine or ten days effectually. _Manardus_,
faith, it is a Counter-Poyson against the biting of any Venomous
Creatures; the Herb also being outwardly applyd to the hurt place. The
Distilled Water is often given with some Sugar before the fit of Ague
to lessen it, and take it away in three or four times using.”
Such vaporings were, indeed, as little worthy of credence as the empty
chatter of Ben Jonson’s Bobadil: “Signor, believe me (upon my relation)
for what I tell you, the world shall not improve. I have been in the
Indies (where this herb grows), where neither myself nor a dozen
gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the taste of any other
nutriment in the world, for the space of one and twenty weeks, but
tobacco only. Therefore it can not be but ’tis most divine. Further,
take it in the nature, in the true kind, so, it makes an antidote,
that had you taken the most deadly poisonous simple in all Florence
it should expel it, and clarify you with as much ease as I speak.... I
do hold it, and will affirm it (before any Prince in Europe) to be the
most sovereign and precious herb that ever the earth tendered to the
use of man.”
Such were the absurd claims of those who held tobacco to be a medicine.
But I contend, Sir, that tobacco has never been proven of any real
medical value whatever; that it is a poison and not a blessing. I have
been told, indeed, that it sometimes destroys the toothache; but for
my own part I had rather taste the toothache than tobacco; and as for
deadening the pain, so, for that matter, will opium or prussic acid.
I contend, Sir, that tobacco will eventually bring to grief every
nation which makes use of it. Who can contemplate the present
distressing state of Portugal without recalling that it was from Jean
Nicot, a Portuguese, that the poison, nicotine, received its name?
Tobacco destroys all that is noble in man. There is no more noble
sentiment than chivalry; and tobacco has destroyed the chivalry of
man. How else could we applaud that English poet who sang,
“A thousand surplus Maggies are waiting to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke”?
Tobacco is offensive to all high-minded people of delicate
sensibilities; it is offensive to me. Nay, the smoker himself sometimes
involuntarily recoils from his slavery and feels disgust for the vile
weed, as is shown by the cry of the modern poet, whose name for the
moment escapes me, in that line--
“Then, as you love me, take the stubs away!”
Oh, Sir, it is now high time for all men of sound judgment and
unselfish nature to unite in stamping out this nefarious traffic! Let
every state pass laws forbidding the manufacture, sale _and use_ of
tobacco in any form. Let the government suppress with stringent law and
heavy penalty that wicked and seductive book of J. M. Barrie’s called
_My Lady Nicotine_; that work which has, without doubt, led many young
men to contract this evil habit and confirmed many older men in it
against their own better judgment. Let all books in praise of tobacco
be destroyed publicly, as is befitting a public menace.
For my own part, having suffered all my life from a quinsy which I
contracted early in youth, and which my family physician assured me
would be greatly aggravated by the use of tobacco, I have been saved
from the vile effects of even the slightest contact with that noxious
plant. But, Sir, being a man of tender sensibilities and imbued with
an almost paternal love of humanity, it has grieved me to the heart to
see my fellow men falling ever deeper and deeper into the clutches of
this sinful practise. Owing to the distress I suffer from the fumes
of tobacco, I have often been compelled practically to abstain from
the company of men, otherwise estimable citizens, who have contracted
this habit. Everywhere I go I see young and old blowing out their
brains with every puff of smoke, until I am sometimes tempted to blow
out my own in sheer despair of ever making them see the evil of their
ways. And they smoke, Sir, with such an air of innocent enjoyment as
is enough to fair madden one whose counsel they scorn and at whose
warnings they scoff.
I have been told, Sir, that you are, yourself, a victim of this evil
habit of tobacco using, and I have been warned that you will refuse,
with the infatuation of a confirmed smoker, to grant me space in your
publication for these honest and unprejudiced expressions of opinion
upon this subject. I have refused, however, to credit these scandalous
reflections upon your character, and I hope that you will refute
them and cause the utter confusion of your calumniators, as well as
help enlighten an ignorant and misguided people, by printing this
communication in full.
I am, Sir, very truly yours,
B. Z. BODY.
ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FASHION WRITERS
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Some writers have an unhappy faculty of adopting a superior
tone which is very offensive to most readers. Even in a writer of
acknowledged excellence this dictatorial style is a blemish, and,
moreover, it is an impertinence. Not only does the writer assume to
be superior to the majority of his readers, but, by implication, to
all the world, since his book is addressed to mankind at large. And
if this air of condescension is hard to bear from men of parts, how
much more galling it is when we suffer it at the hands of insolent
nobodies--writers who seek to hide their obscurity behind the shield of
an imposing pseudonym. I have in mind, Sir, that pestiferous crew who
mar the pages of our theater programs with their uninvited discourses
upon men’s fashions.
It may be that I am confessing to an unmanly weakness when I confess
that I invariably peruse that column in my program which is signed
_Beau Nash_, _Beau Brummel_, or something equally ridiculous; but if
it is a weakness, I am convinced that it is one which is shared by
nine out of ten men in the audience. I say I am convinced, because,
suspecting that I might be alone in it, I took the trouble to observe
the men about me upon several occasions, and I always caught them at
it at some time during the intermissions. They read it furtively, to
be sure, but they read it none the less. Of course, I can not be sure
what effect these essays upon sartorial matters have upon others, but I
fancy they are affected much as I am, and for my part they distress me
exceedingly.
In the first place, I am not overly pleased that some unknown hack
writer has assumed to instruct me in such a personal matter as
the clothes which I put upon my back, and in the second place, I
strongly resent the implication that I am interested in such foppish
literature. But, what is worse than all else, these anonymous arbiters
of dress are continually putting me out of countenance by criticizing
explicitly and in detail the very clothes that I have on! It seems to
me that these fellows have a devilish faculty of knowing beforehand
just what I shall be wearing every season.
Now, Mr. _Idler_, you must not suppose that I am one of those silly
fellows who aspire to lead the fashion or to play the dandy, for,
indeed, I am nothing of the sort. I do not believe there is a man
living who more heartily despises those empty-headed creatures who
are variously known as fops, dudes and dandies. It has never been my
ambition to be the introducer of a new style of neckwear or footgear;
indeed, I fear my very indifference to such matters lays me open to the
vexation caused by these miserable scribblers who prey upon my peace
of mind. Were I in the habit of consulting long and earnestly with my
tailor and haberdasher, no doubt I should be fortified with a sound and
sure confidence in the appropriateness of my apparel. But the fact is,
I leave these things largely to the men who make a business of them,
and content myself with choosing what seems to me to be sufficiently
modish and yet in good taste.
And yet, Sir, though I am no macaroni, I am not utterly indifferent to
my personal appearance. If I am not a fop, neither am I a sloven. I am
one of those who have faith in the old saying, _In medio tutissimus
ibis_. I would not be
“The first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
Like most practical men, I have a positive horror of appearing queer.
I shun eccentricity in dress as assiduously as I shun eccentricity
in manners. I sometimes envy poets and artists, not for their poetry
or their art, but for that sublime egotism which enables them to
take pleasure in making themselves ridiculous. This seems to me
a vanity which is almost beautiful, a self-confidence which is a
greater blessing than personal bravery. Many a man, otherwise not
extraordinary, may prove himself a hero of physical courage when the
occasion offers, but few there are who can deliberately challenge
attention by their freakish appearance and go out among their fellow
men with an air which seems to say, “I know I look like the devil and I
am proud of it.”
Now I, Sir--I should not be proud of it. I should be miserably ashamed.
And so I am ashamed when I read in my program that which brands me as
a man of no taste or discrimination. I am horribly humiliated when I
discover in the column of Beau Nash that I have brazenly shattered
every commandment in the sartorial decalogue. I give you my word,
Sir, I break into a cold perspiration whenever I recall the harrowing
experience I had last Saturday-week. It so happened that when I
prepared to go to the play, I found no fresh white waistcoats. This did
not greatly trouble me at the time, for I am a resourceful man, and I
at once recalled that I possessed a black waistcoat which my tailor had
made for me at the same time he had made my dress suit. This I donned
in blissful ignorance of my impending ordeal. I arrived at the theater
rather late and had no opportunity of reading the program before the
curtain rose. That first act is the one bright memory I have of that
awful evening. I enjoyed the first act. But, Sir, I did not long remain
in ignorance of my disgrace. In the first intermission my eyes were
drawn by an irresistible fascination to the column headed, “What Men
Wear,” and in letters which seemed fairly to jump out of the page I
read, “_The black waistcoat worn with evening dress is the height of
vulgarity and is not tolerated._”
Sir, you can imagine with what a sudden shock my care-free contentment
dropped from me. There I sat in the full glare of the electric light,
conscious that I was surrounded by hundreds of men who had read that
damning paragraph which stamped me as an ignorant underbred boor, who
had attempted evening dress without knowing the very rudiments of the
art. I cast a hasty glance about the theater, and the fleeting hope
which had sprung up died within my breast. _There was not another
black waistcoat in sight._
How I lived through the rest of that intermission I can not say. I only
know that I could feel the contemptuous eyes of the audience upon that
dreadful black waistcoat, like so many hot augurs boring holes in the
pit of my stomach. Hastily hiding my face behind my program, I slumped
down in my seat in the vain hope of hiding my disgrace, while drops of
anguish trickled down my brow and fell splashing upon the cruel words
which had rendered me an object for pity and contempt. When the curtain
rose upon the second act, I crept out of the auditorium under cover of
the kindly darkness and slunk away home to hide my shame.
I do not think I shall ever attend the theater in this city again.
In vain I argue and seek to persuade myself that what I read in the
program was only the opinion of one man, and a man at that who, in all
probability, never owned a dress suit in his life. Whoever he may be,
whatever his knowledge or ignorance of dress may be, he writes with
such a saucy assumption of omniscient authority that my reason stands
abashed before his insolence. As aloof and austere as the Olympian
gods, he crushes my spirit and fills my soul with humility. No, Mr.
_Idler_, I do not believe I shall ever attend the theater here again.
The mental suffering these fashion writers inflict upon me is too great
a price to pay for the pleasure I extract from the drama.
I am, Sir,
MAURICE MUFTI.
OF LOOKING BACKWARD
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: It is a constant source of surprise to me that men continue,
at all ages but the earliest, to look back upon the past with a wistful
eye, recalling, with many expressions of regret, the days that are no
more. Thus, while still in the twenties, the youth begins to feel the
burden of worldly cares already pressing heavily upon his shoulders and
sighs when he thinks of the irresponsible school-days of his teens. At
thirty, he is convinced that he has missed the best part of his youth
and would fain be a youngster of twenty once more, his greatest care
the sprouting down upon his upper lip. Come to forty, he is sure that
he should have been most happy when thirty, over the first rawness of
youth, but not yet sensible of any physical deterioration and quite
unmarked by the passage of time. At fifty, he envies the lustihood of
forty, and at sixty he longs for the activity and the muscular ease
which he enjoyed at fifty. And so it goes on, so that we can readily
imagine a patriarch of ancient days exclaiming, “Oh, if I were but
two-hundred-and-twenty once more! How I should enjoy life!”
Now, to me, Mr. _Idler_, things do not appear in this light at all.
I can not conceive that had I been Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of
France, I should have longed to be an obscure youth in Corsica. It is
easier, of course, to understand why he might, at St. Helena, regret
the departed glories of St. Cloud; but for myself, I do not believe
I should ever, whatever my former station might have been, wish to
lay down the present for the past. I have, it is true, some hope for
the future (I am now but fifty), but even if this were denied me, and
I were assured that my condition ten years hence would be no more
enviable than it is at present, yet I think I should not care to
reassume my youthful aspect, or to take up my life where I left it long
ago.
There is, in truth, no period of my past life upon which I can look
back with complete complacency. I was, at all times, very well
satisfied with myself, barring occasional and inevitable spasms of
self-reproach. I am, to say the truth, well enough satisfied with
myself as I am to-day. But experience has taught me that the time will
come when I shall look back upon to-day and will not be pleased with
my present self at all. At thirty I remembered the Me of twenty as a
callow and conceited boy. At forty I beheld in the Me of ten years gone
a lazy careless idler. At fifty I recollected the man of forty as a
pompous and affected ass. Now, while the most careful scrutiny of my
person and character fails to reveal to me, at this time, any serious
flaw or defect, yet I doubt not that the future Me, the Me of Sixty,
will have grave fault to find with the individual who is inhabiting my
skin at the present moment.
“We live and learn,” says the proverb, and since we do, it is unnatural
if we do not feel a sort of shame in the ignorance of our former
selves. I feel no shame for my present ignorance because I do not know
wherein that ignorance consists, but be assured I shall, as soon as I
have found myself out.
It is, I like to think, one of the wisest provisions of a merciful God
that no man is ever permitted to see what a consummate simpleton he
is, but only what a simpleton _he has been_. A complete and certain
revelation of a man’s folly to himself would, without a doubt, result
in an immediate and lasting loss of self-respect. And to lose one’s
self-respect is to lose one’s identity and become a stranger to one’s
self. The inmost mind, however the outward actions of the body may seem
to contradict it, still clings to the noblest principles, so that no
man can be truly said to be _unprincipled_. He may be debauched and
depraved, but he is not without principle so long as his subconscious
personality has the power to arise and accuse his conscious person.
Where there is no such accusation there can be no loss of self-respect,
for surely a man must possess a thing before he can lose it. As some
say of another, “He is his own worst enemy,” so it may be said that
every man should be his own best friend. None other is empowered so
to befriend him. His life and his character must be, to a very great
extent, of his own making, for every man truly lives to himself. He
is the central character of the drama in which he is both actor and
spectator. Others may come and go, but he alone remains throughout the
play.
For all our intimacy with ourselves, we never come to know ourselves
completely. We discover, day by day, ideas and opinions which we never
suspected ourselves of possessing. We are wrung by emotions which take
us completely by surprise. We are angered by slights which our reason
tells us are beneath our notice. We are moved to compassion when we are
most determined to remain firm and unmoved. We take a liking for this
person whom we have decided to dislike, and we develop an inexplicable
aversion for another whom we have deliberately chosen for a friend.
Whence come these impulses, these orders which we can not disobey?
These commands which override our conscious desires and break down our
natural wills? Where, indeed, but from that Inner Man, that Unknown
Self whose power we feel but can not comprehend? Where else but from
that second and stronger, if submerged, personality--the human soul?
Is it not, indeed, this unanswerable argument, this inexplicable
conviction of another and better Self within, joined with and yet
distinct from, the ordinary self, which persuades men that mankind is
immortal, no matter how ably the Brain may play the Infidel, nor how
aptly the Tongue may second him?
For our outward selves, our “every-day selves,” as we might say, we
know whence they are derived. We know that we are born of woman and
fathered of man. We can trace to the one or the other this feature
or that, this trait or the other, but there are yet to be accounted
for those strange whims and fancies, those impulses and ideals which
come neither from the father nor the mother, and which, in very truth,
_make_ us ourselves, make us to be different from our sisters and our
brothers, and without which all the offspring of the same parents
would be as like as so many peas in a pod. And it is these things which
convince us that we have within us another Ego, another Self which
comes to us from some unknown place, to guard and to guide us upon the
perilous path of life. We may sometimes close our ears to his counsel,
but he never suffers us to go wrong unadvised. Is it to be wondered
at, then, that we grow to feel for ourselves an affection which is not
wholly selfish, and to take in ourselves a pride which is not wholly
egotistic? I do not feel under any obligation to the man who wears my
face and bears my name; he has made me ridiculous too often for that.
But I do feel a duty to that other _Me_, the _Me_ that is not wholly of
my own choosing. And so, I am convinced, do most men.
As I was saying, or about to say, the keenest shame we ever feel is
the shame we feel for ourselves. Shame for others may be tempered with
forgiveness, but it is very difficult to forgive one’s self. There is
no question there of giving the accused the benefit of the doubt.
There is no doubt. I feel a certain shame for the young man that I
once was because I naturally feel a tenderness for him. I can forgive
him much more readily than I could forgive myself as I am to-day. Yet
I would not, if I could, change places with him. My taste in Selves,
as in other things, has changed as I have grown older. I blush for the
weak-mindedness of that youth who was the Me of twenty years ago; yet I
feel, in a way, relieved from the sense of direct responsibility, for
am I not, in fact, another and a different person from the man I was?
As the delightful Holmes once expressed it, that youthful self is
like a son to me. A bit of a cub, but on the whole, not at all a bad
fellow. He is related to me, but he is not me. And he _never was_
the man that I now am. He wore my body for a time, that was all. We
were never the same, for I was not born until he had ceased to be. I
am no more that young man of twenty years ago than I am that other
young man who interrupts me now--(No, I haven’t. Can’t you see I’m
busy?)--to borrow a match to set his ugly bulldog pipe alight. A vile
habit--pipe-smoking! Unsanitary and beastly annoying to those who have
better sense. That young man we were speaking of--not the one who
asked for the match, you know, but the one who had the impudence to
pass himself off for me twenty years ago--_he_ used to smoke a bulldog
pipe. I stopped it some time ago myself. Bad for the heart, the doctor
said, and--well, I’m getting on and I can see for myself the folly of
it. Decidedly, I should not like to exchange my own calm judgment for
his youthful carelessness and addiction to tobacco. Unless--well, say,
unless for twenty minutes after dinner!
I am, Sir,
OLIVER OLDFELLOW.
THE LITERARY LIFE
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have read a great many references, at one time or another,
to something which is known as “the literary life”. I have read of it
in novels, in essays, in criticisms and in the reports of the daily
newspapers. Everybody seems to know of it, and everybody speaks of it
as of something to be taken for granted; but though I have made an
earnest effort to discover just what it is and where and by whom it
is lived, I have been quite unable to do so. I had been a newspaper
writer for several years when I first began to take an interest in this
curiously illusive sort of existence. It was in a novel, I think, that
I had read it upon the occasion when my curiosity aroused me to action.
“There it is again,” I said to myself. “What is this literary life,
anyway? Who lives it and in what does the living of it consist? How
does one go about finding out the secret of it?”
So I set out on my quest. As all good reporters should do, I first took
stock of my possible sources of information, and having done so, I did
what reporters usually do when they wish to find out anything--I asked
the city editor.
“How the devil do I know?” said he in his unliterary way. “You’re a
reporter, ain’t you? Get busy and find out. If you get anything worth
writing, make a story of it.” That is the way with city editors; they
have no thought for anything but “stories”, no thirst for knowledge
that is not in the way of business, no soul for the higher things in
life.
With this source of information closed to me, I turned to the staff. I
knew I could learn nothing from the books where I had found the term
used. The books merely referred to “literary life” just as we say
“prison life” or “army life” and expect every one to understand what we
mean. The first man I asked about it simply laughed and said, “That’s a
good one!” The second man told me to go away and stop bothering him.
He was writing an interesting article about the price of onions. The
third man asked me if I thought I was funny. That nearly discouraged
me. I tried one or two others without success, and then I determined to
try a more subtle method of investigation.
I had failed to gather my desired information as a reporter; I would
try my hand as a detective. I took to following the members of the
staff home from the office. It was an afternoon newspaper and that
was easy to do. The result of my shadowing was that I learned much
of the habits of these men, but little of what I wanted to know. The
police reporter went from the office direct to the butcher shop. There
he made a purchase which he tucked under his arm and went home. He
stayed at home every night that I watched him. The court reporter
spent his evenings in a little saloon on a side street playing poker
with a particular friend of his who was a boilermaker. The hotel
reporter covered the same ground every evening that he had covered
during the day. He went from one hotel to another, playing pool or
billiards and shaking dice with traveling men. After about a fortnight
of investigation I gave up trying to learn anything about the literary
life from newspaper men. I looked up a few magazine writers and the
result was the same: _No two of these men lived the same life at all!_
I was astonished. I asked myself how it came about that these men had
overlooked their obvious duty of living the literary life. If literary
men knew nothing of the literary life, then who would? I resolved that
I would solve that problem if it took me a year. From the magazine
writers I went on to the novelists who seemed to have even less in
common than the two former classes had. The publishers were so widely
scattered in so many different suburbs that I had not the courage to
seek them out.
After a conscientious search which covered a period of six months or
more, I began to think that the literary life might be one of those
traditions handed down from another age; one of those things which
continue to be spoken of in books long after they cease to have any
real existence. Perhaps the authors of other days had lived the
literary life, even if the authors of my own time did not. I would see.
I began to read biography. In Johnson’s _Lives of the Poets_ I found
that:
Abraham Cowley was the son of a grocer. He showed early signs of
genius; he was expelled from Cambridge. He was, for a time, private
secretary to Lord Falkland. Afterward he spent some time in jail as a
political prisoner. Upon emerging from prison he became a doctor, and
thinking a knowledge of botany necessary to one of his profession, he
retired into the country to study that science. For some reason, he
abandoned botany for poetry and from that time on he wrote poetry. He
died peacefully of rheumatism.
Edmund Waller was the son of a country gentleman. He attended Cambridge
and was sent to Parliament before he was twenty. Rich by birth, he
added to his wealth by marrying an heiress who died young and left him
free to marry again, which he did. He lived among people of fashion
and wealth, and though he was sent into exile for a short time because
of a treasonable conspiracy in which he engaged, he was soon restored
to general favor. He died in good circumstances of old age.
Thomas Otway was the son of a rector. He left college without a
degree. He went into gay society and mingled his literary labor with
dissipation. He was, for a short time, an officer in the army. He fell
upon evil days, and when threatened with starvation, borrowed a guinea
from a total stranger. With this he bought himself a roll, but he was
so ravenous that he attempted to bolt it at one mouthful and so choked
himself to death.
Which one of these men might properly be said to have led the literary
life?
You need not be surprised to find in your paper some morning an
advertisement to this effect: “Wanted--Some definite information
concerning the character and habitat of the Literary Life.” But if you
know anything about it, don’t wait for the advertisement, but send on
your information at once. I think maybe I would be willing to try it
myself. Certainly _somebody_ ought to live it.
I am, Sir,
A. J. PENN.
THE POETIC LICENSE
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Your recent strictures upon a certain poem by John
Masefield, and the general tenor of several other volumes of verse
recently published, have moved me to address you upon a subject which
holds considerable interest for me; and that, Sir, is the scope and
legitimacy of what is commonly called “the poetic license”. To what
does this license extend and by whom is it granted? Is there no way in
which it may be regulated by law?
This matter of the poetic license is a source of continual annoyance to
me. I find it invoked upon all occasions. I find that it is considered
a sufficient answer to any criticisms or charges that may be brought
against a poet. I am curious to know if there is any real authority
for it; if it is not, in fact, a mere figment of the imagination, a
polite fiction of letters invented by men of letters for the purpose of
confounding the layman and depriving him of his natural right to pass
an opinion upon all that he reads?
I confess I am no poet. This being so, I may be lacking in sympathy for
the art, as some of my poetic acquaintances have averred. But I protest
that a man need not be a poet to be a judge of poetry, any more than
he need be a vintner to be a judge of wines, or a cook to be a judge
of preserves. I may lack the finer ear of the poet when it comes to a
question of complicated rhythms, but I am not lacking in an elementary
knowledge of grammar, as some of our poets appear to be. I never could
see any reason why a poet’s grammatical or orthographical errors should
be condoned merely because he chooses to write in verse. We do not
condone such defects in a prose writer, why then in a poet? It may be
urged that the poet has a harder task than the prose writer; that it
is more difficult to express one’s self in verse than in prose. No
doubt it is, but is that any reason why incompetent writers should be
excused their errors? Or their laxness? Or their laziness? Why write
poetry at all if they can not write it properly? Why not choose prose
for a medium? There are men, no doubt, who find prose as difficult as
most men find poetry, but do we therefore overlook their mistakes or
their vagaries?
Sir, it appears to me that the leniency shown to verse writers in
this respect has worked a great injury to the art of poetry. It has
encouraged men to write verses, who were in no way fitted to write
verses. It has led tyros to choose poetry rather than prose because in
the former they feel more secure from the well-merited censure of their
readers. It has degraded really good poetry to the level of very poor
poetry by allowing virtue where there was none and by holding verses
full of defects to be equal in merit with verses marred by no such
violations of the common rules of grammar and orthography.
All this, Sir, was bad enough, but I was prepared to pass over it since
it is a practise inaugurated and upheld by professional critics who
will allow us laymen no word at all in the matter. But, Sir, when these
poets attempt to extend their poetic license to clothing, to manners
and to morals, I think they go too far.
Not long since, I ventured some remarks, not altogether complimentary,
upon the personal appearance of a certain poet, or poetaster, as I
prefer to call him, in the presence of a literary woman. “Oh, yes,”
she replied. “There’s no denying it--he _is_ a sloven. But really
one of his spirituality could hardly be expected to be finicky about
his clothing and that sort of thing.” Upon another occasion, I spoke
harshly with regard to the manners of a well-known versifier, and I was
rebuked for my hasty judgment with the assurance that the oddity of
his conduct ought not to be ascribed to boorishness or rudeness, but
to his poetic temperament. And, Sir, only yesterday, when I condemned
the unbridled license and immorality of a recent book of poetry, I was
informed that a poet could not be expected to view a moral question
from the same angle as an ordinary uninspired mortal.
Sir, if these scribblers of verse are to be allowed any license, why
should they not qualify for it as do pedlers, saloon-keepers and the
like? Why not require them to prove their fitness for the business
of writing poetry? Let them secure their license from the civil
authorities, and let those licenses be revoked at the first indication
of abuse of privilege.
As affairs now stand, any one who chances to possess a pen, a windsor
tie and a wide-awake hat can pass himself off for a poet and can claim
indulgence for his bad verse, bad manners and bad morals upon the
plea of poetic temperament. Therefore, to insure the public against
such imposture, I suggest that every poet be compelled, like every
chauffeur, to wear his license in a conspicuous place, and that if he
fail to comply with this requirement, he be immediately impounded.
This arrangement, I think, would operate as an effective check upon the
too exuberant poetic temperament, and would also be an excellent thing
for the public, for, Sir, if every poet were required, like every dog,
to wear his license attached to a collar, the pound would soon be full
of poets.
I am, Sir,
P. ROSE.
THE NECESSITY FOR BEGGARS
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: It is with alarm that I observe the increasing activity
of our charitable organizations and the consequent disappearance
of beggars from our city streets. I, who was formerly constantly
importuned for alms whenever I stirred abroad, have not now been
approached by one of those needy tatterdemalions for a period of six
months or more. This fact has, for me, a deep significance. It means
nothing less than that the ancient fraternity of street beggars is
rapidly dying out. Surely you must have noticed that yourself. Where
are the old blue-spectacled men one used to see standing upon the
corners, bearing the once-familiar placard, “I am Blind”? Where are the
legless men who used to wring discords from little squatty hand-organs?
Where are the street-singers, the match venders, the orphans, the lost
children, the paralytics? Where, even, is the Italian organ-grinder
with his begging monkey? These charitable organizations, Sir, have
spirited them away, and now instead of being approached by the beggars
themselves, we are visited by the agents of the societies.
Now, Sir, my regret at the passing of the beggar is not altogether
sentimental, like Charles Lamb’s complaint in _The Decay of Beggars in
the Metropolis_. There may be a certain amount of sentiment in it, for
certainly in the loss of beggars we not only lose a picturesque class
of people, but we also suffer a spiritual loss. The spiritual glow
which came of personal giving is entirely, or almost entirely, absent
in making checks for these beggars by proxy. But, Sir, I am a practical
man and I can plainly see that the beggar, so far from being a mere
nuisance and eyesore, as charity-workers would have you believe, is a
very useful and necessary member of the social order.
Beggars, Mr. _Idler_, are the natural scavengers of the human race.
They live upon the scraps we throw from our tables; they dress in our
cast-off garments. In short, Sir, they make to serve a useful purpose,
that which would otherwise be sheer waste. These humble people are
the economists of humanity. They save what we squander. Every time
one of them goes without a meal, there is that much more food left in
the world for the rest of us. James Howell wrote of the Spaniard in
1623, “He hath another commendable quality, that when he giveth alms
he pulls off his hat and puts it in the beggar’s hand with a great
deal of humility.” Let us say, rather, with a great deal of respect
and gratitude. Truly the Spanish grandee had reason to be grateful and
respectful to the beggar who made possible his own magnificence.
Now, Sir, what are these charitable organizations trying to do? I
will tell you--they are trying to teach the beggar that he wants the
comforts of life. They are trying to teach him to desire good clothes
and good food. They are trying to awaken in him that selfish desire to
appear better than his fellows, which we call “self-respect”. _They are
even trying to teach him to work!_ What folly!
“But,” you say, “it would be an excellent thing if all of these
vagabonds could be induced to work, for heretofore they have been
mere idlers and parasites.” To which I answer, “You are wrong, it
would _not_ be a good thing.” Is it not perfectly clear that, once
these beggars become workers, they will immediately demand the means
to enable them to maintain a higher standard of living? Which do you
think costs you the more, the beggar who begs perhaps a dollar a week,
which he has not earned, or the bricklayer who charges you six dollars
a day, of which he has earned only a part? It has been some years now
since the notorious Coxey led his army of unemployed to Washington,
and since that time the number of unemployed workers has been steadily
increasing. Do you think, then, that we need more laborers? Have we
so much wealth that we must force it on those who were content to be
without it?
Why, Sir, I tell you this corruption of beggars should be put down with
a firm hand. These charitable organizations should be legislated out of
existence before they do an irreparable mischief.
I am, Sir,
HENRY HARDHEAD.
THE ABUSES OF ADVERSITY
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: In the course of a long and not uneventful life, I have, upon
more than one occasion, looked upon adversity in its various forms,
and I have, therefore, given the subject some attention, both in the
light of my own experience and in the light of the opinions of others.
I have heard a great deal of the “uses of adversity”; that adversity is
like a great training-school for character which brings out whatever
strength and resolution there may be in a man, and much talk of a like
character. But I must confess that I have not often seen adversity, nor
its lessons, put to any good use whatever, while I have often seen it
abused most shamefully.
So far from learning useful lessons from ill-fortune, it seems to
me that most men are inclined to turn misfortune to the basest of
uses, making it serve as an excuse for shirking, for moral lapses,
for dishonesty and for an utter lack of charity toward others. I find
that many people boast of their misfortunes as if they were actually
entitled to some credit because they have befallen them, wearing woe
like a feather in the cap and holding themselves somewhat better than
their fellows because they appear to have excited the wrath of the
Goddess of Fortune. It is as if they said: “See, we are the Unfortunate
Ones who are of sufficient importance to be singled out from among
men to receive Sorrows which you are unfit to bear. Look upon our
afflictions and reflect upon the happiness of your own lot, and do
not forget to do us honor for the fortitude with which we bear our
miseries.”
I count among my friends and acquaintances a number of these habitual
boasters of misfortune, who are always ready, day or night, to relate
their trials and tribulations with a conscious air of distinction and
superiority.
There is an old fellow of my acquaintance who suffers, or so he
declares, the torments of the damned, by reason of his gout, a disease
which has held him in its grip for the last twenty years. There is no
manner of doubt that he has himself to blame for this painful malady,
which is, without question, the result of his injudicious and riotous
manner of life in his youth. Yet this old man is as proud of his
infirmity as many another man is of physical soundness, and he relates
his pangs and twinges with the greatest relish in the world. Nor does
the fact that he has suffered from the disease for nearly a quarter of
a century have any effect upon the eagerness with which he always turns
the conversation upon his favorite topic. Despite the fact that he has
told and retold his pains and symptoms ten thousand times, the subject
never seems to lose its novelty for him, and to-day he discusses his
infirmity with as much gusto as he did when I first met him ten years
or more ago. It makes no difference what may be the subject of the
company’s discourse, this man can not bear to go twenty minutes without
intruding the matter of his lame foot.
Politics, business, history, music, literature, art or the drama--all
these are but verbal stepping-stones to his one supreme subject. Does
some one speak of Napoleon at the foot of the great Pyramids, the mere
mention of the word “foot” is enough to set him discoursing of the
inflammation in his great toe. Does some one call attention to the
flaming crimson of the sunset, he swears that it is not so red as his
own instep. He never enters a conversation, in short, but to put his
foot in it, and so persistently does he dwell upon this malformed pedal
extremity as to render him fit company for none but chiropodists. He
has no interest in life but his gout, and he is forever talking of the
pain it causes him, though I dare say it has never caused him a tenth
part of the misery that it has caused his friends and acquaintances.
Another person whom I have the misfortune to know is a widow lady
of some nine years’ standing, who has never put off her weeds and
who never tires of bewailing the loss of the dear departed. The bare
mention of death is a sufficient warrant for a flood of tears, and
the sight of a hearse sends her into hysterics which abate only
at the prospect of a sympathetic audience for the old story of her
bereavement. She goes about the neighborhood casting the shadow of
death upon all our innocent pleasures and brings with her into our
happy homes the gloom of the mortuary chamber. Her long-continued
mourning and complaint are the less deserving of patience and
sympathy when we reflect that her husband was already past the age
of seventy-five when he died, so that nobody but the most infatuated
mourner could speak, as she does, of his having been “cut off in his
prime.” One would think, to hear her speak of him, that other men
were in the habit of living to the age of Methuselah and that no
other woman in the world had cause to mourn her spouse. For my part,
I think the old man had small reason to complain of premature demise,
and I know that were I her husband I would ask nothing better. To
cast the slightest suspicion upon the genuineness of her grief or the
sufficiency of the cause thereof would be to lay one’s self open to a
tongue which can be most bitter when it chooses; so I fear we shall
have to bear her complaints and her mourning until she dissolves in
tears like Niobe, or until Death gives ear to her publicly expressed
desire to join her mate beyond the grave.
My cousin, Robert Wasrich, is forever telling of the wealth and luxury
which were his in his younger days and complaining of the lowly estate
into which he is fallen in his middle age. The quarters in which he now
resides are of the humblest, but he speaks of them most ostentatiously
to all who have not visited them, referring to them as “chambers” and
adding that, while they are far above the average, they are not at
all what he has been used to in other years. When we have him for our
guest, which we do out of pity at Christmas and such seasons when it
seems shameful to neglect one’s own kin, he upsets our whole household
with his constant complaints and exactions.
So, far from trying to make himself as little a nuisance as possible,
he must needs take his breakfast in bed because that was his custom
in the days of his prosperity, and he must be supplied with all sorts
of dainties and extra dishes because his stomach, so he says, craves
them, having become accustomed to them when he was wealthy. He finds
fault with the cooking, saying that it probably seems well enough
to us, who have never been used to anything better, but that it is
death to the palate of one who has been in the habit of eating and
drinking of the best. He picks flaws in our pictures and decries our
taste in furnishings, and so sends my wife off to her chamber in a fit
of indignant weeping. And not content with all this, he is forever
borrowing of me small sums of money which he declares he stands in need
of to pay off certain obligations to friends whom he has known in his
better days and who have seen fit to ask him to dinner or to the play.
To allow such obligations to go unpaid would be most offensive to his
acute sense of honor and would cast discredit upon his honored name. In
fact, Mr. _Idler_, he is twice as arrogant and proud in his poverty as
he was when he was well-off. And more than once I have wished with all
my heart that he might be rich again, and so take himself off and leave
us in peace.
To come nearer home, my wife is the victim of a nervous disorder which
totally incapacitates her from doing our housework, though we can ill
afford a servant, but which, oddly enough, does not interfere with her
attendance at matinées or card-parties given by her women friends.
This is doubtless due, as she says, to the fact that exertion which
is in the nature of a diversion takes her mind from her trouble and
so mends her condition for the time being. Though this disorder is
not in the least dangerous, it is most obstinate and causes her, so
she assures me, the most acute mental anguish and the most terrible
physical suffering. It is of such a peculiar nature that any mention
of the amount of the month’s bills sets it instantly in motion, and
disappointment in the matter of getting a new hat is enough to cause
her to take to her bed for a week. But though, as you can readily see,
this indisposition puts her to a great deal of trouble and annoyance,
she will not consent to enter a sanatorium where she might be cured
of it, nor will she follow the advice of the doctor whom she calls in
from one to three times a month; so that I am forced to conclude that
she is actually proud of being an invalid. And I am the more of this
opinion, since when I complain of feeling ill or indisposed, she always
assures me that I do not know what suffering is and that I never can
know because I was not born a woman.
These and other cases which have come under my observation have
convinced me that people are more proud of their afflictions than of
their blessings, and that the most common use of adversity is to make
life miserable for others.
I am, Sir,
EDWARD EASYMAN.
THE SCIENCE OF MAKING ENEMIES
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: As I am about to open a school of an unusual nature, I
have determined not only to secure for the same as much publicity
as possible, but also to explain to the public the nature of the
instruction which will be furnished in my new academy. My course of
study is, I think, unique; and I fear that without explanation it would
probably prove quite incomprehensible to the public at large and to
those who may chance to hear of the school through friends or to read
my advertisements in the press.
In this connection, it seems to me not out of place to acquaint you, in
some sort, with the reasons which led me to settle upon the plan of my
proposed course of instruction, and this I shall accordingly do to the
best of my ability.
I entered at an early age upon my present profession, which is, as
you may have surmised, that of an educator. I became, in turn, an
instructor, a tutor and a professor of sociology. I have ever been
of an independent character of mind, and in the course of my work I
have been prone to draw my own conclusions without, I confess, much
consideration of, or regard for, the opinions of others who assume,
or have assumed, to be authorities upon the subject. Society, I
believe, is a subject which must be studied at first hand. Text-books
and treatises may be well enough as stimulants to study, but the real
essential is a knowledge of people. I, therefore, devoted myself to
the study of mankind, and I studied the students of my classes with
more enthusiasm and with more application, I dare say, than my students
studied their text-books. But I did not stop with the study of others,
I also studied myself. I studied myself as an isolated individual, and
I studied myself in relation to others, and it was as a result of this
study that I finally made a most disconcerting discovery--a discovery
which was not made until I had entered upon my professorship, and
which shocked me inexpressibly and bade fair, for a time, to put an end
to my career as a teacher.
Though at first it was only a suspicion, it soon became a conviction.
I discovered that I was _unpopular_. Not unpopular with a few only,
for all of us are that, but generally and hopelessly unpopular; a man
without any friends and with a great many enemies. I do not now recall
what first called my attention to this matter, but I do remember that
I gave it a great deal of thought and attention and I studied the case
in the same impartial manner that I would study any other case of
social phenomena. I took careful note of the demeanor and behavior of
my students and my fellow members of the faculty, and I soon settled
beyond any reasonable doubt all question as to my popularity. I had
never established myself upon a footing of familiarity or friendship
with my students and I now came to see the reason why this was so. My
students did not like me and they would have nothing more to do with me
than was absolutely necessary. It was the same with the members of the
faculty. I was retained in my position because I was an able instructor
and an indefatigable worker. There was no sort of favoritism in my case
and I knew that my colleagues as well as my students would have been
glad to see me guilty of some blunder which would justify my removal.
As you may suppose, this was not only a hard blow to my vanity, but
a very painful thing to think upon. Like most men, I had always
assumed that people were glad to know me and to have me about, and
it distressed me exceedingly to learn that this assumption was
without foundation or justification. It is one of the enigmas of
human nature--this conviction of personal popularity. No man can
conceive of himself as a pariah, nor even as a very unpopular person,
until he actually finds himself in that situation. Even the greatest
bores seldom realize that they _are_ bores. But most bores are not
sociologists.
Now, when I had become fully convinced that my unpopularity was a fact
and not a figment of my imagination, I began to turn the matter over
in my mind and to direct my attention to the study of popularity and
unpopularity both as to cause and effect. My study led me to several
discoveries. The first was this: that some people are born with the
attribute of popularity and possess the faculty of making friends
without any conscious effort on their part, while others have a trick
of making enemies without actually being guilty of any offense. This
is not what is called positive and negative “magnetism,” but it is
something like that. When a man possesses this faculty for making
friends he will make them whether or no, even though he be lacking in
all the qualities which men find admirable. He may be selfish, cold,
over-ambitious and ruthless of the rights of others, and yet exercise
a fascination upon other men. Such a man was Napoleon Bonaparte, who
called forth the greatest personal devotion and enthusiasm in the men
whom he destroyed for his own ends. Contrariwise, a man may be noble,
generous, affable and everything that a popular man should be, and yet
be practically without friends.
But I made another and greater discovery which reconciled me to my
unpopularity and which, indeed, completely revolutionized my views upon
the subject--_I discovered that the greatest men in the world have been
the ones who had the most enemies!_
And it was upon making this discovery, Sir--the most important, in my
opinion, that has been made by any sociologist of our time--that I
determined to set up my school for the exposition of the science of
making enemies. All men, said I to myself, are naturally ambitious;
they desire fame, honor and riches. They have but to be shown the way
and they will enter eagerly upon it.
Elated as I was at my great discovery, I could not but wonder that men
had not discovered this secret long ago. How could such men as Spencer,
Lecky, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and the others have overlooked a thing
so _simple_ and so obviously true?
Here, I rejoiced, I have a discovery--not a theory, not an
hypothesis--but a fact! A fact which may be tested and proven in any
field of human activity--in government, in commerce, in religion, in
literature, in art--in everything! No religion can live without first
enduring persecution; no government can survive without the patriotism
bred of the fear of enemies and the hatred of foes; no general
can become great without war; no author becomes a classic without
criticism; no prophet can conquer without opposition. Nothing great can
be done without enemies.
For generations, for ages, men have been proceeding upon an entirely
erroneous theory that friends are more necessary to success than
enemies. Such stupidity! Such utter disregard of the evidence to the
contrary which confronts us upon every hand! Our park benches are
lined with men who had too many friends, our charitable institutions
are overflowing with them. Think of the most popular man you know and
then of the most successful! Are they the same? Of course not. Once you
stop to think of it, the truth of my discovery is self-evident. No
matter where you go you will find that the greatest man is the one who
has the most enemies.
Friends are not only not necessary to a man’s success, but they are
often a positive detriment. A man surrounded by friends is like a man
blindfolded--he can not see where he is going. How do you improve? By
correcting your faults. And who points out your faults, your friends
or your enemies? An enemy is a spur. An enemy is an inspiration. Your
friends sympathize with you, commiserate with you, agree with you and
flatter you; but your enemies _advertise you_.
Whistler once wrote a book called _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies_,
and I suspect that Whistler had caught an inkling of the truth of my
great discovery, but his title was a misnomer. The making of enemies
is not an art, but a science. Some people have a special gift for it,
as I have, but almost any one can learn how. By observing a few simple
rules in this connection, any man should be able to acquire all the
enemies he may desire. But any man may save himself a great deal of
time and trouble by taking my course of instruction. When he receives
his diploma from the Sourface Training School he will be so well versed
in this science that he will thereafter follow the principles of the
school without any thought whatever, but purely from force of habit.
Judging from the number of people I see about me who are trying in an
amateurish way to acquire enemies, the academy should have a large
attendance from the start, and since I have never met a more unpopular
man than myself, I know of no one more eminently qualified to conduct
such a school. I can not afford to make public my method of instruction
because such an action would open the field to a host of imitators, but
I can assure you that the course is most effective.
There is only one doubt in my mind about the success of the school,
and that is this: I fear that when the public realizes the tremendous
import of my discovery and appreciates the great work which I am doing
for humanity, I shall become so popular that I will be in great danger
of losing the success which I have labored so hard to attain and which
I so richly deserve.
Truly yours,
SAMUEL SOURFACE,
Headmaster, Sourface Training School.
CRANKTOWN, NEW JERSEY.
THE FATE OF FALSTAFF
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am an actor; a follower of Thespis, an interpreter of men
and emotions. To become such was the dream of my boyhood’s ambition.
At an early age (I shall not state when, since you would probably
be incredulous) I used, Sir, to act plays for my own amusement and
afterward for the amusement of my elders. Where other children were
content to play in careless fashion, without attempting anything like
an exact reproduction or imitation of Nature, I was most particular in
this respect. If I played Julius Cæsar, I had, to satisfy my artistic
instinct, to carry a short sword and not a long one; I must needs wrap
myself in a sheet and swear by the heathen gods. Nothing short of this
satisfied me. I could not, as so many children do, thrust a feather
duster down the neck of my jacket and play at being an Indian chief;
on the contrary, I must have the feathers in my hair and my complexion
darkened until I bore some actual resemblance to the aborigine. Without
these aids to illusion I could not enjoy myself or get any manner of
amusement from the sport. I was so close a student of details, even at
that age, that in playing Indian I acquired a habit of toeing-in which
caused my mother much distress and which clung to me for many months.
Nor was I less particular in the matter of my speech. I was forever
mouthing sentiments and speeches culled from my father’s library, some
of them, I dare say, weird and bizarre enough upon my youthful and
innocent lips. However this may be, I had an abiding horror of all
sorts of anachronisms, and I preferred Ben Jonson to Shakespeare for
the reason that he was less frequently guilty of offending my artistic
sense in this respect.
It was not long before my parents were impressed with my natural bent
in this direction and encouraged me in my favorite diversion by
taking the part of an audience, while my younger brother was pressed
into service with his harmonica and rendered the overtures and the
interludes to the best of his somewhat limited ability; for I could
no more act without an orchestra than I could act without a make-up.
Incidentally I came to practise the art of elocution, and it was said
in our neighborhood that I could interpret _Horatio at the Bridge_ in a
most telling fashion, and that not Riley himself could improve upon my
rendition of _The Raggedy Man_.
With such a wealth of youthful experience, it was not surprising that
I found myself at the age of twenty-one a supernumerary in a theater,
nor that soon afterward I was given a speaking part and rose, before
long, to the dignity of “leads” in a stock company of the first class.
It was at this time that I was given my first opportunity really
to distinguish myself. A prominent manager, who shall be nameless,
sent for me and told me that he had chosen me to play Falstaff in a
production of _Henry the Fourth_ which he intended putting on the
following winter.
Elated as I was at this splendid opportunity for a display of my genius
for acting, I could not forbear voicing certain conscientious scruples
as to my ability to do the part justice.
“I can undoubtedly interpret the character to your most complete
satisfaction,” said I to the manager, “but there is an obstacle, which,
while by no means unsurmountable, must, nevertheless, be overcome at
once or not at all.”
“And what is that?” he inquired.
“Why,” said I, “I am not fat enough.”
“What odds?” he answered; “while there are pads and pillows, this
should be no matter for despair. You have only to stuff your doublet
and pad your hose until you are as swollen as you like.”
“That,” I protested, “may do very well for your merely commercial
actors who have no concern in their acting beyond the matter of drawing
a salary; but I, Sir, am an _actor_, not a mere buffoon, not a vulgar
clown to waddle about a stage wagging a hypocritical belly and passing
off feathers for fat. If I am to play Falstaff, I will be Falstaff, in
the flesh as well as in the spirit. My corporosity shall be sincere,
my puffing and grunting shall be genuine; I will eat real food and
drink real liquor upon your stage, and when I waddle I shall waddle as
Nature intended fat men to waddle--because I can not help it. My calves
shall be as natural as Sir John’s own, so that if I am pricked with the
point of a rapier, I shall give utterance to a howl which is not mere
mockery, but as real as a howl may well be, and which will delight the
audience as no feigned howl ever could do.
“No, no! I shall not play Falstaff like a clown in a pantomime, but
like that very knight himself. My performance shall be as real as the
performance of Nature. I will be Sir John redivivus. Falstaff shall
live again in me. He shall be I and I will be he, and there is an end
of it.”
Well, Sir, to be brief, the manager was so struck with my unusual
and, I may say, unaffected, sincerity, that he voluntarily advanced
me a portion of my salary and agreed to my proposal that, instead of
wasting valuable time in rehearsing a part in which I was already
practically letter-perfect, my part in the rehearsals should be taken
by a substitute, while I retired to the country and devoted myself to
my labor of love--to the task of putting on so much flesh as would be
necessary to act with fidelity the pursy knight errant. And this I did
to so good purpose that from my normal weight of about one hundred and
ninety pounds, I soon came to weigh upward of two hundred and eighty,
and was as fat as any one could wish when we opened in _Henry the
Fourth_ in the Autumn.
To say, Sir, that my performance was a success is to do scant justice
to the literary ability of William Shakespeare and to my own histrionic
powers. It was not merely a success--it was a triumph! Ah, Sir, if I
could but whisper in your ear the name by which I was known in those
days of superlative glory, you would recall in the flash of an eye the
days when the whole of the English-speaking world was convulsed with
merriment at my performance and when press and public were vying with
each other to do me honor! Never was such a performance of Falstaff
given before, and never, I fear, will such a performance be given
again. I was Falstaff to the very life! Falstaff in person and not to
be mistaken for any one else. You could have sworn that I had stepped
bodily out of the pages of the folio edition and thrust my way into the
theater of my own volition, usurping the place of the actor.
Four whole seasons we played to crowded houses--New York, Chicago, San
Francisco and London--and everywhere the critics all agreed that never
had such a perfect Falstaff been seen before. This we followed with
_The Merry Wives of Windsor_, repeating our success for two seasons, so
that for six years I was known to every actor and patron of the theater
as the greatest Falstaff that ever was.
But Fate, alas! however prodigal she may appear for a time, is not
constant in her favors. All things come to an end sooner or later, and
our production of _The Merry Wives_ ran its course in time. How well
do I remember that last night of all--the glitter of the electrics
overhead, the glare of the footlights, the music of the orchestra,
and, oh, above all else, the thunderous applause that greeted me when
I appeared before the curtain, clad in trunks and doublet, to make
my farewell speech! There ended our production, and there ended my
greatness and my life. My grossness I have still, but my greatness has
fled forever! Disconsolate I wander through the haunts of stageland, a
fat pale ghost of my former self; a Falstaff out of place and out of
time; a Falstaff without jollity or joy. I, Sir, have become that thing
which I hate above all other things in the world, I have become an
Anachronism!
Conceive, if you can, my consternation when I discovered my dilemma.
Having no further need for my excessive flesh, I sought to reduce my
weight only to find that I could not lose it! Six years of playing
Falstaff had made me Falstaff for good or ill. No fighter of the
prize-ring, no beauty of the court, ever labored as I labored to
struggle back to slimness. No Hamlet ever cried more earnestly than I,
“Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!”
Like Sisyphus, I toiled for months with my burden, rolling off flesh
only to have it roll on again, until at last I gave up in despair.
No manager would employ me to play for him--I was too fat. Too fat
to act, too fat to play at any part but one. Once only since that
time have I tried to obtain an engagement and that was when I saw an
advertisement of a revival of my own great play, _Henry the Fourth_.
But would you believe it, Sir, the manager had the impudence to laugh
in my face, to deny the truth of my story and scoff at my insistence
upon my identity. He called me, Sir, _a fat slob_! In desperation
I tried a Dime Museum, only to be told that no “fat freaks” were
employed who weighed less than three hundred and fifty pounds. At
last I fell into my present disgraceful situation; I was employed by
a restaurant-keeper as a decoy. In the window of one of the cheapest
and vilest cafés in this city I sit for eight hours daily drawing a
crowd about the place while I toy with a knife and fork and pretend to
eat of a meal that I would not feed my most bitter enemy. I do not eat
it. I can not eat it. And so, Sir, here I sit each day, a mere husk
of my former self, a hulk, a wrecked Leviathan! A fraud and a freak;
a delusion and a snare. This have I suffered in consequence of my
devotion to an ideal--I who was for six years the greatest Falstaff the
world has ever known!
T. P.
THE REWARD OF MERIT
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I am an ashman, or, as they call me nowadays, a scavenger. It
may appear to you, Sir, a queer thing that a man in my station in life
should address a letter to an editor and upon such a subject, but when
I have made you acquainted with the facts of my case, I think it will
not seem so strange.
It is true that I am now employed as a scavenger, but I was formerly
the occupant of a very different station in life; I was formerly a
physician. I wish to lay before you what I consider the causes of my
descent in the social scale. When a man who has once been a member
of an honored profession is reduced to manual labor of a peculiarly
disagreeable sort, the common opinion is like to be that he is in some
way responsible for his own downfall; that he has fallen a victim
to drink or drugs, to a passion for gambling, or to some other
injurious habit. In my own case, I will not deny that the change in my
circumstances is probably due to my own conduct, though I do assure
you that it was not caused by my indulgence in the habits which I have
mentioned above. To be brief, Sir, I am of the opinion that my present
poverty and obscurity is nothing more nor less than the reward of merit.
It has been my observation that most of the favorite theories of the
human race are erroneous. They come into being as mere suggestions,
they grow into convictions, they thrive as platitudes, and they die as
superstitions. There have been millions of them since the world began,
and I have no doubt there will be millions of others before the last
man has vanished from the face of the earth. Some of these theories
live on long after they have been clearly demonstrated to be without
foundation in fact, and sometimes they work great harm to the innocent
persons who accept and act upon them in good faith. Such has been my
sad experience, and the theory which was responsible for my present
unpleasant situation was the theory that merit is always rewarded.
As a boy I was of a confiding and trusting nature. I believed all that
was told me, and I put especial faith in the admonitions and advice
of those who were set to instruct me in manners and morals. One of
the first lessons I learned was that merit is always rewarded; and
another, that industry is the certain road to success and advancement.
These things I firmly believed to be true. Sundays, when other boys
of my acquaintance stole away to go fishing or swimming, I went to
Sunday-school, firm in the conviction that my virtue and self-denial
would be amply rewarded, though I was a bit hazy as to the manner
in which this would come about. It was often a severe temptation to
hear the truants boasting of the pleasures they had enjoyed at the
swimming-pool or at the fork of the creek where they went to angle.
At the end of my first summer of Sunday-school, I was given a crude
picture card showing two cows of peculiar construction who appeared to
be enjoying themselves immensely in the very river I had shunned so
religiously. Upon this card there was printed a conspicuous legend:
“The Reward of Merit.”
While this result of my season of piety was not what I had expected, I
continued to hope on until I had acquired quite a collection of similar
cards, some of them varied a little as to subject, but all of the same
order of art, and all bearing the familiar legend. Being of a naturally
optimistic and sanguine disposition, I soon convinced myself that my
mistake lay in looking for material rewards in return for spiritual
industry.
When I entered the profession of medicine, I still clung to my theory
of the reward of merit, and no sooner did I get a patient than I set
to work to cure him as quickly as possible. If a patient really had
nothing the matter with him, I sent him about his business. I was not a
nerve specialist and I did not care to be bothered with hypochondriacs.
Though I started with an unusually good practise for a young physician,
the result of this course of conduct was that I found myself in two
years’ time sitting idle in my office with my waiting-room absolutely
empty. I had cured all my patients who were really ill and I had
offended all who only thought they were ill. It seems that one can not
offend a man more than by telling him he is well when he prefers to
think that he is unwell. My patients who had been cured had no further
need of me, and those whom I had refused to treat had no further use
for me, so that the tongue of malice completed the work which my own
energy had begun. And thus, for the second time, my theory of the
reward of merit had failed to work out. Having made one failure as
a doctor, I could never again establish myself in the practise of
medicine. Wherever I went, the story of my failure had preceded me,
so that presently I found myself dropping down and down in the social
scale until finally I awoke one morning to find myself a scavenger.
“Now,” said I to myself, “I have touched bottom and I must presently
go up again like a man who sinks in the water.” But my hopes were not
realized. I remained a collector and remover of garbage. My study of
hygiene had taught me the evils of filth and I could not, therefore,
neglect my work as a less intelligent scavenger might have done. I knew
that my clients were depending upon me, in a great degree, to protect
them from typhoid and kindred evils, and even though I realized that
this dependence was more or less unconscious upon their part, I could
no more have shirked my responsibility than I could have gone into
their houses and killed them in cold blood. So I went to work earnestly
and I flatter myself that there is no more thoroughgoing workman in the
whole body of scavengers than myself.
Since I have been engaged in this work I have made another discovery.
I have discovered that industry is by no means a sure road to
advancement. When my work is well done I am paid, but I am not
complimented. The thoroughness of my methods does not attract the
attention of my clients. Nobody seeks me out with a proffer of more
congenial employment. Everybody appears to take it for granted that
I like to collect garbage. I do not. I have never been a collector
of anything from choice. I used to think that any man who collected
stamps must be lacking in intelligence, but I see now that one may be
engaged in collecting worse things than stamps. Nobody says anything at
all about my work unless something goes wrong. And this, I believe, is
usually the case.
I recently read a copy of the _Memoirs of Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von
Pulitz_, which I retrieved from the ash-can of one of my clients who
is of a literary turn, and it was through his receptacle for discarded
matter, by the way, that I first made the acquaintance of your
excellent publication.
In these _Memoirs_, which are unusually interesting in many respects,
I came upon an anecdote which seems to have a direct bearing upon the
question which we are now considering. It appears that Colonel von
Pulitz was discussing with a number of other officers the chances
and mischances of a military career. Several of the officers had
volunteered the causes to which they attributed their success.
Colonel von Pulitz then related this anecdote, the truth of which he
indorses elsewhere, and in this he is borne out by the editor of the
autobiography, Professor Rudolph Ubermann, of Berlin University.
“When a young man,” writes Colonel von Pulitz, “I fell into disgrace
with my family because of a certain youthful escapade--no matter
what--and so forfeited my opportunity for entering the Prussian Army as
an officer. I therefore determined to gain by my wits what I had lost
by my folly. I was, as you who know me can testify, an unusually tall
and fine-looking young man. Now it occurred to me that if I could once
attract the attention of the king (he is here referring to Frederick
the Great) he would undoubtedly desire me as a recruit for his ‘tall’
regiment, and if I had an opportunity to explain to him my situation, I
might, after all, secure my coveted commission. I therefore secured a
situation as a servant in the king’s own household, under a fictitious
name, of course; and I was highly delighted when I found that I had
been delegated as one of the waiters at table, for, thought I, now
is my great opportunity certainly at hand. But alas for my hopes! The
king bestowed upon me no notice whatever, and for all the attention my
height secured from his majesty, I might have been a dwarf.
“So it went on for weeks, and I had nearly despaired of my commission
when I hit upon the audacious scheme which solved the problem. I
determined to attract the king’s notice at any cost, and when next
I waited upon him, I deliberately pretended to stumble, and with an
air of awkwardness I emptied down the neck of his majesty a plate
of exceedingly hot soup. In a moment there was an uproar. The king
was in a fury of temper and the majordomo was in a fair way to die
of fright and chagrin, but my purpose was accomplished. The king had
looked at me. He observed my height and my aristocratic bearing. He
questioned me, and I told him my whole story frankly, omitting nothing
but the ruse whereby I had brought myself to his notice. I secured my
commission in his regiment, and from that time on I advanced steadily.
The king never forgot me, but kept a friendly eye upon me. He once said
in my presence: ‘Gentlemen, I never see a plate of hot soup that I do
not think of my good friend the Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz.’”
Now, Mr. _Idler_, I have no opportunity for spilling hot soup down the
necks of my clients and my conscience will not permit me to attract
their notice by gross neglect of duty. My effective work has failed to
bring upon me their favorable regard. Finding myself so situated, and
being, even yet, hopeful of some opportunity for bettering myself, I
have written you this letter. I have done so in the hope that it may
meet the eye of some one of my clients, perhaps that of the literary
gentleman through whose barrel I first made your acquaintance and the
acquaintance of the ingenious Lieutenant-Colonel Paul von Pulitz.
I, am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
CHARLES CLINKER.
THE BLESSINGS OF THE BLIND
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Those who are blessed, as the saying is, with two eyes
and the gift of sight, are much given to expressing sympathy with,
and sorrow for, the blind. It would be churlish to quarrel with so
unselfish a sentiment, for it is, indeed, very good-natured of those
who are busily engaged in seeing the sights of the world to spare the
time and the thought which they give to the sightless. Yet I often
wonder if the blind do not sometimes question, as I do, if a great deal
of this sympathy is not wasted?
I, Sir, am blind. Totally and irretrievably blind. I have been blind
all my life, having been, as the Irish say, “dark” from my birth. Born
blind, in fact. My “affliction,” as it is called, being natural, I was
born with no blemish to betray my infirmity, and it has so happened
upon several occasions that, being thrown into the company of those
who had not previously been warned of my condition, I have been
compelled to make them acquainted with it myself. This information has
invariably been the signal for apology and sympathetic pity. From which
I infer that men generally feel that the blind are to be pitied and
consoled. Also I have read a great deal of the hardship of being blind,
though I have never, I confess, been quite able to see wherein that
hardship lay. You are surprised, perhaps, to hear me say that I have
“read” of this, but I assure you there is no reason to be surprised. If
you are at all acquainted with the progress of science, as I suppose
you are, you must have heard of raised type. Oh, yes, I read quite as
naturally as you, yourself, though I accomplish with my fingers what
you do with your eyes.
The result of my reading has been that I have come seriously to
question the theory that sight is necessary to human happiness and
efficiency. It has been borne in upon me that men possessed of two good
eyes are often apparently unable to make use of them. I read that men
often fall in love with women who seem, to all others, extremely ugly;
and that women as often do the same by men. And not only that, but
that they are quite frequently completely deceived in the characters
of the persons whom they marry, women discovering their husbands to be
bullies, and men finding their wives to be viragoes and shrews; and
all this when the nuptial knot is tied hard and fast and the damage is
beyond repair.
If eyes are really of as much use as those who see seem to think them,
how is it possible that people should make such mistakes? Blind as I
am, such a thing could never happen to me, nor do I think it could
befall any sightless person; certainly not one who has been, as I have,
blind from birth. I know the voice of a shrew the moment she opens her
mouth, no matter how pleasantly she may speak at the moment. I can
point out to you the drunkard, the hypocrite and the boor the moment I
have heard them speak. In the tone of his voice every man carries his
true certificate of character, be it good or bad. An ill-tempered man
may conceal his vice from you, who look only at his face and judge his
speech by his words, but he can not deceive me, for I know him by his
voice. I have been engaged in business for the last thirty years and
I have never once been taken in by a swindler. I have never yet been
mistaken in the character of a man with whom I dealt. How many _seeing_
men can say as much?
Excepting the human being, we know of no such active or intelligent
creature as the ant--the ant who lives in total darkness. Yet does he
not build his cities and fight his battles as wisely as we do our own?
I sometimes wonder if the possession of the power of sight is not a
hindrance, rather than a help, in labor? The ant, who can not see at
all, goes straight to his object. He is never distracted by the sight
of things along the way. The fly, on the contrary, is possessed of a
great many eyes; his head, in fact, is practically _all eyes_. Yet what
is the fly but a parasite, a nuisance, a very vagabond of insects?
Attracted hither and thither by everything that meets his gaze, he
lights first upon one object and then upon another, without rhyme or
reason save his overweening curiosity, until he finally falls into a
trap and dies an ignoble death in a spider’s web, or caught fast upon
a sticky paper. The fly has no social organization, no family life,
no mating in any proper sense of the word. He pollutes all that he
touches. His entire life is a life of destruction, as opposed to the
ant’s, which is a life of construction.
According to the Grecian mythology, the largest race of men the world
has ever known, the _Cyclops_, had but a single eye, and that in the
middle of the forehead. The stupidest of all characters of the Grecian
myths was _Argus_, who, though he had more eyes than all the gods and
heroes together, yet allowed _Hermes_ to pipe him to sleep and so cut
off his head. In the tail of _Hera’s_ peacock, his eyes were of as much
use to him as in his own head. _Eros_, the god of love, was blind; yet
he was of all the gods the most joyful. And in this, our own day, is
not _Justice_ blind?
Is there, in all this, no significance? Is there no hint of an
understanding of the secret that, as he who would save his soul must
first lose it, so he who would see must first be blind?
Men see, as we say, with the mind as well as with the eye. Men also
see with the spirit. Saul never could see the truth and beauty of
Christianity until he was stricken blind upon the road to Damascus. But
_while_ he was blind, he _saw_, and so became Paul. Would Homer have
been the giant of poets had he had his sight? I doubt it. Would Milton
have attained his heights of inspiration, had he retained his vision? I
can not believe it. For the man who has physical sight looks upon the
earth and the works of men; but he who has only the spiritual sight,
lifts up his eyes to God and His angels.
The shepherd lad who has never traveled beyond his native valley dreams
a beautiful dream of the world that lies beyond the hills that hem him
in. But the tourist lives a life of constant disillusion, for he finds
in distant lands, where he had thought to find the abiding-place of
Romance, the same humdrum life of the commonplace that he left at home.
We who are blind, Mr. _Idler_, are the shepherd boys of this life.
Enclosed in our valley of darkness by the everlasting shadow of our
endless night, we dream of the world that lies beyond as a place of
beauty and happiness. For us there is no sad disillusion. For us
there is no rude awakening from the delights of fancy. For us the
sky is always fair and the earth is always sweet. For us the woods
are thronged with nymphs and the grasses with the little people of
fairyland. We do not know the gloom of age or the horror of decay. We
do not know the sight of death.
Do not imagine, Sir, that because we can not see, we can not create
images. We can, we do. We dream of the earth as fair as other men may
dream of heaven. Because we have never seen beauty, to us all things
are beautiful. When I walk in the garden, the scent of the rose rises
to my nostrils with a sweetness which is but intensified because I can
not see the blossom whence it springs. I finger its fragile petals,
and I rejoice in its beauty of form, for you must know that one can
_feel_ beauty as well as see it. I lean my head against the friendly
and sturdy oak and I hear the beating of his heart. For to me all these
things _live_. What does it signify that they can not see, or hear,
or speak? _I_ can not see; am I the less a man for that? I learn that
nowadays it is possible to communicate with people who are born not
only blind, but deaf and dumb as well. That it is possible to teach
them to read and to speak, even as I was taught to read and speak. Is
it not possible, then, that some day, if we will only try, we may be
able to break through the long silence that has separated us from our
brothers and sisters of the woods and fields? Already, we who are blind
can almost understand the whispered syllables of the rustling leaves
and the waving grass. May not some other, one perhaps more closely shut
in with God than we, reach downward as well as upward, and bring about
the _universal_ understanding? I hope it may be so.
My wife, who had the sweetest voice of any girl I ever knew, is as
fair to me to-day as upon the day when I first fell in love. Her
voice, if anything, has grown more pleasant as she has grown older.
She, too, is blind, and together we enjoy a state of happiness which
comes as near to being perpetual youth as it is possible for mortals to
attain. How infinitely better this seems to me, than to be compelled,
day after day, to watch the fading of that flower of my early love! To
observe anxiously the lines of care creeping into that dearly beloved
countenance; to see the snow of many winters slowly whiten her soft
smooth hair! What a kindness of the good God is this, that she remains
forever young to me, as I do to her, and that our passion knows nothing
of the insidious poison of departing comeliness!
Curiously enough, our only child, the dearly beloved son who was the
fruit of our attachment, has a perfect vision. And this, Mr. _Idler_,
odd as it may seem to you who are accustomed to look upon this matter
from a different point of view, is the one worry of my life. Many a
night have I lain awake, listening to the gentle breathing of my wife
at my side, and turned over and over in my mind the dangers which he
must face because of his condition. Often have I prayed God that He
might watch over him and turn aside his eyes from the ugliness, the sin
and the temptation, which his mother and I have mercifully been spared!
It is hard, in any case, to have the child grow up and go out into the
world. But it is infinitely more hard to know that he is almost as
though he were of another race of beings, and that he must endure the
sight of pain, of misery, of squalor, of poverty and of age! That he
must be subject to temptations for which I can not prepare him, having
never met with them myself.
I once read a story of a man who became mysteriously possessed of the
power to read the thoughts of all those with whom he came in contact.
At first he was transported into the seventh heaven of delight,
reveling in the sense of his new-found power. But soon he came to
realize what a curse had fallen upon him. Turn where he would, he
found the minds of men filled with envy, malice and evil. The fairest
faces served to hide from others, but not from him, the most ignoble
minds. Beneath the frankest and most friendly manner he often read the
secret hatred and jealousy. Confronted upon all sides with the evidence
of the wickedness and baseness of his fellows, he was at last driven to
despair, and by one desperate act destroyed both his power and his life.
Mr. _Idler_, were I suddenly to be granted the gift of sight, I think
that I should feel like that. It is hard enough to read of some things.
I should not care to look upon them.
There have been those who, hearing me speak so of sight, have answered,
“That is because you have never been able to see. You do not know what
a blessing sight is, because you have never enjoyed it!” Sometimes I
comfort myself with the thought that it is like that with our son.
He can see, but he was born that way and he will never know the
difference. Gradually he will grow used to looking upon things which
I could not endure to behold. God has chosen to give him the harder
part; may He grant him the strength to bear it!
I am, Sir, your sincere friend,
NOEL NIGHTSHADE.
A TALE OF A MAD POET’S WIFE
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have long been an interested reader of your interesting
periodical, though I have not hitherto presumed to address you, either
personally or in your character as editor. I have ever had an aversion
for that type of person who is constantly rushing into print to air
personal troubles and casting upon the shoulders of the public the
burdens which should rightly be borne upon his own. I have observed,
however, that a great many of your readers do not scruple to address
you in this respect and are quite in the habit of writing you for
advice upon their personal affairs, and, since you do not appear to
find this burdensome, I have determined to make known to you my own
pitiable plight, in the hope that you, or some of your readers, may
be able to suggest some method of relief; for, indeed, I am deep in
trouble, from which I seem utterly unable to extricate myself by my
own devices. Lest I weary you, I shall tell my sad story in the fewest
possible words.
While yet a very young woman I fell in love with a poet. In this there
was nothing especially noteworthy, since, I suppose, all women go
through this experience at some time of life. The unfortunate feature
of my own affair was that it ended quite as I wished it to end--in my
marriage. I soon learned that the qualities which make the poet so
satisfactory a suitor do not always appear in so favorable a light when
he has become a husband. I found it very sweet and charming during our
courtship that my lover should be concerned with my spiritual welfare
and that his thoughts should never descend to the common affairs of
life. It would have seemed almost like sacrilege to ask him to consider
with me the sordid problems which are commonly inflicted upon young
men of grosser clay when they have proposed marriage to a young woman.
So certain was I that any mention of such trivialities would mortally
offend my fiancé that I would permit neither my father nor my brothers
to question him upon the subject of his financial condition. For this
sentimental whim I very nearly paid with my happiness, for I found
soon after we had been wed that these questions must inevitably be
considered sooner or later, and whereas it had formerly been only a
question of the expediency of my marriage, it was now become a matter
of vital importance.
Fortunately, I have always been of an excellent _wheedling_
disposition, so much so that my father used to say I could coax a
Scotchman into extravagance or a politician into honesty by merely
smiling upon him. I turned this natural gift to account in the case of
my husband by inducing him to constitute me his business agent. I then
went about among the editors selling his verse, and in this I was so
successful that he was soon supplying _no less than a third_ of the
current verse which was printed in the six or seven leading monthly
magazines published in this city. No doubt you have often heard poets
express surprise at the amount of rather mediocre poetry which finds
its way into the columns of standard publications. You may understand
this more readily when I tell you that several other writers of
magazine poetry, learning of our own arrangement, immediately set about
acquiring handsome and attractive wives, to whom they turned over their
output, never appearing at the offices of the editors in person but
always sending their wives as their representatives.
In this way we managed very well for several years, though latterly I
have encountered one or two editors who were apparently either very
near-sighted or peculiarly unsusceptible. We were doing very well,
however, and my husband had acquired a wide reputation, so that he was
often invited to lecture before associations of one sort or another and
to give readings at entertainments in private dwellings. This added to
our income, but both of us by now being under the necessity of always
appearing dressed in the very neatest and most attractive fashion, we
soon found that whatever sum we had left over from current living
expenses went for keeping up appearances; so that we were able to live
very well but were by no means enabled to lay by a competence for the
future.
It was at this stage of our career, which is to say some three years
gone, when we were doing better than we ever had before, that the sad
blow fell upon us which has cast a shadow over our household, and
which has left me, at the age of forty, a widow in all but name and
a pauper in anticipation, if not already one in fact. My husband had
been invited to speak before a certain literary club or society, and as
was always his custom, had accepted without hesitation. Little did he
realize, when he carelessly mentioned this appointment to me, that it
would be his last public appearance for a long time to come--perhaps
forever! Little did I know when he left our apartment that evening,
looking so debonair and engaging in his faultless evening attire, that
I should next behold him a pitiful wreck--a driveling idiot! Yet, Mr.
_Idler_, this was, alas! what befell your wretched correspondent. He
came back to me from that reading a man without understanding, a mental
incompetent, a man who, despite his stalwart frame and glowing health
of body, exhibited all the symptoms of senile decay! A man who could
scarcely scrawl his own name in legible fashion, to say nothing of
inditing sonnets, quatrains and ballads.
And what, Mr. _Idler_, do you suppose those heartless wretches who
composed that literary society had done to my innocent and harmless
husband? Not content with having him read his verses, _they had
insisted that he explain them_! And he, poor weak man that he was,
yielded to the unhappy vanity which is the birthright of all poets,
and had attempted to comply with their request. The result you already
know. His mind was completely overturned. He has spent the time since
that dreadful evening in dictating to an imaginary stenographer a
critical appreciation of each rhyme in _Mother Goose_. Only once
has he attempted anything in the way of original poetry, which I
hastened to jot down in shorthand, and which was so puerile, so empty
of all meaning, that I could not forbear to weep heartbrokenly as I
transcribed my notes.
Now, Mr. _Idler_, what redress have I against those inhuman creatures,
those compassionless brutes, who brought my husband to this pass? Can
I sue them in a court of law? Or must I bear without compensation the
dreadful sorrow which has befallen me? I beg of you, advise me at once,
as I do not know which way to turn.
I am, Sir, distractedly yours,
BEDELIA BARDLET.
P. S.--All is come right after all, Mr. _Idler_. After writing you
the above, yesterday morning, I determined to make one more desperate
trial. I took around to an editor the one original poem, of which I
spoke, which my husband had dictated in his madness. That editor has
just called me on the telephone to say that the poem will be printed in
the next number of his magazine, and that he finds it by far the best
that my husband has ever submitted. And so, please God, it may turn out
that his misfortune will prove to be a blessing in disguise.
THE LOCK-STEP
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Thackeray once said: “Every one knows what harm the bad may
do, but who knows the mischief done by the good?” It appears to me
that there is a valuable suggestion in this query which merits the
consideration of all men who live under a civilized government, and
especially the attention of young men who are about to enter upon
the serious business of life. Young people, being by nature somewhat
lacking in logic, are prone to consider everything that is good _per
se_ as a thing which must necessarily be good in its effect, and
similarly to class all thing which are bad in themselves as bad in
their effects. Nothing could be more erroneous than this assumption.
There is no man who will maintain that a beating is a thing which is
good in itself; yet I am old-fashioned enough to believe that many a
beating has been very salutary in its effect. Early in life, I fell
into this common error of confusing the inherent quality of an act with
the quality of its effect, and it is in the hope that I may save some
worthy young man the miseries resulting from such an error that I am
writing this letter.
As Mr. James Coolidge Carter points out in his book, _Law: Its Origin,
Growth and Function_, and as Blackstone and others pointed out before
him, all law originates in custom. As a custom becomes general--so
general as to be termed the common custom among a given people--it is
usually enacted as law. And even where such legislative sanction is
wanting, a general custom takes on the force of law and operates as
law, as is the case with the great body of the common law of England.
Thus, a custom, which in the beginning all are free to adopt or to
reject as they may see fit, eventually acquires the force of a rule to
which all are obliged to conform, whether from strict legal necessity
or merely by force of public opinion.
The law, theoretically at least and actually in most cases, is merely
the expression of a public sentiment. It is the constant tendency of
all uniform and generally prevalent customs and opinions to take on
the form of law. The general disapproval of profanity, for instance,
results in laws providing penalties for the use of profane language
in public places. Practically all ordinances may be traced to the
same source of public sentiment. Not all laws, however, represent
the will of the majority. Certain of our laws are representative of
the general opinion of all mankind, others of the sentiments of a
majority of mankind, and still others of the ideas and prejudices of
an active minority. To the extent that such habits, ideas, customs,
opinions and prejudices become crystallized into law, the members of
a community become enslaved to those habits, ideas, customs, opinions
and prejudices; since a departure from them is followed by penalties
and punishments. And there are some customs which, while not actually
laws, exert quite as strong an influence upon the average citizen as
the duly enacted statutes. The fear of social ostracism is often quite
as effective a check upon the inclinations of an individual as the fear
of legal punishment.
Now, as every man is the slave of general laws and customs, so, in a
lesser sense, is he the slave of his own personal habits. And oddly
enough this is more often true of good habits than of bad ones.
Should the town drunkard make a sudden resolution to reform, the town
may laugh, but nobody will condemn his resolution to mend his ways;
nobody will be scandalized at his change of habits. But should the
leader of the local prohibitionists suddenly resolve to test the joys
of inebriety, what a protest would go up on all sides! Even the town
drunkard would sneer and despise him as a man who had fallen from his
high estate. Much as the inebriate may dislike the sincere teetotaler,
he dislikes the ex-teetotaler even more. No, every man is a slave to
his good habits and he can not hope to change them without exciting the
animosity of all who know him.
I recall reading not long ago a story of an eastern governor who was
caught in the act of smoking a cigarette. Now, there was nothing
especially horrifying about the fact that he smoked cigarettes except
for the fact that he was the vice-president of an anti-cigarette
society. Under the circumstances this governor, who is in all
probability a capable and fairly honest executive, has endangered, if
he has not destroyed, his political future--and all for the matter of
a cigarette! While it may seem an injustice to him that he be made
to suffer a political eclipse for so slight a lapse, there is hardly
a smoker who will not heartily agree with the idly busy people who
make up the anti-cigarette league, that the governor deserves all the
punishment his outraged associates may choose to inflict upon him. He
has been a double renegade; for he has betrayed his fellow smokers by
publicly indorsing the aims of the society, and he has betrayed his
fellow members of the society by privately indulging in the very habit
which the society condemns.
And the general public may very justly condemn him not because he
smokes cigarettes--but because he has played the hypocrite. This
statesman is evidently one of those foolish men who believe that it
pays to appear better than one really is, and that an undeserved
reputation for abstinence and virtue is better than none. And of all
the possible attitudes that he might have assumed in this connection,
the one which he did assume was the worst, for it was the most
hypocritical and insincere. And what monumental folly! For the sake of
a cigarette he has jeopardized his career--by such a slender thread is
the Damoclean sword of public opprobrium suspended!
But I am digressing. I did not intend to write you a dissertation upon
the follies of politicians, but to set forth, in some sort, the results
of my own stupidity in failing to discover early in life the tyranny of
custom and habit.
I am, as you may possibly have conjectured, a member of the legal
profession; which profession I have followed with some degree of
success for the last thirty years. I think I may say without boasting
that I have attained an enviable reputation among my colleagues of the
bar as an able advocate and a man possessed of a logical mind and a
rather extensive knowledge of the “delightful fictions of the law.” I
have no complaint to make upon the score of my professional career.
If it has not led me to eminence, it has at least preserved me from
want. My practise, while general and not so profitable as that of some
legal specialists of my acquaintance, is yet sufficiently lucrative to
enable me to maintain a comfortable establishment at home and to pay
without pinching the expenses of my son’s collegiate and my daughter’s
“finishing school” education. I have a comfortable home, a healthy
and happy family, a prosperous business, a large number of congenial
friends and a hale and hearty constitution. Doubtless you will say
that I am blessed beyond the majority of mankind. Doubtless I am, and
doubtless, too, beyond my deserts. But for all these blessings, which
are obviously much to be desired, there is, so to speak, a fly in the
ointment of my contentment. And that is just this--_I have too good a
reputation_! In me, Sir, you may behold a man who has become an abject
slave to good Reputation. Totally unknown to the great majority of
my millions of fellow countrymen, and having but a modest degree of
celebrity among the members of my own profession, I am yet compelled
to be as careful of my speech and as circumspect in my actions as
if I were the Czar of all the Russias! I am bound hand, foot and
tongue by the ties of a lifetime; I am manacled at the cart-tail of
Respectability; I am pilloried in the pillory of Dignified Demeanor!
If you will bear with me a bit longer, I shall endeavor to explain my
present situation.
I was born and reared in the little Missouri town where I now reside. I
am personally acquainted with practically every man, woman and child in
the place, which, while not exactly a village, is hardly large enough
to be called a city outside of the columns of our local newspapers. The
present county attorney is a young man of thirty whom I trotted on my
knee and for whom I made kites many years ago. The county judge and I
fell out many years ago because he insisted that we had been playing
marbles for “keeps”, while I maintained that we had been playing merely
for fun. We are now the best of friends, however, and there is no judge
in the state who passes heavier sentences on convicted gamblers than
he. The pastor of the church which I attend is a lad who in former
years was a member of the Sunday-school class I taught and which used
to embarrass me with all sorts of questions concerning the wives of
Cain and Abel and the origin of the inhabitants of the Land of Nod. And
so it is; I know them all and they all know me.
“Jimmy” Vance is our family physician; he is the family physician for
at least a third of our population. He has been helping the people
of our town to be born and to die for more than thirty years--but
he is still “Jimmy”. Jimmy and I were born in the same year. It was
once a joke with us to call ourselves “twins” on this account. But
Jimmy and I are “twins” no longer. Jimmy is still a smooth-faced
boy at fifty-five, while I am a gray-bearded oldster. You may gather
something of my life when I tell you that though my Christian names
are Jeremiah Samuel (I do not give my surname for reasons you will
understand), I have never, since my twenty-first year, been addressed
either as “Jerry” or “Sam”. My wife calls me “Jeremiah”, as do my other
relatives, while my business associates and friends never grow more
familiar than “Jeremiah S.”
When I determined to enter upon the study and practise of the law, my
maternal uncle, who was himself a practising attorney, became a sort of
supplementary preceptor to me by virtue of his avuncular relationship.
He assisted me in my studies and when the time came for me to be
admitted to the bar, he gave me a deal of what he no doubt considered
sound advice as to my future conduct. “Jeremiah,” said he, “there
is no profession on earth which is a more serious business than the
law. Men do not go to law for fun. Nobody brings a lawsuit for mere
amusement. When clients come to you they will come because they have
serious business on hand and they want a sober competent man to attend
to it for them. It is no joke to them and they don’t want you to joke
about it. Now, my advice to you--which you may take or leave as you
see fit--is always to keep a straight face. No matter how funny a case
may seem to you, don’t laugh. Your dignity will be more than half your
capital; see that you don’t forget your dignity.”
Such was the advice of my maternal uncle. And such was the character
I assumed upon entering the practise of the law. From the day I drew
my first real brief I became the very essence of dignity. I even
wooed and won my wife in the character of a dignified young man of
serious mind and purpose. She has never in all these years suspected
my innate frivolity. Should I yield to my natural impulse and indulge
in the nonsense and fun which has ever been so dear to my heart, I am
convinced that she would at once lose all respect for me, if, indeed,
she did not think me suddenly insane. I am grave. Under all conditions
and circumstances I am as grave as an undertaker. I do smile now and
then, but it is generally the indulgent superior smile which I labored
so hard to acquire when young and which I can not now shake off. I have
been dignified so long that my dignity has become a part of me--not
really a part of my inward personality--but a part of my outward
appearance; I should feel naked and ashamed without it; it would seem
like going about half-dressed. I am so grave that nobody ever tells me
a funny story excepting the kind that one tells a minister. They are
afraid to be natural when in my presence. As Midas turned everything he
touched to gold, so I turn all my friends to bores. No sooner do I come
into my house than the whole family stops talking and waits to hear
what I have to say. Nobody dares to interrupt me; nobody presumes to
contradict me, unless it be old Brownly, who is our oldest inhabitant
and so considers himself somewhere near my own age. Every one is grave
when with me. That is, every one but Jimmy. Jimmy has always seen
through my pose and Jimmy takes a malicious pleasure in pretending he
is young when with me.
From the day I entered upon the practise of the law, I modeled my
conduct upon that of my maternal uncle who was, as my boy Tom says,
“as cheerful as a crutch.” I abandoned the bright colored scarfs which
have always delighted my eye, and I donned the sober black bow tie
which I wear to this day. Striped and checked clothing gave way to the
non-committal pepper-and-salt suit of indefinite hue which has been my
unvarying garb from that day to this. And I grew that Vandyke beard,
to which, I am convinced, I owed my early reputation for learning and
even now owe a good part of the respect which I command. My beard is as
fixed an institution as our local literary club. Fashion has at least
relieved me of the necessity of wearing a top hat, or “plug” as we call
it here; but fashion will never relieve me of my beard, for beards may
come and beards may go, but mine grows on forever. Should I shave that
beard it would electrify the community. My wife would regard me with
suspicion, my children with pity, my friends with mirth and my clients
with horror. I verily believe that old Brown the banker, who is my best
client, would be less shocked should I tell him that I had forgotten
how to frame a complaint or draw a mortgage, than if he should walk
into my office and find me clean-shaven.
And as it is with dress, so it is with other things. Jimmy Vance,
although a doctor, never affected that dignity which has come to be
my strongest personal characteristic. Jimmy never imitated anybody’s
dignity. And as a consequence Jimmy is as free as the wind. If he
wants to smoke, he does it. If he wants to drink, he takes a drink.
If he wants to go roller-skating, he goes. And nobody ever thinks
of objecting to anything he does. Jimmy has never led any one to
expect any particular sort of conduct from him. He is full of
surprises and nobody likes him the less for it. I can drink at my
club--occasionally--or at a banquet, or at home; but I can not go into
a bar like Jimmy and shake dice with a traveling man. I can smoke,
but I could not chew tobacco. I can read, but I can not read light
novels--that is, not unless I hide away to do it. If I were to go into
our public library and ask for _The Siege of the Seven Suitors_ I
honestly think that old Miss Peters, our librarian, would faint dead
away. Now it isn’t that I want to _do_ these things which irks me,
so much as the fact that I want to be able to do them if I feel like
it. I thank God I have escaped the gravest danger which lies in the
acquisition of too good habits--I have never become what so many men
of super-excellent reputations do become--a hypocrite. I have been a
poser, a pretender, a rebel--ah, I have fairly seethed with rebellion
against the tyranny of this fictitious self at times!--but I have
never broken my habits on the sly. I have lived up to the straw man
I so foolishly put in my place; I have gone around and around in my
lock-step of respectability when I felt that I might gladly have died
for a single year of absolute personal freedom; I have made my bed and
like Damiens I have lain chained to it with iron chains for years; and
never before now have I cried aloud!
And Jimmy! What a life is Jimmy’s! Jimmy is as prosperous as I; as
respected as I; far happier than I; and ah, how much more is Jimmy
loved than I!
When the girls go away to boarding-school, Jimmy kisses them good-by;
when they come home again, Jimmy kisses them hello. Jimmy never misses
an opportunity to kiss them, coming or going. But who cares? Nobody.
“It’s only old Jimmy,” the girls say. “It’s only old Jimmy,” echo their
sweethearts. “It’s only Jimmy’s way!” giggle their mothers--for Jimmy
kisses them, too; Jimmy is no fool. But suppose I should try it? Who
would say, “It’s only old Jeremiah?”
Since there is small danger that your magazine will ever be read by
any one who will recognize me in this letter, I don’t mind confessing
that I did try it once; it is the only sin of the sort that I have
on my conscience after twenty-five years of dignity, domestic and
foreign. It was last year that it happened. The girl had been visiting
one of my daughter’s chums for the Christmas vacation and she was one
of the guests at the Christmas party we had at our house. I came into
the front hall and found her standing all alone, directly under the
mistletoe. I looked at her standing there so sweet and pretty and so
unconscious of the mistletoe, and I wondered how it would feel to kiss
some one on the lips. I have been kissed on the forehead for years.
Even my children kiss me on the forehead. They learned to do that
early, when they explained that my beard was “cratchy”. I looked at the
girl again. I was tempted and I fell. That is, I tried to fall, but she
wouldn’t let me.
“Why not?” I asked her. “You let my boy Tom do it.”
“Oh, but _he’s_ only a boy!” she said.
“Well,” I insisted, “you let Jimmy do it!”
“Oh, but he’s an _old_ man!” she exclaimed.
“Yes!” said I, “and so am I an old man!”
“Oh, but,” she protested, “you’re not _that kind_ of an old man!”
That’s it! That’s always been it, and that always will be it--I’m not
_that kind_ of an old man!
J. S.
THE FRUIT OF FAME
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have told many strange and distressing stories in my
time; tales of struggle, of suffering, of sorrow and of bitter
disappointment; for I, Sir, am an author, and the telling of tales has
long been my vocation. But of all the tales which I have spun from
the thread of my inner consciousness, there is none, I believe, more
strange or more filled with disillusionment than the true story which I
am about to tell you now.
I began writing at an early age. Indeed, I was writing short stories
while yet in the high school and selling them before I had done with
college. The history of my younger years does not differ greatly from
that of most young authors; it is the history of an existence which
would have been inexpressibly sordid had it not been glorified by
youthful hope and ambition. I married young and was forced to write
constantly in order to make both ends meet. The years went slipping by
almost unnoticed until suddenly one day I awoke to find myself upon the
verge of middle age and realized that for years I had been postponing
the writing of my first real book, meanwhile falling unconsciously into
the habit of giving all of my attention to the market value of what
I wrote and growing more and more indifferent to the question of its
literary merit. I had, in fact, become a confirmed hack-writer.
The discovery shocked me into action. I determined then and there that
I would write a novel worthy of my powers if I had to give to that task
the time which should be employed in rest and sleep. I had never taken
many holidays; now I took none at all. Every odd moment was employed
on the great task which should lift me out of the rut and transform me
from a mere fiction machine into a creative artist. I shall not bore
you with the details of that work; how I toiled far into the night and
arose before daybreak to finish a chapter or retouch a paragraph; how
I struggled with my style which had become corrupted and florid from
the writing of sensational stories of adventure; how I tossed in my bed
when I should have been sleeping, made wakeful by the excitement under
which I labored. Suffice it to say, through infinite pains and toil I
finally wrote the last line of _The Pin-headed Girl_, and sent it off
to Messrs. Buckram and Sons with a high heart. It was accepted.
The publishers, according to their usual custom, offered me a
royalty of ten per cent.; for you must know, Sir, that it is only
the established and successful author who can make his own terms. We
poor devils who are appearing in cloth for the first time must be
content with what is offered, for no publisher considers a meritorious
manuscript a recommendation in any way equal to a well-known name. The
book of a famous author, like a notorious brand of soap, is supposed
to sell itself, whereas, in the case of an unknown scribbler, a demand
for the work must be created by advertising. Now it is an axiom with
publishers that a modern novel, unless it happen to be a story of
extraordinary vitality, is dead in six months. With the birth of the
autumn list, the spring list dies, which is to say, when the books
which appear in the autumn are thrown upon the market, the demand for
those which appeared in the spring is immediately checked and often
dies out altogether. In six months novels are _old_; good only for
bargain sales, second-hand stores and circulating libraries. It is
therefore necessary that a book achieve a good sale in the first six
months if it is to enjoy such a sale at all.
Realizing this and taking into consideration the fact that _The
Pin-headed Girl_ was the work of a literary nobody, my publishers set
industriously to work to create a reputation for me. I will say for
them that they spared no expense in making my name familiar to the
public. It was flaunted on every side, so that no man could ride in the
subway, pick up a magazine or open a theater program without being made
acquainted with the fact that Hackett A. Long was the author of _The
Pin-headed Girl_. No man could read a literary supplement or a monthly
review without learning that I took coffee with my breakfast; had a
fondness for Russian boar-hounds (never having owned one); preferred
reading opera scores to hearing the singers; did most of my work
between the hours of three and five in the afternoon; disliked Bohemian
restaurants; bought my cigarettes by the hundred; wore a wing collar;
and many other things, some of which were true and some not. If you
glanced at any of the illustrated papers at that time, you must have
seen me riding in my six-cylinder roadster (loaned for the occasion by
the obliging publisher), sitting upon the stoop of my cottage by the
sea, or seated, pen in hand, at my desk in the very act of producing
literature. I assure you, Sir, your correspondent was no inconsiderable
figure in the public eye at that time.
This activity upon the part of my publishers was not without
results. The first person to show the effect of my sudden leap into
notoriety was my wife. She assured me that as a well-known author
I must pay some heed to appearances. I must no longer lodge in a
third-class apartment-house without hall-boys or elevators. When my
fellow celebrities sought me out to offer me congratulations upon my
masterpiece, they must find me in a suitable environment. We must have
an apartment fitting for an author already notable and soon to take a
well-deserved place among the foremost writers of the day; an apartment
which should be expensive without being pretentious, furnished in
such a fashion that any one could discern at a glance the touch of
the man of taste and refinement, the natural aristocrat, the man of
temperament; in a word, the artist. Having settled the question of the
apartment, she next turned her attention to my wardrobe, which was,
I confess, sadly in need of attention. I must no longer go about in
ready-made clothing. I must patronize a fashionable tailor, I must
dress for dinner, I must buy me a soft hat with a bow at the back. I
must cease my writing of lurid short stories and hair-raising serials;
to do pot-boilers for cheap monthlies and weeklies was beneath the
dignity of an author of recognized standing. You may well believe that
this unaccustomed notoriety was not without its effect upon me, but I
was not so carried away by it as was my optimistic mate. I hung back a
little; I protested.
“It is all very well, my dear,” said I, “to talk so glibly of giving up
my short stories and my serials, but we must consider that they have
been, and still are, my chief if not my only source of revenue. They
are nothing to be proud of, I admit. They are cheap, shoddy, stupid and
entirely unworthy of the pen that wrote _The Pin-headed Girl_. But, my
dear, they _pay_.”
“That,” said my wife, “is a consideration which had some weight before
the publication of your novel, but an author so well known as you now
are can certainly have no need to depend upon such puerile compositions
for his income.”
I thereupon called her attention to the fact that my contract with
the publishers called for a semi-annual accounting and settlement,
and that under this agreement, no matter how much money might be due
me, I could not hope to collect any of it until six months after the
date of publication. To which she replied, truthfully enough, that it
would be easy for me to obtain anything we might want on credit. The
upshot of it was, Sir, that I yielded to her persuasion and began to
live in a manner which was little short of princely as compared with
our previous hand-to-mouth existence. I stopped writing pot-boilers and
set to work upon my second novel which I named, very aptly as I then
thought, _Out of the Woods_. Where my first novel had been three years
in the making, my second was finished in five months, for I now had
plenty of time at my disposal, and I sent it off confidently enough to
Buckram and Sons, and with it, a letter in which I made it clear that I
would expect a larger share of the profits upon my second story than I
had been content to accept in the case of _The Pin-headed Girl_. For,
as I pointed out to them, whereas the author of _The Pin-headed Girl_
had been an unknown scribbler, the author of _Out of the Woods_ was a
well-known novelist who possessed the _name_ which had been wanting in
the first instance.
You can, perhaps, fancy my surprise and consternation when I received
a letter from Buckram and Sons enclosing their statement of the sales
of _The Pin-headed Girl_ and a check for seventy-two dollars and fifty
cents in full payment of all royalties to date. _In spite of the money
expended in advertising, the sale of the book had not exceeded five
hundred copies._ The letter further stated that Messrs. Buckram and
Sons regretted to inform me that they were returning the manuscript of
_Out of the Woods_, as they could not consider publishing another of my
books upon the heels of such a failure as _The Pin-headed Girl_.
This sudden collapse of my castles in Spain left me completely
demoralized, but it had no such effect upon my wife. She was astonished
at the failure of the book, but she held firmly to her position that
whatever the fate of the book might be, the fact remained that I was
now a celebrated man. I could not be blamed, she argued, because the
book had proved a failure. It was my part of the business to write the
book, it was the publisher’s part to sell it. I had performed my part,
but Buckram and Sons had most lamentably failed to perform theirs.
If they could not sell a book which had been so well advertised as
_The Pin-headed Girl_, that simply went to show that they had a very
poor selling organization, and the very fact that they had spent so
much money in advertising a book which afterward proved a failure,
was in itself a proof that they were no business men. In short, the
only thing for me to do was to find a new publisher for _Out of the
Woods_; preferably some energetic young man who would not only make a
success of the second book, but who would realize something from the
advertising expended upon the first.
This unanswerable argument encouraged me a little and I submitted the
second book to Franklin Format who, although a young man and a new
man to the business, already had several “best sellers” to his credit.
A few days later he sent for me and when I was seated in his office,
he told me that he had read my manuscript with interest and had found
it most entertaining, but before making me any offer, he would like
to know if the book had been submitted to my regular publishers. His
was a young house, he said, and he could not afford to antagonize so
influential a firm as Buckram and Sons by stealing away one of its
authors. I replied that the book had been offered to them but that they
had refused to publish it. He raised his eyebrows at this and asked
the reason for their refusal. In my innocence I answered truthfully
that Buckram and Sons did not want my second book because they had been
unable to sell my first. On hearing this he remarked sympathetically
that it had been a very bad season for novels and that several on his
own list had fallen quite flat. Indeed, his own losses had been so
great that he had been looking about for some author with a “selling
name” to help him out of his difficulties. Under the circumstances,
however, it would be rank folly, not only upon his part, but upon mine,
to issue another novel bearing my name at a time when the memory of my
first ill-starred book was still fresh in the minds of the booksellers;
for while the public might know nothing of the failure, the booksellers
would most certainly recall it upon seeing my name on a wrapper, and
without orders from the booksellers one might as well burn a book in
manuscript as to let it die more expensively in covers. The best thing
for me to do would be to wait a year or two until the memory of _The
Pin-headed Girl_ had completely faded from their minds. In two years’
time it would certainly be as completely forgotten as if it had never
been written, and I then might venture, with some hope of success, upon
another novel.
And there, Sir, the matter rests. In some mysterious way the word has
been passed around among the publishers that _The Pin-headed Girl_ was
a disastrous investment and not one of them will touch _Out of the
Woods_. My wife threatens to leave me if I abandon novel-writing and
go back to my pot-boilers; she says she could not bear the disgrace of
acknowledged failure and that I must maintain my present position as a
celebrated author at all hazards. I have applied to several editors of
my acquaintance for editorial positions and they have all replied that
they had nothing to offer me which would be worth my consideration or
worthy of my talents. My first novel has left me with a reputation,
a two-years lease of an expensive apartment, a load of debts, an
angry wife, a scrap-book filled with favorable reviews, an unsalable
manuscript and a prospect of bankruptcy.
This, Sir, is the true story of a writer who achieved his ambition of
becoming a well-known novelist. If any reader of your journal, now
engaged in hack-writing and enjoying comfortable obscurity, cherishes
an ambition like mine, let him be warned by my example, lest through
the blighting touch of the publicity agent he be forced, as I am, to
choose between beginning life anew under an assumed name or slowly
starving to death in the midst of luxury.
I am, sir,
HACKETT A. LONG.
* * * * * *
Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unpaired.
Page 1: Transcriber removed redundant book title.
Page 27: The chapter title was printed as “A PURITIAN IN BOHEMIA,”
but was changed here to “A PURITAN IN BOHEMIA,” as that matches the
spelling in the Table of Contents and in other uses of the word
elsewhere in the book.
Page 173: The chapter title was printed as “THE ABUSES OF ADVERSISY,”
but was changed here to “THE ABUSES OF ADVERSITY,” as that matches
the spelling in the Table of Contents and in other uses of the word
elsewhere in the book.
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