Part 15

And perhaps--I yet further speculate,--the phenomena called "literary genius" and "artistic ability" are vexatious little mishaps, a trifle gone wrong, in the broad working out of a plan which they minutely hamper.... So the contretemps is remedied. The person afflicted with "genius" is removed, be it by his other diseases or by his fellows' natural dislike of him, it hardly matters: either way, there is by ordinary in his removal a smack of haste: and you will note that, whether in polity or mercy, it is somehow provided that his children do not inherit his affliction.... So does life seem to keep her pawns from errancy. So does she seem to restrict them, with now and then some show of pettishness, to the arena and service of her large and dim and patient gaming: and wisdom bids us emulate this patience, in the time that we get bread and children, and strive to die with no more of active discomfort than may be unavoidable.

And yet, even so, in the bared teeth of outraged reason, no one of us rests quite content to be a mere transmitter of semen, and to serve as one of many millions of instruments in life's inexplicable labor, used for a little while as such, and then put by, worn out and finished with forever. We appeal against oblivion. And not only does the shatter-pated artist appeal: the Pharaohs have filed pyramidic caveats, the best-thought-of business-men yet enter demurrers in the form of public libraries: there is no tomb-stone however modest but insanely appeals to posterity to keep in mind somebody's dates of birth and death and middle name.

For we will to continue here, in the world known to us, to continue if only as syllables. We all will not to be forgotten utterly by those that must so soon inherit our familiar dear estate of tedium and muddle-headedness and fret and failure; and that in our places will get bread and children; and that after our going will in our beds be striving to die with no more of active discomfort than may be unavoidable.

Yet here is an odd thing: we can pretend to offer no example worth the following, not even any salutary instance of just what to avoid; nor can we, in any of the limbos which have been divinely revealed, thus far, derive from being so remembered one minim of profit. We are spurred by neither altruism nor self-seeking; the counsellor that persuades to the appeal remains anonymous: and it seems that, here again, some power which mocks at reason, or at least at human reason, is moving us to serve unknown but, one suspects, not unappointed ends.

For we do not know, either here or elsewhere, what ends may be appointed: but we do know, I think, that every wise man will avoid too much of guesswork, in the brief while that he gets bread and children, and patiently foreplans to die with no more of active discomfort than is unavoidable.

§ 93

Thus, then, I reflected, now that I approached my summing up, the writer who is sustained by the notion of his books' being perpetual things cannot, after two minutes of honest thought, believe himself to be sustained also by altruism, nor by any faith in the superior discernment of posterity. Upon no ground perceptible to me could reason detect, the instant that reason weighed the present rate and direction of man's progress, any marked likelihood of posterity's being in anything more logical than is that contemporaneous, so huge and so depressingly unimpressed audience which every artist must perforce contemn. Posterity in its approach to literary matters would probably muddle forward, as man has always done, upon humanity's time-tested crutches of hearsay and stupidity. The men who after our departure inherited the gray tedium of man's daily living would keep some of our books (but not really read them), and others of our books they would destroy, not in any haphazard fashion, but acting always under the adamantean human compulsion to be illogical about everything.

Not any art or painstaking, nor certainly any accident of "genius," could enable a book to live. Chance alone appeared to do that, and then only in a very limited sense. And in this final, frantic, and yet optimistic appeal to posterity--here, too, man clung to his great racial custom of being illogical about everything; and every serious author triumphantly attested himself to be, after all, quite human. That seemed the conclusion of the matter....

So I ran over my enlinked deductions. Man lived, for the major part of his conceded time, a meagre and monotonous and unsatisfying existence: this he alleviated by endlessly concocting fictions which bedrugged and diverted him. The artist, and in particular the literary artist, like every other person animate, attempted to bedrug and divert primarily himself; which end the literary artist gained, as a rule, by picturing himself as figuring enviably in unfamiliar surroundings, and as making sport with the three martinets that he, in common with all men at bottom, most genuinely abhorred,--that is, with common-sense and piety and death. Moreover, he diverted himself by playing with such human ideas as he found entertaining: and he played too with the notion of hoodwinking posterity into accepting and treasuring his highly imaginative portrait of himself. And the outcome of his multifold playing--of that interminable self-diversion which he, quite unsmilingly, called his "work,"--was always unpredictable, always chance-guided, and, in any case, was of no benefit or hurt to him by and by, and was never of grave importance to anybody else. That seemed to be the whole truth about the literary artist. That seemed the gist of the epilogue I had now evolved for the Biography of Dom Manuel's life, and was submitting to myself to-night as the explanation of why I had given over so many years to writing.

Yes, all my premises seemed true: my deductions appeared to hold together. My logic and its upshot, in any event, contented me. What, I had begun by asking, does the author get out of it all? Well, I had found that unknown quantity; the equation now was solved; and _x_ amounted to, exactly, nothing. That was the mathematics of it: only, as you may recall, it had been revealed to me, through the aid of my small son, that mathematics too amounted to, exactly, nothing. And, besides, here also, in reaching this negation, I had most gratifyingly attained, in the same moment that I discredited, the aim of every valid author. For I had found, I reflected, even here, some rather interesting ideas to play with.... Yes, and my argument ended, neatly, with the day: for the clock behind me was now striking midnight....

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 11: A prominent American littérateur of the period. The titles of many of his books have been preserved, such as _His Father's Son_, _The Last Meeting_, _A Secret of the Sea_, &c.]

[Footnote 12: A newspaper writer of the day. He specialized in very short editorials, so notably preëminent, even in American journalism, for feeble-mindedness that these were published, simultaneously, by some fifty of the leading papers of the United States, and were read everywhere with edification.]

[Footnote 13: Novelists of the day; authors of _Charles Rex_, _Janet March_, _Greatheart_, &c.]

THE AUTHOR OF THE EAGLE'S SHADOW

"To the citizens and all the realm I make this proclamation: for now have I moored my bark of life, and so will own myself a happy man. Many are the shapes that fortune takes, and oft the gods bring things to pass beyond our expectation. That which we deemed so sure is not fulfilled, while for that we never thought would be, Heaven finds out a way. And such hath been the issue in the present case."

_The Author of The Eagle's Shadow_

§ 94

"Would you advise me, sir," he was asking, "to become a regular writer--now?"

For I had got just this far, and, as I have said, the clock behind me was just striking midnight, when I was interrupted by an unlooked-for visitor.

Most writers, for their sins, are used to the incursions of the literarily-inclined young man (with, as a rule, quite dreadful manuscripts hidden about his person) who wants advice as to his life-work. But that this especial young man should be calling upon me for that purpose, or for any other purpose, did, I confess, even on Walburga's Eve, astonish me....

For he undeniably sat there. He was fat, remarkably fat for a lad of twenty-two or thereabouts; and he had, as I noticed first of all, most enviably thick hair, sleeked down, and parted "on the side" with some fanfaronade in the way of capillary flourishes. He was rather curiously dressed, too, I considered: the lapels of his coat were so small and stiff; they were held in place, I deduced, by a coat-spring, which would be to-day, I could have no doubt, the only coat-spring in existence. And he wore a fawn-colored waistcoat, and his rigorous collar towered, incredible in height, above a sky-blue "Ascot tie," which was resplendently secured with a largish sword-hilt asparkle everywhere with diamonds. And to describe the majestic rotundities of this boy's shoulders as due to "padding" would be through understatement to deceive you; since these coat-shoulders could have been designed and builded (I reflected), by no imaginable tailor, but only by an upholsterer.... It must have been, in fine, a good twenty years since I had seen anybody appareled quite as he was....

"You see, I have just sold three stories to magazines," he continued, "and I was wondering, sir, if you would advise me to become a regular writer now."

To that I gave my customary, sage and carefully considered reply. "Of course," I informed him, "there is a great deal to be said upon both sides."

"I wrote five, you see: and I mailed them all out together. And The Smart Set took one; and The Argosy took the one I sent them, too; and Mr. Alden wrote me a real nice letter about the one I sent Harper's, and said they would be very glad to use it if I would let them say 'paunch' where I had written 'belly'--"

"Dear me! and so you are already writing with offensive coarseness. But don't mind me. Go on."

"Well, but I was just going to say, and that's all right, of course, though you do sort of think of Falstaff as having one. But the other two came back, although I can't see why, when you look at the stuff those very magazines--!"

"You will see, by and by," I assured him: "and then you will wonder about the stories that did not come back."

"Anyhow, I got a hundred and five dollars for the lot of them. Yes, sir, not a cent less. And to have three out of five stick, the very first time, is pretty unusual, don't you think?"

To that I assented. "It is the bait in the trap, it is the stroke of doom, it is the tasted pomegranate of Persephone."

"Then I have the notion for a book, too. It's about a young man who is in love with a girl--"

"That now is a good idea. It is an idea that has possibilities."

"--Only, he can't ask her to marry him, because she has lots of money, and he is poor. Of course, though, it all comes out all right in the end. His uncle left another will, you see."

"Now was that will, by any chance," I wondered, "discovered long years afterward, in the secret drawer of an old desk? and did it transform your high-minded but impoverished hero into a multi-millionaire?"

And the young man asked, "Why, how did you know?"

"It is not always possible to explain these divinations. Such flashes of imaginative clairvoyance just incommunicably come to me sometimes."

He considered this. He said, with a droll sort of awe, "Probably you do think of things quicker after you have been writing so long--"

I shook my head morosely. "Quite the contrary."

"And of course you have written so many books that--You see, I naturally read them, on account of our similarity in names--"

"You liked them, I hope?"

Very rarely have I seen any young man counterfeit enthusiasm less convincingly. "Why, how can you ask that, I wonder! when everybody knows that your books, sir--!"

"Come, come!" I heartened him, "I have been reviewed a great deal, remember! The production of articles as to my plagiarisms and obscenities ranks as a national industry. Very lately Judge Leonard Doughty[14] exposed me to all Texas as a chancre-laden rat whose ancestry had mixed and simmered in the devil's cauldron of Middle Europe. And, besides, since Professor Fred L. Pattee[15] let the news get out, in perfectly public print, that I am dead and my soul is already in hell, there does not seem much left for any moderately optimistic person to be afraid of."

"Well, but," the young man pointed out, "I'm not unbiased. There is so much about me in your books, you see, sir; and you do make me seem sort of funny. You sort of keep poking fun at me."

"I know. But I cannot help it. For you appear to me, I confess, the most ridiculous person save one that I have ever known. I am the other person."

"Well, I am afraid I don't entirely like your books, sir," he conceded.

And I sat looking at him, both amused and saddened. For never until to-night had it occurred to me how unutterably would this especial young man dislike my books if ever he could know of them. And he was trying so hard, too, to be polite about it.

§ 95

"Why do you do it, sir?" the boy asked now, almost reproachfully. "You get a plenty of pleasure out of life, don't you? and what did you want, anyhow, that you never got?"

"Yes: and I don't know," I admitted, seriatim.

"Well, then, why don't you write some books that will make people see the world is a pretty good sort of place after all?"

"But surely it does not require two persons to point out such an obvious geographical feature? Cannot posterity rely upon you, by and by, to diffuse that truism single-handed?"

"I certainly do hope so," he replied. Now his voice changed. "For I would like to write the very nicest sort of books,--like Henry Harland's and Justus Miles Forman's and Anthony Hope's. They would be about beautiful fine girls and really splendid young men, and everything would come out all right in the end, so they could get married, and not be sort of bitter and smart-alecky and depress people the way"--he coughed,--"the way some people do."

"Young man," I started out severely, "it is quite evident you are not married--"

To which he countered, now I think of it, rather staggeringly. "But you, sir, are not in love. You never will be, sir, not ever any more."

I said: "Yes; that does make a difference. I remember." Then I said: "Stop talking bosh! and stop calling me 'sir'! I'm not your grandfather. It is rather the other way round. And, besides, we were talking about books. Well, you may try, if you like, to write the blithering kind of novel you describe. But, somehow, I don't think you will ever succeed at it."

"You ought to know best, sir, of course, about my abilities. And so, if you would really and truly advise me--Still, I would certainly like to be a real author--"

He was looking at me now, across that remarkable blue tie and shiny sword-hilt, with very touching deference, and with, of all conceivable emotions, envy. I understood, with the most quaint of shocks, that I possessed every one of the things which this preposterous young fellow wanted. I had written and published, sometimes even with commercial extenuation, at least as many magazine stories and books as he hoped by and by to have to his credit: I could imagine how my comfortable-looking large home, and my ownership of actual stocks and bonds, and my acquaintance with a number of more or less distinguished persons, would figure in his callow mild eyes: and I had tasted, too, if not of fame, most certainly of all the notoriety he ever aspired to. Why, but what does it not seem to this pathetic boy, I reflected, actually to have one's picture in the papers! For I could well remember certain ancient glancings toward that awesome pinnacle of being a celebrity.

I was, in fine, by this boy's standards, a success. I had to-day each one of the things he had ever consciously desired. That really was a rather terrible reflection....

§ 96

But he was speaking. "Then you would honestly advise me, sir, not to take up writing as a regular thing?"

"I don't see how I can advise you that,--not honestly, at least. For you will get out of the writing all--heaven help you!--that you hope to get."

"Why, then--" He was abeam.

"You simply wait until you have got it! You can attend to your grinning then, if you feel like it. For you will get every one of the things you think you want. Only, you will get them by the, upon the whole, most philanthropic process of not ever writing any of the mush which you now plan to write."

"But I don't understand--"

"Nor do I, either, quite. But from the start will be tugging at your pen a pig-headed imp that will be guiding it his way instead of the way you intended. And with each book he will be growing stronger and more importunate and more cunning, and he will be stealing the pen away from you for longer and longer intervals. And by and by that imp, full grown now and the very devil of a taskmaster, will be dictating your books from beginning to end,--not to speak here of his making you sweat blood when you revise, at his orders, all the earlier ones."

"Come, now,"--and the young fellow was looking at me rather like a troubled cow,--"come, now, sir, but you don't really mean I am going to be possessed by a devil?"

"Some people will put it that way, only a bit less politely. But I would say, by a dæmon. Socrates had one, you may remember."

"Yes, but this one--?"

"You," I replied, "will call him the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings. Other persons will call him quite different things. Anyhow, with time, you will fall into a sort of bedrugging dæmon-worship, and you will go the way he commands you, without resisting any longer. It will be most deplorable. So Professor Henry A. Beers[16] will have, after all, to dismiss your literary claims from the pale of serious consideration, because you are not of Colonial stock--"

The boy viewed this as urgent. "But, sir, my father's people came in 1727, and my mother's in 1619--"

"That will not matter. Facts are but reeds in the wind of moral indignation. And Maurice Hewlett must become very cuttingly sarcastic about your being a Jew brought up on the Talmud--"

"Me, sir?"

"Most certainly, you. And a transfigured Richard Le Gallienne,[17] purified by his intellectual death and descent into the helotage of reviewing, will be compelled to unmask you as a moral and spiritual hooligan with a diminutive and unkempt and unsavory ego. And an enterprising young person named Bierstadt[18] will, on the strength of having twice had luncheon with you, write out for The Bookman a remarkably intimate account of how partial you are to provoking tragedies and throwing flesh-pots at people's heads. And there will be others,--oh, quite a number of others.... So that, altogether, you perceive, you will get, through this dæmon-worship, into some trouble."

Very rarely have I seen any young man more unaffectedly appalled. "But look here, sir! I don't want to get into any trouble. I simply want to contribute to the best magazines, and write some wholesome and nice entertaining books, that will sell like _The Cardinal's Snuff-Box_ and _The Prisoner of Zenda_."

"I know. It is rather funny that you should begin with just those goals in view. You will not ever attain them. That will not matter so much--after a while. But what will very vitally matter--to you, anyhow,--is that, having once meddled with the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings, you will not ever be able to forswear your dæmon. And such folly is, of course, enough to set every really well-thought-of person in America braying. So that in time--who knows--you too may come to be a chancre-laden rat, and a German Jew with a soul in hell and simmered ancestors and a notoriously unkempt ego, and may otherwise help out with the week's literary gossip."

Whereon the young man rose; and he remarked, with a perhaps not wholly unwarranted uncertainty, "Then you advise me, sir--?"

"I cannot advise you the one way or the other. I am merely forewarning you that, if you insist upon writing books, you will get what you wanted."

He smiled now, brightly, intimately, strangely. "I see: but isn't that also in the one way which matters," he demanded of me, "true?"

And I smiled back at him. "Yes," I admitted, "it seems true in the one way which matters, also."

"Why, then," said he, "I reckon I had better keep right on with _The Eagle's Shadow_."

And after that he went quite suddenly away. He returned, I imagine, to 1902 or thereabouts.

I hope he did, for his sake. There was a rather nice girl awaiting him, back there in 1902. Then, in addition to her, he would have the facile, false inspirations of _The Eagle's Shadow_ to play with, I reflected, as I went back, a little saddened somehow, to concocting the needed epilogue for the long Biography of Dom Manuel's life....

§ 97

But that queer boy's brief visit had quite broken my train of thought. His passing seemed, indeed, to have disproved my train of thought. For the instant I had proved, to my own satisfaction, that what I, in common with all creative writers, got out of writing was, exactly, nothing,--at that same moment he had appeared with his mild, bleated, so respectful question, "Would you advise me, sir, to become a writer--now?"

And I had answered his question. I had failed, at least, to advise him not to become "a regular writer." I had, virtually, admitted that were my youth restored to me, as Jurgen's was, and had I my life to muddle through all over again, I would, still somewhat in the Jurgenic manner, repeat its unprofitable dedication. I could not deny to him, I could not truthfully deny to anybody, that, in the one way which really seemed to count, I had in the end got what I wanted.

§ 98